Thread: How Threat Down Legacies / Tomes probably work

One of the biggest weaknesses of the Hunter class, compared to other DPS options, is the few ways in which we can manage threat. Beneath Notice is 10-20 seconds every 3 minutes- though I don't know anyone that traits it. Stance:Endurance is a powerful tool, but Blue and Red hunters alike feel gimped outside of their main DPS stances and are always reluctant to drop to Endurance.

No one exactly knows what the Whisper Draw Tome and legendary item legacies actually do, and so most people are dismissive of them. I've considered adding the Focus Bow Threat Down legacy to my new First Age bow, but wanted to know exactly what it did first. So I've done some pretty extensive testing to figure these unknowns out.

I think I have pretty reliable answers, but am happy to be corrected. If people are interested, the next post will outline my testing procedure. Here are the primary conclusions.


Threat Book - Tome of the Whisper Draw

- Reduces threat by 20 per hit

- Works on Auto-Attacks in addition to Bow skills

- A Fleetness Hunter is probably hitting 1.25 times per second, in which case the threat reduction is 25 per second. Threat Book would then reduce threat ~1.25-1.67% for a 1,500-2,000 DPS Hunter.


Weapon Legacy - Induction Bow Threat Down

- Reduces threat by approximately 5.5 per hit per legacy level.

- It is presumed that Focus Bow Threat Down works the same way.

- Level 75 2nd Age weapons start at legacy level 19, which would reduce threat by about 100 per hit. At max rank of 27, threat reduction would be close to 150 per hit. A First Age starts at 25 and goes to 33, reducing threat 138-182 per hit.

- A Fleetness Hunter is probably hitting a Focus skill roughly once every 1.75 seconds, and an Induction skill once every 3 seconds. Focus Bow Threat Down on a 75 2nd Age would then reduce threat 3.8-5.7% for a 1,500 DPS Hunter, and 2.9-4.3% for a 2,000 DPS Hunter (range depending on magnitude of legacy). Focus Bow Threat Down on a 75 1st Age would then reduce threat 5.2-6.9% for a 1,500 DPS Hunter, and 4.0-5.2% for a 2,000 DPS Hunter (range depending on magnitude of legacy).

- It isn't clear if the legacy affects all three hits from Swift Bow or just the first hit. Obviously, if it affects every hit, the legacy's value is greater. Assuming Induction Bow Threat Down affects only first hit from Swift Bow it would be about 60% as effective as Focus Bow Threat Down. If it affects every hit it would be comparably effective. It would also be much more valuable for Red Line hunters.

- In most cases Threat Down legacies are probably 2-3x more effective than Tome of the Whisper Draw. As such Hunters are probably roughly indifferent between Whisper Draw + Focus Skills Power, and Wind-Rider + Focus Bow Threat Down.


Stance:Endurance Quick Shot Threat Down

- With no legacy, S:E Quick Shot reduces threat by 800 per hit in addition to the S:E -10% threat bonus

- Legacy reduces threat by an additional ~11 per hit per legacy level. Level 75 2nd Age weapons start at legacy level 1 and can be ranked to 9. At max rank threat reduction would be close to 900 per hit.

- Note: S:E QS can easily crit / devastate for amounts above 900. I would suspect that Hunters using a First Age average more than 900 per hit with QS, in which case threat still builds just at a lesser rate, but still builds. For any hit less than 800 (900 with maxed legacy) S:E QS is a true detaunt.

- S:E QS Threat Down is comparable in potency to the other threat down legacies, but of course is limited by its stance dependency, and hence is of questionable value. The S:E QS Threat Down skill itself is likely the most powerful threat skill outside of Beneath Notice.


Conclusion

- Our threat reduction legacies have likely not scaled sufficiently to be really effective. The legacies are based on a Fixed Threat per Hit mechanic rather than % Threat per Hit. As DPS has scaled up materially the fixed threat reduction amount has become more marginalized. I suspect this isn't a problem for only Hunters. I suspect that Guardian +Threat ratings on their LIs work similarly. For that matter I would guess that Burglar Provoke is the same too. So Hunters are less equipped at shedding threat but Guards are also less equipped at keeping above the Hunter for similar reasons. The fact that Burgs and Champs have real threat dumps make it less noticeable.

- For all we know Tome of the Whisper Draw hasn't scaled at all since release. I believe that it has always read "Greatly reduces threat during ranged combat" and that only the morale/power buff has changed. This has resulted in a very weak form of threat reduction from the Tome.

- The Hunter threat legacies need to be combined into a single legacy. Even at max rank a combined legacy would only reduce threat ~8-10% for a 2,000 DPS HUnter. That might be enough to actually induce someone to use the legacies, though it surely isn't overpowered. The primary Burglar DPS stance comes equipped with -10% threat after all.

- If Hunters really are feeling limited by threat as opposed to power it may make sense to forego Focus / Induction Skills Power in favor of Threat Down. The legacies do in fact work just not in great magnitude.

- It might make sense for Hunters to use a true de-taunt swap weapon for emergency aggro situations. Because E:QS Threat Down hasn't scaled with Hunter DPS its value as a de-taunt has declined. Hunters will commonly hit for more than the threat reduction value. You might want to use a lower level (lower dps) swap bow with E:QS Threat Down, S:QS Slow, Burn Hot, Distracting Shot Resistances + Cooldown for just those skills. If you pull aggro, drop to S:E and equip the low dps bow to have a more effective detaunt. Gimping damage even for a few seconds isn't fun, but if you are out of other aggro tools and do pull it is better than nothing.

Revision: Changed Threat Down Legacy summary for information regarding First Age Threat down values.

Generalized Test Procedure

Since there is no threat meter in LOTRO I had to back into most of these answers. I multi-boxed 2 Hunters and a Captain (just for heals to keep Hunters up). All testing was done on Folkar the 50,000 morale Mirkwood Troll found at 11.9s 44.7w.

The general steps include:

1 - Hunter A (no stance, no threat legacies, Power book) attack Troll to accumulate threat and then stop (usually around 10k)
2 - Hunter B (stance, legacies, and book vary depending on test) then attacks Troll until aggro is tripped and then runs off aggro
3 - Sum up Hunter A's total damage - this is the Base.
4 - Sum up Hunter B's total damage up until Base was exceeded. This is the Trip. You know that Trip minus Base is then the excess threat that was absorbed by whatever you are testing (stance, legacy, book).

One issue is that you can never be exactly sure of the exact damage point that aggro was tripped. Base could be 12,000. Trip could be 15,000, but if the last hit in Hunter B's series of attacks was 1,000, then the trip point really could have been anywhere between 14,000 and 15,000. This error bar is bigger if you crit on the last hit that trips aggro. It is also reasonably large compared to the Troll morale. Ideally to get the most accurate results, you would want the Troll to have infinite morale and damage to be really small. But we work with what we have. I evaluated the range of possible outcomes for each test and tested a number of times to get more confidence in the results. I did some things to weight the observations that I think zeroes in on the answers.

Threat Book - Tome of the Whisper Draw

The first question about Tome of the Whisper Draw was whether it reduces threat on a percentage basis or on a fixed value per hit. The Guardian forums have asserted that their legacies work on a fixed value basis, so I was guessing that the Tome might work similarly.

One way to determine if it is percentage or fixed value is to test multiple times with different base DPS values. If it is percentage based, the threat reduction amount should be higher for a higher DPS weapon, whereas if it is a fixed value it would by the same regardless of the DPS level. I ran the test 15-18 times with each at a 115 and 139 damage rating with the threat book.

As noted above, there is an error bar around every test arising from the last hit before tripping aggro. Those errors create a distribution around what should be a mean value. With enough test results the mean value should converge to the true value. You can see the results in the first chart below.



The chart above basically confirms that Tome of the Whisper Draw is a fixed value of threat reduction. You can see that it gives basically the same threat reduction regardless of the DPS rating. Also as one would expect, the error bar is wider for the higher DPS tests (the last value in the trip series is larger creating wider errors).

Tome of the Whisper Draw reduces threat by about 20 points per hit. The values above are actually slightly higher (22 and 21.5), but other regressions pointed to a number closer to 20, and since 20 is a round number it seems more likely, but it certainly could be 21 or 22 given the error bars.

The graph below shows that it is unlikely that Tome of the Whisper Draw works on a percentage basis. The means of the two distributions are more different with less overlap. Moreover, as you would expect, the lower DPS tests resulted in a higher imputed % than the higher DPS tests. That's supportive of the notion that it is in actuality a fixed threat reduction amount.



The next post will outline testing on the Threat Down legacies.

Induction Bow Threat Down Legacy

Hardly anyone uses Focus Bow Threat Down or Induction Bow Threat Down legacies, in part because no one knows how they actually work. I used effectively the same procedure outlined above to come up with an estimate.

As you can see below, the Tome of the Whisper Draw effectively adds 20 to threat reduction- intercept of the red line. Ideally, the slope of those lines would be identical and the 20 points would be uniform throughout. I attribute the convergence to measurement error.



I scaled the Whisper Draw data down by 20 points, and plotted all the data on one chart to get a better look at the effect of the Threat Down Legacy in isolation. You can see that in the chart that follows. As you can see, each point of the legacy Induction Bow Threat Down reduces threat per hit by about 5.5 points. Hence, at a rank of 19 (starting rank for a 75 2nd Age), the legacy will reduce threat ~100 per hit. At a rank of 27 it will reduce threat approximately 150 per hit.



Endurance Quick Shot Threat Down

Lastly, I looked at the skill and legacy for S:Endurance Quick Shot Threat Down. The procedure required one additional step. Hunter A accumulated threat. Hunter B then DPS'd to trip aggro, and continued to build. Hunter B then swapped to a bow with Endurance Quick Shot Threat Down legacy and dropped to S:Endurance. I then recorded the amount of damage and number of hits that were required for Hunter B to shed aggro back to Hunter A. Using that data you can compute the implied detaunt per hit. It was clear from the dispersion of the data that this legacy also was based on per hit values rather than some percentage.

As you can see, each point of the legacy E:QS Threat Down reduces threat per hit by about 11-12 points. In addition, the skill itself without the legacy reduces threat by about 800 points per hit. Hence, at a maxed rank of 9 it will reduce threat approximately 900 per hit.

I tried something similar on the turtle with some kinmates and had similar findings. To see if it would make a difference I put both threat legacies on my FA bow and maxed them out. At the dps levels I had, the effect was almost impossible to notice in a raid setting.

My hunter is the laziest ever, and he rarely concerns himself with the minutiae of stuff like this, being a Nikon of sorts: point and shoot, but let me just say: you are a total stud. Fascinating stuff.

Well done and +1 to rep.

This basicly confirms what I have belived for a long time. That hunter's threat problems are in part due to the fact that DPS scales and our threat reduction and a tanks threat increase does not scale. This is a flawed system and Turbine should change our threat down abilities to a percentage that we can quantify.

Great thread and great info!

Definitely enlightened me. I wonder how closely this is to what Turbine looks at (or doesn't look at).

Alright, I came back to glance at the results of my farewell thread and you drop this. You son of a.... thanks for making my farewell thread a sham.

This is good agreement with my own work on the subject but yours is more thorough and better visualized. I had intended to publish it but simply lost interest as my frustration with the game has mounted. I personally had concluded that the threat downs were actually an interval (I.E. 60-80 threat down, which of course scaled with rank) that was randomly selected like a damage value. This is shown nicely with your graphs, actually. Very very nice work. I am impressed.

You have also inspired me to do one last thing for the forum; I'll publish whatever tools I've made to help understand my character.

I have a few spreadsheets I have that people might use to find the realistic DPS on a per skill basis so long as they plug in their tooltip damage values and could use them to approximate a DPS so long as they know their typical skill use weighs in a given fight.

EDIT: And my estimation of the book's threat down was 2-3%.

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to bastiat1 again.

Hope the Devs are paying attention. This was a very thorough test over a long period of time, presented very well in this thread, just like they have asked for. It just goes to show while the hunter is in an "OK" place, there are still tons of things wrong with the class overall. Thanks for your work on behalf of the hunter community.

Quick question: How can you not know if the Induction Bow Threat down is on every hit or not? Seems that with your "trip" method that you could easily tell if Swift Bow reduces threat by 100 or by 300.

In addition, according to your results, given the choice between Whisper Draw + Power Legacy or Wind-rider + Threat Down Legacy, that the latter pair is easily the better choice as you get the better of both and the bonus of not having to spend legacy points.

I have done little test like this myself but not to this depth. I recently went to a 5b/2r build and the set bonus armor for reduced focus cost for PS and found it easier to pull aggro than it was traited 5/r2/b. I then added focus threat reduction to my FA bow and I still pull aggro at about the same time and DPS lvl in ToO LT2. I have now went with a 5/b 2/y trait for further reduction in threat and power use, I still will pull aggro and even after hitting beneath care towards the end of the fight I still will get aggro. I have threat book and a very good tank, but in a DPS race and I have done everything skill wise to drop aggro this is something that needs to be fix either by fixing the hunter threat reduction or increasing the tanks threat.

Originally Posted by Vongs666

I still will pull aggro and even after hitting beneath care towards the end of the fight I still will get aggro.

I'm not sure what you mean. No hunter is going to hold aggro after hitting Beneath Care late in a fight. Also, once the timer is up and the effect is gone, all your threat comes back to you. It just gives you a temporary window in which to do something that actually lowers threat, like changing stance or holding your fire.

Originally Posted by Brutabas

Quick question: How can you not know if the Induction Bow Threat down is on every hit or not? Seems that with your "trip" method that you could easily tell if Swift Bow reduces threat by 100 or by 300.

Because I didn't test Swift Bow. I kept things as controlled as possible by only using Quick Shot. I agree you can likely easily do it by using only Swift Bow, but I didn't feel like waiting around for it to cooldown. If you mix Swift Bow and Quick Shot you probably have to take a ton of samples to get anything meaningful. The error bar that you are dealing with is significant, which is why it took so much time to just get the data I didn. I might get to it in the future.

Originally Posted by Brutabas

In addition, according to your results, given the choice between Whisper Draw + Power Legacy or Wind-rider + Threat Down Legacy, that the latter pair is easily the better choice as you get the better of both and the bonus of not having to spend legacy points.

Yup. I think it just depends on whether players feel they are throttled by Power or Threat. I think most top-end Hunters are threat limited, in which case they should be opting for Threat Down over Power.

Well thought-out theory, and well-tested experiments... major kudos to you.
Thanks for helping us better understand the mechanics that we grapple with.

Thank you for the large amount of work you did generating this data as well as publishing it (shame on Turbine for not giving us the information in the first place). Now that the lack of proper implementation is public maybe Turbine will get some inspiration to fix their gross mistake.

Great stuff. This matches the conclusions myself and a few others reached quite a while ago (immediately post-MoM, I think), but went way more in depth into this than any of us were willing to go. Nice to see it spelled out with big, crunchy numbers.

One thing: It might be worth checking at various levels to see how (and if) S:E QS scales with level or damage output. It certainly wasn't equivalent to 800 damage at 60. We figured it was based off your weapon damage somehow, and that it equaled the threat from a regular hit but not crits/devs, but had no gumption to actually test that theory. Anyone in S:E was just plain wrong by that point anyways.

Originally Posted by Waylen

This is a flawed system and Turbine should change our threat down abilities to a percentage that we can quantify.

Don't hold your breath. As I mentioned above, we did some research into this way back when and found basically the same thing; that -Threat was a fixed value, and that in order for those effects to remain relevant as the game progressed they'd need to be changed to a percentage. Big surprise: Nothing happened. Turbine's great for sweeping nonfunctional mechanics under the rug. See also: lolBA.

Originally Posted by Thraxz1982

Alright, I came back to glance at the results of my farewell thread and you drop this. You son of a.... thanks for making my farewell thread a sham.

It happens.

I would like to agree with the previous posters that commented favorably on the willingness to perform such a time consuming analysis and the thoroughness with which it was executed. We need more investigation into game mechanics like this and less wild speculation (blue vs. red, anyone? ).

Originally Posted by CWood

lolBA.

I`m sorry, what is this, it obviously isn`t what I have on my Skillbar ??

Oh but how I wished it was on my Skillbar, a ranged slow that actually slows the target a significant amount.

To OP, great stuff, respect for taking the time, I`m not great at understanding this sort of mechanic when it comes to the numbers side, but I found this easy to understand.

All boils down to, Hunters cant utilise thier Class to the max for fear of pulling aggro, which unfortunately I do regularly, I run in Endurance in ToO so as to not pull aggro, which kinda negates the point of us being huge DPS.

Originally Posted by Reapor

I`m sorry, what is this, it obviously isn`t what I have on my Skillbar ??

Oh but how I wished it was on my Skillbar, a ranged slow that actually slows the target a significant amount.

To OP, great stuff, respect for taking the time, I`m not great at understanding this sort of mechanic when it comes to the numbers side, but I found this easy to understand.

All boils down to, Hunters cant utilise thier Class to the max for fear of pulling aggro, which unfortunately I do regularly, I run in Endurance in ToO so as to not pull aggro, which kinda negates the point of us being huge DPS.

With or without -threat yellow trait slotted?

Originally Posted by Sagit

(blue vs. red, anyone? )

(More shots, more crits, more pips, cheaper PS/BlA. It seems to me that, thanks to stat uncapping, and availability of ~25% crit rates, there is no way in hell that Cudur users can keep up, apart from for reasons having to do with the blue one not making optimal use of his build's strengths... Having said that, I do not have the seals/meds/second bow with red-based legs to work this out numerically; sorry.)

What I'm more interested in personally is a comparison between Faron and a 4(r/b)/3(r/b) traited Gonathradir user.. If the difference is small enough, the debuff would certainly make up for such a choice by helping the rest of the raid.

Originally Posted by CWood

One thing: It might be worth checking at various levels to see how (and if) S:E QS scales with level or damage output. It certainly wasn't equivalent to 800 damage at 60. We figured it was based off your weapon damage somehow, and that it equaled the threat from a regular hit but not crits/devs, but had no gumption to actually test that theory.

CWood - I didn't test character level. All of my characters were 75 for these tests. Even still I did test damage output by doing the test with and without leveling up the DPS rating of that bow. Like the other tests the damage reduction tended to be unrelated to DPS output. It was actually more clearly fixed in the E:QS case than in others, which is why I did fewer tests- there was much tighter clustering.

I suspect that E:QS Threat Down was intended to be a detaunt, but if anyone is using a typical 75 First Age bow they are likely averaging more DPS from the QS than the raw threat down of -800. As you note, this is mostly due to crits and devs. It still generates far less threat than other attacks, but it just isn't a detaunt.