I admit, a good AOE taunt skill available from either the Sword and Board or Undaunted skill lines would be a good thing to add, I have used Tormentor armor on a tank (Werewolf), and it was a lot of fun.

Because the code is in place to allow taunts to affect only untaunted targets (AKA in the Companion Sword and Board skill line) or not able to over-taunt (Arcanist) I see no reason that an AOE taunt skill could not be added in with the same limits.

Yes, but the taunt duration should be VERY low.

Since single target taunts are 15s, an AOE taunt should be like.. 2-4 seconds. The idea being you use it on a pack of enemies to get their attention briefly, but you still need to individually taunt each one to keep their attention long term.

The trade off then becomes..

4 enemies:

Do I waste 1 GCD to get their attention, then 4 more GCDs (total 5).. or do I just taunt 1 by 1 without an AOE taunt (total 4).

Lastly, since there is taunt Immunity, you can't just spam an AOE low duration taunt to achieve the same results. A tank would still need to have a single target taunt.

The issue then becomes a trade off of not just a GCD situationally, but you're also wasting 1 of your 12 skill slots for an AOE taunt you use once and awhile. That slot could be used for other beneficial group buffs, heals, etc.

That to me would be balanced. A 15s AOE taunt, no. Of course that goes against their philosophy of tanking in this game, because thats your main job and as soon as you take that away, the tank is free to start stepping on the toes of the other roles. I can see why it's problematic for them, but there is an easy solution around it as I described above.

Specifically, companions need an aoe taunt. They can't spam it. Some bosses are more than just one enemy. I don't mean trash mobs, I mean bosses like Salothan's Curse in Vvardenfell. Also, they can't taunt an enemy until the current taunt expires. This makes them lose taunt for a time.

I highly recommend pulls and snares!

Some pretty cool things to try as a tank;
-Silver Leash yanks and soft taunts at range.
-Caltrops provides armor pen (saving you from having to do it manually) and snares all targets in an area.
-AoE stunning is criminally underrated. Skills like negate, sleet storm, or Soul Tether can lock down an entire mob pull and interact well with other offensive abilities dps have (like dw doing more damage to stunned targets).

Why am I posting this?

AoE Taunting is cool and I'm not advocating for its removal, but there's very fun and effective ways to shut down a room that are already in the game. It sounds like people want to keep everyone in their party safe, and there can be no safer place than the middle of a time stop where enemies can do *nothing*. No AOE, no incidental damage from dots, just a whole bunch if helpless enemies and some big DPS ready to rock!

An aoe taunt would be great for normal daily dungeons, keep add management nice and simple. Who cares if its a crutch, its not great to use in super high level content anyway

LunaFlora wrote: »

the Bow Vault grimoire can be an AoE taunt, at least how it was shown in the Gold Road reveal livestream.

so unless Taunt gets removed as an primary option in Scribing in update 42's release we will likely get more Area of Effect taunts.

I would like to take a moment, to note that 1: the list of scripts on that picture is not final as stated by ZOS themselves, 2: just because AoE ability has a primary script called "taunt" does not mean that this taunt will be AoE taunt. And considering ZOS now came with statement that AoE taunting goes against core tanking philosophy they have, I doubt it would be.

On the main topic of the question tho: having AoE taunt would definitelly make tanking work of grouping the enemies for AoEs much more convenient. But I can live without it.

You really don't even need a aoe taunt what is stopping you from example throwing caltrops on a pack of mobs to pull aggro or vate snb pulling everything in and snaring them all ect ect alot of the issues that people run into is mainly dps pulling before the tanks are ready im not against their being a aoe taunt option but we really don't have a need for one

Give werewolves a natural taunt and a natural pull on their morphs and I bet this demographic would be satisfied with losing tormentor.

I don't mind people wanting AOE taunt but it should sit on a proc condition. With a cooldown on a 7 piece set bonus.