Threat and +Damage Debuffs

Shivers · 03/09/06, 11:16 AM

A few of our mages have recently respecced fire in order to test the viability of different builds inside AQ40. A couple of us have run into something interesting with Improved Scorch, so I thought I'd bring the question to a higher authority :P

Last night, during the three bugs, after allowing the tank to gain aggro, I stacked a few imp. scorch debuffs on Kri and began to wind up a fireball. About halfway through casting, Kri peels off the tank and makes a beeline for me. None of the scorches had crit, so the only damage I had done was the actual spell damage. I think if Kri was going to aggro based upon that damage, he'd have done it immediately, not halfway through my next spell cast. This got me thinking, does the extra damage generated from the Improved Scorch debuff get applied to the threat of the debuffer or the caster of the spells benefitting from the debuff?

Another example, one of our other mages was in AQ20, and about halfway through a boss fight, he restacked the scorch debuff, and continued to fire away. 10 seconds later, the boss peels off the tank and goes for him. He moves back, the Imp. Scorch debuff falls off, and the boss turns around and heads back for the tank.

There may have been a number of other factors in both examples, the first one probably being the most cut and dry. Not being experienced with playing a debuffing class, I also wonder if warlocks gain threat from the extra damage that CoE / CoS generates. Any thoughts?

Brilliance · 03/09/06, 12:35 PM

Are you fighting mobs that fear? As that might explain bug family and maybe the aq20 thing.

♦ Praetorian · 03/09/06, 12:36 PM

I actually read a post on the FoH board like 5 months back that suggested such a thing. I'm skeptical, but it's something I'd meant to test empirically.

• Hamlet · 03/09/06, 12:53 PM

This would be highly counterintuitive, given the way the game reports damage. And some things (such the way Ignite ticks until 1.10) suggest they don't do any more complex damage tracking behind the scenes.

Elfan · 03/09/06, 4:22 PM

Yeah I remember when the CoS/CoE theory was brought up a while ago but nothing seemed to come of it.

Test Plan for 2 locks and a warrior:
- Warrior smacks mob for X threat.
- Warlock A slaps a curse on our hapless test subject.
- Warlock B Shadowbots the mob untill he has done >X bonus damage.
- Slug dies ("lol teh lock got eggroll").
- Who does the mob go to?

Lurchington · 03/10/06, 8:42 AM

Originally Posted by Elfan,March 9th, 2006 @ 4:22PM

Yeah I remember when the CoS/CoE theory was brought up a while ago but nothing seemed to come of it.

Test Plan for 2 locks and a warrior:
- Warrior smacks mob for X threat.
- Warlock A slaps a curse on our hapless test subject.
- Warlock B Shadowbots the mob untill he has done >X bonus damage.
- Slug dies ("lol teh lock got eggroll").
- Who does the mob go to?

my reading of this sort of implies a different test case. I believe the hypothesis that the "bonus damage," meaning the result of damage_with_curse - damage_without_curse is given, as threat, to the person who gave the curse. That curser doesn't receice all of the damage as threat.

If the curser received all the threat, we'd see this effect more often it seems.

Thus your text case need to include Warlock A (the curser) putting out damage as well, although at a rate where:

threat(lock A damage) < threat(lock B damage)
but also whrere:
threat(lock A damage) + threat(lock B damage_with_curse - lock B damage_no_curse) > threat(lock B damage_no_curse)

Already this seems like a pretty narrow window to test empirically.

I would be surprised if it was anything more complicated than straight damage = threat. Although as you can guess from my main's level, I'm not really capable of end-game discussion, And this is only my understanding of the opening post.