Guild Wars 2

Hello, I’m still pretty new to the game, and I don’t really understand how aggro is supposed to work (if it even exists) so I wanted to share my experience today running the CM story mode about 4 times, and maybe someone can tell me what was going on and how to fix it.

Basically, in all 4 runs, every time there was a “sniper” mob with a rifle like the Sergeants or Lietenants they would all target me as soon as they saw me, and would continue to focus only on me until I was dead. They would even focus me when I was downed, and if someone managed to rez me, they would just focus me again and knock me down within seconds.

This kept happening, in every run, regardless of whether I attacked them first, or if I was the first one they saw. A few times I waited a good 10-15 seconds for the rest of the group to engage the enemies before joining in, and still the snipers would focus on me as soon as I joined in (no matter what I was attacking).

This was pretty frustrating, and made the latter half of the dungeon that had the snipers not fun. The part with the bandit tower in particular, since there are about 3 snipers there and I literally could not stay alive for more than 5 seconds at a time during that part.

I am a thief, and I was playing ranged, either dual pistols or short bow. I am not built as a glass cannon, about half of my traits are in Vit/Toughness and most of my Trinkets are also Vit/Toughness. I had my Smoke Screen utility, which worked well, but since I can only have it up for 7 seconds out of every 30, it just meant that I could survive 7 seconds before they all ganged up on me and killed me.

I’m wondering what was going on here and how, if at all, I could have fixed it or dealt with it. I can only roll so often, and even their standard auto attacks took off a good chunk of my health, and like I say, they would all target me at once and never stop even if the rest of my party was in their faces beating on them. If I stealthed with one of my abilities, they would resume focusing me as soon as I came out of stealth.

Thanks in advance!