Discussion: Provoke, Provoked, Provoken

I don't know what Provoken means either. Looked fun to me. Well, I did a little more testing with Provoke. I wanted to do some intensive testing and get exact results, but based on the initial results I was too disappointed to pinpoint the exact turning point. That could come after a little more testing.

Here is the test. I ran with 3 players, a Guard (thank you Jox), an RK (thank you Luna) and my burg. All 75. We tested on Foul-Maw, because I think he is a cool mob. The guard had all his passive agro removed, and a belt with zero perceived threat. He ran in, agroed Foul-Maw, turned around and did zero agro generation, his only threat was initial entry on the threat table from first agro. I then hit Foul-Maw with a provoke and tested how much damage the RK needed to do to pull agro off the guard. I had the RK do some low damage melee attacks so the damage from one hit to another would be lowish, maybe 300 and when she pulled, we would know approximately how much threat in terms of damage the provoke gave to the guard.

I tested provoke without stealth, provoke from stealth, provoke with the class skill traited, and provoke with the skill and the LI legacy on a level 75 2nd age sword. I had the provoke rating ranked up all the way to 26 on the sword. I had the guard run in and agro maybe 7-8 times. The results are of course not exact as the damage was not low enough to know exactly when the RK pulled. But I got enough results for me to make my conclusions.

Provoke not from stealth no class trait:
~1,100 damage.

Provoke from stealth no class trait:
~2,000 damage

Provoke from stealth with provoke threat up 26 on the legacy, no class trait:
~2,000 damage

Provoke from stealth with class trait:
~3,000 damage

Provoked once on the guardian when he forgot to take off his perceived threat belt, legacy plus 1st age belt gave him 28% additional perceived threat. He indeed get more threat from provoke as it took about 30% more damage to pull threat onto the RK.

Conclusion
The results were able to convince me that the class trait does indeed work and that the legacy is absolutely broken. The RK could not get a single extra low damage melee hit in without pulling agro. Although there might be some amount of threat added(I would venture to say the provoke threat up rank 26 adds an additional 26 threat from damage!) I would not be surprised if the legacy was actually broken completely, or a left over from the days in the Shire where an additional 26, possibly 100 threat might have been useful.

@Burg Devs
Please remove the provoke threat legacy or make it have some kind of threat effect. Useless legacies happen, but this one is a pile of rotten fish, stinking as bad as any. I would prefer that it be fixed. It could be made into a viable option. Imagine 5-6 burgs adding 5k threat to the tank, or 30k threat at the start of the fight during burg zergs where the biggest threat is threat itself. A real legacy that would be used by the rare but prepared burg to help keep agro on the tank away from eager hunters or champs. It is not that. At all. Either fix it or please take it out of the pool of legacies.

+ rep for taking the time to test this. also thank the guys helping you test this.

have you perhaps also tested at what point the mob switched without provoke?
Would be nice to know how much the initial provoke untraited gives.

Very nice information. Thanks for running this.

My best guess about the legacy is that it works much like the minstrel songbook healing rating, which is about 1% per point. Assuming the threat from stealth is 1800 (you find ~2000) that would make the threat from stealth with the legacy 2268 (~2000), but it's nice to see that the trait works that well.

Interesting find. I've only seen the legacy on two or three trash weapons myself so I've never bothered going through the trouble of testing it.

I'd like for whatever dev is ours to look at LI legacies in general, to be honest. Not much variety going on in that department these days and it makes me sad.

I've tried using Provoke from stealth (traited) as an initial attack the moment a mob turns towards the tank, then followed it up by using feint attack and a SS, which immediatly resulted on me pulling aggro off the guardian. I dropped the legacy there and then.

To make provoke useful as a threat mechanic base threat on provoke should be as much as a regular burg skill damage. Maybe 2k. From stealth should be equal to a from stealth hit maybe 4k. Traited should continue to add 50 percent. The legacy should add another 50 percent to make a Traited legacied provoke from stealth add 8k threat. These numbers would make it a rarely used but situational legacy.

More great info, +rep, thanks for sharing and thanks to show who assisted!

(Interestingly, I've never slotted the trait, but have had the legacy unranked, and used Provoke from stealth at the start of DPS races, it's great to know that is truly worthwhile after all!)



"Sometimes survival comes down to not being hit. Actually, most times." -the chicken skill, Bob and Weave

Envoyé par lutemaster

I've tried using Provoke from stealth (traited) as an initial attack the moment a mob turns towards the tank, then followed it up by using feint attack and a SS, which immediatly resulted on me pulling aggro off the guardian. I dropped the legacy there and then.

Iirc Provoke`s dmg is more threat for you then it adds threat to the tank,so you gave him some threat,but at the same time got more for yourself from that 1 skill. meaning your follow up skills wich where burst outaggroed the tank pretty easy.

+rep for the OP,even tho i dont think Devs will care