Force Weaver
07-07-2007, 04:54 AM
<p>Everyone has experienced that many mobs in the game have a "weak side", in particular the back. When the tank turns the mob or you circle around and get behind your resist rates drop, you're doing more damage and wasting less power. This is easy to see and to quantify, but....</p><p>There may be something else happening as well, you may be generating less hate than if you were facing the mob. I've definitely found I pulled aggro less with the same group of players on the same type of mobs with the same buffs/spell order when behind or far away. I thought it was my imagination, but after LU 36 I'm thinking there's more to this than a hunch. In addition, distance from the mob also seems to influence hate gain/order. Although when you're up close you're able to pop in a FOR and Firestorm here and there and rip the aggro from most tanks if you keep the same spell order for close/far (without the FOR or FS) I've found its harder to rip aggro when you are further away. </p><p>What suggests that independent of damage dealt there's another "factor" for orientation and distance in hate gain at least in group content? (I'm excluding raiding as I have practically zero experience there.)</p><p>Look at the shielding line in our AA tree, the final ability extends your spell distances by 5. Ok so what right? Well if you solo then you'd place 10 in magi's, go up the Ice for the debuff, IN, ST and then slide over to the emergency ward and get the spell distance for extra time on your encounters. After all, there's some finite time it takes for the mob to get to you so you get more chances to root or stun etc. increasing your survivability. But if you're mainly in group content you don't plan on ever going toe-toe with the mob so you're not so interested perhaps in the magi's shielding or the emergency ward. You can go up the ice and slide over through cease and concussive and get your 15pts to still get the extra 5 on all your spells. If you're far away you won't be worried about needing the ward or emergency ward as there won't be AOE's or nasty DOT's from most instance names etc. But many of your spells have plenty of "distance" to begin with.</p><p>Why would the bonus for such an anti-hate distribution of points in our tree be rewarded with..... <i>more</i> distance? Well if there's a tank in the group who cares about distance because hate is just about my DPS vs their DPS/Taunts right? I'm starting to think not. If distance was such a trivial component of hate formulation why would this be the hate control reward for the wizard tree? </p><p>Why does Fusion seem "extra" hateful? The AOE damage is easy to calculate but there's no way to tell the possible hate multiplier for being so close to the mob because if you cast it without the Int line its insta aggro and most ppl use it as a finishing move or to give the healer time to catch up on the tank. A group type-player will probably go down ice for the frigid gift AA bonus and may/may not elect to add distance to fusion. But the bonus to fusion is not a lower recast or more damage but more distance. Yes some ppl had a hard time getting the hang of it when it first came out but this extra distance may be both to make it easier to hit targets and make it so you gather less hate (afterall you're putting points in it) so you can use it more often.</p><p>Remember that mobs have aggro radii that are adjustable. In TT the 4x writs used to require the treehouse mobs that were easily pulled singly. Then there was an update that increased their aggro radii causing many more to come in a pull afterwards increasing the challenge of grabbing them. (Anyone in house responsible for that change I sincerely appreciate the increase in difficulty btw as it made for a great learning/strategy session improving my ability to play this class.)</p><p>Aggro cascades vary depending on the zone. Some "dense" areas are insta-deaths if you mistakenly break you invis solo or grab aggro or AOE in a group. The most vicious aggro cascade I've experience has to be in parts of Unrest. It is quite nice to be in a zone where everyone must communicate and restrain themselves and be a team player. A "hate managing" build is very useful when you can't maximize your distance or the tank can't really turn many mobs easily from lack of room,etc. </p><p>The KOS Int Line, ok it allow you 20% less hate gain with the right pet and a really uber "2 threat position reduction." So if distance and orientation aren't always things you can maximize in certain situations you can be automatically placed 1? hate point below the next two players on the hate list which significantly affects your hate sum. </p><p>Another thing I've noticed is once a Wizard has hate it's hard to get rid of it without the KOS Int endline even if you don't cast offensive spells. Yes it's possible you got really far ahead of the tank on hate from the damage you did (or the total hate accrued if you got "multiplied" for facing and point blanking the mob <hangs head in shame><img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />, but there's times I've gotten ahead on a non-IN/Fusion hit. </p><p>So when I've gotten ahead even a little it seems like the tanks taunts and my regular deaggro's don't pull the mob off of me very fast at all. It is possible that the #1 hate position has a boost to hate gain not only from a proximity damage multiplier (i.e. the mob is in your face) but from a "current leading hate" or "time hated" multiplier making it harder to reduce your current hate and to let the tank get aggro back. I don't know this to be the case but it seems to be plausible given that the hate calculation isn't completely transparent to the playerbase yet. </p><p>I like the game to be a game and magical behind the curtain so I'm not advocating that the hate equation be placed explicitly out for all to see. Who knows maybe there's a link someone will post showing where hate has been transparently shown to us all. As it stands most points of view on the wizard class advocate brute force of one style or another. Max DPS or Max Tanking. </p><p>Brute force. Effective and fun, but there's a more sophisticated and classy Wizard playstyle that manages hate and still does some decent group DPS. As an advocate for max tanking, I must point out it does have its limitations and max aggro management is more fun to play in the group setting. Max tanking was more challenging but it's nice not to hog 2 roles in every group any longer. In T8 consideration of Wizard playstyle and its detriment on other classes' "fun" needs to be considered. Something should be done so a Brute Force build is good if the player has the right cadence (self-limiting) and doesn't obnoxiously steal aggro from the tank with no consequences. Then again, it is nice to be able to "duo" some content so I wouldn't place everything off limits to unrestrained Brute Force builds. </p>