Thoughts on Aggression

[Erasluindor]

Aggression was certainly a great skill while we had it and probably one of the better things that came out of RoI. In its current state its next to useless, but in its former useful state it has been deemed overpowered. Where does the skill go next? A boost to its threat transfer could be the answer, but I imagine that it wouldnt get boosted much past Conviction/DoW leaving it still not that great. Aggression kinda feels like the kid in the group who doenst belong now but persists in sticking around.

There is still a hole in the wardens threat gen that we have worked around but still feels kind of awkward. Threat around CC'd targets. Goad can help since its a frontal AoE but goad has low threat and a DoT component thats still not 100% reliable around close quarters. In an attempt to solve this what if Aggression lost its leach factor and became an on par threat gen skill to EoB. It could be an all directional AoE with 6-10 meter range with no DoT component making it CC friendly. Someone is gonna say that Aggression in this form would obsolete EoB, but the obvious tradeoff here is Aggression would generate no heals. EoB remains superior around lots of trash mobs when no CC is needed and Aggression shines in raids that are CC heavy. Aggression is easily made by masteries that require us to do no damage with our gambit builders ensuring its CC safe role.

With this we would still need love in the threat swapping arena where our current buggy EoB+TV shines like a star. Id like your thoughts, critiques, or just plain trashing of the idea if you hate it.

[Darlgon]

I am still trying to wrap my head around how they wrote (coded) it. From my understanding, the way guards get aggro is, when they challenge, force taunt or whatever the skill is, they go 1 point above the highest person in the group in threat. After that, it is their job to keep ahead, using other threat skills, while the person who was above them in aggro needs to drop aggro by doing less damage or pausing in chain healing. If Agression was OP, how much ahead of everyone else did it put wardens? It must have been much more than just a tad. Why did it not work just like the guard skills, just using gambits instead of one of their three (?) taunt buttons?

While we are on the subject of thoughts on Aggression, I have been wondering about its complement, Deflection. I keep reading how Aggression is needed for snap aggro as a forced taunt, in tank-swapping fights. However, I never hear anyone say they hit Deflection and aggro went back to the other tank. Was it not working? Sorry, my kin needed my LM way more than my warden for boss fights over the last year, since he was the only LM going.

[Nydorewyth]

If Agression was OP, how much ahead of everyone else did it put wardens? It must have been much more than just a tad. Why did it not work just like the guard skills, just using gambits instead of one of their three (?) taunt buttons?

No one knows how far ahead because actual threat numbers have always been a mystery. I think the tooltip said a "great" amount which is around 3 times an autoattack. Not sure whose autoattack it goes by, but lets say 150 damage * 3 = 450 DPS worth of threat transferred. In a fellowship that's 450 threat times 5 people = 2250 DPS worth of threat. Definitely enough to keep you in the lead, especially when you consider that 450 threat is also being REDUCED for each of your fellows. Meaning the champ doing 2000 DPS is now putting out 1550 DPS worth of threat.

[SharadSun]

There was a post somewhere that stated that Aggression would leech 10% of the threat from each Fellowship member.

I forgot where I read it, if someone could find the post that'd be gold.

[Constrictions]

Aggression was certainly a great skill while we had it and probably one of the better things that came out of RoI. In its current state its next to useless, but in its former useful state it has been deemed overpowered. Where does the skill go next? A boost to its threat transfer could be the answer, but I imagine that it wouldnt get boosted much past Conviction/DoW leaving it still not that great. Aggression kinda feels like the kid in the group who doenst belong now but persists in sticking around.

There is still a hole in the wardens threat gen that we have worked around but still feels kind of awkward. Threat around CC'd targets. Goad can help since its a frontal AoE but goad has low threat and a DoT component thats still not 100% reliable around close quarters. In an attempt to solve this what if Aggression lost its leach factor and became an on par threat gen skill to EoB. It could be an all directional AoE with 6-10 meter range with no DoT component making it CC friendly. Someone is gonna say that Aggression in this form would obsolete EoB, but the obvious tradeoff here is Aggression would generate no heals. EoB remains superior around lots of trash mobs when no CC is needed and Aggression shines in raids that are CC heavy. Aggression is easily made by masteries that require us to do no damage with our gambit builders ensuring its CC safe role.

With this we would still need love in the threat swapping arena where our current buggy EoB+TV shines like a star. Id like your thoughts, critiques, or just plain trashing of the idea if you hate it.

Aggression was added as a utility to help wardens swap threat, or pick it up quickly. It's intended purpose wsa to fulfill the same role as a Guardians engage.

It's former use was deemed overpowered, because it would not only bring us up to that threat, but also allow us to keep it with just that single gambit and nothing else.

I would like to see aggression brought back to it's original purpose, but the way the skill functions expressed differently.

AoE threat that does not interrupt CC has been a though of mine too, I would like to see war-cry fill this gap perhaps. There's literally no reason why the dot is on there (except to annoy pesky wargs in the moors).

Those are my thoughts.

[khaipur]

I am still trying to wrap my head around how they wrote (coded) it. From my understanding, the way guards get aggro is, when they challenge, force taunt or whatever the skill is, they go 1 point above the highest person in the group in threat. After that, it is their job to keep ahead, using other threat skills, while the person who was above them in aggro needs to drop aggro by doing less damage or pausing in chain healing. If Agression was OP, how much ahead of everyone else did it put wardens? It must have been much more than just a tad. Why did it not work just like the guard skills, just using gambits instead of one of their three (?) taunt buttons?

While we are on the subject of thoughts on Aggression, I have been wondering about its complement, Deflection. I keep reading how Aggression is needed for snap aggro as a forced taunt, in tank-swapping fights. However, I never hear anyone say they hit Deflection and aggro went back to the other tank. Was it not working? Sorry, my kin needed my LM way more than my warden for boss fights over the last year, since he was the only LM going.

Aggression technically wasn't ever a force taunt which requires all mobs within range to attack. It also wasn't technically a threat catchup like the guardian skill your talking about where it gives highest threat +1. Instead what it was, was a threat transfer similar to Conviction. In it's original incarnation it stole 10% of threat from every fellow within 30m that means that all of the fellowships threat numbers drop by 10% and the wardens threat level rises by that 50%. What this meant was that in long fights wardens could spam aggression and drain all threat from everyone in the fellowship and since it was mastery friendly. It was intended to be used for revive catch up.

What they nerfed it too was a specific amount of threat transfer similar to conviction but this made it useless in long fights since if the Guard had generated 100k threat or whatever the number is and the warden steals 1k from each fellow for 5k total which meanst you need to spam it 20x to catch the Guard.

[Ketilron]

Why not give it back its original form - but on a cooldown, like the stun immunity of ST? This way, its more of an emergency threat re-grabber after death, and not quite so spammable as it was. Aside from the 50% threat transfer on the CD, give it some other benefit that would still make it useful, much like ST still gives Tact Mit?

*shrug* half-baked.

-Vayguin Layonect

[khaipur]

Why not give it back its original form - but on a cooldown, like the stun immunity of ST? This way, its more of an emergency threat re-grabber after death, and not quite so spammable as it was. Aside from the 50% threat transfer on the CD, give it some other benefit that would still make it useful, much like ST still gives Tact Mit?

*shrug* half-baked.

-Vayguin Layonect

or the current version if it is on cooldown

[Nydorewyth]

There was a post somewhere that stated that Aggression would leech 10% of the threat from each Fellowship member.

I forgot where I read it, if someone could find the post that'd be gold.

The only time I remember hearing about a percentage was before the skill came out. When we actually got it some blue name said it ended up being some unknown flat amount of threat.

I have no idea where those posts are now so obviously could be wrong =) But I never heard it took a percentage other than during the planning stages.

[Darlgon]

The only time I remember hearing about a percentage was before the skill came out. When we actually got it some blue name said it ended up being some unknown flat amount of threat.

I have no idea where those posts are now so obviously could be wrong =) But I never heard it took a percentage other than during the planning stages.

I remember the unknown flat number also. I think the % thing was in one of Orion's speculative, cant hold me to this logs.

[khaipur]

I remember the tooltip when it first created it gave a %. It was changed for update 5 if I remember right.

[Harperelle]

As far as I can tell, aggression hasn't changed much in its total threat xfer. Aggression, Maddening Strike, Dance of War, and Conviction all use the same threat xfer mechanic. That is, they take a certain amount of threat from each fellowship member and transfer it to the warden. So Warden goes up and everyone else goes down. It used to be that Aggression did a much higher instant transfer than all other transfer skills. It was lowered in a patch, then lowered much further in update 6, however a ToT xfer was added. I suspect that the up-front transfer + the tranfer over time is actually pretty close to the amount it did before. But its hard to see that because when you got all the threat up front before, you saw the mob instantly peel off and run to you. Now that may not happen for up to 16s later, and you certainly won't give aggression the credit for it.

--Harper

[tomiathon]

Why not give it back its original form - but on a cooldown, like the stun immunity of ST? This way, its more of an emergency threat re-grabber after death, and not quite so spammable as it was. Aside from the 50% threat transfer on the CD, give it some other benefit that would still make it useful, much like ST still gives Tact Mit?

*shrug* half-baked.

-Vayguin Layonect

no. they should get rid of the cooldown on ST stun immunity as well. cooldowns on gambits are bad. what might not be bad would be a skill that has a cooldown that a gambit unlocked (similar to a burg's Burglar's Advantage unlocking Double-edged Strike, or a captain's Battle Shout opening Devestating Blow or Pressing Attack, but in place of Buglar's Advantage or Battle Shout, you'd have a gambit). aggression could give its threat transfer, and also unlock a skill on a cd that would give another threat boost. they could use this same approach for an "emergency" skill as well, and perhaps it would be a tradeoff to lower the cooldown on Defiant Challenge slightly as well.

[Erasluindor]

no. they should get rid of the cooldown on ST stun immunity as well. cooldowns on gambits are bad.

I second this. Shield tactics' cooldown for stun immunity makes the skill completely worthless to a warden. I use it for tactical mits only unless its pretty obvious to predict when the stun is coming. Cooldowns on gambits is horrible.

[Beornded]

I remember the tooltip when it first created it gave a %. It was changed for update 5 if I remember right.

IIRC it was originally supposed to be a % but was changed to flat amount before it went on live. The tooltip just wasn't changed in time. So unless you were on BR aggression wasn't really changed until update 6.

[Hydragyrum]

I'd really like Aggression to turn into a damage-less AoE static threat gambit. It would be great for initial pulls, which is where we struggle the most right now (ignoring OP VT/EoB).

A CC friendly initial pull aggro gambit I feel would be all we need to be great tanks, even after the VT/EoB fix.

[cpdm]

As far as I can tell, aggression hasn't changed much in its total threat xfer. Aggression, Maddening Strike, Dance of War, and Conviction all use the same threat xfer mechanic. That is, they take a certain amount of threat from each fellowship member and transfer it to the warden. So Warden goes up and everyone else goes down. It used to be that Aggression did a much higher instant transfer than all other transfer skills. It was lowered in a patch, then lowered much further in update 6, however a ToT xfer was added. I suspect that the up-front transfer + the tranfer over time is actually pretty close to the amount it did before. But its hard to see that because when you got all the threat up front before, you saw the mob instantly peel off and run to you. Now that may not happen for up to 16s later, and you certainly won't give aggression the credit for it.

--Harper

The transfer-over-time effect is interesting, although it makes me wonder what the thought process was. How does that make people want to use Aggression over DoW and/or Conviction? Even if it is of similar power (in total) to it's old self, we'd have to start buiding it 16-20 seconds before we actually wanted to swap aggro to get the full effect. I don't mind having to plan ahead a bit, but that is extreme.