Thread: Question on Ebbing Ire and Rising Ire

Hello Fellow Champion-Players ----

I have a (noobish?) question about the Rising Ire (RI) and Ebbing Ire (EI) skills for champions. For the questions below, imagine a fellowship or raid with:

you playing the champion dps-ing your heart out,
somebody else tanking an enemy and trying to hold threat,
and other classes standing away from the melee action, such as minstrels

Main question for EI: can you control or select which fellowship member receives the champion's EI threat dump?

For example, can you somehow make sure that your EI skill dumps threat onto the tank instead of, say, the minstrel in the back who does NOT want to be the recipient of the threat dump? If so, how does one instruct the game to dump threat to (say) the guardian instead of (say) the minstrel? (Or is the threat dump something the game dumps to somebody else and there is no system or algorithm for determining which fellowship member is the recipient of the threat dump?)

Main question for RI: can you control or select which fellowship member from whom you will appropriate some of their treat?

I'd be very appreciative if other champ-players would let me know. Unless I'm missing the obvious (always a possibility) it doesn't seem like there's a way to control from whom or to whom the threat flows when using EI and RI, but I'm open to correction or advice here. Or perhaps there is a link I've missed on the champ boards that discusses this in detail, and somebody could point me to it. Thanks.

Good question. For ebbing and rising ire -- you must select the player you are ebbing or rising from. Click on them or use your f1-f6 keys for the right player and hit the skill. Note however that you cannot do this for a raid member not in your fellowship. So if you are pushing onto the tank you need to be in his group.

The above poster is correct.

Something I also find helpful for Ebbing to the tank is to have the "skill target forwarding" option checked (I don't remember where the option is, sorry - I haven't messed with my preferences or interface for a long time). Skill target forwarding will, if you attempt to use a skill on someone or something that you can't use that skill on, it will attempt to use the skill on the target of that something ("that something" being your current target). Thus, as long as the tank is in my fellowship and currently has the aggro of the mob that I'm attacking, I can continue to target the mob that I'm attacking and Ebb to the tank.

The same trick can be used for Rising Ire. If you're supposed to be tanking something and that something peels off to go attack the healer, skill target forwarding will allow you to Rise off the healer by targeting through the mob.

If you prefer to select your Ire target directly, the default keys for choosing members of your fellowship should be F1-F6 (F1 being you, F2 the person listed just below you, on down to the person listed at the bottom of your fellowship being F6).

Edit: Also note that Rising Ire and Ebbing Ire are now a single skill that is dependent on which stance you are in. You can only Ebb in Fervour and Ardour, and only Rise in Glory.

Lestache and Garetjax8 ---

Thank you very much for your answers. If you both are correct (which I don't doubt), then I've been a complete noob on my champ for an embarrassingly long time. I've been using EI and RI without any conscious targeting. Now maybe I've been successful with EI/RI at times because I (luckily) had the skill-target-forwarding (STF) box checked in the option panel. There are times when (in glory stance) RI does "work" and I pull something off the healer and/or the tank needs my champ to off-tank for a brief spell. Also, EI (in fervour stance) has seemed to "work" at times too when the monster, having just decided to give my champ the attention, decides he'd rather go back to the real tank.

The point is that I didn't know about the F1-F6 keys, and that is really valuable to know. I'm not sure where, within the game itself, I can find that F1-F6 guide the direction of the rising or ebbing ire. For example, the little box that pops up over the skill button doesn't say how to guide the ire, it just says that it dumps/increases threat to/from a fellowship member. This led me to conclude that, no, the game just had its own way of deciding which way threat went to/from my champ. (This didn't seem logical to me.)

The guardians in my kin are probably just as grateful for the info, since my champ often steals threat even though he waits a while before entering the boss fights and even then ramps up slowly until he gets explicit word from the tank to go nuts. This might make their lives a lot easier.

Thanks again!

Originally Posted by Lestache

The above poster is correct.

Something I also find helpful for Ebbing to the tank is to have the "skill target forwarding" option checked (I don't remember where the option is, sorry - I haven't messed with my preferences or interface for a long time). Skill target forwarding will, if you attempt to use a skill on someone or something that you can't use that skill on, it will attempt to use the skill on the target of that something ("that something" being your current target). Thus, as long as the tank is in my fellowship and currently has the aggro of the mob that I'm attacking, I can continue to target the mob that I'm attacking and Ebb to the tank.

True, but tricky. If the minstrel has unintentionally grabbed agro just before you ebb, you basically kill the minstrel.

Originally Posted by Ronigard

True, but tricky. If the minstrel has unintentionally grabbed agro just before you ebb, you basically kill the minstrel.

True. But then I get to corpse-jump the minstrel.

Here's another question, basically regarding the mechanics of how threat works: if, say, I'm a DPS champ and I've been going nuts on the mobs, then a mob peels off the tank toward a healer, if I Ebb off onto the tank, is that going to change only where myself and the tank are on the mob's threat list, or is the the tank just going to receive a quantity of my total threat relative to all monsters in combat?

I usually pay more attention to ebbing ire in boss fights, dumping some aggro onto the tank now and then just so I don't pull it myself, but if it works as I've outlined above it could help tanks in multi-mob pulls, even if I'm not really worried about whether or not I'm taking hits.

Originally Posted by Gylve

Here's another question, basically regarding the mechanics of how threat works: if, say, I'm a DPS champ and I've been going nuts on the mobs, then a mob peels off the tank toward a healer, if I Ebb off onto the tank, is that going to change only where myself and the tank are on the mob's threat list, or is the the tank just going to receive a quantity of my total threat relative to all monsters in combat?

I usually pay more attention to ebbing ire in boss fights, dumping some aggro onto the tank now and then just so I don't pull it myself, but if it works as I've outlined above it could help tanks in multi-mob pulls, even if I'm not really worried about whether or not I'm taking hits.

Ebbing Ire should transfer a percentage of all of your threat to whomever you Ebb to, so it's sort of a combination of your two ideas. You'll transfer a portion of your threat on each mob to the tank, so yes - it is helpful for multi-mob pulls (at least ones in which you're hitting multiple mobs, of course). Some folks like to use Ebbing Ire after hitting some high-damage AoEs, which works fairly well.

Well, I tend to do that anyway, but I've always come at it from a more "so that these mobs I'm shing-shinging don't kill me" perspective. I'll fiddle around with trying to use it when a healer (or hunter or whatever) pulls off the tank and see if the tank getting a bunch of my threat will make the mob turn back to the tank from the squishy it was just attacking.

In any case, I really wish the Ires crossed into the other fellowship in raids, as it seems more often than not I'm in the other group and can't dump onto the main tank.

Originally Posted by iloverach

...

The point is that I didn't know about the F1-F6 keys, and that is really valuable to know. I'm not sure where, within the game itself, I can find that F1-F6 guide the direction of the rising or ebbing ire. For example, the little box that pops up over the skill button doesn't say how to guide the ire, it just says that it dumps/increases threat to/from a fellowship member. This led me to conclude that, no, the game just had its own way of deciding which way threat went to/from my champ. (This didn't seem logical to me.)
...

F-keys are just a means to an end. The point is, whenever a skill says "does XXX to a fellowship member", you must have that member targetted. You can do that via the shortcut F-keys, but also via clicking their vital bar, clicking the member directly on the screen (can be fiddly), clicking their name if the tank is set as a raid assist target or clicking the small "Show targets´ target" window. A last method, which I prefer to use, is to "tooltip" the tank; to do this you mouse over the tank and press "H" which will create a static tooltip that you can move around on your UI. Whenever you click that tooltip, you´ll target your tank.

Or, if you are using Ire proactively, you can simply use the "Skill forwarding" mechanic that has been mentioned earlier.

Originally Posted by Gylve

...
In any case, I really wish the Ires crossed into the other fellowship in raids, as it seems more often than not I'm in the other group and can't dump onto the main tank.

If you do so much damage that you will find yourself pulling aggro often, why not ask to be put in a fellowship with the main tank then?

(Original poster of this thread here....)

Well, after a bunch of fellowships and raids this last weekend, armed with the information about the f1-f6 keys, my champ held threat or stayed untouched as the situation demanded it. I feel simultaneously glad to know about this information, but also embarrassed that I didn't know about it for so long.

As a practice exercise in threat swapping, a fellow guard, my champ, a burg, and a minstrel did a 4-man Turtle run. The run was very successful and straightforward, though the point wasn't to win but just to practice, and it was great to be able to dump off threat via Ebbing Ire and acquire threat via Rising Ire & Champion's Challenge as the situation demanded. In the Foundry, my champ usually tanks Penrith while the guard kites Ghashanuz (spelling?), and using Rising Ire appropriately made the minstrel's life much easier.

So, I'm glad I asked my original question, even though it screamed NOOB. No more "what the ...." comments from my guardian friend when the boss makes a 180-degree turn and starts generating large red numbers above my champ's head.

Thanks again for all your replies (my mini/guard/rk/cappy friends also thank you). I've +rep'd all posters above (for whatever that is worth).

Originally Posted by iloverach

(Original poster of this thread here....)

Well, after a bunch of fellowships and raids this last weekend, armed with the information about the f1-f6 keys, my champ held threat or stayed untouched as the situation demanded it. I feel simultaneously glad to know about this information, but also embarrassed that I didn't know about it for so long.

As a practice exercise in threat swapping, a fellow guard, my champ, a burg, and a minstrel did a 4-man Turtle run. The run was very successful and straightforward, though the point wasn't to win but just to practice, and it was great to be able to dump off threat via Ebbing Ire and acquire threat via Rising Ire & Champion's Challenge as the situation demanded. In the Foundry, my champ usually tanks Penrith while the guard kites Ghashanuz (spelling?), and using Rising Ire appropriately made the minstrel's life much easier.

So, I'm glad I asked my original question, even though it screamed NOOB. No more "what the ...." comments from my guardian friend when the boss makes a 180-degree turn and starts generating large red numbers above my champ's head.

Thanks again for all your replies (my mini/guard/rk/cappy friends also thank you). I've +rep'd all posters above (for whatever that is worth).

There is absolutely nothing to be embarrassed about. This is a deep and complex game. And while many think the champ is nothing but a shing shing chimp, at high level it's a deep and complex class.

Champs can determine the flow of threat and with that the flow of battle. This is not apparent without help from others, so it makes perfect sense you had to experiment and ask.

Originally Posted by Vandervahn

If you do so much damage that you will find yourself pulling aggro often, why not ask to be put in a fellowship with the main tank then?

Well, I'm not usually in raids with wholly incompetent tanks so I'm not usually worried about supplying the tank with extra threat. I usually dump it onto an LM or Captain if I'm not in the tank group, so I don't really have issues outside of a few select situations, like pulling aggro on Saruman when someone gives me that giant melee damage/crit ring buff.

I'm talking more about things like raid skirms, where tanks are sometimes iffy and I usually do pull a bunch of aggro. In those cases I usually throw up a bubble and shing-shing some more, as killing things faster is better than using pips to get the mobs back on the tank and then killing them more slowly, but sometimes with rough Lt's it would be nice. And, to answer your question for those situations, it's just a skirm so it's not really a big deal.

First, not wanting to spend pips on Ires because you could use them for something else is pretty weak. We all know how lightning fast pips can be generated. This is more of a mindset problem than a practical problem. You will lose probably not even half a second in kill-time (with 9 other people hitting on it, 4 pips isn't going to make an amazing difference, and on skirmish trash, this is even more magnified) and for your trouble end up practicing good habits to help you and your groupmates for the future for when it DOES matter, all so you can avoid 'wasting' 4 pips so you can churn out a 3-or-more pip skill that you can have access to easily.

Yes, for skirmishes it doesn't matter, and yes, I'm being more of a stickler than I am even comfortable with (because I don't do it in skirmishes either), but there really is no application where Ebbing is ever detrimental. Ever. Even if the tank already has aggro, Ebb it anyway. It just means you and everyone else around you can continue DPSing even harder, letting the tank feel secure and the group (especially the DPSers) feel secure. There is no lose, it's pure win-win. Every time.

Yes, I suppose it's technically a drop in DPS in that very moment, but not many consider that it lets other DPSers (including yourself) not hold back as much, meaning it can net you more if there's communication going on. Ebbing is just... easily one of our top 7 skills. Maybe top 5.

But for skirmishes it doesn't matter. I'm always an advocate of practicing good habits though, even when they don't matter, because good habits WILL bleed through and show when things DO matter, rather than your muscle memory being inadequate enough for you to get to the skill fast enough and stuff like that.

...

Except skirmishes REALLY don't matter. More than anything else doesn't matter.

Oh, for sure it'd be good practice, but often times hitting RB instead of Ebbing when you pull aggro on skirm trash means that everything around you is dead, instead of attacking the tank. Definitely worth it in any other situation where whatever you're blendering takes more than a few seconds to die, though, like if you're the only champ in a Forges group, or Isen trash, etc. And, I do Ebb on skirm pulls that have more than one Lt., especially if they're ones you really don't want the tank losing aggro on.

Bumping thread for some perhaps useful info: put a champ in the tank's group during the Orthanc Shadow Wing boss fight. Have the champ trait At the Ready. My groups have had aggro issues on this fight because the guard is pretty much unable to b/p/e the whole fight due to the debuff, seriously hampering his ability to generate threat. With At the Ready equipped, you can pour out the DPS and ebb onto the tank at a good rate. Not only does this allow you to DPS harder without pulling aggro yourself, but it also really helps the guard build up his threat level against classes that aren't as good at getting rid of threat (before doing this, we routinely had burgs pulling aggro and HiPSing). Definitely worth leaving instance and retraiting for.