Guild Wars 2

Don’t know if this has been discussed before or not (search suggests no). Anyway, wouldn’t a taunt mechanic be useful in this game, even with no trinity? How often do you see a downed player being chewed up by a mob, where the allies have nothing to do other than try to rez faster than the damage?

You could have interesting strategies, like kiting mobs into traps, bouncing the mobs around, etc. To me, it feels like it would add a bit more order to the chaos, without having to resort to the trinity model (as no profession can stand being the sole target indefinitely).

What do you think?

Only if it’s treated like a short-duration condition, such as what you see in games like League of Legends.

Not against a taunt at all…

Personally, i don’t really do the rez faster than damage thing too much though… you can knock-back then stun… kite away, invis, then blink back etc. There are tons of possiblities depending on your setup that can be of use in this situation.

There’s nothing to prevent you from currently using those strategies. Stuns, knockback, blinding all work to help control the monster. Taunt and aggro systems in general tend to be very unrealistic, and I’d hate for them to implement anything like that in the current game.

Who needs a taunt when I can just blow a boss on his back via a careful application of Big ’Ol Bomb?

Could make sense to have it work like reverse fear.

Why would an enemy go for you when it’s objective is to kill all of you, and it has the chance to finish one of you? I prefer the pseudo-realism.

If you really want to make the enemy want to kill you, then CC it or hit it really hard, and it’ll come for you.

Nope, wasted ability that wouldn’t translate over to PvP well either. The game is built around a lack of “tanking” in the pure sense, this would go a long way into adding the archaic trinity back. Leave that to the lesser MMOs.

Agree with the responses against taunting, it’s not a realistic mechanic. If you want to save a downed person, cloaking them with a thief is the best you’ll get to make the monster forget about you 100%.

Sylvari have a great taunt, for whatever reason mobs hate turrets. I pop out my elite 5 turret mortors and they go straight for them ignoring me 95% of the time.

Taunt isn’t bad design as long as it’s a short duration/long cooldown.
It should be used to say save a member from death, but not as a way to keep the boss on you all the times else the game would become another easymode party like wow.

Akiko.2364:

Sylvari have a great taunt, for whatever reason mobs hate turrets. I pop out my elite 5 turret mortors and they go straight for them ignoring me 95% of the time.

Mobs seem to favor entities that “appear,” in general. Coming out of stealth near a boss, summoning an elemental or thieves’ guild, all seem to get most mobs to switch targets.

Give every profession a taunt that only lasts for a few seconds and has a massive cooldown. Does not work in PVP.

I’ve changed my mind… I am against a taunt mechanic. There is just way too many solutions to this problem already implimented. No easy button.

Sounds like you are trying to make forced kiting sound like an interesting mechanic by calling it taunting.

Correct me if I am wrong, but in GW1 the mechanic was more or less “targets of opportunity”, go for the squishies and healers if in range. I don’t know how GW2 works aggro, but if its anything like that system, then yes pound that downed player till they die.

There are a couple classes that can almost divert attention by smoke clouds or teleport, but yes I think there should be skill on the bar to direct attention, if only momentarily. Make it a utility skill and only last for 5 seconds max.

Just a small edit: Do most classes have a pull or immobilize skill?

Taunt just sounds like another CC option for me. It should just be an opposite of fear, and I see no problem with that.

I think Taunt is a fine idea. It’d function as mentioned above, as the opposite of fear. Whether we need/want/should have another condition is anyone’s guess, though I think adding new CC options increases the fluidity and excitement of the combat system and gives players more interesting mechanics to pursue. Anyone making an argument against it on grounds of realism should probably take a step back and reevaluate the nature of the game you’re playing, what with fireballs, frog-people, undead, and stick-figure women killing people fluidly with greatswords.

What about a cover effect where a person can get between the mob and what the mob it attking to drop some of the dmg the mob’s target is taking. I would think its best that the one covering will take 75% of the dmg and the one whom the mob is going after take 50% so it will up the dmg the mob is out putting over all but you can make it more evenly spread out. I am not sure if this should be an ability or should it be a build in system.

The only time it would matter would be during boss fights and with defiant in place, no CC would work anyway, rending a taunt utterly useless in it’s most needed area.

Lyer.1905:

The only time it would matter would be during boss fights and with defiant in place, no CC would work anyway, rending a taunt utterly useless in it’s most needed area.

So… knock off the defiant stacks, and save choice CC for it? Though a stun would still be better.

I don’t like taunt mechanics that grab aggro. I would like to see a taunt that causes frenzy though, buffing the targets damage but making them take more damage also.

Would be great if they removed traps from the thief and gave them taunt (frenzy target), Bluff (confuse target), distract (resets target) and misdirect (Forces targeting change).

Couldn’t post for a few days, sorry.

I understand why most people are against it, and let me say that I am definitely against the trinity, and force kiting, and other WoWlike mechanics. And yes, pseudo-realism is nice, but there is one other aspect that breaks this realism, that justifies me wanting a taunt: for most dungeon groups, communication is not constant and immediate (like it would be if it were ‘real’). If every group could communicate in real time, a taunt would probably be useless…alas, is not the case.

Sure, CC, knockdown, fear, they could be used to accomplish the same results, except that most bosses have defiant, cannot be knocked back, etc. The cloaking mechanics are great, but you need specific classes.

Maybe we don’t need it, and could just do with an aggro dump when you’re downed. Someone said that, realistically, the enemy will try to finish you off first. But if I were fighting five opponents, one of them fell down, and the other four kept beating me up, I sure wouldn’t stand there beating the fallen guy while the rest pound me behind my back. In other words, as soon as you’re downed, any attack that causes damage should peel the enemy off of you (as long as you don’t attack them with downed abilities). How about that?

best taunt mechanic I’ve ever seen was in Warhammer:

sinlge target taunt: Increase aggro generated, it doesn’t turn automatically the mob… it just give an aggro generation multiplier to the tank.. if you’r not doing dmg in that time frame it will do absolutely nothing and in it was a 10% dmg increase for you only against that specific target (the bonus dmg also worked in PvP while the aggro part had obviously no effect in that field)…

AoE taunt: increace the aggro generated (just like the single target one but for shorter time frame), in adition it reduced dmg done by affected target against every other target but the taunting one, if the attack is AoE it is effected by the damage reduction only if it doesn’t hit the taunting character as well (as before the aggro part was PvE only while the other effect was applied to PvP too…)

this was a really interesting pvp mechanic…. and a funcional but not too much easy pve mechanic… it wasn’t an I WIN button in pve since good dps could easily take aggro away from bad tank even if they were cycling their taunt at every CD… also AoE taunt were often used fo it’s dmg reduction rahter than as a mean to take aggro… CD for single target was quite short (15 sec if I’m not wrong) while AoE taunt had a 45 sec cd… this combined with the “Guard” ability (50% of incoming dmg suffered by the guarded target was redirected to the guarding character after dmg reduction was calculated… and only if the the 2 character were within a reduced distance) made the tank role a really functional PvP role… where u wold really feel that u were DEFENDING your teammate… and the opponent often found himself in the position to have to kill the tank before being able to kill the defended character… more than a tank it was a real BODYGUARD… and in the hand of a skilled palyer it could be used to defend multiple target (by switching the guard from one ally to the other as soon as one started to take serious dmg)

Best i can tell, the game suffers from a opaque aggro system.

There are some guidelines on the wiki, but nothing is hard and fast because:

1. to really check the system you would need a group of 5 that would do gear in specific ways and do specific actions in a repeated fashion, and keep notes.

2. while there are guidelines, various mobs, both large and small, deviate from said guidelines. Ranged attackers may be favored by ranged mobs and so on, while they should under the guidelines favor the shield carrying guardian standing right in front of them (the extreme example given the guidelines).

As for using the current CCs, maybe maybe not. Problem is that with larger mobs there is the whole Defiant mechanic to deal with. That kind of stuff require a guildie party on voice to handle in any reliable manner, as the game offers very few tools for PUGs to coordinate at all.

All in all, some love fights where they are on the reactive side the whole time. But others like a more structured and controllable fight.

If an enemy is focused on an ally who is downed:

• Use Fear
• Use Pull
• Use Knockback
• Use Knockdown
• Use group stealth
• Use quickness
• Use instant rez skill if party deaths are frequent enough

There are so many controls in this game a taunt would be pointless.

Don’t need it. Where’s the fun if you know in advance that you would take 0 hit and only one or two peoples woud take damages ?
In this game you have to be aware when you have the aggro or not, if you want to help someone who has the aggro you have bumps, interrupts or barriers.

tsfs.4527:

Don’t know if this has been discussed before or not (search suggests no). Anyway, wouldn’t a taunt mechanic be useful in this game, even with no trinity? How often do you see a downed player being chewed up by a mob, where the allies have nothing to do other than try to rez faster than the damage?

You could have interesting strategies, like kiting mobs into traps, bouncing the mobs around, etc. To me, it feels like it would add a bit more order to the chaos, without having to resort to the trinity model (as no profession can stand being the sole target indefinitely).

What do you think?

No, there are no tanks in Guild Wars 2. Taunting is a tanking ability.

And I think the downed player’s “aggro” or in this game it is called “hate” is halved, but I could be mistaken.

cesmode.4257:

tsfs.4527:

Don’t know if this has been discussed before or not (search suggests no). Anyway, wouldn’t a taunt mechanic be useful in this game, even with no trinity? How often do you see a downed player being chewed up by a mob, where the allies have nothing to do other than try to rez faster than the damage?

You could have interesting strategies, like kiting mobs into traps, bouncing the mobs around, etc. To me, it feels like it would add a bit more order to the chaos, without having to resort to the trinity model (as no profession can stand being the sole target indefinitely).

What do you think?

No, there are no tanks in Guild Wars 2. Taunting is a tanking ability.

And I think the downed player’s “aggro” or in this game it is called “hate” is halved, but I could be mistaken.

Some mobs don’t target downed, some really hate downed and some hate ressers, the agro for each enemy type is something that needs learning

emikochan.8504:

There are so many controls in this game a taunt would be pointless.

I see quite a number of interrupts, but very few controls (frost bow #5 comes close, but barely).

tsfs.4527:

Don’t know if this has been discussed before or not (search suggests no). Anyway, wouldn’t a taunt mechanic be useful in this game, even with no trinity? How often do you see a downed player being chewed up by a mob, where the allies have nothing to do other than try to rez faster than the damage?

You could have interesting strategies, like kiting mobs into traps, bouncing the mobs around, etc. To me, it feels like it would add a bit more order to the chaos, without having to resort to the trinity model (as no profession can stand being the sole target indefinitely).

What do you think?

I’m not COMPLETELY against a taunt but i would find it a waste of skill slot since you have blinds, stuns, knockbacks and etc etc. A great thing about this game is that bosses aren’t always immune to control or stun abilities. Unless a taunt had a secondary buff or something, then that’d be more useful in and out of dungeons.

I’m all for taunt. It would give the game much needed organization that its totally missing

Taunt is a mechanic used by weaker systems to make mobs dumber than they already are. AI behaviour in this game uses several different variables to govern their decision making. Taunt arbitrarily overrides those decisions by forcing it to chase after someone for absolutely no reason.

Want to get a mob off a downed player? There are several methods available in the game to do just that, many of them mentioned in this thread, and none of them are cheats. Taunt is a cheat. It’s smart for a mob to wail on a downed player because taking them from downed to defeated makes them that much harder to revive and pretty much removes them from the fight. If you want them to stop doing the smart thing, then work for it. The tools are there.

LOL at those arguing GW2 is ‘superior’ because the fights degenerate into a chaotic zergfest .. and especially a LOL that it’s a ‘cheat’. Fight design is made much easier if you simply make everything into a DPS race, which is all I see GW2 providing.

I’ve made posts about this on different forums and was going to open a discussion up here a well until I saw this

This and zerg rushing were the primary reasons I took some time off the game. I am 100% for a long cooldown, short duration taunt if specc’d for it (say toughness/vitality lines). How do they expect us to control (as far as aggro) a mob without something like this implemented. I mean one of the trinity branches here are called controller without any proper form of controlling aggro to be seen in the game. Just ruins pve somewhat for me and leads to less strategic gameplay and more chaotic encounters. And think about the interesting node defense a reverse fear in PvP for bunkers would create, but could be issues there who knows.

I really think a small implementation of long cd/short dur taunt into a spec’d “bunker” build would go miles in fixing the dungeons in this game.

Absolutely not. Taunt is the most ridiculous ability in all mmos.