Guild Wars 2

I’d really like to understand how the aggro works in this game, I’ve been playing for more than 3000 hours now and it’s still a mystery to me.
Ever since I started playing my engineer, geared in berserker gear like my other two characters, I keep being the first target of absolutely every ranged mob in dungeons.

For example, CM, the riflemen keep shooting me first EVEN when someone runs in first and aggro them, I was in range but didn’t even engage them.
The golem boss in CoE, the instant I’m the room, he stops attacking the npc and turns toward me for the rest of the fight.
I just did SE story to help some guildmates and guess what, Kudu, and his golems kept auto attacking me and me alone between their usual attacks, even the next golem boss was on me the whole time.

Fractals seem to be unaffected by this.

I could add a lot more examples but you got my point, the thing is that now I’m taking high risks if I don’t slot my toolkit or don’t go p/s and Elixir U for the reflects.
I’m supposed to be stacking might and dealing damage but right now I spend most of the fight blasting my waterfields and dodging around just to stay alive.

I’m not whining but i’d really like to understand, I’m cool with taking damage but this is way too much for just one guy to handle. People used to say mob prefer targets with high toughness/vitality/whatever and I can tell you it’s completely wrong.

I don’t think anyone has really figured out what triggers agro in this game. I noticed when my ranger had rare knights armor while in Orr he was an agro target for any champion. All he had to do was appear and they would break off from who they were fighting and chase him down. This stopped though when I got exotic knights armor. I suspect it has to be some combination of toughness and health that triggers it and maybe you have hit a ‘sweet spot’ for agro. Perhaps you can check by resetting your traits to give more toughness and/or vitality and see if it affects this. If it does you could keep the traits you want and change up your armor to get the reduced agro.

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

Lol, no one has figured it out?

SweetCream.8051:

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

Lol, no one has figured it out?

So using a shield makes me the main target of basically everything in dungeons?
That’s pretty kittening stupid, almost no one except engineers use shields.

from my experience, engaging first and doing most damage – especially aoe’s against group mobs – makes you #1 target, often to the point that mobs ignore other party members that are reviving someone

if its becoming a problem you can always disengage and cease attacks for a while, so that your party members can accumulate enough aggro to draw mobs away from you

also if you cannot handle whole mob groups aggro, you probably shouldn’t be the first one to burst them with aoe, even more so, if no one else in your group use aoe attacks

cannot confirm this, but i believe providing boons to allies while in mob range, also generates some aggro

SweetCream.8051:

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

Lol, no one has figured it out?

Then why did the champions turn away from the people fighting it and go after my Ranger who just appeared on the scene, completely ignoring all the other characters who were fighting it till it managed to chase him down and kill him? This happened repeatedly. All he had to do was show up to get unswerving agro. That site mentions toughness and he was wearing rare knights armor but the excessive agro stopped when I switched to exotic knights armor (with more toughness).

Saulius.8430:

from my experience, engaging first and doing most damage – especially aoe’s against group mobs – makes you #1 target, often to the point that mobs ignore other party members that are reviving someone

if its becoming a problem you can always disengage and cease attacks for a while, so that your party members can accumulate enough aggro to draw mobs away from you

also if you cannot handle whole mob groups aggro, you probably shouldn’t be the first one to burst them with aoe, even more so, if no one else in your group use aoe attacks

cannot confirm this, but i believe providing boons to allies while in mob range, also generates some aggro

I’m not even sure this game has that kind of aggro building system and distance between players and the mob only seems to affect some melee mobs. I can easily break from melee range against Kholer or the thief boss in CM but as soon as I go back to stack I get hit by their single target auto attacks again.

The problem is that aggro works different here on different mobs. For example on my Ranger i can most the time in the open World just start fighting and my pet grabs aggro fast. However there are some mobs like Arctodus, where i can even send my pet in first and don’t to any damage, and they directly run to me.

Mostly also high toughness should generate more aggro, however it has also been said that some mobs prefer players with low toughness or low health.

SweetCream.8051:

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

Lol, no one has figured it out?

Based on the fact that this was posted by a player on the week of release, I doubt its very reliable.

Based on the fact that wiki and devs all verified that different mob types and bosses have different aggro systems on a mob by mob bases, I doubt its very reliable.

Perhaps it is wiser to think for ones self and experience it rather then blindly assume that a wiki post by one player is fact. Many here appear to be confused about the difference between what a Wiki is and an Encyclopedia is. Especially if your going to add the “Lol” to a post.

This used to be a real problem for me on my Ele. when I first started WvW.

I had tons of Toughness and every time I went through an enemy gateway with my guild the Guards would instantly lock on me, let everyone else through and then beat me to a pulp.

Once I got confident enough to drop some of the armour, they decided to pick on somebody else.