What is "Hate"?

All of us have heard each other talk of the concept of "Hate" in this game, but I've never engaged in a discussion about how people perceive it (haven't looked for a thorough explanation elsewhere either, yet). In my view at the moment, it seems to be a mechanism on a PvE entity that tracks and records different factors that occur on and around the entity, translating them into some kind of "hate-points" for each player-character that interacts with the entity either directly or indirectly. These accumulated "hate-points" are then arranged into the so-called aggro-list - who has the most is usually the one who the attention of the entity is on.

Some classes are specifically designed to create as many hate-points in PvE, like the Guardian, obviously, while others must seek to minimize the hate-points they create. This is where plus-hate and minus-hate also seem to become a factor - the way I see it is that they act as a modifier on how much hate-points your actions create. Let's for simplicity's sake say that doing 1000 points of damage translates as 1000 points of hate as well. Guardians don't do as much damage as some other classes and cannot gather a lot of hate-points from that alone, but I suspect certain combos are there to specifically generate a lot of hate-points, as well as some of the Guardian's abilities like Goad. The plus-hate that a Guardian (hopefully) has acts as a positive modifier to the hate-points his/her actions create, increasing the amount of hate. Then when someone deals damage to the entity, he/she preferably has to take care not to overtake the hate-points the Guardian has at any given time.

With a simplified example, let's say a Guardian attacks with a combo that deals 200 damage and on top of that creates and additional 800 hate-points, totalling 1000 in hate-points. His plus-hate modifier is a nice +15% which makes the total accumulated hate-points go to 1150. A spellcaster then casts a spell which deals 1400 points of damage, enough to overtake the Guardian on the aggro-list and become the target of the PvE-entity, but luckily his/her minus-hate rating is at -20%, lowering the spellcaster's accumulated hate-points to 1120, keeping the caster below the Guardian on the aggro-list.

That's how I perceive the mechanism. Is there a more thorough (and perhaps more accurate) explanation to it somewhere? Am I completely lost with my assessment?

I think that's how hate works as well, Heps.

There's a very useful post by Ciderhelm on the US forums which goes into this quite a bit.

A few minor things to add - Goad guarantees aggro by making the soldier's hate equal to the current highest hate on that mob plus about 10%, so it's possible for a team of soldiers to create an aggro "ladder" with it, I believe.

Taunt works as a proc, with there being a chance for the soldier to generate extra hate on a hit.

Also, aggro only switches when someone exceeds the current hate target's hate total by more than 10%, so if a guard has accumulated 1000 hate points, then a dpser will need to accumulate 1100 to grab the aggro from them. Ciderhelm's testing suggested that this 10% may vary slightly from mob to mob, but not to any huge extent.

I also read an iteresting post on the US forum - one guy listed there guard's combos with the amount of hate that they generate. I have no idea how did he measure that. Anyway, this is how it works probably. Each combo have assigned an amount of hate that it generates and which is additionally increased by +hate modifiers.
I'm not sure what is the difference between taunt and +hate. Sometime ago Borochas told me that 100 of taunt equals to +1% of hate. Firstly I thought "why to make two different modifiers which are actually doing the same??" but it is the same with movement speed - we have it in skills and also modifier of items expressed as a percentage. So I guess he is right.
Speaking of taunt, I read today on testlive forum a thread in which dev said that currently taunt is capped at 800 although GUI does not informs about it (I was pretty sure that all above 800 still counts for my benefit). The same applies to all other skills, all above 800 means completely nothing. That's a piece of news, isn't it?
The amount of taunt (or any other skill) that you get from items can be deducted from skills and invested in sth else. At least thoretically as skills reset is quite costly and it is certain that your gear will change in time, which means other adjustements to skills (and more gold to spend).

Here is the link to that thread:
http://forums-tl.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=43893

Ayrr