[Tanks] Anyone else problem with spotting?

Iduyenn · December 2014

Hey there

Before i start i beg everyone who doesn`t tank very often (less then one veteran dungeon every 2 days) to not write comments like: "I have no problemz at all, you nab".

I tank more than 3 veteran 12 instances every day with my DK twink and mutiple times with my Templar.

Most of the Time there aren`t any problems and everything works just fine.
Then i have a boss like the spider in the Fungal Grotto.
Now... i know, there is a mechanic which resets your spot on the boss (in this particular case i think its the nockback). You have to re-spot very fast. (And yes... not overspot him).
I had the Problem, that i was nocked down and the boss run to the other side (with still 4+ sec. spot-time (and no overspot) on him).
When i respotted, he didnt react. I had to spam until he finaly came back...

Now for me that is very embarassing and i dont know how to get better at this or at least understand what i did wrong. So i have to ask you for help.
- Do you have the same problems sometimes with particular bosses? Perhaps you remember wich bosses and how to avoid aggroloss?. (For example i observed, that in Wayrest you have to shieldbash the Lich sometimes, so he turns back to you and doesnt run out of the pipe (even if you cant interrupt his cast), even if he is spotted (and again.. only 1 spot, no overspot).
- Do you use Pierce Armor, inner beast or both? (in wich frequency?/overlapping?)
- At what time do you re-spot?

Now my knowledge is not complete. I just heard something, that you should not respot before you bypassed 6 seconds and i followed that rule with more or less sucess. (i respot between 0 seconds and 4-5 seconds)

I mostly use inner beast. Today i tried it with pierced armor and then with both. The spider didnt react at first. I had to spam spot 5 times until she finally turned back to me (not after casting here attack to one of the groupmembers first).

The next one: The guy who drains magicka (in Fungal Grotto): He just turned away and went for a dd and he had at least 3 sec spot on him left. I just cant figure out why... i`ts not like i overspottet him or so...

I don`t know, if perhaps the FTC Addon is bugging sometimes, because it seems, that some of my spots miss and i have to recast. But perhaps this is an addon-issue and the spot was on the mob all the way, even if the interface sayed the opposit.
Or do certain playerspells override spot?
Anyway... the problem occured with only one active spot which didnt run out yet.

In AA and Hel Rah i dont have this problems normaly. But sometimes i have to pray anyway...

The Ghost in Wayrest: He looses aggro sometimes too. I thought it was, because he moves back to cast his spell. But there is no consitency. Sometimes it just works perfect and in some runs; BOOM, you lost aggro and even if you respot, he doesnt react at first and finish killing one of the group in the worst case...

Now is there something wrong with my playstile, or do i just have to follow an unspoken rule, that somethimes certain bosses run away even from good tanks?

Anyway its hard to explain this to my healer and dd, because in such a case its always the fault of the Tank. And if they run with a Tank before who didn`t lose aggro before, i look very bad...

yodased · December 2014

There are mechanics hidden behind taunt in the game that don't really make sense.

You can over taunt and the two taunts overwrite each other. Using them both takes some serious maths in your head or an active counter.

I wouldn't rely on an addon telling you what buff/debuff is on the boss, I would rely on counting.

The only time that I lose aggro since 1.5.1 is when I accidentally overtaunt the boss.

There are times when inner fire simply doesn't register though, you have to continue to hit them until they turn to you, you can tell if they are taunted on you if you can pull em around by moving, thats why I continually am moving while tanking (Beyond its the basis around step 3 profit in this game), the boss will travel with you as long as you have them taunted, they will stay still or turn towards others if not.

Thats pretty universal through the game, if you can snake charm the boss you have em taunted.

Identifying that they are taunted is not enough though, there needs to an ongoing timer in your head from the time you place the taunt. Every 11 Mississippi, taunt again. If you are just holding block and taunting the whole time it will also be more difficult to hold the boss as you are generating no threat, only taunt.

Make sure you are doing at least some DPS on the boss to be able to hold em as well.

OrphanHelgen · December 2014

I am one of the noob tanks, who tank 1 vet dungeon a day or something. But I still had the exact same issues as you, both on the spider in grotto and the ghost in wayrest. This it not an answer to your post, but more like a bump and support.

The group were angry at me when I was tanking the ghost in the tunnel, and suddenly he teleported to a dd.

I am so so sorry ? ? Im vet14, I didn't knew I had to taunt him.

JLB · December 2014

@‌ OP
I mainly tank dungeons and raids on my Templar every day and yes, correctly casted taunts do not work sometimes.

Specially Inner Fire gets buggy often. So try to use Piercing Armor as your main taunt and slot Inner Fire as a back up taunt for the times you can only taunt from ranged.

In my experience, the taunts you use when you don't have aggro are the ones that would fail. Once you have enemy/enemies on you, refreshing taunts every 10-12 seconds works fine, at least for me. But the ones you use for initial pulls or when you lost aggro for some reason, are the ones that tend to get buggy.

I have no idea what is causing this instability with taunts, but it's definitely there.
Would be great if @ZOS_GinaBruno‌ or @ZOS_JessicaFolsom‌ could pass note to devs about it to have it checked.

aco5712 · December 2014

this boss is a nightmare to tank. It legit just disregards aggro all the time. They need to look at him or at least tell us its intended so we can work with it.

Layenem · December 2014

So I don't know what spotting means to you, but to me it means something very different...

I'm going to assume we're talking about the lousy threat mechanic in ESO.

I'll add in my two cents as follows:

As of 1.2 there have been some degrading elements to taunt. Stamina taunt started out becoming unreliable where the magicka taunt remained useful for its full duration. 1.3 made stamina taunt function for about 5s of its 15s duration, and magicka taunt started to become useless after 10s... this caused tanks to start spamming stamina taunt since it had the 43% spell resist and armor debuff on it... which caused ZOS to implement a "3 taunts within 10s makes the enemy immune to taunt for a set amount of time" rule... which is stupid in this game. 1.4 made the two taunts work even worse and 1.5 made them completely useless, there is still one enemy that doesn't even respond to taunt. It's been reported and ignored by ZOS. I'm tired of doing everything I can to PROVE to the dev team that their things are broken.

Recently, roughly a week after 1.5, I and quite a few other tanks provided undeniable evidence to ZOS that their taunts were broken beyond use. They finally got off of their high horse and fixed them, claiming that the magicka taunt was causing an issue with the stamina taunt (I never use them both on the same boss so this didn't make any sense to me) but it fixed the taunts.

Currently, Spawn of Mephala is the only boss I've got that wipes taunt when she does her PBAoE on herself. Whether it hits someone or not, it wipes taunt. This has happened since PTS back in Jan/Feb before launch. Unfortunately, ZOS doesn't bother saying "this is the actual mechanic" or "we're looking into it"... they just remain quiet which results in COUNTLESS unnecessary bug reports from a lot of us. More work for them to sort through it, oh well.

Aside from that, since the fix, it is RARE that one of my taunts wears off before its time expires. All in all it has been fixed.

Now, I'm writing all of this in the event that "spotting" is a reference to threat, which, in my opinion, is just another "term" we really don't need. KISS this stuff homie, let's just call it one thing so we know what we're all talking about.

Hypertionb14_ESO · December 2014

i have found that single targets are still quite easy to keep control of. tho some mobs do exibit strange tendencys to "turn and smack" when tanked by people i know to be experienced and skilled tanks.

i have found so far that most things remain taunted just fine if you dont retaunt untill around 10s.

around a week or two ago it was really bad tho, and i noticed mobs would sometimes ignore the taunt effect or it would not work, In fungal grotto, the spawn of melehp would often just do what it wanted.

but untill today, i didnt have a class leveled high enough that was uniquely geared for tanking and was tanking on a sorc. (V13 Footbark DK today and i had a blast using that old guy)

today i noticed no issues that were not caused entirely by me being either too slow or too fast or mistargeting and taunting the same target several times while trying to taunt a specific other target.

i tank as often as i can, tho its been rare that people have wanted me to do so as sorc.

xaraan · December 2014

I've often had issues with that boss, even before the last update. Though it seems worse now. There is also still an issue with inner beast not working - I don't use it often, but another tank in our group does and he is always struggling to get it to take.

ZoS really needs to make whatever is going on behind the scenes much less complicated for tanking/aggro.

Iduyenn · December 2014

@‌Yodased Thnx very much for the tips. Most of them come automatically, but with doing them conciously is a whole other Story.

But some Problems remain. Sometimes the boss looses aggro and even if you respot the boss instantly he doesnt react on you all the time. He takes the tame for at least one attack to kill someone.

As i sayed. Most of the time everything works just fine. But to me the whole thing is getting to be a russian roulett thing.

I also asked myself if, with my 3.3-3.4k i need to take some more deffensive stats (if others in the group have nearly as much life as i do). Perhaps thise things do influence the thread too.

So in the end: You can do much to minimize the aggroloss, but there is still something buggy... either with piercing armor or the other or some bossmechanics.

For me its simple a problem of explanation. If i can say. "Yea... take it easy... sometimes it goes like this... its the game..." "Dont stand to close, block if he turns to you"...
or. "Sorry guys, my fault".

omy_mkeb17_ESO · December 2014

Afaik, that spider boss in FG has a mechanic that it becomes untauntable as long as the portal is open, and untill some1 goes in and kill all the trash, it can't be tanked.

As in general rules of taunting:
-currently stamina taunt is far better at keeping aggro than the mana one
-reapplying taunts during the few seconds of taunting invulnerability still leads to aggro loss, althou it was supposed to be fixed in 1.5
-obstacles between the tank and the target may lead in aggro loss
-height differences between the tank and the target (like if the tank jumps on a rock or smt like that) may lead in aggro loss
-sometimes it happens that the taunt isn't applied on the target althou the skill animation happened. A buff/debuff tracking addon like FTC helps alot