Guild Wars 2

Hi there,

This portraits a very specific situation, although hopefully understanding this would open up other practical uses.

On the Unstable Fractal (the one where you fight a handful of golems at the end). One of the encounters put you against a Fire Shaman, an Ettin and the ocasíonal rabbit/robber.

I was running with a 4 man guild run who probably had to pick up the 5th – me. They seemed well organized, above pug degree for sure, and in that particular fight they had their Guardian fend off the Ettin to a side, while the others melted the shaman. I noticed this, proceeded to burn down the Shaman with the other 3 and would ocasionally throw CC and heals (me as a ranger) not because the Guardian was in trouble, but more in a way of telling “i see what you’re doing, great job! Here are some skills that my current weapon set has, not needed for the dps meltdown plus my healing spring as a token of my apreciation.”

Lately in pug, i keep trying to fill in the same diversion technique of holding the same Ettin… what a monumental series of fail. The Ettin would simply ignore me, kept running around the area and if anyone of those pugs i was with noticed my gameplay, that player surely thought i had parkinson syndrome.

So what am i missing? What was that guy doing that simply allowed him to keep the Ettin “on a leash”? Only thing i recall from said guardian, was that he was using staff on his set, but that means nothing, since has i have noticed not even line of warding seems to work on the Ettin…

Any help would be welcomed. Maybe throw in other situation where mob control is key and specially how to pull it off.

I think that each boss has different kinds of agro table to follow. The slave driver from CoF p1 for example always goes after the highest dps dealer, the final boss of the new TA path always atacks downed players and people ressing.

The wiki says that wearing a shield increases your chance to agro stuff but i think thats wrong, because i played a soldier mace+shield warrior when i started playing and the dungeon mobs always ignored me, i was able to pull agro more frequently by using greatsword, and i feel that i get more agro now that i use berserker gear.

So to ensure that you will succeed in pulling that mob you need to be the only person atacking it, if other person tags that mob too it may mess up with the agro table if that person fits the mob’s agro priority.

Maybe that ettin goes after the highest toughness player that is atacking, so you as a medium armor class may have less chance to hold agro from it.

I’ll try to help to the best of my capacities with some links :

In order to manage aggro :
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Aggro

How to tank the Ettin !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzjBxKwXOpo

And last but not least the full forum post on how to do fractals :
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/84006-guardian-video-guide-for-fractals-of-the-mist-shown-at-48/

Remember to thank obal for this !

Never tested it so I won’t be surprised if bosses did have different aggro tables but I’m under the impression that the leading causes of aggro was high toughness, distance (they love chasing range down), DPS and healing/rezzing.

Thats a common misconception. It works differently for every boss and it rarely works the same way each time even with the same players using the same builds. For example my group runs arah, im on my ele and lupicus decides he wants to use single target life drain on me (tends to favor eles). We do arah again and this time he completely ignores me and goes for the guard. Ive even had him switch lifesteal aggro to me mid fight without anyone dieing. Never seen lupi do that before, he usually lifesteals the same person for the whole fight until they die.

Also ettin tanking kitten es me off so much, I can be the only 1 to hit him and the only one near to him but he will still lose interest every now and again and run to the other side of the room to take shots at my party members.

Still those guildies seamed to know what they were doing, i’ll give in more attempts with my guardian in knights.