Guild Wars 2

Overall, rare or exotic armor is better. At least it would seem so.

I like to experiment with various armor attributes, clerics, solder, berserker or whatever.

When I do this, I use masterwork ( green & cheap ) to see how it works.

I can’t tell you the times when using masterworks armor seems to work well, but when I upgrade it to exotic, not as well I as expected.

Granted DPS will always be better with higher lvl gear. The thing is, and this is mainly going up against champions in a group/zerg. Maybe its just my imagination, but I seem to take far fewer hits with my green gear as opposed to exotic gear.

So my question is……are you less likely to be targeted when equipped with sub par gear?

I don’t know it this can be a real advantage, but it might be in some situations.

it varies from mob to mob, but it generally is either how much dps you’re doing or how much toughness you have (or occasionally how close you are) will determine who aggros first

Geared in greens is one thing, using a maxed stat Exotic is another. I find that a balanced gear set will cause the agro to move towards the heavily damage or defense oriented players. As I use a balanced set, I tend to do fine even after the zerkers or defensively set up chars have been dispatched.

There’s also the mental aspect of it, if you’re in greens you’re more likely to keep your distance and play it safe. Whereas in Exotics you’ll probably feel a bit more confident and maybe stay in a bit longer, thus getting hit more.

ITheNormalPerson.9275:

it varies from mob to mob, but it generally is either how much dps you’re doing or how much toughness you have (or occasionally how close you are) will determine who aggros first

Pretty sure it’s not toughness that matters, but your armor bonus.