Guild Wars 2

I play a pure rabid necro build (rabid is condition dmg as main and tougness and precision as secondary stats). I’m full exotic and got 4 ascended items (all except the accessories). I’ve spent some traits in the toughness line. All, in all, I have 1882 toughness.

The other day, I played my necro in AC story. The group was the following: 1 level 80 guardian (full berserker), 1 level 80 warrior (full berserker), 1 level 60 mesmer (unknown equipment) and 1 level 30 ranger (unknown equipment) and me, a level 80 necro.

During the whole dungeon, I was the first and only target of the game. Even if I was the farest player from the boss. We went like that: I was running in circles, the bosses were following me, the other guys were killing the boss by standing still, except for the warr who ran after the boss. For ALL bosses. But… the group wasn’t bad.

In the end, I spent half of the time lying on the ground. I reran the story with another similar group. It started the same, but then I removed my trinkets, all of them, and all of a sudden it was bearable, I could play normally, getting the aggro only once in a while.

The same happens in fractals: I get too much aggro, even though my party plays mix of knight’s and berserker’s equipment, and I lie too much on the ground. However less than when I played that AC story.

It strange, because if I play with my other light/medium-armored characters, I have much less issues standing still. When I play in WvW with my necro, it’s the same: I stand still. So the problem is really linked to the aggro.

A small thing to know: lying on the ground is not fun. Lying on the ground when you gear to not lying on the ground is even less fun!

So please, to make it playable for all players, including those who think about putting some defense on them, by opposition to those who focus solely on damage, reduce the importance of the toughness in aggro, or take in account the fact that light-armored professions may have high toughness but still remain light-armored.

Or, play smart and balance out toughness and vitality.
Personally I think if someone wears nothing but bezerker gear the boss should target them first for the simple fact they obviously are squishy. s for people who just want large numbers? Well, better get used to kiting and tanking for those large numbers than…bosses should have a smarter AI that tries to eliminate the weakest links first…the weakest links are always the bezerker builds as they get hit twice and go down.

Toughness isn’t the only factor in aggro. Distance, shields, vitality and perhaps several other stats that we don’t even know about get taken into account. on top of that, some bosses have their own aggro AI. They may have targeted you simply because you are a necromancer.

But I do agree with one point. Aggro should be made clear so we can take advantage of it. Without a deep understanding, we’re just running around spamming abilities. We may counter one or two massive strikes but we’re cooperating less as a team.

Wll, heavy armor (ignoring all stats) starts with more aggro than medium or light. I am aware that that is part of the equation.

Well, if there were some condition damage, precision, vitality gear, I would definitely take those for some of my equipment pieces.

But right now it’s not toughness that I lose: it’s precision, if I take this page as reference. I have nothing against more vita: I just don’t have the right option, like a lot of combinations for everybody, I guess.

@Crossplay: Yesterday, I played the Swamp fractal in my rabid gear. My 4 co-runners were 2 warriors and 2 guardians, all full melee, even though one was using staff, don’t ask why. Given the life loss the two warriors suffered after each hit, I strongly believe they were in full berserker. Yet I saw the Mossman rushing to me after each invisibility period of time, simply ignoring the 4 heavy armored guys. And when I type “after each invisibility period of time”, it’s not a figure of style. Ok, to be complete, once I evaded once or twice his attacks, the Mossman was more focused on the melee group. But as soon as he became invisible, I became the main target, consistently.

Let’s do some math: I had constantly 10-15 stack of bleed that deal 150-170 dmg each tick and 185 when I get 25 stacks of might. Let’s take an average: 12 stacks of 160 dmg, that’s 1920 dmg per second. Try to beat that with a guardian. A warrior though can beat that easily. But, one of the two didn’t play his build really well and was constantly downed or even dead after 2 or 3 hits or after agony. So that leaves me with 1 warrior as top damage dealers over time.

Now let’s take in account the toughness. I believe one of the guardian (the one with the staff) was wearing some cleric stuff as his life was always jumping from low to full. Full cleric gives you 1800 tougness. If you mix n match, you get around 1400 toughness. Given that a heavy armor has basis 2127 armor and a light has 1836 and that I have 400 more toughness than the guard, well, I was both the top toughness and the top defense in the group.

So in conclusion, Crossplay, I was in the top spots for 3 main points of the aggro (who deals dmg, top dmg dealers, and toughness), so yeah it was logical that I got that much aggro.

What I did to suffer less from this case was to spam 1 instead of playing my whole range of skills. I don’t want to spam 1 and I don’t want to lie down. I want to play completely my build with being aware of the mobs, with being a target to them, but not constantly, that’s why parties are formed of 5 people. But if having damage mitigation as toughness is not the way of doing it, then what is?

well the idea is to let the tankiest person take the hits while also forcing fragile dps’ers to monitor their skill usage, unfortunately it sounds like you were the tankiest (with the most armour) and fairly high if not the highest on the dps table.

Its sort of working how it should to a point, but there are a few issues with it, namely no “zerker” equivilence for people trying to run a condition damage dealer (best you get is the condi, power, vit stuff).

Though do think that perhaps conditions score a bit higher on the agro table than others as my condition thief build pulls and holds aggro quite insanely (with only 50 toughness higher than base)

Well, that explains why the end boss on Hirathi Hinterlands seems to be so interested in me all the time lately. I run Cleric everything which boosts my toughness as a secondary stat. I never noticed this being an issue before and I haven’t actually gotten new gear in a long time, so this kind of tells me something changed recently.

But what if ArenaNet wants to remove the holy trinity? The mob sees one tanky guy and he gets 50% of the aggro?

I didn’t make that build to tank. I took it to not lie on the ground. Indeed in a level 80 party, I don’t lie on the ground like it was with the mixed party in AC story. That’s already something. But I still get 40-50% of the aggro.

I agree I’m tanky, but it’s because Rabid is the only option available to me if I want condition damage and precision and still survive. I could go for a few Rampager items, but that is not second-necro friendly because of the bleeding cap, also, each tick is less strong.

No, the problem is not with my stuff, because I deal huge damage and I am tanky, that’s what ArenaNet wants. The problem is that tanky people are primary targets, and as a good damage dealer, I’m even more of a target. Let the non tanky ones die so they learn to be tankier. Therefore, ArenaNet should reduce the importance of “tankiness” from the equation. Not remove completely: just reduce to an acceptable level.

ANet should remove all dependence on Thoughness for aggro. If they want to make a “Threat” stat, then let them do it plainly and not overload the meaning of an useful stat.

It’s at the point I’d rather get my thief in all Berserker to remove any trace of Thoughness in my build because it allows me to survive better …

stof.9341:

ANet should remove all dependence on Thoughness for aggro. If they want to make a “Threat” stat, then let them do it plainly and not overload the meaning of an useful stat.

It’s at the point I’d rather get my thief in all Berserker to remove any trace of Thoughness in my build because it allows me to survive better …

This. I have always felt “threat” should be a seperate stat with percentages, a la Boons or Crit Dmg modifiers.

And again. I played fractals and I was the only target of the Volcano boss. My team was full life when I died after 3 minutes in the boss fight; they didn’t last 15 seconds after that. (They were not bad players, they just were used to not get touched, so when they got hit nearly all at once, they didn’t know what to do.)

Please, really do something about the link between toughness and aggro. I played with 4 zerkers. Always full life, as soon as I died, the party was doomed. Once, twice. No third time, they had learned that to stay alive, they had to keep me alive.

It’s not fun playing with zerkers because of that. (Yeah, for once, I’m complaining that I get downed when I play with zerkers, not that zerkers are down.)

This 1000×.

I took toughness to give myself a little defense, not to be a tank. If there was a pow/pre/vit stat for armor, I would definitely take that instead, even though toughness (other than aggro) is a much better stat for my build than vit.

Sometimes I wonder if going full berserker would actually increase my survivability. It probably would, given how much aggro I get. Berserker shouldn’t be a defensive build.

technically beserker isn’t a defensive build unless someone in the team are rolling toughness, if there isn’t then your likely to still be pulling the aggro.

If your pulling with secondary toughness your already topping multiple parts of the aggro table which, unless your humping the bosses leg, is most likely to include the dps table, switching to bezerker removes that from the calculation to the same level as the other 4 ‘zerkers however your still topping any other list and would most likely be hitting even further ahead in say highest dpser meaning now your still going to be getting aggro but now you don’t have that extra defense.

So unless you bring back the trinity in someway your always going to have to decide on something to sacrifice to drop aggro in a team full of worse players in the same gear.

So yeah either you can have no trinity and allow everyone to have the same chance of being chosen to “tank” depending on play skill and such at the cost of a few people who have defensive stats for personal reasons in teams with people who dont but also don’t seem to be pulling impressive damage get aggro, you can remove any real choice of building “tanky” if they want with the general vibe of the game being they don’t want to so that aggro then becomes random or more focused on the squishier people (thus more deaths overall) or you can just give up and put in a proper trinity system so those that want to just dps full out with no thought and no thought about the quality of their team can at the expense of any issues a full trinity system brings.

Runiir.6425:

Or, play smart and balance out toughness and vitality.
Personally I think if someone wears nothing but bezerker gear the boss should target them first for the simple fact they obviously are squishy. s for people who just want large numbers? Well, better get used to kiting and tanking for those large numbers than…bosses should have a smarter AI that tries to eliminate the weakest links first…the weakest links are always the bezerker builds as they get hit twice and go down.

This is the core of the problem I think: “Squishy” characters never get targeted first over “Hard” characters or so it seems. Zerker gear is by far the most pricey due to demand, which to me indicates Anet needs to consider revisiting the way “threat” is calculated so that other gear/builds become more valued. Armor that doesn’t provide additional protection through toughness or hit points but does maximize your damage should have a significant downside. Zerkers should be target #1 for Veterans and Champions – spend some time dodging and kiting just to get your hits in and maybe that Knight’s or Valkyrie gear won’t seems so second rate. Open the game up for more than one play style.

jinxy.8457:

You could try swapping out some Rabid trinkets for Rampagers.

Precision primary, power and condi dmg secondary.

I’m fully in favor of mixed stats. This character is the only one of my characters having only one set of stats.

I thank you for the input regarding my problem, but I’d prefer a solution for the problem.

I will never forget when a event boss decided to come stomping in my direction while there was a bunch of people in melee range. I was standing there at near max range of the necro staff attack and it simply upped and came lumbering my way.

Btw, another thing that seems to get the mobs attention is the very activity that ANet seems to consider healing, helping people up from downed state. That is counter-intuitive as hell, especially when there is no good way to taunt the kitten away.

Apparently people are supposed to run up in front of him and perhaps use a knockback (yea right, defiant anyone?!) to get him away. What is more likely to happen is that the person attempting to help will break off and run, and hopefully the mob will not proceed to stop the downed character into defeated. End result is that he will likely get ignored, because it take 10x or something to get someone up from defeated vs simply downed.

all in all, the aggro system at present is a mess and further fuel a “every man, rodent and plant for himself” attitude.

This is from the Wiki

For a neutral (yellow outlined) NPC the player must attack first to gain its attention. The aggro table of a hostile NPC changes dynamically depending on a number of factors, in order of importance [citation needed] :
1. closest target to them
2. who is dealing damage
3. top damage dealers
4. who is using a shield / has more toughness and overall armor
5. others (see Tanking tactics below)

I think that is should be the people with the least toughness get targeted instead of the people with the most. It makes sense that way. Enemies should not be so dumb as to not kill the squishy player and instead go for the more tanky player. If players played like that everyone would die all the time.

Chrispytoast.3698:

This is from the Wiki

For a neutral (yellow outlined) NPC the player must attack first to gain its attention. The aggro table of a hostile NPC changes dynamically depending on a number of factors, in order of importance [citation needed] :
1. closest target to them
2. who is dealing damage
3. top damage dealers
4. who is using a shield / has more toughness and overall armor
5. others (see Tanking tactics below)

I think that is should be the people with the least toughness get targeted instead of the people with the most. It makes sense that way. Enemies should not be so dumb as to not kill the squishy player and instead go for the more tanky player. If players played like that everyone would die all the time.

In a game that doesn’t have trinity, and technically every character is capable of making themselves tanky that isn’t actually a completely unreasonable suggestion. You want to be a glass canon? Prepare to be tested, you’re going to get every mobs attention with your lack of protection and over the top damage. Giving yourself toughness and protection is even better because it also makes the mobs want to both fighting you less when there are easier targets to work on.

At the same time, though, it removes the point of making yourself tanky. Why should I build my fighter to take hits when it means he’s less likely to even be hit, and more likely that someone else will be hit instead?

Kal Spiro.9745:

Chrispytoast.3698:

This is from the Wiki

For a neutral (yellow outlined) NPC the player must attack first to gain its attention. The aggro table of a hostile NPC changes dynamically depending on a number of factors, in order of importance [citation needed] :
1. closest target to them
2. who is dealing damage
3. top damage dealers
4. who is using a shield / has more toughness and overall armor
5. others (see Tanking tactics below)

I think that is should be the people with the least toughness get targeted instead of the people with the most. It makes sense that way. Enemies should not be so dumb as to not kill the squishy player and instead go for the more tanky player. If players played like that everyone would die all the time.

In a game that doesn’t have trinity, and technically every character is capable of making themselves tanky that isn’t actually a completely unreasonable suggestion. You want to be a glass canon? Prepare to be tested, you’re going to get every mobs attention with your lack of protection and over the top damage. Giving yourself toughness and protection is even better because it also makes the mobs want to both fighting you less when there are easier targets to work on.

At the same time, though, it removes the point of making yourself tanky. Why should I build my fighter to take hits when it means he’s less likely to even be hit, and more likely that someone else will be hit instead?

You build tanky to take the hits when they come, not to purposefully get hit.
They also need to limit defiant to 3 stacks maximum. Bosses already have rediculous hp levels, being able to smartly interupt them should just be good game strategy.

Runiir.6425:

You build tanky to take the hits when they come, not to purposefully get hit.

This. This is exactly the summary of this whole topic!

Imho, the problem isn’t in the aggro itself. Is in the amount of damage and the evasion.
As in, monsters do too much damage anyway even if you’ve got much toughness, but having them attack you constantly means you’ll finish your dodges quite quickly…and then you’ll get mauled to death.

Please don’t, I like being able to actually tank on my Guardian, and it is only possible due to this mechanic.