A simple question. Occasionally our priests' or shamans' pets would break the CC on a target. I've noticed it happening on Moroes and sometimes with Magtheridon on a trapped Infernal. So how does the targetting and aggressiveness of a player's uncontrolled pet work?

One of our priests lives by the theory that the shadowfiend attacks the last enemy you cast a spell on. We had the problem with Moroes a few times where one priest would target a tanked add, or moroes himself, hit shadowfiend, and just have it go after his shakle. A simple rank 1 SW:P on the mob she wanted the shadowfiend on, then casting shadowfiend, seems to always prevent it from breaking shakles. Basically...

Spell (Shakle)
+ New Target
+ Shadowfiend

[top] Broken Shakle

Spell (Shakle)
+ New Target (Harmful)
+ Spell on that target
+ Shadowfiend

No broken shakle

How this works for other uncontrolable pets I have no idea.

I think it works very much like a mob. CC will bring the target to the lowest priority, but I don't think it will stop an attack in progress.

IE:

Shadowfiend on moroes: 2 adds shackled, 2 adds dead, moroes up. Moroes vanishes. Shadowfiend chooses a new target but the only acceptable ones are shackled. Breaks shackle.

Shadowfiend on Magtheridon: Infernal is being chain trapped. Shadowfiend on Mag. Mag charges up blast, gets banished from cubes, shadowfiend picks a new target, picks infernal. Other possibility, infernal's trap effect wears off shadowfiend hits untrapped infernal as it's moving to next trap. Attack in progress breaks next trap as it takes hold of infernal.

Shadowfiend from what I can feels like it attacks whatever you have the highest aggro on at time of cast.

examples:
Mechanar 2nd boss (fire elemental chick): If you don't have an elemental on you and cast fiend on the boss it will stay on her. If you do have an elemental on you and cast fiend on boss, fiend goes directly to the fire elemental chasing you (and dies shortly there after with no mana gain). When you have an elemental on you, its like you have permanant or maybe infinte threat.

Out farming multi-doting mobs: Dot up 1 mob, Dot up 2nd mob, cast fiend on 2nd mob, fiend proceeds to go run to attack 1st mob as more damage has been done to it.

The deal with fiend breaking shackles.. I think shackle works differently than people realize. I think shackle provides some static amount of threat to the target it is cast on, and then its threat table is frozen. If I'm DPS'ing a mob with another mob shackled, and shackle breaks, that mob almost always goes directly for me. Even with all the mass amounts of healing put on the tank from healers, shackle goes to me (I'm a s.priest). I haven't touched the shacked mob since the initial shack. So in this case, if you don't have threat built and exceeding something other than you're shacked mob fiend will wander over and beat on your shackled mob.


None of this is fact. I haven't taken any time to prove it, just what I believe based on what I have observed.

In regards to searing totem, I have no experience.

This makes a little bit of sense, and I'll add a bit of experience to it (which I know is nothing compared to actual testing, but the CD makes that a bit difficult to test, at least for Shadowfiend). Last night in Kara, we forgot to tell the new Shadowpriest who was on his first run to not use his Shadow Fiend on Moroes. Asking about it after the fight, it turns out that he used it right in the middle of it. Now he was constantly casting on Moroes or one of the tanked adds, and his Shadow Fiend didn't break anything, so that loosely fits with the described behavior.

Still, that's an odd theory, and while it kinda makes sense I've still seen the Fiends do the most retarded things sometimes so I can't say that I put full faith in it. I'll try and test it tonight.

Edit: As for Searing Totem, I have no clue. I'll pull two mobs on my little 34 Shaman, drop a searing totem, and even though I'm only attacking one of the mobs sometimes the Totem will go for the mob that I'm not targetting and that I haven't touched besides Lightning Shield.

From my perspective, my fiend will attack the closest target to my character, regardless of threat or CC. I could have only VT/VE threat on a sheep (at best), and I would still have my fiend not attack the mob I've been nuking and instead attack the sheep close to myself.

None of these theories fit everyone all the time though, which is frustrating.

My Shadowfiend ran past Curator last night to attack a flare still up at the very beginning of Evocate. That doesn't make any sense at all. It wasn't attacking me and I hadn't targetted it.

Perhaps they attempted one of the above algorithms, but the implementation is buggy in some hard to predict way? Every priest I've talked to seems to have a different theory. And a story to back it up.

My experiences with Searing Totem lends me to believe that the totem's target is based on proximity. I've yet to see the totem go after a target other than the closest one to it.

Maybe behavior is different on bosses than non-bosses, because of the zone-wide combat/aggro thing.

Maybe during boss fights all mobs in the encounter are possible, but some other algorithm chooses among them. Could it be something as silly as alphabetical order? Astral Flare comes before The Curator... Priests in my guild have complained about the problem of SF going after flares instead of the Curator, as well.

For non-boss fights it could be the "last cast" or proximity. I would think proximity would be the most efficient and common sense way to code.

I'm really at a loss here. The tooltip on Fiend says it attacks your current target (assuming it's hostile), and it always does that for me, without fail. The screwy stuff happens after that target dies - I can't predict what happens then, but I can't say I've ever had my Fiend attack a target right off the bat that I <didn't> have targetted when I cast it.

It's definitely not always proximity. When I'm DoT/VE farming mobs I use Shadowfiend to boost up my mana to keep grinding. This involves having 3-5 mobs agro on me at all times, one of which is usually "running in fear" at low health. I will select a mob that is currently beating on me and as often as not the shadowfiend will run to the mob that is currently running in fear 30 yards away from me, completely wasting it. Keep in mind at this point I have 2-4 mobs beating on me.

The behavior has always been very erratic and I have not found any way to reliably control it. I can say that it does most often go after the mob that is running away from me which would indicate it may be threat based, but I haven't done any "scientific" testing of this to confirm or not. I can confirm that it is not simply proximity based.

In the Moroes examples, if it's threat based, you would see healing aggro + shackle aggro, therefore the fiend will pick your shackle target to break when Moroes vanishes. I'm not a priest... does this happen?

I'd agree that, in accordance with the tooltip, my Fiend always seems to go for my current hostile target. The problems arise when the target dies or becomes invulnerable. (Specifically, if it's up and Moroes vanishes, things can get hairy.)

This is exactly what I do. It's my little 'special friend' that I have who gives me mana sometimes and eats sheep other times. I just wish that I could figure out something that was right. As for searing totem, I'll try that later today and see if it's proximity. Might very well be.

uh, my shadowfiend has always responded to distance from me. If I'm near enough to an enemy target that I could aggro it, then the shadowfiend goes for it. It also acts on a 'defensive' maneuver, if I get hit, it goes for that. Often, if I kill whatever I'm going for, I have to walk the shadowfiend up to my next target.

In Moroes, I can use it safely with timing -- activate it on Moroes right after he comes back from vanish, and make sure you're as far away as you can conceivably be from your shackles. For instance, my shackle usually stays near the steps. To ensure that the shadowfiend comes back to me, I position myself while 'fiending to be on the other side of the dinner table in the center of the room (the one nearest the arches that you enter into that room from). I've yet to have him run to the shackles after I've done this -- and it helps that timing it for right after a vanish gives you the maximum uptime.

Hrm, this might be relevant... apparently pets have a certain minimum response/action timer on the server side, I believe it was "discovered" by warlock pet casting tests? Anyway, I seem to remember it being on the order of 1 second-ish, as the minimum interval the server would process server-directed pet actions.

Why does this matter? Well, it would explain a lot of the "exceptions" that make coming up with the real "rules" they follow difficult.

Or not. Just a thought.

RdT.

I'm pretty sure that mob actions can build aggro with the fiend... anytime I've pulled him out during a murloc pack in ssc, he ends up pretty consistantly making a beeline for the harpooner if one is up (I'm guessing due to the regen buff or some other action).

Its rare, but on a few occasions I have seen my Shadowfiend just stand still until despawning after the mob it was attacking disappears/dies rather then killing a CC mob.

Now i don't if this is because I use a focus macro for my Shackle target and never actually target them. I've never actually had my shadowfiend break a shackle on moroes.

After reading what people have said so far and seeing lots of contradicting examples, I decided to go do some tests. I grabbed a couple other priests and this is what we figured out.

1. A Shadowfiend (SF) will not break your own shackle no matter what.
2. If you are attacking two targets and only one of them has hit you, the SF will attack that target, even if you summon it on the target that has not attacked you.
3. A SF WILL break other players CC.
4. If a target has hit you and is then CC'd by another player, that target will be the first one the SF goes after even if you are attacking another target that has not hit you. The SF will break the CC to attack the target that has hit you.
5. Proximity does not seem to matter.
6. Damage done to you matters more then damage you have done.
7. A SF will NOT switch targets once it has selected one, unless that target is unattackable or is shackled by the priest that summoned the SF.

This explains a lot of what people have been seeing.

Moroes example. Why does my SF run to a shackled target even if Moroes is up?
Most likely that target had hit you before it was shackled and was then shackled by another priest. The SF would break that shackle assuming Moroes has not hit you.

Curator example. Why does my SF attack a flare?
The flare probably got a hit on you as you were summoning the fiend. If the Curator had hit you previously, I'm betting you would be fine.

This is wrong. Several times during Moroes my fiend has gone straight for the add I had shackled, even though I had Moroes targeted when I summoned him.

The better question to ask is, why does shackle and polymorph give so much innate threat?