Aggro is a result of?

[Halifex]

Hello my fellow DDO-er's...

I love this game.

So here I am happily making a new toon. He will be a human fighter 2 paladin 18, with all the intimidate feats and shield feats. The goal of the build is to tank a big purple named boss and be the center of the healing, keeping aggro on self, using Defender of Siberys III enhancements, allowing the rogues to get sneak damage, etc.

A friendly guy tells me those feats are a waste (he was referring to Skill Focus Intimidate and Bullheaded) ... the marginal extra intimidate skill they give you is not as important to holding aggro as the 200% hate times your damage, and you would be better to apply those feats (and possibly change the build) to more DPS. He did not say Intimidate was a total waste , just that it was not worth investing all the Intim feats in. Intelligent and nice guy (ty to Skale on Thelanis btw).

I have DPS builds ... I want to do something different. But I realized that what this guy was saying might very well be true ... that if hate is 200% of a (relatively-speaking) small number, it won't take aggro away from the barbarians and/or rogues and the build will be a failure (a failure against my goal).

So why am I posting? Because I want to know the truth (here it comes ... "You can't handle the truth!" ... please pretend that I can :-) ). And I would like to know it from an authoritative source. I request a Turbine Developer tell me how aggro is figured with respect to high Intimidate skill relative to ongoing DPS. If these feats (Bullheaded and Skill Focus Intimidate) don't really do what the average joe assumes they do (pull aggro to you) then I want to know that before I invest a lot of time in this build.

I welcome feedback from the player community as well of course. I am familiar with different builds, like the Hurt Locker that kind of ride both sides of the fence (the sides being: intimidate versus ongoing DPS x hate multiplier) ... I am not really looking for someone to suggest a build. I am looking for someone with knowledge to explain to me how aggro works so I can make intelligent decisions on this. Once the aggro model is understood the builds can be constructed around this data / model, and I can freely tradeoff DPS versus Intimidate with the build / items / enhancements / etc.

If there are threads that provide the answer (and I suspect there are) ... please provide me the link(s) and thank you very much :-).

Sideline ... useful information for me also includes:
*how much intimidate will pull mob X's aggro in dungeon or raid Y on difficulty Z.

[BlackSteel]

intimidate doesnt add a set 'hate' amount that you traditionally think of in other MMO's

what it does is: if your DC succeeds then you get the aggro no ?'s asked for the duration of the skill. But once its over, the mob will once again turn to whoever has the most 'hate' thru DPS or spells. It gets you the uninterrupted attention of all the mobs in a small area for a few seconds; BUT it adds no lasting 'hate'

to successfully intimitank with the skill alone, you have to spam the key as soon as the cooldown is up.

with increased threat items/enhancements you can simply DPS and hold aggro and not worry about the skill at all.

[Halifex]

Does the duration of the intimidate effect from the skill last long enough to be ready again once the skill cools off?

Let's pretend I have an intimidate skill of 100. If I were wonderfully adept at mashing that button once the timer expires every time I would hold the aggro indefinitely?

[Dylos_Moon]

Does the duration of the intimidate effect from the skill last long enough to be ready again once the skill cools off?

Let's pretend I have an intimidate skill of 100. If I were wonderfully adept at mashing that button once the timer expires every time I would hold the aggro indefinitely?

Yes, both the duration and cooldown of intimidate are 6 seconds.

Of course, you're still much better off hate tanking. With the right weapons and enhancements, it shouldn't be a problem. A Warforged Paladin should be able to get either 750% hate, or 650% hate, depending on how the enhancements work. Thats using Defender 3 Stance, Warforged Brute Fighting, and Paladin Divine Righteousness, no items.

[LazarusPossum]

"I'm not touching you."
"Go away."
"I'm not touching you."
"I mean it. Go away."
"Lalala. I'm not touching you! Lalala."
"RAAAAAWRRRR!"

I figure that's what some aggro stems from?

[Bronko]

intimidate doesnt add a set 'hate' amount that you traditionally think of in other MMO's

what it does is: if your DC succeeds then you get the aggro no ?'s asked for the duration of the skill. But once its over, the mob will once again turn to whoever has the most 'hate' thru DPS or spells. It gets you the uninterrupted attention of all the mobs in a small area for a few seconds; BUT it adds no lasting 'hate'

to successfully intimitank with the skill alone, you have to spam the key as soon as the cooldown is up.

with increased threat items/enhancements you can simply DPS and hold aggro and not worry about the skill at all.

Intimidate does in fact generate hate. It is not a large amount, but it does generate some. I don't believe this was always the case but when they changed the cooldown to match the duration I believe that's when it happened.

I do, however, agree with the rest of your points. Hate generation via DPS is far better for maintaining aggro than Intimidate is. But Intimidate does have its place in this game and the OPs build concept would do well to incorporate it.

[hydra_ex]

Intimidate has three useful cases; if you want to be a S&B AC tank, sometimes 200% hate might still not be enough, and intimidate is useful to get aggro back if the mob turns (such as sulo.) Intimidate is also AoE, so the orthons in VoD can be efficiently intimidated. You can shield block to DR tank with intimidate; you cannot with hate tanking (well... barring shield bash)

[Depravity]

If something (or several somethings) has aggro'd on, say, your caster, intimidate is going to get it off right now instead of whenever you manage to garner enough damage hate to pull it off. Intim will pay off the first time a couple of mobs survive a web and make a beeline for the squishy.

Luckily enough, trash mob intimidate targets are lower than bosses, so you won't have to work as hard to get the numbers up and remain viable - hate on red/purple names, intim the trash.

[A_Sheep2]

I've seen successful intimitanking of most purple nameds. You do have to be very vigilant about mashing that key, and you have to succeed on a 1. It's every 6 seconds, so that's 10 checks per minute and most fights are 1-3 minutes long of straight dpsing with losing agro for 6 seconds being somewhere between 'DPS kite for 6 seconds then back in' to 'that'll cost the healers a pot' to 'wipe'. Somewhere I bet someone has posted intimidate DCs for the important mobs/bosses. (Our guild best intimitank even does orthons AND sulu during VOD)

I haven't seen a sword and board AC dude that could hold hate without intimidating. However, someone posted something about 650% hate and that sounds really cool and would probably work, I don't understand the steps to get there though.