How are people struggling with aggro in 2024?

[Wakanda]

I've never had a tank struggle with aggro in any of my groups because I just root the mob we are killing. I do this on my CLR, ENC and SHM.

I do it on my CLR because I'm not trying to go OOM healing a squishy instead of the tank.

I do it on my ENC/SHM because if I don't, the mobs I've tash / slowed are going to beat me up if I don't.

I've never had an issue with aggro in my groups because of this.

Kind of blows my mind to see people unironically talking about how warrior and even monks have aggro issues. Sounds to me like more of a L2P issue, and that players in your groups need to stop standing too close to rooted mobs.

Like how is this a thing??

[DeathsSilkyMist]

I've never had a tank struggle with aggro in any of my groups because I just root the mob we are killing. I do this on my CLR, ENC and SHM.

I do it on my CLR because I'm not trying to go OOM healing a squishy instead of the tank.

I do it on my ENC/SHM because if I don't, the mobs I've tash / slowed are going to beat me up if I don't.

I've never had an issue with aggro in my groups because of this.

Kind of blows my mind to see people unironically talking about how warrior and even monks have aggro issues. Sounds to me like more of a L2P issue, and that players in your groups need to stop standing too close to rooted mobs.

Like how is this a thing??

Believe it or not, some mobs are immune/resistant to root.

People discuss agro mechanics/issues because agro management does matter when root fails you.

[Wakanda]

Believe it or not, some mobs are immune/resistant to root.

People discuss agro mechanics/issues because agro management does matter when root fails you.
oh if we're talking about raid mobs I can see where you're coming from, but I'm reading forum posts where people are implying that warriors and monks are really hard to play because of aggro issues.

I'm not an expert at the game, but as someone whose enchanter play frequently gets compliments from the top guild on my server, I can tell you that I can usually root mobs that are resistant to my mesmerize. For instance, the goos in CoM? Mez them? It might stick, but even if it does, low cooldown, and there's a 60% chance once it breaks in about 20 seconds it will resist the 2nd mez, 3rd mez etc. and you've got multiple of these you're dealing with + a piss who might get pissed and start breaking mez as you get swamped.

In those instances for me, it's usually a lot easier for me to start parking mobs with paralyzing earth.

So like, again, if we're only talking about aggro as a major issue in raids... I see where you're coming from, but at the same time, I highly doubt the raid is going to replace a warrior with an SK or Pally because of aggro issues. Monks? Not even sure why they would be tanking in raids, but again, I know P99 monks aren't true classic!

[Jimjam]

Summoning mobs don’t care for your root.

[Nickelback8469]

Kind of, I've used the root aggro strat a few times but it's a lot of effort to maintain and takes away time from medding or casting other spells. It works great when you have a mage with an earth pet that will constantly apply root, but if a Warrior or Monk requires someone in the party to babysit them by constantly rooting, to me that's a pretty convincing argument for why Warriors aren't good group tanks.

[WarpathEQ]

Gear can certainly play a role, a self geared "tank" grouping with a DPS that has twink items could easily lose agro consistently. Even in the end game I have to do a lot of agro management on my rogue to not steal agro over the main tank at raids, even the best geared tank (and sometimes even the knights). When I was leveling the rogue I had to pull back on dps to not overtake agro quite often and that was before I upgraded to weapons beyond the epic.

Raids often do opt to have a knight tank when its not one of the handful of mobs that hit too hard to keep them alive. Same with mostly-BIS monks, they can tank several raid mobs. And that's common place in group content where you often don't have a warrior.

Rooting can be useful for sure, it was pretty common when I leveled in CoM last, as pointed out can be used as crowd control for adds. At the same time its not something I would really preach as a best practice. Eventually you get to a point where root isn't really reliable/viable (requiring either debuffs to land or simply not landable on most raid content). If you become reliant on root to manage agro then eventually when you get to hard content you're likely going to mis-manage agro and negatively impact others (wipe). We all know the shaman who can't manage their threat while slowing, or the wizard that over nukes and pulls mobs on top of your healers. These people become liabilities to raid forces.

Most recently in leveling a shaman I think there is tremendous benefit in solo'ing with a pet without using root. I've found it as a really good way to understand the cadance of putting in threat and how to not overtake agro on the "tank" (pet). Sure I could just root the mob and then slow, debuff, nuke, ect. But not using root helps me learn critical timing of putting in threat so that way when I get into a high stakes situation like a raid I understand the importance of timing when putting in debuffs and getting mobs slowed without pulling agro and dying.

[Ciderpress]

root is heaven for rogues. warrior tanks even with good proc weapons and damage can't hold aggro in higher level camps for shit if the dps is allowed to go hog wild.

root = faster kills and fewer headaches, who cares if it's a cheap tactic?

[Namsaknoi]

Also root in any form is far more reliable on P99 compared to live, almost no outright resist on blue con or lower level mob with standard resists, and almost always stick for full duration or close to it. No additional dungeon root/snare resist penalty either. I remember as a druid on live, in places like velk or sol b, it would be like resist, resist, break in 3 ticks, resist, break in 3 ticks, resist. Snares were less resisty than roots, but still expect 1-2 resist per mob in general during xp grouping. Also druid and rangers root + dd component made it even more resisty according to official sources like patch notes.

[Smoofers]

Dead OP, have you tried getting good?

[shovelquest]

In pug groups at this age of the game I take it as my responsibility to pull agro from the tank not listen and accidentally agro a room really far from the camp and then run back asking for help and then logging off as soon as I feel like it right after any CR without really telling anyone.

So we get that classic experience, you know?

[Castle2.0]

Cheap root

or

Shaman on expensive root after canni but before med tic

or

Main tank with Herbalist Spade

or

Druid clicking https://wiki.project1999.com/Warden_Symbol_of_Tunare mana free inbteween med tics

or

Earth pet

or

Skele pet with 2x https://wiki.project1999.com/Ebony_Bladed_Sword

Problem solved.

Easy.

Git gud, noobs.

[Eisai]

Gear can certainly play a role, a self geared "tank" grouping with a DPS that has twink items could easily lose agro consistently. Even in the end game I have to do a lot of agro management on my rogue to not steal agro over the main tank at raids, even the best geared tank (and sometimes even the knights). When I was leveling the rogue I had to pull back on dps to not overtake agro quite often and that was before I upgraded to weapons beyond the epic.

Raids often do opt to have a knight tank when its not one of the handful of mobs that hit too hard to keep them alive. Same with mostly-BIS monks, they can tank several raid mobs. And that's common place in group content where you often don't have a warrior.

Rooting can be useful for sure, it was pretty common when I leveled in CoM last, as pointed out can be used as crowd control for adds. At the same time its not something I would really preach as a best practice. Eventually you get to a point where root isn't really reliable/viable (requiring either debuffs to land or simply not landable on most raid content). If you become reliant on root to manage agro then eventually when you get to hard content you're likely going to mis-manage agro and negatively impact others (wipe). We all know the shaman who can't manage their threat while slowing, or the wizard that over nukes and pulls mobs on top of your healers. These people become liabilities to raid forces.

Most recently in leveling a shaman I think there is tremendous benefit in solo'ing with a pet without using root. I've found it as a really good way to understand the cadance of putting in threat and how to not overtake agro on the "tank" (pet). Sure I could just root the mob and then slow, debuff, nuke, ect. But not using root helps me learn critical timing of putting in threat so that way when I get into a high stakes situation like a raid I understand the importance of timing when putting in debuffs and getting mobs slowed without pulling agro and dying.


I Mained a rogue for like nine or so years on live and for at least half of those i was #1 on my backwoods server and i have got to influence here: if you get aggro it's your ducking fault.(period) gi don't care if your tank is butt naked fisting the mob; you aren't doing anything but managing positioning via push and pressing one(two?) button over and over. If you can't do the most important job required of dps (don't d(f)ucking die, then try something else.

[Ciderpress]

If you're xping in a pickup group in velks or something there's literally no reason not to root the mob if somebody can, rogues can do a lot more damage without pulling aggro that way, so the mob dies faster and the next mob arrives faster and your xp bar moves faster. Raids are a totally different story, because obviously.

[Ciderpress]

That being said, I honestly can't remember if it's even classic that mobs always attack the nearest PC when rooted, which is the whole reason it's useful for threat here. I don't really remember that being a thing back in 99-2001, but maybe it was?

[Eisai]

Ro says: it was classic.

But also, until the very end of velius pets tanked on matter how many PCs were in range. Earth pet wasn't the best then because it would max-range spamming root making mobs turn on me often enough to be annoying to my DPS meter and healer. We used this mechanic to kill AoW the first time, the devs said it was impossible but we always find a way. They Nerfed pet aggro because of that kill. I can see why p99 chose to keep the Nerf

[Jimjam]

That being said, I honestly can't remember if it's even classic that mobs always attack the nearest PC when rooted, which is the whole reason it's useful for threat here. I don't really remember that being a thing back in 99-2001, but maybe it was?

/shrug. What I do remember is how people hated root pets back in the day cos they 'messed up aggro'.

[cd288]

Anyone getting RecondoJoe vibes?

[Ciderpress]

/shrug. What I do remember is how people hated root pets back in the day cos they 'messed up aggro'.

Yeah it just seems like such an obvious tactic to use in groups that it should have become common practice within like the first month of release in 1999. There were hundreds of thousands of people figuring out how the game worked back then, somebody would have noticed "oh hey, if you just root the mob it will always attack the nearest person no matter what."

I have a couple RL friends from highschool who played extensively in classic, and they both tried p99 and asked the same question which was "why does everyone root the mob in groups?".

[Wakanda]

Most recently in leveling a shaman I think there is tremendous benefit in solo'ing with a pet without using root. I've found it as a really good way to understand the cadance of putting in threat and how to not overtake agro on the "tank" (pet). Sure I could just root the mob and then slow, debuff, nuke, ect. But not using root helps me learn critical timing of putting in threat so that way when I get into a high stakes situation like a raid I understand the importance of timing when putting in debuffs and getting mobs slowed without pulling agro and dying.

this is obviously off topic, and you may not want to play an inny troll :p nor is having a snare necklace classic (guess it's kunark or velious?) but having the snare necklace is nice for shaman who uses pet a lot. if you root the mob it will turn around and beat up your pet once it's low hp :p if you snare the mob it continue to flee despite not moving (essentially being rooted)

makes it a lot easier since you dont have to worry about your pet getting beat up as much lol

when i talk about aggro im referring to people ive seen on these same forums talking about how warriors are borderline uplayable because of aggro issues :p

for me, when i play my shaman.. its a non issue. i love duo'ing with warriors because with my buffs, haste etc. they deal almost as much damage as a monk but are easier to heal.

i definitely notice a diff between duo'ing with a warrior and duo'ing with a pally or sk... like stuff dies way slower.

i would rather just root it and sit down.

[Wakanda]

/shrug. What I do remember is how people hated root pets back in the day cos they 'messed up aggro'.

idk what is or isnt classic btw, i feel like back in the day we were just happy to have a tank and healer in general lol. i remember as a monk using a ranger to tank and the group falling apart when he left (weird how monks on p99 are viable tanks at all levels and untwinked)

but im mostly referring to p99 exclusively

like i play this game 24/7 and dont care what type of tank we have because root pretty much negates the issue altogether, so im mostly responding to the people who make it sound like warrior or monk tanks arent viable because of aggro

like no? it sounds to me like the casters in your group arent viable, lol.

also idk how classic root is, because i remember asking my friends why they used snare and stinging swarm to kill mobs and why they dont just root them, and they told me because root broke constantly and wasnt viable, so they had to use snare instead

meanwhile on p99 root rot is the meta

so like, hard to know what classic really is at this point

but im mostly referring to p99 meta

[Wakanda]

also i want to add that i dont think most casters are bad about rooting mobs btw

when i play my enc it sometimes shocks me how our random cleric is literally out front rooting mobs before i even mez them because i guess they are so used to improvising without an enc

[Eisai]

Like ten days after green launched i grouped with this wizard in uguk that blast a caster add and drag it out of line of sight and root it before coming back to group and burning down the assist target. He set the bar that no other wizard attempted to meet but i never have taken root off any of my char's spell cars since.

[Namsaknoi]

Regarding live classic vs P99, it was purely because of resist difference, and it is huge, not because people didn't know the how to take advantage of root mechanism back then. It also works both ways, NPC can almost never land a root on a player reliably, unless the NPC is a red con to the player and player barely has any magic resist gear.

Problem with caster casting root hoping to make it easier will have it resisted most of the time or break off very fast, then with 5-6 casts there is no way a tank will be able to taunt the mob off the caster, so eventually either the caster or NPC will need to die.

Problem with earth pet chain rooting also meant that root rarely reliably stuck, so the NPC will first be on tank, then when root sticks, now it will turn to whoever is nearest, then when it breaks, its back on tank etc, then also made re-positioning and switching target very very difficult, often times that NPC will just end up fighting the earth pet alone when switched, then when the pet dies it will just go straight for the Mage until the Mage dies.

[Jimjam]

idk what is or isnt classic btw, i feel like back in the day we were just happy to have a tank and healer in general lol. i remember as a monk using a ranger to tank and the group falling apart when he left (weird how monks on p99 are viable tanks at all levels and untwinked)a

Monks were good on live, but they are crazy good here. I remember my iksar monk in her 20s being able to just fight her way back into camps naked against blue con mobs on the exceedingly rare occasion she died. I was flabergasted as these were mobs that I had struggled to solo on my warrior which had fair armour / weapons.

[Reiwa]

Monks were good on live, but they are crazy good here. I remember my iksar monk in her 20s being able to just fight her way back into camps naked against blue con mobs on the exceedingly rare occasion she died. I was flabergasted as these were mobs that I had struggled to solo on my warrior which had fair armour / weapons.

Avoidance is just so much better than mitigation.

[Eisai]

When Furor realized monks were out tanking him on live he shit a brick and got them nerfed. Happened near the end of velious. There was a big write up on it. It's on my favorites at home (along with the sleeper exploit). Maybe i can post it if i ever see home/my PC again.

[Jimjam]

I’ve always wondered why and how did Furor have so much sway?

[Namsaknoi]

I’ve always wondered why and how did Furor have so much sway?

My theory is that:

1. Family/friend/acquaintance of people related to the game, more likely since he started before the game blew up to a mainstream one in Kunark and Velious

And/or

2. They treated him like a 'diamond' level member, since he purchases the game, pays subscription, re-joins after ban, while being a full time tester 18 hours a day, proactively gives suggestions (usually via complaints), markets indirectly with his guild forums, actively tries toget people to join the game, usually from other games, etc, something only a paid worker would do. Top few guilds really helped adding hype to the game, which helped with sales and subscription, and he was basically one of the top influencer of the game at that time

[Snaggles]

OP’s title should replace “aggro” with “p99”. If PvE is difficult consider playing another game.

[Snaggles]

At least xp grinding

[Sadre Spinegnawer]

Non-tank class boggles at aggro?

We're going to dig deeper into this, tonight at 11. Back to you Bob.

[Wakanda]

My theory is that:

1. Family/friend/acquaintance of people related to the game, more likely since he started before the game blew up to a mainstream one in Kunark and Velious

And/or

2. They treated him like a 'diamond' level member, since he purchases the game, pays subscription, re-joins after ban, while being a full time tester 18 hours a day, proactively gives suggestions (usually via complaints), markets indirectly with his guild forums, actively tries toget people to join the game, usually from other games, etc, something only a paid worker would do. Top few guilds really helped adding hype to the game, which helped with sales and subscription, and he was basically one of the top influencer of the game at that time

There was a player on our server who had a bunch of items that no one understood how he got. Like he had full lustrous russet despite never raiding. Among other weird items. And at the time it was controversial. A staff member made a notice, I believe in a patch, about how they awarded him these items because he had helped them discover bugs/glitches. But anyways, when I first started playing on P99, no one believed me when I said this player had these items because a lot of them were never supposed to be in the game. So out of curiosity I googled the player's name to see if I could find old threads that corroborate this claim. What I found instead ..... was this player on quora.com talking about how badly addicted he was to EQ and how he worked as a GM the entire time on top of playing it with all of his free time, and it made me realize that the way he likely got all of these items was by being a GM and/or friends with staff.

He also did really controversial things, like he had his epic an hour after the servers came up that patched the epics into the game.

I've also always wondered if Musk from the Tunare server was Elon Musk IRL. Dude had the only Fiery Avenger on any server, and it was explained that the staff helped him get it for his contributions outside of the game. At the time one of the main things paypal was actually being used for was buying EQ characters and items off of ebay. If I ever met him and could ask him one question I would ask him if that was him.

[Namsaknoi]

There was a player on our server who had a bunch of items that no one understood how he got. Like he had full lustrous russet despite never raiding. Among other weird items. And at the time it was controversial. A staff member made a notice, I believe in a patch, about how they awarded him these items because he had helped them discover bugs/glitches. But anyways, when I first started playing on P99, no one believed me when I said this player had these items because a lot of them were never supposed to be in the game. So out of curiosity I googled the player's name to see if I could find old threads that corroborate this claim. What I found instead ..... was this player on quora.com talking about how badly addicted he was to EQ and how he worked as a GM the entire time on top of playing it with all of his free time, and it made me realize that the way he likely got all of these items was by being a GM and/or friends with staff.

He also did really controversial things, like he had his epic an hour after the servers came up that patched the epics into the game.

I've also always wondered if Musk from the Tunare server was Elon Musk IRL. Dude had the only Fiery Avenger on any server, and it was explained that the staff helped him get it for his contributions outside of the game. At the time one of the main things paypal was actually being used for was buying EQ characters and items off of ebay. If I ever met him and could ask him one question I would ask him if that was him.

Wow, interesting, I do remember seeing on forums how some GMs on some servers abused their power in this regard and eventually removed, it became less during Velious time then eventually stopped afterwards. They probably vetted and monitored candidates much more strictly as the game became bigger. I think some of the quests, or at least parts of them, were near impossible to solve just by trial and error at least in such short period, so those people may have been giving out hints and spoilers on them too. There is also his siblings Kimbal and Tosca Musk also, haha.