Howdy and such. I have recently returned to this game and ran my first instance with other players. I was DPS, but wound up being the tank. I was doing so much more damage than the tank, that I pulled aggro with one attack.
We were all low level, so there was not much of a problem with me pulling aggro, but I am seeing simillar reports in guides and posts. Pulling aggro seems to be a problem, so I came here seeking advice on how top level DPS players do not pull aggro.
Try scaling back on initial DPS, i.e. pause a few seconds on your first attack to allow the tank time to get the target’s full attention before you lay into it.
Stop attacking if you do draw aggro, to give the tank time to try and get it back.
I would still advise a scan through all of your slotted actives and passives in case any of them note that they add threat as one of their effects.
I am very confident I have no high threat or taunt abilities on my character. I was pulling hate from the tank with one hit.
I am fairly confident I was pulling aggro because the tank was not actually tanking (using high threat abilities or taunt). They were chaos and just spamed Schism, which is not a high threat or taunt ability. I was also 8 levels higher tham them and I have a blue quality weapon.
But, again, I made this thread to ask if there is any special behaviour or conduct, maybe even gearing, I may need as a DPS to avoid drawing aggro moving forward. I have read guides and seen message board posts that say it is easy for DPS to draw aggro in this game. I know there is some gear and items in the game that have a hate lowering effect. Are these neccessary, or can I skip them?
Making a build around running with lower level characters isn’t really recommended for other low level characters.
The advice to give the tank a second or two before laying in helps, but if your tank isn’t tanking that’s a group problem, not a you problem as dps.
If AA isn’t unlocked, there simply is no role of tank in the game. You can’t tank without it. Story mode dungeons don’t assign the role, they’re designed so dps players in survival builds won’t die if they have aggro. From there it’s only a question of who does most damage, they will have aggro except when someone’s casting a taunt. The intention is 3 dps players in story dungeons, that’s the easiest group composition to complete it with.
Once you have AA a tank can set 30x as much threat and from there it’s possible to discuss what’s going right or wrong (as it’s possible for a dps player to exceed 30x their damage with luck and some level gap… equal ability players the gap should not be more than 6-8x average, but a string of crits can easily triple that)