Guild Wars 2

I don’t know if this is common knowledge to those who have been playing since beta or not, but I think I figured out something.

My buddy and I have been playing a lot together recently. Me, a Guardian who is Vit/Toughness specced and him and engineer who was Toughness/Bombs or whatever.

We ran through about 4 maps together and have done pretty well for ourselves. However recently he decided he’s getting out of the toughness tree and into the Vitality tree. Now that he’s in Vitality/Whatever, he’s getting a lot more aggro off me. He seems to easily pull mobs if I’m not focused that much on them.

I understand the dynamics that not all mobs stick to one target or that they move around etc. This is however a more common theme among the mobs we have fought. I also tried to take into consideration how much damage he might be doing in comparison to me. However he’s always done more damage than I have. I don’t know if he reached a threshold that I have a hard time over coming or that I’m getting terrible. haha

Does Vitality effect how much pull you have to tanking/pulling/sticking to mobs? It seems to have a pretty apparent affect from my point of view.

Thoughts? Opinions? I tried doing some searches (in the forums and on google.) I couldn’t find anything. Maybe I’m crazy and need to go outside for some air.

aggro is very random in the game, there is no ‘true’ way to tank anything. They kinda do what they wanna do.

Mind you I’m just talking about general mobs like Crocks, Birds, Krait, etc. Not bosses or anything .

Gopher.4562:

aggro is very random in the game, there is no ‘true’ way to tank anything. They kinda do what they wanna do.

I would agree, but after playing my guardian the way I have. I find that I can keep the attention to most mobs (and some dungeon bosses) with very little effort. So I don’t think it’s as random as you believe it to be.

You can also easily pull off a lot of bosses simply by running away from the action. At least this has been my experience.

I’d love to get some insight into how “threat” works in this game aswell. Sometimes it seems to stick very hard to the one that pulled them, other times it seems to go for the heaviest nuker on the team first.

It’s actually toughness that’s doing it. At least if it works like GW1.

In GW1 mobs were attracted to targets with lower armor. This would line up with what you’re seeing.

Gopher.4562:

aggro is very random in the game, there is no ‘true’ way to tank anything. They kinda do what they wanna do.

It’s not random at all. Try reviving someone during a bossfight – you get bumped up to the top of the aggro charts and will instantly be attacked. Also, pets and minions tend to be higher on the charts, as well as high-DPS players. If everything else is equal – the mob aggros to the closest threat to it.

I didn’t want to use threat as this isn’t wow/swtor. However to give a simple example. It seems that the more Vitality the person has, the more threat the person can produce. Toughness may also have some sway in this, however I didn’t see the same type of behavior when he was specced into that tree.