Aggro Management

[CrimsonCapacitor]

I'm used to the COH style of tanking:  Throw out a taunt and the bad guys swarm to the tank, letting the team hit them with AoE's and take them down.

Aggro management in CO is much more fluid.  Granted, I'm still learning the game...

I have a tank build, at least it's SUPPOSED to be tank-like.  He can take a pretty serious pounding and just wades into mobs when soloing.  Shoot, sometimes I aggro multiple mobs soloing just for fun.

But on teams, he's less than stellar.  The squishies get attacked.  I can't hold the bad guys' attention.  Case in point:  Friends and I are running the "Witchcraft TF" (I know CO uses other terminology.  I'm still learning it, so I tend to speak in COH terms) where you fight what's his name Black...  We're all the way at the end where you have to manage his aggro while the demon key does his thing.  The first 1/3 of Black's health bar is easy and quick.  He focuses on me as a tank, just like he should.  Then... *sighs*  He starts spawning mobs.  My tank has two AOE attacks with "challenging strikes" on them (best option I saw to keep aggro focused on me).  the mobs start pounding me.  The empathy toon(s) are spamming heals, as I just need to keep things focused on me and not the key.  And then, multiple spawns notice the blaster and healers and things fall apart quickly.  We tried about a dozen times with different strategies.  "this time, I'll run and try to get them to chase me.  This time, I'll dive underground and pop up across the room.  This time, me and the scrapper will go in together."  Nothing worked.  I'd get a few swings in on the mobs and then they'd turn to the squishies.

Are there any tips to aggro management in CO? 

[Kaiser Tarantula]

Oh boy.  You're doing the Luther Black fight all wrong.

The trick is that nobody touches Luther Black at all.  The more you tick him off, the more he spawns monsters and the more he starts buffing them.  You, as the tanker, want to hit him just once, and then kite him around like a Benny Hill flick while tanking and DPSing whatever uglies he summons that are biggest (his buffs increase the size and damage of his minions, but NOT their HP - kill the biggest ones quick or they'll overwhelm you).

You don't even need to lay a finger on Luther himself after the first hit, unless he starts directly attacking the Demon Key (which he shouldn't so long as nobody else touches him).  Once the Demon Key unlocks the last of Luther's boxes, Luther's done; regardless of how much health he has left, the fight's over and you win.

As for tanking in general, CO's tanking mechanics are almost as screwy as its sidekicking/exemplar mechanics.

The short version is, unless you are just as devoted to DPS as you are to survival, you can forget tanking.  I'm dead serious - challenging strikes and crippling challenge can help, but no amount of taunt advantages will let you maintain aggro in the face of a determined and well-planned DPS character or healer.  There are no "hard taunts" as there were in CoH, where taunted was a status ailment that FORCED you to attack your taunter until it wore off.

As a result, it's very difficult for one tank to hold aggro for his entire team. You and your DPSers need to coordinate, ensuring that they only attack your primary target, and stagger their attacks out so that one massive burst doesn't drag the mob off you and onto their squishy butts.

Unfortunately, everyone in CO loves big numbers, and you can basically forget any sort of planning besides MORE DAMAGE NOW in PUG groups.  It's almost better if everyone but the healer can manage their own tanking (think scrapper or brute), and simply split up enemy mobs among three or so party members while your healer drops heals on whoever's the most hurt.

Archetype tanks have it even worse; even with every taunt advantage available, there is no way a tank Archetype can hold aggro against freeform DPSers or healers.  It's flatly impossible, at least not without highly specialized gear.  I've suffered to the level cap with a Glacier AT long enough to know.

[Starsman]

The trick is that nobody touches Luther Black at all.  The more you tick him off, the more he spawns monsters and the more he starts buffing them.  You, as the tanker, want to hit him just once, and then kite him around like a Benny Hill flick while tanking and DPSing whatever uglies he summons that are biggest (his buffs increase the size and damage of his minions, but NOT their HP - kill the biggest ones quick or they'll overwhelm you).

Kiting... that sounds fun...

...Archetype tanks have it even worse; even with every taunt advantage available, there is no way a tank Archetype can hold aggro against freeform DPSers or healers.  It's flatly impossible, at least not without highly specialized gear.  I've suffered to the level cap with a Glacier AT long enough to know.

Well... I guess this seals it for me. Uninstalling the thing tonight... if tanking is this lame then I don't think I want to keep investing any more time in the game.

[JaguarX]

Oh boy.  You're doing the Luther Black fight all wrong.

The trick is that nobody touches Luther Black at all.  The more you tick him off, the more he spawns monsters and the more he starts buffing them.  You, as the tanker, want to hit him just once, and then kite him around like a Benny Hill flick while tanking and DPSing whatever uglies he summons that are biggest (his buffs increase the size and damage of his minions, but NOT their HP - kill the biggest ones quick or they'll overwhelm you).

You don't even need to lay a finger on Luther himself after the first hit, unless he starts directly attacking the Demon Key (which he shouldn't so long as nobody else touches him).  Once the Demon Key unlocks the last of Luther's boxes, Luther's done; regardless of how much health he has left, the fight's over and you win.

Took a few face plants to figure out this easy way.

NOTE: I soloed this arc. Fun stuff.

First time, got into the room, Demon key starts to do his time, the bugger taking his sweet arse time, while I decided to try and smash Luther Black. Got him down to 1/3 third he spawns a villian Trey King melee. Meh, no big deal I think. I keep smashing, he spawns another one, and buffs the first one. Still no bigg deal. But more I beat on him the more he buffs and heal the things he spawned. It got to a point where there was four giant trey Kings smashing my brains in and the demon key taking his sweet ass time. Anyways, was doing well until the bugger got too close to a trey king and murked him before I could even get to him. Failed.


Second time, Beat on Black, ignored him, beat up the trey kings that spawned, they got best of me that round, failed.

Third time, decided to go back to first method, demon key got smashed when he had only 10% on the last glowie he had to visit. Failed.

Fourth time, hit black once, ran arond the room, shooting him just enough to keep attention on me, while demon key did his thing, demon key got stuck. Had to reset, failed.

4.5-(didnt reset entire arc)-same thing, demon key got stuck again, had to reset. ran out of patience. Ended. Failed.


5th time- alright, I got this Black guy, that sorry excuse of a ghost is doing his thing, going well, lose connection. IP having issues in the area as apparently according to them, someone boloed the area hub or as they said, blew it up. How do you blow up an internet hub? smh. Didnt get connection back until next day.


6th time-got black, got good connection, new hub i nthe area, nothing else could stop me, but was hoping that the d.key dont get stuck. Nope! He didnt get stuck this time...but got called away for emergency. Spent all day and night in ER with baby and the mother. Got back was too tired to log on.


Today, hopefully the 7th time is the charm. Hopefully nothing else happens and I can add this arc in the "done it" section.


Is it different with a team? Although I will not do any of those arcs with a team as I now lack the patience and will power to deal with other people's version of fun now (must be the old age kicking in),  I am curious though as I heard some are a bit more "interesting" with a team and mob interaction.

[CrimsonCapacitor]

Our current team attempting this consists of:

Me on the "tank"
a scrapper
a blaster
two emps

They're all free froms, I think.  I know the scrapper and I are both free form.

I think part of the problem is that the two emps are around level 11 and can't quite keep up the healing in the face of the damage.  We've been running other missions to try to get them some levels.

We pretty much cakewalked through the arc, though.   Sure, there were faceplants, but it wasn't horrendous.

I think the next go round, probably Friday, what we'll try is this:

I keep taunting Black with that "power builder targetted from a distance" pull so I don't hit him.  I then stand there and block, letting the mob hit me.  The Scrapper and blaster take out the mobs as I keep Black busy.  The two emps heal the scrapper and blaster as needed, throwing me some healing every now and then.

And I just wander slowly around the room, taunting Black and blocking to lead him away from the key.

We've tried just about everything else. 

[Kaiser Tarantula]

One of the biggest annoyances is that the Luther Black fight is buggy as hell.

Many times, you'll find that the Demon Key just starts working on a chest and never finishes, rendering the fight unwinnable.  If it happens, you're done, just wipe and be done with it.

Luther Black can also sometimes aggro the Demon Key relentlessly and refuse to come off no matter how many Crippling Challenges and Challenging Strikes you stack on him.  If it happens you're doomed.

Then there's the Trey Kings monstrosities that he summons.  Luther buffs them periodically, but he may get his AI locked into a loop where he does nothing but spam his buff on a single King every time it's off cooldown.  You'll soon end up with a Trey King that fills the room and one-shots tank ATs from full health.  You can kinda-sorta fight this bug by focus-firing whichever Trey King is biggest, and controlling aggro to pull the big ones off the tank and kite them around until they can be killed.  This takes a LOT more aggro-management skill than most pubby teams can manage though (a problem with the Luther Black fight and the game in general, really).

Finally, there's the minion flood.  Luther may just go into pissy boss mode and decide to spam his summons as fast as he can, which quickly leads to your primary tank getting swarmed.  Eventually, ONE of the summoned Treys is going to peel off the tank and go eat the Demon Key, which will fail the mish.

Our current team attempting this consists of:

Me on the "tank"
a scrapper
a blaster
two emps

They're all free froms, I think.  I know the scrapper and I are both free form.

...

I think the next go round, probably Friday, what we'll try is this:

I keep taunting Black with that "power builder targetted from a distance" pull so I don't hit him. I then stand there and block, letting the mob hit me.  The Scrapper and blaster take out the mobs as I keep Black busy.  The two emps heal the scrapper and blaster as needed, throwing me some healing every now and then.

And I just wander slowly around the room, taunting Black and blocking to lead him away from the key.

This ain't a bad idea, but note the part I bolded.  You don't wanna do that.  You need to contribute your own DPS to hitting the Trey King monstrosities to keep them aggroed on you and keep your "blaster" and "scrapper" from getting mauled,  If you have an AoE with Challenging Strikes on it, use it frequently to keep the mobs that aren't being DPSed focused on you.  Make your your DPSers know to focus fire on the biggest monster at all costs, in order to minimize damage.  This is particularly important if you're an Invulnerability tank, because it's going to be the heavily-buffed monster that kills you, every time.

[CrimsonCapacitor]

Thanks for the tip.  This is an "all COH exile" team, players I've played that game for years with.  I know them, they're good players.  This is pretty much the exact opposite of a PUG.  ;-)

[Kaiser Tarantula]

Oh, another thing that came to mind; Luther Black is a fight where debuffs help a lot.  While normally holds and roots and snares do precisely jack squat, the ability to halt a Trey King monster in its tracks via a root or paralyze is great to have around.  Even slow effects are useful, since so much of this fight centers around training and kiting - having an Ice-oriented character around can help you out a lot.

Any debuffs to enemy damage are also insanely useful, especially debuffs that can be applied to multiple enemies at once.  Knocking 10-20% off a buffed Trey King monster's offense will reduce the workload of both your tank and your healers.