Hate before the encounter is engaged.

[Ardornon]

<p>I don't quite know how to explain it, some classes do it, some more than others. Other classes rarely if ever do it, then once in a while you'll be surprised when it happens from a class that you cannot recall it happened to before.</p><p> What I'm talking about is hate generation before an encounter is engaged. For example, you body pull a mob and it slugs you and then proceeds immediately to your Mystic where it proceeds to pummel the crap out of them. Now you would like to taunt the mob off the Mystic, but that isn't possible because the other monster(s) in that encounter haven't made it to your group yet so by officially engaging the mob you'll thus cause friendly aggro from the neighboring encounter of mobs which in turn will train the [Removed for Content] out of you and quite possibly get you killed. Nizara anyone?</p><p> Anyway, I not only don't like it, but I vouch we fix to remove it from ever happening.</p><p> Now granted I understand that if you body pull a mob and haven't officially done anything to it, then you realistically have no hate. If your healer then wards and or heals or buffs you in any way after that, they should pull aggro, just not when they haven't done anything.</p><p> I think no matter what happens, so long as a player hasn't touched anyone in the group, or anyone in the monsters in the pulled encounter, (or their pets haven't done anything either for that matter) should a player receive hate and thus direct aggro from a pulled mob not currently engaged.</p><p> There's not much else I can say on this point, it's stupid, and yes that is my highly educated final statement. "Stupid".</p>

[sah]

<p>it has to deal with reactives/wards/heal-over-time spells and over-enthusiastic healers/mezzers.  most good healers, mezzers, and tanks learn to deal with it...if you absolutely do not want to deal with this, then tell your healers not to use those spells and to wait until you have the mob perfectly positioned before casting heals/mezzes.....</p><p>honestly, if this were removed, then there would be pretty much no risk at all involved in pulling unless you pull a "leeroy jenkins" or something stupid...</p>

[tracheaspider]

<p>The reason this happens is that the mobs start calculating aggro for the group the second they notice one of the people in it.  Pretty much all beneficial and hostile actions have aggro associated with them, even if those actions never involve the mob at all.  In fact, it's the things are passive or don't hurt the mobs that cause the most issues on pull.  My coercer can get aggro from her health-to-power spell ticking down or from casting her extra power regen buff.  My warden has a proc she puts on the tank that gives (with AA) a 12% chance of casting a HOT when the tank takes damage.  I know defilers get a similar spell that casts a debuff on the mob.  Mystics and templars get AA lines that make their cures cast wards or reactives when hit and those cannot be canceled before they expire.  If any HOTs, wards or reactives are left up from general healing, they can cause the same problems.</p><p>Good players will time their casting so their spells will land precisely when the mobs get to the spot the tank will stop, but they have no control over a lot of what happens between the time the mob notices the tank and when the tank fully engages.  The tank generally has the most control as long as everyone else is being reasonably smart.  If, as a tank, you know which classes get aggro on pull and why, you can anticipate it and minimize the impact it has.</p><p>One thing to keep in mind is that, while you can't safely AE taunt while part of an encounter holds back near adds, you can single target taunt ones that run in without getting social aggro from the potential adds.  Keeping extra distance between the group and the next set of mobs helps, too, so you can target the one that's going for someone else and taunt it off before it hits them.  You can also cast defensive buff as you're running back and time your AEs so the mobs run into them and then taunt after that for extra aggro.  It's really not that hard to deal with if you play smart.  I think it's well enough designed and adds a good amount of depth to tanking, though the amount of aggro certain things generate (coercer health-to-power spell) could be adjusted a bit better.</p>

[Rattfa]

It varies from situation to situation, and from tank to tank, but once I learn how a tank pulls, I can pretty cast my HoT during the body pull process so it lands just after the first taunt. Sometimes I take a hit, but usually it works pretty well.

[Ardornon]

<cite>tracheaspider wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>The reason this happens is that the mobs start calculating aggro for the group the second they notice one of the people in it.  Pretty much all beneficial and hostile actions have aggro associated with them, even if those actions never involve the mob at all.  In fact, it's the things are passive or don't hurt the mobs that cause the most issues on pull.  My coercer can get aggro from her health-to-power spell ticking down or from casting her extra power regen buff.  My warden has a proc she puts on the tank that gives (with AA) a 12% chance of casting a HOT when the tank takes damage.  I know defilers get a similar spell that casts a debuff on the mob.  Mystics and templars get AA lines that make their cures cast wards or reactives when hit and those cannot be canceled before they expire.  If any HOTs, wards or reactives are left up from general healing, they can cause the same problems.</p><p>Good players will time their casting so their spells will land precisely when the mobs get to the spot the tank will stop, but they have no control over a lot of what happens between the time the mob notices the tank and when the tank fully engages.  The tank generally has the most control as long as everyone else is being reasonably smart.  If, as a tank, you know which classes get aggro on pull and why, you can anticipate it and minimize the impact it has.</p><p>One thing to keep in mind is that, while you can't safely AE taunt while part of an encounter holds back near adds, you can single target taunt ones that run in without getting social aggro from the potential adds.  Keeping extra distance between the group and the next set of mobs helps, too, so you can target the one that's going for someone else and taunt it off before it hits them.  You can also cast defensive buff as you're running back and time your AEs so the mobs run into them and then taunt after that for extra aggro.  It's really not that hard to deal with if you play smart.  I think it's well enough designed and adds a good amount of depth to tanking, though the amount of aggro certain things generate (coercer health-to-power spell) could be adjusted a bit better.</p></blockquote><p>None of this is new knowledge to me. As stated in my original post, I accept and understand the concept of hate being generated for things such as triggered spells or heals before the mob(s) in question are engaged. What I don't understand or accept is the idea that my brother's Mystic can have no wards up, no activate spells going on, nothing, and the mob sometimes will take one swing at me and then choose him as a target.</p><p>Thing is, the very next pull (we've tested this) another mob will beat on me for a full 60-120 seconds straight and never choose him as a target. Same buffs, same everything, neither of us doing a thing except my body pulling.</p><p>Chawk that one up for making any sense. </p>

[xOnaton1]

<a href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=183750" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Mystics</a> have a group buff called Runic Mark (Level 5) that has a built in replenishing ward. Any time you get hit, the ward counts as a heal from the mystic. Try pulling with all the mystic buffs off. Also, if you pull when the ward hasn't replenished there wouldn't be a ward active. If you want to get into more detail you may have to post portions of your log with examples. Othesus - Dirge - Lucan DLere Vaspar - Fury - Lucan DLere

[Beldin_]

I don't play so often with a mystic, and when i think it was not so bad then with our defiler, the mobs ALLWAYS run straight to our poor defiler on bodypull <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Norrsken]

Shalla@Valor wrote: <blockquote>I don't play so often with a mystic, and when i think it was not so bad then with our defiler, the mobs ALLWAYS run straight to our poor defiler on bodypull <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></blockquote>Thats because of the shaman group buff that gives a small regenerating ward. It's come up and been fixed quite a fwe times now.

[Gitface]

Hi  All Bit of a thread hijack, but still on topic. First I can confirm the HOT from the last encouter, this happened to our group the other day we were pulling fast to clear to a mob because of fast respawns and our warden still had a HOT up on me when I pulled the next mob. He ran in stright to the warden, who died in a few wacks, (big nuke from the bad to start <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> ) and it went down hill from there. Anyway the question I wanted to ask was about wards. Does the ward have to actual trigger and heal to draw threat or does it draw threat by being there.  Recently my Monk (who is our guilds main tank and who has just tank 3up mobs 7 levels high) just hit 53 and got Inner Clam the big self ward against magic damage.  What I was woundering, this is warding for near on 4000 damage, thats a big chunk of hate gen to start the fight with. Cheers, Bitsy McHard of the Clan McHard on Guk

[Allisia]

It's none of the reasons given above. The mob is running loose with no hate generated against it yet. This is the same as a mob aggroing unexpectedly. When choosing targets of equal hate value (i.e. 0 in this case) mobs have two criteria: 1) go for lower level players, and 2) go for players in close proximity. These two factors are all taken into account when the mob chooses it's target. You can even watch the mobs as they come in sometimes and they will switch targets as they approach the party. This is a result of the mob's targeting priority changing due to the situation changing. For example, the other night in Den of the Devourer I was aggro pulling (i.e. body pulling) groups of 3^ and 2^ ravasects. Initially both mobs would come after me. If the mob came straight after me it would stay on me the whole trip back to the party (proximity would keep it there), but if it stopped or it was the linked mob and thus further away it would always end up on either a healer or the necro (who was significantly lower level).  I could prevent this by landing a group taunt before the mobs reached the "softer" parts of the party, but this isn't always practical due to the situation. For single mobs it's pretty unusual for them to peel off the puller unless something actually generates hate against them, but for group encounters it's much more common, though still often preventable. Sometimes I wonder if archetype is also a factor in the mob determining the target. Mages seen to attract a lot of attention even if they're just standing still. If this is the case then I guess there's more to the orcs saying "Kill the healer first" than just talk.

[TuinalOfTheNexus]

<cite>Ardornon wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>I don't quite know how to explain it, some classes do it, some more than others. Other classes rarely if ever do it, then once in a while you'll be surprised when it happens from a class that you cannot recall it happened to before.</p><p> What I'm talking about is hate generation before an encounter is engaged. For example, you body pull a mob and it slugs you and then proceeds immediately to your Mystic where it proceeds to pummel the crap out of them. Now you would like to taunt the mob off the Mystic, but that isn't possible because the other monster(s) in that encounter haven't made it to your group yet so by officially engaging the mob you'll thus cause friendly aggro from the neighboring encounter of mobs which in turn will train the [I cannot control my vocabulary] out of you and quite possibly get you killed. Nizara anyone?</p><p> Anyway, I not only don't like it, but I vouch we fix to remove it from ever happening.</p><p> Now granted I understand that if you body pull a mob and haven't officially done anything to it, then you realistically have no hate. If your healer then wards and or heals or buffs you in any way after that, they should pull aggro, just not when they haven't done anything.</p><p> I think no matter what happens, so long as a player hasn't touched anyone in the group, or anyone in the monsters in the pulled encounter, (or their pets haven't done anything either for that matter) should a player receive hate and thus direct aggro from a pulled mob not currently engaged.</p><p> There's not much else I can say on this point, it's stupid, and yes that is my highly educated final statement. "Stupid".</p></blockquote><p>A few tips:</p><ul><li>Use tab on the pull to target the first mob to arrive, and use a single target taunt on it. This will not cause social aggro with the remainder of the encounter.</li><li>Cast a group buff during the pull; this generates hate with all mobs in the encounter without causing social aggro. For a Guardian Sentry Watch is a good choice, I can't speak for other classes.</li><li>Tell the healers not to pre-heal / pre-ward you</li><li>Put intercede on the mystic/defiler before the pull.</li></ul>

[SteelPiston]

<cite>Gitface wrote:</cite><blockquote>Hi  All Bit of a thread hijack, but still on topic. First I can confirm the HOT from the last encouter, this happened to our group the other day we were pulling fast to clear to a mob because of fast respawns and our warden still had a HOT up on me when I pulled the next mob. He ran in stright to the warden, who died in a few wacks, (big nuke from the bad to start <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> ) and it went down hill from there. Anyway the question I wanted to ask was about wards. Does the ward have to actual trigger and heal to draw threat or does it draw threat by being there.  Recently my Monk (who is our guilds main tank and who has just tank 3up mobs 7 levels high) just hit 53 and got <span style="color: #ff0000">Inner Clam </span>the big self ward against magic damage.  What I was woundering, this is warding for near on 4000 damage, thats a big chunk of hate gen to start the fight with. Cheers, Bitsy McHard of the Clan McHard on Guk </blockquote><p>MMMM...clams</p><p>Is there a UI anywhere with a hate meter on it? It would be nice to see how much hate is on you at any time. </p>

[Leemeg]

<cite>SteelPiston wrote:</cite><blockquote>MMMM...clams<p>Is there a UI anywhere with a hate meter on it? It would be nice to see how much hate is on you at any time. </p></blockquote>Nope, hate isn't listed in the combat log, hence no hate meter is possible. The hate equations isn't public known (just a few bits), so how it excatly it is working we probably never know <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> My experience is that lower level characters tend to draw the intial aggro, nothing triggering, just that they draw it for some reason. Some classes also seems to draw some intial aggro, without any good reason for it. Troubadors is one. I would agree to the one that said that "lets kill the healer first" thingy may have something more than fluff <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />