Don't pull the Mesa Alpha Wolf! So there I was minding my own business slaughtering the local wildlife in Garu'Kar Mesa when I pulled a wolf. My Merc and Pet were tanking when suddenly my additional targets window filled to overflowing, the Merc and Pet folded and I was swarmed by a pack of wolves. Silly way to die. I guess the other part of the moral would be to read the name of the mob first and not just go by appearances. What you don't know can hurt you! Also, while I am here I've noticed that the Target Window shows who has the mob's aggro. On either side of the aggro holders name are two numbers. What are those numbers? I haven't really been able to find anything about this via help although I probably haven't looked as hard as I should. Thanks!
From what I have been able to discern about the aggro indicator, it seems to go from green, to yellow, and to red, depending on how solid the aggro is. When my merc has red aggro, I can med without being targeted. If it is otherwise and I try to meditate, they will immediately come and hit me. That is as far as I understand that part of it, but my results in this study have been consistent.
The numbers referenced are percentages, (as I recall) yours on the left, main aggro holder to the right. Every character or mercenary or pet should have numbers if he / she / it has participated in the combat. One can tell if subject has not participated by lack of number on left. There are historic things that attract aggro. Sitting is number one. Low-"man" (level) is another.
The number or percent in red is the player with the mobs highest aggro. You can notice it go yellow and your color go red if you gain aggro over the tank, like mage pets and other casters often do. Then you need to back off, it used to be that sitting or casting heal spells would be instant aggro but the game has lightened up on that so players don't die so much when they do that.
Basically 0-100 with 0 being no agro and 100 being top agro for the mob. If you are a tank you want to be 100 at all times. When I use to main a ranger I would aim for 80-90 which meant I was pushing my tank to tank better while avoiding becoming the tank. If you have 100 and are not the tank you might want to consider either an exit strategy, some way to defend yourself, or be ready to self heal until a tank can grab agro again. It is possible to have several characters/pets/mercs at 100% in which case I am not sure how the npc determines who to attack but I am assuming the hate generator actually goes above 100 but for simplicity on the visual side we only see it up to this point.
In my experience at least some mobs consider the distance to the "most hated" PC. Something like "I am fighting this beefy Ogre, but that Elf wizard standing at the other end of the room has just jumped to 102% of the warrior's agro. I should probably run over to the wizard and start smacking him around. However, by the time I get to him, the Ogre will probably get the agro back, so I'll just lose a round or two of melee attacks. Not worth it." It may be a conscious design decision to make ping-ponging agro less viable, but that's just a guess. It's also possible that the server and the client simply fail to synchronize agro display due to lag.
For ranged characters it's like 130 percent, if they were to walk up to the mob it would turn to them.
If you put a ranger and pally in a room with a wolf and they just stand there the wolf will run past the ranger and kill the pally. So faction plays into aggro also.
