Guild Wars 2

Hi guys, I’m just wondering if anyone knows how to attain 100% aggro on lupicus.

I play with some friends, and we usually set up our party with pugs and then adjusting such that we have 1 tanky character and the rest on DPS.

What frustrates me is during lupicus, the DPSers get the aggro. We can tank/kite him with our berserker gear, but what frustrates is the lack of efficiency with 1 DPSer lost to maintain Lupicus’ aggro.

Anyone knows?

I read that the amount of aggro a player draws is based on proximity, damaged dealt and most importantly, their toughness. Stack a load of toughness on the tank and I’m guessing he’ll draw aggro.

I mean whenever I do PvE with some friends, even if they rush in and I tag along later, becaue of my 300%+ toughness on my guardian the enemies just swarm around me even though I may have yet to do anything, lol.

Lupicus in particular tends to have random aggro in phase 1, fixed aggro in phase 2, and random aggro in phase 3. In addition, Lupicus has a tendency to use its life-steal attack on the first player it has fixated on in phase 2.

Knowing that, I don’t think Lupicus has a preference on who it shadow walks to first in Phase 2. I play a near-full zerker Grenadier, and sometimes I get picked first. Other times, other characters who may or may not have more survivability than me get picked first. Whomever he picks for the first shadow walk should prepare to dodge the shadow walk ability more often than the other party members, perhaps to the point of actually kiting. Other players should avoid being near the one Lupicus chases often since the uppercut that it cancels into after the shadow walk can hit multiple targets.

Lupi picks on the glassiest person. That is all

We sometimes do Lupicus in a more or less fixed team and very often our PVT Guardian has the aggro on Lupicus almost all the time. Just anecdotal data, though.

Lupicus seems to have other aggro mechanics each phase. As example on my mesmer, when soloing he has 100% aggro on me during phases 1-2 but in phase 3 he aims only 1 out of 4+ attacks on me. (Though there barely are bubbles or rapidfires)
When in a team i never have aggro in phase 1-2 (or if i do he looses when i dodge once) but 9 out of 10 attacks are aimed on me in phase 3. My clones pretty much never get attacked then.

On my warrior i often get aggro in phases 1 and 2 but can completely chill behind Lupicus when we have a mesmer and guardian.

Forgot to mention: i ran with a ranger yesterday (for the first time since long ago) and it was hillarous. Pet got killed each attack, often has aggro beeing dead (wtf?) and at least was instantly smashed again when resurrected.

Thank you for your wonderful comments. So it seems like we cannot swap tanks.

My group tried to run to the perimeters to lose aggro so that the guardian can intercept the aggro. Lupicus just goes to the next guy in berserker gear. Immediately the person who gained initial aggro came back to the fight, he regained aggro.

So is there a way to intercept aggro?

I dunno about other phases but he loves tuffness in Phase 3. I had him spamming every attack on me sometimes, which results in my death. (Didn’t hug him so I get hit by projectiles ;;)

When I’m on guardian and I run glass he takes little interest in me, when I run knight’s he has tunnel vision.. maybe it is just my luck hehe.

When I am meleeing him he ignores me till phase 3 usually, then he dances with me in a romantic manner.

I fight lupi with a fairly glassy thief, i usually get most of the aggro during phase 1 and phase 2. In phase 3, he ignores me as long as i melee him. The moment i back out, he will keep using his life steal skill on me.

Lupicus has different rules to pick different targets. He’s got a tunneling (melee) target in phase 2, some phase 2 ranged targets, a phase 3 chase (melee) target, a phase 3 ranged drain target, and probably some others as well. If someone is killed and revived they tend to still be the target for the same attack. Getting out of combat by standing far enough across the arena can change some of the aggro. Lupicus hasn’t tunneled towards my thief very often but when he did I had been the instance opener. Maybe that has something to do with it.

I run a Knight/Zerker guardian, lots of toughness. I almost always get aggro on phase 3, sometimes phase 2. If I stay alive the entire time he’s after me, then he aggro’s me the whole match.

Last night in phase 2 he shadow stepped to a necro every single time in phase 2. Phase 3 he switched to me and was on me for the entire phase 3.

I also tried to make sense out of Lupi’s aggro but it seems to me I couldn’t. I ran a complete Knight armors guard with a group of 2 warriors, 1 ele and 1 mesmer several times. Based on the look of the armors of my party, I think I have the most toughness (2900+ armor). In phase 2, he went after the ele or the mesmer (probably lowest toughness) and in phase 3, he went after the warriors. I’m pretty sure that I have the most toughness in this set up.

In any case, he may give me a couple looks once in a while, phase 2 or phase 3 are no difference, but after I dodged toward into him a couple times, he lost interest & started looking for somebody else. Could it be the dodging into him so I am always behind him that caused him losing aggro?

Lupi focuses on me probably around 60% of the time no matter what class I play. Glass thief? Tanky guardian? Rabid necro? Zerker war? Doesn’t matter. I don’t really get it.

Phase 2 he often targets ranged units, giving priority to his shadowwalk movement. It includes NPCs sigh.

Phase 3 seems that when you’re downed you’re marked for Necrid Trap and Life Drain.

I’m pretty confident lupicus reacts to your damage output and proximity more than anything else. When I kite him well he never even faces me but if I hover too close and stand still a second too long he charges me and stays on until I can outrun him. I always run full berserker.

His threat varies during phases. On phase 2 he most likely goes after the person doing most damage to him, using shadow walk whenever he can, and using his melee attack on anyone trying to melee, this won’t prevent him from shadowwalking. The only time I was able to keep aggro on him was using my Zerker Mesmer with a lot of reflect, he didn’t shadowstep then only used melee and AOE

On phase 3 he will give priority to people in melee range, then go after someone with high toughness, however if no one with high toughness tries to take him he might keep after the same person he was on phase 2. If someone with high toughness takes his aggro he will probably attack the person he focused on phase 2 with his single target siphon. If there’s over 2 people in melee range he may switch targets to be able to cast his necrid trap. If he can’t seem to damage the person in melee he might switch targets for a bit.

It’s kind of like a range and your hp+toughness. I’m ele. In phase 2, if I’m in a certain range of lupis, let’s say less than 1100 feet, then he will chase me, 90% of time. But if I keep strictly 1200, then he might chase others nearer. But still possible focus on me. In phase 3 it’s more related to the range, if someone stay closer then he will constantly follow that player.

Being an ele, I was hated by most of bosses. They all like to kill me first. I was trained to be a good dodger thanks to this.

Zogyark.4597:

His threat varies during phases. On phase 2 he most likely goes after the person doing most damage to him, using shadow walk whenever he can, and using his melee attack on anyone trying to melee, this won’t prevent him from shadowwalking. The only time I was able to keep aggro on him was using my Zerker Mesmer with a lot of reflect, he didn’t shadowstep then only used melee and AOE

…

This probably explains why he went after the 2 mesmers like crazy in our melee practice session late last night, because the 2 mesmers took turn giving him quite a few feedbacks. He hardly gave us the 2 guardians & 1 ranger a glance.

He’s incredibly sporadic. On my Thief, in the exact same group, he will focus ONLY on me on one run, and then ignore me completely on the next. One time, he aggroed someone else for the entire fight, but every single time he fired his poison projectile, he would aim it at me and only me. Yet, he would still only aggro the previous player. On the Guardian, I had the same problem.

I just don’t get it.

Just a thought, there are some articles that states proximity as the most important factor in aggro mechanics. What if lupi pics his target from who stood closest to him in the first phase? This would give us a logical answer to why he seemingly tunnelvisions in p2 and not so much in p3. Maybee this simply has to do with aggro deteriorating over time. Maybee Lupi is switching targets because the initial aggro buildup from p1 is getting shifted in p2/p3. Im trying this out and i would love if others did aswell and posted findings after.

Sorry for bumping, but its important!