Guild Wars 2

Hi all.
I guess that on speedclears groups she goes down so fast that doesn’t matter, but in my PUG runs she tends to focus on me… Being quite embarrassing.
So, are the aggro mechanics known? Please don’t tell me that she is focusing on the guy with a zerker-Ele?

Sorry for my English.

I could be horribly wrong, but as long as I melee her she doesnt seem to focus me in particular. Playing a zerker elementalist as well. Usually whenever one of the other guys starts running all over the place or long ranging they get focussed.

I am not to sure myself, but in my experience she tends to attack the one who is farthest from the group.

Mmmh I melee her aswell but is true that I tend to start at distance with meteor shower and cast a lava front before going close quarters….

I’ve never had an instance where she solely targeted me. Have you tried fighting her in melee (or as close to melee as you can manage)? Maybe she does target based on distance.

Do mean targets you with all her spatial surges and illusionary waves, or teleporting to you with mind stab because you’re at a range?

If you do mean all the attacks, my friend, also a Berserker ele, notices similar things on Lupi where he gets targeted every single time, and I have no answers for you.

When I go down is because her spatial surges are focused on me, yes.

Perhaps it is you who pulls her, so you get the huge initial aggro that you can’t shake off?

ele seems to take aggro from a lot of mobs, Tazza included.

other examples – lupi phase 3 (tossup between ele, guard – though ele normally takes aggro), COE golem (and the trash mob golems laser eles in my experience)

I wonder the clones of mesmer can take aggro off ele during Lupi phase 3…

guanlongwucaii.3162:

ele seems to take aggro from a lot of mobs, Tazza included.

other examples – lupi phase 3 (tossup between ele, guard – though ele normally takes aggro), COE golem (and the trash mob golems laser eles in my experience)

I’ve noticed this, too, from watching ele guildies take hella agro from the CoE golem (specifically) and a few other things.

guanlongwucaii.3162:

ele seems to take aggro from a lot of mobs, Tazza included.

other examples – lupi phase 3 (tossup between ele, guard – though ele normally takes aggro), COE golem (and the trash mob golems laser eles in my experience)

Now you mention it,did definitely experience extreme focus when fighting the COE golem. Luckily the NPC usually gets it.

Iris Ng.9845:

I wonder the clones of mesmer can take aggro off ele during Lupi phase 3…

They do sometimes… but not sure if I like it.
And yeah, might be true that ellys get a lot of attention, but try playing ranger at Lupi in one of the days where’s he’s a bad mood. Behehe.

For TAzza, well… have you tried cookies and chocolate milk?
Ok, ok. Aggroing her first sure has a lot of things to do with being targeted. Other than that, she seems to enjoy people ranging or dodging away from her. She likes my guardian a lot if I pull her, and it happened many times that she would never switch aggro.
I guess he has a lot of sex appeal, even to little b… asura.
Tazza’s rotation can look more or less like this…
Mind stab (the one with aoes, seems like she’s reflecting while channeling), illusionary wave if the one she’s got aggro on is in range of the skill, mirror blade (it bounces off you if you have aggro and don’t dodge) and autoattack or autoattack and mirror blade. The aa appears to have a…. around 5+s cd. Mind stab should be 15 or so. If you keep in mind that she’ll do iwave and mirror blade AND aa right after mind stab, you can more or less count down the time ‘til you’ll have to prepare yourself for the aa.
I saw her repeating the aa 2-3 (I think 4 too but I couldn’t see well) times in-between mirror blade.
Just memorise her rotation and you should be able to avoid most of the damage.

DutchRiders.2871:

guanlongwucaii.3162:

ele seems to take aggro from a lot of mobs, Tazza included.

other examples – lupi phase 3 (tossup between ele, guard – though ele normally takes aggro), COE golem (and the trash mob golems laser eles in my experience)

Now you mention it,did definitely experience extreme focus when fighting the COE golem. Luckily the NPC usually gets it.

Gah, I faceplant on this boss on ele so much, and rarely if ever on mesmer/warrior. Now I have an excuse! (besides the fact that i’m a bad)

I can’t say I’ve noticed the same with Tezza, but I almost always play s/f + LH on her, so I’m almost always attacking in melee. I think I get more aggro on her as warrior, usually, but I could be wrong.

Oh! Now I undetstand! She likes she wants my kasmeer’ staff!

maxinion.8396:

DutchRiders.2871:

guanlongwucaii.3162:

ele seems to take aggro from a lot of mobs, Tazza included.

other examples – lupi phase 3 (tossup between ele, guard – though ele normally takes aggro), COE golem (and the trash mob golems laser eles in my experience)

Now you mention it,did definitely experience extreme focus when fighting the COE golem. Luckily the NPC usually gets it.

Gah, I faceplant on this boss on ele so much, and rarely if ever on mesmer/warrior. Now I have an excuse! (besides the fact that i’m a bad)

I can’t say I’ve noticed the same with Tezza, but I almost always play s/f + LH on her, so I’m almost always attacking in melee. I think I get more aggro on her as warrior, usually, but I could be wrong.

I feel your pain, golem is a complete pain in the kitten to fight as an ele if you don’t have a good guard/mes doing reflects. if you don’t get aggro from the knockdown laser, you still have to deal with the retal, which is kind of annoying as well.

these days I just pug COE on warrior unless the guard/mes proves to be competent. I don’t mind alpha going slower, but golem is a complete nightmare if your party sucks and you get aggro.

A quick guide for ele at the CoE golems:
You need:
- Scepter/ Focus equipped
- Arcane Shield and Lightning Hammer utilities
- A half-decent team which provides decent DPS

Rotations:
- Never aggro the golem first. Rule of thumb: never. aggro. him. first.
- Either stack might before or at the golem.
- Start with swirling wind, drop LH at the golem. Stand in between the golem and retaliation turet, cast #4 and use AA to cleave both of them.
- If at this point, you still don’t draw aggro yet, position yourself at the back of the golem and DPS it down. You can either 1. laugh at the person who dies miserably at the pink laser or 2. use LH#3 to interrupt its channeling. Always stay at the back of the golem so you don’t get knock back by the spin attack.
- If you draw aggro, chances are you have to move around a lot to be always at his back. You may have to drop the LH to get access to more CC from the focus. It’s unlikely to avoid the spin attack and the pink laser so time your CC well.
- Use Obsidian Focus and Arcane Shield at last resort.
- Proceed to ping your full stacks of Bloodlust/Precision and laugh with glee.

Far as I’ve experienced, initial Aggro seems to be determined by:

Highest Toughness
Lowest Health

This is only initial Aggro, after that it’s a DPS race. Zerker Ele can pump out mad amounts of damage in a short amount of time, and your low Vit probably attracts some level of attention if the above-mentioned theory is correct.
Generally, I’ve found Dodging to be quite useful in losing Aggro, but it might be worth it to deliberately lower your DPS while pugging in order to lose Aggro (Such as use Water AA with Dagger.) If you keep aggro constantly while pugging, you can just assume that your teammates aren’t doing their job correctly anyway. The most likely reason to why she’s targeting you is that you’re leagues above the PuG in terms of damage (Can easily happen even in a Full Zerk run, with people who don’t know how their rotations.)

Another thing to note is that you cannot divert Aggro from an enemy until they’ve finished a Queued action. If they’ve targeted you, they will use a Skill on you before diverting their attention unless CC’d. Dodge the first attack and hope one of your teammates bursts Tazza enough and gains her attention. If that doesn’t work, well, there’s always Focus #5 in Earth?

I dont agree with equipping arcane shield at the golem at all. Take signet of fire. I like to open the fight, i do this with swirls → might stack. From there whoever reflects takes over

Just… have your guardian use reflects? or dodge the projectile? It looks exactly like the projectile of Old Tom the cute kitty.

actually you can avoid the projectile without dodging by either standing inside the golem’kittenbox (not that easy) or moving behind some other sucker so they eat the hits instead.

the really annoying part about golem with bad reflect classes or no reflects is the static field/fire field attack which does some damage along with creating the field (then it spins and knocks you into the field and you die)

guanlongwucaii.3162:

moving behind some other sucker so they eat the hits instead.

Bahahaha, I like how you think. Perv.

I am getting the impression that no one is using staff on Ele. Being scepter the most used weapon. Is that correct? Why? Only cause better might stacking?

I replaced Arcane Wave with Arcane Shield in a group without mesmer/guard. (I used to run 2 thief/3 eles in CoE with DD and we never had any problems.) SoF is a must for any ele so I never take it off, unless against a structure.

When I duo the Golem with Sandy, we noticed that the golem did more projectile attack when people stay at 300+ range. So dodge toward his back is better. The best method to completely shutdown the golem is to use untraited warden to absorbs almost all of his attack and the buff from the turret. He becomes totally boon-free.

I always reserve a CC to his spin attack if I see his lightning field is already laid.

Ryn.6459:

I am getting the impression that no one is using staff on Ele. Being scepter the most used weapon. Is that correct? Why? Only cause better might stacking?

Staff is good for fire attunement. However scepter main hand has excellent might stacking (as you said) but even dagger main hand is a good way to go, for its air auto. Focus is a fabulous offhand, and has awesome utility you can’t get with a staff always.

Ryn.6459:

I am getting the impression that no one is using staff on Ele. Being scepter the most used weapon. Is that correct? Why? Only cause better might stacking?

Actually, the usual combo is LH s/f or d elly + staff elly. Their synergy is awesome. But yeah, if you’re the only elly in party LH stacks might better. This doesn’t mean staff is bad.
I have grown fond of staff elly or d/f + phalanx in fractals, though. I like it so much I don’t think I’ll ever go back to playing anything else.

White ascended staff gives +100% fashion and damage boost.

Ryn.6459:

I am getting the impression that no one is using staff on Ele. Being scepter the most used weapon. Is that correct? Why? Only cause better might stacking?

Except you’re a really skilled ele, for example; like Dub, it’s more difficult to carry pug with staff.
Scepter is only used for stacking might, it is not a good weapons for DPS. LH has comparable DPS to staff after patch, and provides more utilities. What matters more is your OH. The choice of your OH depends on what do you want to bring to your group. If my group is really good, all reflection and CC covered, I tend to grab my dagger OH for mobility (important!!!) and a group condi cleanse. If my group is inexperienced or need an extra hand for reflection and CC, focus is a way to go.
If I foresee the content forces me to go solo, D/F is my safe bet. In fact I run D/F all the ways in Arah and Fractals if I’m not comfortable with the group I’m running with.

The few time I run staff in Arah and fractals is with Team Bible, I think.

Run or dodge/evade through her (from in front to in back) to lose aggro — at least temporarily.

Dungeon mobs just seem to hate Elementalists. I swear Eles get targeted by dungeon mobs more than any other class.

They agro on fire eles, because… (put glasses) …they are HOT.
Aw yeaaaaah.

guanlongwucaii.3162:

actually you can avoid the projectile without dodging by either standing inside the golem’kittenbox (not that easy) or moving behind some other sucker so they eat the hits instead.

the really annoying part about golem with bad reflect classes or no reflects is the static field/fire field attack which does some damage along with creating the field (then it spins and knocks you into the field and you die)

The hitbox seems pretty big (or was). At least I had no issues when soloing it a year ago.

Unlike Alpha, aaarrrgh!

Neko.9021:

Dungeon mobs just seem to hate Elementalists. I swear Eles get targeted by dungeon mobs more than any other class.

totally agree with this statement

Yeah, this just happened to me tonight on my Ele. Tazza was focusing me down, and whenever my party members would get me back up, she would immediately go back to attacking me. Once I died, she immediately started focusing the other Ele in the group.

Tzza: Gotta kill the ele’s before they drop that darned greatsword

I can’t remember Tazza ever focussing on my ele (no surprise there, since she’s mostly in WvW gear running with similarly geared guildies), but my mesmers both have had the honour since I’ve switched them to full berzerker gear (still in mixed-gear guild groups), so my guess would be that it’s related to damage output rather than class.

There are a few npcs around that like to focus on just one group member if you play without stacking, Lupicus is the other one that quickly comes to mind that can be really bad at focussing.

Everything hates me when I play with pugs, be it on warrior or ele. It just so happens that ele has half the hp and no healing signet, so getting manhandled by mobs is to be expected.