Game Mechanics: Bard Swarm Kiting

[Daldaen]

Been reported many times, but I think with the changes recently made to sit aggro, this change should be doable.

Basically, for those unaware, this is what swarm kiting was:

You got a train of let's say 20~ mobs. You charm 1, and have it attack a mob in your train. This will lead to the mob you attacked, to fight your pet. And the other 18 mobs assisting the mob you sent your pet onto, and they will all attack your pet. You then break your pet with invis and repeat until most of the train is dead. Chant kiting the old pets you broke at low HP.

The bolded part doesn't function properly on this server. Mobs should ***IF YOU DO NOTHING BUT BODY/PROXIMITY AGGRO*** assist and all stack up on your pet.

However once you put in enough aggro the mobs you get aggro on will not assist on your pet. For example, if you have 20 mobs again, and I charm mob #1, and it fights the other 19, then I break charm. If I charm mob #2, and send it on mob #3. Mobs #3-20 will attack my pet (mob #2). But mob #1, the first mob I charmed and then broke, will ignore my new pet and keep chasing me because a single charm or DoT is sufficient to keep aggro on me. Atleast until my new pet is lower than 20% and then gets low HP aggro.

This can lead to several of your mobs having enough aggro from charms and DoTs to ignore assisting on new charmed pets you get and will continue chasing you.

Mob faction or body type is irrelevant for this type of killing, so long as they are all KoS, they will assist onto any charmed pet you have.

In before links to posts about this reported already. I know they exist I just felt making a new one specifically for this in light of the aggro changes implemented for sit aggro, which is similar I think.

[Exalt]

A little old but I am glad I found this and somewhat fresh. This is exactly what I was going to post; I could not state it more clearly myself.

The bizarre thing is if you attempt to do this; their behavior is very eradic. Currently when you a 'swarm' of mobs with a pet, only the one being attacked will engage. However, if you run the mobs from the swarm between the two in conflict, anything can happened. By this I mean, there's a good chance only ONE mob from your swarm will assist the mob engaged with my charm pet. Other times, a significant portion of the swarm with assist. Rarely, the ENTIRE swarm will engage your pet; this is how is should be.
I couldn't find any consistency in what made the swarms behave this way whether it was pathing, distance, placement, etc. More variables than I know, I'm sure.

[zanderklocke]

Burning Wood is a good example to explain how it's currently working. Let's say I pull a bunch of bees including different named bees (ash hornets, cinder hornets, scornae, etc). If I send a charmed mob to attack an ash hornet, only the ash hornet will initially attack it. If I run the train through the pet, the other ash hornets will assist in attacking the pet. However, once the pet becomes low health, all of bees will assist. However, if I had gorillas and skeletons in that train, they wouldn't assist in killing the pet when it's low hp.

From what I have heard, this isn't correct, but it sounds like aggro for pets in game would have to be reworked to fix this. This would definitely affect other pet classes as well.

[Daldaen]

Originally Posted by zanderklocke [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Burning Wood is a good example to explain how it's currently working. Let's say I pull a bunch of bees including different named bees (ash hornets, cinder hornets, scornae, etc). If I send a charmed mob to attack an ash hornet, only the ash hornet will initially attack it. If I run the train through the pet, the other ash hornets will assist in attacking the pet. However, once the pet becomes low health, all of bees will assist. However, if I had gorillas and skeletons in that train, they wouldn't assist in killing the pet when it's low hp.

From what I have heard, this isn't correct, but it sounds like aggro for pets in game would have to be reworked to fix this. This would definitely affect other pet classes as well.

What should happen is similar to what's described above with some differences.

It should not take another pass through the mob. The train should immediately turn to attack your charmed pet once you have him Attack another mob. The second your pet attacks a mob in the train the rest of the train should turn and Attack it. Think of it as though the pet has sit Aggro at that instant. You shouldn't need another pass.

Also yea mob faction is irrelevant. They should all attack.

[derpcake]

Originally Posted by zanderklocke [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

From what I have heard, this isn't correct, but it sounds like aggro for pets in game would have to be reworked to fix this. This would definitely affect other pet classes as well.

Pet initial agro is too low on blue / red. Was attacking pets ever given a lower priority on these servers or so? That would explain.

Undead (skeletons like in your example) should KoS pets with a higher initial agro then on P99, so it doesn't take "one pass" to get them on your pet. Even if singing regen and selo while mobs are agro, all it takes on live is to charm 1 mob and have it attack its friends near it, to get em all on pet.

A fix should also affect other classes since they have the same issue.

[Buellen]

I believe this all has to do with pet agro problem and the need to NOT have pet tanking raid targets.

The pet agro problem has been stated in other threads, but if it is corrected then pets would out agro tanks and would be used to tank in raids.

[derpcake]

Considering Velious hasn't launched, such a fix seems inappropriate.

When they fixed the frozen jezus charm in Kael they didn't break swarming either, am sure there is an elegant fix.

[Nirgon]

Charmed vs summoned change maybe? Shrug

[Daldaen]

Bump.

When you body aggro mobs (just by getting near them and doing nothing else to generate aggro), and then charm a mob and send it on your pack, the amount of aggro your charmed pet generates by meleeing another mob in the pack should outweigh the amount of aggro you have from proximity/body aggroing your entire train.

Due to this, your entire train should assist whatever you sent your pet to attack and they should all pile up on your pet.

[Slowride]

Bump, I did this on classic