Beefcake said:Yes it is, so no one should ever be allowed to show an example from another game, and ask that the situation not be repeated in Pantheon.
Make sure you take that point of view to all the other topics and tell people not to ever discuss their experiences in other games in a Pantheon forum, when describing how they would like to see Pantheon be different.
"Without large amounts of AE taunts/spells, there is no way a tank can grab agro on all those mobs." "But, if raids are designed with many adds, it is a necessity. "
You dind't ask for a situation to be avoided im pantheon, you said if the game did not have aoe taunts it would be impossible to deal with encounters with multiple adds. That's really narrowing down the creative side of encounters.
Beef, I know there's no point in conversing with me because I'm so unreasonable, but all the same:
Beefcake said:Maybe read my whole post for insight.
I quoted, literally, 85% of your post.
Beefcake said:I was describing poor raid design/experience in EQ2...
I understand that. I think it's also fair to say that you were extrapolating from that experience and making assertions about pantheon.
Beefcake said:I also stated that I assumed VR would design raids better than EQ2, without these problems.
I recall agreeing with you. I think my exact response to that was "Yes."
Beefcake said:...instead of understanding the experience and limitations I was discussing, you just want to shout from a mountain top about how EQ1 was, which has nothing to do with the situation as described.
I mentioned EQ1 as an example of a design where crowd control works well, yes, but I don't think "shout[ing] from a mountain top" is a fair characterization of my argument.
Beefcake said:Clearly, there is no point in continuing a discussion with you.
I mean, fair; that's your call. Rock-throwing, glass houses and all that though, man. Glass houses.
Beefcake said:Have a nice day.
Thanks. You too. I mean that sincerely. I actually enjoy arguing with you.
I am a firm believer in doing things that have minor setbacks,
Take AoE taunts for example. Could be really useful, yet really harmful, if you think about it, they are designing this game to be much like EQ, Imagine a tank having AoE taunt in EQ, he wouldn't survive long enough for the cleric to heal as many mobs that would be beating him.
Same for AoE DPS, the game had it, it became useful but not often. Sure there were wizards that were quad kiting, but it was very difficult to do. There was rarely a pull that went right. Then, we had the mass pulling/killing, now I only ever experienced this in Old Sebilis shortly after kunark came out. It was pretty cool, I was just wandering around one day and someone asked me to come heal for a mass pull group in old sebilis. Thinking it was mass pulling as in hey im pulling 5 mobs on purpose chanter is parking them all and tank is killing them one by one. Nope, it was a group of 4 wizards, 1 enchanter and me, the cleric. They pulled massive groups, like whole wings of mobs, and AoE'd them all to death while the enchanter kept them all stunned. I was 59 at the time, spent about 6 hours in a group in Karnor's and walked away with like 10% of my level worth of exp. Typical EQ stuff, then in this group in 3 hours i was level 60.
All that being said, I don't mind AoE's of any sort. Especially since if you AoE in EQ you were breaking mez's. Which was not acceptable by any means. Like i said, in EQ there was always a drawback to anything AoE. AoE healing drained your resources and fast. AoE taunt would likely kill your tank, and AoE nukes would hurt the Crowd Control, and likely kill them.
If any game ever had any AoE down, it was EQ. Does that mean AoE shouldn't exist? Nope, but there should always be some kind of penalty to using it over a single target ability, just because it's AoE.
This is the exact way I hope AoE's will be looked at in Pantheon. A penalty for everything you do.
Dubah said:...he wouldn't survive long enough for the cleric to heal as many mobs that would be beating him.
I think you nailed it. AoE is fun and fine as long as the consquences are such that it's situational. The best way to make it that way is to scale mobs such that nobody, not even tanks, can survive more than one or two at a time. I think that solves all the problems.
Shai said:Dubah said:...he wouldn't survive long enough for the cleric to heal as many mobs that would be beating him.
I think you nailed it. AoE is fun and fine as long as the consquences are such that it's situational. The best way to make it that way is to scale mobs such that nobody, not even tanks, can survive more than one or two at a time. I think that solves all the problems.
If you've watched the streams there have been more then one occasion where more than the two mob limit you mentioned attacked them and they survived with CC and offtanking. However they didn't have much left in the tank so to speak afterwards. I personally don't see them having this lower than 3-4 but making it slow down group progression to do so.
I'm certainly no fan of rushing to AOE mow down content so Johnny can get his quests done before bedtime so I understand where your coming from. However I think your dialing it too far back the other way, to use WoW as a reference, BC style grouping sucked a group couldn't go anywhere without a mage/rogue or both. I can see the 'preferred' group need a mezzer but a healer/dps or Paladin to offtank in that spot should be viable too.
As for Raiding, this should be where the AOE DPS skills would shine with mana regen suffient to sustain to a degree. Offtanking using +Threat AOE skills to pull adds away would be needed. It's also very common for raids in almost every game to have some/all raid mobs be CC immune or have "as long as adds live Boss has these additional abilities" traps. This may be Pantheon but if you look at the foundation of the developers and the games they worked on every one of them had these concepts so it would be silly to ignore it until we can try it out for ourselves. :)
leafnin said:Shai said:Dubah said:...he wouldn't survive long enough for the cleric to heal as many mobs that would be beating him.
I think you nailed it. AoE is fun and fine as long as the consquences are such that it's situational. The best way to make it that way is to scale mobs such that nobody, not even tanks, can survive more than one or two at a time. I think that solves all the problems.
If you've watched the streams there have been more then one occasion where more than the two mob limit you mentioned attacked them and they survived with CC and offtanking. However they didn't have much left in the tank so to speak afterwards. I personally don't see them having this lower than 3-4 but making it slow down group progression to do so.
I'm certainly no fan of rushing to AOE mow down content so Johnny can get his quests done before bedtime so I understand where your coming from. However I think your dialing it too far back the other way, to use WoW as a reference, BC style grouping sucked a group couldn't go anywhere without a mage/rogue or both. I can see the 'preferred' group need a mezzer but a healer/dps or Paladin to offtank in that spot should be viable too.
As for Raiding, this should be where the AOE DPS skills would shine with mana regen suffient to sustain to a degree. Offtanking using +Threat AOE skills to pull adds away would be needed. It's also very common for raids in almost every game to have some/all raid mobs be CC immune or have "as long as adds live Boss has these additional abilities" traps. This may be Pantheon but if you look at the foundation of the developers and the games they worked on every one of them had these concepts so it would be silly to ignore it until we can try it out for ourselves. :)
Well, like they have said and time before, they are designing this game like EQ. So take a look at EQ raiding. You didn't pull 100 things and just use offtanks and melt them all down. You did your best to pull one at a time, and when crap hit the fan, take plane of growth for instance, good luck getting a single pull there lol, we relied on or mezzers/rooters, had one guy designated as main assist, and every single dps burned that one mob. In EQ, there was soloable content, for about the first 20-30 levels you could solo all day long, and depending on the class you could go up to max level as solo. But there were a lot of consequences A) It was MUCH faster to level with a group and B) if you died, well you now had to spend the next 10-20 minutes retrieving your corpse, and corpse runs limited people to where they could solo.
All that being said, we had AoE's in EQ, but they definitely were NOT used for raiding. Mobs hit way too hard, a tank could handle maybe 2, but use up all of his disciplines, a cleric could heal that tank too, but again, there was serious repercussions to it, leaving a group just about out of resources. But it was doable, now 3 or more... Good luck. That just isn't happening. Usually if 3 came and you had no enchanter, you weren't even trying, you were already booking it for the zone line.
And that same thing went into raiding, no tank was tanking 2 or 3 mobs, it just isn't happening. One mob, yes, 2, maybe but your chanters were getting yelled at, and 3, definitely no, tank goes down, dps starts dropping, and just like that it's a wipe, and that was just trash mobs.
I personally love AoEing. But, it most games I have played there was a balance. I know the example is Rift- and even in Rift, there was time for AoE, and time for single targets or much small groups. I think people get caught up in DPS too much, so seeing the crazy numbers that come with AoE overall gets them a little side tracked. But raid bosses and mechanics usually are single target and skill. Some bosses are AoE, but everyone is different and its usually more skill than a AoE or ST thing. While AoE is fun, I do think if you want to stop people from abusing it.. just make them pay for AoEing. If mobs are harder to kill, you will have to use more CC or pulling to pick them up. I think it is about balance and knowing the instance.
I don't like friendly fire AoE, but I do like it in the aspect of teaching people discipline. So many people that do have AoE spells tend to do too much or use those spells and pull more mobs that shouldn't have been pulled. Know the instance and don't abuse your spells. I know some AoE spells/abilities allow people strong DPS.. but it shouldn't be specifically just a DPS thing, it should also be combine with skills and things you know you shouldn't do. This builds more of a team and you think about the group and acheiving the objective vs you being on top.
Dont get me wrong AoE can be a good thing for some classes to have in moderation but like many have pointed out there needs to be downsides which it sounds like we agree but also to be a balance and thats why taunt is incorporated into the thread because they go hand in hand. A simplified way of saying it would be if a constant stream of AoE taunt can hold onto agro from a constant stream of AoE DPS then we are badly heading in the wrong direction (in my opinion).
There are some great points made about tanks not being able to take on too many mobs at once which i think is definitely the way the game should be going and from stream looks like it is the way. And as pointed out this would essentially fix most of the the issues in the sense that you can certainly try and risk taking on a bunch of mobs at once balancing AoE DPS and Taunt but most likely you're Tank is going to get mashed into a squishy mess so by design AoE bombing or taunting becomes tactical and circumstancial skills not the normal way of playing.
One way to make AoE not become The path to victory is to ensure that AoE Taunt is not as powerful as AoE DPS so that balance in game is difficult to strike and the use of all the varieties of CC and other tactics become more important than being all about DPS and as Saytena said "seeing crazy numbers that come with AoE" :)
Edit added below...
Ummaguma said:Back in my day...
AoE's were for quad kiting, and nukes were for groups...
and if you tried to AoE in a group, you were shamed as you were rezzed...
this was a nice balance... I liked it.
True that haha!
Tralyan said:Was AoE taunting ever an issue? Genuine question. I'm not asking it was ever something implemented, as I know it was. I'm asking if it was ever something that was ever a problem, or was seen as overpowered.
I mean, sure, I'm against having all powerful AoE force taunts that work all the time, every time. But I don't think there is anything wrong with, say, having one tank that excels at solo aggro for the big guys, and another tank that excels at moderate AoE taunting. It's all situational. Just make sure the AoE taunting is done in ways other than just "force taunt". Aggro leeching, AoT (Aggro over time AoE), mechanics that force members to act accordingly.
Hopefully, the emphasis VR is putting on crowd control will make the mentality of AoE DPS'ing everything to the ground more of a detriment than a good strategy.
Honestly what i think people are getting twisted in some situatins isnt actually AoE taunting but AoE Aggro generating abilities like the Paladin Consecration Spell in WoW other than maybe the AoE Tuant, cuase with the DnD from the DK or the Concretation spell from paladin, you simply just had to be behind the aura of the spell and knew you were safe from getting aggro, unlike the tuant if he timed to poorly and it wasnt within the radius of the ability it had no affect of the said mob. plus even if you taunted and someone like lets say a cleric healed the tank immeditely after with the tank able to do something to cuase additional aggro he would than simply just lose aggro fo it again and you have to bring it back to him through single target tuanting or a aggro generating ability to gain his attention again, and honestly if you have a AoE tuant with lets say a 15 ft radius of your position with a 1 minute cooldown is enough to where you still have to use it wisely in the encounter you are in but able to use it in every encounter to at least give the enchanter/CCer time to give him a chance to save his grp, healer be able to heal the tank, but if any member catches aggro he has to go back to the tank and let the tank take it off of him, with single target abilities.
So thats my 2cp AoE taunting is fine, but make it to where if their is AoE Aggro Generating abilities that they should be with high cost and longer CD than the taunt
Again I think everquest had it right here as well, the mobs were so powerful youd be screwed to aoe nuke anything lol, however, at mediumish levels, if you so desired for a change of pace, the aoe's were still powerful enough that if you got 5 wizards, you could have some real fun, but getting 5 wizards was rare to see, and it would only be viable for grinding. Again, EQ had aoe mechanics down right, at least up to pop