mostundesired

Sure. I'm saying there's no tactical recourse for dealing with this (besides CC of course). Maybe CC is good enough, but the point is that it makes the Defender modal pointless because when I make my Scout retreat, enemies don't follow. Either threat generation is a thing, or there's a weird bug that makes (Minor Threat) pop up in the combat log when my Scout pops off. Underlined the relevant part. My point is that they don't disengage, no matter how little damage my tank does. Which wouldn't be a problem, but it makes the Defender Modal useless. The defender modal upgrade being a useless investment is what I'm trying to highlight, because the AI is entirely content in just trying and failing to put a dent my Tank for half an hour. With that, I think I will start a new thread with Defender modal upgrade as the topic. Engagement works just fine, to reiterate my stance and stay on topic.

Long post incoming, split into two parts. CONTEXT So after a lot of testing, I'm finding that most encounters have about of five or six enemies, and my Crusader has no problem holding six of them at once (Maybe more? At least one enemy tends to stay at range instead of engaging). In general, I'm finding more than 5 engagement slots is redundant due to some of the enemies being ranged attackers, but I'm not sure if that will hold for all encounters. I'm seeing three major problems so far. First, in order to ensure all those enemies latch on to my tank, I have to keep my Scout in stealth until my Crusader engages all of them. Not a huge deal, basically means you send your front-line fighters into combat first. Second, if an enemy isn't already engaged even after that (read:ranged attacker), they might go after my Scout anyway. Now usually, that's not too big of a deal either, as long as I can win against them in a DPS race. If I can't out damage them, it's a problem. Third, melee combatants that are engaged by my Crusader have a habit of turning around and attacking/engaging my Scout. It's not that I'm not hitting them with my Tank, it's that my tank isn't generating as much threat because of a lower rate of damage. But then if I make my Scout run away, the enemies just turn around again and keep attack my Crusader. Additional details, there are times when rather than having the defender modal on, I have the modal that increases deflection and accuracy. Usually because my Scout can't lay on enough hurt without getting hit (see reasons above), or because the enemy is immune/resistant to certain damage types, and I don't have a decent weapon set equipped to offset that. In those cases, I still have +2 engagement from Unbroken and Shieldbearer. Since more then 5 engagement slots tends to be superfluous, and I still have a bonus to deflection, I can set my tank into "damage mode" and still be able to do his job tanking. In doing this I lose out on being able to knock enemies prone should they try to disengage. You don't want Defender because of the additional engagement slots, you want Defender because of it's CC ability. So on paper, what you want to do for best tanking ability is be Unbroken/Shieldbearer, turn on Defender, and send them in before any other party member. However, the AI really doesn't want to disengage (so far), so then the Defender modal becomes more of a decoration than something useful; if it weren't for the damage reduction, you'd be better off adding accuracy and deflection. CONCLUSION Now that I have all that outlined (a lot of which I'm assuming is already known), the biggest problem isn't the engagement system itself. AI doesn't want to disengage and you can grab all the enemies you want by sending your tank/frontliners in first. The biggest problem is getting enemies to want to hit your tank more than your damage dealers. In talking about whether or not we want taunts, I think we're overlooking the fact that aggro management is already a thing in the game: you generate threat by doing more damage. The best tanks have maximum engagement, and maximum damage. Let's assume you max out might and perception on your tank. Well, what you want next is to max out either resolve or constitution, or maybe a healthy dose of both, to mitigate incoming damage. There's not really a point in pumping intelligence at all AFAIK, because you'll never need to drop someone prone with Defender, so you can dump int, most likely dump dex, and pump up your Mig, Dex, Con, and Res. So what I'm finding to actually need fixing, is the Defender modal. If enemies never want to disengage, knocking them prone when they do is useless. This might warrant a new thread, but I think what needs changing is either making the AI more prone to attempting disengagement, or change the Defender modal to do something other than making enemies go prone. If the former, reinforce the desire to attack enemies with lower AR. Suddenly, making enemies go prone is useful again. If the latter, make Defender generate more threat per damage done. Now ranged enemies are less likely to try and pick off my backline from a distance, and engaged melee enemies won't turn around to attack my melee DPS as often. I'm leaning more towards the former, because one can always just stack more damage dealt onto their tank to maintain threat. **TL;DR** Engagement works fine as long as you send your tank in first, but it doesn't actually stop enemies from attacking your squishies even when engaged, and the way AI handles being engaged makes the Defender modal underpowered.

Hopefully, the resolve, passive, and modals will be enough to keep that from being a problem. Can't one shot my tank if they can't hit him. Oh, and on enemies still targeting your melee DPS, what about auras that increase ally deflection? Or debuffs to enemy accuracy? Or both?

Instead of maxing con, I'd leave it at 10 and max might. Surviving might be harder, but I'm already pretty unlikely to get hit because of resolve. I would just have to compensate with better healing. (I.e., multiclassing or party members or maybe even being a moon godlike)

In the spirit of theorycrafting, let's go with the former, since there's already a suggestion assuming the latter. Do we increase the stickiness? Make it so that even enemies with the option to disengage/attack squishies without taking a hit are unable to or discouraged from doing so?

Good to hear we're in agreement. So do you think having those 8 engagement slots one one super tank is a bad thing for a full party? The way I see it, it's not inherently so. I can tell you from personal experience, if you have all those enemies on you, you either need to minmax or have a healer/disabler/lot of DPS coming from other characters to keep that tank from dying. Having all those other character types, like you mentioned, is still necessary if we're basing it solely on the ability to hold enemies in place. As for minmaxing, the only people you have to worry about for that is challenge enthusiasts who play harder modes (in which case, you probably don't want to balance the game around them) or weirdos like me who find excuses to minmax on normal difficulty

Firstly, I'll be pedantic and point out that we weren't talking about that, we were talking about the fact that you already have potentially four extra engagement slots that are useless, and I was proposing a way to make them useful. If you wanted to do away with those extra slots entirely, I wouldn't be opposed. I'm actually really bad at multitasking, so I tend to only play with two min-maxed characters of my favorite classes, a Fighter and a Rogue. What you're arguing for is to necessitate a full party, which I think is a more roundabout (but still valid) solution to the problem of all those useless engagement slots. I would prefer, instead, to have both options. Either I can make a full party like how you described, or I can stack engagement and defenses on my Fighter/Paladin while my Rogue/Ranger goes to town. So I guess now I'm trying to figure out why having one super tank is a bad thing. Balance issues I see are that it leads to one main tank and a bunch of DPS. I guess you could add enemies that can escape engagement, or attack other characters while engaged to counter that. You could also call it boring, but in that case, it's a matter of player choice whether or not to go with it.

That makes sense. When you put it that way, I'd rather Fighters (or whatever other class) be tanks through strategy and character building, rather than through a single "fite me" button. Although I still think the latter has its place, it doesn't seem a good fit for Pillars. It works well in a game like Dragon Age where they're designed explicitly to be distracting meatbags. I can see how that would be cheesey in a game more about tactics, though.

Lack of physical space might very well be the biggest issue, yes. So how do we solve this? Increase the range of engagement for Unbroken/Shieldbearers? That would solve the issue of not just being unable to hold all those engagements, but also enemies just walking around the fighter with ease. Any downsides to that, besides it looking silly? Side note, I'm curious what your reason for being so vehemently against taunts is? If everything was exactly the same, but they just threw taunts on top of it, would that be acceptable? Please elaborate if not.

Aw, shucks. I like this a lot. Gives you that one option, either at the beginning or halfway through a fight, to save your squishies from being targeted. I think I'd make some changes, though. Make it more like an AoE Into the Fray than forcing enemies to engage you automatically. I find that the AI tends to stick with whatever is pissing them off the most at the given moment, at least for a while, so that could be what makes all the difference.

Yes, of course, I'm talking about which tools should or shouldn't be provided when that happens. You did lay out some good ones, though, so I'm satisfied with that answer. It brings me back to a point I made earlier, though: the longer a battle goes on, the less options you have to deal with engagement, especially if more enemies show up. That's the weakness I see with engagement. Once it's surpassed, it's not effective. If it can't be surpassed, it's all powerful against squishies. What tools do you have once your tank's engagement has been surpassed and you no longer can evade it yourself? Arguably, passives that make engagement attacks less accurate is the answer, but I'm raising the question regardless.

This, I like. Maybe even stronger than that, make them re-engage when targetted, hit or miss. Here's a thought that hasn't come up, though: what about enemies that have abilities to escape engagement like a rogue or ranger has? How do we deal with what happens when they break out of engagement with no repercussion?

My only doubt with the current suggestion is if it's even a really significant; if the fighter's ability to make enemies hit by disengagement go prone isn't significant enough already.

So how about something like an ability or talent to make disengagement attacks do more damage? And restrict it somehow, because whilst I like disengagement attacks being useful, I'm not fond of the idea that they are universally that strong.

I had meant adding threat management on top of engagement. Like, a passive to make enemies more likely to engage. Or unlikely to disengage. Or something. EDIT: As is, Fighters already get an modal that makes enemies go prone if hit by disengagement attacks. And I think that in that mode, those attacks have higher accuracy, but that might just be in the first game.

So add some sort of threat management to fighters, in short? I can get behind that.

My apologies if it sounded like an attack. It was meant to be a suggestion that we focus more on how/if engagement needs improvement, and he seemed to me to be talking about that engagement needs to be fighter only to make up for general talents, which seemed unrelated. I ask again, and clarify that I'm talking about balancing engagement for fighters only vs general weapon talents for fighters only, how does that make the discussion on engagement being underpowered better?

Cute. So how exactly does this improve the discussion on engagement being underpowered or not?

It sounds like you're bringing in arguments from another topic. Maybe this one should continue to be about engagement, and not about who gets what passive talents?

Partly my fault, I'm having way too much fun theorycrafting

Oh, okay. Well, if that were the case, then I would make scrolls limited in use. I would rather not do that, and have them just be equal.

Great idea. My only qualms, then, would be defining where to stop. One handed, two handed, weapon and shield, dual wield (fighter), deep pockets(rogue), gunner, marksman(ranger), slayer talents(barbarian), and use of scrolls (cipher, chanter, priest, wizard, druid). I'd say add to that some minor hand-to-hand technique like a kick (monk), and an inspiring war cry (paladin). Or something like that.I wonder exactly how much power is gained with scrolls per point invested in Arcana skill? Only pondering if technically a martail class could get more power out of a single magic scroll then a caster gets out of weapon after taking a weapon style proficiency.That would be too much. A fighter will still be better in melee because of stances. A caster, respectively, should always be better with spells because of power, area of affect, penetration, or something like that. Efficacy, basically.

Great idea. My only qualms, then, would be defining where to stop. One handed, two handed, weapon and shield, dual wield (fighter), deep pockets(rogue), gunner, marksman(ranger), slayer talents(barbarian), and use of scrolls (cipher, chanter, priest, wizard, druid). I'd say add to that some minor hand-to-hand technique like a kick (monk), and an inspiring war cry (paladin). Or something like that.

I was just saying that,you'll have to forgive the odd timing if my posts, I'm on my phone in the doctor's office. Anyway, I would say scrolls aren't quite the same because they're not reusable, but if they were, ohoho, now we're cooking with oil.

The last few posts have been enlightening. So weapons are thought of as tools, but all spells count as abilities? Fair enough. Then what about talents that let a barbarian use grimoires to cast low level spells at their power level? This could work for everything. Make priests need holy symbols, chanters need instruments, ciphers need a focus of some sort. This is leaning heavily on being classless, and very unlikely to happen, but it's cool to think about.