Two Tank Mercenaries - Non Taunting One Taking Aggro

Our group has two Warrior mercenaries up. One is set in "Aggressive" stance. The other is set in "Assist" stance.

The Aggressive one:
[Fri Oct 28 00:06:44 2022] Kayrher has captured a flame disciple's attention!

The Assist one does no taunt messages.

The Aggressive one has more or the same number of Tank AAs, in fact on that character they have purchased every mercenary AA there is. The Aggressive one also has better mercenary gear. Both are buffed with the same buffs.

Yet the Assist one keeps taking aggro. This is happening constantly, in different zones, against different mobs.

I don't think it should matter, but are both mercenaries also the same level?
If you switch their roles, does the one that used to be assist still take aggro?
Are you fighting one mob?
Do you have the group main assist role set?

Set the one on aggressive as main tank.

1. They are both the same level.
2. The Aggressive one was set as Main Tank.

Merc's are the Devil.

Ok, warrior mercenary on Assist, real life paladin tanking, with paladin marked as Main Tank and Main Assist.

Warrior mercenary stealing aggro like putting a massive aggro lock on the mob. The level of warrior mercenary aggro is fantastic and I love it, but that aggro needs to only apply when they are set as Aggressive.

TL;DR: Warrior mercenary aggro is great, super great, but needs to only be on when merc is set as Aggressive, and off when they are set as Assist.

Thank you.

Only the merc set as tank will do actual aggro stuff. The other is just a DPS merc.

The type of merc named "Tank" is a warrior and can be set as either Aggressive or Assist. Aggressive means you are having them be the group tank. Assist means they should not be taking aggro but just doing dps.

There is also a merc type named "Melee Damage". Those do just dps and do not tank.

I have no idea what you mean, because what I'm reading of what you posted seems to not notice this.

What level are they though?

I'll do some testing myself to try to duplicate the issue.

Sounds like you forgot to set the one you wanted to be the tank as "Main Tank" in the group menu. That doesn't mean the other one wont occasionally pull aggro but it should fix a great majority of the aggro swapping issues.

NM just saw you did set it as main tank.. Not sure what is going on but i rarely if ever have 2 tank mercs out.. dps mercs are far better if you want secondary dps,

Everyone involved is level 120.

Okay and what are their Furious Wrath tank AA ranks respectively?

Mine were at maximum and my mercenary tank was the one that was set to Aggressive (in the two merc example) while the other one may or may not have been at maximum Furious Wrath but was set to Assist.

Regardless, it is unimportant whether or not they had Furious Wrath AAs, the point is that a Tank merc set as Assist should not be taking aggro over a tank merc or player that is actually taunting or otherwise set to grab aggro.

Right now, it seems that all Tank mercenaries are ignoring the "Assist" setting completely and are treating it as "Aggressive". That is the full issue. Tank mercenaries are actively taunting or otherwise doing the best they can to grab aggro even when set as Assist. They are taking aggro so well that other tanks trying to hold aggro cannot.

A Tank mercenary set on Assist should not be stealing aggro from actively taunting tanks,. End of story. Bug reported.

Right. But only when the merc is set as the main tank will it actually do real aggro things. There's always an alpha tank merc, and the others are beta tank mercs. The other one, not the main tank, is just swinging weapons, and at that point you may as well have the rogue merc and not the warrior one.

My report here is that this is not happening. The merc who is NOT set as main tank is doing "real aggro" things.

The "beta tank merc" does not get the memo that they are beta.

And there are reasons, like some people only have one merc and it is a tank, or you want to have the tank merc ready to take over if the actual tank dies (at that point you would change them from Assist to Aggressive), etc., not to be using a rogue merc.

I did some testing. I used a pair of same era mercenaries as follows:
* Level 111 Vah Shir tank (no tank AA) on aggressive (group main tank)
* Level 113 Vah Shir tank (no tank AA) on assist

Notes:
* For the tank merc to use Mercenary Taunt it has to be marked as group tank, regardless of stance.
- Assist tank taunted if marked as group tank, otherwise not.
- Aggressive tank taunted if marked as group tank, otherwise not.
- Both tanks attack arbitrary mob, in mass pull, if no group main assist.
- Aggressive tank, if marked as group tank, attacks (and taunts) any mob not already attacking it, after engagement.
- Assist tank follows group main assist or group main tank (to a lesser focus).

Special note: Neither tank used any combat abilities or disciplines that I have been used to seeing in previous years and levels of mercs. I will test more difficult scenarios to see if I can get them to use any abilities beyond Mercenary Taunt. Failure to use abilities (at all) could be the source of your bug report. It's not the first time mercs have lost their abilities (e.g. rogue mercs) so this wouldn't surprise me. I agree that something is odd if not broken here.

Thank you for your testing.

Just as a note, I cannot say if any tank mercenary was actually taunting (except for my first post in this thread). It could be they are not taunting but that their aggro is just from attacking.

Some player classes manage to generate massive aggro without taunting. About a year ago or so (or maybe more, I did not mark the date), monks suddenly began generating massive aggro for no reason I can detect. This is not a problem because they can just FD off their aggro. But there was a change made.

So it is possible to generate aggro without taunting. It also seems like to me that some aggro generated is not directly related to damage output or other factors. There just seems to be a class or other setting multiplier that determines how much aggro something generates.

Whatever settings are set for tank mercs to generate aggro is creating huge amounts of aggro, and that is super fantastic and great and the last thing I want to do is have that changed. Except for when they are set as "Assist". Under that condition, and no other, their aggro needs to be turned down massively.

I think a mercenary's aggro is at least partly tied to the melee damage they do. The tank should be getting some extra hits from ripostes, but I wonder if the assist tank is hitting from behind and doing more damage, so generating more aggro from melee. If that's the case, though, then I'd expect the aggro to bounce back and forth between the 2 if the mob lives long enough.

Going to have to disagree on some of these points. I run a 120 tank merc and 120 DPS. I do not use any roles and none of them are marked at tank or assist etc.

The tank merc will engage mob and if that mob or another accidentally pulled mob starts attacking the healer or anyone else in the group then the tank merc will get aggro.

If the dps merc does too much damage and the tank merc is no longer highlighted as the one with aggro then within a hit or two the tank merc regains aggro. Even when I, the aggro producing ranger get in trouble my tank merc pulls it off of me.

So how is the tank merc gaining aggro if he is not taunting? Just some food for thought.

Wonder if the tank merc is coded to do less damage if it is in tanking role and more damage if not.