Beastlord DoT Agro Reduction

[Keonos]

"Now, its a bit more of a challenge and I have found myself doing something I don't like: asking other people to change their playstyles to accommodate my inability to get agro and hold it."

This is the main problam with this yes dare i say it again NERF!!! Anything that makes us have to ask people to change the way they play to compensate for our lacking from a patch is crap.

Yes plate tanks are the choice of raids, but most comments here have been argued about groups not raids.

This not only a problem in groups but in raids also. It was known fact before this patch that in raids i could grab agro faster than any class. This landed me the role of MA allot because i could get agro of that add tank and keep so he could pick up another mob. Beasts make one of the best add tanks there is, just think about it. We can slow and debuff our own mob, and we can self heal during the fight depending on how hard the mob hits.

Keonos, I'm tired of all this argueing.
So, let me start off. YES I KNOW WHAT A BEASTLORD CAN AND CAN NOT DO. there, now thats off my chest.

OK, this ain't argue meant people lol, this is a discussion about our class getting changed and not to liking of allot of people. They of you that asked for the change got it, but allot of us didn't ask for this and for dang sure hate this stupid change. There need to be an option for those who wanted it to change to have a way to change it on themself only so those who did not want this could leave it the same. Give us a new agro spell or give us a DOT agro decreasing AA or something but the way it is not is just un fair to people who have been playing a certain way for over 3 years and are forced to play a class that is not what is was when we started.
In reply to your first remark, i was trying to get people heated up and basically it worked. My point was that before this patch the was nothing a beastlord could not do, but now we have lost some, NOR ALL , of our tanking ability. For me and allot of others that love to tank this hurt us greatly and we just want to get our class that we came to love back to the way it was, some how.

I'm with the camp of the DOT agro reduction being a good thing. These were never meant to have this effect, in the first place, and it wasn't just a fix for beastlords, but for any class that had poison dot agro.

To be honest our DOTS are junk. How often do they land? How much DPS is lost in the time its going to take you to cast and land that dot? How much mana did you waste trying to do this? OK OMG that dot landed but HMMM the mob died 2 sec after it landed! Dots are not good in groups with high DPS, the fight is over to fast for the dot to do any good so use cold nukes. As far as the dots suppose to have this effect, well they have for ever and for all the classes who use them. Take necros for example , this is big part of how they solo. Was snare suppose to be a agro spell that people could to rabbit a mob, hmm no but it works. We where given these tools and many embraced them and now to loose this is a travesty.

I have to agree with Firriann, the change ( not Nerf ) to dots did not result in me changing the way I tank at all. My agro line up while tanking has always been slow/incap and I have never noticed a problem in obtaining/holding agro in any group.

Also, in reference to Keonos' post, the recast time on our cold nukes has NOT been changed, it is till 30 secs, same as it has always been.

Go back and read the forums on Sony boards. They decreased the recast time at least thats what they said. As for me it seems that they do refresh faster but that just could be me seeing things. Ether way .5 cast time and you have 2 of them up, at least you can get them 2 in before the mob is dead unlike dots.
I group with high end people most all the time.(Monks and Rogues--OMG THE DPS)  When i am grouped with them they generate allot of agro from the DPS and weapon procs they have.. Yes, i have Chaotic strike on my Crystal Hilted SHini but they have more DPS than i do and that gets the mob to ping pong allot.


All we are asking for is some sort of in-game option that will give us our agro back, or give the Beasts who don't want the agro a way to not have that agro. Is that to much to ask for? :?

[Urim]

Keonos (and anyone else who are up in arms over these changes), please look beyond yourself and look at the bigger picture before coming here to complain/whine.

Was it right for beastlords to have better agro generating than tank classes? Hell No

Was it right for shamans to not be able to cast any of their poison dots because of high agro? Hell No

Was it right that a poison dot that would do less dmg than a disease dot have more agro? Hell No

This is not a nerf, no matter how much you scream that it is. It is a fix, plain and simple. Yes, it has had the consequence of changing the way a few people play the class. If you dont like it, please feel free to quit playing. But this change isn't big enough to warrant that in my opinion.

As stated before, before anger augs and such, it was a group effort to maintain agro on the tank, not the sole responsibility of the tank to keep agro. That meant everyone had to do their best to stay off agro. I'm sorry that most have gotten lazy or just plain forgot this aspect from years of playing but maybe its for the best that people can't just button press anymore.

There are other ways of getting and maintaining agro, sure it might not be as simple as casting one spell like before but in the opinion of this beastlord, it should have never been that easy to begin with. Getting and maintaining agro should be what tanks are best at, not what a leather wearing dps/utility class is best at.

[Shirrkarn Ayge]

I don't need to read SoE boards.. I read the patch messages and check details on my spells on Lucy. Reduction in recast times was only ever on test server.

As for not being able to hold agro when you group... /shrug. As I said I have virtually no probs, and if the rogues/monks you group with are causing trouble from grabbing agro, wtf don't they evade?

As was said above tho, this seems to be an issue that no-one will agree on, all I can say is that it was on our top 10 for a long time before it went live, and that was the correct time to say if you would have a problem with it.

[Tastian]

"Is that to much to ask for?"

The honest  answer is, probably.  Please bare with me on this as I know it's not something you want to hear.  First you have the issue that we can still generate solid aggro.  Not as efficently as chain casting tainted breath or as snappy as chimera blood, but still quite well overall.  Even before this change there were some beastlords that didn't use dots for aggro.  Take a look at some of the old threads on aggro generation and how some use drowsy/FoL/etc.  There are some beastlords that tank a lot that didn't use dots before and don't use dots now and simply saw no change to their aggro/tanking.  This wasn't a change that lowered all beastlord aggro generation across the board.  So we see that this change didn't totally remove an ability beastlords had and in some cases even the beastlords that were tanking saw no change at all. 

Next you have the issue of where should certain things fall.  The truth is beastlords aren't designed to be a tank.  We do it and some of us like doing it, but for the class overall this isn't something we are built to do.  I used to run juggs in seb with a necro as maintank and ran up over a hundred LDoN wins with a wizard as main tank.  I'm pretty sure no one would agrue that those classes are tanks.  See here we have the issue of what's designed and what actually happens.  There's no denying that beastlords can and did tank some content, but the issue is how good should they be at it.  I know that in the last few months zerker and monk aggro were brought up because there was risk of infringment upon the "tank" class. 

I know some people don't like this change and believe me it has been noted since before the changes even happend.  However, when you look at the overall change to the game, the other classes involved and even people within your own class you see just how this change fits into the big picture.  As just an honest answer I think it's pretty unlikely at this point that beastlords will see any direct boosts to their aggro generation.  We can still hold aggro quite well though and function as tanks.  It might be a bit harder/less efficent now, but overall things are more inline with how most feel they should be.

[Keonos]

Keonos (and anyone else who are up in arms over these changes), please look beyond yourself and look at the bigger picture before coming here to complain/whine.


Ok for 1thing i would not be here doing this if people like you had not whined and complaind and not learnd to use the class the way it was. So dont snap at me for not likeing what you whined for. You deal with the hand dealt to as i did not i have do it again, BAH why didnt you do it the first time.

[Keonos]

So basicly your telling me that the class was screwed up from the day i was made but years gone by and  now  it needs to be fixed. Its been years now why all of a sudden dose it need to be fixed, just dosent seem right.
This is not a point of if a Beastlord was meant to be a tank or if they can tank, it is all about agro.
NO we are not a plate tanks,and we can not tank as well as them,well of course we dont have close to 3K AC.
We are there to back them up since we HAD HAD HAD the ability to grab agro fast, and no even if we do this we are not going to keep agro of a paly/sk/war that is trying to get agro unless you are realy tryng to do and youare wron for doing that. It is their job let them do it but be there and ready for if that tank dies and no more tanks to take his spot.......

Well that was my last post about this subject since i can see that this is not goin to change. So thanks to all who forced people like me into this, and have a nice day.

[Tastian]

"So basicly your telling me that the class was screwed up from the day i was made but years gone by and  now  it needs to be fixed."

Yes, "DoT aggro" was fubar forever.  In fact it was even worse at one point because disease dots were huge aggro too, but those got fixed.  In fact dots overall have been straight up, fugged up wrong since kunark or so.  This isn't a new issue and I remember dealing with it and trying to get some fixes done long before beastlords were even in the game.  Notice how beastlord aggro wasn't touched?  This was literally a change to dots, to aggro on dots.  Not to our class, not to one aspect of what we do, but an overall game change to how a part of the game worked. 

"Its been years now why all of a sudden dose it need to be fixed, just dosent seem right. "

It's not right, it should have been fixed years ago.  As I said this is one of those cases where you have to look at what was intended verse what really was.  You are actually using a messed up gameplay issue to justify a messed up gameplay issue, do you see that?  I mean you are literally saying hey I had extra aggro on dots from day one so I should still have it now.  You aren't claiming beastlords should have better aggro, you aren't talking about a line of +aggro spells we had removed or nerfed, but you are literally talking about a game dynamic that many have said was wrong for years and finally got fixed across the board.

"Well that was my last post about this subject since i can see that this is not goin to change. So thanks to all who forced people like me into this, and have a nice day."

Somethings could happen and game dynamics can change.  Maybe they'll decide that debuffing isn't risky enough and needs more aggro(/cringe) and then slows would be even better.  Maybe they'll find that nuke aggro isn't where it should be and it'll get changed, etc.  I do understand you are upset and there's no denying that for you this change was a bad one that really didn't benefit you at all.  However, for the game as a whole this change makes sense and should have happend long ago.  Please don't think people were out to get you or anything like that.  Also the way you talk I think you should look at your aggro a bit and see what else you can do differently.  Beastlord aggro generation is still quite good overall and although it's not as crazy as it used to be you should still be able to hold aggro in a lot of cases with a problem. 

[jitathab]

Yeah there was a mistake made that some/many enjoyed, its not coming back.
Chances of succesfully arguing any type of agro gaining ability for a non-tank class is virtually zero.
The agro we could generate was significantly less than paladins, the ultimate saviour tank, now we have to work harder and do less DPS.
Ok thats the way it is.

However I would just like to point out that a lot of our "solutions" lately have involved using more mana than before, and more often now I am getting into mana diffuculties unless a Shaman is around. This is reducing my DPS, having to cast more agro generators is also reducing my mana pool.
I am hoping the DPS envisioning which I hope will increase or DPS will also not rely totally on our mana pool

[Rhoam]

I think we have taken this as far as we can. Sony fixed something that was broken and the result is good for some other classes and in some ways good for beastlords I suppose, although, I am not sure how much good it is to us actually. In exp groups, I used my poison dots for agro only really. Sure, the dot added some dps, but most of the time the mob died before the dot ran its course. I rarely have seen the message "your chimera blood spell has worn off". I dont know for certain how the high end raid mobs resist our dots, but I do know alot of the mobs I see in latter stage oow resist them.  I have been using cold nukes now instead of dots and the reduced cast time on them offsets the increased casting of incap. I cast incap 2-3 times now during the course of a fight, whereas, in the past I could cast slow,  poison dot and NEVER lose agro. I never had to chain any spells to hold agro.  I know it was not right that our poison dots generated the agro that they did. I know in the traditional group I wont see any benefit to using my dots with a plate class tank present because I wont be using them, I will use my cold nukes where able, as they have been shown to be higher dps for less mana and less cast time.

In all, I can live with the change. I dont see holding agro as a huge issue really. I have to watch what the others in my group are doing more than I ever did but thats ok I suppose. And not being able to get snap agro on adds is something OTHERS in my group will have to deal with. I will miss being able to peel adds with a dot right as they enter camp and turn on a caster, but there is really nothing I can do now, except to position my mouse over that caster's hp bar in my group list and get ready to toss a heal his way.  Other players in the group will have to mez, root, or heal to save that group member.  I just dont get he quick, long distance "snap" agro from incap or slows as I did with my dots and the time element is crucial in peeling adds. Casting two or three spells while trying to peel an add usually means dead caster.

I was hoping that our increased heal would generate some real heal agro. But I went on a pick up hedge raid last night to help out some friends and found that isnt the case at all.

One concern I have though. I am terrified that class reinvisionment may bring some horrible changes to our class. We were never meant to be tanks. We wear leather armor. Will we see a reduction in our tanking abilitiies and be left having to say : "well we were never meant to be a tanking class"? Will we accept a reduction in our tanking abilities to the level that a leather class should be? Will we see an increase to our dps and a reduction to our tanking abilities? And if so, is that best for all of us? or just better for those who raid and horrible for those who solo or grind exp in casual groups? If so, that would be a career ending change for me. I enjoy tanking mobs and I am not as concerned about my dps as maybe I should be.  I like to be able to solo or tank in pick up groups where finding a plate tank is not possible right away. I like to offtank mobs to buy time for the group to kill the original mob in camp. I really think a  change in our tanking abilities and an increase to our dps is not outside the realm of possibilities, is it something we want? not me. But then again, "leather classes should not tank better than some chain classes" same as our poison dots were not meant to give a nontanking class snap agro (some chain classes, not all). Will we accept a fix in this regard as easily as we accepted a change to our dots? Maybe I am paranoid, but can any of you really say you know Sony will do the right thing by us? Do you think Sony really understands our class? We are fortunate to have Tastian to represent us as class correspondent, he is our best chance to come through the upcoming changes without further any further decrease to our abilities than the nerf by ommision that the last few expansions have wrought. /cheers Tastian

[sunkash]

jitathab summed it up fairly well, it's just not coming back. This thread and the one on SOE's forum been pretty well beat to death, and there have been sereral alternatives offered, but some still insist posion dot agro is the only means available to get snap agro, and that's really not accurate. If you're already slowing, anyone that's yanking agro from you; if a plate tank was in your place, they'd also be yanking agro from them.

Reading some of the posts the the warriors forums, they complain a lot about thier inability to get and maintain agro, unless they have a rather uber 50-60k+ weapon, and some anger III augs... why should we be able to generate agro better. Our slows have plently of agro as it is. Zerk class has no real class ability to get agro, other than anger augs, and perhaps some raid target drops.

As Tastian pointed out, this is something not class specific thats been broke since day 1; and its certainly not the 1st thing thats ever been discovered that SOE has taken a long time to get around to correcting. Another classic example would be the freeze sceen from proc from iskar pet proc freezing screen; broke from day 1, and still broke me thinks, and probably never will be fixed. Does that make it right, no, just the way it is.

One thing that did occur to me, from a raid the other night. One of our tanks; forget if it was a warrior or pally, found out they were not going to be one of the tanks, for that particular raid,  and said... oh, "I'll switch weapons to my DSP ones, instead of thier anger III aug'd ones." Tanking is not about DPS, but about maintaining agro, and tanks realize they need to give up some DPS, in order to do this. Most likely many of us have older "no drop" weapons that are still decent DPS, or other weapons that are rarely if ever used rotting in the bank; you could get anger augs for them, that  way this doesn't interfere with your DPS ability when you are not tanking. Both DoN and Ldon have these types of aug's available.

[Rhoam]

Sunk, I dont think we need anger augs as I dont think we have lost the ability to get and hold agro. I just think we have to work harder to keep it. Anger augs might reduce the amount of casting we need to do to hold agro and address Jita's concern about the drain on our manapool, but Anger augs wont help the only unaddressable change from the poison dot agro reduction; the loss of proximity snap agro.  By snap agro, I dont mean getting  and holding instant agro on the mob you were tanking in camp. I mean getting agro on the add that wanders into camp and prepares to feast on an unsuspecting caster while you are focused on the primary target. For snap agro purposes, waiting for an anger aug to proc is not a solution to this problem. Absent a class with snap agro ability in the group, the whole group is going to have to work to keep its members alive when an add comes into camp. Incap works sometimes but is not reliable enough, nor is fol a solution when the mob is not near you due to the train that would occur when fol wears off. I have not been able to generate snap agro with my slow as yet. I have tried to peel adds with my slow, but if the mob has taken any damage from the pc I am trying peel it off of, I cant snap the mob's agro to me.

[Bengali]

Actually, the LDoN anger augs are warrior only.  Other tanks used the Ykesha augs, however (DD + stun), and claim that those are equal if not better.  DoN also has chaotic strike augs (also DD + stun), so if aggro is your thing then those augs will help .  More importantly, DoN has two ALL/ALL enraging blow augs available (one from each camp), which are more hate than Anger III.

This is of course more of a sustained aggro issue than a snap aggro issue.

As for saving casters with DoTs, which ones were people using?  Those things have slow cast times and are extremely mana inefficient if all you're using them for is aggro (at least the higher level ones).  Plus, getting aggro on an add that happens to wander up on a caster is easy to do with slow or incapacitate.  DoTs only helped you to gank aggro from an add that a PC has damaged already, like a wizard who chained two big fire nukes in a row.  The point people are making is that PCs who don't want aggro have no business damaging adds in the first place.   In the situation you described, where everyone is minding their own business and a wanderer comes into camp and decides to aggro a dress wearer or healer, a beastlord who slows or incapacitates and melees the add will have aggro, period.

The only situation that has been altered is when you are trying to steal aggro from someone who has generated a lot of hate.  The question people are asking is why anyone thinks beastlords need that type of ability to steal aggro from someone else who should have it (by "should have it" I mean not only people who should have it because they are tanking, but also people who should have aggro because they are being stupid).

[sunkash]

Rhoam , sorry, I just don't agree with any of that. Your snap agro should be coming from your slow; thats plenty enough snap agro. If casters are throwing out huge nukes in the 1st 10 seconds, they should just die, until they learn better. Several healers would say the same thing, and have about beastlords, casters yanking agro. I know I've been told that if I grab agro again, you're just going to die, till you learn better, and have seen wizards, etc told the same thing. There's several older posts on this board, and other class boards, concerning technichies people to use when they are grabbing agro from the main tank to often.

I also posted several links concerning pet taunt proximity agro. this should keep agro from any caster, that knows how to play in a group, from getting splatted. I've used this for a long time, even when not tanking, and its a very rare occasion that I've seen a caster yank agro, from the MT... our pets are basically warriors and have a decent taunt ability.a few times have had wizards toss one the thier 6k nukes way to early and they got exactly what they should have, and normally warned by the healer about agro management.

Bengali;  yup I stand correct, we can't use the ldon aug; however as you state the don aug's would be a good choice, and also now that there is the bandiero, there is really no issue quickly swapping between different weapons.... so this should be a way to help, "along with the many other suggestions people have made", for those people affected, at least for those who want a solution. Seen it stated several times, that upper end beastlords DPS is all about procs, with our Weapon Affinity, we proc a lot. Using slow for snap agro, pet taunt on, and a few procs from one of the DoN aug's should be plenty get and keep solid agro, at least as good as most plate classes; then a quick swapout to your DPS weapon(s).

Myself, I have never had a problem mainting agro. I use an assist marco, thats basically /assist, /pet attack; fairly simple marco. The one thing that I do is to hit the assist hotkey 3-4 seconds before mob arrives in camp. and in that way my pet has, if not gained agro, from proximity, taunt "our pets are capable of taunting from a distance", a round of attacks, and possibly a proc, at least is very high up on the hate list, at same time this is happening, I tossing the first slow, and it lands about 1/2 a second before the mob is within melee range. This works for me 100% of the time for snap agro when tanking, and many times when I'm not tanking but just preslowing or the only slower, until MT aquires agro.

[Rhoam]

Sunk: Again, I have no issue with maintaining agro. I dont think we are communicating here. I have issue with not having the type of snap agro for adds that come into a camp while the primary target is still alive. For whatever reason a slow from a distance is not peeling an add off my group members. I am not talking about maintaining agro after I have slowed and incapped a mob and meleed it. I am talking about peeling adds here and I dont see where your response addresses that. You are talking about maintianing agro, not peeling adds. I have not been able to get snap agro on adds with just a slow from a distance. I have needed to cast slow and incap to get aggro on adds from a distance where I am not meleeing them yet and given the urgency that is present when an add starts hitting a caster, casting two or more spells is not fast enough to get aggro off the caster. Maybe I am missing something in what you are saying or you are missing the issue of getting aggro on adds. /shrugs.

I am just stating what I have experienced. In the past week, I have tried slows and I have tried incaps on adds and my experience has been that I am not getting aggro off people who havent done any damage to a mob. I dont know why my experience would be any different than yours, and I am not saying Bengali is wrong as I defer to his knowledge over mine on all issues relating to our class. I am just saying that even where mobs are in range of my slow, I am not getting agro off casters who havent damaged an add without dragging my primary target over to the add and engaging in melee on the add. The problem here is that the primary target doesnt follow me sometimes and people who were acting as dps are becoming offtanks on the primary mob while I melee the add. As for pet taunt, well I suppose I could disc my pet and clear his attack with /pet back off to get him and his taunt on the add but that is just incredibly cumbersome.

[Grbage]

For adds that wander into camp I don't try to "peel" them off the skirt wearers from a distance. I run over and start smacking their butts then cast slow after hitting them a few times. This works quite well for grabbing agro. If you still have an issue just redirect your pet onto the add also. Takes seconds and they can lift their skirts and run off safely. Will the PC take some damage? Yes, but that's what a healer is for. BTW, I can do this then stop to heal them myself without losing agro if the main healer is a bit busy.