How do you generate threat?

Have any self-proclaimed tanks discovered a foolproof way to keep aggro? I was healing a dungeon last night and was pulling aggro consistently. I looked around the online forums and no one seems to know how threat is generated.

There are two taunts in the game that I know of, one is on the 1H/Shield tree and the other in Undaunted.

For trash pulls you will pretty much always pull threat, unless your dps is on it.  For quite a few bosses they really  don't have a threat table or anything.  Your tank could taunt them all day but they will still try to attack you randomly.  

As a healer the best advice I can give is you to NOT run away.  Run towards your tank/dps so they can try to CC/Taunt them off of you.  Block often.  If you are a Nightblade, shadow cloak helps out a ton.  Other class really don't have an "aggro" drop.  

Also healer in this game might have to involve more in fight and survival since the tank don't have a lot of threat generating tools and mostly just be responsible for keeping the boss at bay.

DPS might have to be more mindful helping the healer too.

I don't think there is threat in this game in the conventional sense. It is honestly very random. The two whole taunts in the game simply force to target to focus on you for the duration. I've even done tests with a friend. For example, in one case, I was a fair distance away, but could see the mob. He went in and aggroed it, and for whatever reason, it went all the way for me. I would not be surprised if it was actually RNG. 

Most bosses have some mechanic as well, usually you can tell it is coming by a red circle or rectangle. They drop threat and usually attack a random close target. Sometimes they come back to the tank after, and sometimes the tank has to taunt again. 

As a tank you round up the trash mobs as best you can, but they will scatter off. Do your best to keep them off your healer while controlling the boss.

from what I have read, threat is generated in a few ways.  First as in most cases, threat is generated by damage.   The target doing the most damage will usually pull the threat or aggro of the target.  This is important as it means, dps in a group needs to work together with the tank and healer, and focus on target priority.  This means, if the boss has trash adds, no dps should be hitting the boss at all till the adds are dropped.   Target priority should always be healers, soft squishy targets that are easy to take down, then tough targets like a boss or tank.   Priority should only shift if say their is a target attacking the healer, because if your healer drops, then you will be in an uphill battle or lose very quickly.  

Second, aggro is generated based on proximity.   This means standing close to a target will often times get their attention.  It is not 100% because if you are standing next to a target but not doing any damage and someone farther away is, they will most likely go after the one that is doing damage.  This is key, meaning if your ranged dps, stay back if possible and work with your tank.   Remember target priority and the boss or tough mobs shouldn't come after you.   For the healer, this is difficult because you have to be in range of your group to heal them, so often times it means placing yourself between the tank and your dps.   Also healing abilities will create extra agro, as they count against the damage the targets are doing thus making your healer a priority.  This means, if you are tanking, and you got a self heal, by all means use it when you need health, as it will help generate some aggro. 

The two taunts in this game are not true taunts, but more like distractions.  They are meant to focus the mob on you, while you try to do some damage abilities to it.  This means, when you taunt, you will do some damage, but it will one, bring the target close to you, thus adding to your aggro, and it will allow the target to beat on something that can take the hits which helps the healer and dps by them not dieing.   Since it is close to you, once you have taunted it, you need to hit it with a damage ability, and auto attacks to generate more damage against it during the duration.   Again if their are adds up, the dps shouldn't be hitting the boss at all, but clearing the trash, giving the tank time to build up their position on its threat meter so to speak.  

The downside is you can only access the single target taunt from the 1h and shield line, and the aoe taunt is from the undaunted line.   They did this so any class can get access to the taunts, however the aoe taunt, requires you to have to get to rank 3 in undaunted which means as a tank, you have to tank dungeons without it for a little while to get the ability, meaning you will have to learn to work with your group before you can get an aoe taunt.  

Because of the lack of a true threat system like the traditional roles often require, this makes pug groups almost unbearable, and which is why a group will often do better if they can communicate, thus using a voice chat system.   To be honest, if games are going to start messing with the trinity of groups, expecting the trinity to still exist but making it where you can't generate threat directly, give us only a handful of taunts that do not actually pull mobs off others, but grants a temporary hit me then go back to your previous target, and healers can't directly heal who they need to, just who is close by, then they are going to need to put in a built in voice chat system, or pug groups will always be less desired and more painful than dedicated guild groups who use or maintain a voice chat.  

There are a few quirks with threat in the game in addition to what Syphon posted.  First, there is a huge negative modifier if you outlevel the mobs, and a huge positive modifier if they outlevel you.  For you to outlevel them you must be past where you would gain experience, but the mobs being higher modifier seems true regardless of how small the level difference is.  This is part of the AI design, where the PvE enemies try to act smarter than a rock.

Second, taunts seem to easily overwrite.  Whomever most recently taunted has agro.  Only with the use of abilities that target randomly will a taunt not be followed.  Most bosses in 4 man dungeons have at least one of these.

Third, proximity is HUGE!  Even without much damage output, a melee attacker pulls far more threat.  Just being close makes you seem far more threatening, for whatever reason... which is why an imp can pull off a sorc that has used multiple high damage attacks.

Finally, a correction (or two,) the undaunted taunt is not aoe.  It has a synergy which does aoe damage.  It is a single target taunt style magicka based attack.  I keep hearing people talk about it as an aoe taunt, but it is nothing of the sort.  The ability morphs to cost less with more range, or to have a higher chance of generating the synergy effect.  There is no aoe taunt in the game at this time.  The second point is that the taunts are indeed taunts.  Unless taunted, or using an ability that breaks the taunt effect, any taunted mob will attack only the person who used the taunt regardless of any other influences.  It may not seem that way, but that is due to abilities and aoe attacks which do not follow the normal taunt rules.

» Edited on: 2014-04-20 12:51:12

it sounds funny, but I bet you could actually pull a lot of threat with aoe heals as your off-hand... just to grab aggro off of people, plus it would support the healer at the same time... again, maybe it's not so viable an option for someone that needs to concentrate on tanking, but I notice in dungeons that as the healer I'm pulling more aggro than the tank.

bummer, the undaunted not being an aoe taunt is sort of bad.  Yes, while the taunts are actual taunts, most games have them, where they simply grab the attention of your target for a very short period of time.   What would be needed is some sort of passive in the sword and board line that would actually increase the threat generated by your damage abilities.  Maybe not permenant threat, but would allow all of your abilities to generate threat equal to a higher damage level or at least 1.5 times the normal damage you are dealing.   The reason I say this, is because generally, tanks will be focused on mitigation, and thus they wont be able to dish out the same damage levels as someone who is focus on dps.  The reason is that because of the way increased stamina and magicka work, they generally allow your abilties that use those resources to do more damage, thus a tank would focus more on hit points and their abilities might not do as much.  having a passive, even if it was the highest ranked passive in sword and board would help with that, or put it into undaunted since that line has a taunt and dmg shield, but also requires you to be focused on doing dungeons anyways.   

The point is, even this game, makes it hard for a tank to actually tank, when healers can pull agro simply by doing their jobs.   Tanks are a role that is highly suffering, and though it isn't as bad as it was in guild wars 2 (from my experience in doign dungeons their), it is an uphill battle to do the job of  grabbing agro, getting the attenion, spamming your abiltiies and still having enough resources to use damage mitigation abilities or block/dodge.    I am sorry to say this, but I feel that the devs may not have really thought this through for the role of tanking, with agro being so difficult to obtain and having so many factors.  I know the mobs should act smarter, but at the same time, the tanks should have some tools to do their job of getting the attention.    

Because of this factor, it makes group coordination mandatory in order to be truly successful, thus pug groups will be nil unless you are constantly inviting people who use some form of voice chat, and invite them to your voice chat channel, and then hoping they use the same voice chat program as you do to start with.   On top of that, I do like that it does mean that people will have to learn and understand teamwork and target priority in order to do the dungeons, as well as knowing the limits of their own characters, because with agro being so wonky and easy to pull, it means that healers, and dps will have to manage their abilities and not spam as frequently, as well as worry about building in some survival tactics into their builds. 

I think that main point here is we all are trying to tank like WOW. There isn't what appears to be an agro table in this game which is where that threat needs to stay. 

In my testing it appears that the threat is generated on a now level. If my healer pulled more healing than my dps did at dps'in then it goes to my healer. Now if I have a taunt going then it stays on me but if not I think the way it works is based on a what is going on now approch and who is doing the most.

I have to agree an disagree with this. I do like being able to be a successful tank by having what i need to "hold" all of the targets. However it does make it more interesting with this process. My main beef with the system is if I try to single pull a mob..I can't I can have pulled the whole room with about 16 mobs and no way to freakin hold them all. So I communicate and call out priority targets left and right and focus on just my healer in some more difficult fights for everyone to stay alive.

I remember about 1-1.5 years ago ZOS putting out a info session on dungeons  where they said that the tank will have a very hard time in holding all mobs in an encounter.  DPS at level are easily able to take down an add or two while the tank holds threat on the boss.  There really is no reason for the tank to try to aoe tank everything.  That is just going to cause the tank to die very quickly because you cannot block every attack or get every interrupt in that mess.  That also leads to the "taunting!  oh wait I taunted the add not the boss."  Now the healer or dps is getting chewed up. 

The taunt system in this game feels similar like the threat system in vanilla wow.  In that time the agro system was broken and you had to apply a 5 stack of sunder and keep it up at all times in order to build threat.  it was very broken and they eventually fixed it.   I am not saying to chain taunt,  that is not the way to do it.  Wait for the taunt to almost fall off and then reapply.  If you have a templar in group,  have them pop Restoring Aura on call so you can shield bash the boss (provided they are not low on magika).  There are rank 10s that are reporting 800 dps on boss's via that.  That's where the RA comes in because your stamina is going to drop quick.  Keep dot based abilities on the boss at all time.  This is where it gets tricky,  reapply the dot or wait for it to fall off before reapplying?  That is getting a bit into the technical min max side of things but it would be nice to know.

"The point is, even this game, makes it hard for a tank to actually tank, when healers can pull agro simply by doing their jobs.   Tanks are a role that is highly suffering, and though it isn't as bad as it was in guild wars 2 (from my experience in doign dungeons their), it is an uphill battle to do the job of  grabbing agro, getting the attenion, spamming your abiltiies and still having enough resources to use damage mitigation abilities or block/dodge." 

There are 3 skill lines under each class that use magika.  Looking at the shield and sword tree,  that is all stamina.  The grabbing agro part is Ransack,  the rest is magika based.  Perhaps you should think more along the lines of not spamming abilities so that you do not go dry too fast.  The saying slow is smooth,  smooth is fast applies here.  If the healer is snatching agro simply by healing then you should as I said earlier,  keep taunt on the boss.  Do not spam it,  do not reapply it until its almost ready to fall off.  The healer and dps should never take agro if you do that.  Also why would one not keep it up at all times anyways.  It applies a 43% armor debuff and buffs the tanks armor by 600 and the taunt lasts 15 secs. (Edit:  Those Ransack stats are for VR5,  not sure what they are at lower levels,  but regardless,  its a must to keep up).

Just some thoughts before I rack out.

it would be easier if you could see the debuffs you apply on your target so you don't have to do a count in your head.  Another failing of the game is that they are making it more eldar scrolls like than MMO, is that even as a tank, you apply the taunt, it taunts them for 10-15 seconds, but you have no little icon showing when that taunt is up so you know when to reapply, not unless you get an app, but then, that still wont show, because it gives the player an edge over someone who doesn't have the app, thus against what they are wanting for the game, but its crucial if you are the tank and need to know when to reapply your taunt, otherwise you will be stabbing at the wind not sure if you should be hitting your taunt again or if you are spamming it to early.   

That is why I said, all they need to do is give the sword and board a passive that allows your damage increased threat, add it to the last passive along with the movement or something.   Doesn't have to be a doubled amount, but something like your damage counts as 1.5X the damage you are doing so the targets feel like your doing more damage to them.   I know agro is affected by distance to the mob too, but as you said yourself, the tanks in this game suffer while other classes doing their job have no issues grabbing the aggro.    

Also I don't want to tank like wow, I just want to be able to grab the attention when it matters, instead of chasing a boss around, spamming taunt and him not noticing me at all.  

Debuffs are shown through Fouundry Tactical Combat,  ransack, Shielded assault stun, unstable flame...so on.  The game api does not allow for the ui mod to show the debuff from server side but the mod author made a work around by detecting that the ability was used and the mod generates a timer with the ability icon on the fly. 

Interestingly I have found that the tank is probably the least important role in dungeons. I healed blessed crucible with 3 dps and no tank and we were fine. We just all had to run around and block more often but it was not any more difficult than usual.

I actually have the opposite viewpoint on the lack of defined roles in a dungeon group and the inherent difficulties that presents a dungeon group.

In my opinion, the lack of defined roles and the action type combat style of this game means that the dungeon difficulty is probably tuned lower than in more traditional mmo's like WoW, EQ, or Rift.  As a previous poster said, since there are no real defined roles, you don't have to be a tank to a dungeon really.  Or you can bring 4 tanks if you like.  Whatever.  Because of all the different possibilities, the dungeons can't count on your group composition being the basic cookie cutter combination so they can't tune the encounters so tight. 

I think some people may have difficulties in dungeons in this game if they try to do too much in this game based on their experience in other games.  If you're the tank, you're not going to control all the mobs on a string.  Instead, you might have to do some dps or healing.  If you're the healer, you might actually have to tank an add or two.  Sure it sometimes means that the run is pretty chaotic but that's not always a bad thing lol.

As far as the whole taunt and threat generation discussion goes, I'm sure there is some sort of threat table involved but at this point, it doesn't seem that the tank gets any threat modifiers besides just doing more damage or standing closer to the boss than anyone else lol.  Again, I think this puts less pressure on the tank because you don't have to feel like you have to hold every mob's attention anymore.

My concern is that when things need to be tightened up, like in raids for instance, if the content will be as challenging as the more conventional MMO's.  The biggest advantage of having the holy trinity is that developers can tune a dungeon/raid difficulty really high because they know what you're bringing and what you have at your disposal.  Rift had some really good raid and dungeon content but it was also ultra vanilla MMO as far as roles and mechanics were concerned.

tldr - I think it's actually easier to PUG dungeons in ESO because of the lack of defined roles lol.  Hell I kited 2 bosses as a healer in the last dungeon run I was in.