Anyone know how aggro works?

Emencie · January 2015

I mostly PvP but when I PvE I generally tank, and while I've noticed questionable aggro behavior this before I decided to test this out tonight and the results are completely baffling.

Mobs seem to target anyone and everyone in the group of the person attacking them regardless of what is actually going on in the fight.

For example:

I shield assault into a group of enemies and do nothing else. 2 enemies fight me, 3 run to fight the person in party with me.
I run into a group and use engulfing flames hitting them all. Every single enemy runs off to attack the other person in my group.
I run in and light attack one enemy. Only 1 of 5 enemies runs off to attack my party member.

In all these examples my party member did absolutely nothing. We tested dozens of times, with them standing next to the mobs, a few ways away, and even in another room out of LOS of the enemies. It seemed to be completely random and the mobs would run so far they would reset themselves trying to attack the other character even though that character had done absolutely nothing.

We checked that there were no hots or running on the character doing nothing, and even tried with me spam healing and DPSing while the other player did nothing and again it was completely random how many mobs if any attacked either one of us.

We swapped roles to see if maybe it was the armor playing a role in aggro (like heavy armor gets less/more aggro) But the exact same random results.

So I'm just wondering if there are some aggro rules somewhere or anything on how it works, I know about the taunt skills, I'm just talking about general aggro on enemies. Is it based on health maybe?

Any information appreciated.

DaniAngione · January 2015

I've noticed similar results myself when I was testing something similar once.

Aggro only really gets changed when you start using aggro-related skills (taunts, escapes, hides, etc...) but it really seems random before that.

I don't see that as a problem, though... Imagine a group of bandits being attacked... If there are like two big mean guys behind and one guy in front attacks, they'd probably talk in between them: "Get the ones back there!" or something like that. It just makes no sense that even if the enemies can see other possible threats they'll focus on the 'first' attacker. In fact, being a group, it's only logical they'll split.

As for the bugs with the other party members being really far away and such... Well, this is where it gets *really* broken, then, I guess... But I suppose it wouldn't happen under 'normal' circumstances so I'm not surprised it's broken.

(all of the above is just my opinion, though :P )

Cyhawk · January 2015

For the most part it comes down to who hit them first, or a random chance to target anyone in the group. When taunt is lost, the next person to attack it repeats the above (high chance of going after them, I'd estimate a 50% chance to attack a random person rather than the person who hit it based on experience). There doesn't seem to be a correlation between distance/stats/role on who it attacks, just any random person. Distance seems to help (about 20m) but not always.

Truthfully we dont have hard numbers for how aggro works in ESO.

If you're tanking I recommend using a soft taunt like Caltrops to keep aggro on the majority of trash and taunt the big ones and chain pull the annoying ones. Works really well.

superquadockyb14_ESO · January 2015

The enemies do not have aggro as far as I can tell. They are actually a bit more dynamic in their organization and may occasionally attack the 'weakest' or the obvious support/ranged character. A 'taunt' as far as I know is pretty much a status infliction upon an enemy that forces them to attack you regardless. Its like inflicting 'bleed' or other some such.

I do notice that the AI tends to favor attacking those they see first, but then may switch targets if others are in range.

In my mind this makes more sense as a setup as there is no 'cooldowns' and the combat rhythm doesn't have time to bother with calculating who has the most aggro or whatever.

But that is what I have mostly observed. I am probably completely wrong but I tried.

Alphashado · January 2015

This isn't random. It's intentional. it's designed this way to give trash mobs more of an immersive feel.

Look at it this way: Pretend you are the trash mob. You are just standing around doing your thing and this big burly knight charges into your campfire tossing fire and carnage around. You see 3 other people standing in the background shooting arrows and casting spells at you. Are you just going to ignore the 3 other people and focus only on the big guy in heavy armor while getting pelted with spells and arrows?

They are going to randomly charge anyone in the group the instant combat is initiated. This is one of the things I absolutely LOVE about ESO. Your job as a tank in this game is to keep BOSS agro. If you can manage (cc) trash mobs, then so be it, and that is a feat that DK tanks excel at due to the talons and chains skills. But for the most part, your job as a tank in this game is to keep the BOSS off your group. This is why there are only two taunts in the game and neither of them are AoE.

The holy trinity is alive and well in this game, but it's very flexible

Harleyquincey · January 2015

As a full fledged tank, let me tell you a few things about aggro and how it works...

It does not.

Really, it's that simple. Do you have someone with a resto staff? You can bet your hide that this person will get initial aggro most of the time. Which is fine with me. But now comes the thing which validates my point: Taunts. They are broken since roughly November and ZOS is "actively investigating the issue" ever since.
See, I'm really not one for easily being annoyed but it's role-breaking. We're talking about standard (happens in what.. 7 out of 10 fights?) phenomenons such as:

Mob gets 1st Taunt. Runs off to random guy.
People bash that mob.
Mob gets 2nd Taunt. Focuses on Tank now.
People bash the mob, Mob decides to randomly lose aggro despite Taunt still ticking off.

And now comes the fun part - if all this happens within 10 seconds, you're screwed. Why? Because there is a mechanism in place called overtaunting. If you taunt more than twice within 10s guess which mob will grow taunt-resistant for a while? Yup. That very mob.

Now of course on your average Joe-the-Mob this is no issue.
On your Ash Titan or whatever - it IS an issue.

Other than taunts the aggro does indeed really seem fairly random at first with a strong bias towards resto staff users followed by archers - which is really perfectly fine and understandable imho. I could live with that very well, if the game allowed me to taunt properly.

This is all true for both, the Undaunted taunt as well as the 1h&shield taunt.

WhiskyBob · January 2015

Also combining melee taunt and ranged taunt is utterly broken.
My usual tanking of axes in hardmode AA looked like this:
- Inner Beast to grab them
- Pierce Armor to keep them on me

Well apparently if you use both taunts (i am not saying overtaunting, i don't overtaunt) the taunt breaks randomly and usually very early.

Final decision: pack some extra mana and dont use other taunt than inner beast (ever).

kongkim · January 2015

Its a design choice that they often target others in the groupe.

Lord_Kreegan · January 2015

Sure it works... if you're the healer in your party, you are guaranteed to get aggro.

Run a dungeon; stand back and do nothing for several seconds while the other three guys in your group are fighting. Then cast a heal... instant aggro.

Both of my Templar healers use heavy armor just because of that (not that heavy armor really provides much in the way of damage mitigation) and use "healing on the run" as their primary tactic. I have yet to see any tank or DPS be able to grab aggro off of a healing character; instead, common tactics I've seen are to let the healer get aggro and then whack on the mobs while they're chasing the healer... not taking any damage in the process because the mobs are all attacking the healer.

Seems the most effective healing tactic is to let the mobs beat on the healer instead of the other players.

Emencie · January 2015

Thanks guys, after testing more I'm going to have to agree with many of you, it is completely random and unpredictable.

I tested so many variables in so many ways with so many abilities (intentionally avoiding the taunts to try to figure out how the aggro tables work) time after time and every time the number of enemies that attacked me VS other party members was consistently random. From testing I have come to these conclusions.

The mobs will attack anyone in the party, at random even if that party member has taken no action or is completely out of the mobs line of sight.
The mobs seem to have a timer where they swap targets (again randomly) at certain intervals.
Damage done, healing done and position are completely irrelevant.
If a party member is in stealth mode, Mobs will not attack them.
When a taunt effect wears off the mob goes back to randomly selecting a target, this is not based on damage or healing done.

This makes me think there is actually no aggro mechanic in the game at all, and instead the enemies are set with some sort of script that checks for a taunt and if one is not found they run a RNG that selects from each available party member and then attacks accordingly.

Ahdora · January 2015

Lord_Kreegan wrote: »

Sure it works... if you're the healer in your party, you are guaranteed to get aggro.

Run a dungeon; stand back and do nothing for several seconds while the other three guys in your group are fighting. Then cast a heal... instant aggro.

Both of my Templar healers use heavy armor just because of that (not that heavy armor really provides much in the way of damage mitigation) and use "healing on the run" as their primary tactic. I have yet to see any tank or DPS be able to grab aggro off of a healing character; instead, common tactics I've seen are to let the healer get aggro and then whack on the mobs while they're chasing the healer... not taking any damage in the process because the mobs are all attacking the healer.

Seems the most effective healing tactic is to let the mobs beat on the healer instead of the other players.

Huh?

I'm a light armor wearing nightblade healer, and while I occasionally get aggro, my tank/DPS *never* have me kite around mobs while they kill them. When I get aggro, I bring it in to the tank/DPS, and block until they get it off me.

I'm not denying taunt is very broken, but I've never had an experience like what you describe. If anything, if the DPS can't get the mob off me they focus and kill it quickly.

DarkAedin · January 2015

caltrops

srsly

Harleyquincey · January 2015

Well I can indeed grab aggro off a healer or anyone else if I really have to. This involves risking to overtaunt the enemy because yeah sometimes it won't fire on the first two tries and after that it's a matter of decisionmaking: Do I feel 10 seconds have passed? Should I risk another taunt? All while cc-ing the heck out of the mob if possible and trying to make its life as miserable as it gets.

It's really at a point that I feel playing a tank is not really playing a tank but an underwhelming sort-of-DPS with tons of survivability.

Whenever it works, I can even tank multiple bosses on me without many issues (this is really highly dependable on gear setup and attribute spread though) but ..frankly usually it doesn't work and that's definitely not on my side (as the tests above show, plus talking to any other tanks I know plus one of my best mates going tank occasionally and experiencing the exact same issues).

Merlin13KAGL · January 2015

Wait...aggro works?

Wifeaggro13 · January 2015

Emencie wrote: »

I mostly PvP but when I PvE I generally tank, and while I've noticed questionable aggro behavior this before I decided to test this out tonight and the results are completely baffling.

Mobs seem to target anyone and everyone in the group of the person attacking them regardless of what is actually going on in the fight.

For example:
I shield assault into a group of enemies and do nothing else. 2 enemies fight me, 3 run to fight the person in party with me.

I run into a group and use engulfing flames hitting them all. Every single enemy runs off to attack the other person in my group.

I run in and light attack one enemy. Only 1 of 5 enemies runs off to attack my party member.

In all these examples my party member did absolutely nothing. We tested dozens of times, with them standing next to the mobs, a few ways away, and even in another room out of LOS of the enemies. It seemed to be completely random and the mobs would run so far they would reset themselves trying to attack the other character even though that character had done absolutely nothing.

We checked that there were no hots or running on the character doing nothing, and even tried with me spam healing and DPSing while the other player did nothing and again it was completely random how many mobs if any attacked either one of us.

We swapped roles to see if maybe it was the armor playing a role in aggro (like heavy armor gets less/more aggro) But the exact same random results.

So I'm just wondering if there are some aggro rules somewhere or anything on how it works, I know about the taunt skills, I'm just talking about general aggro on enemies. Is it based on health maybe?

Any information appreciated.

There is rudimentary Aggro management in ESO. its part of group mechanics that need serious reworking. In all honesty people like to defend this design . But i do not , its very shoddy and easy. tanking takes less skill and the role is just a hybrid dps.

Nestor · January 2015

Lord_Kreegan wrote: »

Run a dungeon; stand back and do nothing for several seconds while the other three guys in your group are fighting. Then cast a heal... instant aggro.

I see this as the game playing the same way I do. Healers and Menders are always targeted first by me. Only the game has to wait until someone actually heals as they don't have these badges denoting their role/class

pppontus · January 2015

Harleyquinceyeb17_ESO wrote: »

As a full fledged tank, let me tell you a few things about aggro and how it works...

It does not.

Really, it's that simple. Do you have someone with a resto staff? You can bet your hide that this person will get initial aggro most of the time. Which is fine with me. But now comes the thing which validates my point: Taunts. They are broken since roughly November and ZOS is "actively investigating the issue" ever since.
See, I'm really not one for easily being annoyed but it's role-breaking. We're talking about standard (happens in what.. 7 out of 10 fights?) phenomenons such as:

Mob gets 1st Taunt. Runs off to random guy.
People bash that mob.
Mob gets 2nd Taunt. Focuses on Tank now.
People bash the mob, Mob decides to randomly lose aggro despite Taunt still ticking off.

And now comes the fun part - if all this happens within 10 seconds, you're screwed. Why? Because there is a mechanism in place called overtaunting. If you taunt more than twice within 10s guess which mob will grow taunt-resistant for a while? Yup. That very mob.

Now of course on your average Joe-the-Mob this is no issue.
On your Ash Titan or whatever - it IS an issue.

Other than taunts the aggro does indeed really seem fairly random at first with a strong bias towards resto staff users followed by archers - which is really perfectly fine and understandable imho. I could live with that very well, if the game allowed me to taunt properly.

This is all true for both, the Undaunted taunt as well as the 1h&shield taunt.

I have to say.. I don't experience this.

WhiskyBob wrote: »

Also combining melee taunt and ranged taunt is utterly broken.
My usual tanking of axes in hardmode AA looked like this:
- Inner Beast to grab them
- Pierce Armor to keep them on me

Well apparently if you use both taunts (i am not saying overtaunting, i don't overtaunt) the taunt breaks randomly and usually very early.

Final decision: pack some extra mana and dont use other taunt than inner beast (ever).

Or this.

I keep hearing about issues with aggro loss, taunts not working, don't mix inner beast with pierce armor etc. Everyone is telling me this, meanwhile I am tanking Mantikoras, Serpents, DSA, AA HM .. whatever, I mix them all the time, and never experience this issue. I have heard all sorts of explanations like don't use crippling slash after pierce armor, and tons of other.. but really this just isn't happening to me on my Templar, DK or NB who I frequently tank with.

All I can say is: don't taunt to often, and don't ever wait until the taunt timer expires. You have to remember if you're relying on a timer that the timer is going to fire when you press the button, not when the taunt is registered so add at least a second or two to that. Also *watch your character*, I'm guessing lag can be an issue here.. so look at your character and listen for the sounds of PA/IB, if your character does the animation and you hear the sound - it's on. Not necessarily when the timer shows.

In addition to that, Zenimax ffs(!) put in proper buff/debuff tracking and people will stop saying that taunts are bugged.

Iselin · January 2015

I remember very old developer interviews where they talked about mob behavior using a mix of "traditional" (think WOW) aggro tables and semi-independent or scripted behavior making some mobs from a pack ignore taunts and go after the other party members.

It's pretty obvious with some boss mechanics when they peel off the tank and pick a random player for a special attack... but that's a really old boss trick to spice things up a bit. However, other than those special attacks, bosses are more likely to stick to the tank that taunts them than packs or ads are.

You can use tricks as a tank (such as frequent use of AOE roots) to keep them away from the rest of the party but some mobs just seem determined to ignore the tank and take off unless they're rooted.

It's also a lot easier here to pull mobs off the tank through DPS than in other MMOs with superglue tanks.

Personally I like this system a lot more than the totally predictable mob behavior in other MMOs or the totally chaotic behavior in GW2. This is somewhere between those two extremes... there is some order but no one in the party is 100% safe.

Emencie · January 2015

@Iselin
From everything I've seen there is no threat system at all in this game, so I'm not sure what you mean by that because this game is as random as the GW2 system. Except that we have 2 taunts and they have none, so we can force a mob to attack a particular person but everything else seems completely random.

I would love to see that developer comment because I seriously doubt there are any aggro tables at this point.

eliisra · January 2015

Lord_Kreegan wrote: »

Sure it works... if you're the healer in your party, you are guaranteed to get aggro.

Run a dungeon; stand back and do nothing for several seconds while the other three guys in your group are fighting. Then cast a heal... instant aggro.

The tank is probably over-taunting, so aggro resets and your heals are the first thing being registered. Also seems that a heal is slightly more aggro pulling than a basic dps skill. So if dps is mediocre you're more likely to pull as a healer.

I rarely have your problems when healing though.

But I still feel that taunt is unreliable. It's not so much based on the skills I'm using, more like certain dungeon bosses behaving oddly, while others responds to taunts perfectly and according to timers. Problem is these bosses resetting or ignoring tank, during mid or early taunt timer. If you try picking them up again, you might over-taunt and they're still on the loose. If you wait, they may kill someone.

One reason might be addons tracking debuffs. They will tell you that a boss is taunted, even if the skill didn't register due to latency or whatnot. Of course not a solution for everything that's messed up with taunting, but a reliable built-in buff/debuff tracker, would help.

Iselin · January 2015

Emencie wrote: »

@Iselin
From everything I've seen there is no threat system at all in this game, so I'm not sure what you mean by that because this game is as random as the GW2 system. Except that we have 2 taunts and they have none, so we can force a mob to attack a particular person but everything else seems completely random.

I would love to see that developer comment because I seriously doubt there are any aggro tables at this point.

If a tank who has been holding aggro on a boss dies, the boss will preferentially target the remaining player who has been doing the most DPS... I've seen this happen enough times to know for a fact that there are DPS-based aggro tables.

Also tanks with good DPS hold aggro much better than one who puts out negligible DPS.

But like I said, groups of mobs will do their own thing sometimes no matter what. Bosses react to tanks in a much more WOW-like fashion.

Emencie · January 2015

Iselin wrote: »

Emencie wrote: »

@Iselin
From everything I've seen there is no threat system at all in this game, so I'm not sure what you mean by that because this game is as random as the GW2 system. Except that we have 2 taunts and they have none, so we can force a mob to attack a particular person but everything else seems completely random.

I would love to see that developer comment because I seriously doubt there are any aggro tables at this point.

If a tank who has been holding aggro on a boss dies, the boss will preferentially target the remaining player who has been doing the most DPS... I've seen this happen enough times to know for a fact that there are DPS-based aggro tables.

Also tanks with good DPS hold aggro much better than one who puts out negligible DPS.

But like I said, groups of mobs will do their own thing sometimes no matter what. Bosses react to tanks in a much more WOW-like fashion.

This is not true. I started this thread because I was wondering about the tables in the first place. I was able to test without a shred of doubt that DPS and healing have absolutely no effect on who a mob is dealing damage to by simply having character stand without doing anything in my party, while I engaged enemies.

The mobs targeted any one of us at complete random and no amount of healing my party or DPS while they did nothing could pull the mobs off them. At certain intervals the mobs seemed to require targets and sometimes they would swap but again this swap was completely random.

Of course I know how taunting works but I'm not talking about taunting. Just aggro tables.

Iselin · January 2015

Emencie wrote: »

Iselin wrote: »

Emencie wrote: »

@Iselin
From everything I've seen there is no threat system at all in this game, so I'm not sure what you mean by that because this game is as random as the GW2 system. Except that we have 2 taunts and they have none, so we can force a mob to attack a particular person but everything else seems completely random.

I would love to see that developer comment because I seriously doubt there are any aggro tables at this point.

If a tank who has been holding aggro on a boss dies, the boss will preferentially target the remaining player who has been doing the most DPS... I've seen this happen enough times to know for a fact that there are DPS-based aggro tables.

Also tanks with good DPS hold aggro much better than one who puts out negligible DPS.

But like I said, groups of mobs will do their own thing sometimes no matter what. Bosses react to tanks in a much more WOW-like fashion.

This is not true. I started this thread because I was wondering about the tables in the first place. I was able to test without a shred of doubt that DPS and healing have absolutely no effect on who a mob is dealing damage to by simply having character stand without doing anything in my party, while I engaged enemies.

The mobs targeted any one of us at complete random and no amount of healing my party or DPS while they did nothing could pull the mobs off them. At certain intervals the mobs seemed to require targets and sometimes they would swap but again this swap was completely random.

Of course I know how taunting works but I'm not talking about taunting. Just aggro tables.

But did you test it on a boss fight?

Emencie · January 2015

Iselin wrote: »

Emencie wrote: »

Iselin wrote: »

Emencie wrote: »

@Iselin
From everything I've seen there is no threat system at all in this game, so I'm not sure what you mean by that because this game is as random as the GW2 system. Except that we have 2 taunts and they have none, so we can force a mob to attack a particular person but everything else seems completely random.

I would love to see that developer comment because I seriously doubt there are any aggro tables at this point.

If a tank who has been holding aggro on a boss dies, the boss will preferentially target the remaining player who has been doing the most DPS... I've seen this happen enough times to know for a fact that there are DPS-based aggro tables.

Also tanks with good DPS hold aggro much better than one who puts out negligible DPS.

But like I said, groups of mobs will do their own thing sometimes no matter what. Bosses react to tanks in a much more WOW-like fashion.

This is not true. I started this thread because I was wondering about the tables in the first place. I was able to test without a shred of doubt that DPS and healing have absolutely no effect on who a mob is dealing damage to by simply having character stand without doing anything in my party, while I engaged enemies.

The mobs targeted any one of us at complete random and no amount of healing my party or DPS while they did nothing could pull the mobs off them. At certain intervals the mobs seemed to require targets and sometimes they would swap but again this swap was completely random.

Of course I know how taunting works but I'm not talking about taunting. Just aggro tables.

But did you test it on a boss fight?

No, unless we are talking world bosses, every test we did was on open world mobs or public dungeons.

Though this is the information, I'm wondering about. Do group dungeon mobs have a different rule set?

Iselin · January 2015

Emencie wrote: »

Iselin wrote: »

Emencie wrote: »

Iselin wrote: »

Emencie wrote: »

@Iselin
From everything I've seen there is no threat system at all in this game, so I'm not sure what you mean by that because this game is as random as the GW2 system. Except that we have 2 taunts and they have none, so we can force a mob to attack a particular person but everything else seems completely random.

I would love to see that developer comment because I seriously doubt there are any aggro tables at this point.

If a tank who has been holding aggro on a boss dies, the boss will preferentially target the remaining player who has been doing the most DPS... I've seen this happen enough times to know for a fact that there are DPS-based aggro tables.

Also tanks with good DPS hold aggro much better than one who puts out negligible DPS.

But like I said, groups of mobs will do their own thing sometimes no matter what. Bosses react to tanks in a much more WOW-like fashion.

This is not true. I started this thread because I was wondering about the tables in the first place. I was able to test without a shred of doubt that DPS and healing have absolutely no effect on who a mob is dealing damage to by simply having character stand without doing anything in my party, while I engaged enemies.

The mobs targeted any one of us at complete random and no amount of healing my party or DPS while they did nothing could pull the mobs off them. At certain intervals the mobs seemed to require targets and sometimes they would swap but again this swap was completely random.

Of course I know how taunting works but I'm not talking about taunting. Just aggro tables.

But did you test it on a boss fight?

No, unless we are talking world bosses, every test we did was on open world mobs or public dungeons.

Though this is the information, I'm wondering about. Do group dungeon mobs have a different rule set?

Not sure about world bosses vs. dungeon bosses.

But if you're in a testing mood, here's a simple test for a no-add dungeon boss:

Have the healer stand back and do absolutely nothing
Tank it, hold it for a while and then let the boss kill you
Have one DPSer just go crazy on it
Have the 2nd DPSer just hit it every now and then

Who does the boss go after when you die?

That should tell you.

Emencie · January 2015

Iselin wrote: »

Emencie wrote: »

Iselin wrote: »

Emencie wrote: »

Iselin wrote: »

Emencie wrote: »

@Iselin
From everything I've seen there is no threat system at all in this game, so I'm not sure what you mean by that because this game is as random as the GW2 system. Except that we have 2 taunts and they have none, so we can force a mob to attack a particular person but everything else seems completely random.

I would love to see that developer comment because I seriously doubt there are any aggro tables at this point.

If a tank who has been holding aggro on a boss dies, the boss will preferentially target the remaining player who has been doing the most DPS... I've seen this happen enough times to know for a fact that there are DPS-based aggro tables.

Also tanks with good DPS hold aggro much better than one who puts out negligible DPS.

But like I said, groups of mobs will do their own thing sometimes no matter what. Bosses react to tanks in a much more WOW-like fashion.

This is not true. I started this thread because I was wondering about the tables in the first place. I was able to test without a shred of doubt that DPS and healing have absolutely no effect on who a mob is dealing damage to by simply having character stand without doing anything in my party, while I engaged enemies.

The mobs targeted any one of us at complete random and no amount of healing my party or DPS while they did nothing could pull the mobs off them. At certain intervals the mobs seemed to require targets and sometimes they would swap but again this swap was completely random.

Of course I know how taunting works but I'm not talking about taunting. Just aggro tables.

But did you test it on a boss fight?

No, unless we are talking world bosses, every test we did was on open world mobs or public dungeons.

Though this is the information, I'm wondering about. Do group dungeon mobs have a different rule set?

Not sure about world bosses vs. dungeon bosses.

But if you're in a testing mood, here's a simple test for a no-add dungeon boss:

Have the healer stand back and do absolutely nothing
Tank it, hold it for a while and then let the boss kill you
Have one DPSer just go crazy on it
Have the 2nd DPSer just hit it every now and then

Who does the boss go after when you die?

That should tell you.

I will try this as soon as I can and post results.