As this is not the first time this has happened. It happened while back in a couple different expansions then it went away. An now its back.
So, I have to disagree that there's an upper limit to the aggro list, because we'd be seeing a different kind of behavior. If there was an upper limit, the tank reaching it would then get thrown back to the bottom of the list and have to work their way up again. The second tank on aggro would have a solid lockdown on their placement until they too went over the limit. Then it would fall to the third tank, and so on. Each player reaching the limit would suddenly drop to the bottom, as if they had successfully faded all aggro. Eventually, all the tanks would hit that limit and DPS classes would be next on the list. That would mean the raid boss is chewing through melee classes and wiping the raid, so it would be pretty obvious. You'd have this situation where tanks would want to build aggro as high as possible without going over a certain amount (that they have no way of measuring or estimating) or else they'd lose everything. Instead, what we see is the aggro meter displaying some information that is harder to understand and unreliable to use as the tool it was designed to be. Once the aggro values get too big, the meter shows the main tank as having less than 100% aggro, despite being the focus of the mob's attention and with no aggro-override spell effects in play. The second on aggro can show at 1%, and suddenly overtake the main tank because they were actually at 99%. You can see first and second place on aggro flip-flopping (as the MT and their backup accidentally fight each other for top slot) because their aggro is so close but don't know it, due to the aggro meter providing bad information. They don't suddenly fall off a cliff and have to start over from scratch, they don't lose all of their previously built aggro. These tanks just don't know where they are in relation to each other on the aggro list because the aggro meter is displaying junk.
That's the point. I'm trying to explain the difference between how it would work if that (the aggro upper limit) were true, and what we're actually seeing. People are getting confused because their UI (the aggro meter) is lying to them; the indications aren't clear and have to be interpreted.
well you are making up stuff too.. As was pointed out the whole tank would fall off thing.. has never been seen in game before. Think thats what they were pointing out perhaps ?
If you not a dev .. working for DBG on Everquest. Then there is no way you know with out 1 of them telling us there is or is not a limit. Or what should or should not happen if there was a limit .. verses what we are seeing.
The laws of the universe do not explain themselves, you figure them out through testing and observation. If the Developers don't deign to explain all of the specifics of the game, we can still figure stuff out anyway. Dev explanations just provide shortcuts. You can wait for the Word of God to get passed down if you like, but they don't have the time or care to answer most of our questions, and we don't have to wait to figure it out anyway.
I don't think it's an overflow. Either it's just a bug in the aggro display, or whatever code was put in 20 years ago to prevent an overflow doesn't work very well.
agree 100%. My bet as a non-dev is that when a mob hits some aggro threshold but things still kind of work OK this pops up on the EQ server somewhere so it's never been looked at and fixed.
You sure it wasn't taunt? With the fix to taunt messages we can now see those spam taunters in raid, which would create the kind of situation you are referring to.
