Guild Wars 2

as title says how does aggro work in this game

I’m not sure anyone knows exactly. After a point in the beta they changed it a bit (resulting in mobs hating anything classified as a turret).

From the guide:

AGGRO
Getting a monster’s attention is also known as getting aggro. This
is a more advanced game concept and is explained throughout
the guide. For a general idea, consider that your enemies
sometimes have multiple targets to attack. Will they go after you,
your guardian buddy, or someone else?
To decide this, enemies quickly think about which target is
closest to them, which one is infl icting the most damage, and
whether any opponents are trying to revive allies. If you want
monsters’ attention, move into close range and hit them hard.
To avoid aggro, let others get the fi rst hit, keep yourself at range,
and back away when something starts to run toward you. Give
your allies a chance to lure the monster’s attention back onto
themselves—or to kill the beast, slow it down, or otherwise delay
the enemy’s attack.

It seems that there is an aggro table. I’ve hammered on a champion (as a ranger) for a while while a group cleaned up other mobs, and then it was absolutely impossible for them to get the champion off of me. I’ve also pulled champions off of some of the melee characters in events that lasted a while. (Lucky for me rangers are pretty good at staying away from baddies)

Overall, while it appears there is some kind of aggro table, it doesn’t seem to matter if you have aggro if you’re good at playing your class.

Theoretically, yes, there are aggro priorities (proximity is supposed to be the biggest one).

In reality, people are reporting left and right that mobs do not follow those supposed priorities at all. Mobs running through other players to get to one player who barely does any damage, mobs avoiding pets to charge for the Ranger or Necromancer even though the Master has not done a single action, mobs beating one one player while ignoring the other four people beating on them, etc. etc.
So, either there are some hidden priorities we don’t know about, or aggro is buggy.

Yeah, but it seems aggro table is not so fixed as in some other MMO’s. This probably differs from encounter to encounter, because I’ve seen bosses picking targets on different way.

Hickeroar.9734:

It seems that there is an aggro table. I’ve hammered on a champion (as a ranger) for a while while a group cleaned up other mobs, and then it was absolutely impossible for them to get the champion off of me. I’ve also pulled champions off of some of the melee characters in events that lasted a while. (Lucky for me rangers are pretty good at staying away from baddies)

Overall, while it appears there is some kind of aggro table, it doesn’t seem to matter if you have aggro if you’re good at playing your class.

Oh yeah, the mobs definitely aren’t just randomly hitting people. And the best way to get their attention for an entire fight is to run in before anyone else and drop a huge nuke (e.g. I do this a lot on my d/d elementalist which results in me running around tanking for the rest of the fight).

Hickeroar.9734:

It seems that there is an aggro table. I’ve hammered on a champion (as a ranger) for a while while a group cleaned up other mobs, and then it was absolutely impossible for them to get the champion off of me. I’ve also pulled champions off of some of the melee characters in events that lasted a while. (Lucky for me rangers are pretty good at staying away from baddies)

Overall, while it appears there is some kind of aggro table, it doesn’t seem to matter if you have aggro if you’re good at playing your class.

this is what i was wondering i play a ranger to and i have the same problem my friends guardians, warriors cant pull the mobs off me i even let my pet attack first and they still attack me over them

Zoltar.2873:

Yeah, but it seems aggro table is not so fixed as in some other MMO’s. This probably differs from encounter to encounter, because I’ve seen bosses picking targets on different way.

This is exactly right. The various monsters/encounters don’t all follow the same standard formula for behavior; they can and will act very differently from one another. Some simply prioritize one thing over another. You can have a mob that will purposely focus on ranged targets more than melee, for example. If you’re counting on every mob following a set rule for aggro, that example can seem broken. But it’s not, it’s by design.

Mrpopo.4593:

this is what i was wondering i play a ranger to and i have the same problem my friends guardians, warriors cant pull the mobs off me i even let my pet attack first and they still attack me over them

Additionally, why having good defense if you can’t get beating, because mob constantly is concentrated on someone else. I know, I know, it can be useful in PvP, but lower damage output of certain more defensive builds doesn’t help. However if you add threat modifier on abilities, there you go; holy trinity kicks in.

No matter holy trinity or not, without threat modifiers your defense is waste of stats.

I’ve been in fights where I did a mix of damage through conditions, throwing up combo fields for other people to use, using my CC abilities on the boss, and quickly running over to revive any people who are fallen.
And the boss has quite often just suddenly turned to my character and really wanted him for a punching bag until dead.
One player even commented on what did I do to that thing to kitten it off so much. XD

The wiki seems to be in a state of confusion at the moment, the discussion section is worth visiting:

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

I’ve found you can break aggro by getting to a place that enemies can’t path to.
But they reset and begin healing and walking back to their normal location if nobody else is fighting them.

In WvW the camp guards won’t pursue you past a certain distance from the camp. So you can break it that way.

I think some mobs have different aggro priorities than others. Lesser monsters have a tendency to attack the closest player while others shift their priorities to the one that does the highest DPS, those who are the furthest away, or even those who are down and reviving those who are down. Champions and some Veterans are notorious for going after those who are in downed state.