People often ask about Threaten's effectiveness in bosses, and I've always wondered if and when it should be used. Since there was nothing conclusive on the forums (with the small exception of this thread -> click), I decided to test it on my own. The tests are not supposed to be the most accurate, I was not trying to get the exact damage % differences, but just understand if it should be used. This was mostly done for my own use, but I thought I should also share the results on forum. One thing to note is this was tested with Threaten being muled, I will explain why it matters later. I decided to first test it on a low W. Def boss, and then on the highest possible W. Def boss (out of those that are static and have no i-Frames). The idea was to hit them with a paladin that can't hit cap, because the damage lines would be the easiest to track this way, and then compare the clear times and the biggest damage line I could spot. *Human error such as getting stuck in attack limit or getting knocked back was accounted for. Krex (570 Def): Spoiler: Threaten Spoiler: No Threaten Biggest line: Threaten - 164511 No Threaten - 164256 Time: Threaten - 21:11.337 -> (1271 seconds) No Threaten - 21:18.994 -> (1277 seconds accounting for 1.9 secs human error) Difference - 0.47% in favor of Threaten. Castellan (4200 Def): *Boss was split in half for those tests, lines are slightly bigger because of Holy Charage. Spoiler: Threaten Spoiler: No Threaten Biggest line: Threaten -172828 No Threaten - 172841 Time: with - 24:50.289 -> (1490 seconds) without - 25:21.320 -> (1518 seconds accounting for 3 secs human error) Difference - 1.86% in favor of Threaten. Since W. Def behaves in ways that I don't fully understand, and since it was speculated that it might be a flat damage reduction per line or affected by crits in some way, I decided to also test with NL (just clear time, not tracking the lines this time). Spoiler: NL with Threaten Spoiler: NL with no Threaten Time: Threaten - 14:50.17 No Threaten - 14:49.3 I got knocked back out of range once on the one with the Threaten, so the time on both is roughly the same, which is very confusing. Conclusion (you should only care about this part): Threaten is nearly useless. On a super high Def boss (4200), it was only roughly 1.8% damage difference while Threaten was muled. It means that if you are the attacking Paladin, It's not worth using Threaten actively while having to attack, you will either gain little to no damage, or even lose damage if you hit damage cap often. With the difference being this small on a high Def boss, you can only imagine what kind of difference it makes on bosses such as Von Leon (1700 Def), HT (1760 Def) or Auf (1400 Def). Do not use Threaten on solo content or small party content, you will be better off just hitting instead. Do not use Threaten for LHC, the mobs die too fast to get the full duration of the skill, and you will have to spend extra time using it on multiple platforms too. For expedition content such as Von Leon, there are other factors making Threaten less useful, the main two are: 1) Demolition ignores Def. 2) People hitting damage cap, such as Paladins or Barrage last line (meaning Bucc only really benefits from Threaten on 5 Barrage lines for the whole combo). It is slightly beneficial to use Threaten in VL still, but the difference will be in seconds over the whole boss fight, not minutes. That said, do not use Threaten for VL mobs, you are better off just hitting instead since Threaten will not have the time to benefit the party more than a single hit. The other exception where you could be using this, is for content where Crash is often muled, and can be chained with Threaten on a macro with no extra effort (HT, Scarga). Do not put any extra effort in clicking it, it's not worth it. I hope this helped some of you!
Good stuff! Had no idea Demo ignores defense! While you were digging into this, did you get a clearer sense of when defense actually gets applied in the damage formula? From my testing, I still can’t pin down where the confirmed reduction is being applied. The only thing that seems public is: Max damage - (monster def * .5) Min damage - (monster def * .6) What I can’t figure out is which part of the calculation those max/min values are being pulled from — whether it’s: AP window Range AP window Range * Buff Multipliers AP window Range * Buff Multipliers * Attack Multiplier That’s where I’m seeing inconsistent results, and I’m not sure if it varies by class or if I’m just missing something. Curious if you came across anything more definitive.
Not really, sorry The plan was to first check if it makes enough difference in damage for me to do a deep dive, but since that's not the case I'd rather not spend more time on it.
Ah, but you made a terrible miscalculation. My pally's threaten cast is macro'd to shout "oh no lag", which makes it incredibly important to cast a few times randomly in the middle of long boss fights. Much better skill in that macro Edit: the ayumilove formulas say theoretically it should have a bigger impact than what you've seen, so I wonder if it has reduced effectiveness on bosses like many other skills. Like it's 5% on boss mobs instead of 20% or something.
