Guild Wars 2

Am I absolutely crazy, or has there been some changes to threat mechanics since June 26th?

Before June 26th, I’d be in a group for Arah with 1 mesmer, a guardian, and 2 warriors, and Lupi would hardly ever target me, in fact I didn’t even know about his single target life drain, because I’d never been hit by it. Nowadays, he focus fires me, every single single target life drain, every single shadow walk, every single single target protectile is aimed at me. I get completely exhausted of all options to avoid. mist form, arcane shield, dodges, sigil of energy, burning retreat, magnetic aura (when target is a projectile), and then I’m getting hit when I have no evasive options left, and he’s STILL targetting me.

The only time he was NOT targetting me, is when there’s a second elementalist.

This same thing seems to happen in the volcano fractal final boss, with the flame arrows. 100% of them are shot at me unless there’s a second elementalist.

These aggro mechanics seem to be flat out broken. I’m not using a shield, I don’t have highest toughness, I guarantee I’m not doing highest damage when I’m having to focus so much of my attention on avoiding every attack, and I’m not the closest in proximity, nor the furthest away. I’ve tried full soldier’s gear, I’ve tried full dps gear.

as far as I know, Eles aren’t intended to tank, they don’t have heavy armor, have the worst base health in the game, and don’t have as many blocks as a guardian, nor as many evades as a ranger or thief or mesmer.

It actually kind of makes me miss holy trinity, where at least the person who consistently got aggro was built for it.

Don’t expect that the mobs will decide not to hit you just because you have low hp or defence …

Zelyhn.8069:

Don’t expect that the mobs will decide not to hit you just because you have low hp or defence …

I said, I’ve tried swapping gear, I always have 30 points in water, I had 20 points in earth, with full soldier gear, that’s about as much defense as elementalist can get. I had more hp than the full zerker mesmer. Ele still took aggro.

Besides, one of the major points in the manifesto of this game was because there was no holy trinity, aggro was going to be shared by group members, rather than having one person who has all the aggro.

That’s precisely my point. Your gear does not define your aggro (only to some extent).

Lupi was always targetting me with his life drain with glass build.

Zelyhn.8069:

That’s precisely my point. Your gear does not define your aggro (only to some extent).

What I’m trying to say was your theory thakittens targeting the lowest health/lowest armor was not it, as with a gear swap I had more health and more armor than a mesmer in the group.

The aggro should not be focused on one person, you simply run out of ways to avoid damage if every single attack is aimed at you.

I have expressed no such theory.

Quite often some mobs and bosses like to focus on one player until he is downed. For GL this depends on the phase (I doubt you get focused in P1), etc. This is not true for most mobs, and usually CCing them resets their aggro, etc. It is all dependent on the script of the mobs!

So other people have noticed this too, and say their support guardians have to spend a ridiculous amount of their time dedicated just to keeping their elementalist up, so they stopped bringing the elementalist.

Apparently that’s the solution, stop playing your ele in Arah.

Cause that’s what I’m doing too.

Thanks Anet.

Are you using fire fields?

Generally I seem to have noticed a greater agro radius and mobs will chase far longer, but not always lol. So yes, it certainly seems something has been tweaked. It’s just a feeling. I have no proof.

Actually, I share this feeling with you my friend. Every time I run CoE P1, the Mark T-B34RC3 advanced golem cant help but only target me. Even by standing behind a wall it still tried to target me. But this is also only limited to this dungeon, I’ve never had this happen anywhere else

I think it could just be coincidence.

I do happen to know that the Champion Wasp Queen in Queensdale bears a massive grudge against me. She could be mobbed by 1000s of allied players, but she will ultimately make a bee line for me and with every ounce of her being, aim to destroy me. I tend to be standing the furthest away and she still comes at me. Every time. Without fail :’(

I have noticed this too. There seems to have been a change in the aggro system. A few months ago mobs seemed to aggro more reliably on characters with high stat defenses. Now it seems just completely random. There’s basically zero reason to have an “Anchor” (a character with high stat defenses while the other four use full Berserkers) in your dungeon group now.

Maybe it is the staff? When I use a staff, the Fire Shaman world boss ALWAYS go for me and only me.

Avatara.1042:

Maybe it is the staff? When I use a staff, the Fire Shaman world boss ALWAYS go for me and only me.

Im guessing you are refering to the boss in the Fractals? I was in there last night with a staff and he ignored me enough I never had to worry. Only the occasional hit. Go figure.

Baladir.2736:

Avatara.1042:

Maybe it is the staff? When I use a staff, the Fire Shaman world boss ALWAYS go for me and only me.

Im guessing you are refering to the boss in the Fractals? I was in there last night with a staff and he ignored me enough I never had to worry. Only the occasional hit. Go figure.

Nope. The outdoor world boss who gives the bonus chest. He is in the Iron Marches.

I noticed this in the last couple of days in WvW. At every camp, no matter the size of the party, the Guild Claimer makes a bee-line for my ele. I had out party cracking by kiting the claimer around (it had righteous indignation) calling out “ring around the rosy” and messing with it while it was invuln. But still, I have been using 2 builds: 1 heavy in air, 1 heavy in earth with soldier’s/celestial gear so it is pretty balanced.

Neko.9021:

I have noticed this too. There seems to have been a change in the aggro system. A few months ago mobs seemed to aggro more reliably on characters with high stat defenses. Now it seems just completely random. There’s basically zero reason to have an “Anchor” (a character with high stat defenses while the other four use full Berserkers) in your dungeon group now.

Are you completely positive about this? I have not noticed such change, but that is likely because I have stopped reliably playing with a good anchor.

Baladir.2736:

Avatara.1042:

Maybe it is the staff? When I use a staff, the Fire Shaman world boss ALWAYS go for me and only me.

Im guessing you are refering to the boss in the Fractals? I was in there last night with a staff and he ignored me enough I never had to worry. Only the occasional hit. Go figure.

I run staff ele and I was noticing the grawl shaman targetted me with nearly every fire arrow, I did a couple runs, one with full zerker gear, 1 with full soldier gear and 1 mixed. Didn’t seem to matter. When there were 2 eles, the aggro split better, or if I knew for sure a mesmer was full zerker gear I could wear full soldier’s and the aggro wouldn’t all be on me.

It seems that a couple boss mobs such as Lupi and the shaman have had their aggro tweaked to where it targets lowest health exclusively. Even in Soldier’s gear an elementalist will be fairly low health compared to warriors and mesmers.

Personally I think it’s a bad aggro system. Proximity should be considered, as then the same person won’t ALWAYS be the same distance away.

Focusing on one target goes against the mechanics the game was supposed to have where everyone would split aggro and everyone would have to avoid damage.

If only one person has to avoid damage it’s tanking… just.. using the squishiest character as the tank.

Either way.

I retired my ele from PVE for awhile unless this changes.

about 12 players fighting Champion Ketsurak in Lawen Ponds. i’m the only ele (staff) and i’m the only one at range. everyone else was at melee

i was the only one the champion ran after and ultimately died.

i thought maybe i was doing too much damage (which should be impossible since was running buff/support, yes i’m too lazy to swap specs), so i respawn and watch a guardian being chased by it. i throw out Fireball (nothing else but the #1 fire auto attack) and the champion runs directly to me again, ignoring ~5 GS warriors hitting it at full force

later on i just watched everyone else fight it with 3 longbow rangers and a guardian with sceptre/focus jumping in later

Edit: now that i think about it, i might have ended up as the anchor during the fight, not sure how much defence everyone else had.

Hello. I can actually relate to that. My main is an elementalist too and I play her the vast majority of time. I am full glass cannon berserker ele, and I always seem to be the target, even when I group with warriors who do a lot more damage than me. No matter the dungeon I go, CoE, Arah, Fractals. I have no clue how the aggro system works in this game, but apparently, it decides that the class with the worst armor and HP in the game should be the tank. =(

Sometimes I don’t get targeted if there is another elementalist in the party. Also, this have been happening for a while now for me. I don’t have the highest armor, nor the highest damage. What is causing all this aggro? I tried swapping gear thinking that maybe it was because I was the squishiest, then I compared stats with my friends who run dungeons with me and I am still almost always the target.

I main a AH based guard, she has 3300 armor so every time I run arah GL is evidently intoxicated by my fine fine norn behind. He will spectral walk, 100% of the time, without exception, to me and me only. And that’s fine generally the pugs I run with figure they will just stay away from me in p2, I focus on kiting and dodging while my group ranges GL happily from a distance.

Where I did see a difference is p3, when I still take some of the aggro but not all. He hits everyone at random it seems

This needs to get fixed. I just came from the Svanir fractal and the Ice Elemental was nailing me with lightning strikes and knockdowns every 3 seconds; same deal with the veterans. It was unbearable, I could barely heal and dodge fast enough to survive. I’ve played this very same fractal at least 100+ times and this has never happened to me. My group seemed entirely clueless to the fact that I was drawing all the aggro. This is truly broken and unfair. I hope the devs see this and fix it immediately. This can’t go on for 3+ months… My only char is an ele. What am I supposed to do until this gets settled? Stop playing in dungeons? They’re about to revamp the reward system…. PLEASE FIX THIS!

As far as I always knew, the MOB AI was built to attempt kills. It aimed for the lowest hit point, lowest toughness character, which was invariably the elementalist. I think we have all had those silly situations where we have had a champion mindlessly follow us round and round while an entire group of 20 players bashed it to death, unable to pull aggro from us as we kited it.

It’s daft really, as the characters who are naturally the toughest are the least likely to get attacked and thus have even better survivability than they should.

It’s also something to do with channeling. I`ve seen mobs immediately attack me as soon as I start to channel a spell , breaking off from other targets and even cancelling abilities in progress to stop my channel.

SilverUniverse.7103:

about 12 players fighting Champion Ketsurak in Lawen Ponds. i’m the only ele (staff) and i’m the only one at range. everyone else was at melee

i was the only one the champion ran after and ultimately died.

i thought maybe i was doing too much damage (which should be impossible since was running buff/support, yes i’m too lazy to swap specs), so i respawn and watch a guardian being chased by it. i throw out Fireball (nothing else but the #1 fire auto attack) and the champion runs directly to me again, ignoring ~5 GS warriors hitting it at full force

later on i just watched everyone else fight it with 3 longbow rangers and a guardian with sceptre/focus jumping in later

Edit: now that i think about it, i might have ended up as the anchor during the fight, not sure how much defence everyone else had.

Some bosses, npcs, favor ranged targets over melee. If you were the only ranged and he was targeting you…seems like a good time to get in melee range

Silver.4798:

I main a AH based guard, she has 3300 armor so every time I run arah GL is evidently intoxicated by my fine fine norn behind. He will spectral walk, 100% of the time, without exception, to me and me only. And that’s fine generally the pugs I run with figure they will just stay away from me in p2, I focus on kiting and dodging while my group ranges GL happily from a distance.

Where I did see a difference is p3, when I still take some of the aggro but not all. He hits everyone at random it seems

Did path 4 on my Ele finally just the other day, we did an experiment.

Full zerker guardian, and I was mostly zerker with a few pieces of valkyries and 1 piece of PVT in my back, so I had 1300 health more than he did.

He went for the guardian almost every time, unless I got hit by his big aoe or a tick of his aoe lifedrain, then he’d target me with the next attack, without fail.

So give it up to anet for making sure tha zerkers is the most useful stat combination for
E V E R Y T H I N G.

Even tanking, wear zerkers.

GG.