Guild Wars 2

Ok, so i am by no means glass cannon, and i don’t like it. I build toughness and vitality myself, but something about it just feels so completletly broken.

It seems like toughness makes mobs aggro you. I always have the highest toughness in my group, and i ALWAYS tanks. Even if i run into the fight LAST the mobs stop attacking the other guys, and go on me.

Last night, while me and 5 others where doing the eye of zhaitan group event in orr, i got so kitten ed of because of this. I ran in, got aggroed and because toughness is no godly skill in this game because of “No tanks”, i died quite fast anyways. I respawned and ran back. When i went into the room where the eye was, he instantly started attacking me, and downed me fast.

This is stupid Anet… Seriously. Toughness doesnt even help that much because you dont want a holy trinity. Therefor its impossible to “tank”.

I have another character aswell, that dont have that much toughness, and i NEVER gets attacked in group fights on that one. Heck, i even used my main (a necro) and changed gear to test it out. Never attacked. I equipped my toughness gear and got instantly targeted.

They should find a new way for mobs to find targets or make toughness actually work

What affects mobs aggro tables (for the most part) in guildwars, in order of importantance.

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

While there are no tanks, people sometimes toss around the word anchor. Where as a class such as a guardian with high toughness is more likely (not all the time) going to be attacked, he can use this knowledge to help position the mobs so the other damage dealers can hit more targets in the aoe and use the higher damage, rooted moves like hundred blades more freely.

for a necromancer, defensive use of death shroud also helps survivability.

While having high toughness does let you survive easier, dodges/invulnerabilities are the most important, even for classes like guard who have a lot of sustain.

We’ve got a whole nother Category of Consumables just to offset this y’know..
…Granted, they require Dust which isn’t exactly in “hedonous” supply currently
… but it’s still an option for the truly determined ‘Tyrian Tough Guys’.

I have more toughness & vitality spec’d on my Ranger than I do Power & MF% and the main reason I built her in the first place was for MF farming. Infact I think she even has more Tough & definitely more HP’s than my Guardian …and so far I can’t complain about my DPS, it’s actually surprisingly good when I’m running the right Cons and 25 stacks of “Perception”. It also makes stacking mobs together a lot easier for some reason than pure Zerkers can thanks to the odd Aggro algorithms *(much like A.L.N. just said). I pulled P.o.Dwayna’s aggro off 30 other players the other night with some kind of UpUp DownDown LRLRABAB combo and the timing couldn’t have been better b/c I was the only one behind her and I blocked her Nuke a second later. Feels Goodman

No, Toughness on its own doesn’t make you Tank in this game… It’s what do you after you’ve got their attention that decides if you’re the “Tank” or not

ALeetNoob.4830:

What affects mobs aggro tables (for the most part) in guildwars, in order of importantance.

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

While there are no tanks, people sometimes toss around the word anchor. Where as a class such as a guardian with high toughness is more likely (not all the time) going to be attacked, he can use this knowledge to help position the mobs so the other damage dealers can hit more targets in the aoe and use the higher damage, rooted moves like hundred blades more freely.

for a necromancer, defensive use of death shroud also helps survivability.

While having high toughness does let you survive easier, dodges/invulnerabilities are the most important, even for classes like guard who have a lot of sustain.

Are you sure about the aggro priority? I was in a Group event in Orr and the Champ kept targeting me, no matter what I did. I kept getting killed and everytime someone rezzed me the darn thing came right back at me. No amount of running or dodging helped. I even stopped all outgoing damage. The thing was stuck to me like a heat seeker.

I’m the only one who thinks Toughness should work more like precision but instead granting crit chance, give a chance to resist CC?

I mean, I recently switch from soldier to zerker (though my build is 20/0/20/30/0 so I’m not exactly a glass cannon and my survival come from the traits, not the extra hp/armor) and I can tank pretty much the same so yes, toughness right now is totally useless (same with vitality).

So, in my opinion, this change, along with nerfing the dmg deal by mobs (or increasing the dmg reductions from armors alone) and increase the CC (except in those zones already filled with a lot of CC) would make toughness more useful.

ALeetNoob.4830:

What affects mobs aggro tables (for the most part) in guildwars, in order of importantance.

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

And sometimes they are just vicious beasts that go after downed players or those rezzing a downed player.

Toughness just gives you a bit more survivability if you are having trouble dodging, kiting or LoSing their attack. Watch for the monster’s attack animation, they always have a “tell”.

From my experience, I know there are a few things that cause the enemy to target you more.
I play a thief a lot, so I’ve learned to dodge to survive. But sometimes I do pull the aggro, usually when I do a really high critical hit or get too close. So I know that pulling aggro has something to do with how much damage you’re doing and how close you are. Also, I know that certain actions can increase or decrease aggro. Actions that will increase aggro also include reviving a downed player. To decrease aggro, dodging helps a lot, if they can’t hit you, they give up after a short time and move on to something different. Stealth helps, but not everybody has that option. My best advice, is if you’re taking all the hits and can’t keep up, then dodge away, switch to a ranged weapon for a bit, then after they switch targets for a bit, switch back to your melee.
I have at least 1 of each class, and this is the strategy I use if I start to die and can’t heal up. It works well in most cases. Of course, sometimes they have a vandetta against you, so running away doesn’t always work.

tcat.6725:

ALeetNoob.4830:

What affects mobs aggro tables (for the most part) in guildwars, in order of importantance.

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

While there are no tanks, people sometimes toss around the word anchor. Where as a class such as a guardian with high toughness is more likely (not all the time) going to be attacked, he can use this knowledge to help position the mobs so the other damage dealers can hit more targets in the aoe and use the higher damage, rooted moves like hundred blades more freely.

for a necromancer, defensive use of death shroud also helps survivability.

While having high toughness does let you survive easier, dodges/invulnerabilities are the most important, even for classes like guard who have a lot of sustain.

Are you sure about the aggro priority? I was in a Group event in Orr and the Champ kept targeting me, no matter what I did. I kept getting killed and everytime someone rezzed me the darn thing came right back at me. No amount of running or dodging helped. I even stopped all outgoing damage. The thing was stuck to me like a heat seeker.

There are enemies that will focus on people further away so no that priority isn’t the same for everything. The Nightmare Vines in Twilight Arbor seems to favor attacking ranged. Subject Alpha in path 1 of CoE seems to put a high emphasis on who is dealing the most damage, with a particular party composition it would stay glued to the glass cannon berserker. Giganticus Lupicus seems to have different priorities as well. Did the Mursaat path the other day, it seem intent on murdering the thief in the party at every opportunity(whenever she was not dead). Given how much damage the thief was taking she definitely did not have more armor or HP than me or the mesmer in the party. As for distance, since we ressing our distance was more or less the same.

As for whether toughness helps, it can certainly help in the right situations. For the GL fight I mentioned above I forgot to swap my berserker+ruby orb set for my cleric+soldier rune set. The difference was very clear, with the cleric in can stand in the bubble without too much worry, with the berserker I will most likely get downed. The results were the same back when the cleric pieces were cleric+ruby orb.

ALeetNoob.4830:

What affects mobs aggro tables (for the most part) in guildwars, in order of importantance.

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

I am VERY skeptical of this list on the wiki, because personal experience says otherwise. Even if a dev came here and told me that list was correct I would then say it’s not working as intended.

I have a slow internet connection so it’s difficult to get the timing of dodges right due to lags. So having some sort of toughness gear has always been a must for my characters. I have 7 different alts with varying levels of armor rating, from 2400~2900.

And they all get focused nearly all the time. Bosses, trash mobs, even objects like turrets.

Like many others have said before, I’ve been in situations where I stood out of combat, and a mob that entered combat with another player nearby completely ignored that player and ran up to me and hit me the entire fight. Or fights where I ended up dead, wp’d and came back only to grab aggro immediately again as soon as I stepped in range. Which means #1,2,3 on that list was not very important.

When I fight lupicus on my guard(2780) with scepter+shield he stays on me the entire phase 2 and 3. Every single shadow step and the occasional single projectile and life steal attack, all at me and me only. I’ve run arah several times and not once have I fought lupicus without having its aggro 90% of the fight. Considering scepter damage and my effort to keep max distance, once again #1,2,3 on the list thrown out the window.

It’s all the same. Every boss encouter experience I’ve had in this game is either 1. I have aggro or 2. I don’t have aggro, but the boss uses their special one-shot/cc attacks on me.

I could go on and on. Once to test this I got my brother to roll a character just like mine. We made engineers of the same traits, same weapons, even the same utility skills and levelled from 1-80 together making sure we were on the same level. Only difference was I used tougness gear while he used zerker. I can barely remember a single instance where I did not hold aggro despite him being closer, starting combat first or dealing more damage than me. Not even when I took the shield off and changed to rifle or threw grenades from afar. Toughness is without a doubt the single largest aggro factor.

I am so sick and tired of this system and like the OP I feel I am being punished for gearing the way I want to gear.

The toughest player getting all the aggro so more glassy players can unload in peace…yeah sounds great on paper, and sometimes in practice too like those lupicus fights, where I regularly get comments from pugs about how it was their easiest lupi ever thanks to me hogging the aggro the entire fight. But in a game where no class is designed to be a dedicated tank, why make ONE player hold aggro the ENTIRE fight?

We only have two dodges. We can only evade/invulnerable/block so much. They do run out, and classes like necros which devs have allergic reactions to giving vigor are terrible aggro holders to begin with.

tl;dr – toughness needs to go way down on the aggro priority list, or just removed from it all together. Make aggro randomly rotate between players with a time limit. Or mob limit so no more than 5 of them chase a single player at a time. Anything, please.

Toughness yes yes. It adds up to armor with your armor defense. For each time you double your armor the enemies make only half the damage.

However tanking itself is not possible. I love to run with hybrid (berserk + soldier) so my toughness is generally higher and it does indeed help. It’s really useful but often makes enemies attack you instead. if someone else is able to take aggro from you it’s ok again however. But keep in mind that toughness is useless against any condition damage.

ddoi.9264:

tl;dr – toughness needs to go way down on the aggro priority list, or just removed from it all together. Make aggro randomly rotate between players with a time limit. Or mob limit so no more than 5 of them chase a single player at a time. Anything, please.

Quoted only the tl;dr, because your two posts are too long to quote, but I read it all.

What I don’t understand is, you are gearing yourself like a tank, and asking not to be one. What would be the purpose of having high armor and not being focused?

Now, don’t misunderstand me, I am not one of those “zerkers only” player, I simply don’t understand the concept of gearing towards a play style, and then complaining about the results.

Sacrai.6280:

What I don’t understand is, you are gearing yourself like a tank, and asking not to be one. What would be the purpose of having high armor and not being focused?

Now, don’t misunderstand me, I am not one of those “zerkers only” player, I simply don’t understand the concept of gearing towards a play style, and then complaining about the results.

No problem, it’s a good question.

The thing is, some of these characters I have are not ‘geared to be a tank’ but reach that level of armor just through traits alone and a few pieces of knights/soldier’s gear. My guard for example uses soldier’s armor and amulet but everything else is berserker’s, including weapons and all upgrade slots. I’d say it’s more of a offensively balanced gear than tanky. I used to gear all berserker for it but I discovered I held the aggro all the time even then, so I thought I might as well not be a squishy guard and added some toughness.

Then there are situations where I will get the aggro anyway – i.e, when I’m running solo and being tanky geared is beneficial, and these are not the instances I’m complaining about.

Other purposes of having high armor yet not being focused is good is when fighting bosses with lots of aoe – Twilight Arbor Nightmare Vines, Lupicus with its inaccurate aoe circles, or maybe I want to melee a boss with cleaving attacks.

Ultimately the point I’m getting at is that toughness is supposed to be stat that increases your survivability but in affect it decreases it by punishing you with aggro. There is no way to drop aggro except running far enough to go out of combat in this game, and once you have it enemies rarely switch. It’s not a playstyle issue, it’s a design flaw.

I don’t mind tanking some of the time, or maybe even most of the time. But I can’t tank ALL of the time.

Sacrai.6280:

What I don’t understand is, you are gearing yourself like a tank, and asking not to be one. What would be the purpose of having high armor and not being focused?

I can answer that one – because the concept of tank is not supposed to exist in this game. Toughness is just a survivability trait, not a dedicated bunker stat.

I agree with the general feeling on this one. Toughness shouldn’t attract aggro. Especially since there seems to be no way to dump it. Once focussed, it seems nothing will shake them off.
Every time I run past guards in WvW, even when I’m in a group and dodging furiously, I’m first choice for the bolas immobility. I’m only an Ele, yet Guardians and Warriors seem to stroll past untouched.

Contiguous.1345:

Sacrai.6280:

What I don’t understand is, you are gearing yourself like a tank, and asking not to be one. What would be the purpose of having high armor and not being focused?

I can answer that one – because the concept of tank is not supposed to exist in this game. Toughness is just a survivability trait, not a dedicated bunker stat.

I knew using that word would trigger those kind of reactions but english is not my native language and I couldn’t find any other at the time I wrote this. What I mean is that I didn’t see any usefulness in gearing towards being the one with the most survivability capacities in your group and willing to keep those capacities to yourself.

Though I certainly see your points and find them valid, I feel like toughness (or armor) should play a part in the way aggro works. I do believe though that aggro should be droppable in some way, which is mainly what you lack. I don’t think the game would be that enjoyable if aggro was mainly random or based purely on DPS.

It sounds like the problem people are having with toughness is not the fact that it gives aggro, but that once you have that aggro the game mechanics don’t allow you to effectively “tank” the mobs. So there’s a problem of having the tank’s aggro mechanics without his survivability.

This is a reasonable concern, especially for professions like the Necromancer, whose condition builds usually call for Toughness. It’s difficult to solve this problem because there are no other sensible solutions to aggro. Mobs running from player to player is dumb. Where do you go from here?

-Does building toughness punish you?

-Yes the default aggro system is really terrible.
The wiki data is just wrong.

Not only berserker is OP but this system makes sure that it’s safe.
The game would be much more balanced and interesting if aggro was solely based on damage dealt (and conditions).

However I like the different aggro systems specific to some mobs.
That’s a very good idea.

Are you the first person to attack the boss? From personal experience, enemies ALWAYS attack the first person to attack them above all preferences. (For this reason, I never attack a Champion/Legendary first if at all possible.) This preference sticks to you even after you’ve been downed, although I’m not sure if death resets it.

In some games aggro is a science, in GW2 it’s a mess.

Logically we should be able to “build” aggro on a mob: the more you damage it, the more it hates you.

Well I just soloed an Eye of Zhaitan, it’s a very long fight, I dealt all the damage to it. At about 2% of its life two players passed by and attacked it; one of them got instantly the aggro and died.
I was there, attacking the eye and it preferred to aggro the newcomer.
That’s a typical GW2 aggro mess.

Actually aggro should depend on the intelligence of the mob.

An intelligent mob attacks the player with least armor but highest damage.
An unintelligent mob (e.g. Zhaitans servants) attack the players with the highest damage ignoring the armor.

If I were an foe I would always attack the player that dies fast but does too much damage.

If such changes were to be made, the whole meta game would need adapting. I’d like this to happen, I’m tired of the “DPS is all you need” trend.

GreenNekoHaunt.8527:

Actually aggro should depend on the intelligence of the mob.

An intelligent mob attacks the player with least armor but highest damage.
An unintelligent mob (e.g. Zhaitans servants) attack the players with the highest damage ignoring the armor.

If I were an foe I would always attack the player that dies fast but does too much damage.

It’s a good start, but it’d be better if the mob wasn’t assumed to be always perfect. They might go for the nearest guy, thinking it’ll be too hard to get to the guy further away who’s a “better” target for cutting the damage. Healers are always a good priority. Anyone stabbing you in the back pretty much always needs dealing with (they’d be doing a potload of damage). If the damage source is non-obvious (depends on the casting paradigm, and positioning of the caster).

Unintelligent mobs should only take into account the last few seconds of the fight; they only really care what’s happening to them right now and won’t pick on healers/ressers.

Just some opinions, based on many years of “monstering” for LARP.