Courtesy of Mabbu on the official forums:
We have brought this to Daybreak attention multiples times.
I consider their lack of comment both times it was reported to mean that its not an issue and anyone can do this as they please. Regardless I feel it leaves some small guilds not utilizing this at an extremely unfair advantage. Therefore lets break down what we are actually talking about so its spelled out for everyone, including one of the Devs who might actually read this and realize that its completely unacceptable and do something about it finally.
Here we go!
1.) Make sure the boss has Mitigation of the Mighty. Mobs with Mitigation of the Mighty were changed back in classic on Phinny to not allow pets to ever become their primary target.
2.) Have your Epic Mage pet (or any pet, but epic mage pet or air pet builds the best agro) send in their pet to build agro on rooted, snared or mobs easy to kite using pathing hiccups in places like Kael or NToV. The mage should be the only one attacking, make sure you have your ramp tank tag the mob first to ensure the mage doesn't get ramp.
Tips: If you can get Selos(or SoW, or Potions of Speed) and Lev on a Magician in Kael, they can actually kite AoW for an hour if you clear the area of other mobs while their pet attacks AoW and the mob will never get below 97% to be able to summon the Mage. The magician can build infinite agro because the Mark of the Mighty bosses refuse to target the pets and only target the pet owners.
3.) Once you have built sufficient agro with the magician (10 minutes worth seems to a nice round number) have your tank taunt and they get all the aggro that the magician had been building up. Additionally on rooted mobs you can have all your top tanks get a taunt in to set their agro as high as the mages so if you have a tank death the transition is instant, the next tank doesn't even need to hit taunt typically.
4.) Because your tanks have a massive chunk of agro right out the gate, aggro weapons do not matter nearly as much. Warriors can still berate, lightly attack if desired. Have your tanks wear 1 handers with High AC/Stats, and a shield. Not only will they keep aggro, but your tanks will also avoid Offhand, and Mainhand ripostes, dramatically lowering the incoming damage on your tanks for fights like AoW where his ripostes are a huge part of his damage spikes. Not being riposted for 1500hp anymore at random definitely helps smooth out the tank damage for Idol/AoW.
5.) If the boss mob is rooted as so many in Velious are then your tanks can actually taunt, then continuously back out of range of their melee. The mobs will summon your tank still, and most in ToV will cast "Call of the Zero" pulling you into their center point, but you simply keep backing up. you can avoid 50% or more of the incoming damage as a tank if your mage has built enough preagro that you can summon tank...not to mention if your not attacking you're not taking riposte damage either...or damage shield damage later on!
So now you know exactly how to build pre-aggro on Mitigation of the Mighty bosses, and you know how to mitigate a massive amount of tank damage on rooted, snared or kitable bosses using mage pre-agro. But there is one more component to this that was discovered, and this is the component that I think everyone can agree wishes would be fixed.
6.) The Ultimate Cheese. On rooted mobs a Magician can actually build pre-agro from a distance. They can send in their pet and run away from the mob, far. Eventually at a certain distance the boss will actually ignore the Magician and target the pet....YES despite bosses with MoTM not being able to target the Pet, they will! At a certain distance the magician actually loses aggro on the boss. Infact anyone on the aggro list who runs a certain distance will lose aggro, we've all seen this before. But did you know that there is a sweet spot of about 50 yards...just before the point of where the bosses will de-aggro you...that they also will not be able to summon you?!
Yes that's right, having a person run roughly 600 yards away from a mob will make that mob unable to summon that player even if the mob is below the 97% mark! So when you have a Magician build aggro on a boss with a pet, and run near the 600 range mark, they can literally keep the mob focused on them once it is in summon range, and because the mob cannot reach that mage because its rooted, snared, or being kited using a cheesy pathing exploit....then guess what...that mob does NOTHING. It cannot reach the mage to cast on it, it cannot summon the mage, it cannot Call of the Zero the mage, nothing. Your raid can literally smack the boss until it does, no running out of AE range, hiding behind walls, no mana drain on your caster's nothing, you just melee the crap out of it...casters included. you're clerics can even get in some dps.
This is the state the game is in now on the TLP servers, and everyone knows about it, everyone talks about it, so why don;t we shine some light on this so it will get fixed finally before Luclin comes out. Because honestly threat/aggro management matters to me as a tank. I think its a fun aspect of playing a tank, and especially the highlight of playing a Knight class.
Lets hope for a fix...but until then I think its important that we level the playing field so all of you know what your up against, including those or you on Ragefire and don;t have the luxury of instances while some 30 boxer clears NToV in the night.
Goodluck Ragefire!
We have brought this to Daybreak attention multiples times.
I consider their lack of comment both times it was reported to mean that its not an issue and anyone can do this as they please. Regardless I feel it leaves some small guilds not utilizing this at an extremely unfair advantage. Therefore lets break down what we are actually talking about so its spelled out for everyone, including one of the Devs who might actually read this and realize that its completely unacceptable and do something about it finally.
Here we go!
1.) Make sure the boss has Mitigation of the Mighty. Mobs with Mitigation of the Mighty were changed back in classic on Phinny to not allow pets to ever become their primary target.
2.) Have your Epic Mage pet (or any pet, but epic mage pet or air pet builds the best agro) send in their pet to build agro on rooted, snared or mobs easy to kite using pathing hiccups in places like Kael or NToV. The mage should be the only one attacking, make sure you have your ramp tank tag the mob first to ensure the mage doesn't get ramp.
Tips: If you can get Selos(or SoW, or Potions of Speed) and Lev on a Magician in Kael, they can actually kite AoW for an hour if you clear the area of other mobs while their pet attacks AoW and the mob will never get below 97% to be able to summon the Mage. The magician can build infinite agro because the Mark of the Mighty bosses refuse to target the pets and only target the pet owners.
3.) Once you have built sufficient agro with the magician (10 minutes worth seems to a nice round number) have your tank taunt and they get all the aggro that the magician had been building up. Additionally on rooted mobs you can have all your top tanks get a taunt in to set their agro as high as the mages so if you have a tank death the transition is instant, the next tank doesn't even need to hit taunt typically.
4.) Because your tanks have a massive chunk of agro right out the gate, aggro weapons do not matter nearly as much. Warriors can still berate, lightly attack if desired. Have your tanks wear 1 handers with High AC/Stats, and a shield. Not only will they keep aggro, but your tanks will also avoid Offhand, and Mainhand ripostes, dramatically lowering the incoming damage on your tanks for fights like AoW where his ripostes are a huge part of his damage spikes. Not being riposted for 1500hp anymore at random definitely helps smooth out the tank damage for Idol/AoW.
5.) If the boss mob is rooted as so many in Velious are then your tanks can actually taunt, then continuously back out of range of their melee. The mobs will summon your tank still, and most in ToV will cast "Call of the Zero" pulling you into their center point, but you simply keep backing up. you can avoid 50% or more of the incoming damage as a tank if your mage has built enough preagro that you can summon tank...not to mention if your not attacking you're not taking riposte damage either...or damage shield damage later on!
So now you know exactly how to build pre-aggro on Mitigation of the Mighty bosses, and you know how to mitigate a massive amount of tank damage on rooted, snared or kitable bosses using mage pre-agro. But there is one more component to this that was discovered, and this is the component that I think everyone can agree wishes would be fixed.
6.) The Ultimate Cheese. On rooted mobs a Magician can actually build pre-agro from a distance. They can send in their pet and run away from the mob, far. Eventually at a certain distance the boss will actually ignore the Magician and target the pet....YES despite bosses with MoTM not being able to target the Pet, they will! At a certain distance the magician actually loses aggro on the boss. Infact anyone on the aggro list who runs a certain distance will lose aggro, we've all seen this before. But did you know that there is a sweet spot of about 50 yards...just before the point of where the bosses will de-aggro you...that they also will not be able to summon you?!
Yes that's right, having a person run roughly 600 yards away from a mob will make that mob unable to summon that player even if the mob is below the 97% mark! So when you have a Magician build aggro on a boss with a pet, and run near the 600 range mark, they can literally keep the mob focused on them once it is in summon range, and because the mob cannot reach that mage because its rooted, snared, or being kited using a cheesy pathing exploit....then guess what...that mob does NOTHING. It cannot reach the mage to cast on it, it cannot summon the mage, it cannot Call of the Zero the mage, nothing. Your raid can literally smack the boss until it does, no running out of AE range, hiding behind walls, no mana drain on your caster's nothing, you just melee the crap out of it...casters included. you're clerics can even get in some dps.
This is the state the game is in now on the TLP servers, and everyone knows about it, everyone talks about it, so why don;t we shine some light on this so it will get fixed finally before Luclin comes out. Because honestly threat/aggro management matters to me as a tank. I think its a fun aspect of playing a tank, and especially the highlight of playing a Knight class.
Lets hope for a fix...but until then I think its important that we level the playing field so all of you know what your up against, including those or you on Ragefire and don;t have the luxury of instances while some 30 boxer clears NToV in the night.
Goodluck Ragefire!
