How melee aggro works?

[eisley]

Is it known exactly how aggro works from melee? My understanding was the only factors, discounting procs, were the listed DMG+damage bonus from mainhand weapon only, listed DMG on offhand (no dmg bonus for offhand) and from there, flat aggro being applied per swing. I also was under the impression proc chance (ppm) is simply halved if a weapon is in the offhand, and that double/triple attacks have no effect on proc rate, a single swing will proc equally as often as a triple attack, unsure on double/triple attacks effect on swing aggro. For example, I thought a 200 point crippling blow and a hit for 2 do the same amount of aggro, and a single miss or triple landed hit results in the same chance to proc. I thought misses did the same aggro as hits as well, or at least more than zero.

However, I was talking to a level 57 warrior friend of mine, and he said aggro is just 1 damage = 1 aggro, applying to DD's as well. He also said every single one hander has an equal DMG bonus of 9, and that only two handed weapons have varying DMG bonuses, I thought both scaled based on delay. I don't understand this, as it doesn't seem to favor the use of Mosscovered Twig in mainhand. He claims he was the main tank for an uberguild on live and that the MCT was outclassed quickly in Kunark, before the secondary-only nerf. I really don't remember things that way, but I very well may be wrong too.

Looking through my old screenshots, in Kunark era I see my guilds' warriors using staff (MCT) nearly without exception once it became popular, and then later double dagger, presumably Blood Points? Maybe Croaking Dirks? And finally, late Kunark/beginning of Velious it looks like Red epic blade + Feverblade or blue epic, but I think we only ever killed Hoshkar once in Kunark (I think he actually was kind enough to kill himself for us) and we got four Feverblades... which were "11/20 + high aggro 110dd" according to my screenshot.. yet they're 11/18 on p99... but that's neither here nor there I guess. Then Willsapper appears to be a mainstay all throughout Velious, with a variety of offhands: I see whips, katanas, various primals, sceptres, claws, harpoons, epics, etc. Seem to recall Warrior epic being complained about often, which makes me question how proc aggro works here compared to live. Two handers are super rare across the board on my old raids, aside from SK epics. Again, this is just based off of screenshots and memory from my time on Tarew Marr and VZ.

As far as spell aggro, I've noticed a few things. Tashanian seems to be dramatically more aggro than Malo, despite Malo being 45x4 resists, and Tash being 41x1, and both unresistable. I am assuming the Poison counter is the key here. Tash aggro also seems to be higher aggro on harder mobs, leading me to believe it scales with HP, which I *think* is how it worked on live? I seem to recall a patch on live that addressed this issue, but again, purely memory and maybe entirely wrong.

On fungus dudes or juggos for example, I can Malo, then Malosini, then Turgur's, and typically don't pull aggro off a charmed krup. Then I see the Enchanter cast Tashanian on it after, as their first spell, and it'll summon them. However, if I do one Bane or Cripple, I typically get summoned as well. So I'm left to believe that poison counters and atk debuffs (blind?) scale with mob level or hp, and other debuffs including disease counters, slow, resist debuffs, and stun are flat amounts, although not necessarily all the same amount. DD's seem to be simply based on damage and DoTs a combo of initial and per tick, possibly with the initial aggro portion being based on whether or not it has poison/disease counters.

Resists don't appear to affect things here for the most part, and I am unsure if whether or not you are re-applying a debuff factors in at all. Resists certainly produced aggro on live as well, otherwise Willsapper wouldn't have been so popular. Did red sword proc do less aggro on resists? Does it here? Aside from the fact that getting things slowed was hugely important in that era, WS proc was massive aggro even if it were resisted or "unable to land" aka Turgur's was on. It was common for others to swap WS out/stop meleeing once slow landed, iirc. Earthcaller (another non-disease counter slow like WS) seems to do much less aggro here than I remember it being on live, so there may be some discrepancy.

Anyways, if anything is well understood about this, I'd be interested to hear. I tried to search around forums/wiki as I'm sure this has been discussed at length, but couldn't find much surprisingly.