AoE dmg over time A.I.

I want to know precisely how the A.I reacts when in AoE dmg that casues scatter (e.g. lava font). Here is what I have worked out so far:

Some skills cause scatter, whilst others don't. Examples of skills which cause scatter:
Mark of Pain, Lava Font, Snow Storm

Some skills which do not cause scatter:
Spiteful Spirit, Whirling Defense

There are two types of "scatter" commonly referred to:

Type 1: Only affects melee enemies (and some enemies in this state by default e.g. dream riders), and it triggers when they get below ~75% hp and there are more than 3 enemies attacking a target at once. It doesn't matter what dmg they are taking etc., only how low their hp is. What happens is all but 3 enemies will become "dislocated" and hover around waiting to regen.

Type 2: STriggers on both casters and melee characters. It depends upon the damage skill used, RoJ famously did not cause this type of scatter before it was fixed. What happens is the enemy will run away to try and get out of the damage area, but will return to attacking after a few seconds.

Here I am not talking about type 1, it is well known how the A.I. behaves in this condition, and so more a sort of A.I. mode rather than a scatter.

The Type 2 is what I am interested in. I know that it is possible to block enemies so that when they are trying to scatter they get stuck and just stand in the AoE dmg doing nothing, however I can't reproduce this consistently and when I get it to happen it is mostly by luck. I remember back in the old chaos plains farm it was possible in normal mode to stop this type of scatter by keeping your hp under ~25% (I am not sure if this also applies to HM).


So basically if you know anything about how the A.I. behaves with respect to this "type 2" scatter then please post it =)

Type 2 to me is where you are in a mob of 3+ foes , in 3 or less they wont split on aoe dmg except skills like roj but when you hit above 3 ( 4 or more ) then type 1 will come into effect and aoe dmg will split but after a few secs of regen they usually jump in as another jumps out - sort of taking turns.
so a mob of 6 will split into 2 x 3 and will take turns when dmg or aoe happens to an extent.Its damn annoying on some farms where you want to kill foes fast and dont use aoe- gd example 330rt on halycon job sin farm - damn sins split on 4 or above and usually its a mob of 4 you get and its usuallu retibution that cause the split.

One thing that really confused me was when anet "fixed" the aoe split in hm - it was stated hm fixed but it also made same split happen in nm and the issue was hm split not both.

Nono that is all type 1 that you are talking about.

What I mean is like, say you just aggro a group with SF up to survive, and then cast fire storm on a mesmer enemy. The mesmer will run out of the fire storm and then keep attacking you. What I want to know is how the game decides in which direction the enemy decides to run, and in particular how to exploit this to keep the enemy in the dmg area.

If one "scatters" away to regen, if you hit it (spear/bow) it will come back to you.

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