Faction Champions AI Behavior: A Definitive Analysis

[Joanadark]

I've heard about the demo shout tanking concept, but when I've tried it myself it's seemed inconsistant.
It's possible that there is something to it, and I'm doing more testing on that, however for now my stance is that tanks are running into the middle of the melee pack, getting clipped by bladestorm, and then by virtue of the Health Deficit rule proceeding to "tank" several melee and think it's because of something special they did.
Doing demo shout requires fairly close range, which both puts you high on the proximity signature, and makes you likely to get clipped by aoe damage and thus open up your health deficit signature as well. Particularly on a strat where the rest of the melee raid members are off zerging down a healer somewhere else, this would probably explain why initial threat was going on tanks since they are running around in the melee's faces making a nuisance of themselves.

I've already gone into above why once a target is on someone, particularly multiple targets, they are likely to remain attacking that same player unless they lower their threat signature in one of the three areas.

[fafhrd]

Going to demand our spankadin is topless for this fight, to reduce her armor.

[beornus]

I sounds like you killed a couple of warlocks a lot figuring this out brekkie, kudos.

I was wondering when someone would pick up on that.

Noticed, but thought nothing of it, seems an appropriate use for them.

[Snake-Aes]

Going to demand our spankadin is topless for this fight, to reduce her armor.

Clicking off druid buff and devo aura should make a significant difference already, I think.

[fafhrd]

Well, I don't think you can click off devo aura on yourself unless it's your own aura - in which case all your squishies would lose it too.

No, I fear she'll just have to go topless.

Although we've wiped like once to FC since we first killed it though, so there may be some resistance to proposed changes.

[Snake-Aes]

Just tell magi and warlocks to switch to ice armor / demon armor then :p

[Meloree]

Brekkie (or Joanadark, whatever form of address you prefer), this is amazing stuff, thanks very much for the time and research.

[Klor]

You may want to look into how CC affects their threat.. In my experience they tend to target interupters and CCers quite more often than any other class.

Oh and long time no see Joana

[Threatco]

Is this a viable tanking strategy?

Start the fight with your tank at 50% HP. Have him run into the champs and face pull. Use very careful healing to keep him alive but not over 50% hp.

In theory as long as no one else gets hit or goes near the melee, the tank should maintain aggro. (Unless the armor factor is that large)

If this works. Then deathgrip the first DPS target away from your tank and the other champions and proceed to kill him.

Based on the above rules this should work as a way to 100% control the fight. Seems too good to be true.

[fafhrd]

Is this a viable tanking strategy?

Start the fight with your tank at 50% HP. Have him run into the champs and face pull. Use very careful healing to keep him alive but not over 50% hp.

In theory as long as no one else gets hit or goes near the melee, the tank should maintain aggro. (Unless the armor factor is that large)

If this works. Then deathgrip the first DPS target away from your tank and the other champions and proceed to kill him.

Based on the above rules this should work as a way to 100% control the fight. Seems too good to be true.

Some guilds have been doing it that way for quite a while according to EJ, so not too good to be true, no.

[Threatco]

Ughh, how do I miss this kind of stuff? For a few weeks we have not wiped on togc 10 champs but it's always a close thing. Sometimes it just feels like luck.

I will feel like pro sauce when I show this strat to my guilds groups.

[Bevan]

This is absolutely amazing, thanks for putting the work in. With any luck we'll be able to use it to start keeping everyone alive in 25s, instead of having a couple clothies faceplanted on the ground.

Definitely going to see if I can find a way to keep them all stuck on me, too. Would certainly make the fight a lot more interesting on my end.

[Koatanga]

Good write up.

However, I would like to present an anomaly that we have been enjoying for the past couple weeks:

When I equip my healing sword and shield, while still in prot spec and all other prot gear the same as my normal tanking set, they stick to me like glue.

I do the pull, so I have initial aggro - I'll grant that. And I am closest to them since they are attacking me - also granted. However, other melee DPS also attack them at the exact same range, and are ignored. They have less armour than I do (by a metric ton), and proximity is equal.

But ALL of the DPS go onto me at the start of the fight, and I keep them for about a minute while the healers franticly try to keep me vertical. Then the FCs drop as if uninterested for about the same amount of time, but spontaneously all decide to attack me again.

And by this I mean all of them. I seal and judge Justice, so the constant stuns should bother the one I am hitting, but that doesn't explain the behaviour of ones I am not even touching.

Our other Pally tank gets ignored almost completely. We are each assigned to a melee target to try to... well I don't know what exactly since our taunts are meaningless, but somehow the RL gives us the task of keeping them busy.

I used to run around after the warrior trying to get his attention while he raped clothies, (which is a dismaying task leaving one feel completely useless) until I noticed some OOM issues (since no one was paying attention to me, and I wasn't sealing/judging wisdom I got little mana return).

I can swap sword and shield and remain uncrittable, and it gives me a healthy boost to my mana pool, so I did. Since then, I'm the faction champion equivalent of methamphetimine.

I don't know why it happens, and it definitely does not conform to the rules laid out here, but I am curious if any of you experience the same thing.

[Worldie]

There may be (not tested much often, so don't take it as true) something with specs actually.

I say that because our other prot paladin uses his PvP prot/holy spec for FC, which is primarly prot, and absolutely NEVER gets targetted by any attack, while myself doing it as Holy get occasionally targetted by casters, melees and whatnot.


Regarding the CC, i'm pretty sure that most CC just target a random target in range.

[Dalithe]

I think I know what you are referring to. For Faction Champs 10 we go 2 healers and me as prot in holy gear for primarily cleanse duty and I take station dead center of the mess. I never get targeted for anything and the only thing that ever catches me off guard is if I cleanse someone that has Unstable Afflication hidden under a poison or disease.

This could be that, as prot you're still having near top Armor. Which would mean you only meet the range critiera and not the lowered HP or lower armor that others have. So of 3 criterias of the threat table requirements you only meet 1 of 3 instead of 2 of 3 or all 3 of 3.