There's a pretty interesting thread about aggro mechanics on R&D:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.a...ns&T=311610&P=1

It seems like he's done some pretty well-thought-out experiments. And a lot of his conclusions jive with what's already known (i.e. he correctly deduced how Taunt works, something which people have an incredible amount of trouble believing). And a lot of his numbers seem to make sense (threat ratios for different stances, etc.).

But I'm skeptical about the 10% idea (10% threat margin required to pull aggro). What do you guys think? I really can't think of a way in which it's supported by common experience.

EDIT: Hah, wow, and look at what came out of this.

The 10% stuff is correct, to my knowledge. And the way it interacts with taunt explains a lot of people's confusion about taunt. I think there's a bit more to that 10% bit that still is not understood -- maybe something having to do with who initially aggros the mob? Mobs definitely have some "stickiness" to them, but it sometimes seems arbitrary who their preferred target tends to be.

Also, I may have missed it, but the post does not acknowledge that healing yourself is different from healing someone else.

See, here's an experiment I performed a little while ago with one of my tanks:

1) I solo a mob down to 30%. He Taunts and does nothing else. Mob attacks him and returns to me after 3 seconds.
2) He body-pulls a mob, doing no damage and using no abilities. I solo him down to 30% (pulling it off him with my first hit). He Taunts and does nothing else. Mob attacks him for 3 seconds and stays on him permanently.

I concluded at the time that "initial aggro" is not actually a finite, positive amount of threat, but just a tie-breaker. Actual exact ties in aggro almost never happen in practical situations, but can be engineered with Taunt.

However, I'm not sure how this all interacts with the 10% idea. How did the mob stick to the Warrior in #2?

I can sort of see where it comes from--without any kind of aggro buffer or other artificial stickiness, it would be too easy for 2 ranged classes to "aggro bounce" a mob indefinitely. Still, this needs to be looked at a bit more.

Specifically, does this mean that there can be benefit to Taunting when the mob is already on you (unless we interpret the tooltip to mean that they specifically disabled the effect in this case)?

What was that about healing aggro, by the way?

Healing yourself generates more aggro than healing someone else.

even with knowing healing myself creates more aggro it is really hard to depend on others.

Interesting.

I remember reading that, back in Beta, Paladins could hold aggro over anybody by chain-healing themselves. So they gave Paladins a flat reduction to healing aggro. Happen to know if this is true?

Really? NO Fucking wonder i gained aggro during the first part of raz last bwl and died :angry: . Ok now its minimum heals from priest/paladin during that part and let the druid heal and cower. DIE Druids DIE.

Ok, how did you find that out SC. I don't remember reading that in the patch notes while i was updating.

Hmm, there was nothing in patches notes about this reduction. How did you come with that, tests ?

I think, as indicated later inthe thread too, that his values for shield slam are based on the old "moderate" threat pre 1.8(?).

Slam from my experience is an agro monster and can often times be used to regain snap agro without having to use taunt.

Well, I don't think all servers had the 10% thing on them up until recently -- I think as of 1.9 all servers have it, but I don't honestly know.

I know when we were doing more aggro tests, Mal'Ganis didn't have any kind of 10% aggro-change-range (or whatever it should be titled), but people on other servers did mention something along those lines, even back then (pre- 1.9). I definitely noticed it when I did some aggro tests on the 1.9 Test Server, and I assume it was standardized across all servers when the patch went live.

Yes, some paladins did some proper testing of it.

So I guess I'm still confused as to how taunt works. Specifically due to a certain case - On Ebonroc, if a taunting tank dies and is rezzed, he is taken out of the rotation due to not enough aggro. But shouldn't the act of taunting pretty much restore his aggro to a point sufficient to keep tanking?

Correct chupid, it just wasn't worth arguing about it at the time.

If the 10% theory is correct, no. If a tank dies, is rez'd, and taunts, he needs to generate 10% of the top target's threat to get aggro back (which may be a lot later in the fight). Alternatively, everyone between from that tank and 90% of the tank's aggro can die, then he'll get aggro back.

Yeah, that would be correct for most situations, but, for example, for Ebonroc, where he is being taunted constantly, it shouldn't matter.

It doesn't matter.

The OP of the R&D thread mentions that over-healing generates no additional threat. I have always believed this, and my in-game experience has never given me a reason to be dissuaded. I've never done any testing myself, though. The issue came up tangentially in a recent discussion I had with a priest in my guild whose opinions I respect, and he was vehemently arguing that over-healing *does* in fact generate additional threat. He also claimed he'd tested it himself, but since we were running back from the GY to attempt Vael one more time (which ended up being our first kill), we didn't really have the time to get into it in depth.

Does anyone have any simple testing ideas for investigating the over-healing::threat relationship? Or even some persuasive anecdotal evidence?

Overhealing definitely does not generate any threat.

Even then its iffy, if a mob is fully sundered and I have the option to either HS or sunder, but not both, I will probably HS.

The example he gives for why sunder is better is dumb, they hypothetical mob has 9000 armor or something. Almost nothing in the game actually has that much armor and even if it did, he neglected to factor in faerie fire and curse of recklessness. Really the only time spamming sunder is a good idea is when you aren't getting hit and auto attack is your only source of rage.

Well, it's probably correct that you're better off sundering an unsundered mob than doing an HS. But on a mob that has sunder, FF, CoR on it (any raid mob), HS will be strictly superior for aggro.

How do you explain this to someone who believes he has empirical evidence that says otherwise, though? I guess I could roll with the good ol' appeal to authority.

"Over-heals DO generate extra threat!"
"No they don't. Gurgthock said so!"

I was thinking of running the following experiment to attempt to correct his misunderstanding. Take a tank and two healers to a low-level zone and have the tank body pull a mob and hold it with the least threat generation possible. One of the healers (let's say a druid for this example) should keep the tank up with a HoT (Rejuv). This should be plenty of healing for a low-level mob. The other healer (let's say priest) should spam the crap out of Flash Heal or whatever on the druid, who is at full health.

If the priest pulls aggro, I'm wrong. If he doesn't, I'm right.

I guess this could be done even more simply with just a healer and one other person. The second person body pulls a mob, and the healer starts spam healing himself. See if the healer can pull aggro.

I walk up to a mob and punch it once. It melees me for 30. I do a Nature's Swiftness heal on myself for 2k+. Someone else hits the mob once with a weapon. The mob will turn to him.

Next experiment: I jump off a cliff a couple of times and lose most of my hp. I walk up to a mob and punch it once. It melees me for 30. I do a Nature's Swiftness heal on myself for 2k+. Someone else hits the mob with a weapon. The mob isn't going anywhere for quite a while.