Provoke - Analyzed

[kebrok]

Be carefull when taking advice from a warrior/whm!

I have never seen provoke act in such a way as to make me think it "failed." Seems to me it adds so much hate, just like a direct damage spell would. Sometimes it is not enough to pull the monster back to the provoker because another player has more hate then the provoke can overcome.

Take a whm and benediction for example. Unless the provoker has alot of hate built up, a single provoke will not get the mob on them (as far as I have seen.) This can be tested by having someone make a mob very angry, and then use provoke. If I am correct, they provoke won't pull the mob off no matter how many times the test is run. If taurius is correct the mob will sometimes be pulled off, sometimes not.

I brought up bard and bst just because they would be two classes that would have alot of chr gear. For the test I was suggesting to examine provoke, they would need to sub warrior.

Btw, sneak attack is not the thief skill that transfers hate. Trick attack is.

[Taurius]

yeah yeah I was too tired to write sneak+trick+viper bite >,.<

I was not giving an advise. I was giving the fact of what Provoke is. Provoke IS a Charm skill. Don't confuse Taunt with Provoke. Taunting is maintaining enmity, while Provoking is the act of performing that skill.
All Charm skills require parameters to be met for it to be successful. Obviously for Provoke, enmity is one of those parameters. The other parameters being, CHR, your lvl, the mobs lvl, and the PT's lvl. BRDs and BSTs have some other parameters of their own. BRDs being their instrument, and for BSTs, damage done to the mob.

I stated before that Charm skills can't be stacked, while enmity does. Charms effect the mob directly, and a 1 time effect. Just because a BRD casts the same song over and over, doesn't mean the effect of the song will be stronger or successful with more casts. Same with Provoke. If 5 ppl casted Provoke, it doesn't mean the mob will be more subseptible to each consecutive Provoke.
Enmity stacks dynamically on the player. Meaning an action that is done that creates enmity, is compounded with all the ones effected. So if a WHM does curaga on a PT of 6 of lvl 20s, and it cures everyone for 100HP each, that WHM just created 600 points(figuratively) of enmity. Being equivalent of a single melee or nuker doing 600 damage with one hit/cast at lvl 20. The enmity parameter being so extreme, no one in that PT of lvl 20s can have a successful Provoke.

And what the hell does my being a WAR/WHM have to do anything with my knowledge of the game???? What I played doesn't reflect how I played. I was the first in beta to be lvl 24 and with full Chain armor, first to get Purple belt, Bat Cape, Latern Shield, Holy Phial, white cape, Garnet Ring, Full Musketeers armor(had all the gears at lvl 48), AF2, and more before any other player in beta. I was the 4th person to get to lvl 55. My PT of 8 did Genkie1 in 3 days. I did 150 quests, many in which no one else knew how to do. I soloed and killed Mimas at lvl 43. I'm proud to say that I was one of a few that can say, had never had any help from higher lvl players. I got all the advance jobs. I always had the best armor and weapon for every lvl. I had more gils than i could use, so I bought everything for overprice, keke I messed up the economy because I bought things for so much more than anyone else. With all my gear, I had +11STR, +7MND to help both my WAR and WHM jobs at lvl 50. I was the best taunter(without using 2hour). I used Provoke, War Cry, Devine Seal Curaga, and Breaks to keep the healers and nukers from getting aggro. I'm not say my sub was the best for WAR in a PT, I just used it to its best abilities. But I have yet to see a soloing combo that was better....hmmm maybe WAR/NIN if I had tons of Blink.

[Jubba43605]

I am a Paladin, and if CHR has ANYTHING to do with my ability to Provoke, then I am supposed to be the worst Provoker on the planet. Paladin CHR is in the shitter. If CHR messes with your ability to Provoke, then a Mithra should not go anywhere near a tanking job. As of right now, anything said in this topic is pure opinion, and has no proof whatsoever of being true. Even mine. So unless someone who works on the game can come clear this up, it is all speculation.

[Russta]

Originally posted by Jubba43605
As of right now, anything said in this topic is pure opinion, and has no proof whatsoever of being true. Even mine. So unless someone who works on the game can come clear this up, it is all speculation.

I beleive that has been pointed out several times and as we said it is impossible to point it out. I've partied with hundreds of Paladins and Warriors and various other provokers and CHR is known to affect it somewhat. Your Paladin is level 25 and, while i'm not shooting you down, this really does have a lot to do with what you have experianced later on. Wait till you need to taunt off of a Black Mage MB'ing with an Ancient.

I somehow can guess the reply to this post

[Extreme]

Your all wrong, hate does not add any +hate to the warrior, but rather resets a set # of hate from the rest of the PT.

I tested this out myself.. go think about it. (dont make me explain the whole thing either)

[laicram]

Yea, hopping back into the subject. I was thinking more about the Benediction scenario. Voke will never "counter" a Benediction. That brings the whole debate back to square one, for me.

[Brassias]

I've had 4 vokes bring hate off whm on benediction before Greater Pugil/Quifim. I don't see what all the chatter is about though... The simple fact that you party with people in a 2lvl range of your level if you want to make experience and you place yourself with the enemy away from the mages... You make a provoke order and when you see it turn for the mages hit the macro... simple. You have your mages wait to cast nukes late in the battle and only cast up to cure II except in bad situations to not cause alot of hate... Normally in the parties I'm in we let the hate stay on just one person normally and then the whm cast regen on me and only has to heal me instead of healing 4 other people sucking up all the MP works better that way atleast for mobs that aren't extremely difficult or do area attacks like bomb toss... Really I'm more worried about people saying they gotta disband or use the bathroom every 5 minutes instead of how provoke works :O) Another thing no one brought up what about people casting cure I outside of a party while a higher level is fighting a mob, and it comes to hit the lowly healer...?? Not to change the subject but does anyone know if shield bash used on a bomb toss actually help deflect damage? Thanks in advance

[Spider-Dan]

Originally posted by Extreme
Your all wrong, hate does not add any +hate to the warrior, but rather resets a set # of hate from the rest of the PT.

I tested this out myself.. go think about it. (dont make me explain the whole thing either)

OK, in a thread about analyzing Provoke, when you come in and say, "none of you know what you're talking about, this is how it works, not going to explain how/why or give any evidence, kthxbye," it's probably not going to be received with a standing ovation and a Nobel Prize.

[Extreme]

Do I care? I'm telling you how it works.. it isnt open for debate.

Why would I care how people accept the info.. its fact whether they do or not.

[Spider-Dan]

And we're supposed to believe you... why?

If the workings of Provoke were really so obvious and transparent, I don't think we'd be on page 3 of this thread, still without any conclusive evidence to prove one theory over another. (And I'm sure this is far from the first Provoke thread.)

[zyfe mural]

again, take the link. Hate has nothing to do with your level...tested and proven. Bridge parties, you will see. Use intervals of 100 and 25s, it is easy.

[laicram]

Briefly touching some responses:

Of course we understand "the use" of Provoke. This is more about breaking down it's minor details. I wanna know if Cha+ items will make a difference, for example.

Until someone can cite from an official text of some kind, or come up with a full-proof test, we're all here throwing in theories as to what the "the mechanics" of provoke really are.

[Spider-Dan]

Originally posted by zyfe mural
again, take the link. Hate has nothing to do with your level...tested and proven. Bridge parties, you will see. Use intervals of 100 and 25s, it is easy.

...

Your thread is not at all relevant to this one.

Your thread discusses how to keep hate, while using some (very convenient) arbitrary number values that you have assigned to Provoke and other actions. In your system, why exactly is it that Provoke is worth 100 "hate points" and not 78, or 109? Why do hits count as 25 hate points? Surely higher damage hits count for more hate. Just because everything would be really easy to understand if it were like that, doesn't make it so.

To put it in your terms, the point of this thread is to figure out how to make Provoke worth more "hate points." It is obviously tied to some statistic, be it max HP, CHR, or level. Your thread does nothing to help us address this question.

[Spider-Dan]

Originally posted by Taurius
I was not giving an advise. I was giving the fact of what Provoke is. Provoke IS a Charm skill.

I'm sorry, but I think that this is pretty conclusively incorrect. Provoke is not a binary (yes/no) Charm action. Here's why.

First of all, I have never, ever seen Provoke fail [charm=no] against a mob with zero or very little hate, and I've never heard of such thing happening. If Provoke was in fact a binary action, unless it had a 100% modifier in it somewhere, it would have to fail sometimes. We've all seen thousands upon thousands of no/low-hate provokes.

Now, let's take the modifier case. If Provoke does have a modifier in it that says that if the mob's enmity towards someone else is below a certain value, then Provoke always works [charm=yes], that might explain why it doesn't fail. However, this is simply a roundabout way of saying that Provoke has an approximate enmity value of whatever that 100% threshold is. If the current target has less enmity than that threshold, Provoke works 100%; if it has more, Provoke may work, at a reduced likeliness, etc.

Finally, in the case of situations where Provoke definitely doesn't work (say, a THF/WAR with little hate trying to Provoke off of a WHM after Benediction), you would have to explain that by saying that if the target's enmity is above a certain threshold, Provoke has a 0% success rate [charm=no]. Once again, this is just a very convoluted way of saying that Provoke has a certain enmity value, within a given range.

As far as Extreme's assertion that Provoke subtracts hate from the rest of the party, way to reinvent the wheel. First off, your theory would have to assume that players can go into negative enmity value; if not, then when a WAR Provoked to pull a mob, the first party member to attack it with anything (or cure the WAR) would instantly gain aggro.

Even if you assume the existence of negative enmity, this theory is still unlikely; using the "addition-by-subtraction" theory, if a party mage cast a very low hate spell, and the WAR provoked and got one-shotted, the mob would just walk away (original mage now has negative enmity).

Finally, I would like to see someone try to explain the difference between adding hate to me, or subtracting hate from everyone else. (hint: it's a math question) The only way you could prove "addition-by-subtraction" true is by having someone outside the party attack the mob; i.e. call for help. Good luck with that.

[Extreme]

Why is there a 3 page thread on the subject? Because its filled with a bunch of newbies who dont know what the skill is. Any experienced player will tell you exactly what I did. I'm not going to debate with you what everyone else on the Japanese sites accepted as fact for over a year.

And as for your brilliant response to why I'm wrong.. you cant have negative hate, that would imply the monster runs away from you. The minimum value for hate is zero, when your provoke, it reduces your partys hate A SET AMOUNT (not instantly to zero..) and resets your own hate value to some set # above 0.

Do me a favor, go in a 2 man party with a Thf and a War. Conduct two experiments.

1- Have the Warrior provoke, then stack all of his skills after the provoke. Then have the Thf use Sneak/trick/viper. The Warrior will NOT lose the hate.

2- Have the Warrior use all of his skills, then provoke AFTERwards. Then have the Thf use Sneak/trick/viper. The Warrior will lose the hate.

Like I said, any experienced player knows how it works. And this is exactly why all the NA newbies make sucky Plds/tanks.. no offense.

Im done here, enjoy debating what everyone else already knows.