Spells and Aggro

[Eatbugs]

What I think needs to happen is that aggro needs to be removed from the "tick" portion of dot damage. You already pay aggro for casting the dot and I see no reason to continually pay more aggro for it every tick it does.

This would completely remove any downside from Necro and Shaman DoTs on raid or solo mobs.  As it stands at the moment,  Necros have to watch their dps just like Wizards do - if the MT goes down and a new tank has to step up, (Or if the DoT dps classes go hog wild with DoT stacking) the Necros and Shaman generally get summoned and killed, just like an overnuking Wizard.

If the hate was removed from everything but the initial cast on DoTs, Necros and Shaman would have no limits on DPS at all on raids.  (Not to mention the increased ease of soloing - continued DoT aggro is one of the few limiting factors on Necro solo dps.)  Low-aggro massive dps seems just a tad unbalanced.

[Tastian]

In first post...

"PCs were always facing away from mobs and there were no ripostes. "

" If the hate was removed from everything but the initial cast on DoTs, Necros and Shaman would have no limits on DPS at all on raids. (Not to mention the increased ease of soloing - continued DoT aggro is one of the few limiting factors on Necro solo dps.) Low-aggro massive dps seems just a tad unbalanced."

This simply isn't true.  Most shaman will be lucky to use Bane (420 per tick) + BoS (328 per tick) currently without getting summoned.  DoT "tick" aggro is quite high and because of CA/BA it's also unpredictable.  A wizard that goes, nuke, nuke, nuke, get's aggro stops nuking their aggro generation falls to ZERO, they don't nuke for a period of time, they concussion, etc.  A rogue that pulls aggro (get's laughed at) I mean turns off attack, hits evade, etc, they STOP generating more aggro though.  Now lets say you land bane and BoS.  You didn't get aggro from bane, or it's first tick, BoS landed and no aggro, now the next tick you get 328 & 420.  Now you have aggro.  As a shaman you curse under your breath.  You aren't applying anymore spells, you don't cast another DoT, but even if the warrior or MT pulls the mob off you in 6 seconds or less you are going to generate atleast about as much damage as an enraging blow proc.  And 6 seconds later it'll happen again.  

There is some debate about how aggro should be adjusted on DoTs.  I'm in favor of having them do more initial aggro and no tick aggro.  This would mean some dots actually do more damage at first as they currently have very low initial aggro.  Others want the dot to land with low aggro and then generate each tick.  This makes more sense because paying full aggro for a 2k dot that does 400 damage is annoying.  However, by having aggro tied to the intial cast you get SCS effecting all of the aggro (can't show it working on "tick" aggro, but unsure atm), you gain the ability to still cast dots to genreate aggro when you want, and you gain instant feedback from landing your spells just like with nukes.  By changes to DoT aggro I don't want them aggro free, but I want their aggro more inline with nukes.  I want them more stable to.  Not knowing if the next tick will generate 400 hate or 900 hate is kinda crazy and very hard to work around.  Also you have limits on duration, fight, debuff slots (they got bumped up on test), etc.  I still want DoTs to generate aggro and I don't want to see shaman or others getting no aggro for the damage they do, but at the sametime I'd like to see people getting aggro semi-proportionate to what they are doing.

[Eatbugs]

This simply isn't true. Most shaman will be lucky to use Bane (420 per tick) + BoS (328 per tick) currently without getting summoned.

Sure - if they start the fight with those two.  If they wait until 70% to 80% health on a raid mob (Keep in mind, Shaman will be high on the hate list to start with due to debuffing and slowing initially - the aggro from DoTs isn't the whole problem for a Shaman) they don't have that problem. (Just like Wizards who have to gauge how soon to start nuking heavily.)

By changes to DoT aggro I don't want them aggro free, but I want their aggro more inline with nukes.

I know Necros (who as a class seem to have the highest DoT aggro) who stack seven or eight DoTs on raid mobs right now.  The only way they get away with that is feigning immediately after the last DoT lands to avoid being summoned, and trying to gauge when they can stand back up and still live.  What you're proposing would take most of the danger and strategy out of using DoTs in raid situations - and taking the strategy out of DPS goes a long way toward making the game far less interesting.  Why should everything have identical aggro?

Also you have limits on duration, fight, debuff slots (they got bumped up on test)

They've been bumped WAY up on test.  I believe the last figure I saw was 70 slots on mobs for Debuffs and DoTs - that simply isn't going to be a reachable limit anymore.  (Not that it's been much of a limit lately, with the previous increase and the change to DoT stacking.)  As far as duration, that's why I'm talking about raid and solo mobs, those being the only situations in which you can reasonably expect DoTs to last full length.  Fight?  Every dps class has limitations based on what kind of fight it is, without exception.

I understand what you're saying and why you think it should be that way - I simply don't agree.

[Eatbugs]

Sorry for the above digression, it didn't really contribute to the discussion.   :P

Something that interested me from your initial post:

Initial aggro on a mob seems to be capped. No matter how many slows I cast once I finally got into position my SK could always pull off with just a 200 + 200 combo. However, they never could with a single 510+ like before.

I'm wondering how to reconcile that with what I've seen when aggro kiting with my pet.  I've spent a fair amount of time aggro kiting in Fire (both with Spirit of Snow and Hobble as procs) and it seems to work much better if I spend a couple of minutes building up aggro with repeated casts of Incapacitate and Drowsy at the beginning of the fight before sending in my pet.  It's particularly noticeable that if I begin with only one or two casts, the pet will almost always grab aggro within the first minute or so of the kite.  It's been a while since I aggro kited with players instead of pets, but my memory is that it worked the same way.  

This would seem to contradict the conclusion that initial aggro is capped - but I don't see a way to reconcile that with your results.  I'm guessing there's some factor I've missed that differs in those situations.

[Tastian]

That is one of the issues I've been having.  In spots I can reproduce massive aggro generation where it takes forever to pull off and in other spots againist mobs I'm simply not keeping their attention.  It's something I want to nail down, but sample size is too small and I can't find a common thing to attach it to.  My SK always builds initial aggro no problem and bst would take awhile to pull off.  However, sometimes my beastlord just can't build enough aggro to keep the SK from yanking it right back off.  I think I've found a possible solution that seems to fit in my head, but I have to test it hehe.  

As for the first post...

"Sure - if they start the fight with those two. If they wait until 70% to 80% health on a raid mob (Keep in mind, Shaman will be high on the hate list to start with due to debuffing and slowing initially - the aggro from DoTs isn't the whole problem for a Shaman) they don't have that problem. (Just like Wizards who have to gauge how soon to start nuking heavily.) "

That's just not true.  Even the 4th or 5th shaman at a raid that doesn't even malo (hardly any aggro anyway) will have aggro problems from using certain combinations of DoTs and still doing less damage than others.  Mind you I don't want shaman doing more damage than a lot of different classes, but I'd like to see it remotely reasonable.  Just like with beastlords our aggro is too high for our damage imo.

"I know Necros (who as a class seem to have the highest DoT aggro) who stack seven or eight DoTs on raid mobs right now. The only way they get away with that is feigning immediately after the last DoT lands to avoid being summoned, and trying to gauge when they can stand back up and still live. What you're proposing would take most of the danger and strategy out of using DoTs in raid situations - and taking the strategy out of DPS goes a long way toward making the game far less interesting. "

The way things work now a necro can actually over DoT and then FD to avoid the aggro of the ticks.  However, if dots did more initial aggro in some cases and less overtime the necro would actually have to decide "do I cast this spell", just like a wizard has to with a nuke.  However, if the necro is wrong he will get summoned and have to deal with his overaggro'n.  As it stands now the high aggro on DoT ticks actually let's a necro drop 2 or 3 lower initial aggro DoTs, then bigger, then drop huge one, then FD and by the time their aggro is very high they are still FD.  It's not a matter of taking the decision making out of doing dps it's a matter of making it more intuitive and overall reasonable.

"Why should everything have identical aggro?"

It shouldn't, I want similiar aggro, I want reasonable aggro.  Why should a spell that does ~1100 damage and takes ~42 seconds to work generate about the same aggro as a spell that does ~6850 instantly?  I don't want a flat rate conversion of X damage to X aggro.  I like different spells having different aggro.  I like the distinction between casting a poison dot and disease dot at first.  I like people having choices to make, but some of the choices are being severely limited.  As a shaman you have a lot of options that you actually can't use.  It'd be nice if you went "well the mob lives longer I'll land a disease dot, then drop a BoS, can't bane at first because I'll get aggro, so drop a tears, then bane, tears again because it refreshed and then refresh BoS".  Unfortunatly you usually go tears/torrent or nukes of some kind (god dang VS takes forever to cast hehe) and hardly dot even in situations that seem ideal for it.  Imagine if piercing weapons simply generated 2X the aggro of all other weapon types for the same amount of damage.  That just doesn't make sense to me.

[Eatbugs]

Hm, I don't think you understood what I meant by everything having identical aggro.  I like the present system, where different types of damage have different considerations about how and when you can use them.  I don't favor a system in which all spells work the same way for aggro purposes - initial aggro.  I like the game the way it is - fairly complex in some areas, with different classes having different things to consider.

If that's actually true about Bane and BoS, (What you're saying about it isn't in accord with what I've heard from Shaman in my guild and seen on raids) I could see a reduction of the aggro from those particular spells (something that's been done on specific lines of DoTs in the past) as being a good thing, but changing the system to work like DDs strikes me as unnecessary and far too simple.