Fear aggro not consistent with general aggro mechanics

[Farstrike (temp)]

(if this has been discussed already, feel free to ignore)

As the topic says, I feel that part of the fear nerf is not very consistent with the way aggro works in general.

To clarify, lets look at how aggro normally works.

There are currently 3 ways of gaining aggro in solo play and vs. hostile mobs (just mentioning this to prevent any confusion):

1) Shoot/attack something, and it will aggro you
2) Get too close to something, and it will aggro you
3) Shoot/attack its buddy, and it will aggro you (if it's close enough). This form of aggro is often referred to as social aggro, i.e. shoot an orc, and the goblin standing 10 feet next to it will attack you as well, since orcs and goblins are social with eachother.

However, aggro as described in case no. 3 will only trigger on the first shot, i.e any adds coming into social aggro range of your target after it's already been engaged will completely ignore your actions (unless you actively aggro the add of course).

With me so far?

Good.

Ok, so we've established the fact that you can kill mobs without fear of social aggro, as long as your initial (first) attack doesn't trigger it.

Now, let's look at Bard's Arrow: you shoot, mob starts running around in fear and triggers social aggro on any adds in proximity.

Why is that?

You can have an add walking in and standing on top of your target, and it wont give a hoot about you filling its buddy with arrows, but as soon as you fear something, all hell breaks lose....

Now that just doesn't make sense to me, and I think Fear should be changed to match how aggro works under normal conditions.

Please discuss. :p

[MéLAnoR]

Well i often found weird that wandering mobs aroun my target doesn't join into fight unless i shoot them or come closer to them.
Lets say i'm shooting an archer goblin from 35 m distance and a warg comes nearby to that archer , as long as i don't aoe or target that incoming warg or get in agro range of the warg it doesn't joins the fight.
This is not realistic but also how mmorpgs work.
Fear is not consistent with this , so i agree with you.
We've soooo long discussed the issue and the thread i'd started was booted days ago so you may have not read the feedbacks there ,whatever.
The reason that they changed fear mechanic is the overpopulated number of hunters in the community thus requiring so-called class balancing "aka : nerf" of hunters.
Someone may pop up and say minstrels also have fear feature but their gameplay hasn't been hindered so much with the fear change , i actually find the 15 sec change as buff for them since they can heal another 5 secs and can also mezz if an add joins to the fight.
/MeL

[Scappydog]

Very good point. But I think we all know that the change to BA (through the fear change) wasn't particularly well thought out or implemented. DoT's breaking fear was known about before the update went live and here we are still awaiting a fix ( maybe Book12 ). To give the Devs some slack tho, this game and its mechanics, must pretty complex at the coding level and I doubt if all options can ever be covered. We have to live to a certain extent with the fact that a game will always have annoying discrepancies of this sort. What I find annoying in the extreme is the motivation for these changes, the way they were implemented and the fact that after every update we have to relearn our gameplay.

Constant tinkering with a class annoys the hell out me ( I'm old and and don't adapt very quickly ok :) ). Book 12 is promising more changes to the class and no doubt yet another change to how we play and equip our toons. Personally I don't believe that constantly changing how a class plays, and forcing you to relearn and requip, is a path to longevity for a game. New and more challenging content, yes. New areas to explore, yes. New armour, weapons, recipes etc, yes. Pi**ing off your existing player base with unjustified/ un-needed changes is a big NO. If changes need to be made they should be a benefit to the player, not, as seen by many, a constant nerfing of a class.

From Farstrike's summary of how the fear 'skill' agro works, the Devs can do one of 4 things to my mind;

a) Leave well alone.

b) Change the agro behaviour of a feared mob to that of a mob agro'd in the normal way. ie he will only attract a pre-linked mob.

c) Change the behaviour of all mobs so that close proximity to your current target will cause agro. ie a mob wandering past the one you are filling with arrows will get annoyed as well.

d) Change BA into a paralysing fear or stun.

Any bets on a) ?

[DrunkenM]

what i'll never understand ever is, lots of people played hunters, because they enjoyed playing them, so they nerf hunters. when people put effort, time and money into a character, only to have it changed for the worse to make other want to choose other classes more is so beyond stupid i can't believe it.

the boosts to minstrels, ie, they could do damage, are fantastic i enjoy playing a new minstrel as its fun. people are much more willing to roll a mincer now as they aren't stuck to always finding a group for any quest, in easier quests they can switch to pure damage mode and actually be helpful. why does increasing the fun of playing one class need the destruction of another class.

end of the day, its not real its a game, i want to play for enjoyment, achievement, doing well are all well and nice and i enjoy achieving, but at the end of the day it has to be fun. some people take 3-6 months maybe to level up to 50, only to find the most fun parts of their alts nerfed.

well thats just the opionion of a lvl 50 Nuker whose biggest nuke is so slow that i can throw out multiple smaller attacks in the same time and for the same damage, with my second biggest attack which can crit for 1400, only usable on an "average" mob when they hit under 500 morale? so basically our two real "nuke" attacks, aren't even remotely useful. not to mention our class armour sets are pretty weak, 50% power reduction on heartseeker, which saves us just over 100 power every 5 minutes, yay. how about a set that gives a decent threat reduction, or morale/power increase, or you know, something remotely useful.

bards arrow is all but useless, rain of thorns is fantastic, against really low level mobs, way of the hunter i've yet to finish , one page to go, and i have no intention/effort to look for it.
lots of dps increasing traits if you put in pen shot and rain of arrows in for -1 focus cost on both and increased crit chance and crit damage, but if you actually work at full dps you draw aggro. so again our nukers, with two MIA nukes, can't even run our other attacks full pelt.

PS< i'm a bit drunk, tired and just got off a session with my hunter after a long break feeling my lvl 27 minstrel is so ridiculously more effective(for its level) than my hunter ever was or ever will be again.

[Belion_]

eugh you cant use the large population swing argument.

Simple fact is champions are the most used class in the game and they are constantly getting buffs. i personally think the games devs wanted to punish all the ex wow people going ZOMG THEY WERE OP THERE LETS GO THEM HERE!!11ELEVEN1

[Skamander]

A big disappointment was discovering that the complete Hunter Rift armour set increases morale by a measly 22 pts. One welcome change, apart from doing something constructive about the currently useless Bard's Arrow, would be to provide some Hunter equipment, of whatever kind, which would boost morale by 500 or so points. At present, one of the biggest obstacles to soloing a Hunter in really dangerous terrain is our low survival rate when faced with several attackers, as it's almost impossible to achieve much more than 3,000 morale - far from adequate for an inherently vulnerable class with no healing abilities.

[MéLAnoR]

A big disappointment was discovering that the complete Hunter Rift armour set increases morale by a measly 22 pts. One welcome change, apart from doing something constructive about the currently useless Bard's Arrow, would be to provide some Hunter equipment, of whatever kind, which would boost morale by 500 or so points. At present, one of the biggest obstacles to soloing a Hunter in really dangerous terrain is our low survival rate when faced with several attackers, as it's almost impossible to achieve much more than 3,000 morale - far from adequate for an inherently vulnerable class with no healing abilities.i'd be happy to stay at 3000 morale with better evade/parry rates and more swift utulities helping my inductional skills or focus gains, also 'd like my cc skills to be fixed ( traps , RoT)

[Skamander]

i'd be happy to stay at 3000 morale with better evade/parry rates and more swift utulities helping my inductional skills or focus gains, also 'd like my cc skills to be fixed ( traps , RoT)

Reliable, long-lasting traps would certainly be welcome, as would a self-healing buff. But an increase in morale would be a good all-round, all-purpose improvement in survivability. I can't count the number of times a measly hundred or so points of morale would have made the difference between victory and defeat...

[Darzil]

However, aggro as described in case no. 3 will only trigger on the first shot, i.e any adds coming into social aggro range of your target after it's already been engaged will completely ignore your actions (unless you actively aggro the add of course).


This isn't entirely true. When you attack a Goblin (or similar mob) and it is low on health and runs, it uses the fear mechanics, and will bring friends if you hit it when near them.

This affects all classes, not only fear users.

Darzil

[Belion_]

if u want a morale build you can do that can get close to 4k but crappy agility. just depends on what you want.