Guild Wars 2

I was told that, the more toughness you have, the better chance enemies have of attacking you. Now, I’m not sure that this is true, but I’m seriously starting to believe it.

My warrior has run with toughness sense I hit 80. I’ve pretty much only ever uses full/mostly knights gear in dungeons. I’ve also noticed that, 9 times out of 10, most enemies like to go for me. I’ve done dozens of explorable paths by now, and each one I’ve noticed this.

Now, I’m not build to be a tank. I use a greatsword. So having this many enemies on me at a time seriously hurts, despite all of my toughness. I’ve recently picked up a full-zerker set and, not to my surprise, I’m being attack far less now. I suppose this brings me to my point: Does toughness generate aggro? If so, does that mean I should stop putting it on my gear so enemies don’t attack me, and thus I could survive more (oh, the irony)?

Do you also run ahead of the group and go twirling into the fray ahead of the control?

Most GS warriors that have trouble staying alive/agro issues need to look at gameplay more than mechanics at this stage.

EDIT: I could be wrong – they may have ninja “fixed” some agro mechanics, not in front of game client for a while to confirm though.

I’ve noticed this too but I keep the toughness because I WvW mostly.

My warrior has full knight’s gear and whenever I run a dungeon every enemy is on me. I can stay alive because I’m spec’d as tank/healer but I get comments all the time about getting all of the aggro. Yes, I do tend to run in ahead a lot of times but I’ve even tried staying way back and mobs will just run past the other party members and come straight at me. It’s pretty kitten funny.

yes, i’m currently running in knights on my ranger because after doing some math, zerker armor is just not worth it.

My survivability has been cut in half, and i have mobs ignoring warriors (zerkers) pounding them and go for me all the time in dungeons. It’s a paradox, i gave up some dps to be able to stay closer to the fray and support my teammates more, but the effect is exactly the opposite, now i have to run&kite alot more.

So basically, if you want to increase your survivability as a midlane fighter…. run glass cannon. Makes sense.

Its a myth. On my alt is shout warrior with full soldiers gear and soldier runes and i really have to put a lot of effort to make mobs attack me cause they just go for squishies while ignoring me.

FLFW.3105:

Its a myth. On my alt is shout warrior with full soldiers gear and soldier runes and i really have to put a lot of effort to make mobs attack me cause they just go for squishies while ignoring me.

It’s not a myth. I have read recently that the enemy AI chooses who to target based on a few variables. Toughness is one of them. I myself also see that I am public enemy no.1 a lot in Champion fights and dungeons which I put down to my toughness gear and precision mainly.

I noticed excessive aggro on my ranger. When he was wearing rare knight’s armor in Orr, the mobs would target him and ignore everyone else. Once he got exotic knight’s socketed with ruby orbs, aggro dropped down to normal levels.

The Troll champ in HotW1 chasing me up and down the stairs non-stop is annoying. The end boss – Ginva the Butcher – same thing, goes around and around the room after me refusing to drop agro. The Slave Driver in CoF1 sometimes chases me almost back up to the dungeon entrance. I am really considering dropping toughness on my gear.

FLFW.3105:

Its a myth. On my alt is shout warrior with full soldiers gear and soldier runes and i really have to put a lot of effort to make mobs attack me cause they just go for squishies while ignoring me.

Soldiers also give vitality, which has the opposite effect as toughness on aggro. I have the same problem on my guardian, try switching to knights or something else with high toughness and no vitality and enjoy every mob on the map locking on you.

It’s not a myth about toughness: source = http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Aggro

quote:
Gaining and Losing Aggro

For a neutral (yellow outlined) NPC the player must attack first to gain its attention. The aggro table of a hostile NPC changes dynamically depending on a number of factors, in order of importance [citation needed] :
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
5. others (see Tanking tactics below)

FLFW.3105:

Its a myth. On my alt is shout warrior with full soldiers gear and soldier runes and i really have to put a lot of effort to make mobs attack me cause they just go for squishies while ignoring me.

You do know that “Soldier” gear has less Toughness than “Knight’s”, right?

No wonder i gain agro alot, luckily i dont die very easy x_X

Makes sense. Knights are often seen as defenders of the weak and such, soldiers don’t really have that connotation.

Toughness does affect aggro. I will explain it with the example of how I soloed the statue of Dwayna with my rabid conditionmancer.

The statue of Dwayna has a PBAoE blind that also grants itself soothing mist, a non-removable self regen, which is triggered if the aggro holder is within 600 units of range.

To deny her soothing mist, I had to let the historian NPC tank. At first, I kept drawing aggro away from the historian. Not until I took off my rabid-runed gear could I stop drawing aggro.

Finally, soothing mist was totally denied for the statue during the entire fight. All that’s left to do was corrupt her regens and dodge her tears for 30 min.

That’s the story of how the statue was killed by an NPC and a naked necro.

Pennry.9215:

FLFW.3105:

Its a myth. On my alt is shout warrior with full soldiers gear and soldier runes and i really have to put a lot of effort to make mobs attack me cause they just go for squishies while ignoring me.

You do know that “Soldier” gear has less Toughness than “Knight’s”, right?

Indeed. Soldier is power primary and secondary toughness, knight is toughness primary and power secondary. On a full exotic set that is almost a 100 point difference.

The benefit of soldier is that it has both toughness and vitality as secondaries, the only gear set outside of wayfarer (magic find primary) to boost both of those.

I think the opaque nature of the aggro mechanic invariably devolve a group fight from a organized battle to a barroom brawl. And i suspect this lack of control is why there are quite a few calls for trinity/roles.

I hoped the game could accommodate both organized battles and brawls, depending on the players wishes, via different character builds. But so far it seems it can only do brawls. In part because of the focus on movement as a defensive mechanism, and in part because CC do a poor job at controlling.

Aggro is strange in GW2 because there is no trinity, so no natural tank. Being a Guardian has an inherent aggro associated with it. So does max health, which is the opposite of a Guard, so it get’s weird. Mostly being close to the mob and doing damage grabs hate first, then it starts looking at if you are a guard or have high HP. Alot of Necros pull hate from range because their H kitten o high it outranks a closeup guardian. I really don’t know how toughness fits in, but generally mobs make a few checks to attack whoever has the calculated highest survivability in its opinion. I know that reviving is hate #1 for a mob and they come straight for you to prevent it.

Then there are certain mobs who do the opposite and go for squishies first. There is no universal aggro rule for every mob.

Correction, lowest HP gains more aggro than highest HP… allow me to expand on Infernia’s post from wiki:
reviving a player
closest target to them
ranged attacks
top damage dealers
lowest hp
who is using a shield / has more overall armor

These are all factors which affect aggro/threat. You can help pull/peel a boss if you start to revive a player within proximity of the boss.

This is why guardians make better “tanks” than warriors with their naturally lower HP and ability to get high armor. But since there is no taunt mechanic it’s hard to reliably “tank” in GW2.

Funny thing is that the list on the wiki is not sourced, and so can’t really be said to be anything more than speculation. At least unless a group of people are willing to go into a dungeon or similar repeatedly with various builds, and record the aggro behavior of a select mob.

And even then that may only give us pointers for that specific mob.

Our guild master, a high-toughness Ranger always attracts the aggro of any mob in dungeons. Bosses, silvers, anything…they always have it out for him. It’s a hillarious running joke that all the mobs become crazed pre-teen girls for him. (He’s gay, so he wants none of that!) Luckily, he’s very good a kiting.

Still, I wouldn’t think toughness would have such an extreme effect on aggro.

I’ve noticed that in dungeons Zerker warriors have more survivability than Knight’s warriors because everyone in the dungeon goes after the knight warrior first.

Personally, I think it’s a design flaw. If you are going up against a guy with a machine gun in the open and another guy with a pistol in a locked shed, you don’t batter down the shed first.

The more i think about it the more find that the current aggro system is very pug-hostile. While roaming the open world you are very likely to stack up on every last bit of survivability you can find, unless you happen to pack enough burst to level a group event solo. But bring that setup into a dungeon and all of a sudden every last mob will want a piece of you. This even tho you may be standing near the doorway waving a twig while the burly norn in plate armor is up front swinging a big piece of metal.

I image that it was designed so that you could create a tank type character that would pull some of the aggro away from the DPS (hmm… sounds very trinity-ish), but it’s objectively ridiculous.

Also, toughness doesn’t mitigate nearly enough damage to make that viable when there are respawning mobs.

When I am choosing targets, I’ll always go after the guy who can hurt me the worst or the softest target instead of the guy that’s the “toughest” to kill.

Mujen.2089:

Correction, lowest HP gains more aggro than highest HP… allow me to expand on Infernia’s post from wiki:
reviving a player
closest target to them
ranged attacks
top damage dealers
lowest hp
who is using a shield / has more overall armor

These are all factors which affect aggro/threat. You can help pull/peel a boss if you start to revive a player within proximity of the boss.

This is why guardians make better “tanks” than warriors with their naturally lower HP and ability to get high armor. But since there is no taunt mechanic it’s hard to reliably “tank” in GW2.

Thanks for putting the reviving in there. I simply quoted the list but it was stated further down on the wiki page that:
reviving an ally was the number 1 way to grab aggro.

Around 3k armor ( as a heavy armor wearer you gain roughly 1200 armor from base defense) you have around 40% damage reduction. Toughness pushes your armor further as armor = gear defense stat + toughness.

I have also noticed that on my necro, when I spec for lifesiphoning my aggro goes through the roof. I noticed it especially one night when fighting Giganticus Lupicus. He stayed glued to me and would not attack anyone else (completely ignored our tank-spec guardian who usually never has threat problems). I should note that I was also in all berserker gear, so not a lick of extra toughness from gear.

I finally switched out my life siphoning traits and from that moment on Giganticus stayed on our Guardian and pretty much ignored me. I’m guessing that healing must have some influence on threat.

Mujen.2089:

Around 3k armor ( as a heavy armor wearer you gain roughly 1200 armor from base defense) you have around 40% damage reduction. Toughness pushes your armor further as armor = gear defense stat + toughness.

That very much depends on the power stat of whoever you are fighting tho. Power and Armor pretty much balance each other out 1 for 1.

I have ~3k armor on my Guardian and I’m a mob magnet. My guildies and friends I’ve done dungeon with always want to group with me as every mob comes after me, always. The funniest place where I tested my magnetizing skills was in the Underwater fractal, I always, ALWAYS, have every single little jelly following me, they never go for anyone else, ever, I create huge tails of fish and it’s so funny…

digiowl.9620:

That very much depends on the power stat of whoever you are fighting tho. Power and Armor pretty much balance each other out 1 for 1.

Not really. Power and Toughness(???) do not balance each other out, Power scales far far far better than Toughness in this game.

The formula for damage is:

Damage done = (weapon damage) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Defense+Toughness)

To double your damage you need double Power, because if you have 2xPower in the formula above you get double damage, so assuming the base 916 Power, you need another 916 from items/traits etc to deal DOUBLE damage.

On the other hand, to double your Armor you need a LOT more Toughness. Let’s have an example with heavy armor:

Exotic Heavy armor offers 1211 Defense combined with the base 916 Toughness results in 2127 Armor. To double your resistance to damage (and take half damage) you need to… double that.

Medium armor offers 1064 Defense for a total of 1980 Armor (base)

Light armor offers 920 Defense for a total of 1836 Armor (base)

In other words, to take half damage you need 2127 (Heavy), 1980 (Medium), 1836 (Light) Toughness but in order to deal double damage you only need 916 Power… That’s how badly Toughness scale compared to Power.

lol Mad, the same thing happens to me in the jelly fight aswell, my guardian has 3030 armor, it is pretty funny guardian powa!

This system goes to show how little sustain Warriors have.
Guard/Ele/Necro have strong sustain so they can do this efficiently.
Thief/Ranger/Engi/Mes has some sustain/protection and can go like this somewhat efficiently.
Warrior has no sustain/no protection/no blind/no lifesteal = Cannot go full tank.

I have tried a full-out sustain build with 30 defense 30 tactics and 3900 armor, it simply wont work.
Because Anet said they’re afraid that any minimal change to Warriors might make them not-the-worst-tPvP-profession-anymore.

It is almost definitely a huge factor. During the Priest of Grenth event, it was already half-way through by the time I arrived. My Guardian is heavily invested in Toughness, and as soon as I walked in to the room, he ignored everyone and focused all of his attention on me. Instantly. In that instance, it actually helped, since I could pull him all the way to the other side of the room and facetank him in a corner, so I felt like a hero, but still…

Toughness does seem to be a factor.
But also first to aggro seems to do it too. I like to rush ahead on my zerker warrior, and i’ll be picked as the target over people who most certainly have more toughness than I do (literally any amount of toughness would be more than me)

Either first to aggro, or proximity to the boss (greatsword range) do play a factor. At least for some encounters.

Yeah, the wiki has a write up on Aggro, but in actual gameplay I treat it as more of a mystery. I’ve also heard that toughness moves you to the top of the charts, but have no way to know it is so for certain. I’ve also heard that equipping a shield makes the target on your back a little larger still (though I’ve never played with a shield so can’t corroborate).

I can tell you my precision/toughness/condition damage necromancer is much more attractive to mobs than my power/precision/crit damage GS warrior, which really makes no sense in terms of actual threat. I mean the Necro is pretty much capped as far as damage goes. And all the bleeds are probably from the thieves and warriors anyways. Just grist for the mill.

Going to speculate a bit here: I wouldn’t be surprised if they put toughness on the aggro table like that to encourage dodging over just loading up on ac and face tanking everything. The devs certainly seem to love the dodge mechanic, and I can’t blame them because it is fun. Face tanking everything seems very counter to their philosophy.

Raine.1394:

Yeah, the wiki has a write up on Aggro, but in actual gameplay I treat it as more of a mystery. I’ve also heard that toughness moves you to the top of the charts, but have no way to know it is so for certain. I’ve also heard that equipping a shield makes the target on your back a little larger still (though I’ve never played with a shield so can’t corroborate).

I can tell you my precision/toughness/condition damage necromancer is much more attractive to mobs than my power/precision/crit damage GS warrior, which really makes no sense in terms of threat. But, it is a piece of anecdotal evidence.

I’m beginning to think that wiki entry is also anectdotal evidence. It’s un-cited. I still have yet to see any official word on how aggro really works. If there is one, I’d love to see it.

rizzo.1079:

Going to speculate a bit here: I wouldn’t be surprised if they put toughness on the aggro table like that to encourage dodging over just loading up on ac and face tanking everything. The devs certainly seem to love the dodge mechanic, and I can’t blame them because it is fun. Face tanking everything seems very counter to their philosophy.

I find it fun to dodge the occasional big, properly flagged, spike. But as it is right now, i feel i need to have vigor up 24/7 and be constantly rolling around in the mud. First of all because armor seems to do jack all except paint a big bullseye on my back, second because i have seen time and time against single hits from vets on up that strip me of half my health or more.

All in all, i can really understand why evasive arcana is so loved. It basically turn what is a defensive measure, dodge, into a AOE offensive measure with a 10 second (5 with vigor) recharge.

maddoctor.2738:

I have ~3k armor on my Guardian and I’m a mob magnet. My guildies and friends I’ve done dungeon with always want to group with me as every mob comes after me, always. The funniest place where I tested my magnetizing skills was in the Underwater fractal, I always, ALWAYS, have every single little jelly following me, they never go for anyone else, ever, I create huge tails of fish and it’s so funny…

digiowl.9620:

That very much depends on the power stat of whoever you are fighting tho. Power and Armor pretty much balance each other out 1 for 1.

Not really. Power and Toughness(???) do not balance each other out, Power scales far far far better than Toughness in this game.

The formula for damage is:

Damage done = (weapon damage) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Defense+Toughness)

To double your damage you need double Power, because if you have 2xPower in the formula above you get double damage, so assuming the base 916 Power, you need another 916 from items/traits etc to deal DOUBLE damage.

On the other hand, to double your Armor you need a LOT more Toughness. Let’s have an example with heavy armor:

Exotic Heavy armor offers 1211 Defense combined with the base 916 Toughness results in 2127 Armor. To double your resistance to damage (and take half damage) you need to… double that.

Medium armor offers 1064 Defense for a total of 1980 Armor (base)

Light armor offers 920 Defense for a total of 1836 Armor (base)

In other words, to take half damage you need 2127 (Heavy), 1980 (Medium), 1836 (Light) Toughness but in order to deal double damage you only need 916 Power… That’s how badly Toughness scale compared to Power.

I see that i worded myself poorly. What i am getting at is that in that formula, power is a multiplier while armor (the total of defense and toughness) is a divisor. End result is that if both have the same value, resulting output will be weapon modified by whatever skill is used.

You are correct tho that armor is worse off in the grand scheme of things as it is fighting both power and weapon damage. Meaning that it needs to be higher than power to impact weapon damage, and so produce a effective reduction in incoming damage.

But that was not my claim, only that armor and power cancel each other out one for one.

There are a lot of people quoting this Comic con interview & Italian website interview, so it took a bit of time to find them. I take NO credit for either since I just cut and pasted to give those that wanted sources. Though he never really specifically says ‘toughness’, the fact that they changed the basis for determining aggro for different bosses/creatures means it’s still quite viable. As is the reviving aggro. You are welcome to test that one. Sorry for the wall of text.
Question is being asked at 49:00
Colin answered at 49:22

Colin’s answer in the video was at Comic-Con. He answers a similar question later in Gamescom with this.

http://gw2ita.wordpress.com/review/interview-with-colin-johanson-by-mmorpgitalia-and-gw2-italian-blog/

“Q: How the AI of enemies will work? Specifically, how enemies will chose their target? Will they be capable of complex behaviour and combat strategies?

A: That’s a great question, because it’s something we don’t necessarely get asked details a lot. There are very few creatures in the game right now that have kind of their final skills and abilities that we intended them to have. For example, in the demo that we’re getting here at Gamescom… the undead army in the high level map is probably the closest thing to what I would consider to be in an army that has a lot work done on it at this point. Our creatures are going to be getting a lot of work between now and release. We have really been focused mostly on the players side of things at this point and on getting all the contet put together on. So creature balance will be kind one of the next things that we tackle, and we’ll be moving army by army in trying to give them themes and skills and AI details to each army specifically. In regards to AI and aggro… simple creatures will use an AI system to determine who attack, and one of the most important criteria will be who is the closest target to them, but there are also criteria like who’s doing damage, how much damage they’ve done… and other things like that. These are basic things that most creatures would use. Then there will be unique AI for a number of different creatures that will use specific skills or the entire creatures will do different things than that. There may be creatures, for example, who attack the furthest away player in the party. There may be creatures who try to focus on people wearing medium armor or light armor, and try to chase them around. There may be creatures that run away, there may be creatures who get out of the way of attacks, there may be creatures who specifically only use skills on people at specifc times. So, all of these are aspect on which we’re going to work as we get closer to the release of the game."

I think you guys are both assuming the list is accurate and then ignoring the factors position on the list.

If it was at #1, I’d say it was punishing for defensive classes with the flip side that tanking would be a LOT more effective in the game then it currently is….

But it’s not..because it’s at #4. Basically, it’s a crutch to allow a defensive class to get aggro at all…to attempt to tank? Otherwise, that toughness/heals shield guardian would probably not even be touched until everybody else was dead?

I’ve tanked a lot with my guardian and this is what I’ve noticed.

Some bosses you just can’t tank effectively. They will bounce around to everyone in the group. Most regular champions and lower will stick for the entire fight, but dungeon bosses seem to be random.

If I lose aggro and I use my mace block skill, I will get aggro back instantly on block, similar to a taunt. This leads me to believe certain skills may have a sort of built in taunt.

Since I am in full Clerics gear with 3200 armor, I don’t deal much damage through crits. This leads to people who are standing next to me with very high damage pulling mobs to them sometimes. However, if everyone is ranged, I have no issues keeping aggro.

I know how this feels, 4 PVT pieces and I’m the sole target for every boss.

It’s like if u do less overall damage your not allowed to live.