I believe these are entirely missing from P99.
To those unaware, basically every time you cast a Heal there should be a dice roll performed to determine whether the mobs on the Hate list of the person you're healing, noticed or witnessed you were the one to heal.
If the check succeeds, then the Heal places you on the aggro list (if you weren't before) and adds the correct amount of hate.
If the check fails, then the Heal does not place you on the aggro list and no Hate is generated. Feasibly you could have the check fail, the tank dies and the mob would reset because you were never added to the aggro list.
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The primary situation where this is misunderstood would be Velious faction hits. Currently in Kael or ToV a healer whom only casts heals will never receive faction hits for the mobs being killed. This is incorrect. The lack of faction hits from these zones was mostly due to CH being the most commonly cast spell and most fights would only involve a small handful of casts so it's possible to never be placed on the aggro list due to this.
It is *possible* you may not receive faction hits on certain mobs. But that is only due to the underlying mechanic at work. The witness check never succeeded when you received no faction hits. For regular old trash mobs where you may only cast 1-2 heals this is quite a reasonable situation.
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Torven's work on EQEmu Hate
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NPCs can fail a 'witness check' (Sony's term, mentioned in patch notes) in which case they will completely ignore a beneficial spell cast by a player which is in their hate list.
This means you can cast a heal on somebody tanking a NPC and have a chance to not get on the NPC's hate list at all. This is why healing is less effective than hitting NPCs for getting faction hits in groups/raids.
My data suggests that witness check rates are not affected by distance or angle to the target. Levels of the caster and target also seemingly make no difference, however I have not tested every possible combination of level disparity due to the difficulties involved. I did run some tests involving characters that were lower in level from the NPC, which produced the same success/fail rates, although the tank was still a higher level. (I had the casters usually casting on themselves however, not the tank)
The data does indicate that rates are not the same for every spell. Endure Fire for example was witnessed at a lower rate (about 40-45%) than most other spells I had tested-- those were around 50%. Minor Healing also resulted in the same lower witness rate as Endure Fire on a level 68 NPC casted by a level 65 character. I have not tested many spells due to the significant amount of time required to gather the data.
An old cleric thread from early 2004 has some clerics running tests, and they also came up with the 50% chance for heals to aggro, testing on low level NPCs: http://www.eqclerics.org/forums/show...t=17872&page=3 however their sample sizes are small.
See the pastebin link for my data.
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EQClerics Post linked above
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Unlike my data, Mikar's is subject to numerical analysis.
SR: 7 caused hate and aggro; 11 caused hate but no aggro.
SL: 12 caused hate and aggro; 9 caused hate but no aggro.
CH: 4 caused hate and aggro; 3 caused hate but no aggro.
This means that 46 heals are listed, and presumably 4 heals are missing from the data set shown.
It's nice to have the "heal but no hate" effect observed in two different zones from two different expansions.
Mikar didn't want to draw conclusions yet, but I will tentatively do so:
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Against non-KoS targets, direct healing spells have an approximately 50% chance to cause zero hate. This is calculated on a "per heal" basis rather than a "per monster" basis.
The amount healed necessary to pull aggro off a necromancer pulling with the spell "incinerate bones" is greater than 973 and less than 989.
Seemingly disproven by Mikar's test is the hypothesis that heal aggro is on a "per spell" basis rather than on an "amount healed" basis; it seems clear that heal aggro is based on the amount actually healed rather than an an arbitrary number chosen per spell.
Also seemingly disproven is the hypothesis that CH draws a different amount of aggro than SR or SL for a given amount healed.
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Iiiiiiinteresting. I figure the Kael Drakkal test is unnecessary; it's obvious that against non-KoS monsters throughout any expansion, direct heals have a chance to cause zero hate.
I'll test against KOS monsters next I think. Here's a proposed experiment:
I'll park my cleric in a place which is outside normal aggro range from monsters, and then my monk in a different place, outside monster aggro range from the cleric but within heal range (the heal employed may need to be SR). Monk will pull a monster to him, receive a heal on incoming, and then feign. The experiment is to see if the monsters then charge the cleric; if they do so only some of the time, it will be demonstrated that direct heals have a chance to cause zero hate even against KOS monsters.
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New round of data, this time the experiment went off as planned.
Method: 65 cleric and 63 monk, dual boxed in the East Commonlands. Cleric matched that used in Mikar's test in the sense of having maxed AHA and AHG, and as in Mikar's test, all foci were removed.
Monk pulled a deathfist orc - specifically, orc centurions, apprentices, legionaries, and High Chief Kellerus, but not orc pawns which were too fragile for the test - with a shuriken. Monk then sat down (which was necessary in order to avoid killing the orc with ripostes; also when standing, the monk's regen was faster than the orcs' damage, which meant the heals would have landed for zero). Cleric healed monk; monk then feigned, and it was recorded whether or not the orc charged the cleric.
In some instances the orc was killed, in others not, for reasons explained below. In cases where the orc was not killed, it was allowed to return to its spawn spot and regen to full health before being used as a test subject again.
There was only ever one heal per pull, and in all cases the heal employed was Complete Healing.
Results: Of 50 CH's, 16 resulted in the orc charging the cleric, and 34 resulted in it returning peacefully to its spawn spot.
The amount healed was between 20hp and 50hp in all cases and there was no observable correlation between amount healed and the chance of the cleric taking aggro. A 44hp heal with no aggro was immediately followed with a 23hp heal with aggro.
In order to establish that the chance was calculated per heal and not per monster, in some cases the orc was allowed to live and then re-pulled after returning to its spawn spot. It was observed that orcs who did not aggro after the first heal, sometimes did after the second or third.
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Conclusion: Complete Healing has a significant chance to cause zero aggro. Whether fighting green con monsters or blue cons (Chardok test), and whether fighting KoS or non-KoS monsters, this holds true. The chance that it will cause zero aggro may be in excess of 50%.
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I'm frankly amazed at that conclusion. I'll conduct further tests as soon as the opportunity arises.
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Shadowfrost
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EQClerics 2000 Post
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Being Euro I have only recently gotten SoV - but during 10 hours of fighting in Kael (partly for faction) I noticed that I *never* got faction if all I did was healing. I had to either melee of nuke/stun the critter - didnt test if buffing during battle triggered faction though.
I now ask if anyone else have noticed this and if it is like that all over Velious.
Hmm, havent checked if its a general change and also applies to Kunark and the old world.
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Perhaps you were bugged... Did you try camping and reconnecting? Or perhaps it's just a bug in Kael. I was in a group hunting the giants in Great Divide two nights ago, and received faction hits from just healing during battle so it does not apply to all of Velious if it is a bug with Kael.
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You have to aggro the mob to get faction, and like Hinaner said, CH won't always do this. I would say that CH will RARELY aggro the mob. What I do is just cast strike sometime during the fight, this will get you on the aggro list and you will get faction.
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I noticed that if you don't aggro the mob, sometimes you don't get faction hits.
It seems rather odd, but it happens. Using CH exclusively(sp?) can do this.
Perhaps you need to get on the aggro list
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EQClerics 2001
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I watched my faction closely when hunting in Karnors, and this is what I observed:
Casting a single heal in a fight almost never earned a faction hit.
Casting two heals took a hit less than half the time.
Casting a third heal usually earned a hit.
Casting any offensive spell earned a hit.
CH seemed to earn hits less often than remedy.
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This post points to the fact that the reason faction hits are given out is due to the underlying mechanic I described above. Rather than it being something unique to Velious zones or Dungeons.
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This mechanic is easily tested and confirmed on Live EQ with the combat status icon in your player window. If you heal a player and don't get put on the hate list, your combat status goes to 30 second timer to out of combat (hourglass icon). If you heal a player and do get put on the hate list, your combat status goes to crossed swords.
The mechanic is one at the core of EverQuest in general. It is one very unlikely to have been overhauled at any point. The evidence across the long timeline of EQ indicates this mechanic has existed at all points it just wasn't fully/well understood to start, as with many of the underlying EQ mechanics.
In summary:
- P99 needs to have a witness check applied to heals and beneficial spells in general to determine whether it adds Hate to a mob.
- Typical mobs and heals are a 50/50 roll on this check.
- Complete Heal has a lower chance to fail the check, 75/25 seems to be a fair guess (due to the loaded amount of hate potential I suspect, which was capped at some point but I would guess this is why CH fails the check more often)
- Remove Velious Dungeon specific code that says if you only cast beneficial spells no aggro is generated.
Praise be to classic EQ.
01-25-2017, 12:01 PM
Let's Discuss "Witness Checks" for Heals
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