I got thinking about this after reading the story behind the mage being power leveled to 70 in 28 hours, as well killing a bunch of mobs for other people due to server tag-display-delay (Where I'll hit the mob from 100% to 95%, showing the mob tagged to me, and then suddenly grey out at 92%.) By that point, I'm doing more damage than the mage/hunter/warlock that's hitting it from a distance, so the mob stays on me even if I stop attacking, as long as they also stop.

What if there's a mob-aggro-modifier applied to the person that tags the mob? Something like 2x aggro? I can't think of a way this could be exploited for anyone's benefit, and in cases where 2 people are both attacking a mob, the person who tags it would pull aggro, allowing the "loser" to at least have the option to leave the mob alone in pursuit of another.

Thoughts?

Semi-related, due to the overwhelming number of aholes purposely tagging mobs right as we engage them (mostly hunters and mages), we discovered there is a solution. It's kind of painful, but it is very satisfying knowing the guy who thought he'd be a cheap dick and get you do his work for him is getting screwed.

Just kite the mob away from the person, it will show up as thier tag but as soon as the mob would normally 'reset' it suddenly becomes your mob instead. It has worked every time for us.

Not sure if this is related to the topic at hand, but tagging mobs (especially the little camp bosses or those elite quests) can be a pain. It has made me open with a wand shot more times than I've wanted but with a 1.30 wand speed it is the fastest way to get it from range as a priest.

I don't think any changes are needed. If people want to abuse the system and get to highest level first, so what? How does that change the way you play or your enjoyment of the game.

Also, I find it that around those rare spawns, most people are willing to get in a group of 5 and do the quest together. Many times I find the mob while horde is fighting it and I help them down it only to have them wait for the next spawn and help me as well.

A bit off topic now.... What is the leveling curve on your server? On Mal'Ganis, I'm level 65 and will finish the third zone tonight (have about 10 more quests left - damn gf wanted to watch a movie last night instead of letting me finish the zone). I find it that I have a much easier time to find spawns for quests that I did in the previous two zones.

There are a couple of level 68s in my guild (probably 69 or even 70 by now) that feel you have to be a whole zone or even more ahead in order to avoid the crowd. I feel that the leveling curve on Mal'Ganis (where most people are questing now) is 63-64 and people are getting done with Zangermarsh... But I could be wrong.

An interesting tagging anecdote:
I was helping a friend do Natural Remedies in HFP, where you summon the large rock giant. Some horde were there before us, so we let them go ahead. While they were fighting, I decided to try for a few bow skill and speed their kill along. Apparently after that, they either ran away or tried to kite the mob. I was AFK and heard my girlfriend calling me back into the room because I was being attacked. Goliathon had ran back to me and was now tagged for our group at about 10% health. Easiest completion of that quest ever, and I've helped a number of people complete it.

Mob tags can definitely change now if the original tagger dies or runs out of range, and the mob health does not reset. This seems to be new, since I don't remember the green dragons or other contested mobs working like this, but I have no idea when this change occurred. I've used this a couple times in Outland if I find an alliance character has just tagged a named mob I need for a quest; when I've killed the other player, the mob becomes mine and the damage the previous player did remains.

The easiest solution to prevent tap leveling: reward experience based on the % of damage done by the tagger. I have no idea why this is not already the case.

I thought this was the case already... A few patches ago I thought they made the change.

I think he means the "tagger" is the group that tagged the mob. Right now, if you tag a mob, doing 1% of its total life, and someone outside of your party finishes it off, you get full xp granted the mob is not gray to either party. If the mob is gray to the people outside the party, the experience is given based on the damage you, the tagger, have done, not sure why this changes when the mob becomes green to the outside group.

This has kinda strayed away from the original intent of the post, though some of the stuff brought up is very interesting.

I just wish there's some mechanism in place where the person/group that tags the mob (destined to get the loot/xp/quest for the mob) actually has to take responsibility for the mob, rather than the ranged sniping that's been going on in the heavily populated areas like HFP where everyone's questing.

maybe not a flat aggro multiplier modifier, but something like a taunt, where upon tagging, you force the mob to focus on you.

I'll have to try the kiting method though, and see how that works out. It'd be pretty ridiculous from a pure efficiency standpoint, but would certainly make me happier in general knowing that I didn't just kill another mob for someone else's benefit.

If xp was awarded proportionally to damage, kill stealing would be a lot worse than it is now. Once you tag the mob it's "your" xp, even if that random guy decides to 'help'. Imagine how grief-friendly the game would be if he 'helped' and took 50% of your xp...

Another issue to consider is that, at least until recently, if I was on my warlock fighting something that MCs, I could send in my pet, get MCed, regain control, then only get about 10% of the XP I should have gotten thanks to being the mob's minion until whatever % of it's life I regained control at.

Its already in to a degree in that I know for sure that if NPC"s damage a mob you are attacking you won't get full XP except partial amount based on how much damage (this even counts for pets like a Water Elemental took me a while to realize that the pet on my mage was taking away XP).

Having XP earned being a percentage of damage dealt has one major flaw. It becomes too easy to grief other players. Think a group of two people running around attacking any mob that you attack taking all your xp. And that still doesn't solve the problem of who gets the loot.

You could require that some substantial portion of the damage be done by the tapper in order for them to get full credit. Too large a portion and you still have griefing issues, of course. Maybe 30% is reasonable. Or 50% (EQ's was 50% I believe, with non-pc effects like damage shield counting as no one's damage.)

I was under the impression that something similiar to this is already in place ? There've been times where I've cheapshotted a mob, hit it with a single swing for an insignificant amount, to have something like an Arcane Shot or a Fireball hit the mob, take off more HP than my damage, and lose the tag.

We PL'd my new warlock in EPL with the tag + IAE-them-down method and I didn't lose XP. I was tagging with rank 1 corruption.

Not positive but it's possibly something like that happens because it actually "tags" the mob when the PC fires off their spell, instead of when it actually hits. Both spells you mentioned have a travel time once activated, so if it lags, or even, is acting normally and counts the tag as the time from when the spell is cast, then it's possible.

I've had similar weird things happen like that; rogues tagging mobs by just hitting tab with an SS as they spawn in even before my explosion trap activates.

I completely understand everyones frustration. I've been disc spec since the new specs went live, and do you want to know what I put my 52nd pt into?

Holy Nova.

I think that says something when people spec a certain way to ensure they won't get kill sniped.

I just wanted to point out here that you might be thinking of on lower levels. Im 99% sure that they fixed it so if you take a level 10 and tag something, but then bring a higher level to come demolish the thing, the lower level only gets % of xp based on how much % he did. However, if the same situation happens, but both people are in the same level range, there is no % xp penalty, to prevent griefing by KSing someones xp away.

At least, Im pretty sure thats how it goes. I havent tried to plvl a lower character like that in a while.

This was a long-standing issue with hunters and warlocks that was eventually fixed (in 1.9 or so I believe). If it's occurring again with the mage pet, it's a bug and should be reported as such.

Here's how it works since I did somer esearch before leveling my paladin:
If the mob you're tagging is GREY to the higher level(so anything under 52 for 60 twinkers), you get xp based on the damage done. If the mob you're tagging is Death Skull(higher than red, so 69 I believe for 60), you get xp based on the damage done. For any other case(so if the mob is in killable range), you get xp based on who tags first.

Which is why you can't kill twink stuff with a 60 until you're around level 48(when you can reliably land hits on a 52 or higher) and why Millenium had some people level to 61 while they were twinking their mages to be able to keep grinding at higher levels.

Also there's a special exception, pets will always make you get xp based on damage, whatever the level. I couldn't twink my paladin in tyr's hand with my hunter because of this, I'd barely get more xp than just grouping because my pet was getting all the xp. He wasn't leveling off it either, just that if you get the pet to attack, he'll consume xp.

Whats even more nejoyable is when you finally get that rare spawn tag, and an alliance mage sheeps you, kites the mob out of your range and steals it =/. I have 2 mages on my KoS list for this reason =)

That is close, but not entirely true. Specifically, the one who is getting powerleveled, just has to be able to hit the mob, it doesn't matter if it is 10 or 50 levels higher than him. For instance, hunters can reliably hit mobs much higher than them for very little damage, but enough to get a tag.

The key component, is the person who then does the other 99% must be in the level range of the mob. As long as the person doing the powerleveling is sees a mob that is green or better, it can give the EXP for that mob to the much lower level.

That being said, the EXP for killing mobs much higher than you in this method does have a cap. Even if you manage to tag a level 60 mob at level 5, you can only get a maximum amount of EXP, based on your current level.

A good place we used to do this in the past, which is entirely impossible now, since 52 is the minimum level range for a 60 to give exp away, was just outside BRD. The level 48 overseers gave more exp than other mobs in that level range. We actually tried tap grinding elites all over, but these seemed to give the best return. We went from 38-46ish getting the max exp per kill, took about 40-45 mins per level.

The catch was, that you had to be really quick on the tap, or the mob would rock your level 40 world in about 5 hits. Not to mention the huge agro radius of the other mobs.