Threatening Presence and the 2 Blue Line Bonus

[Evendale]

I was told recently by another Guardian that the Threatening Presence trait (which states that it increases the threat component of shield skills) actually increases the threat component of all skills. Apparently Graal (or some other dev) has confirmed this in the past (although if anyone has a link to this confirmation I would greatly appreciate it).

I was wondering if anyone had more information on this. Specifically, does anyone know if the 2 Blue Line Bonus (which has pretty much the exact same text) also increases the threat component of all skills, or is that limited to shield skills only?

[jimmyboy131]

Good question. I'd like an answer to this too.

[Crissaegrim]

From the Mines of Moria Patch 1 Notes, December 1, 2008:

Guardian

* The Guardian has had a sweeping pass to the balance of his threat skills and shield damage skills.
o Base Shield Damage Increased 10% from 50-60
o Base Threat increased from 50-60
o Shield of Fire trait gains additional bonus: +1 Shield Taunt targets
o Shield Damage Legacy progression change to have max at rank 9 be 21% on a level 60 Epic belt and cost slightly less
o Litany of Defiance base targets increased to 5
o Litany Legendary trait gains additional +5 Litany of Defiance targets
o Whirling Retaliation Skill gains a numeric Threat transfer ability
o Litany of Challenge trait +2 Challenge targets
o Litany of Challenge trait Challenge Generates additional Threat
o Evade 3 & Evade 4 Passives now available for Guardians
o Defender of Free Trait Set 3 additional bonus: +2 Shield Taunt targets
o Bug fix for Shield of Fire which was only providing a 7.5% boost to threat previously
o Increased the threat generated by the shield response line of skills

o Threatening Presence now applies to all skills that generate threat. This includes melee attack skills that do not normally generate additional threat.

* Guardian Legacy “Stagger Movement” speed debuff now properly changes the Stagger skill tooltip when this legacy is active.
* Guardian Legacy “Reactive Block Damage” now displays the increase as a percent on the legacy tooltip.
* Guardian Legacy “Targeted Melee Range” tooltip has been updated to reflect that this legacy does not affect AoE & auto attack.
* Guardian “Threat Rating Up” legacy has had its tooltip updated to state “Skills Threat Rating Up” as this legacy does not benefit auto attacks.
* The countdown effect “Imminent Cleansing” applied by the Guardian's “Improved Sting” skill will no longer overwrite itself. If the player used this skill repeatedly to attempt to remove a Corruption effect, it would actually prevent the Countdown effect from completing because the Countdown timer would keep resetting back to 10 seconds, thus not removing any Corruptions.

[Evendale]

Thanks. For some reason those patch notes aren't included in the lorebook, but I found a copy of them on another website, and I see that, sadly, there is no mention of the 2 blue line trait bonus.

It is very annoying that the text of threatening presence hasn't been updated to correctly match what the trait does (and thus differentiating it from the 2 blue line bonus).

Based on that info I guess we have to assume that the 2 blue line bonus only works on shield skills, whereas Threatening Presence (along with the Skills Threat Up legacy) works on all skills. What actually happens in game though is really anybody's guess, /sigh

[jhwort]

Thanks. For some reason those patch notes aren't included in the lorebook, but I found a copy of them on another website, and I see that, sadly, there is no mention of the 2 blue line trait bonus.

It is very annoying that the text of threatening presence hasn't been updated to correctly match what the trait does (and thus differentiating it from the 2 blue line bonus).

Based on that info I guess we have to assume that the 2 blue line bonus only works on shield skills, whereas Threatening Presence (along with the Skills Threat Up legacy) works on all skills. What actually happens in game though is really anybody's guess, /sigh

But Evendale, it doesn't matter because you don't use shields.

I'm assuming that the change to Threatening Presence was because of the introduction of the trait line system, to differentiate it from the DotF line bonus. Either way, it's my understanding that it's on Graal's list to change the tool-tip for TP so that it displays correctly. Whether the blue line has the same function we won't know without a little testing or a confirmation from a dev.

[ArcticAurora]

I always understood the 2-deep Blue line boost to be shield skills - that being Shield Blow, Shield Swipe, Bash, Shield Smash and Shield Taunt. Darned to find a quote to back it up though.

[Jaunt]

I believe I have data suggesting that 2/5 Blue applies mostly to shield skills (but also to some other skills), and that Threatening Presence applies to the same skills, but not others, for instance, Sting. However, I'm pretty much making this up at the moment, and I'll confirm when I get home to my data.

[jhwort]

I believe I have data suggesting that 2/5 Blue applies mostly to shield skills (but also to some other skills), and that Threatening Presence applies to the same skills, but not others, for instance, Sting. However, I'm pretty much making this up at the moment, and I'll confirm when I get home to my data.

2/5 DoTF is supposed to only apply to shield skills - which includes Shield-Taunt, Bash, Shield Smash, Improved Shield Blow, Shield Swipe. I'm not sure if that includes reactive damage or not.

Threatening Presence is supposed to apply to all skills that generate threat, as stated in the patch notes above.

Granted, there are a lot of things that are supposed to be working one way and are proven not to be working as advertised, so if your data shows this then that wouldn't surprise me.

Evendale's real question is (or what I gathered his real question is), are these cumulative? He was seeing redundancy from the tool-tips and wondered if it was necessary to have TP if you had 2/5 DotF traits. My answer to that was I don't know, but if I had to guess I would say that they're indeed cumulative. All information presented by the devs has indicated that they do different (however similar) things and one does not override the other.

[Jaunt]

I can state with certainty, even away from my notes, that they are cumulative.

[Evendale]

Evendale's real question is (or what I gathered his real question is), are these cumulative? He was seeing redundancy from the tool-tips and wondered if it was necessary to have TP if you had 2/5 DotF traits. My answer to that was I don't know, but if I had to guess I would say that they're indeed cumulative. All information presented by the devs has indicated that they do different (however similar) things and one does not override the other.

Well, that wasn't really my question :P

I'm pretty certain they would be cumulative - at least it would be stupid if they weren't.

I was just wondering if the effects of Threatening Presence were different from the effects of the 2 Blue line bonus. The main reason I want to know this (there are quite a few reasons really) is that I am wondering if I should trait:

(a) Harasser + Threatening Presence (1 Blue & 1 Yellow), or:
(b) Harasser + Some other blue line trait (2 Blues), thereby getting the +threat effect trait line bonus while having effectively a whole extra trait slot over option (a)
(... where my other traits are 5 red)

It would be awesome to get a dev confirmation here, but ... I certainly am not holding my breath.

It's my understanding that it's on Graal's list to change the tool-tip for TP so that it displays correctly.

/sarcasm on
Yea, changing tooltips must be an extremely complex task for our poor devs. Maybe in another year or two, we might expect this to get updated :P

[Jaunt]

2/5 Blue and TP are basically the same thing.

[Evendale]

2/5 Blue and TP are basically the same thing.

Ok, great.

And you know this how?

[Jaunt]

Hours of painstakingly slow experimentation and data gathering. I'm glad you don't just take my word for it; it makes the effort seem meaningful.

[Evendale]

Yea, sorry I just wanted to know why you're convinced they're the same.

I am a bit if a cynic though, so I have to ask: can you give more details about how you experimented to determine this?

[Jaunt]

Well, in various trait setups, I would do a skill, then I would have someone hit the mob very lightly until they pulled aggro. Then I would record how much damage they did. And yes, I did a whole bunch of tests to try and prove or disprove various theories about many hits totalling X damage being weighted more/less than 1 hit for X, and whether or not crits did more damage, whether or not threat was partially random, and so forth. From my tests, threat is a very predictable beast.

I'm putting out a guide in the near future with all these numbers in extensive details, but until I finish the last couple skills, I'm going to keep the process to myself in order to minimize the chance of being scooped.

[Evendale]

Ok, great. Looking forward to your guide! And thanks for the info.