Death March Aggro - Demystified

[Ceruline]

There have been a number of threads regarding Death March aggro, and whether or not it has changed.In order to figure out what was going on (And /bug it if something had changed) I did some testing last night on Test.The overall verdict:  It's difficult to be certain, but I'm inclined to say that it hasn't.How Death March generates aggro:As Death March is a group buff, it generates a fixed amount of aggro for each target that it applies to *provided* that the target is engaged at the time.The upshot of this is twofold - Deathmarch will generate more aggro as more party members engage in combat, and Deathmarch will generate more aggro as more eligible buff targets join the party.Eligible Buff Targets is clunky, but important.  Death March generates aggro not only for players it buffs, but also any engaged pet which benefits from group wide buffs (Sadly, this excluded dumbfire pet swarms...)Hence Deathmarch aggro is ineffective in the following situations:1.  Small group play.  Less buff targets = less aggro.2.  Up front aggro, especially if some party members haven't engaged yet.  If party members haven't engaged, they don't count.Deathmarch aggro is EXTREMELY effective in the following situations:1.  Pet Classes!   We Loves Necromancers!  Perma pets which can engage in combat (Our squire receives group buff benefits, but is reluctant to engage) will add to our aggro.  Necros and Conjurers for sure work here - other classes may also have pets which engage.  Note that pets seem to count as engaged as soon as their master engages (And I think visa versa)And now...  The best formula I was able to come up with!Let C be some amount of aggro that DM generates per buffed target (My measurement for my Ad3 DM was that C was roughly between 1700 and 2000)Let N be the number of group-buffable allies who are engaged in combat.Aggro from DM = C*NUnanswered questions:   1.  How do healers (Who haven't offensively engaged the mob) count with regards to the number of engaged targets?  I'd assume they count as engaged, but we didn't have a healer around.2.  If there are two seperate encounters involved, how does the math work?  If a player has only engaged one encounter, does the aggro from buffing them only apply to one encounter?  If a player engages two encounters, could that count as double aggro applied to the SK?  Two encounters may make things much more complicated.Generally speaking, there are enough variables here to explain some of the discrepencies people have been noticing in DM aggro.  In a full group (Raid), DM is usually going to be pulling at least 12k aggro, and potentially significantly more with eligible pets in group.  In a small group, or duo, Death March will pull substantially less aggro. 3.5k-4k, and as low as 1.7k-2k in worst case conditions where the other player hasn't engaged.This doesn't definitively mean that nothing has changed - but it explains why people are seeing such wildly different results.<div></div>

[Notorious_G]

<P>Thanks for taking the time to test & share your discovery.  Considering your findings on DM, an SK in a raid MT grp w/ a Guardian should be able to pop DM on the pull after ONLY the Guardian has engaged w/o giving the Guardian much aggro to over come from the SK correct?  I think by your numbers that would be roughly 4000 hate to overcome on the intial pull for the Guardian?</P> <P>However, what if a Dirges Stone Skin Procs on that pull.  Would that now be 6K hate to overcome?  How about wards & reactives?  Grr, so many questions left unanswered.</P>

[Zanix]

<DIV>I think because of the increased DPS DM causes, that's why a group will tend to steal the agro (in raid situations)</DIV> <DIV>I noticed last night (many times) that the initial CAST of DM didn't cause the mob to change targets, however a good 5-10 seconds later, the agro would turn & focus on me </DIV>

[Ceruline]

Yeah, it's very situational, and given the sorts of things that can pull someone into combat, it can be tough to predict exactly how much you're going to pull.If you've waited a bit, it's probably safe to assume it'll be doing a fair amount of aggro while in a full group.My biggest question right now is with regards to how many pets there are that count.  For instance, are the familiar style pets Wizards and Warlocks get buffable?  Do they count as engaged?   How about the trees that the wardens always seem to summon?   Etc. and so forth...  Our squire is actually buffable (When you DM, he gets the particle effect and the buff shows up), but since he usually doesn't get engaged, he usually won't count towards the equation.<div></div>

[Ceruline]

<div></div>DM is definitely doing a fair amount of aggro up front.  The test didn't really test whether or not all the aggro was on initial cast or if it was spread out.The test was typically as follows (Once we got on the right track and were trying to verify -we'd add or remove engaged members depending):Party member A prox pulls mob.  Hits it once to get engaged.Party member B tags mob to get engaged.I tag mob to get engaged.I DM, and mob turns to me (Preemptive question answer - yes, my reactive aggro was turned off)I turn my back to avoid riposting, and party member B slowly dpses until the mob turns back, while I watch ACT carefully (Set to a 1 second delay to hopefully be as accurate as possible) to see what their total damage was.It's an effective test of the total aggro done by DM itself, and doesn't include additional aggro due to additional dps from On The March, since minimal dps was done during the buff.  If additional hate is gained when party members dps during On The March, that will be on top of whatever was measured during this test.<div></div><p>Message Edited by Ceruline on <span class=date_text>10-04-2006</span> <span class=time_text>11:03 AM</span>

[DUNN]

It has been m experience that when engaging multiple groups and casting DM everything has turned to me.  At least in group setting and also in Crab instance.  I use DM to pull the Named and crabs when they pop on last 10%.  Worked so far and they are 2 seperate encounters. 

[Ceruline]

Oh, DM definitely aggroes the secondary encounter - the question is how much, and how exactly is everything being calculated.<div></div>