Guild Wars 2

I know this subject has been beaten around the bush so many times over the years, however, I recently started playing after 6-7 months and I am constantly being focused down on all of my characters in PvE.

As soon as I’m in range, the boss(es)/mobs turn and face me and only hit me and aim all of their hard hitting abilities at me. If I outrange them they move onto someone else. If I stealth, they move onto someone else (sometimes even continue to beat me down while stealthed). If I die, they move onto someone else.

As I mentioned this is across all of my characters – my Thief, my Elementalist, my Warrior, my Mesmer and my Guardian.

It’s rather annoying not being able to do any significant damage because everything drops whatever they’re doing and focus me down until I’m dead, gone or stealthed.

Is there something I’m missing that prevents this kind of behaviour from mobs/bosses? Any help is greatly appreciated.

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

Unfortunately that link doesn’t really answer his question.
What gear are you wearing? Some mobs like players with higher toughness.

I edited my link, I had the wrong article originally but that page details the extent of agro mechanics that the community needs to understand.

My Guardian wears Toughness gear, which is fine really, as that lets me take hits when endurance/blind is out of the loop. My other characters all wear Berserker gear as they’re all high damage dealers.

I thought aggro was random with the occasional boss liking toughness players over others :o

When I used to play this never was an issue. Now I have to micromanage my cooldowns perfectly in order to avoid going splat, and even then RNG creeps in and wallops me :/

I’ve grouped with other players saying they are “full berserker” builds and they never have aggro when I’m with them, ever.

The only character I can play without dying every boss encounter is my thief because of cloak and dagger being a part of my main damage abilities. It is my main character, but I’d like to be able to play my other characters without bosses constantly nuking me down. It even sparks some remarks from group members telling me to learn to play. But I can’t do anything without endurance or some mitigating cooldowns which aren’t on cooldown. Ugh.

Thanks for the link, though. I started to get paranoid and think a GM flagged my account to “highest-target-priority” or something. I guess I’ll just have to only play my Thief until there’s a change to the aggro system (which seems a bit broken if you have toughness to take the hits but nothing hits you until you’re the last alive).

I have a question for OP. Are you the first one in your party to hit the boss? If so then it will go for you first. Just stand back a second let the rest of the party hit it a few times then jump in, might make all the difference.

The wiki page is really misleading. Those are factors not a priority list. Not all mobs weight them the same. On the other hand with all the stacking it doesn’t actually matter since the attacks will just cleave everyone anyway.

I have (had) a warrior built with toughness, condi and precision, set up as bleed warrior (power was not neglected just not pronounced, i think knight and lionguard). The low damage solo was evident, even after they started to melt, but the thing was I could run through an NPC/mob zerg, whack as many as possible and generally not only grab aggro but pretty much keep it as long as I was the only bleeder, even with some other melee class trying to tank. Have not tried any of this since ascended though, and rifle was nerfed so bleed warrior is not even a decent goal. But…

The aggro assist from the bleeds was pretty evident and testable by adding other bleeders. It seemed to me then that condi was as good as raw damage because it allowed you to do other things, kiting dodging juking and spreading it all to various mobs, while self-clening/healing. And the groups I played with, we weren’t exactly playing the meta; someone wanted to play a given way that was fine, we experimented a lot with the mini-bosses at the time. Disclaimer- This was while everyone else was running karma trains in Orr (remember those?).

Kronos.2560:

I have a question for OP. Are you the first one in your party to hit the boss?

Nope. I was even half a room behind the rest of the group (they were rushing) and the boss would get hit, by them, and proceed to run across the room towards me. It doesn’t always happen that way, although as soon as I’m in ability/melee range I’m subject to every ability and power known to the boss, for some eternal sin I’ve seemingly committed.. dramatised but yeah, it illustrates the situation a little bit.

Khisanth.2948:

The wiki page is really misleading. Those are factors not a priority list. Not all mobs weight them the same. On the other hand with all the stacking it doesn’t actually matter since the attacks will just cleave everyone anyway.

I see, thanks for clearing that up. Also, about the stacking, I’ve tried standing next to/behind other people, only to see them take little to no damage and me take every ounce of boom from the hit.

RollingBob.8502:

I have (had) a warrior built with toughness, condi and precision, set up as bleed warrior (power was not neglected just not pronounced, i think knight and lionguard). The low damage solo was evident, even after they started to melt, but the thing was I could run through an NPC/mob zerg, whack as many as possible and generally not only grab aggro but pretty much keep it as long as I was the only bleeder, even with some other melee class trying to tank. Have not tried any of this since ascended though, and rifle was nerfed so bleed warrior is not even a decent goal. But…

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So, perhaps, the person with the highest power/condition damage stat becomes target for bosses? I don’t know at this point, but I’m really annoyed at running away kiting bosses because they only focus on me :/

Honestly, majority of groups I am in doing dungeons everyone is stacking and not moving very far. Boss attacks are sparse and animated, so standing still and waiting for a dodge works perfectly fine.

In open world, there is normally so much zerg going on that I don’t have to dodge overly much, and if I do get downed I either spawn and run back or someone typically will try to revive me if it isn’t too dangerous. Again attacks are normally pronounced and you learn to dodge the right animations/timing.

Just because a boss is looking at you does not mean you have to immediately have to run away.

Also, since threat is so fickle, people have given up on trying to “tank” things….but if things are TRULY as dire as you make them sound, a lot of people would love to be able to “tank” and that is something they would die to have (get it they would die cause we can’t tank…yet).

Helsing: Allow me to ask the obvious question. Are you the same level as the area you are running in?

If you are more than 4 levels under the Mobs you are attacking they will almost always focus on you AND your Agro circle is also MUCH larger.

i.e. if you are lev 37 but the mobs are 45 then you have a huge target on your back and that would explain your problem.

If this is not the case, please ignore my above statement.

CMF.5461:

Just because a boss is looking at you does not mean you have to immediately have to run away.

When my endurance is exhausted and any defensive cooldowns are on cooldown, I can’t just stand there and wait for the boss to finish me off. Dire is the right word here

I’ve actually ‘tanked’ the devourer summoner boss in CoF (the one with that annoying whip and kick ability) by just using cloak and dagger and dodging left and right, cloak and dagger, dodge left and right etc. Everytime he would look at me and almost kill me, I’d stealth and he’d pause for a second, turn around and go to attack someone, then I backstab and he’d resume attacking me.. not sure if this is supposed to be intended way to deal with encounters, but it worked :o