Guild Wars 2

For context, it was during a aetherblade miasma event. 17,790 damage in one hit.
From a champ I could of understood, but that is almost a 1-hit KO from the 2nd weakest guy you fight. you can argue attack animations all you want; there are 30+ mobs in a very small area – you are not going to see that coming.
Had I been a berserker or any less than full health, it probably would of killed me.

The Aetherblade Thugs hit ridiculously hard compared to the other Aetherblades.

That’s one of the chain attacks in a 1-2—3 format with a slow animation that’s meant to be evaded. Keep moving and you’ll never get hit by it. The banner drop will also kill you.

It was also probably level 83+, which makes it worse since damage seems to be multiplied due to scaling.

Yup, my semi PVT guardian got hit for 17k. Instant KO. already pop all aegis and other kitten skills in the heat of the battle. Battle log points to a darn veteran moltenblade or what the name is…

now that I think about it, not many champs can even match that amount of damage. world event bosses certainly don’t. It’s just silly that the highest damage in the game is caused by one of the weakest foes.
wait, there is one champ that can match it. Champion Rabbit in uncategorized fractals!

The Aetherblades (and most of Scarlet’s minions honestly) have always had kind of wonky scaling for vets. Their damage seems to climb to ridiculous levels in the jump from normal to vet, especially if they’re uplevelled.

I can’t really see how it is a bad thing to have enemies actually try to kill players with highly forecast moves. It is true that it becomes extremely difficult to watch for the signs when you are in the middle of 20 different MOBs all having visual effects dropped on them. So maybe it would be more effective to not jump into the middle of a pile of 20 MOBs if you want to stay standing? Fight from the edges and clear them out methodically rather than just jumping into the pile and swinging away.

Large spike damage like this, on a forecast move, gives the designers a way to actually threaten players while still giving players an easily accessible counter play.

I can understand they need to hit hard, but the health. omg the annoying amount of health these mobs have,

RedShipRaider.9560:

Large spike damage like this, on a forecast move, gives the designers a way to actually threaten players while still giving players an easily accessible counter play.

Or in the case of GW2, it gives Anet the chance to dish out champion level damage without having to reward the players for conquering it.

The main thing I like about GW2 is that a great deal of mobs output quite a lot of damage if you don’t pay attention.

aspirine.6852:

I can understand they need to hit hard, but the health. omg the annoying amount of health these mobs have,

While I understand this complaint, I also understand the counter-complaint, “Mobs melt too fast in the zerg.” Mob health is a scaling issue, and sometimes this might mean that you are the only one attacking a particular mob.

Well if we think about it, when it comes to content scaling (to accommodate more people) there is only so many things you can scale up (health and damage being the two main ones). So the larger the zerg the more you need to look out.

50+ players engaged in the event = Extremely powerful veterans… Events scale in difficulty depending on how many players are engaged.

Test it yourself. Go kill a veteran with nobody around. You’ll find you don’t get hit nearly as hard and deal a lot more damage. It would be pretty pointless if they didn’t scale and near impossible to tag anything as dozens of players instakill them.

CureForLiving.5360:

Well if we think about it, when it comes to content scaling (to accommodate more people) there is only so many things you can scale up (health and damage being the two main ones). So the larger the zerg the more you need to look out.

Wrong.

Health and Strenth aren’t the only things Naet can scale to increase the difficulty…
its the absolutel suboptimal lazy way to make a game more difficulty by rasing enemy helath and strength just always only ad absurdum..

ANet has also other options to increase the difficulty scale in regard of how many players participate in the event:

• Amount of Enemies, very simple. so more players r there, so more enemies do spawn lettign them become reinforcements

• Enemy AI could become better, using more different skills, so more players are there, dodging/blocking more oftenly and usign more oftenly CC skills and AoEs by themself

• Instead of always skaling up their Health and Power, they could simple instead of Vitality scale up Toughness so that enemies takes lesser damage

• Enemies could receive individual Buff Effects, so more Players fight agaisnt them, like Defiant, Wrath and what not al else to add to them unique effects that make the scaling up also by themself visual, that if a Buff of that sort plops up, then you know that the enemy got upscaled and it can be simply blended over by the enemy using a skill, that gives to it that unique buff

• Enemies could start on higher scalign to use also agaisnt players Combo Fields and Combo Finishers

• Enemies could finish off downed players also at higher difficulty scaling, why should this stay a player only thing ???

• Anet could increase the difficulty by lettign enemies have decreased cooldown times for their skilsl at higher scales

So there is more than enough different options, it must not be always only the 0815-way with more Health and more Strenght, but its the most easiert and very lame and lazy kind of way, that sadly gets always used as it seems :/

ANet sadly designed mob behavior around solo and small group (dungeon) fights, not the mass brawls we are facing in the living story. All their basic attacks follow of roughly a spike every 3 seconds.

During normal fights you are supposed to spot these spikes via tells. But during mass brawls those tells are obscured by other mobs, particle FX and similar.

Vets are a bother at level thanks to their big health bar. And at 4 levels above they easily turn into walking walls against anything but a full zerker GS warrior or guardian playing buzz-saw. And the six help you if they come en mass…

Orpheal.8263:

• Amount of Enemies, very simple. so more players r there, so more enemies do spawn lettign them become reinforcements

They tried this at launch. Events simply turned into loot farms for whoever could spam the most AOE the fastest. I watched GS warriors and staff eles camps the mob wave spawn at shelter gate because of this. If you were a split second faster at hitting your AOE, the ground would sparkle before you.

Oh and btw, mobs already prioritize anyone in down state and those trying to help them back up. They just do it via normal damage rather than finishers.

IndigoSundown.5419:

aspirine.6852:

I can understand they need to hit hard, but the health. omg the annoying amount of health these mobs have,

While I understand this complaint, I also understand the counter-complaint, “Mobs melt too fast in the zerg.” Mob health is a scaling issue, and sometimes this might mean that you are the only one attacking a particular mob.

I would not mind it taking long, if i just felt sturdier when bunkering up. But because of this “active combat” gimmick, everyone, bunker or zerker alike, have to dodge. Except zerkers actually dodge less because the mob dies faster.

At the core of this is that our skill sets are balanced for SPVP, but mobs do not play by SPVP rules.

Powerful Potion of Slaying Scarlet’s Armies Nourishment (1 h):
+10% damage vs damage vs. Toxic Alliance, Watchwork, Aetherblade, and Molten Alliance
- 10% damage from Toxic Alliance, Watchwork, Aetherblade, and Molten Alliance
+15 Experience from kills

Yeah I was on my guardian today. He has around 21,000 health, and all of a sudden I was instantly downed with 1 hit from out of the blue. I was like, “WTF!?”

It could very well be a bug. I don’t know any champ that hits that hard – unless they have righteous indignation on in WvW or EOTM, but in a living story and in a PVE environment AND from a vet? I was NOT expecting that to say the least!

I think something should be done about it.

Adventurous Cookie.1658:

Powerful Potion of Slaying Scarlet’s Armies Nourishment (1 h):
+10% damage vs damage vs. Toxic Alliance, Watchwork, Aetherblade, and Molten Alliance
- 10% damage from Toxic Alliance, Watchwork, Aetherblade, and Molten Alliance
+15 Experience from kills

Using this. There’s a bug that makes them deal 10% more damage to YOU.

Azure Prower.8701:

Adventurous Cookie.1658:

Powerful Potion of Slaying Scarlet’s Armies Nourishment (1 h):
+10% damage vs damage vs. Toxic Alliance, Watchwork, Aetherblade, and Molten Alliance
- 10% damage from Toxic Alliance, Watchwork, Aetherblade, and Molten Alliance
+15 Experience from kills

Using this. There’s a bug that makes them deal 10% more damage to YOU.

Believe it or not but that bug finally got fixed(every potion not just this one). So the PVE people can finally use their potions for dungeons too. Something good that came out of the bugfixing.

Orpheal.8263:

• Amount of Enemies, very simple. so more players r there, so more enemies do spawn lettign them become reinforcements

With AOE, this really doesn’t work. The more players you have the more combined mass damage they can do the quicker the mobs die out. Increasing mobs is only useful if you combine that with an increase in their individual survivability.

Orpheal.8263:

• Enemy AI could become better, using more different skills, so more players are there, dodging/blocking more oftenly and usign more oftenly CC skills and AoEs by themself

A good suggestion but not so easy to implement or balance. I’m thinking about the Molten Alliance events, AOE everywhere…

Orpheal.8263:

• Instead of always skaling up their Health and Power, they could simple instead of Vitality scale up Toughness so that enemies takes lesser damage

It comes down to the same thing, enemies take longer to die.

Orpheal.8263:

• Enemies could receive individual Buff Effects, so more Players fight agaisnt them, like Defiant, Wrath and what not al else to add to them unique effects that make the scaling up also by themself visual, that if a Buff of that sort plops up, then you know that the enemy got upscaled and it can be simply blended over by the enemy using a skill, that gives to it that unique buff

This is a good option. It allows for player awareness of scaling. It might lead to players attempting to micro-manage scaling though. For example someone might say “Too many people at Boss X, 30 of you please go stand on the other side of the map twiddling your thumbs while me and my 5 friends do all the killing.”

Orpheal.8263:

• Enemies could finish off downed players also at higher difficulty scaling, why should this stay a player only thing ???

They practically already do this, they just take the long way around by hitting you a lot. Still again something that might be useful.

Orpheal.8263:

• Anet could increase the difficulty by lettign enemies have decreased cooldown times for their skilsl at higher scales

So essentially they get to do more attack, thus doing more damage. Useful only if the mob has skills other than pure damage, otherwise you’re creating a more complicated means of simply increasing damage.

Orpheal.8263:

So there is more than enough different options, it must not be always only the 0815-way with more Health and more Strenght, but its the most easiert and very lame and lazy kind of way, that sadly gets always used as it seems :/

Well it’s lazy, but also very easy. Still it’s not perfect.

digiowl.9620:

Vets are a bother at level thanks to their big health bar. And at 4 levels above they easily turn into walking walls against anything but a full zerker GS warrior or guardian playing buzz-saw. And the six help you if they come en mass…

Personally it’s the 1 shot kills that bother me. Out of no-where I’ve gone from full-health to laying on my back.

Lalangamena.3694:

I think something should be done about it.

oh yes,

L2P.

That’s such a bad answer. At least support the L2P with a argument or explanation as to how the player is not playing correctly, ideally providing some advice or tips.

Raising health and / or toughness so that mobs live longer in a zerk is ok, raising damage not really since players don’t get more health in a zerk. Also this could lead to absurd damage numbers like the 64.000 damage that some upscaled mobs in Orr did.

Better in my eyes it would be if the mobs maybe get a higher AoE limit so that they can hit more than the usual 5 in a zerg.

This is just good, now you need to learn how play to against foes with big numbers. Zerkser will desipair!! Finally.

Darkicon.7950:

50+ players engaged in the event = Extremely powerful veterans… Events scale in difficulty depending on how many players are engaged.

Test it yourself. Go kill a veteran with nobody around. You’ll find you don’t get hit nearly as hard and deal a lot more damage. It would be pretty pointless if they didn’t scale and near impossible to tag anything as dozens of players instakill them.

I tested this in LA, from gendarran you go left and go up the ramp to that entrance to the secret cave. There are lots and lots of citizens there, normally dead. And one small group of a vet and a non vet. It takes to kitten long to solo this vet that it becomes down right annoying to do so. I do not like health sponges combine that with invul, interrupt and you get the most annoying fight.

I noticed this, too. Although I don’t have a problem with it, they are definitely getting stronger. First was EotM, now Lion’s Arch under attack. I used to be able to kill vets without breaking a sweat, now it’s actually a struggle to kill even one.
However, they are almost all level 83 – 84 in LA and most of them are some kind of Aetherblade Warrior, so. That might explain the damage and resistance they have. I’d just say that if you’re going to travel alone in LA while it’s being invaded, do what you can to avoid fighting more than one vet at a time. Elites are a whole different story.

Beldin.5498:

Raising health and / or toughness so that mobs live longer in a zerk is ok, raising damage not really since players don’t get more health in a zerk.

Raising damage would be less of a problem if we could herd or in other ways control who the mob targets.

The aggro code right now seems to have this absurd piece where a elementalist in soldier is considered a juicier target than a warrior in zerker.

Zaoda.1653:

Yeah I was on my guardian today. He has around 21,000 health, and all of a sudden I was instantly downed with 1 hit from out of the blue. I was like, “WTF!?”

It could very well be a bug. I don’t know any champ that hits that hard – unless they have righteous indignation on in WvW or EOTM, but in a living story and in a PVE environment AND from a vet? I was NOT expecting that to say the least!

I think something should be done about it.

21k health is nothing when there are things that can spike for 46k(against 2.9k/3k armor)

It’s design like this that drives everyone towards Berserker gear.

What’s the point in stacking survivability when mobs hit you for such ridiculous damage? At least with Berserker’s you can hit them back equally hard.

CureForLiving.5360:

Orpheal.8263:

• Enemies could finish off downed players also at higher difficulty scaling, why should this stay a player only thing ???

They practically already do this, they just take the long way around by hitting you a lot. Still again something that might be useful.

There is one extremely important difference between using a finisher and finishing something off with normal attacks if there are other people around. Normal attacks will make it much more dangerous to anyone trying to res the downed person. Not that it matters during the molten alliance miasmas events when everything is covered in fire anyway.

Dee Jay.2460:

It’s design like this that drives everyone towards Berserker gear.

What’s the point in stacking survivability when mobs hit you for such ridiculous damage? At least with Berserker’s you can hit them back equally hard.

I guess it could also be argued that the way to avoid this is not to clump up but I don’t think that suggestion would get much traction.

Dee Jay.2460:

It’s design like this that drives everyone towards Berserker gear.

What’s the point in stacking survivability when mobs hit you for such ridiculous damage? At least with Berserker’s you can hit them back equally hard.

ANet went heavy handed with their manifesto. The basic attack pattern of mobs is to make everyone have to dodge, so we get to experience the “active combat” they replaced “tank and spank” with. Never mind the whole “no trinity” thing…

Khisanth.2948:

CureForLiving.5360:

Orpheal.8263:

• Enemies could finish off downed players also at higher difficulty scaling, why should this stay a player only thing ???

They practically already do this, they just take the long way around by hitting you a lot. Still again something that might be useful.

There is one extremely important difference between using a finisher and finishing something off with normal attacks if there are other people around. Normal attacks will make it much more dangerous to anyone trying to res the downed person. Not that it matters during the molten alliance miasmas events when everything is covered in fire anyway.

The molten even is the weirdest one yet, vets, elites and champs will a stupid amount of health + the protection spells. Bad bad scaling too. Terrible for this event.

digiowl.9620:

The basic attack pattern of mobs is to make everyone have to dodge

True, although ANet could work a bit more on the combat presentation. It’s been said befpre dodging is only a really useful ability with a handful of enemies which you can easily keep track of and to look for telegraphed attacks. Currently combat in LA is large zerg of players versus large mob. The 1 shot kills wouldn’t hurt so much (my feelings I mean, since it hurts my HP a lot) if it was reasonably possible for me to see the attack coming and to dodge or use an ability. I don’t have anything against the zerg content (it can be rather fun from time to time) but presently the mechanics aren’t optimal for the type of combat we’re taking part in. Old school tanking basically did the job of keeping the attention on a small number of characters while the rest stood around and pew pewed (kinda boring combat for sure but the mechanics and combat style in such a case did complement each other). It’s not a massive disconnect between the two, but it does sometimes feel a bit off.
I think ANet might need to start rethinking what role dodging plays (and perhaps combos as well, since they’re practically useless in zerg content as well or basically anywhere else) and start to better design the combat style around that.

CureForLiving.5360:

I think ANet might need to start rethinking what role dodging plays (and perhaps combos as well, since they’re practically useless in zerg content as well or basically anywhere else) and start to better design the combat style around that.

One would hope so. But i constantly find myself thinking that the game is built from engine up for 5v5 SPVP, and the PVE is a mechanically crude addon because NCSOFT would not ok a MOBA.

Aetherblade mobs stack heavy might + fury as well

Adventurous Cookie.1658:

Powerful Potion of Slaying Scarlet’s Armies Nourishment (1 h):
+10% damage vs damage vs. Toxic Alliance, Watchwork, Aetherblade, and Molten Alliance
- 10% damage from Toxic Alliance, Watchwork, Aetherblade, and Molten Alliance
+15 Experience from kills

If you get hit for 27k damage oneshot on a guardian, that potion is not going to help you any (and that’s veterans, elites can go up to 40+k)

whew. i was wondering if eles were really this weak but it was just few veterans that could have one hitted a warrior

Mishee.5719:

This is just good, now you need to learn how play to against foes with big numbers. Zerkser will desipair!! Finally.

I am not a zerker. these numbers are so big that non-berserkers are also despairing.

the thing about zerg scaling… Lots of players increases the number of mobs and the health of those mobs, so:
2x # of mobs x 2x health = 4x health pool you have to kill with only 2x number of players.
just like critical damage, it’s not linear
3x players = 9x health pool
4x players = 16x health pool

This is a very positive direction for the game to take.

You can easily survive through these attacks using a combination of active defense (blocks, aegis, blinds, ccs, etc), dodges and a few survival stats on your gear (and if you can team up and get some active support from team members, even better).

If you insist on rushing in like a bull and just throwing out AOEs while in full zerker, then you will most like die often. Ive gone full sessions in the Lion’s Arch event without dying once.

It just takes knowing your profession and being willing to sacrifice a little dps (either through gear or by using more defensive traits/skills/weapons) to ensure a little survival.

It doesnt matter if a mob hits you for 27000 if you block or the target is blinded.

Yeah, like someone else said, I’ve seen some mobs with a whole stack of might. I try to rip it off them as soon as possible, but it can be pretty freaky. I don’t know if this is the cause of such high numbers, but it might have something to do with it.

I really enjoy this mechanic, though. It enforces a new kind of play-style in PvE and requires some bulkier builds. I love the feeling of being a wall.

Blaeys.3102:

This is a very positive direction for the game to take.

You can easily survive through these attacks using a combination of active defense (blocks, aegis, blinds, ccs, etc), dodges and a few survival stats on your gear (and if you can team up and get some active support from team members, even better).

If you insist on rushing in like a bull and just throwing out AOEs while in full zerker, then you will most like die often. Ive gone full sessions in the Lion’s Arch event without dying once.

It just takes knowing your profession and being willing to sacrifice a little dps (either through gear or by using more defensive traits/skills/weapons) to ensure a little survival.

It doesnt matter if a mob hits you for 27000 if you block or the target is blinded.

However it does matter when the mob spawns behind your camera or is hidden by all the people around. Yes active defense works when you can actually see the attacks. On the other hand if you can actually see the attacks then that means there probably wasn’t enough people around to scale up the mobs anyway.

Though as I mentioned above this might be another way the devs are trying to break up the zerg. Doesn’t seem very effective based on the results but they had to try.

As a ranger in zerker armor i noticed both changes:
- Being one shotted, or pretty much 90% HP gone in one hit.
- Once downed the foe coming in for the kill, so fast even that even with a rez pet i get killed. If i don’t bounce up from a rally or get ressed by bystanders.

And i think it is GREAT !! (no sarcasm at all here ) for the following reasons:
- I don’t think mobs should just be wiped up for their loot, it makes for a hardly compelling fight.
- It also makes you consider your moves more, it’s not just rush in do a 1 through 8 and hit [F] for loot.
- It makes it more important to keep rezzing people and thus ‘play together’, at times I have seen whole fields with downed players, a full wipe so to speak. Mainly because players think that ‘downed should use a WP’ is the best option. Well it is not, because it takes more time (then a multiple people rez) and due to this time once people start going down the group gets smaller every time, and thus the fight gets harder.
→ this also means support (mainly healing) can become more important.

Lastly:
- I think it is very positive, because it shows that Anet is definitely actively working on Foe AI (mainly the kill drive), and it also shows they are actively trying to combat ‘mindless’ zerking.

With mindless emphasised, because it does, once you get one shotted a few times you (or at least I) woke up a tad to realize this time the fight is a tad different this is somewhat ‘serious’. And I personally love it, mainly because my brain was finally stimulated to become a bit more actively involved in what I was doing (instead of just ‘run up and hit 1-through-10, hit [F] for loot). Especially once I noticed that some foes actively had it ’in for me’.

One thing I would like to add to this though, I do somewhat agree with Orpheal (only without the negative undertone). There are more ways to go about this, and perhaps some of these systems need a ‘maximum’ to stop becoming ridiculous.

Maybe a CDI on AI, Foe behaviour, damage curves and scaling and rewards. Could lead to more of these kind of fights but in a better balanced way. Because I think this is the way forward for more compelling gameplay, and the fact this is happening shows that Anet is working on all of this, we should encourage them to keep working on this, so it can become more varied, more compelling and better balanced.

Blaeys.3102:

It doesnt matter if a mob hits you for 27000 if you block or the target is blinded.

If you don’t see the attacker, then your survival through active defences can be only accidental. And the only profession able to survive those attacks through passives is a full bunker warrior. Guardian will simply not have enough hps.

Veteran Dredge in the cage in Fractal 49 has more HP than many of the bosses in the game. More HP = More difficult…. right?

Orpheal.8263:

Wrong.

Health and Strenth aren’t the only things Naet can scale to increase the difficulty…
its the absolutel suboptimal lazy way to make a game more difficulty by rasing enemy helath and strength just always only ad absurdum..

ANet has also other options to increase the difficulty scale in regard of how many players participate in the event:

Posters points are shown as bullets, below, with response below each.

• Amount of Enemies, very simple. so more players r there, so more enemies do spawn letting them become reinforcements

Some, if not all, events that scale already use this option.

• Enemy AI could become better, using more different skills, so more players are there, dodging/blocking more often and using more often CC skills and AoEs themselves

While this could be added, it would increase the time needed to program the mob AI. Some mob armies already use plenty of CC and AoE (see changes to Risen, plus mob armies added since launch (e.g., Molten, Aether).

• Instead of always scaling up their Health and Power, they could simple instead of Vitality scale up Toughness so that enemies takes lesser damage

For power builds, this might not make a difference. It’s possible to tweak numbers so that a mob can survive the same amount of direct damage through increased resistance as through increased health numbers. Depending on how this idea was implemented, this would matter only to condition builds. Not that that’s a bad thing, but it should not be seen as anything other than a band-aid fix to the real problem with conditions in large-scale PvE.

• Enemies could receive individual Buff Effects, so more Players fight against them, like Defiant, Wrath and what not al else to add to them unique effects that make the scaling up also by itself visual, so that if a Buff of that sort pops up, then you know that the enemy got up-scaled and it can be simply blended over by the enemy using a skill, that gives to it that unique buff

There are plenty of buffs in the game already. I’m not sure that adding unique buffs to anything other than, perhaps, Legendary enemies, would be better than mobs using the existing buffs to make boon-stripping more valuable in PvE.

• Enemies could start on higher scaling to use also against players Combo Fields and Combo Finishers

There are some mobs that do so now (e.g., the revised Risen Pirates). Could this happen more? Perhaps.

• Enemies could finish off downed players also at higher difficulty scaling, why should this stay a player only thing ???

Perhaps they could be more consistent about doing so, but this already happens.

• Anet could increase the difficulty by letting enemies have decreased cooldown times for their skills at higher scales

I’d advise caution here. Reduced CD’s are already in the game, except that this seems to happen with mob type up-scaling. Veteran Risen Nobles, for instance, use their AoE more frequently than normal ones, and the Champ Noble’s CD is even shorter. If normal mob CD’s shortened due to scaling, there might be unfortunate side effects — like 20 Aetherblade Striker’s dropping AoE stun almost constantly.

My conclusion: ANet is doing a better job with scaling than some give them credit for. My primary beefs with scaling are:

1. max scaling seems to occur with a moderate number of players, trivializing the events when a herd shows up
2. some events don’t scale down enough once the herd has moved on

to me, it’s totally fine that the amount of damage goes up with the number of players. But the damage that goes up should not be this random. Damage I seem to take: 500, 400, 389, 700, 120, 17790, 80, 600
it’s like only one of their attacks actually scales with the number of players.
All I want is more normalization. I’d much rather see: 1500, 1400, 1389, 1700, 1120, 7790, 800, 1600
that way, you can actually somewhat predict when you will die and maybe do something about it.

I am not a big fan of being in a fight, then being randomly picked by Thor, the god of thunder, as target practice to instantly kill me.

as an off-topic: you know what doesn’t scale well? the number of molten protectors. more players = more protectors. the mechanic of these protectors is to knock them out of their circle. but with so many, when you knock them out of their circle, they get knocked into someone else’s circle.

What you’re seeing, Mystic, is ANet’s attempt at forcing us to play the fight actively. The damage spike is from the mob’s “telegraphed” attack, that you are supposed to dodge/block/interrupt.

All well and good fighting 1-2 mobs solo while out in the world. But during these massive events, spotting the telegraph in the mass of models and FX is difficult. And the difficulty is amplified by the aggro mechanic.

The other day i was at a molten miasma event, fighting a oversized protector. Suddenly when someone ran by, or something, it just ignored me, spun around, ran off in some direction for a bit, then spun around and came right back at me.

This means that you don’t know who the target of the mob is at any one moment. It can all of a sudden spin around and drop its spike on someone completely unrelated simply because of some black box aggro trigger.