This Thing You Call Aggro.

[savaughn]

Here's a test:  two people needed.  One person aggroes the mob.  Second person steps within aggro radius, then backs out of aggro radius (but not so far as to invoke the evade mode return of the mob if you're not in an instance).

First person dies.  Does the mob go after the second?  If it does, just being in the proximity of the monster (not first) is sufficient to put you on the hate list, like you said.
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Done this. The answer is: depends.

Once a mob has someone in their hate list, that mob does not seem to check aggro radius. It effectively goes blind. You have to do something to enter the hate list at this point - AoE, direct attack, etc. There are certain events that cause a mob to turn its aggro check back on however - running out of things in its hate list definitely qualifies.

Some sample scenarios.
- Walked up to a person fighting a mob, walked away, person died, mob evaded and returned to its original position.
- Person aggroed mob and ran away. Mob ran THROUGH me. Person dropped aggro (feign death). Mob returned to initial position.
- Person aggro'd mob. I entered threat range. Person died (turning on aggro check). Mob saw me and ran to me.
- I aggro'ed mob (so I'm on the threat list), person hit mob (pulling aggro), I backed way away and out of threat range, person dropped aggro, mob ran to me.

The aggro radius check seems to be a one time scan when the threat list empties. If there are no available targets, the mob then enters evade mode which turns off the aggro check. I'm guessing we've all had an evading mob run through us on its way back to it's leash location, indicative of this behavior.

If a mob aggros to a mage in the original scenario and the mage hasn't thrown a spell at that mob, I'm guessing it was because of an AoE burst (frost nova?) that put him in the threat list or because the mage made the pull, which puts him on the threat list of everyone in the pull or because the mob cleared its threat list while the mage was within aggro range (i.e. the tank pulled and died).