Pet aggro = my aggro?

[Scalewulf]

To be specific, the raid in question that I first noticed this happening was Magmaton in POF.  

We had a very significant raid force, pretty heavy on nukers.  

Wiped 3 or 4 times, don't remember.  

Each time, the MA died and before SA could build significant agro, my pet had had agro and died in about 2.5 seconds (seeing as how this bastard hits for 2k+).  

As soon as my pet bit it, I was summoned and bitch slapped.  

There is noway I was that high on agro list, because I wasn't meleeing and was just tossing the occaisonal nuke and trying to keep pet alive through AE rampages.  

Maybe this was a fluke, but it happened more than once.  Pet bites the dust, I was summoned and squashed.  

It was always the same scenario, MA would go down, before SA could generate agro, pet died then I died.  

This is a pretty unique encounter because everyone tries to stay at max melee distance to avoid AE rampage.  So Magmaton would immiadetly go for next highest on agro list (pet or PC) because all were borderline out of his melee range.  

This was my experience with it, take from it what you will...

:wink:

[Grymlok]

Hrm, I've had that happen to me before, on Fennin wipes, but I knew exactly why I got summoned.  Cycling 3 nukes, 2 dots, and patching the MT constantly = flattened beastie.

[cougerofeq]

I dont know if its all the hitting we do as duel weilders or pet agro - but I get comments all the time about the huge amount of agro I get and how the tanks have trouble keeping mobs off me. I always assumed I was getting warder agro.

I know if im not tanking it seems to help to turn taunt off on my warder - it seems to make a significant difference.  The only time I turn it back on is if my warder is off-tanking.  I always turn taunt off on raids for the same reason.

[danaconda]

You want some proof that when pet dies, you don't get any additional aggro?

PL someone. Have your pet beat the crap outta something till the mob almost dead. /pet get lost and let PLee finish it off. PLee gets exp, simple as that.

I believe you get 1 (one) point of aggro just for sending your pet (since it would be too easy to abuse if you got zero aggro)

[bugman]

I know if im not tanking it seems to help to turn taunt off on my warder

my experiences with agro have led me to do the exact opposite. i seem to generate a bit of agro even after virtually giving up on dots in exp groups, with melee and chaining the 3 30 second refresh nooks i have a hard time keeping mobs off me. but the thing ive found that seems to help more then anything is keeping taunt on, sending pet asap, and making sure pet has proc up (yes i know some people that dont use proc because it generates agro). what this does is makes my warder generate a ton of agro, and if you understand the laws of pet agro you know that if the pet is high enough the mob will turn to the pc thats the closest, which all well trained tanks should right ontop of a mob, which means if i keep max melee im not getting hit. pet agro is funny, seems even if im trying to get agro alot of times i cant over my warder (have messed around chaining incapacitate and not drawn agro from solo engaged pet just messing around). should try this some time, it works wonders.

another thing is on raids i also make sure pet is generating as much agro as possible for the same theory. you'd be surprised how many times a whole raid has disengaged a mob so the MT could reposition and my warder gets summoned a few times, which yes is slightly annoying, but again by being on top of the hate list that means the mob is hitting the nearest pc, which should always be a tank, and if the event of tanks going down they'll turn to other melee that are near and not run towards healers.

one perfect example of this was a few weeks ago in VT on one of the blob2's we were doing a good job of wiping, i think 3 straight tanks went down, was very ugly, well we didnt wipe because my pet stayed engaged the whole time and was high on the hate list (okay there were others there too but ill take the credit!). anytime a tank went down the mob would turn to the next nearest melee, which was another tank, until ALL tanks were down at which point the entire raid backed off and my pet tanked a few rounds and once pet rune and mend were used i actually jumped in and tanked a good couple minutes, then of course i died and some other random melee jumped in until we got another tanked buffed and eventually won.  the moral of the story is that without pets imo the healers woulda be toast after the first couple tanks went down, but as it was the mob never moved a single time as pets kept beating away creating agro and it was easy to throw melee in to tank until a real tank got buffed up.

on tz fight of rztw script (the one that procs agro debuff on mt, and agro enhancer aoe or something like that) my guild kept having problems with him turning and/or healers getting early agro and the aoe chewing people up, so i asked a bit about an idea i had and pretty much got ignored and got told to do whatever just dont wipe the raid. so me being sneaky i got pet all buffed up, left taunt of (which i always do anyhow) and got a sk friend to cast the agro magnifying buff on my pet. i guarded pet in perfect position so right when the pull was inc i got pet on mob asap before many heals even were cast and there was not a single problem with agro on anyone but the mt. of course its hard to know for certain if my pet really helped, as the only way would be to intentionally try to over agro, which wouldnt be wise, but it sure as hell seemed to help as we'd struggled with agro on that fight a bit and suddenly had zero problems after 2 wipes with exact same person tanking.

my advice, encourage as much warder agro as possible and learn to keep max melee, your healer and caster friends especially will appreciate it as will the mt you're helping keep agro on, although mostly they'll just take the credit for it, but hey as long as tanks are tanking im happy.

[bugman]

ive never personally had pet die and gotten summoned, but maybe it follows the same theory as several times where ive been the only pet class and ive had my pet die and instantly the mob turns to me while before with pet alive and me farther from mob then mt i was fine. maybe its the same deal, if you're on of only a few pet classes, not to mention i personally send my pet in very early were ive noticed alot of mages and necro's wait a bit, if pet dies then there isnt pet agro locking down agro onto whoever is closer. was also told recently that if 4 pets are engaged then the rules of pet agro dont apply anymore too, so hell i dunno. all i know is usually my pet alive generating agro in groups = me not tanking, my pet and others generating agro on raid mobs while tanks are going down = healers not drawing agro and mobs turning to next closest melee, and situations where my pet is only pet on raid mobs i can run VERY high agro and not get agro at all unless pet dies then im toast.

[Tastian]

*shrugs* here's what I've seen/done.  I'll test it more when I have time though.  Aggro mob with char A,  send my pet.  Pet get's aggro and is tanking.  Pet dies, mob goes to char A not me.  Pet and char B melee'n, me standing back doing nothing.  Char B backs off, pet is tanking, char B goes in char B is obviously tanking, I go in with Char B and pet, I am *NOT* tanking, but char B still is.  Yet my pets hate was > char B,  my hate was lower and obviously again my pet + my hate > player B.  

Nother random situation was doing an LDoN and letting a monk friend tank.  Monk was doing *LESS* damage than me + pet.  Monk had no stun/aggro weapons, but monk was tanking ~80% of the time.  My personal damage was below the monks and I was being careful with slows/dots/high aggro spells.  However, if my pets damage and hate from stuns/procs was getting added in there is just zero way the monk could have tanked over me.  

Basically I've just never had a situation that I could point to as going "well me sharing/getting aggro from pet would explain this".  Yet I have had lots of situations where it seems impossible that pets aggro had anything to do with mine.  If I get time this weekend I'll try some more random tests with a third person and passing aggro and see what happens.

[Strijder]

I'm seeing a lot of situations where the beastlord seems to be getting more aggro than he alone generates, but not enough to be the result of combining the aggro.  Could the max of the pet and beastlord's seperate aggros be used to determine the beastlord's apparant aggro?

[Noriko]

OK, so it sounds like no one really know for sure how this works.

I think Hrann's statement is the only thing that's correct in this thread.  How should we test this?

[Coprolith]

Since i two-box with a druid i could do the following test:

Send the pet in to attack a mob, while staying out of the fight altogether myself. After one or 2 Rellic procs, let druid snare the mob (possibly multiple times). Wait till pet is dead, or simply hit "pet go away". If mob goes after me instead of the druid, i'll have inherited my pet's agro.

I'll try to squeeze in this test tonight

/hugs

[Mahes]

I was reading the mage boards, and came across this thread: Mage Stuff

In it, this portion about using a pet on named mobs and the aggro it generates:

THERE WAS ANOTHER REASON FOR LOWER DPS!!!!

I have stated several times in other posts already, that the Mage's Epic pet has FAR more aggro generation then ANY pet out there. Aggro generation holds a target on the main tank, even when aggro from other players outside melee range goes higher then the main tank. WHY does this happen? Because of 2 rules to the AI of the game....

1. Mobs will find a way to put the top-hatelist player/pet in melee range.
2. NPC's will always hit a PLAYER instead of any PET in melee range.

Mage's Epic pet generates aggro so hard, that I when soloing I can drop nearly back to back nukes until a mob dies and not take aggro. For Eandori, that's maintaining DPS around 220 just from nukes. Same deal on raids, Epic pet generates the same aggro even if he's 100% spell-resisted. The procs and stuns still go off.

Last night on RZWL, I spaced my nukes out about 15 seconds between each one on average. That lowered my nuke-DPS to around 90 DPS. EVEN WITH long delay's in casting, and Spell Casting Subtlety level 3 I got summoned and killed at RZWL=35%. What does that mean? It meant the "aggro limit" that ALL RAID MEMBERS outside melee range had to stay below was much lower. Based on my average DPS last night, and what I can do WITH an Epic pet, I would say our DPS last night was half of what it could have potentially been, even without pets!!


If anybody wants me to SHOW THEM this is true, and exactly as I say it is, I can do that. Very easy test. All I need is a warrior, 1 wizard, me and a healer. We go to some zone where the mob is a good test dummy like those rock guys in Akheva Ruins.

Test 1. -No Epic pet
Mob is pulled, warrior does his normal tanking job. Wizard waits 10 seconds then chain nukes his highest nuke (strike of Solusek). Count how many nukes the wizard can drop before taking aggro.

Test 2. -Using Epic pet
Mob is pulled, warrior does his normal tanking job. Mage sends in Epic pet as soon as warrior engages. After 10 seconds the wizard chain casts his top nuke and waits to see how long until he takes aggro. It WILL BE LONGER!!!! I'll put 10,000 plat on it if anybody wants to bet me!

Is there any danger from the Pet holding the "aggro wall" for a raid? Sure there is. If the pet dies, the aggro wall is gone and the mob will remove anybody above the main tank in hate list. Is there a good way to avoid this problem? Yes again!! Give Virtue to the Epic pet, a full set of summoned gear, and the Epic pet will have 6305 HP. A mage can instantly heal his pet for 2146 every 9 min, very similar to Paladin Lay on hands, but faster refresh. A mages self heals are 1440 per cast when focused, and when the pet is either not engaged, or holding, the pet regens 270 HP/tic. Finally, for those mobs with nasty large AoE's (Tallon Zek, MB, etc) There is a LDoN spell called Guard of Calliav that will absorb 3 hits for any amount of damage. That could be 3 melee hits for 1, or up to 3 AoE nukes for 4k each.

We can't have a Paladin or Shadow Knight main tanking, they can't tank as well as a Warrior. BUT the aggro they can hold is much better. So there is a dilemma there right? Well with Mage Epic pet, you get the high aggro wall, AND you get the warrior still main tanking. Do you guys realize how valuable that is

Now, all the other things mentioned in our thread about aggro, I've observed and assumed to be true.  What I'm most interested in is the potential for this to assist the MT on a named.  If I'm reading this right, they're saying that the pet will generate more aggro than the tank, but since it's a pet it won't be attacked until there are no other PCs in aggro range.  The second part we already know.

Now when I do a named, I tend to turn /pet taunt off just in case.  But I'm curious if by leaving taunt on and having a pet on the named the entire fight, would that really allow casters to go full-throttle on nukes, and presumably allow priests to heal away?  I'd assume melee could still over-aggro the tank since they're in range.

The theory seems logical to me, I'd just never heard it before.  Ideas? Comments? STFU Mahes we knew that already?

[Coprolith]

Just did the test. Had to pull the mob to the zone line, used the lvl 15 nuke for that. Send in the pet who grabbed agro immediately before the mob could hit me. After the first Rellic proc i snared the mob with my druid, then let the pet die at the hands of the mob (pet proc'ed Rellic 3 more times before dieing). After the pet's death, mob went after the druid immediately, so it's safe to say that i didnt inherit my pet's agro.

Now when I do a named, I tend to turn /pet taunt off just in case. But I'm curious if by leaving taunt on and having a pet on the named the entire fight, would that really allow casters to go full-throttle on nukes, and presumably allow priests to heal away?

Well full-throttle may be a bit much, but i do know this. If i pull a mob with my BST using the 65 slow, and then DoT and snare the mob with my druid and sit him down, the druid will get agro only if the pet hasn't proc'ed Rellic yet. I.o.w. druid DoT and snare agro is larger then slow agro, but less then the pet's agro if the pet has proc'ed Rellic. If the pet procs a few times early in the fight i can pretty much chain nuke with the druid and the mob will still give its full attention to my BST, nor will he summon the druid. This leads me to believe that when the pet is at the top of the agro list, the mob will first look at which PCs are in range and then select the one who is highest on the agro list. Caster mob's may attempt to cast on the overall highest PC on the agro-list, but wont move.

/hugs

[Mahes]

I've definitely noticed the last part soloing.  Pull a mob, send in the warder, and go stand off to the side doing whatever.  The mob will melee the warder but will usually turn and face you to cast on you.

As for the raid thing...I guess if you scale it down to a group, logic-wise, it makes more sense.  I'm thinking that after a few rellic procs, though, the warder would likely lock up aggro over casters.  I'm sure there's room for it to go either way.  Was mainly curious if the warder could completly lock aggro to keep Named mobs from summoning / chasing PCs.

After thinking about it some more, I don't see how the warder could completely lock that up over someone chain nuking or chain DoT'n.

[Tastian]

Thanks cop that's almost exactly how I tested what I mentioned in my post.  I've just never been able to show pet aggro effecting my aggro and often think it's great the form of built in aggro reduction/control I have with a decent portion of my dps coming from pet.  Someone going high burn/aggro can pull stuff off my pet, but it is pretty hard.  I leave my pets taunt on over 99% of the time.

[Noriko]

Cop, were you closer to the mob or was the druid after pet dies?  Could proximity be a factor?

What if, instead of snare, the druid use a level 1 or so DD, something smaller than your pulling DD?