Intimidate Useless

[IronClan]

I've tanked elite hound on a level 17 sorceror.

The idea that the quest requires a 'tank' is ludicrous.

All I have to say to this is, your statement sounds like the punch line to a Joke that goes:

What was the last thing you heard over voice, before your hound raid went south

[Junts]

All I have to say to this is, your statement sounds like the punch line to a Joke that goes:

What was the last thing you heard over voice, before your hound raid went south

Actually it was like an 8 man all lowbie run.

Hound is not a hard quest.

[Astraghal]

Part of Intimidating is holding the block key, there is another piece to the puzzle which requires timing, or you will lose aggression. Not everyone can do that timing precisely, the entire time holding a raid boss. I've seen it plenty of times the intimer will lose it 3/4 through from not paying attention.

That was never the case before update 7.

You could press the intimidate button and if successful, the yellow symbol lit up over the mobs head and you would have its aggro. You could then repeat this by pressing the intimidate button again at the end of the cooldown and if the yellow symbol lit up over the mobs head, you would retain aggro.

After update 7, something was changed in the mechanics of how intimidate had worked up to that point, so that you would see the yellow symbol light up over the mobs head, but either not get aggro, or have aggro and lose it a few seconds later. In update 7, something was changed in how the timer worked so that due to latency, the cooldown timer on the client would become out of sync with the cooldown timer on the server.

People then started describing a method or technique required to successfully hold aggro with intimidate that wasn't necessary before the change. Having to time intimidate by waiting slightly after the cooldown had expired, in order to ensure that the client and server were in sync, was never a requirement to successfully use the intimidate skills, but merely a risky workaround for a bugged system.

[sephiroth1084]

That was never the case before update 7.

You could press the intimidate button and if successful, the yellow symbol lit up over the mobs head and you would have its aggro. You could then repeat this by pressing the intimidate button again at the end of the cooldown and if the yellow symbol lit up over the mobs head, you would retain aggro.

After update 7, something was changed in the mechanics of how intimidate had worked up to that point, so that you would see the yellow symbol light up over the mobs head, but either not get aggro, or have aggro and lose it a few seconds later. In update 7, something was changed in how the timer worked so that due to latency, the cooldown timer on the client would become out of sync with the cooldown timer on the server.

People then started describing a method or technique required to successfully hold aggro with intimidate that wasn't necessary before the change. Having to time intimidate by waiting slightly after the cooldown had expired, in order to ensure that the client and server were in sync, was never a requirement to successfully use the intimidate skills, but merely a risky workaround for a bugged system.

Exactly. This is part of why Junts was referring to intimitanking as hammering a button.

I hadn't noticed when exactly the change occurred, but there used to be no error occurring if you hit intimidate too early--you used to be able to just keep mashing the button for the 6 seconds it was on timer to get it as soon as the cooldown expired. The timing part of intimitanking is a relatively new contrivance, and certainly due to some bug that slipped in somewhere.

[MrWizard]

I think a lot of this thread is based on earlier versus later dev posts and information.
There is a 6 second and 12 second issue depending on a shield...unknown about aggro in that time frame.

The other part of the thread is about tanking...Most of the people with input have been playing a very long time with epic geared toons to boot. There is a vast difference between tanking with epic gear, uber ddo and festival cookie buffs, and a vast experience buffer versus a newer player tanking that is still finishing greensteel....in a group full of the same.

In those instances 'wimpy' tactics do take precedence. Just like in epics many use wimpy tactics to get through. These newer players need intim and other 'wimpy' tactics, need it a lot.

Older players, not soo much.

New players..fight on mobs back, cleric uses pots..group barely makes it, loong fight..
Older players...everyone just surrounds raid boss and swings away til dead (very quickly)

So older players usually run with older players and newer with newer. Intim can be absolutely VITAL to newer groups.


Go to a new server with no money...and take your uber tank to 10th level and try to do the things you do with your fully geared 10th level TR with ship buffs, tomes, and lots of money for stuff. The difference is huge.

These changes seem like they will help the 'lesser' people and for the 'greater' people it really will not matter will it?


However.....a s/b toon whacking on the back of a mob might pull aggro from that epic barb...now that would be embarrassing.

[IronClan]

Actually it was like an 8 man all lowbie run.

Hound is not a hard quest.

Translation: "I never pug hound".

[VariaVespasa]

40 Second lead in?

As opposed to a real threat tank, that would say "Okay, get in here" in less than a five count?

Any devil boss in game.
WF Paladin
Holy Sword Greatsword
WF Brute Fighting IV Enabled
Divine Righteousness
DT Armor with Incite 10%/Crushing Wave Guard/Incite 20%
KotC OR DoS

Honestly, the above list is absolute overkill, and the most it takes is a little bit of Reaver's Refuge farming.

As a Human 34-point TWF KotC, with Intimidate as a side hobby of mine, I've been Hate Tank, Off Tank, Blocking intimitank, combat intimitank... I've tanked just about every boss in the game but Epic Lailat and Elite Xyzzy.

From that, I can tell you right now - a real "threat tank" or "intimitank", someone who is truly good at it, takes a lot of investment, be it feats, enhancements, or items, or some combination of the three. Don't discount either route as trivial. Certainly, I know at least one guildie that's going to be pleased by the possibility of a Hybrid of the two.

Er, being lvl 20, spending your AP, buying 3-4 feats (one of which everyone in the game should have) and having an off-the-shelf sword is in no way, shape or form a lot of investment. Its auto-attack E-Z MODE, and you could quite literally just go read a book or vacuum the hall after you start and it wouldnt make a lick of difference really, and the same goes for any other purpose-built toon intended to hate tank. Even my greatsword kensai, who was never intended to tank, can and has done it on horoth with nothing more than a bloodstone, a min2 sword and a GS hp item. No epics, no aggro boosters, no healing amps beyond leviks bracers and healers friend 1, nothing but a 10% head start. I do stick around to hit my power surge and fighter haste buttons as they come up, but do I have to pay close attention? Does it matter if I'm a few seconds late refreshing one? No. Not at all. (Try being late with your intim, and see what happens... ) This is not skill. This is not heavy investment above and beyond the call. This is nothing more than being lvl 20 for a couple of weeks (or a bit more if its your first toon, to build up a supply of larges). It IS trivial. Claiming skill and dedication is laughable. Compared to a timmy who dedicates nearly all his no-class feats, and several of his class feats, and all of his gear to become viable AT ALL. And even more effort to become viable for the top-end stuff. Can a hate-tank aquire specific, harder-to-get gear and perhaps spend a few more feats to cut down on the amount of lead time he needs before other join in? Sure. And can that gearing time approach a significant portion of what a timmy spends (maybe 2/3)? Yes. But its not NECESSARY to perform the function of hate tank in the first place. It is NOTHING compared to the dedication needed to become viable as a timmy.

There are people who like to suggest timmies dont contribute to the group. They are short-sighted monominds. They contribute by saving the party resources by providing control, and providing insurance against mishaps and errors elsewhere in the group/raid. DPS is not the only measure of worth. Dont believe that, talk to your healer.

In any event, I too would be happier if Turbine told us the intent of these changes. Knowing what they were trying to achieve would help everyone provide real feedback and resolve a lot of the confusion and arguing.

[stockwizard5]

Hey its 11:00 and Junts hasn't repeated himself in almost 2 hours - hope he's ok

[ArchStriker]

Tanks have no love

[VariaVespasa]

If you think holding down the shift key in more than specialized situations (your tank died, horoth stunned you, etc) is fun, you are clearly in a small minority that both doesn't include many players and doesn't include the development team.

I couldn't be gladder that intimiblock is dead, and I used to do it: its ****ant boring and noninteractive, and its demise will improve tanking on this game tenfold. going forward.

You found it boring and non-interactive? So the expletive what? Some people find clerics boring. Should we ban them too? How about particle physics? Driving? Doing the laundry? If you dont enjoy a particular build then DONT PLAY THAT PARTICULAR BUILD. Oh thats right, you arent anymore, so youre now happy. So why, precisely, do you care if someone else still find happiness in something that you didnt, hmm?

[Junts]

Translation: "I never pug hound".

More I never run hound, but when I did run it a lot was in fact back when I pugged a lot more often. It requires only about 3 people to be remotely competent: for an elite run, it might be so high as five or six.

The rest of the party really has to do nothing except notkilldogs.

[Durack]

There are people who like to suggest timmies dont contribute to the group. They are short-sighted monominds. They contribute by saving the party resources by providing control, and providing insurance against mishaps and errors elsewhere in the group/raid. DPS is not the only measure of worth. Dont believe that, talk to your healer..

EXACTLY..... Very well put.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Meetch1972]

More I never run hound, but when I did run it a lot was in fact back when I pugged a lot more often. It requires only about 3 people to be remotely competent: for an elite run, it might be so high as five or six.

The rest of the party really has to do nothing except notkilldogs.

This is all true. But PUGs have a knack of making it hard. I believe that was the point.

(btw, it usually helps to emphasise in PUGs that I am the only one allowed to kill the little doggies, 'cos I suck at it... even if deliberately)

[PresentTense]

Well this thread jumped the shark while I was at work. It seems to me it's disintegrated into "Your playstyle is boring to me and I don't think it's useful. I'm glad it's dead." vs. "I enjoy my playstyle and I don't care what you think, because I feel I contribute something valuable to parties that I am in that I will no longer be able to contribute." Neither side will convince the other - although only one side seems to be dancing on the intimitanks' graves. So crown the dps again, because now anyone can get some hate-boosting gear and some ranks in intim and be a tank. And everyone is still going to avoid S&B because, no matter how much bonus hate it gets, it's still terrible dps compared to THF/TWF. There was one comment I wanted to address, though, because there was a good post a few pages back:

I'd really want to know what the objectives are. Do we want agro control to be more complicated? Do we want to end intim blocking as a tactic? Do we want agro control to be less reliable? Are we trying to force DPS to run agro mitigation?

Without knowing the goals, there is no good way to evaluate the results other than personal impact or perspective.

I think Eladrin outlined the goals of the changes pretty well he answered my question about intimitanks being able to hold aggro without any dps:

If your allies are attacking the monster, it'll be difficult to retain aggro while standing there shield-blocking, unless your DPS are taking some of the burden of threat management onto themselves. (Which we find desirable, by the way!)

If you intimidate a monster and people aren't attacking it, it will stay on you indefinitely now. (You're actually on top of the threat list instead of just being temporarily on top.) This could be useful in some situations.

If you intimidate a monster and then the former target uses diplomacy, your coordination will be paid off with a significantly larger threat buffer. DPS can also use Bluff to enable sneak attacks and reduce their personal threat contribution.

Odds are, however, that if you intimidate a monster and then attack while you have your threat multipliers active you'll have the best chance of holding the monster for an extended period of time.

In other words, they want to encourage players with shields to also attack and they want parties to work together more by having dps characters get threat reduction gear and use threat reduction skills. But I don't think these goals are accomplished by this change, because the easier route is to just forego any sort of shield-based tanking, ramp up dps and overcome the rest of the party, which clearly won't be trying to reduce its aggro. After all, no one wants to admit their dps is mediocre and they're better off reducing their threat rather than boosting it. That sort of character build coordination is a tough feat in a guild party, let alone a pug.

I do find it ironic that, in their attempt to make S&B builds viable, the devs have introduced a change that kills off the one type of S&B character that was actually viable and wasn't greeted with eye rolls when it stepped into a raid. As I mentioned earlier, the first suggestion every S&B build posted on the forums is going to elicit is "you'd do a lot more damage THF/TWF," even if - especially if - the goal of the build is to get and maintain aggro.

[sigtrent]

I think Eladrin outlined the goals of the changes pretty well he answered my question about intimitanks being able to hold aggro without any dps:

Ya, that covers part of it at least... its a bit of a tangential statement though.

In other words, they want to encourage players with shields to also attack and they want parties to work together more by having dps characters get threat reduction gear and use threat reduction skills. But I don't think these goals are accomplished by this change...

Agreed. For starters most DPS builds don't have access to threat reduction skills. The best they can do is gear and there isn't a lot of it (thanes set, a couple others) and most of those are for specific classes (rogue). So they just don't have tools for it unless you are a rogue, in which case all the rogues of note already do this.

If they put in more and better tools, OK, not a bad idea, but as it is... even if they wanted to there isn't much a typical DPS can do except to deal less damage, and thats pretty much crazy talk.

I do find it ironic that, in their attempt to make S&B builds viable, the devs have introduced a change that kills off the one type of S&B character that was actually viable and wasn't greeted with eye rolls when it stepped into a raid. As I mentioned earlier, the first suggestion every S&B build posted on the forums is going to elicit is "you'd do a lot more damage THF/TWF," even if - especially if - the goal of the build is to get and maintain aggro.

I will say that if a sword and board is decently built, and they have 150% or better threat amp, they should be able to pace with a similar scale DPS build. They might manage with only 100%. But... the problem is why would you build for that when you can do more damage with an actual DPS build and likely hit the same AC mark?

(I blame the monk class for a lot of this design issue)

My first thought is to grant shield users significant DR when not blocking. Another is to make shield AC far easier to get to a decent level. Make it the cheap AC option or the like but that has a lot of wrinkles due to existing gear and AC balance at lower levels. They seem to be starting to make DPS oriented sheilds, and thats reasonable but they need to do far more (aka make more sheilds) to make that work and its kind of against the spirit of shields in the first place. Actually making shields with threat amp would be nice as well. Instead we mostly have weapons with that.

[dunklezhan]

My first thought is to grant shield users significant DR when not blocking.

Don't the new shield mastery feats do just that? Its a % not a flat rate, but I thought the DR applied all the time, with extra flat rate DR while actively blocking now?

I think what turbine are going for is something like this:

S&B Bastard sword Intim build:

• group starts fight, ideally with caster laying down some heavy nukes.
• As the mobs charge in, tank intims and everyone else stops attacking for a few seconds.
• Tank bumps straight to top of the hate tree, starts laying about themselves, cleave, glancing blows (they get those with bastard sword now with a shield in the other hand, right? did I dream that?) and offhand procs from the shield (from the retouched feats), which with their 100% threat amp for using S&B after an intim check + threat gear/enhancements puts a rather large buffer between them and everyone else.
• Tank's active % DR and any flat rate DR gear (invuln, stone skin etc) keeps them alive, then they hit intim again.
• At this point they probably have enough of a buffer that they can turtle up and sit there with the mobs safely locked on while the rest of the group wails away and clears the pack, providing the rest of the group doesn't have any hate amp or even better has hate reduction.

If the above works (and is what they're going for), then for me the question at this point is: are there enough feat slots to pull this off? Cleave, great cleave, 2 shield mastery feats, Imp Shield Bash, bastard sword will all be minimum 'must haves', then everything else you want on the build.

I realise you could destroy the pack faster most likely with the intimitank using TWF or THF for more damage and more hate, but surely the point of the tank tactic is to keep the healing costs down by requiring only healing on one target? A THF/TWF is still not going to have the damage mitigation. This does of course require AC as well - I suspect what Turbine are trying to do away with is pure AC intimitanking or pure nonAC hate taking and make it a combination of both. Course, for that to work its going to need to be easier to hit those higher ACs...

Edit: I notice there isn't actually an announced change to improved shield mastery - so presumably this means when actively blocking, Imp shield mastery still grants the flat rate DR?

[TheDearLeader]

Er, being lvl 20, spending your AP, buying 3-4 feats (one of which everyone in the game should have) and having an off-the-shelf sword is in no way, shape or form a lot of investment. Its auto-attack E-Z MODE, and you could quite literally just go read a book or vacuum the hall after you start and it wouldnt make a lick of difference really, and the same goes for any other purpose-built toon intended to hate tank. Even my greatsword kensai, who was never intended to tank, can and has done it on horoth with nothing more than a bloodstone, a min2 sword and a GS hp item. No epics, no aggro boosters, no healing amps beyond leviks bracers and healers friend 1, nothing but a 10% head start. I do stick around to hit my power surge and fighter haste buttons as they come up, but do I have to pay close attention? Does it matter if I'm a few seconds late refreshing one? No. Not at all. (Try being late with your intim, and see what happens... ) This is not skill. This is not heavy investment above and beyond the call. This is nothing more than being lvl 20 for a couple of weeks (or a bit more if its your first toon, to build up a supply of larges). It IS trivial. Claiming skill and dedication is laughable. Compared to a timmy who dedicates nearly all his no-class feats, and several of his class feats, and all of his gear to become viable AT ALL. And even more effort to become viable for the top-end stuff. Can a hate-tank aquire specific, harder-to-get gear and perhaps spend a few more feats to cut down on the amount of lead time he needs before other join in? Sure. And can that gearing time approach a significant portion of what a timmy spends (maybe 2/3)? Yes. But its not NECESSARY to perform the function of hate tank in the first place. It is NOTHING compared to the dedication needed to become viable as a timmy.

There are people who like to suggest timmies dont contribute to the group. They are short-sighted monominds. They contribute by saving the party resources by providing control, and providing insurance against mishaps and errors elsewhere in the group/raid. DPS is not the only measure of worth. Dont believe that, talk to your healer.

In any event, I too would be happier if Turbine told us the intent of these changes. Knowing what they were trying to achieve would help everyone provide real feedback and resolve a lot of the confusion and arguing.

You seemed to pull a whole bunch out of my statement that I did not say, while ignoring what I actually said.

I never said Intimitanks don't contribute to the group, first of all. I thought I made it rather clear that I have at least one toon capable of Sword-and-Board Intimitanking. At this point, I wonder if you meant to quote someone else?

No epics, no aggro boosters, no healing amps beyond leviks bracers and healers friend 1, nothing but a 10% head start.

The person to whom I was originally responding asks for a 40 Second "Head Start", and now you're asking for a "10% head start" on Horoth. According to Vanshilar, you're asking for 20k HP on Normal before anyone else can even touch him.

When I speak of a threat tank, I speak of a tank that can allow you to come in *right now*. Less than five seconds of hitting Horoth/Sully/Whoever is sufficient that they can ensure that unless someone else is intentionally trying to pull hate using similar measures that hate will remain on them.

A proper hate tank is just as useful as an intimitank - the longer one the party has to wait to come in and DPS, the more strain is put on healers and casters, due to spell point attrition over time.

I was in no way insulting the "Intimitank" in the post you quoted.

In fact, I do believe I said :

Don't discount either route as trivial.

I would highly suggest you re-evaluate what your definition of "Threat Tank" is.

[VariaVespasa]

The problem with intimitanking before was that it took everything else out of the equation. It didn't matter what your party members were doing, or what the boss was doing (for the most part), or whether you had any offensive ability at all, or if the healing in your group was weak or strong, or even how many dangerous targets there were. You just pick up a shield, hold block and hit a button every six seconds. It's incredibly difficult to design content that allows for tanking when there are characters out there who can basically tank while ignoring every subtlety of the game.

In regular questing, it meant that a rogue paired with an intimitank had to make no effort whatsoever to mitigate their own hate. Nor the barbarian, kensai or caster. It meant that even unlikely characters, like your sorcerer, could sit and intimidate and hold aggro with little to no danger to themselves, and absolutely no real strategy involved. That is incredibly problematic from a design standpoint. How do you challenge a party built around an intimitank?

There's a little design space, which the devs seem to have been using in ToD and Chrono, where either you may get stunned and lose aggro, or will have to move suddenly and expose yourself to other attacks in order to avoid massive spell damage, but, in the case of Horoth tanking at least, the stun only really serves to punish everyone else for relying on you, and without any strategic concerns on your (the tank's) part: if you miss an intimidate due to an untimely stun, it is everyone else in the group that is in trouble when Horoth turns around, not you. Then it's a crapshoot as to whether that even has any noticeable effect upon the raid or not: if he uses a Disintegrate during those 1-6 seconds you don't have him locked, it's a big deal; if he lands a badge or two it's kind of a big deal; if he just gets off a few melee attacks, if it's normal, it probably isn't a big deal, if it's elite it likely is. In any case, you aren't being punished. There really isn't anything you could have done to prevent it from happening, nothing the party could have done, of any real significance, and your role will continue as it had before things started going sideways.

Finally, intimidate previously didn't work at all with threat tanking. You could use intimidate to grab initial aggro, but if you didn't build enough threat to surpass everyone else in those 6 seconds aggro was going back. Many defender builds either intimitank or threat tank, because the two strategies don't work together. The +6 intimidate that Stalwarts get often goes completely to waste, while the rest of the time the passive DR 6/- goes to waste (along with all the feats and enhancements fighters have available to them to improve DPS, because people are only using 1/2 of their character.

I agree that this change really only will end up being a good change if it allows the devs to redesign our endgame to make AC threat tanking viable and useful in more places. If the game remains the way it is currently, then, sure, losing intimitanking will have been a rather pointless blow, but I don't expect that to be the case.

Para 1 and 2- Not having to mitigate your dps etc. How, precisely, do you imagine using a threat tank instead is different? Either way, the tank enables every single other person not otherwise engaged to unload. The ONLY difference is you have to correctly choose who has the highest threat generation in the group (Or dont bother and just make a good guess and give them a headstart, and the healers may use a bit more mana. And not even that, if some of the braggarts in the thread are to be believed. If you choose the best threat generator then, just as with a timmie, every single other person in the group can and does go hog-wild without the slightest thought of strategy or holding back etc. So tell us, how, exactly, does this change that? The only benefit I can see is a slight increase in literacy as more people get to do some reading while autoattacking. At least the timmie has to hit a button every 6 seconds through the fight, with reasonable precision, instead of just one button once at the begiinning for the whole thing.

ToD/Horoth Seriously? Stunning- You havent heard of light monks, I'm guessing? Of course you have, so you know that its not a problem. Nice dishonest strawman you have there. Its everyone else who gets punished, not you, if you miss an intim? So the timmy doesnt wipe when the raid wipes? I hadnt heard of this. Please show me how its done. Or were you being disingenuous again?

Intim doesnt work with threat tanking? Well no feces, Sherlock. When is working directly at cross-purposes with your own group EVER a recipe for success? Hitting things doesnt work with fascinate either. Is that the bards fault, somehow? Its called strategy and discipline- you pick a strategy and have the discipline to stick with it rather than going Hulk smash (Unless that was the strategy chosen); you dont try two at once that directly conflict with each other and then blame whichever strategy you werent personally using. The problem is you have a hammer fixation, so you want everything to be a nail so you can hit it. Is it the sounds amuse you or is it the sparkly numbers floating up your screen? Is it "the look what I can do" factor?

I cant think of an end-game raid where threat-tanking isnt viable, except for those where no tanking is viable, or tanking is not needed. If a threat tank also has ac, well so much the better, but he's viable everywhere. The devs have plenty of space to play with endgame stuff. If your issue is intim, specifically, then it should be simplicity itself to include some mobs (either minions or bosses, as desired) that are immune to intim but not threat. Intimidate works off emotions, more or less, so anything that doesnt have emotions but does have damage awareness would be a prime candidate- many constructs, forinstance, perhaps some undead, certain animals and magical beasts etc. So a boss who is, or is championed by, one of those would give you a spot where only a hate-tank would do, if thats what your ego requires, and some such encounters really should be in the game in any case. And, of course, there is the issue that D+D has always been about attrition, not single critters standing alone or nearly alone against the full resources of a rested party; DDO has sort of forgotten that, especially for raid bosses, and remembering it again might help with boss encounter design, and give more for people to do. So more critters in at least some boss fights, with mixed types. A construct or other timmy-immune boss, with timmy-vulnerale support, or vice versa. They could code in some critters who are brave but not that brave- they'd respond to intim within a certain skill range but not above- so the timmy grabs the boss, but the minion guards wont go near him so someone else has to chase them down, and someone else deals with the automotons that dont intim but will hate. And so on. Sometimes more is better, and the devs might do well to remember that, especially since they are working to reduce mob hp anyway.

[VariaVespasa]

Well, since the lat time I commented on it, I've played around with intimidate more where I was actually paying attention and it is buggy, just not as badly as I thought. Hit it a fraction of a second too soon (ie. just as the timer expires) and the monster breaks off despite a successful intimidate. Wait a little longer, and it works fine. Irrelevant to this thread, but figured I'd chime in on this point.

Yup, it works fine. You cant just spam it with one hand while reading a book with the other (Please tell me thats what youre doing with the other hand...), and you cant anticipate the refresh. Just wait till you see the timer refresh then hit it again, no problem at all.

[sephiroth1084]

There's a pretty significant difference between one character who is using hate generation with a head start holding aggro and one using intimidate and blocking. For one, if you really need to pile on the AC for a given encounter, such as ToD on Elite, it's very likely that the top DPS guys will be overcoming your hate and will have to back off or drop some of their own DPS, such as by turning off PA or removing their Epic Claw gloves. None of those decisions will ever take place with an intimitank. Not in a good group or a bad. I'm sorry, but there is simply no way to equate any other strategy to the non-interaction that is intimitank. There isn't. If a group employs a little strategy at the beginning of the fight, or the threat tank is way ahead of everyone else either due to gear differences or simply having enough threat to outpace everyone else, then the issue may not come up, but that is still a lot more going on than for someone holding the shift button and hammering the intimidate key. Add to that the need to monitor and refresh your buffs and abilities more precisely and the difference between the two styles becomes rather enormous.

Some groups don't wait for a light monk just to run the raid. It's bad enough waiting for healers, and maybe a bard, without also waiting on not only a monk, but a specific monk build to show up. I've seen groups waiting half an hour for a light monk when they could have been done in that time with any other character. If you get one, great, if not that's okay. Quests are completable with just about any configuration of characters so long as those involved are strong enough and willing to do what is necessary to complete. Generally speaking, the only necessities for ToD are a couple of healers and someone with enough HP and threat to hold Horoth's attention with some lead time and not crumble like wet tissue paper. A party is then built up from there. An AC tank is a big boost as it cuts way down on healer resource expenditure and tends to not require as careful management of the orthons compared to, say, a kensai or barbarian tank. If you want to wait on a light monk, fine, but don't claim that my argument is disingenuous because I don't figure them into my plans automatically. I don't bank on having a bard, or ranger, either.

As for who gets punished, my implication was that when aggro shifts and damage gets spread around, or someone dies, the healers are the ones taking on the brunt of the pain as they have to spend more of their resources and focus on caring for other party members or healing through another 20% or more of Horoth's HP. I wasn't implying that the raid wipes from aggro shifting for 4-6 seconds.

Again, you missed my point on the intimidate not working with threat issue. In the case of the Stalwart Defender, at least, the PrE grants bonuses to threat tanking as well as to intimidate, but the two strategies weren't really working together. Your threat bonuses, and to a lesser degree your AC, HP and non-blocking DR bonuses, and your Str bonus, mean nothing while shield blocking for an entire fight, while your intimidate bonuses tend to not figure into your threat tanking. There's a much bigger chunk of the PrE being given up when intimiblocking than threat tanking, for one, and for another it is left as a fairly split PrE, which is kind of odd. Now, it isn't just the SD that has this issue, but it illustrates it best. Intimiblocking tends to ignore most of the abilities characters get in DDO: Str bonuses, damage bonuses, attack bonuses, offensive spellcasting, hate bonuses, the point of many immunities, threat reduction...the list is pretty long. Ultimately, D&D is very much about combat, and DDO more so, for obvious reasons, and pieces of the game that disregard primary features cause problems.

This was the issue with Wounding of Puncturing as a primary offensive strategy: most of the features that defined races and classes and character archtypes were obviated by the superiority of a weapon property and the whole game skewed to support that.The game hasn't skewed to support intimitanks mostly because they are difficult to build, rather boring to play, and really don't come up as a useful tool in many situations. None of that means that they aren't just as troublesome as WoP was.

The revision to the intimidate system marries those principles, those features, so that they work together, and sews intimidate back into the quilt of DDO's combat system, rather than leaving it as the outlier it had been. Whatever you wish to claim, nothing was as non-interactive as intimitanking: nothing anyone in your group could, short of intimidating themselves or letting you die, really altered the way a fight would develop with an intimitank, and there is very little most monsters can do in those situations either. That was a problem and it has been rectified.