Reduce the cd of Intimidate and introduce more mechanics for Tanks

[Kuttamia]

With reaper coming soon where it will be nice to have a tank in the party at last to grab aggro of the super nasty monsters, can we have a revamped tanking mechanic, main in terms of aggro management? It will breathe a little bit of life into a long dead role.

[RistoffDervish]

That is a good idea. I miss having roles in this role playing game. I hope Reaper brings that aspect back for those of us who miss it, while leaving the rest of the game as-is for those who are content with the current state.

Being on the TR train toward completionist, I do like the state of the heroic levels allowing me to solo as long as I need to before my lfm fills up and not having to wait for a healer or trapper as every life I am both of those tacked onto whatever class I chose for that life. The grind is far less tedious now that it was several years ago when cap on 3rd TR was over 4 million xp and xp was a lot harder to get back then.

[Silverleafeon]

+1 I like the social skill item from the archon pack, how about a stronger or stacking one?

Also how about reducing the animation as well, sad to start an intimidate in front of monsters and watch them race past you while its going off?
{EE monster move pretty fast when they want to.}

[Kuttamia]

Tanking has always been one of my favourite roles in mmorpg, infact i always start a game playing a tank and explore. It will be fantastic if tanking was more effective these days.

[AbyssalMage]

With reaper coming soon where it will be nice to have a tank in the party at last to grab aggro of the super nasty monsters, can we have a revamped tanking mechanic, main in terms of aggro management? It will breathe a little bit of life into a long dead role.
They just need to un-nerf intimidate. That would solve most of the communities problems. Also, make it (or a separate intimidate) a fairly large AoE, in cases where NPC's rush past you and head straight toward the "squishies" because of poor AI.

Fighters just received a huge bump in this patch, while everyone else suffered some major nerf's, so I am not to receptive to more Fighter love for the next 48 to 72 hours :p

[zeonardo]

I should make a vid of my pali.
With 97 intim, successfully intimidating mobs, icon shows up over their heads, intim "buff" counting on my bar... and the mob just ignores me completely.
Maybe they put headphones on the mobs and they don't hear the insults I throw at them?

[Darkmits]

While we're at it, reduce Healing Amplification to its original numbers as well (ie. half of what it is now) and suddenly the desire for tanks, healers and cc will skyrocket. Healing Amp on target constitutes a larger part than the caster's spellpower for healing nowadays.

-=EDIT=-
Also, it's not just your job as a tank to use Intimidate. If you group is not taught to use Bluff and Diplomacy, it's their fault monsters are on them. This mentality of "dps should only dps and absolutely nothing else, while non-dps are responsible for every mishap possible" needs to die.

[draven1]

I should make a vid of my pali.
With 97 intim, successfully intimidating mobs, icon shows up over their heads, intim "buff" counting on my bar... and the mob just ignores me completely.
Maybe they put headphones on the mobs and they don't hear the insults I throw at them?

It seems "Diplomacy" is also broken.
Successfully diplo mobs when someone else was nearby, icon shows up over their heads, but, still I have aggro from mobs, and most of all, I can't sneak attack those "diploed" mobs.

Bluff works very well, but strangely, Diplo & Intim are broken.

[nibel]

+1 for bringing roles back in the hardest content.


Also, it's not just your job as a tank to use Intimidate. If you group is not taught to use Bluff and Diplomacy, it's their fault monsters are on them. This mentality of "dps should only dps and absolutely nothing else, while non-dps are responsible for every mishap possible" needs to die.

That is pretty simple to solve, if the devs really want: Make all "mains DPS" trees have a threat reduction to compensate for the extra DPS, have some DPS gear have more threat reduction on it, and make some defensive gear that have +threat as well.

Unfortunately, when the devs mingle with threat gear, usually they tackle +threat on +dps gear so it can be "used by everyone" and mess up with the tank/dps dictomy. I rememebr when Claw set was the best melee set in the game, and I had to ask the barbarians to remove their claw set if they didn't wanted unexpected agro on their faces. And many times they didn't care (unless they die, then they would blame my tank).

[kmoustakas]

Actually before introducing more hate stuff, they should fix current aggro, especially the 'I'll randomly aggro something I can't see' AI some mobs got copy-pasted onto them

[arkonas]

you know i agree. intimidate should be 6 secs in my opinion. the whole point of a tank is to get aggro and it doesn't help when your only ability is on cooldown. hate % should be very high. a tank should ALWAYS get the aggro from someone. so i don't care if they have to bump it to 2000%. look at any other mmo. any tank in their game would get the aggro and they had numerous abilities to pull it on to them. so i think ddo needs to do the same. there are sometimes where we have a party member who might take too much aggro and damage or just its needed. so turbine please make tanks what they should be. i don't need increased damage. i just want my hate like other games have it.

[Kuttamia]

you know i agree. intimidate should be 6 secs in my opinion. the whole point of a tank is to get aggro and it doesn't help when your only ability is on cooldown. hate % should be very high. a tank should ALWAYS get the aggro from someone. so i don't care if they have to bump it to 2000%. look at any other mmo. any tank in their game would get the aggro and they had numerous abilities to pull it on to them. so i think ddo needs to do the same. there are sometimes where we have a party member who might take too much aggro and damage or just its needed. so turbine please make tanks what they should be. i don't need increased damage. i just want my hate like other games have it.

Agreed, 100%. Every other mmorpg that has roles have at least 1 100% guarantee taunt/Intim skill that can break through party dps and hold aggro of that monster or group of monster, depending on what mmorpg it is. Successful Intim does not even guarantee that, its worse then other skills, where if u successfully bluff, its guaranteed that the monster will be bluffed, but if there a dps powerhouse in the party, they will break through your intim as if you didint intim at all.

On a side note, to point out how bad the role of a tank is in Epic elite necro 4 because even with a 98 intimidate, i cannot succeed in making a successful intim on a red name, and even on some of the regular trash! Its a miserable failure on Turbines part, if they are going to give a skill, at least make sure it **** better well work properly.

In short, reaper will be a playground for shiradi casters and ranged units, everyone else will be slaughtered.

[arkonas]

Agreed, 100%. Every other mmorpg that has roles have at least 1 100% guarantee taunt/Intim skill that can break through party dps and hold aggro of that monster or group of monster, depending on what mmorpg it is. Successful Intim does not even guarantee that, its worse then other skills, where if u successfully bluff, its guaranteed that the monster will be bluffed, but if there a dps powerhouse in the party, they will break through your intim as if you didint intim at all.

On a side note, to point out how bad the role of a tank is in Epic elite necro 4 because even with a 98 intimidate, i cannot succeed in making a successful intim on a red name, and even on some of the regular trash! Its a miserable failure on Turbines part, if they are going to give a skill, at least make sure it **** better well work properly.

In short, reaper will be a playground for shiradi casters and ranged units, everyone else will be slaughtered.

i agree with you. no matter what i did as a tank and i had high intimidate i couldn't pull some mobs off people. even if i did pull it i have 15 secs i'm sitting there twiddling my thumbs waiting to grab aggo again. i don't need more damage. i dont need more saves prr/mrr anything like that. i just want the ability and more then one to pull all enemies or single ones to me like it should be.

yeah i'm afraid reaper mode will be far worse on tanks since they won't be able to hold aggro like they should.

[patang01]

While we're at it, reduce Healing Amplification to its original numbers as well (ie. half of what it is now) and suddenly the desire for tanks, healers and cc will skyrocket. Healing Amp on target constitutes a larger part than the caster's spellpower for healing nowadays.

-=EDIT=-
Also, it's not just your job as a tank to use Intimidate. If you group is not taught to use Bluff and Diplomacy, it's their fault monsters are on them. This mentality of "dps should only dps and absolutely nothing else, while non-dps are responsible for every mishap possible" needs to die.

That's a pipe dream. You start nerfing survivability and the player base is gone. There's not enough player base to force people into healbotting and everyone would recent it. No one want to sponge healing a meatbag. No one wanted to do in before MOTU and even less after. The only reason why people wanted tanks was because they were uniquely built to almost never take a hit because of the old AC mechanics. Sponge leaning a meatbag now would just means a dedicated healbot wasting all it's SP doing one exact role.

Nerfing everyone to force people into roles is the best way to destroy the player base in a hurry.

[the_one_dwarfforged]

completely agree on reducing both the cool down and animation time of intimidate.

i also think that a second aoe aggro grabbing clicky should be added to the defender trees (in like, the lvl 1 core...) as well as more support for intim dc (intim being a charisma skill is kinda ****** for fighters).

[HastyPudding]

Henshin mystic has the enhancement 'Negotiator' which increases social skills, but on rank 3 it reduces the cooldown of bluff, diplomacy, and intimidate by 10%. Could this not be applied to the fighter/paladin defender trees? Add it into the two trees as a tier 1 enhancement that gives +1/+2/+3 intimidate and -15%/-30%/-45% cooldown on intimidate. Stalwart defender has a similar enhancement that gives haggle/intimidate and a flat hostility generation buff, but I'd take a half-cooldown intimidate, for sure.

[Kuttamia]

Henshin mystic has the enhancement 'Negotiator' which increases social skills, but on rank 3 it reduces the cooldown of bluff, diplomacy, and intimidate by 10%. Could this not be applied to the fighter/paladin defender trees? Add it into the two trees as a tier 1 enhancement that gives +1/+2/+3 intimidate and -15%/-30%/-45% cooldown on intimidate. Stalwart defender has a similar enhancement that gives haggle/intimidate and a flat hostility generation buff, but I'd take a half-cooldown intimidate, for sure.

Its funny that a monk gets it, but a tree dedicated for tanking does not.

[Darkmits]

That's a pipe dream. You start nerfing survivability and the player base is gone. There's not enough player base to force people into healbotting and everyone would recent it. No one want to sponge healing a meatbag. No one wanted to do in before MOTU and even less after. The only reason why people wanted tanks was because they were uniquely built to almost never take a hit because of the old AC mechanics. Sponge leaning a meatbag now would just means a dedicated healbot wasting all it's SP doing one exact role.

Nerfing everyone to force people into roles is the best way to destroy the player base in a hurry.I know it's a pipe dream, but do you know why healing is resented? Because the Hit Point bar doesn't work like the spell point bar.

- Even on tank-roles, damage is too spiky. Receiving blows of 30% of your max hp on random means that if you do not act within 1 second most of the time, someone is dead.
- Because they wanted to "help" people from being able to recover quickly from such blows (and reduce the need for healers), they gave self-healing to almost everyone and buffed Healing Amplification (and sources) to absurdity. So even if someone takes a 30% blow, by the time a non-dedicated healer tries to act (by that I mean someone who isn't the group with the sole purpose of healing your own bar), the player themselves will have recovered to 90%. Hey healer, here's some nice overhealing for you, ie. you're useless!
- Due to the twitch mentality of playing the game (ie. running and jumping all around), it is very frequent for your target as a healer to go out of line of sight. You just lost your spellpoints and your spell is on cd.
- If currently one was to play a healbot, what spells would they use? Heal, Mass Heal and... ? Oh, Druids have Vigor. How useful is CSW in EH and EE? It actually has potential to be great, but ONLY if the receiver of the spell has stacked healing amp. If they haven't because it fits their build, then the healer feels useless. So there is a signficant lack of diversity and available options, and being a good healer depends largely on the recipient of your spells as well.

I would like to say that this is a universal MMO issue. The mentality of the playerbase is that they shouldn't have to wait for someone to come and heal them, so we see it in other games as well that healing is degenerating into a role with very few actual ways to heal and with failure to feel like a good healer to be the norm. The same happened with tanking, buffer/debuffer, and crowd controller before that. And the reason is the lack of proper coordination in a group.

TLDR: Healers do not have fun toys to play with and their job is too stressful and very easy to go from 100% to 0% effectiveness. God I miss the old days of WoW healing, where tanks could take a heavy beating and stand on their own, managing your mana was important and overhealing was punished by it by running oom before the end. Nowadays it's infinite mana.

[PermaBanned]

Nerfing everyone to force people into roles is the best way to destroy the player base in a hurry.Probably true, but only because buffing everyone into super soloists that don't need a parry of role specialists already did that once ;) What's left is largely the soloist crowd, so yeah driving them away now would certainly hasten this games demise.

OP, I'm with you in sentiment - but do realize that if the Devs can't figure out (or get permission from their bosses to figure out) how to achieve your (and the folks in agreement with you) goals without disgruntling a significant number of soloists it's not gonna happen.

[Kuttamia]

completely agree on reducing both the cool down and animation time of intimidate.

i also think that a second aoe aggro grabbing clicky should be added to the defender trees (in like, the lvl 1 core...) as well as more support for intim dc (intim being a charisma skill is kinda ****** for fighters).
More aggro grabbing skill will be nice. There are so many good games out there from which they can take examples of how proactive tanking is done. A lot of ppl in ddo just thinks of tanking is to intim and hold block. Just doing that is extremely boring. Se games tanks are expected to be alert of the nasty monsters and quickly grab their aggro and are not exprcted to grab aggro of everything. In ddo, those nasty monsters can be champs and bosses.

[J-mann]

Probably true, but only because buffing everyone into super soloists that don't need a parry of role specialists already did that once ;) What's left is largely the soloist crowd, so yeah driving them away now would certainly hasten this games demise.

OP, I'm with you in sentiment - but do realize that if the Devs can't figure out (or get permission from their bosses to figure out) how to achieve your (and the folks in agreement with you) goals without disgruntling a significant number of soloists it's not gonna happen.

Hardly. People seem to keep forgetting what the state of the game was before turbine introduced self sufficiency. I sure as heck remember, it was log in, wait for forever to try and find that ONE party member that you need to be able to play, frequently not being able to do so, and logging out. The introduction of self sufficiency and moving away from the terrible unispired, most lazy trinity system was the best thing that could ever happen to this or any other game. Now, I do think that they should make having a tank a nice, useful thing, but requiring one is just assinine.

[draven1]

How about adding some skill like "Shiv" or "Exposing strike" in tanking ED or enhancement, but use "intimidate on hit", not bluff?

[PermaBanned]

Hardly. People seem to keep forgetting what the state of the game was before turbine introduced self sufficiency. I sure as heck remember, it was log in, wait for forever to try and find that ONE party member that you need to be able to play, frequently not being able to do so, and logging out.
I remember it quite differently. I remember logging in, looking at the LFM panel and seeing a group that wanted to run a quest, but needed/wanted a particular role filled and sending a tell along the lines of "please hold the spot, I'll brb on {name of my Healer/Trapper/Tank/CC'er whatever}." I also remember using options like chillin' in explorer zones or farming lower (than the character I was on) level quests for rare gear drops while watching that LFM panel for the "just right for me" LFM to pop up.


The introduction of self sufficiency and moving away from the terrible unispired, most lazy trinity system was the best thing that could ever happen to this or any other game. Now, I do think that they should make having a tank a nice, useful thing, but requiring one is just assinine.Again, must disagree. The beauty of DDO was that we had/have multiple options on how to fill those rolls. That Tank could've been a Fighter, Pally, Barbarian, Rogue, Wizard, Monk... It was a role, not a class. Same for the Healer, it could've been a Cleric, Favored Soul, or Bard - and other build options existed for secondary/contributory healing rolls; I knew a few Pallys, Rangers and even Rogues that doubled as "tank healers" while a Bard or Divine maintained the rest of the party. Again, the same for CC: though it was mainly an area of expertise for Arcanes, Divines and Bards had contributive options there as well. Then came Druids that could also fill multiple roles, either simultaneously or as a build focus.

People can say what they will about what wonderful things making self-sufficiency widely & easily available did for the game, and what wonderful things the eradication of role-based character and party building did for the game - and since all just a matter of opinion I won't flat state that they're wrong. I will however say that as I observed massive population declines accompanied with those changes that I disagree. Back in those "oh so terrible wait forever for a group to fill days" the Who list was longer, the LFM options were more plentiful, and I can't honestly remember when the last time was that I saw multiple instances of the Marketplace; but I do remember that the last time I consistently saw them was back in "those" days. ymmv.

[Darkmits]

Hardly. People seem to keep forgetting what the state of the game was before turbine introduced self sufficiency. I sure as heck remember, it was log in, wait for forever to try and find that ONE party member that you need to be able to play, frequently not being able to do so, and logging out. The introduction of self sufficiency and moving away from the terrible unispired, most lazy trinity system was the best thing that could ever happen to this or any other game. Now, I do think that they should make having a tank a nice, useful thing, but requiring one is just assinine.Why were people logging out if there was not a group available?

1) They wanted to run only a specific quest? (in other words I want people to help me but I don't want to help others)
2) They wanted it to be Elite and only Elite? (in other words I want to maintain my own exp/quest income even though I actually could be earning far more by doing some other quest on some other difficulty)

The introduction of self-sufficiency has led to the point where DDO is no longer a multiplayer game; it's a singleplayer games where the rest of the group is an impedence. "Oh someone joined? Great, now enemies have higher damage and hp". "Omfg, why do you follow me, go find your own mob to kill". "Guys, I can bless chests - Screw that, I don't have 20seconds to spare for you to get to the chest and bless it, my time is valuable!". "We have a trapper? Sweet, 30% bonus exp"

And that is because the solozergers cannot accept that there is content that anyone else in the entire world is allowed to see except for themselves.

[nibel]

How about adding some skill like "Shiv" or "Exposing strike" in tanking ED or enhancement, but use "intimidate on hit", not bluff?

We seriously need two or three attacks like that. It is a shame that right now there is only one way to instantly pull agro, and it works in an area. We need options to instantly pull a single very specific target alone. Preferably, with some decent range as well.


People can say what they will about what wonderful things making self-sufficiency widely & easily available did for the game, and what wonderful things the eradication of role-based character and party building did for the game - and since all just a matter of opinion I won't flat state that they're wrong. I will however say that as I observed massive population declines accompanied with those changes that I disagree.

I still believe we can "fix" the "need" for healers easily by changing cocoon to either (1) give only 1 THP while keeping the same mechanic, so it becomes an "out of combat" healing resource; or (2) making Cocoon force you immobile while preventing you from attacking (think like the Tea animation, without the invulnerability), so that while you maybe can use it in combat against mobs that don't deal too much damage at once, it slow down zerging.

Oh, and healing resources that are most cost-effective than Heal. When you jump from 4d8+15 (average 33) to 150there is little reason to use anything other than Heal. They balances Mass Cures and Mass Heal with animation. Maybe Heal can also have a long animation, or a long cooldown (30 seconds or so), so that it become more an emergency button than standard healing spell.

Anyway, any changes to maybe put some kind of balance back on healing would be an issue as big as the changes to Manyshot, or even bigger, since it would affect literally everyone.