There are many myths and misconceptions about AI behavior, and this reminded me of various misunderstandings I've heard led a few people astray, as well as a few (possibly flawed/erroneous to the point of bordering on "myth") observations;
As near as I can tell, mobs will go after whoever is altering the HP balance of a fight to their detriment. Mobs have fairly short attention spans so they tend to go after whoever has swung the balance most recently, with some adjustment for how dramatic those swings were, though not as much as you'd think. (If I can tank plods 2 at a time with a pair of q90 daggers and a CC skill around 120, there has to be more to it than DPS!)
The most common way to tilt the HP balance against a mob is to deal damage to them, whether by nuking or tanking. Tanks are generally effective at holding a mob in part because they have more HPM than casters... when they hit. Depending on amps and stanzas, most casters average about 35-40 HPM. Sure, nukers have better DPS than tanks, but the HPM disparity means that, assuming the nuker gets resisted about as often as the tank gets parried/dodged, the mob will stick with the tank most of the time. Things change a bit when there is enough of a level disparity between the tank and the nuke to affect hit percentages but it's still not totally about DPS; speed seems to play a larger role than it gets credit for. Moving on....
What many people miss is that up you make the tank's HP bar grow, you are also altering the balance of HP to the detriment of the mob. Instead of subtracting from one side of the equation, you're adding to the other. Think of healing as "negative damage" if that helps things make more sense. It's actually a bit worse for healers since heals are never parried/dodged/resisted, and are generally for more points than many melee/ele attacks. That gives them a pretty high DPS, which in turn raises the odds of the mob ignoring the tank and shifting it's attention towards the squishy if the tank misses too often. Against a solo mob, that isn't too big a deal as the mob can only be in one place at a time. However, social mobs can decide they want to split their attention. Next thing you know, half the spawn is now trying to chew on the pod while the tank has to decide between dragging the rest of the spawn onto their teammate(s) or just letting the pod deal with it on their own.
Given the complex interplay between level, effective HPM, and DPS (both theoretical and actual), I can see how one might think that mobs treat high-level homins differently from low-level ones. However, I also believe that people mistake correlation with causation all the time, and I've seen enough "exceptions to the rules" that I have a hard time believing that there is a simple answer here.
Now for the 64,000 dapper question; do the above observations and theories have a strong basis in fact, or am I merely making my own myths in an attempt to try to understand something I don't fully grok? Or is there no telling one way or the other and thus a need to go blow stuff up in order to find out?
Fyrosfreddy
3.c I haven't observed any mobs targeting homins by skill level, but I would say once engaged, they have a tendency to "go to damage". If a tank is engaged doing 1150 damage, they do have a tendency to ignore the tank and go to the mage doing 2700 if the tank does not hit frequently enough.
As near as I can tell, mobs will go after whoever is altering the HP balance of a fight to their detriment. Mobs have fairly short attention spans so they tend to go after whoever has swung the balance most recently, with some adjustment for how dramatic those swings were, though not as much as you'd think. (If I can tank plods 2 at a time with a pair of q90 daggers and a CC skill around 120, there has to be more to it than DPS!)
The most common way to tilt the HP balance against a mob is to deal damage to them, whether by nuking or tanking. Tanks are generally effective at holding a mob in part because they have more HPM than casters... when they hit. Depending on amps and stanzas, most casters average about 35-40 HPM. Sure, nukers have better DPS than tanks, but the HPM disparity means that, assuming the nuker gets resisted about as often as the tank gets parried/dodged, the mob will stick with the tank most of the time. Things change a bit when there is enough of a level disparity between the tank and the nuke to affect hit percentages but it's still not totally about DPS; speed seems to play a larger role than it gets credit for. Moving on....
What many people miss is that up you make the tank's HP bar grow, you are also altering the balance of HP to the detriment of the mob. Instead of subtracting from one side of the equation, you're adding to the other. Think of healing as "negative damage" if that helps things make more sense. It's actually a bit worse for healers since heals are never parried/dodged/resisted, and are generally for more points than many melee/ele attacks. That gives them a pretty high DPS, which in turn raises the odds of the mob ignoring the tank and shifting it's attention towards the squishy if the tank misses too often. Against a solo mob, that isn't too big a deal as the mob can only be in one place at a time. However, social mobs can decide they want to split their attention. Next thing you know, half the spawn is now trying to chew on the pod while the tank has to decide between dragging the rest of the spawn onto their teammate(s) or just letting the pod deal with it on their own.
Given the complex interplay between level, effective HPM, and DPS (both theoretical and actual), I can see how one might think that mobs treat high-level homins differently from low-level ones. However, I also believe that people mistake correlation with causation all the time, and I've seen enough "exceptions to the rules" that I have a hard time believing that there is a simple answer here.
Now for the 64,000 dapper question; do the above observations and theories have a strong basis in fact, or am I merely making my own myths in an attempt to try to understand something I don't fully grok? Or is there no telling one way or the other and thus a need to go blow stuff up in order to find out?
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Do not assume that you speak for all just because you are the loudest voice; there are many who disagree that simply have no desire to waste words on you.