Guild Wars 2

Having threat be controlled through Toughness is pretty weird, IMO. Actually, I’d argue that your threat should go down with more toughness, not up, and that there should be utilities that are designed to help control threat in the game.

I agree is wonky but is not really a big deal.

Threat going down with more toughness doesn’t make sense, if you are trying to be tanky then you want to get hit so your allies are not hit.

Warscythes.9307:

I agree is wonky but is not really a big deal.

Threat going down with more toughness doesn’t make sense, if you are trying to be tanky then you want to get hit so your allies are not hit.

I’m thinking from more of a common sense perspective rather than a gamist perspective. My assumption would be threat would be generated in other ways.

this is not a trinity game

its been left open as to what will generate threat/equivalent in future content and i hope the devs take advantage of that design space to make fights interesting. toughness will get stale after a while.

insanemaniac.2456:

this is not a trinity game

its been left open as to what will generate threat/equivalent in future content and i hope the devs take advantage of that design space to make fights interesting. toughness will get stale after a while.

It’s rapidly turning into it though. Anyone with highest toughness is automatically the “tank”…add in the druid healers. I saw some guildies spend liek 4 hours in spirit vale the other night..on the first boss.

Reminded me of everything I hated about WOW. Sigh

Having a soft, flexible role system is not the same as having a hard trinity and is obviously good for the game.

Mitch.4781:

It’s rapidly turning into it though. Anyone with highest toughness is automatically the “tank”…add in the druid healers. I saw some guildies spend liek 4 hours in spirit vale the other night..on the first boss.

Reminded me of everything I hated about WOW. Sigh

No worries, the second boss requires no tank.

Einlanzer.1627:

Having threat be controlled through Toughness is pretty weird, IMO. Actually, I’d argue that your threat should go down with more toughness, not up, and that there should be utilities that are designed to help control threat in the game.

Most aggro control is going to seem artificial. The only two methods of aggro assignment that make any sense from a role-playing/immersion perspective would be, “Kill the guy that hurts the most.” or, “Kill the healer who negates the damage I do.”

How would utility skill use to manage aggro work? Sounds suspiciously like taunts to me, which is every bit as artificial as using toughness. I’d be happy to hear more about this idea, but since you didn’t offer any exposition I have to presume you don’t have more than you offered.

we talk about a skillbased action combat system. i would say, everyone should suffer the same. So i dont understand why u need anything like aa on an epic boss. it just changes the experiance of just 1 player (most of the time in a negative way). how could u change it? very easy. for example replace the aa on the valeguard with a cleave infront of him (red aoe cone) and let him run/face the next enemy in a small distance. lets say radius 180 he will randomly face one of the targets in range. if noone is inside the radius he walks to the closest enemy. negates the “i HAVE to tank the hits”-mentality and would be something more skillreliable in my opinoin.

YES, i am sure they wont change it. its only an example. U can design bosses in future without any aa (still dont know about boss 2 and 3 cause i didnt got there now. so maybe there are alreaddy bosses without aa)

I find it’s possible to make sense of the idea of “threat” based on the “role” part of RPG, mainly from the lack of a charisma stat in video games. In D&D and the like you could always draw attention with something like intimidate, but that doesn’t translate well to a game where every action is based around killing or not dying by damage in some way. “Threat” is like having a high charisma: you might be the least dangerous person in the room, but you appear to be the most dangerous. You scary. From a role-playing perspective, you fool the mobs into thinking you’re doing much more damage than you actually are. The thing about GW2 is there doesn’t seem to be a good basis for a threat-by-ability system since you only have 3 utilities, a heal, an elite, and weapon-variable skills, so I think stat-based or position-based are two of the only ways devs could go.

On the topic of different types of threat source, while that would add nice variety I think it would end up putting too much of a tax on tanks. DPS players could probably continue to get by on their condi or direct damage stats and healers probably wouldn’t have to change, but someone who wants to tank different raids would suddenly need different stat combos for each section of raid with different threat mechanics, or a tank set for one raid and a DPS for all others.