I'm seeing a bunch of people saying mechanics are what matters here and that ccs should never have been anything. Zos has changed the way you tank and what they want a tank to do with the change in cc abilities. Starting as a tank from the first 6 months the game was out you were supposed to use them the way they were being used. This recent change is a complete change from the way zos said you tank. Granted no one ever has followed what a tank is supposed to be but the end result is zos changed what a tank is and does. This also changes dps and healers. When you go into a group of more then 10 adds it is not possible to keep taunt on all of them. That was the point of cc abilities. Now the way zos is making it is a tanks job is to only hold the ads that will basically one shot dps or healers and the rest run wild. So tanks that actually followed the crowd control now have an easier time because they do not need to worry about crowd control as much. It does increase a tanks sustain not needing to spam those abilities to keep control. The cc abilities give dps a small gap to do damage before they have to run. All dots will need to be reapplied over and over in new locations which hurts sustain. I found it more fun as a tank to figure out how to group up all the adds and stack them and hold them. It was not easy to actually group all adds. Chains and range taunts played a big role in such.

I switch to dps when I dont want to work as hard. I would much rather dps then tank. Soooo much easier. Dont stand in stupid and go thru a rotation. Occasional mechanic movement.

John_Falstaff wrote: »

@Marginis , I don't support any of your arguments, and I think that they're all stemming from incorrect assumption that taunt and chain/CC serve the same task. They do not.

Taunt, as you do note, is the device that lets you switch the mobs' attention to you. On another hand, roots have nothing to do with that task; they do not prevent ranged mobs (or even melee mobs, if target is close) from attacking your DDs - just like taunt does not prevent ranged mobs from running away from you and continuing to attack from range (another wrong point from you - you cannot "gather enemies around you" just by using taunt). CCs are tool for grouping mobs, forming the spatial pattern of the fight, while taunt is the tool that allows you to divert selection of damage from DDs. Taunts and roots are not interchangeable in tanking toolkit, considering them to be the same is a big mistake and that mistake makes the rest of your argument moot. Using taunt rotation is -not- how the game is supposed to be played; instead, taunts and roots are supposed to be used together, each for own purpose.

I think you're making the mistake of thinking gap closers are CC. Any melee creature aggroed on you will move toward you, however. Regardless, the changes made to CC don't affect that use of them in fights, but they do mean you can't just spam them. CC needs to be used situationally and appropriately, not all the time on every enemy you see.

BejaProphet wrote: »

There are so many things you said I could interact with but none of it is worth it.

But for the record you are the one painting my words as hyperbolic. I say bad for tanking and you turn that into me saying forever destroyed or something. The ways you misrepresent my thoughts are too many to address, especially when you aren’t actually making a compelling point of any kind. You are just nipping at my words.

Hyperbolic? You said ZOS was destroying PVE tanking.

Marginis wrote: »

BejaProphet wrote: »

There are so many things you said I could interact with but none of it is worth it.

But for the record you are the one painting my words as hyperbolic. I say bad for tanking and you turn that into me saying forever destroyed or something. The ways you misrepresent my thoughts are too many to address, especially when you aren’t actually making a compelling point of any kind. You are just nipping at my words.

Hyperbolic? You said ZOS was destroying PVE tanking.

No I didn’t. I just went through my entire post to double check. I said they have destroyed our ability to keep mobs in one spot. A second time I said they destroyed our ability to to our jobs. In that instance I was specifically referring to our task of keeping mobs in one spot. Which is plain from context. And I said they’ve destroyed the fun of tanking in countless fights, specifically referring to trash fights. So all three times referring to the same thing.

My OP is there and unedited. Show me where I’m wrong.

You are the one making my statements more dramatic and expansive.

Marginis wrote: »

When a fight first starts the first person to aggro any enemy has a free 7 second taunt on that enemy. This is a good reason for tanks to run an AOE, so they get that free 7 second AOE taunt when they run in ahead of their group. That 7 seconds is the ideal time to start a rotation of 15 second taunts on enemies (which gives them the actual taunt debuff), which you can then cycle through while cycling through their other abilities like team buffs or heals. Given how varied the tank ability rotation is, the taunting is a type of tank rotation, I've found, and is what I think ZOS may be intending.

CC spam is just a way of avoiding playing the game that way, how it was arguably intended to be played, which would make it cheese, which... it's kinda hard to fault a game for wanting to remove. That all said, CCs are not gone - they're just not infinite. You can't just substitute an AOE taunt by spamming an AOE CC ability. CC isn't null and void for tanks, it's just something that can't be spammed repeatedly and have a broken effect.

I've never tanked, but am I correct in assuming that a taunt on a melee opponent attracts them to more or less your location and then holds them in place?

If so, what's the problem here? Is it all ranged opponents, or are there also a lot of melee cases, perhaps nightblades who want to be behind rather than in front of you?

John_Falstaff wrote: »

Marginis wrote: »

John_Falstaff wrote: »

@Marginis , I don't support any of your arguments, and I think that they're all stemming from incorrect assumption that taunt and chain/CC serve the same task. They do not.

Taunt, as you do note, is the device that lets you switch the mobs' attention to you. On another hand, roots have nothing to do with that task; they do not prevent ranged mobs (or even melee mobs, if target is close) from attacking your DDs - just like taunt does not prevent ranged mobs from running away from you and continuing to attack from range (another wrong point from you - you cannot "gather enemies around you" just by using taunt). CCs are tool for grouping mobs, forming the spatial pattern of the fight, while taunt is the tool that allows you to divert selection of damage from DDs. Taunts and roots are not interchangeable in tanking toolkit, considering them to be the same is a big mistake and that mistake makes the rest of your argument moot. Using taunt rotation is -not- how the game is supposed to be played; instead, taunts and roots are supposed to be used together, each for own purpose.

I think you're making the mistake of thinking gap closers are CC. Any melee creature aggroed on you will move toward you, however. Regardless, the changes made to CC don't affect that use of them in fights, but they do mean you can't just spam them. CC needs to be used situationally and appropriately, not all the time on every enemy you see.

I think you're making the mistake of thinking that all enemies in dungeons/trials are melee. ^^ I wonder if you opt to ignore that on purpose for this discussion. It's like you've never pulled in and taunted an archer, and next second, if not rooted, that archer ran away and continued to attack at distance.

Once again, chains+roots and taunts are two different, orthogonal mechanisms, and you should start separating them. Else you'll keep saying "so they nerfed our screwdriver, we'll just use hammer, hammers is how the the work was meant to be done". Well, no. Taunt does not necessarily position mobs, it just makes them attack you however they can, it just so incidentally happens that melee mobs have to get close to you for that, but not all mobs are melee. But taunt is not a positioning tool per se, taunt is the way for you, as a tank, to divert aggression from other party members. Chain/CC, on another hand, is a completely different thing that does not perform function of taunt, but that lets you control the position of mobs (and not always in order to simply let DDs burn them - sometimes you can use them to keep stuff separate, like bugs in vFL, like spiders in vFG2 on Cirenas).

Not orthogonal. Indeed, if there are more straightforward melee mobs than ranged or tricksy melee ones, the angle could be less than 45 degrees.

John_Falstaff wrote: »

FrancisCrawford wrote: »

Marginis wrote: »

When a fight first starts the first person to aggro any enemy has a free 7 second taunt on that enemy. This is a good reason for tanks to run an AOE, so they get that free 7 second AOE taunt when they run in ahead of their group. That 7 seconds is the ideal time to start a rotation of 15 second taunts on enemies (which gives them the actual taunt debuff), which you can then cycle through while cycling through their other abilities like team buffs or heals. Given how varied the tank ability rotation is, the taunting is a type of tank rotation, I've found, and is what I think ZOS may be intending.

CC spam is just a way of avoiding playing the game that way, how it was arguably intended to be played, which would make it cheese, which... it's kinda hard to fault a game for wanting to remove. That all said, CCs are not gone - they're just not infinite. You can't just substitute an AOE taunt by spamming an AOE CC ability. CC isn't null and void for tanks, it's just something that can't be spammed repeatedly and have a broken effect.

I've never tanked, but am I correct in assuming that a taunt on a melee opponent attracts them to more or less your location and then holds them in place?

If so, what's the problem here? Is it all ranged opponents, or are there also a lot of melee cases, perhaps nightblades who want to be behind rather than in front of you?

Many are ranged targets that would run away from you even if you'll pull them over - those have to be rooted. Some special cases for roots include moments when you have to keep some mobs away from you instead (like bugs Thurvokun spits at you in vFL, and if you'll let them get to you they'll snare and likely kill you), or untauntable mobs that you can pin in place and safely away from the group (like spiders at Cirenas boss - there's special mechanics for them, but tank can be clever and root the spiders away from the fight because spiders must not be harmed). Many examples.

Point in case is, taunt is not a replacement for positioning tools.

Thanks!

However, taunts can reduce the number of mobs that otherwise need to be cced. So they're somewhat relevant to the discussion. I mainly do base game dungeons (and WGT), but at least in my experience, most (of course not all) large trash packs are majority melee.

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Marginis wrote: »

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

@Marginis
Please clarify how you are dealing with ranged mobs who run away as soon as immobilization ends. You chain them again after immobilization immunity ends? And root them? For example there are 3 ranged mobs, where did you find magicka and GCDs to chain them 6 times, apply immobilization twice, meanwhile spamming inner fire, pierce armor, group buffs, blocking heavy attacks and all of that within 10 seconds?

Ranged mobs who run away should in fact be chained, or at least taunted while they are picked off. They are not meant to just be rooted and stacked while the group burns them down like all the melee mobs, otherwise why would ZOS put in different types of mobs? Note even then that there are good tanks, great tanks even that don't use any chain ability, or dodge instead of block heavy attacks, or only use one taunt. Taunting and staying alive is all that's necessary as a tank. Everything else is extra. So if there are 3 ranged mobs, taunt them. It's not hard when taunts are cheap and quick and last 15 (not 10) seconds. Try a frost staff if you're having that much trouble with resource management.

Yes, how it was before - you throw aoe to grab initial aggro, for example with blockade. Then melee mobs run on you and then you chain ranged mobs and proceed with immobilization. Also you throw couple of inner fires to elite mobs. From that point all mobs attention is on you and you may keep them stacked for long and you have plenty of GCDs to do something more useful then taunting each mob.
Now it doesn't work that way after initial immobilization ends. Ranged mobs runaway, and so while taunting all melee mobs you need to wait 3 seconds and then pull/immobilize ranged mobs again. I don't want to count GCD's now but i think it's pretty obvious that even in simple situation with 3 melee mobs, 3 ranged mobs and couple of elites, taunting everybody will consume 8 gcd's, pulling 3 ranged mobs 2 times each will eat 6 gcd's or even more, then 2 immobilizations, couple of group buffs, couple of heavy attack blocks and couple of break frees from cc... obviously you simply can't do all that with same efficiency as before.

Edit: oops, sorry I didn't read your message to the end. Form your opinion Great tanks don't use chains, they only taunt and survive. OK. You proved my point - changes to immobilization brought an excuse for tanks to use chains/cc only at fight start, after that you may just run around pecking everything and "surviving".

You can still use CC, it just isn't something you can keep up 100% of the time. You have to vary it up a bit. If you just use one thing over and over again, that's not strategy, that's cheese. And chains are useful in some situations, but if I recall they were always more intended as a PVP tank ability than a PVE one, even if they could be used in PVE effectively situationally.