Is Intimidate Broken, Wiggy or Bugged ATM?

[Karranor]

OK so first I will say that I am new to the raid Inimitank role. However I am not new to raiding and have done just about every other role in all the raids of the game. So I think I know all the raids pretty dang well as well as the roles within.

I recently Lesser Reincarnated my fighter to be able to Inimitank as well as DPS. (He was built and leveled before anyone cared about Intimidate or there were even raids it was used in...)

Any who... I have spent the last couple weeks in this new role and last night proved to be very, very frustrating.

What was happening? Simply put I was successfully Intimidating and it did not seem to work on several noticeable and troubling situations.

Does lag or can lag mess this up?

Hound (Normal)
Twice I had them all nice and wrangled. I saw the icon and the dice roll show a success and yet they ran off to eat a cleric.

VoD (Hard)
Orthons had icon showing success. Dice roll and combat log showed success. Yet they continued to shoot and beat up others. Eventually, they scooted over to me.
Sally, well Sally was a joke. I would hold her for a little bit and she would port away or fly away.

ToD
Twice Sally flew away from me charging others across the room when I saw the icon as well as got the success message.

Are others having issues? Are there little tips and tricks you can share to help me avoid this?

According to the guides I have a no fail Intimidate on all but the Hard VoD. I did fail on a 1 or 2.

But what I am frustrated with are all the successful Intimidates that appeared to do nothing.

Do you double up agro? Such as pop a solid fog AND Intimidate? I was trying this and it may have helped, but I do not have enough experience to know if it does or not.

The one mob that seemed to work 100% right was the Jailer for ToD. Stuck him and Intimitanked him until I was lobbed into the corner and took 8 or 10 X trap damage. /sigh

Your thoughts, tips, insight and experience is welcome. Help a newb Intimitank!

[Drfirewater79]

Intimidate is really badly broken

if you look a the dice roll you can see what i mean

on my main intimidate fighter i have a 69 fully buffed intimidate according to my skills page but when i am doing it against the raid boss the dice says +64

that is 5 points less .... What the hell right ?

someone mentioned the size and aura of fear (like you would get in PnP when facing Gargantuan creatures) might be the case ... but shouldnt that get calculated on there side not on ours?

my dice should still say 69 and if a successful 60 is what is needed now and the mob has that ability granting it an additional +4 vs intimidate i should still have a 69 just his save would be 64.

[MrWizard]

OK so first I will say that I am new to the raid Inimitank role. However I am not new to raiding and have done just about every other role in all the raids of the game. So I think I know all the raids pretty dang well as well as the roles within.

I recently Lesser Reincarnated my fighter to be able to Inimitank as well as DPS. (He was built and leveled before anyone cared about Intimidate or there were even raids it was used in...)

Any who... I have spent the last couple weeks in this new role and last night proved to be very, very frustrating.

What was happening? Simply put I was successfully Intimidating and it did not seem to work on several noticeable and troubling situations.

Does lag or can lag mess this up?

Hound (Normal)
Twice I had them all nice and wrangled. I saw the icon and the dice roll show a success and yet they ran off to eat a cleric.
hound is hard to guage as you are intimidating 4 things usually. All 4 do not always land, especially on her/him *(the big one).
If you had a griefer doing ranged weapons at them, that could be it too. IT causes bad aggro problems.
More than likely you did not get that one hound. (too far away) or you waited too long after your intim to redo it.

VoD (Hard)
Orthons had icon showing success. Dice roll and combat log showed success. Yet they continued to shoot and beat up others. Eventually, they scooted over to me.
Sally, well Sally was a joke. I would hold her for a little bit and she would port away or fly away.

Orthons turn to you. If you are close enough they swing (and will hit everyone). If far enough away, they will shoot at you instead.(and hit anyone in the way).

Suulomades will port away at times. But from what you are saying 'flying away' and assuming you have a 54 intim AFTER the negative modifiers and not missing..I would say you had someone ranging Sully. When that happens sully will spin more, port more (if the ranged is far away), or fly to a nearby random target, usually a caster or cleric.

If someone ranges and is far away there is nothing you can do at all about it until they stop..come closer...and then hit him or close range him.

ToD
Twice Sally flew away from me charging others across the room when I saw the icon as well as got the success message.

Again, a ranger probably.

Are others having issues? Are there little tips and tricks you can share to help me avoid this?

According to the guides I have a no fail Intimidate on all but the Hard VoD. I did fail on a 1 or 2.

Then number is like 56 or something like that...on hard. However, that is 56 AFTER the size difference is added (like -4 for sully i believe)

But what I am frustrated with are all the successful Intimidates that appeared to do nothing.

Do you double up agro? Such as pop a solid fog AND Intimidate? I was trying this and it may have helped, but I do not have enough experience to know if it does or not.

The one mob that seemed to work 100% right was the Jailer for ToD. Stuck him and Intimitanked him until I was lobbed into the corner and took 8 or 10 X trap damage. /sigh

no one was ranging him


Your thoughts, tips, insight and experience is welcome. Help a newb Intimitank!

you cna miss an intim even if it hits...kinda a bug.
I usually wait until the timer completely goes out and then I hit it...like a 1/2 second after it ends.
You have to keep doing it.

If you see weird aggro like that, look to see if someone is ranging the monster, either a ranger, caster, or whatever. That is usually your culprit.

In multi mob scenes (such as VoD or hound) you get one dice roll that shows up and it says success or failure...however, that does not mean you got them all.

I usually like to make sure I highlight the big one (the HOUND, Sully, etc) and then press intimidate. I could be wrong, but doing that will show me the 'failure' if I missed on the selected on....even though the rest were successful.


IF people are flanking a mob (i.e. surrounding it) that can sometimes cause weird aggro too...sometimes.

IT ain't perfect, but you will get it.

Hound on normal is pretty high, if you can get her no fail, then vod hard should not be a fail. I think your intim is in the high 50's (guessing) and you are missing a few intims.

[MrWizard]

Intimidate is really badly broken

if you look a the dice roll you can see what i mean

on my main intimidate fighter i have a 69 fully buffed intimidate according to my skills page but when i am doing it against the raid boss the dice says +64

that is 5 points less .... What the hell right ?

someone mentioned the size and aura of fear (like you would get in PnP when facing Gargantuan creatures) might be the case ... but shouldnt that get calculated on there side not on ours?

my dice should still say 69 and if a successful 60 is what is needed now and the mob has that ability granting it an additional +4 vs intimidate i should still have a 69 just his save would be 64.

your combat log will show a size difference modifier..I think vod is 4, hound is like 12 or 14, so is demon queen.

[Drfirewater79]

your combat log will show a size difference modifier..I think vod is 4, hound is like 12 or 14, so is demon queen.

yeah in combat log for sure ... it belongs there but not on my combat dice... i dont use combat log for anything but determining highest dps for weapons or what ever build issue i am testing at the time ... most times its to determine if my lighting strike or metaline pure good is better for situation.

[Quikster]

deception weapons/unbalancing strike will bug agro as well.

[HallowedOne]

Hound is hard to inti, need 69 or so to get 100%, even on normal. Generally a better strategy is to cast that foggy spell from an item (whose name I don't recall atm) and run the big to it to get his aggro.

Everytime Sully teleports, his aggro also resets. That is why it is recommended that everyone stop attacking him once he does that so the tank can get his attention quickly.

[Wizzly_Bear]

Can also grab Hound aggro with Bramble-casters - they damage her. Much more reliable than intim.

[Karranor]

Thank you all for the responses.

I think the key here was a ranger. Now that I think about it we did have one ranged ranger... that could very well be the issue. That actually makes me feel better about this Inim thing. Time for the ranger to get up with the melee I think!

OK for numbers I was sitting at 58 I believe on my CS. I was getting a 54 for on the die am pretty sure that the 1 was even a success (Except VoD/Hard).

How reliable is the icon over their heads? I should see that only on those that I am successful with right?

Thanks again, it sounds like I am on the right track. Just need some tweaking and some practice. I was a bit bummed that I just respec and was having so many issues.

Thanks again!

Oh whats with this Deception/Unbalancing Strike? Is this confirmed? That just stinks of Diplomacy a Chest to me. ;p I have heard it many place but seems silly to me. /shrug

[Quikster]

Thank you all for the responses.

I think the key here was a ranger. Now that I think about it we did have one ranged ranger... that could very well be the issue. That actually makes me feel better about this Inim thing. Time for the ranger to get up with the melee I think!

OK for numbers I was sitting at 58 I believe on my CS. I was getting a 54 for on the die am pretty sure that the 1 was even a success (Except VoD/Hard).

How reliable is the icon over their heads? I should see that only on those that I am successful with right?

Thanks again, it sounds like I am on the right track. Just need some tweaking and some practice. I was a bit bummed that I just respec and was having so many issues.

Thanks again!

Oh whats with this Deception/Unbalancing Strike? Is this confirmed? That just stinks of Diplomacy a Chest to me. ;p I have heard it many place but seems silly to me. /shrug

Test it yourself

[MrCow]

How reliable is the icon over their heads? I should see that only on those that I am successful with right?

Aye, on a successful intimidation the symbol will appear and the next time the monster's AI makes a check for who their next target should be it will go after you. However, be aware that just because you intimidated something does not mean that you are instantly causing it to make a new action against you. It used to be that intimidate (and other things like diplomacy) would near-instantly adjust a monster's target. However, sometime in one of the post-Eberron Unlimited Updates a change was made and a monster makes fewer AI target checks (probably to reduce server load) and thus they may unleash a couple queued actions against their current target before they start using you as their target.


Oh whats with this Deception/Unbalancing Strike? Is this confirmed? That just stinks of Diplomacy a Chest to me.

Bluff and psuedo-bluff actions (including Deception and Unbalancing Strike) cause a monster to attempt to turn direction or spin. This movement action can cause interesting results, the most pronounced ones typically relating to non-moving enemies (such as Arraetrikos in part 4 of The Shroud, where doing these actions could make him move, or if a skeleton archer was spun around where it couldn't face any targets it wouldn't attack because it had no line of sight to any targets).

[Karranor]

Bluff and psuedo-bluff actions (including Deception and Unbalancing Strike) cause a monster to attempt to turn direction or spin. This movement action can cause interesting results, the most pronounced ones typically relating to non-moving enemies (such as Arraetrikos in part 4 of The Shroud, where doing these actions could make him move, or if a skeleton archer was spun around where it couldn't face any targets it wouldn't attack because it had no line of sight to any targets).

Ah oh gotcha, makes sense now. Thanks

[Coldin]

My only current problem with intimidate that is that it's duration is exactly equal to it's cooldown. Would be nice if you got a couple extra seconds to re-intim, especially in those instances where a lot of lag is present.

[MrWizard]

I find if no one is ranging...and no one is using deception stuff as noted above, it is never an issue...ever. (losing aggro).

I think deception opens up a mob to sneak attack. Since they are on his butt hitting him (sneak attack area) why in the world, other than griefing, would someone use a deception weapon on a monster like sully?

[Quikster]

I find if no one is ranging...and no one is using deception stuff as noted above, it is never an issue...ever. (losing aggro).

I think deception opens up a mob to sneak attack. Since they are on his butt hitting him (sneak attack area) why in the world, other than griefing, would someone use a deception weapon on a monster like sully?

Happens all the time. I dont use deception myself, but whatever some do.

[MrWizard]

Happens all the time. I dont use deception myself, but whatever some do.

hey finally talked a group into doing vod elite the other day...it was like running on norm for the most part....
Then I ran it again..same.

Wasn't bad.

In both runs, ha ha, I was the only intim and came out with sully for the orthons. Intimidating both. Used it for the devils the second time too.

I thought it would be much tougher. I can self heal while intimidating him...I felt good about that.

Now if I can only talk some people into trying out ToD on hard and elite....

(beat down the part 1 orthon to about 40% the other day while the rest were on the judge. I feel confident I can take him out without many problems...)

Intim rocks.


Of course......they may nerf it...

Mod 3 - my wizard rocked with AoE specifically solid fog and cloudkill and enlarge...

then came the nerf....retired.

Mod 4 - My sorc went nuts with high spell pen, high DC, and charm monster/dominate

then came the charm nerf (and the horrendously high spell pens and immunities)..retured

Mod 9 - came back and built my AC toon with intim..and it rocks (for me)....

The nerf?- I am waiting to retire with a new character slot ready for a new build.
AC is already partially nerfed due to grazing hit damage...HUGE on elite and epic.
Once intim is nerfed, what to do next....?

Mod 10- My half orc did 1,000 points a crit with the epic double upgrade sword of shadows barbarian frenzied cirt death PrE.......

Then the nerf came.....?

[Xeraphim]

I was using Intimidate in The shroud earlier trying to peel the Bezekira off the caster so I could beat it down... Successful checks... no intimidate success. The cat continued to waylay our sorc for over 3 checks. I finally got some hits in while running around and took its attention.

It needs fixed.