Guild Wars 2

During the developer livestream for ranger, Izzy stated that he recommends that ranger players stay away from knight gear because players with higher toughness will draw more aggro.

What are everyone’s thoughts on this?

I don’t believe a single word of that statement. I played an Elementalist with the lowest toughness possible and I drew aggro literally every time I attacked a boss.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Aggro

The aggro table of a hostile NPC changes dynamically depending on a number of factors, in order of importance [citation needed] :

closest target to them
who is dealing damage
top damage dealers
who is using a shield / has more toughness and overall armor
others (see Tanking tactics below)

Im a Guardian in Knight’s gear. I have to go out of my way to place my walls.

We seriously need a provoke utility added to every class.

Toughness is but one factor among several.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Aggro

What the wiki page doesn’t say is how much each factor contributes.

Any other contributions to the discussion are likely going to be anecdotal. For instance:

1. Back around launch one player in my guild would consistently draw aggro wearing Knight’s gear and getting in mobs’ faces.
2. I had a ranger with 20 trait points in Wilderness Survival. While with a friend in Iron Marches I watched a mob spawn, and walk right past a Necro in power/precision gear, his flesh golem and my pet to attack me.
3. A friend and I used to farm nodes (I on a melee necro, he on staff ele). When I had exotic gear and he had rare, mobs aggroed to me exclusively. Once he got exotic, they aggroed to him exclusively, unless he didn’t attack.

I suspect that if solo, knight’s gear might be enough to pull aggro away from your pet, so maybe that’s what he was talking about.

You increase aggro every time you heal… EVERY time you heal.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Toughness is but one factor among several.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Aggro

What the wiki page doesn’t say is how much each factor contributes.

Any other contributions to the discussion are likely going to be anecdotal. For instance:

1. Back around launch one player in my guild would consistently draw aggro wearing Knight’s gear and getting in mobs’ faces.
2. I had a ranger with 20 trait points in Wilderness Survival. While with a friend in Iron Marches I watched a mob spawn, and walk right past a Necro in power/precision gear, his flesh golem and my pet to attack me.
3. A friend and I used to farm nodes (I on a melee necro, he on staff ele). When I had exotic gear and he had rare, mobs aggroed to me exclusively. Once he got exotic, they aggroed to him exclusively, unless he didn’t attack.

I suspect that if solo, knight’s gear might be enough to pull aggro away from your pet, so maybe that’s what he was talking about.

Still depends on the mob. My ranger wears rare berserker but will still pull aggro off of bear and drake pets. On the other hand there are mobs where even if I start the fight with the pet on passive and start hitting the mob then as soon as I press F1 and the bear/drake starts attack the mob immediately turns around and starts attacking the pet instead. The only thing that changed is the type of the mob.

I have a knight geared warrior with 4000 armor

I draw agro from EVERY where I sometimes don’t even need to attack if I stay back and my party goes forward and they agro something the 1st time I use an attack everything in a room starts running for me .bosses don’t leave me till me or the boss is not dead.

I played with that AH Guardian ‘tank’ build for awhile, and yeah maintaining aggro wasn’t that hard.

It should be the opposite, honestly.

I had a ranger with rare knights armor who drew excessive agro. I switched to exotics knights and it stopped. In my case it may have been the ratio between toughness and vitality that was affecting this. At that time I had traited for 30 points in vitality.

that’s why my thief has 24XX armor. never want to go over 2500 armor and draw aggro from zerk guardians/ warriors.

No. The agro is totally chaotic. I’ve seen bosses lock on me for literally minutes while playing my 2200 armor glass cannon thief.

Nick.6972:

No. The agro is totally chaotic. I’ve seen bosses lock on me for literally minutes while playing my 2200 armor glass cannon thief.

if you’re dealing most damage, bosses will lock on to you.

Khisanth.2948:

Still depends on the mob. My ranger wears rare berserker but will still pull aggro off of bear and drake pets.

Toughness, once again clarifying, is NOT the ONLY factor.

Are you outdamaging your pet? Highly likely? Factor.

I feel like it varies. I main a high toughness character, and in any given CM p1 run, I cannot shake Frost. Contrarily, I’ve noticed some other bosses prefer to go after the heavy damage dealers.

lordhelmos.7623:

During the developer livestream for ranger, Izzy stated that he recommends that ranger players stay away from knight gear because players with higher toughness will draw more aggro.

What are everyone’s thoughts on this?

I’ve been saying this for ages and ages.

I don’t know if their algorithm works right. I do not have my elementalist “decked out” so I am not at the top of my game, nor do I have a lot of toughness or dmg (for now…she’s in transition.) Mobs just hate me.

I could walk in naked and cast nothing but heal skills way out of range, and a random champ will come from across the zone just to seek me out and kill me.

Or at least this is what it seems like.

I’ve personally found that the guardian I used to play, which had uber amounts of toughness, always got aggro – NPC’s would literally chase me, I was like WTF get off me.

On the opposite end with my elementalist, he has such poor armor, but deals massive damage, and always gets targeted for his high hits. I’m finding more and more often the Legendary dudes in WvW will just constantly AOE me, whereas when I didn’t hit as much (before I put points into the guard ranks), I’d hardly ever get hit. Really sucks but I guess that’s the price you pay for dealing huge amounts of damage :-/

In fact, lol, someone said ‘how can you die from the legendary guy?’ (he was talking about the lord in stonemist). Me obviously, especially when you have low defense but hit like a boss, you suddenly become the ONLY target in the entire room.

This is why I’m usually fine I guess then, I have mediocre armor, and deal terrible damage =D

This game is about balance. Too much armor, agro. Too much damage, agro. Too much buffing/healing, agro.
I play a balanced set and I don’t have a problem.

Sligh.2789:

This game is about balance. Too much armor, agro. Too much damage, agro. Too much buffing/healing, agro.
I play a balanced set and I don’t have a problem.

this, I don’t get targeted first ever because I run balanced atk/defense. but i can also handle it when everything in the room targets me at the same time, so it’s pretty stress free for me.

In a regular fractals party, my zerker thief always draws Mossman aggro but never draws the Shaman aggro when using pretty much the same tactics. Basically the only conclusion that I’ve drawn regarding aggro is that bosses seem to give different weighting to aggro factors.

Zacchary.6183:

You increase aggro every time you heal… EVERY time you heal.

This would explain why every mob seems to constantly crap on Eles in group play, we have at least one extra heal skill no matter what weapon set we use, and tons of our traits give us incidental heals.

No. The agro is totally chaotic. I’ve seen bosses lock on me for literally minutes while playing my 2200 armor glass cannon thief.

The developers were asked about aggro pre-release and said that nearly every boss has it’s own aggro table, and with how many there are presumably some of them will hate glass cannons.

I believe he referred to increased aggro twice and used armor and toughness as the magnet. Which, is what we have heard all along as the wiki on aggro suggests. It is significant that a developer has given credibility to the idea as many people don’t believe its true.

I will say from personal experience that aggro is unpredictable and all over the map across the game. But, it would seem confirmed that armor/toughness is a factor.

Raine.1394:

I believe he referred to increased aggro twice and used armor and toughness as the magnet. Which, is what we have heard all along as the wiki on aggro suggests. It is significant that a developer has given credibility to the idea as many people don’t believe its true.

I will say from personal experience that aggro is unpredictable and all over the map across the game. But, it would seem confirmed that armor/toughness is a factor.

That has been on the wiki for ages with the source being an interview with Colin. The argument isn’t whether toughness is a factor. The argument is that it isn’t the only factor and that the weight varies depending on what you are fighting.

I’d argue if whether or not this is something the mechanics should encourage, and I feel like it certainly shouldn’t. Why would being more durable and “tanky” make you more of a target? Should be the opposite. The only place this makes sense is in the “MMO trinity”…and that doesn’t make much sense either.

Smith.1826:

I’d argue if whether or not this is something the mechanics should encourage, and I feel like it certainly shouldn’t. Why would being more durable and “tanky” make you more of a target? Should be the opposite. The only place this makes sense is in the “MMO trinity”…and that doesn’t make much sense either.

GW1’s made more sense but if they copied it over to GW2 every mob would make a beeline for the nearest elementalist …

i think it makes more sense for enemies to target squishies first, but with no holy trinity this might be a bad idea. this would mean that squishy would be even more useless, and they’re already in a bad position compared to the 2 god-mode heavies.

Khisanth.2948:

Smith.1826:

I’d argue if whether or not this is something the mechanics should encourage, and I feel like it certainly shouldn’t. Why would being more durable and “tanky” make you more of a target? Should be the opposite. The only place this makes sense is in the “MMO trinity”…and that doesn’t make much sense either.

GW1’s made more sense but if they copied it over to GW2 every mob would make a beeline for the nearest elementalist …

Of course, and I think its something everyone would strive to do to an extent: Why hit the guy who dies in twenty hits over the guy who would die in one, even moreso when that squishy guy is doing the most damage?

In the case of a standard “trinity” MMO, its because the tank has ‘tricked’ the AI into thinking he’s the most threatening. Its certainly a solution, but I think it’s far from the best one, and I’d rather there be more realistic solutions. They’re just hard to implement with such a limited AI.