Initial aggro cap and/or pet aggro issue(s)?

[Tecmos Deception]

On blue right now, a tash to aggro a mob generates nearly no threat and a charmed pet (or anything, for that matter) will pull the mob off of me immediately (as in, 1 round of melee or any 1 spell, etc).

In the beta right now, the few times I've tried to pull a high-level named (Velk's stuff, Brood Master, Jelek Icepaw, etc) away from its guards with a tash, it is GLUED to me even after a charmed pet attacks dozens of times, doing 1k+ damage.

Bug or intended?

[Haynar]

I will look at this tomorrow. There are pet aggro changes on Beta. But should have gone up. Sounds like tash aggro is a bit low too. Lucky you, I am not doing spells.

H

[Tecmos Deception]

Tash aggro is not low on beta. My SK taunted this scarab on beta to aggro it, then stood facing away from it so I didn't riposte at all while I ran my chanter over there too. Then Tecmos hit it with tashanian and it took DC, SV, DC to pull it back onto my SK:

[Fri Mar 07 07:00:59 2014] You taunt a sand scarab to ignore others and attack you!
...
[Fri Mar 07 07:02:48 2014] Tecmos begins to cast a spell.
[Fri Mar 07 07:02:49 2014] A sand scarab tries to bite YOU, but misses!
[Fri Mar 07 07:02:49 2014] A sand scarab glances nervously about.
...
[Fri Mar 07 07:02:55 2014] You begin casting Disease Cloud.
[Fri Mar 07 07:02:56 2014] a sand scarab was hit by non-melee for 5 points of damage.
[Fri Mar 07 07:02:56 2014] A sand scarab doubles over in pain.
[Fri Mar 07 07:02:58 2014] a sand scarab has taken 1 damage from your Disease Cloud.
[Fri Mar 07 07:02:58 2014] A sand scarab tries to bite Tecmos, but misses!
...
[Fri Mar 07 07:03:01 2014] You begin casting Shadow Vortex.
[Fri Mar 07 07:03:02 2014] You feel a shadow pass over you.
[Fri Mar 07 07:03:02 2014] A sand scarab is surrounded by a vortex of shadows.
[Fri Mar 07 07:03:04 2014] a sand scarab has taken 1 damage from your Disease Cloud.
[Fri Mar 07 07:03:04 2014] A sand scarab tries to bite Tecmos, but misses!
...
[Fri Mar 07 07:03:06 2014] You begin casting Disease Cloud.
[Fri Mar 07 07:03:06 2014] You haven't recovered yet...
[Fri Mar 07 07:03:06 2014] You haven't recovered yet...
[Fri Mar 07 07:03:07 2014] A sand scarab tries to bite Tecmos, but misses!
[Fri Mar 07 07:03:07 2014] a sand scarab was hit by non-melee for 5 points of damage.
[Fri Mar 07 07:03:07 2014] A sand scarab doubles over in pain.
[Fri Mar 07 07:03:09 2014] A sand scarab tries to bash YOU, but misses!


My thought was that it was more likely this was an initial aggro cap thing. It was my understanding that initial aggro is supposed to be capped to a relatively low amount of hate, regardless of how how the mob is initially aggrod. Edit - err, I just tested initial aggro also (albeit on a mob in nro instead of on a high-level named in velks) and DC pulled off of my chanter immediately after my chanter tashed to pull.

So it seems like either there are special hate rules in place in certain zones/for certain mobs or something, or that charmed pets aren't generating enough threat, I guess? Sorry if I'm not being too helpful figuring out what it is! Just noticed this was something much different than what happens on blue so wanted to check if it was intended or a bug.

[Schortt]

Debuff spells like Slow/Tash/Malo used a calculation involving mob max HP which resulted in them causing too much hate against higher hp Velious mobs. This got fixed in Feb 2001:


http://everquest.allakhazam.com/history/patches-2001-1.html
*NPC AI - Hate*

We've made a number of changes to NPC AI, specifically to the section
dealing with target-selection, or what's commonly referred to as
"Hate". It is not so much that NPCs react differently to hate now than
before, but that we've changed the way that hate is awarded.

--- We reduced the amount of hate that can be caused by a proc. Due to
the high proc rates at upper levels, the amount of hate generated from
procs, and the spells that were selected for those procs, made keeping
the attention of the creature much too easy a task for the tank.
Simply, it nearly eliminated the challenge of keeping a foes attention
at levels above 50.

--- We've capped the amount of hate that can be awarded to most
casters, specifically for debuff-type spells like the Malo and Tash
series. The hate calculation for these spells takes into account the
number of hitpoints of the NPC and did not "play nice" with the
increased HP limit of Velious. It explains why Enchanters, for
instance, would complain that casting a Tash spell would lead to near-
instant death.

--- We've redressed the amount of hate generated by heal spells.
Previously, and *partly* due to a bug, the high level heal spells such
as superior heal or complete heal would generate no more hate than
greater heal. In fact, so little hate was generated by these spells
that it made controlling NPC aggression trivial. Heal spells will now
generate an amount of hate more in line with the number of hitpoints
actually healed. Due to our desire to leave the lower level game more
or less untouched, two separate caps have been placed for targets level
50 or below, and 51 or above. Heal spells will generate significantly
less hate for targets below level 51 than those at or above that level.

--- We've also re-evaluated ways that players have to reduce their own
hate. While spells in place to allow this are OK, the Evade skill
(possessed by rogues) let them out of their damage too easily. A rogue
that successfully evaded would immediately drop to a level of hate
lower than someone who was in the awareness range, but hadn't done
anything to really upset the creature such as damage it or heal its
foe. This problem was exacerbated by the increase of the size of the
hate list implemented with Velious. So it sounds like you're seeing the proper amount of hate generated by Tash unless initial hate really should be capped as you're suggesting OR the devs want to shoot for the reworked hate system right away.

[Tecmos Deception]

I don't have exact hp numbers, but just by seeing brood master and jelek's hp % dropping as my pet engaged them, they don't seem to have many more HP than a mob like the spectre spiritualist in HS, and I've pulled him with tash dozens of times only to have a level 49 pet pull it off me instantly with a single round of melee.

/shrug

[Haynar]

Even at end of Velious, if you tashed early, you were going to die. All debuffs were not equivalent. And slow spells should be absolutely brutal as far as aggro goes. Well, the ones that have disease based counters that is. Any disease counter was lots of aggro. Thats why disease cloud was a lot of aggro.

Tash should be more aggro. I will look into it, since you are really bringing into question how it is working. I will make sure its working properly.

H

[Tecmos Deception]

This doesn't seem relevant to initial aggro caps though. What seemed "off" to me playing on beta compared to blue was this: on blue I can pull a ~15k hp mob with a tash, and a level 49 pet that hits for 136 max will pull aggro off of me with 1 round of melee 99% of the time. It's my understanding that this is working as intended, that no matter what action you take to initially aggro a mob, you are capped at a certain amount of threat. On beta though, I pull a ~15k hp mob with tash, and a level 51 pet that hits for 180 max will NOT pull aggro off of me with 20+ attacks.

If tash is supposed to be more aggro than 2 DCs and a SV, that's fine, and it's good to have it working properly; I can't comment with any authority because I never played seriously enough back in the day to know these things. But what about initial aggro caps?

[Haynar]

I will try some tash, aggro games.

I don't know what is going on.

H

[Tecmos Deception]

I was gonna try to get my SK into velks to see if DC/SV pulled off these mobs like they do with the lowbie stuff in nro... but I don't feel like finding out how the aggro radii in velks work on a level 45 :)

[Haynar]

Yep, had pet hate totally borked on Beta. Fixing.

Thanks.

H

[Haynar]

For pet hate on Beta, in group setting. The pet hate generated should be about triple what it was before. Testing changes now, so it is not pushed out to the server yet.

H