Spells and Aggro

[Tastian]

I'm going to try to keep this as on track and simple as I can, but if I wander just bare with me please hehe.  

Beastlords have a wide range of spells and fill a wide range of roles.  Sometimes we debuff, sometimes we MT, sometimes we drop our weapons, fall to our knees and pray to our diety (CT, Agnostic, whatever ya call um) that a tank change doesn't happen.  Whether you want to keep aggro or want to avoid it this thread "might" answer a question or two(and likely raise a few more).  

First and foremost a bit about how most of the tests were done.  The tests were done againist all sorts of green trash that was KoS to me and my SK.  I would use various combinations of the Terror line (+hate) and keep track of how much aggro was needed to juggle attention back and forth between the SK and bst.  This allowed me to create "ceilings" and "floors" for aggro values of the spells.  Then by looking at the distribution of the results across the various tests I tossed a coin, rolled a die, used my slide rule, then made a SWAG and that's that hehe.  PCs were always facing away from mobs and there were no ripostes.  Numbers are not exact because there are variables that simply don't have values.  It's possible to make good guesses at some of the values from the data, but this isn't exact.  SK aggro spells are 1/1.5 second casting time, unresistable and 6 second refresh they generate 200, 400, 450, 510 (the numbers used in this thread anyway). Ok let's get started...

Initial aggro:
This was one of the main problems I ran into when doing these tests.  Initial aggro seems to be capped in certain ways.

Case 1:  Pull KoS mob by aggro range with beastlord, run back to SK (also KoS).  Both characters are in range (and as close to the same distance from mob as I could get). SK casts 200 aggro spell, waits for refresh, casts 200 aggro again and gets aggro.  

Hrmmm...looks like <= 400 aggro...

Case 2:  Same as above, but this time once characters are set up, drop 400 hate spell on mob, mob doesn't turn, cast 200 aggro spell and mob turns.

Ok, so much for that 400 number...

Case 3:  Same as above, but this time drop 510 aggro spell on mob, doesn't turn.  200 aggro spell and mob turns.

Hrmmm...let's try modifying the hate...

Case 4:  Cast voice line to raise aggro by 10% on SK and pull again.  Set the chars up and now cast 510 aggro spell (with 10% mod) and still the mob doesn't turn.  However, 200 aggro spell right after turns the mob as usual.

Now this was with proximity aggro pulling only.  Always 200 + 200 would turn the mob to SK.  However, I couldn't turn the mob to SK with only one cast even

Well let's see what else we can do with initial aggro...

Case 1:  Pull mob with sha's revenge, run to SK...Ok who wants to place a bet?  Did the mob turn after:
a) 200 + 200 again
b) 510
c) 510 +200
d) None of the Above

I'm cramped for space so the answer is right here!! lol A is the correct answer.  Hrmmmm....let's try another case...

Case 2:  Pull a mob with sha's revenge, run till spell refreshes, do sha's revenge again, move to SK, and repeat.  Yup you guessed it 200 + 200 pulled off bst again.

Case 3:  Ok same as above, but this time I slowed 4 times before giving the SK a crack at it.

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.  

Distance Aggro:
By dancing back and forth my beastlord could turn aggro (or my SK)  Distance from mob makes a differance on aggro, we've known this for awhile, but just thought I'd mention it quick.  *DISCLAIMER* This does NOT mean that if you get aggro you should start doing laps around the fighting area like you are FloJo.  Back up a tidge, but don't pull mob out of position or else I'll server x-fer just to /bonk you.

Spell based aggro:
Ok this is the bulk of it and I've already said quite a bit, so I'll keep this as short as I can.  Basically once I had gotten rid of initial aggro and had it where the bst/sk could juggle aggro back and forth with spells I used the +hate spells to get a range in which the SK could be ahead by, then used various beastlord spells to pull off the SK, then threw hate spells back at the mob to try and turn it back.  All tests were repeated a lot because there's a sizeable range of possible hate values and I tried to eliminate as many possible values as I could.  

*EDIT*
I've recently done a lot more testing and made several changes to the testing method.  I'm going to remove results for now until I can put up better ones with clearer explainations.
*/EDIT*

Now those are the main "utility" aggro spells beastlords have.  FoL/Drowsy/incapacitate are all pretty close on aggro, but range a lot in terms of casting time/refresh and in the case of FoL a big drawback that can randomly wipe your group/raid lol.

DoTs:
Tainted breath: ~150 aggro (initial, not counting dot ticks).  The damage ticks of a dot also do aggro as seen by...

Scorpion venom:  Ticks do aggro with each point of damage appearing to do ~1 point of aggro.  3 ticks of scorpion venom always covered a 510 hate spell.  Was hard to balance the tick damage with the initial and you are on the clock so I will re parse this.  However, since aggro seems tied very closely to the amount of damage the tick does I think it explains why some are seeing extra aggro from critical affliction.  I'm going to retest this more before I say for sure, and I'll mention it a bit more at the end, for now onto...

Nukes:  
The main thing about nukes is that aggro appears to be tied to the spell, not to the damage it does.  For instance Frost spear(675 base) always took 600 points of aggro to turn the mobs attention.  This happened on a resist, on a hit for 152, on a hit for 702 and on a crit for 1444.  

Where as Frost shard(300 base) a hit of 35 saw the mob turn on 200 aggro, a hit of 327 had mob turn after 400 (because of where aggro was at when this test started), and a resist saw the mob turn after 200 hate.

Also Ice shard(450 base) had mob turn after 510 hate after a hit for  463, 510 after a 135 hit and 400 turned the mob after a 368.  

From the numbers it looks like nuke aggro is quite high per 1 point of potential damage.  

Heals:

Heals are basically the exact opposite of nukes.  It actually does matter how much you heal for.  I stood at full life chaining over 12 heals on myself (some crits) and couldn't get the mobs attention.  Once I actually healed some damage though I was able to get the mobs attention.  This was mentioned awhile ago and the number is somewhere, but I felt was worth throwing in for those that didn't know.

Last little bit of rambling:
First I have to re-test some of the values for slows and I'll see if I can further pin down some of the other values, such as dots and nukes.

Resists gave just as much hate as a landed spell in all tests I did.  I tried all sorts of combinations, but a resist simply took the spot of a successful spell.  This was extra true in the case of nukes where even partially landed spells generate just as much aggro.  I actually got less aggro from landing a crit 540 with ice shard than I did from a fully resisted frost spear.

Dots not only give initial aggro, but generate an amount of hate proportionate to the damage they do during their duration.  This is seen through the scorpion venom tests.  As this amount of damage does further build aggro it atleast gives a reasonable explaination for why critical affliction would generate more aggro as critical affliction simply doubles the amount of damage that tick does.  In the case of dots this aggro point to damage point ratio seems quite high and it's no wonder some might be pulling aggro on critical ticks.  I'll further test disease dots (lower initial damage/aggro, but DoT portion still builds up) and I'll try to do some tests with my shaman's dots as well.

[Tastian]

Ok just a couple follow up things before bed (Oh how I've missed thee!!).  

-  Some mobs have "weird" aggro.  I went ~20 tests with sha's revenge, getting almost the exact same results, then pulled a mob and had revenge take 2-3X as many casts to generate as much aggro.  If this were mob based or something I just don't know at this point.  I've been using the same mobs for all tests, but a couple times in all of the tests I just got a mob that I had to brush off as an "outlier" for now.  Some mobs are just naturally more "sticky" than others, but if it were a case of "sticky" aggro then once my bst got aggro the SK should have to do more work to pull it off, instead the SK pulls it right back off as usual and then bst has to drop twice as many spells.  *shrugs*  Numbers aren't exact, so it might be in the margin, but I can't read straight atm hehe.

-  I tested turgurs for shaman and it seemed to be about the same aggro as sha's revenge.  I didn't get to do nearly enough tests, but no huge noteable differance.  Still have to break out the bard and do some tests with requim and other bard slows.

-  DoT damage seemed to be very consistant.  I ran tests with plague, tainted breath, scorpion venom, curse of spirits (shaman epic dot), pox of bertox (58ish shm disease dot), bane of nife(fiddysix level shm poison dot) and hrmmmm that might have been it.  Either way the damage from ticks adds aggro and I predicted 47 out of 50 turns right, so I'm close on a number!! lol  now if only I could find where I wrote that number down in middle of all these notes on envelopes and empty soda cans.  8(    I haven't had a chance to test critical affliction yet, but again since the amount of aggro a tick of a dot generates seems tied to the actual damage of that tick it seems reasonable that the extra damage on a tick could double the amount of aggro that tick does.  With how much aggro dot ticks seem to generate per point of damage that could be huge.

[Kotasz]

I've always wanted to do this with another Shadowknight.

Keep up the good work, Tastian.  I might run aggro to mana ratios, and aggro per second ratios later for everyone using your data (if you don't mind).

[Tastian]

Hehe I already typed them up, but first post was too long with them.  Also I edited the numbers for 60/65 (because of spell haste on some of them).  I broke the spells down by...

- "snap" aggro which is just aggro per second for casting the spell once
-  Aggro per second sustained by chain casting the spell
-  Aggro per mana point

I didn't factor in anything like focus though as they'll modify the spells about equally, so once you know where the spells fall it won't matter much.  

I'm still having a couple issues nailing down a few aggro numbers though and initial aggro is weirder than I remember.  You can type something up now if you want, but numbers aren't final and I really want to nail down the dot aggro numbers.  Right now it's looking like you get the big initial aggro from poison dots and some aggro from the non-melee portion.  Once that's offset though it looks like only thing that matters is damage the spell is doing each tick (which is still pretty substantial as the ratio of aggro point to damage point is up around 1).

[Coprolith]

Hmmm, very interesting. Nicely done T.

However, there were a couple cases where if a mob assisted another mob I was already killing and aggro'd on my beastlord, if I killed the first mob and then tried a 510 aggro on the second mob it would turn on me. I think this has to do with how aggro is effected by time, but I simply don't have any numbers for that. This is something I have a few other tests in the works on and need to recheck some old notes though.

Situation: I pull a mob with Slow and i get an add. I run back to camp and slowed mob arrives first. Pet starts beating on the mobs backside. Now 2nd mob arrives in camp and he will invariably turn on the pet immediately instead of me. This is very similar to what you're seeing. I'm not sure it has anything to do with agro being affected over time tho. I think that it was coded deliberately this way, multiple-mob-pulls would be a lot less dangerous if the puller got the hate bonus on initial agro from all mobs.

I don't know if you're familiar with this thread on TSW board:
Determining hate from weapon damage (parses)
but it also mentions something about initial agro. Perhaps you can make something of it?

There may be a way to get a handle on the hate bonus from initial agro tho, by using your SKs melee. From the same thread of the TSW it is seen that the number of swings (or combat rounds there seems to be some discussion open on that) needed to pull agro away is always the same. You could do the following series of tests:
1. Pull via proximity, get back to camp, count how many swings are needed to pull mob of you
2. Pull via proximity, get back to camp, cast 1 Slow, count how many swings are needed to pull mob of you
3. Pull via proximity, get back to camp, cast 2 Slows, count how many swings are needed to pull mob of you
4. Pull via proximity, get back to camp, cast 3 Slows, count how many swings are needed to pull mob of you
(repeat with more slows if necessary for accuracy)
From 2-4 you can get a #swings/Slow number. The ratio of that number to the #swings at test 1 is the same as the ratio of Slow hate to initial bonus hate. And since you've already got a handle on the Slow you'd also know the latter.

If you'd like me to run some tests as well to reduce your parse load (or simply to confirm some tests of your own) give me a holler. I don't have an SK, but I'm sure i can find some way with a different combo.

/hugs

[Tastian]

"Situation: I pull a mob with Slow and i get an add. I run back to camp and slowed mob arrives first. Pet starts beating on the mobs backside. Now 2nd mob arrives in camp and he will invariably turn on the pet immediately instead of me. This is very similar to what you're seeing. I'm not sure it has anything to do with agro being affected over time tho. "

Yeah that situation I get.  I just appears that assist aggro is lower than direct aggro.  This is part of what makes swarm kiting so fun with a bard.  Also what makes those pet splits so easy in spots.  My main issue is when aggro on the monster itself seems different.  When 0, 1, 2 and 3 initial slows all get pulled off by 200 + 200.  Also the mobs I had that randomly stuck to one of my characters like glue.  I'd get into patterns with all these tests where I literally would just ping pong aggro back and forth, sha's, terror, sha's terror, sha's, terror.  Then a couple of mobs I'd have to drop 3 sha's to get the mobs attention.  Yet one terror got it right back.  That tells me it's not just the mob and "sticky" aggro because if it were then once the bst had it the mob would stay on it and not turn back on the SK so easy.  It seems like in those cases the MT had a bonus to hate or something.  The cases were so few and I couldn't intentionally reproduce yet though, so I have to just leave them out for now and try to pin down the other numbers, but it's something I want to go back to as it really interests me hehe.  If I can pin down some of the other numbers a bit more it'll definitely help.

Yeah I've read the thread a few times and going back over.  The problem I'm having is that there seem to be different "caps" or something.  The initial aggro where 200 + 200 pulls aggro, but 510 straight doesn't makes me think that first hate spell I cast was at a modified %  meaning that 200m + 200 > 510m.  I also saw something similar to this when letting my SK pull with prox aggro.  I could sometimes drop 3 and 4 of a spell that usually would add up to more hate than what initial aggro is looking to be.  

Also hate from being KoS seems to be slightly different, it's almost like you get a "bonus" having hit the top of the hate list or something.  In almost every test one of my characters had initial aggro and was tanking.  It took a bit, but I was able to position both of my characters so that the mob would attack one well sitting, then turn and hit the other well sitting.  In this case there didn't seem to be the big initial aggro hurdle to cover.  Sit aggro vanishes when you stand, so that's not it.  However, if I just had a mob roam into camp smack one of my chars the other char would sometimes have a problem pulling it off unless it added.  Makes me think there are mods to aggro based on a few things, but there's so many variables atm I can't put weights on anything to be certain.

First and foremost though I want to finish up the dot testing.  This has been a big shaman problem for awhile(as well as others) and I started initial testing awhile ago.  DD spell aggro is tied to the spell cast.  Whether it sticks or not, hits for 20 or crits I get almost identical aggro everytime.  However, DoTs have initial aggro (high in the case of poison, low for disease), but seem to actually build aggro at the same rate once on a monster.  I think that alone is a big problem as the damage from the ticks simply should not be giving additional aggro if the initial landing of the spell is generating that much aggro.  I'd even be ok with them keeping aggro on poison counters so they could remain useful for aggro kiting/aggro generation, but having to double pay aggro when the spell is cast (land or not) and then keep eating aggro again and again every tick is excessive imo for spells that no longer are compareable total damage and no longer have a decently superior ratio.  

*shrugs*  I'll try to have more answers up by end of this weekend and if I just have more questions I'll post a bunch of the different situations and we can find some of the magic numbers there hehe.  This is definitely one of those things where just knowing a couple numbers for certain would solve the whole equation.

[Tastian]

Ok from my tests I simply run into numbers that make no sense.  Like I said I've been using a "ceiling/floor" type of approach to try to narrow these values down and then with those estimated values run more tests to try and get a more exact value out of them.  The main reason for having to do this is because of initial aggro and aggro decay and other aggro related things that simply don't have values that I can account for atm.  What winds up happening is most of my answers are multivariable answers with a small range of values that "fit" and based on distribution I'm giving the best guess.  The problem I'm having is looking over my data there are some things that just contradict.  I don't know if it's because of an aggro bonus, I don't know if it's tied to aggro decay, but let me give you a few different cases and you can see what I mean.

Case 1:  Base case of just pulling with proximity aggro with the beastlord and having SK cast 200 hate terrors till the mob turns.  This requires 2 X 200 or 200 + another 200 7 seconds later (1 sec casting + 6 sec refresh).

Case 2:  Base case of just pulling with prox imity aggro with SK and having bst throw Sha's revenges (65 slow) at the mob until it turns.  This requires 2 sha's revenge or sha's revenge and another 6.9 seconds later (1.9 casting time and 5 second refresh).

Now from those two cases it would appear that sha's revenge is ~200 hate.  

Case 3:  Beastlord pulls with proximity aggro, runs to SK same as before, but this time SK opens with 510 hate.  This doesn't turn the mob.

Now from that it appears that either the first spell cast is working a modfied value such that 200m + 200 > 510m.  Or that aggro decay is so great over those 7 seconds between the first 200 and the next 200 in case 1 that the mob does turn.  I've tested the aggro decay in a bunch of other cases though and it simply doesn't hold.  I can't reproduce the loss of that much aggro in that short a period of time.  Right now this leaves me thinking that the first spell is simply working at a lesser value.  This means that sha's (65 slow) is possibly ~200 aggro or atleast that shas*m + shas is approximately 200*m + 200, which is less than 510*m, but also greater than initial proximity aggro.  

Case 4:  Mob is already in camp and I've been throwing various spells at it.  I drop a 200 hate spell and this turns the mob to the SK.  This means the SK is ahead by somewhere between 1 and 200 hate (assuming tie goes to current tank *shrugs* call it 199 if you want).  Now I cast revenge and mob turns back.  Now I cast another 200 with SK and it turns back on SK.  This is the most common case.  Sha's and 200 hate flip flop back and forth almost every time I cast, I've gone through mana bars on this.  Again making it look like sha's is ~200 hate.

Case 5:  Pull a mob with sha's, then sha's again, then sha's again, then bring to camp.  SK still pulls aggro off bst with the combo of 200 + 200.  This leaves me with either sha's being low aggro(which contradicts case 4) or a "cap" on aggro that simply didn't let the bst build up any higher on the hate list.

Case 6:  To test the "cap" on aggro I pull with SK.  I fire 710 points of aggro at the mob and then have the bst pull it off.  This takes 5 casts of revenge to turn it.  This means that SKs aggro simply wasn't capped because normally it only takes 2 sha's to pull off the SK like case 2.  I run another test, but have the SK do 2040 aggro before bringing the mob to camp, this takes the bst 21 casts of revenge to get the mob off the SK.

Now this makes it appear that there is no cap, and that revenge is low aggro.  Which contradicts case 4.

Case 7:  I have a mob in camp and am doing the old ping-pong thing with him.  I drop a 510 aggro with the SK and mob turns to SK, the SK now is ahead by 1-509 aggro.  I cast 2 sha's revenge and the mob turns on my bst.  I cast a 200 point aggro spell and the mob DOESNT TURN BACK TO MY BST.  That means the last cast of sha's had to generate more than 200 aggro as 200 didn't bring it back and the spell had to generate enough aggro to turn the mob in the first place.

Sha's doing over 200 aggro fits with the first 30 tests I ran of revenge and fits with case 4.  It always ping ponged even with 200 aggro and when using 510 aggro it'd take 2 casts to turn the mob, but I'd sometimes be able to get in a 200 without turning the mob back.  

Case 8:  I have a mob pulled by prox with my beastlord.  SK does the old 200 + 200 to turn the mob to them.  My bst then does 2 sha's revenge to turn the mob back to him.  This makes NO sense as the biggest lead my SK could have is 199 sha's per case 7 HAS to be doing more than 200.  I continue and do another 200 hate spell, this now takes THREE sha's revenge to turn the mob back, 200 again and it takes TWO sha's revenge to turn the mob.  

These are just some of the cases, but they are ones that simply don't fit with the others with the data we currently have.  There is something that is modifying hate generation, aggro decay or something.  In case 8 Sha's can't be doing more than 100 aggro because it took 3 casts to turn the mob, that means that 2 casts simply didn't cover the 200 max aggro gap.  Yet in case 7 I am able to turn the mob with sha's, hit it with 200 more hate and not turn it back, showing that sha's has generated more than 200 hate.  

Case 5 and case 6 contradict in that I seem to hit a "cap" on my beastlords initial aggro.  I can almost always pull aggro off him with 200 + 200 whether he proximity aggros, slows the mob from a distance, slows 3X and brings to camp, etc.  However, my SK was able to do the same kiting, throwing out hate spells and did in fact build a cushion that the bst had to overcome by casting more spells.  

I'm going to do some more tests using dds, melee and staff of temp flux/concussion to get first aggro, then do various things.  It seems to me that something is going on with the initial spell.  Also I just can't explain how sometimes a sha's turns a mob to the point where SK can drop 200 hate and not turn it back, but other times I need 2 and 3 sha's to turn it after a 200 hate(very rare case, but happened a couple times).  No dmg shields (not that they matter), no ripostes, distance between char and mob and char is very close as I'm using 3rd person views on both chars.

[Oneiromancer]

Amazing work, Tastian.  A few things...

Scorpion venom:  Ticks do aggro with each point of damage appearing to do ~1 point of aggro.  3 ticks of scorpion venom always covered a 510 hate spell.

So that ~1 point of aggro is a typo, right?  Do you mean ~1 point of aggro per point of damage?

Wondering about the pulling aggro...even though both of your characters are KOS, do you think that the SK might be more KOS from his religion, since your BST is probably agnostic?  Might want to fool around with the initial pulling tests with some different classes/religions.  Or even races...get some illusion potions and see if that makes a difference at all.

It could possibly make sense that the first thing you do that gets you on the mob's hate list has a bonus to it.  I remember once I had dinged a level and had new spells, so I was memorizing them during the next pulls.  Even after the MT had gotten lots of aggro, if I simply sent the pet in while sitting the mob would come after me.  That is, it wouldn't come over just from the sitting, I had to send the pet in, and then I got lots more aggro than just sending the pet in normally gives.  Something else to think about.

Game on,

[Tastian]

" Ticks do aggro with each point of damage appearing to do ~1 point of aggro."

I mean that right now the "tick" of a dot appears to give its own aggro and appears to do so at a rate of ~1 point of damage to ~1 point of aggro.  ~1 point of aggro per 1 point of damage.  I do think it's a bit lower than that from some of my tests, but haven't narrowed it down enough yet to test numbers.

"Wondering about the pulling aggro...even though both of your characters are KOS, do you think that the SK might be more KOS from his religion, since your BST is probably agnostic? Might want to fool around with the initial pulling tests with some different classes/religions."

Well first of all my bst is more hated than my sk due to race/diety issues hehe.  Also I made it a point to do most of these tests in velious where race means nothing and both characters already had max KoS faction to the mobs.  I also ran some tests with my shaman and am going to test bard/wizard a bit when I find time.  However, I don't think diety/etc had anything to do with it and if it did it shoudl be a constant thing.  From my previous post you can see I just get some conflicting data.

"It could possibly make sense that the first thing you do that gets you on the mob's hate list has a bonus to it. I remember once I had dinged a level and had new spells, so I was memorizing them during the next pulls. Even after the MT had gotten lots of aggro, if I simply sent the pet in while sitting the mob would come after me. That is, it wouldn't come over just from the sitting, I had to send the pet in, and then I got lots more aggro than just sending the pet in normally gives. Something else to think about. "

This is one thing I'm thinking about.  One of the theorys I'm working on is that possibly the "hate" list and "aggro" list are seperate or whatever they might be called.  Meaning that a mob can store in his mind "hey I hate bob", but doesn't actually give you a hate aggro.  Sending pet is very low aggro, but sitting is a lot.  I know if I'm sitting I "might" get aggro and in some cases I won't, however, if I send pet well sitting I do get aggro.  This makes me think that just being there makes the mob hate you, but doesn't actually put you onto the aggro list or something.  Where as once you send your pet you now hit the aggro list (like 1 point or so for pet hehe) and then your sit aggro kicks in.  I've seen cases where a pulled mob goes right for a sitter, so it has to have it's own aggro, I just wonder if actually hitting the hate list or doing something direct to the mob modifies that or adds to it.  I'll have to try to test sitting on incoming verse sitting after actually doing something to the mob.   I dunno like I say it's sketchy.  There are no exact numbers for initial aggro, no numbers for aggro decay, no numbers for lots of this stuff.  I literally have jots down on paper like

((200*initial_aggro_mod) + 200) - (7*aggro_decay_overtime) ~ ((revenge*initial_aggro_mod) + revenge) - (6.9*aggro_decay_overtime)) > 510*initial_aggro_mod

Problem I'm having is everytime I solve the equation or other ones I get values that simply don't hold in some cases.  Like I posted above one test shows that sha's has to be doing more than 200 aggro because once sha's turned the mob I could drop a 200 hate spell sometimes and not turn the mob back to SK.  That holds with most of my data, yet sometimes I drop a 200 hate spell to turn the mob to my SK, have at most a 199 cushion and have to drop 2-3 sha's to turn it back.  That means sha's has to be less than 100 aggro a pop or else I could never cast 3.  Other problem is I'm trying to solve an equation that I don't even know if it exists or not.  I don't know for a fact that initial aggro get's a mod, I can't speak for the value of aggro decay, there's a chance there's a bonus for actually hitting top of hate list, or for being at the top of it, there are tons of possible explainations, but some of the solutions I came up with don't always hold, which leads me to believe there's more to the formula.

[Oneiromancer]

Ah, you're right, I misread that sentence...and I even quoted it...didn't see a number, just "each", confused me...

And didn't know what race your beastlord was either, but yeah, Velious would negate that anyway.

Here's something I'm curious about...we know that chain-casting Tainted Breath is good aggro.  But the same person can't stack two of the same DoT and see the damage double.  So what is the aggro doing?  Does each initial DD add aggro, but only one of them adds aggro each tick?  Or even if only one does damage over time, they still both do aggro over time?  Or perhaps most of the aggro is from the initial poison counters, which do stack?

Game on,

[Tastian]

"Here's something I'm curious about...we know that chain-casting Tainted Breath is good aggro. But the same person can't stack two of the same DoT and see the damage double. So what is the aggro doing? Does each initial DD add aggro, but only one of them adds aggro each tick? Or even if only one does damage over time, they still both do aggro over time? Or perhaps most of the aggro is from the initial poison counters, which do stack? "

Tainted breath is good burst aggro because of it's poison counters.  What seems to happen is that whenever a dot is cast you get aggro (go figure).  In the case of disease dots this is fairly low since the slow changes where they lowered disease counter aggro and the initial damage on disease dots is fairly low.  However, poison counters still add a good amount of aggro (as seen by low level poison dots, tash, etc).  Dots also add aggro each "tick", this seems to be directly based upon the amount of damage the tick does.  For instance in all of my tests the actual amount of aggro from tainted breath running it's course was quite low (the damage is low), however, the amount of aggro from plagues dot ticks was very close to that of the amount of aggro generated by poison dots, curse dot, epic click, etc.  This is what lead me to believe that dots are generating aggro not only when cast, but also well running their course.  This "double aggro" I think is a problem.  

What would happen is you cast tainted breath, you get decent initial aggro from the spell being cast (resisted or not), then say you recast, but a tick happens, you get small aggro from tainted's 8 damage tick, but then you land your next tainted, this gives a big aggro boost again because of the poison counters, the ticks keep going and building some hate, but not much.  It won't double or anything.  You can't cast tainted 3 times and get 3X the aggro out of each tick.  Basically dot aggro seems broken up into the spell landing and the "tick" portion.  

For actual numbers...
1-2 ticks of Scorpion venom (146 to 292 damage) turn 200 aggro everytime I tested it.  Never saw it take 3 ticks and well it never turned in 0 ticks lol.

4 ticks of plague (220 damage) always turned the mob after 200 aggro.  I have to test this more, but in 20 some tests it was always 200, turn to sk, 55, 55, 55, 55, turn to bst,  200 hate, turn to sk, 55, 55, 55, 55, turn to bst, 200 hate, turn to sk etc.

Using curse of spirits (variable damage so kinda nice for this imo) I would do something like stabilize aggro onto shaman, then throw a 200 hate to get it back.  DoT would tick 11, 23, 35, 47, 59 mob would turn (that's 175 total damage).  Then throw a 200 hate before next tick to turn back to SK, dot would then tick 71, 83, 95.  That's 249 total damage and aggro is back on shaman,  throw 200 hate again to get it back on SK and dot would tick 131, 143 and it'd be back on shaman so 274 total that time.  I repeated the tests several times with the SK having varying ranks of 1-199 aggro from the 200 cast and this is basically what you see.  

The thing to note is that because the dot builds up slow it lowers the possible values the aggro can be doing.  I mean that if 59 turns the mob, and dot aggro seems to be ~1 per damage, that means that the highest the shaman's aggro advantage could have been was ~59, meaning when the sk took back they had ~141 or so, the 71 tick didn't turn it, and the 83 tick didn't turn it (154 total), but the next tick did.  This is what makes me think aggro from a dot tick is close to 1 point of aggro per 1 damage done, but slightly less.  

The big thing I keep getting from all these tests though is that it's no wonder beastlords are such aggro whores.  A varying amount of our damage is done through melee, but our nukes are big aggro when in melee range (not at a distance) and our dots seem to be generating hate even if they don't have the big initial push.  Melee aggro isn't close to 1 aggro per 1 damage, but it's looking like non-melee when in close and damage from dot ticks is close to that.  Basically aggro = melee_aggro + non_melee_agro.  The problem is that the non-melee mod to aggro is quite high and even though a beastlord's total damage is around knight level or whatever (varies a LOT) we are eating aggro like made from our nukes/dots.  This also holds with our procs as they are a large portion of our damage and most are DD types that also seem to build aggro far too well.

[Chubaka]

I am wondering does the level of the mob put any modifiers +/- on the agro numbers you are reading.

I ask thins because the past couple days I have been soloing in Riwwi and it is very hard for my pet to get the agro after only an initial slow has been cast.

vs

Sirens I can cast whatever I want and my pet can almost instantly grab agro of the seahorses and fishies.


Or is pet agro a totally different monster that has nothing to do with this thread?

[Tastian]

"Or is pet agro a totally different monster that has nothing to do with this thread?"

Well one pet aggro is VERY random.  With taunt, random number of attacks, random flurry, random procs, I've seen my pet stop mobs in their tracks and then wait 20 seconds before I could back out.  Also there does seem to be a differance between mobs.  One possibility is melee range and that the distance needed to move is greater.  I honestly need to test distance to aggro and a few other things still, but right now I want to finish up with dots by the end of the weekend.  I'm going to run some tests with burning affliction and with critical affliction.  Since the aggro of the dot seems entirely tied to the amount of damage the tick does and not which spell was cast or counters or anything, it seems reasonable that by simply raising the amount of damage the tick does, you also raise the amount of aggro the tick does.  Will work this first, but then I plan on going back and tweaking initial aggro and mob specific aggro and stuff.

[Oneiromancer]

Post on the main EQ boards that is relevant to the current discussion: http://eqforums.station.sony.com/eq/board/message?board.id=Necromancers&message.id=2315

Game on,

[Tastian]

I did some more dot testing just to see what I could come up with.  What I did was duplicate the exact same scenario as best I could.  I didn't know what initial aggro was exactly, I didn't get the caps, but by keeping it the same in all tests (or very close to) I can simply keep it the same in all the equations.

First thing I did was break out venom of the snake  (40 initial damage, 59 per tick).  From my previous tests it looked like it always took 4 ticks of plague (55 dmg) to turn the mob.  What I did was this...

-Proximity pull a mob with my shaman
-Use the standard 200 + 200 hate to turn the mob to my SK
-Cast venom of the snake on the mob
-Cast another 200 aggro to get aggro back on SK

This always turned the mob to my shaman and I kept this the exact same throughout.  Now I don't know what the exact value of hate my shaman had at this point, but it's consistant in all tests or as close as I could reasonable produce.

Without BA focus (+dmg to dot ticks) the mob always turned after 4 ticks of 59 or 236 total damage.  I did this about a dozen times and every time the mob always turned on the 4th tick, but never on the third.  This makes me think the aggro was more than 177 damage worth (3 ticks at 59), but less than 236 damage (4 ticks worth).  

Now I repeated the same initial steps above, but once I venom'd the mob I swapped in a burning affliction item.  I kept this off well casting the dot though so the initial tick wasn't effected by the additional boost of damage.  The results I saw were this....

65, 64, 67, TURN  - 196 total damage, more than the 177, less than the 236, and in one less tick.

70, 63, 64, TURN - 197 total damage, more than the 177, less than the 236, and in one less tick.

67, 62, 67, TURN - 195 total damage, blah blah blah

66, 60, 64, TURN - 190 total damage, blah blah blah

66, 69, 64, TURN - 199 total damage, blah blah blah

Tests were all run on the same mob types that I've used for most of the other data, and after I did my intitial tests of 5 venoms of the snake I did a couple with focus, one without, a couple with, etc.  

Without burning affliction and well doing 177 total damage with 3 ticks the shaman never took aggro off the SK, however, when I add in burning affliction I never had the mob last past 3 ticks without turning to the shaman.  One thing I would like to test is possibly slipping in a very small burst of flame type nuke after non-focused venom of the snake does it's 3 ticks.  Seems like 3 ticks of VoS is just under the aggro needed to turn the mob.  However, with focus and the extra damage the mob always seemed to turn right on the third tick.  I kept hoping to get some bad rolls on the BA focus so maybe I could get 60, 60, 60, 60 and see a forth tick with focus to further show total damages effect on aggro of dots, but didn't have any luck with that.  Wow imagine the RNG not rolling as low as I wanted lol.