Constantly pulling aggro as a newbie monk despite doing less damage
 

Hey guys, just made a newbie monk and equipped him with a Wu's Quivering Staff a little bit ago. He's level 8 so far, and something odd I've been trying to figure out is why I'm constantly pulling aggro off other monks/shamans/necromancers despite all of us being in melee range and the other people actually doing more damage than me.

I've had it to where a higher level monk will pull a mob, drop it to 90% or 80%, I'll go in, swing once and MISS, and the mob still turns to attack me.

The only thing I can figure is that maybe aggro is based off of the potential damage of each swing rather than actual?

This is correct.

Aggro is always based off of potential. If you cast a DoT spell and the mob resists it, you still get aggro for the damage from entire DoT.

(similar for misses).

One of the strongest opening aggro until procs is getting double attack proc first hit, regardless of actual damage

Yep, happens on my rogue too. Whiff my first combat round and the opening backstab and mob turns on me when I've done 0 damage.

Also, it could potentially be that mobs are being rooted. If that is the case, it will have aggro on whichever player is closest to the center of it's hitbox regardless of threat generated.