Guild Wars 2

Is there any hope of reducing the amount of aggro you get with higher toughness gear?

I’ve just been playing on a thief with PVT gear and zerk everything else, and fighting against the Gravelash for the Living Story 2 part 3. The darned thing was chasing me all over the combat area, jogging past 3-4 players just to come after me.

I solo a lot, so having defensive stat armour is useful to me. In solo situations where everything is targeting me anyway it makes no difference, but in any group content (or where groups form around DEs) it quickly becomes a liability as all the extra mobs that appear due to scaling all… chase… me…!

I’m not saying that toughness should not aggro, its part of the ‘soft’ trinity right? Bit perhaps it could be scaled back a smidgeon?

two options:
1) learn to dodge and active defend. Then you wont need toughness gear when solo.
2) accept that with high defence gear in group play, you are useless if not a meat shield.

Simply use other items for group content or learn to deal with the aggro.

Thieves have quite a few tools too evade damage.

Artemis Thuras.8795:

two options:
1) learn to dodge and active defend. Then you wont need toughness gear when solo.
2) accept that with high defence gear in group play, you are useless if not a meat shield.

Pretty much this.

Yeah, I’m trying to get some mixed valk/knight gear to tone down the defence a little for group play. That should help.

just get full valk and zerk = end of problem

i doubt it’s the toughness that’s the source of your aggro. It’s your low health or high damage; tell all the other members in your group to quit wearing Nomad’s gear. agrro has very little to do with toughness.

Also get someone else to start the story instance.

Often if you are the one starting the LA instance you will be the target of the majority Agro on certain episodes.

Use the pet attack command to have your pet attack first. If you attack first, then you will get the aggro.

~Stacking toughness

~Doesn’t want to get hit?

What?

But in all seriousness, not at the moment, no. That mechanic is there to force players to use evasion/active defense.

Some info from the wiki on threat priority:

1. closest target to them
2. who is dealing damage
3. top damage dealers
4. who is using a shield / has more toughness and overall armor

Often times, the one who does the first hit gets a majority of the aggro, so keep that in mind in group play. You may want to sort out ahead of time who’s going to lead in, and use Ctrl-click to set a target so your allies know what to hit first.

I really enjoy the soft aggro. I run celestial war a lot in PvE. I end up having between 3.4K to 4.4K armor. All the attacks going my way makes it easier to carry pugs without being as slow as soloing.

I actually kinda wish you’d pull more aggro with higher toughness, give it a bit more value.

Rauderi.8706:

Some info from the wiki on threat priority:

1. closest target to them
2. who is dealing damage
3. top damage dealers
4. who is using a shield / has more toughness and overall armor

Often times, the one who does the first hit gets a majority of the aggro, so keep that in mind in group play. You may want to sort out ahead of time who’s going to lead in, and use Ctrl-click to set a target so your allies know what to hit first.

Some of the mechanics are varied depending on instance and mob.

Riflemen in CM for example will generally priority target the most fragile target regardless of distance etc etc. (Last time I was there, I was in full zerker with everyone else in WvW toughness setups, no one got shot once while I went into downstate a couple times when we yoloed the hallways with no strategy).

Mossman regardless of stats has the tendency to just stick to a single target with small peels here and there (also for some reason his AI tends to break quite often if immobilize spamming before he goes into stealth as I’ve witnessed).

IllegalChocolate.6938:

Some of the mechanics are varied depending on instance and mob.

Riflemen in CM for example will generally priority target the most fragile target regardless of distance etc etc. (Last time I was there, I was in full zerker with everyone else in WvW toughness setups, no one got shot once while I went into downstate a couple times when we yoloed the hallways with no strategy).

Mossman regardless of stats has the tendency to just stick to a single target with small peels here and there (also for some reason his AI tends to break quite often if immobilize spamming before he goes into stealth as I’ve witnessed).

You’re right. I just didn’t feel like posting the entire text from the wiki.

I was mostly using it to elaborate in a more general sense, and in looking at it, proximity and damage mean more than ‘tankiness’. And really, that first hit is like some weird psycho-trigger on a basic mob.

It’s not the toughness that draws the aggro, generally speaking.

Aside from proximity, dps and low health (all of which plague thieves), certain actions also generate immense amounts of aggro.

One is reviving a teammate.

The other is using a crowd control skill. Doesn’t matter whether you merely remove defiance or you actually manage to interrupt a skill, mobs hate cc skills and will tend to retarget their users.

If your thief is using s/p, pistol whip is the reason you’re repeatedly targeted. If not, your dps is the reason you’re targeted. If anything, switching to berserker will make your aggro situation worse. It’ll kill things faster as well, of course.

If you really have aggro problems you can’t handle use a shortbow and plink away.

P.S. People who say there is no tanking in GW2 have never touched a full zerk full damage S/P thief. Nobody can pull aggro off you, even if you are in a 120 man zerg. All world bosses will target you, all champions and dungeon bosses will target you. If you can avoid all that damage with evade frames, you achieve the ‘damage removal’ effect tanks in other games do. The only difference is that you do it while also being the dps, you have no margin for error, and you don’t have a healer.

Its damage and toughness and how close you are that determent aggro mostly,they should maybe give some food that make you give more aggro so we can see some tanking action ;D

Or…instead, ppl could learn to use active defended and not try to ‘tank’ in the first place since the fundamental design of the game is to do away with that concept…

Sword/pistol for stuns, dazes and blinds then switch to sword / dagger for evades. → Solo