Guild Wars 2

Srsly, how does it work? I’ve been playing this game for awhile now and it appears to be completely random. Tanky Guardians + Wars and a few other classes can hold boss mobs for awhile but then they “randomly” switch and 1 shot the other 3-4 DPS classes…. Which is stupid.

There’s really no point in ever playing “glass cannon” builds in dungeons as you’ll just get wrecked by the boss. I see people trying to go DPS all the time and it never works.

Can we get GW2 Team post on this please? Or someone link me to forum post about Mob AI aggro.

It’s a mystery. I don’t get one shotted even as ele but I am ranged and stand at max distance whenever possible.

I think toughness has something to do with it. I have some toughness on my gear and seem to get more attention than completely 100% glass cannon gear and trait setups. Earth ele is hard to kill and seems to get all the agg when it is up, I assume it’s due to the high toughness of the elemental but I have no clue because…. it’s a mystery.

One of the GW2 DEvs did a AMA on Kotaku
http://kotaku.com/5960951/the-lead-designer-of-guild-wars-2-is-answering-your-questions-right-now

Someone asked him the same , and this is what he said

There are a number of factors that mobs look at when picking who to target, but the major two are distance and armor. Some creatures prefer to attack heavily armored targets close to them, while others like to attack people far away from them.

In addition to what fortytwo mentioned, there are also some mobs out there that also fixate their aggro on to a single target until that target is beyond aggro range or simply dies. A notorious example of this is the Champion Risen Abomination found at the very end of the Plinx chain, and another found in Crucible of Eternity explorable mode after blowing up the door using the portable cannon.