Originally Posted by
Diz
[part 2 of 2]
In WoW there are mobs that will change targets twice a second, and completely obliterate a lot of meta-game "threat meter" knowledge that people have accumulated throughout the years and games, lugging this stuff around in their brain. There are some mobs in WoW that won't switch targets, even if the highest target on their threat meter is not the hard target but the soft target [like if the soft is dealing out obscene burst damage and the tank is just meleeing] - and the WoW example was just used to give a reference point against another game. Sometimes you just encounter a mob that exhibits such random behavior that it is almost like a riddle, trying to figure out just its threat meter, and that's not even including such potential sinkholes like attack patterns, etc.
Again the whole dynamic of threat meters within Pocket Legends hinges upon whether or not the threat meters are individually coded for each mob or just a global behavior-inducer. I have a feeling the answer is out there, however, I am not much of a PvEer and when I do PvE I am not studying the mobs behavior enough to detect differences regarding the threat meter.
It can honestly be very complicated or very simple, and I really do not know the answer so I have primed you to handle the reality, either way that may be.
Now to try and answer your questions directly, Jim -
Non-offensive actions such as a buff, a heal, or even something arbitrary like a meditation / regeneration skill [focus maybe?] can potentially impact agro. Again this is going to be something that deals with the way a given mob's threat meter is going to dictate. Does the mob react to a heal fiercely because it conceives a healer as someone drawing out the fight longer? Does the mob react to a heal fiercely because it conceives the target being healed as injured, and thus has a chance to kill it? I don't know the answers to these questions, but I know that there are plenty of other MMOs that show precedence for non-offensive actions causing, raising, or changing agro. This can get even deeper, as you also alluded to whether or not the agro would be caused to the target, to the caster, etc. To answer your question more intimately, my personal answer is that a healer needs to focus on reacting. Know your limits, know your own targets and your enemies targets, and react accordingly. As a healer you want to finish things, not start them.
Also the invisible circles is just an analogy. Theres a lot more to mob ranges and why they do a particular thing at a particular location - I suspect PL to be a little more shallow than the typical PvE MMO, but a good rule of thumb in general is that there is usually more than meets the eye with regards to mob AI.
Taunt and/or beckon would be a prime example of soft/hard threat meter dynamics. When you begin to understand how threat meters work, you realize that agro is basically designed to keep the order of things in check - tank fighting the monster, archer dpsing, mage healing. This is how class-based MMOs work.
Look, to be really blunt, any class-based MMO would almost fall apart entirely if the combat was not somehow "ordered". This is why a lot of players find PvP to be a more challenging form of combat [although considerably less rewarding; in fact, PvP usually takes items from the player over time (potion chugging, obtaining a gear set, etc.) while PvE gives them stuff over time]. Quick example -
Me and you are fighting two other identical players in a PvP arena. I am playing an elf mage you are playing a bear tank. If PvP were like PvE, then you would go off and start attacking either of their chars while I sit back and heal you, yada yada yada. Well, guess what - the other team doesn't want to do that. They want to attack me, because I am weaker, have less HPs, less Armor, and no way of defending myself. This is what it is like without threat meters and agro in a class-based MMO. People, and mobs, would just go about the fight in the most advantageous way possible, negating the basic order of things - tanks, dpsers, healers, and so on.
So, in a nutshell, Taunt and/or Beckon are basically gavels of order. They are a form of bulwarking against sloppy PvE. Taunt and/or Beckon help maintain the consistancy that is necessary to form teamwork against monsters. Again if the mob just attacked whoever it wanted, then classes would be a vanity-based choice and not a gameplay choice [in a PvE context].
Taunt and/or Beckon are the most direct methods of control surrounding threat meters and agro. They, like Heal in some ways, are an "oh sh__" button. Also, like Heal, they are a "status quo" button. They keep things neat, orderly, help to clean up messes and get people on the right track, and all within the span of a couple seconds.
Technically speaking these two abilities are, at their core, agro modifiers. They basically are instant hard/soft threat meter rearrangers. They are target swappers. They are temporary windows of opportunity for the tank to get a handle on the mob, the DPS to move into a better position or launch a huge burst attack without fear of instant retaliation, and they are a miniature stop-watch that gives mages enough time to heal injured players who are thankful to have a mob off their butt.
There is so much that is potentially involved in agro and threat meters that there are literally jobs out there in the real world that pay nerds to sit around and devise new and challenging ways for mobs to behave in games. Typically these mobs are not very nice. Sometimes it takes months for thousands of different groups and/or guilds to finally achieve success [wtfpwning the mob]. In this perspective it is understandable that some players take their mob hunting very seriously and that agro and threat meters can be very complex concepts that are not readily or easily understand and disassembled like a pile of legos.
Whether or not Pocket Legends features quality AI and how the mobs are coded with respect to agro and threat meters and behaviors remains to be seen, because the game is so young and the developers surely have bigger and better plans for PvE, while we as the community have barely scratched the surface in regards to mob/player interaction.
More knowledge is required, Jim; perhaps you should be the one to become the master of Pocket Legends monsters... perhaps you shall be the one to create a compendium of mob behavior, or at least "crack the code"!!!!!!!!!!!
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