sehracii wrote: In contrast, all it takes is one second in water and you're totally forgotten
This is a relatively recent development, Nevrax didn't want the mobs staring you down when you are in the water because people would pull mobs to water and swim across, then try to kill them, and things similar to that. They changed it so that mobs would leave if you enter water, in the hope that you would not be able to chase them down and kill them easily. There thoughts last september were that you shouldn't be able to run away from mobs, and in patch 1 they made it so that if you surface somewhere else the mob could swim to you. They obviously changed their mind and switched everything around.