Shining Slash: Open Beta Edition, Thoughts on Tanking Nochsana

As an addition to my earlier post on the Nochsana Training Camp, I'd like to discuss a few of the challenges my group and I faced in the dungeon.

While the Training Camp is far from difficult, we still stumbled a few times, for a variety of reasons. While the first few pulls of the dungeon were completely trivial non-elites (soloable, even), the first serious pull was two hard hitting elite Balaur on the hill up to the Artifact. It's not a significant challenge in its own right, but the patrol that heads up the hill from the left may throw people off, as it's well timed to hit your group right as you're in the middle of fighting. We cleared the patrol before the stationary pull, but we missed one mob. There's another elite, just outside of the immediate pull range on a rise to the right. It appears to pull if you make a wrong move or fight too close to it, so be aware and either pull it by itself (will test on Live, with Inescapable Judgment) or pull the other two left in the direction the patrol came from and kill them there.

A few of us died at the Artifact when I ran forward and activated it, to test if the mobs guarding it aggro when you do. Surprise, they did. We also found that anybody not participating in the combat won't be pursued by the mobs, even if everyone who is dies. We could have guessed both things, but it's valuable to know for sure, rather than always play it safe and never know the true nature of the pulls. That said, if you're insistent on testing something like that for yourself and your group, have them stand back out of range, go test it, and if something goes wrong, run back out of their initial pull range so that when you're resurrected by your healer, you don't pull the mobs back on you immediately.

In general in Aion, mobs aren't chained together. In World of Warcraft, very often two guards on opposite sides of a doorway would both pull at the same time, no matter how far apart. In Aion, the norm appears to be that mobs will only pull together if they are within actual aggro radius of eachother (you check this by clicking them and looking for the orange circle around them in your minimap). There ARE exceptions to this, such as Chieftain Kraka, who when pulled drags all mobs not already dead in his area into combat as well. We suspected that the Nochsana General would, but the only conclusive evidence I can submit in that regard is that the Nochsana Teleporter will pull with him. Killing her might be all that is needed.

The only other wipes were at the hands of the guards atop the wall of the last gate leading to the fortress, where you fight one of the minibosses. A single mob patrols back and forth across the top of the gate, and if pulled accidentally (as it was the first time, by dps standing in its path, and the second time by the aggro radius of the Doc we were pulling down the ramp), or at the wrong time, can and will drag four extra hard hitters onto your party. The only ways to reliably deal with it are to have your party sprint up the ramp as it reaches the end of its patrol (at your end of the gate), and engage it and the Doc at the same time, or to prepare for it pulling adds and have your group ready to use CC.

One serious negative about CC in Aion however is that it causes -significant Enmity-, resulting in the class that used the CC move almost certainly getting aggro after it wears off, even if the Tank repeatedly uses Provoke (a non-damaging Enmity move, which doesn't break CC). It can be used to save your group in the nick of time, or to make a large pull temporarily smaller, but it must be prepared for by your group, so you can deal with the fallout properly.

Another Enmity related concern that I haven't mentioned yet (shame on me) is that the person that has initial aggro (starts the pull, or accidentally pulls an add) gets what appears to be a multiplier to all of their Enmity generation. If the Tank pulls, that's great and makes Tanking much easier. If a dps class pulls, it can make everything more dangerous, as the Tank's lower Enmity generation can mean that the Healer is more likely to pull aggro. If the Healer pulls (ask Zot to heal for you, go on, do it) then you're in trouble, one way or another.

Very often through the run our group members would pull, rather than let me start the combat, and this resulted in Zot (healing) getting aggro more than once. I also found myself struggling to hold aggro off of the Gladiator in the party, as he initiated the pull several times, and had higher base Enmity gen than anyone else (other than me) to start with. Fighting for aggro with him on the secondary target meant that I wasn't doing enough Enmity against the primary one, and again, that sometimes meant that Zot got aggro (although I was able to get it off of him fairly quickly, and he's not exactly squishy). This was largely a problem with communication, as our Gladiator was often off Tanking when we had extra mobs. If we'd communicated better, we wouldn't have had this problem at all.

That said, having an off Tank in Aion is regularly a godsend. As healing does a LOT of Enmity, having another Tank in the group means that, against multiple targets, the group's Tanks Enmity gen goes up significantly, allowing for more healing to be done before pulling aggro, which is never a bad thing. In addition, you now have more Enmity abilities that can be used in a short period of time (two Provokes, for example), which allows you to pick up groups of adds much, much faster. The only real downsides are: you're splitting your dps, so the first mob dies slower (which causes more damage to be dealt in the long run), and you now have two targets that need healing, which doesn't actually increase the amount of healing that needs to be done by a lot, but the Healer will need to constantly change targets, which puts the un-targeted Tank in danger.

As I mentioned in my last post as well, once the Fortress's main door is broken down by your siege weapons, a group of mobs charges at you. This is easily fixed by standing back, as they don't come out very far, and could probably be pulled in twos rather than all at the same time. That said, even pulling all of them at once wouldn't be bad if your group was prepared. CC or an off Tank would help too.

The first pull immediately inside the door might challenge you as well, as while by itself it is nothing special, but with the addition of three patrolling mobs walking around separately, in a crowded chamber, a good eye for distance is key.

Ultimately the dungeon isn't difficult, but what I've talked about above are some of the standard challenges that all groups in all instances will face. Mastering basic Enmity rotations, the art of pulling, using your minimap or your camera to locate any possible adds or patrols. All of these are necessary to complete any dungeon in a reasonable amount of time, and enjoy the experience. Practice makes perfect in all situations, so just reading about the challenges won't make a Tank out of you, but knowing what you'll face in advance is a huge help. Good luck, and enjoy yourselves.

PvP coming up!