Guild Wars 2

Orissa.1872:

I did some researches in 3 different dungeons:

Citadel of Flame:
Path 1 – average aggro
Path 2 – aggro from the final boss the most of time
Path 3 – aggro from the final boss a bit more often than other party members
I had rampager/weapon armor (all CoF runes) and cleric trinkets, using dual pistols (piercing shots), traits 0/30/30/10/0

Sorrow’s Embrace:
Path 1 – grabbing aggro from singularities almost all the time, golems in minefield are always pulling me first, final boss is focusing me all the time, unless I’m not attacking anymore
Path 2 – grabbing aggro from trash mobs the most of time, minor bosses tend to focus me a little more than the others, final golem bosses are targeting me over everyone else until I’m dying
Path 3 – same as above, on final boss stage the most of destroyers are chasing me, hard to take their aggro off me
I had rampager armor (3 CoF runes/3 SE runes) and cleric trinkets, dual pistols (piercing shots) and flamethrower, traits 0/30/30/10/0

Crucible of Eternity:
Path 2 – average aggro on trash mobs, subject alpha tends to imprison me in crystal more often than the others. The final boss (not counting 3rd subject fight) is poisoning and bleeding me much more than anyone else
I had rampager armor (3 CoF runes/3 SE runes) and cleric trinkets, dual pistols (piercing shots) and flamethrower through the first half of dungeon, traits 0/30/30/10/0

At least you’re being pretty specific here but this isn’t helpful if you guys really wanna figure out the aggro system. This might work a bit better:

Have a player, one that isn’t even involved in the dungeon, grab a couple stop watches. That player just watches the fights and starts and stops the stop watches whenever someone has aggro. They have to record how much time for each mob, not for whole encounters or whole dungeons, because we don’t know if the mechanics are the same for every mob. Then you run through the same exact dungeon in the same way again, recording the times again. Do this maybe 10-20 times (the more the better). At this point you probably have enough data to determine which class in the group pulls aggro on which mobs the most. But, this will not tell you anything about why.

The next step would be to go through the same exact process changing one variable (and only one) with whoever is getting the most aggro. The easiest would be a skill being used or a stat. This might also include changing general placement of that player (which would be difficult to be consistent with). Afterward, you’d have enough data to figure out if that particular variable made any difference in the level of aggro and on which mobs.

This is how you’d really get to the bottom of what’s going on. Until one of you decides to go through this, all you’re doing is tossing around subjective perceptions of what you think is going on. Even if you go into encounters with the idea of doing “research,” meaning you’re gonna pay extra attention to how much aggro you get, you have no measurements. It’s still a subjective impression from a test subject which is highly likely to be misleading.

Even at that, the only way you can label your discoveries as a problem is if you went through every single variable in this test (probably through hundreds of meticulously observed dungeon runs) and found that none of them changed the aggro level and that the engineer was always getting more aggro. Your conclusion at that point could be: “Engineers receive an inappropriate amount of aggro from all mobs based solely on the profession.” [Edit: Come to think of it. You still wouldn’t know if it’s the profession or the race at this point.] For all we know, some mobs might actually target particular professions more due to design even, so this has to happen across all mobs.

If no one is willing to do this, then all you can do is send in a bug report and let ANet figure out if you’re crazy or there’s something wrong with the code. A thread that tries to get consensus on subjective perceptions is not gonna help.

Someone hinted that some mobs have initial threat assessment. This probably applies as a threat multiplier to each player attacking it. You multiply the amount of damage or healing (always treated as crit by the mob: 2 x whatever healed) total and that is the total aggro you have on that mob.

Also there is one thing that people don’t take into account: Regen. Regen may seem like a subtle sort of healing you can get away with, but I think that it may apply the total amount of healing you can do initially on the monster’s aggro. So if you toss an Elixir H and it hits all 4 of your buddies, you just added 4 times the amount of healing aggro to you in one shot.

Another one that can be considered is removal of damaging conditions. If an intended damaging condition is removed, the remaining damage left on that condition could be added to your aggro as healing damage.

Just theorizing here. No guarantees.

Upon further reflection, I think it might have to do with our “persistence”. i.e. turrets, and long lasting buffs, and also the fact that entities in this game do not get removed when they are killed. For example, the various houses/caches are still hanging around and your turrets will still try to shoot them.

I think it is possible that the aggro never get reset on engy after some enemies die, so everything will spawn thinking “hey, that’s engy still has 10k aggro left on him since when I die last time”.

Maybe the matter is that supporting engineer tries to stay in the middle, between allies and mobs. I’m trying to catch everyone in AoE healing (both turret and super elixir) and sometimes toss elixir B. In addition to this throw minefield and burn mobs before retreating (ofc if mobs are moving around). My boyfriend is often qqing when I’m not doing dungeons with him, because random parties (without skilled support engi) don’t have a real tank like me, and everyone is getting wiped faster. They simply got lazy at dodging/healing while having me xD

Funny, I was running as engineer HotW path 2 with my guild mates, and most bosses were attacking me almost all the time, it was so annoying. Maybe it was the damage output, or because I have so much toughness (traited 30 in toughness and have knight’s armor/trinkets).

I really like the idea that mobs do an initial threat assessment, perhaps based on your capabilities to heal your party, remove conditions that the mob inflicts, remove boons that the mob “likes”, how tough you are, how persistent your AoE/heals/boons/condition-removers are, etc. I never played GW1, but from some of the posts, it seems that it was well-known that GW1 did similar things.

I do believe that if you don’t kill a boss, it does remember your aggro level, so if you get rezzed or run back to the fight it may go straight for you. That happened to me last night with a DE boss. (I’d also rezzed several NPCs who were also fighting the boss, and perhaps that counts against you as well.) Eventually, several players joined in the fight, but the boss was on me the entire time. (I was playing my Elementalist.)

I like a more sophisticated aggro system than WoW had, but there also has to be some understanding of aggro that would let us manage it. Unfortunately, if too much is known about aggro, players will find ways to abuse it and perhaps try to replicate the Trinity. Perhaps the devs are waiting a while to release some aggro information so that non-Trinity play styles get entrenched in the culture?

Now that some suggestions here have gotten me thinking about mob threat assessment, what factors might go into that?

1. Your role. Once you enter combat, you’re locked into the role you’ve adopted by the weapons and skills you’ve equipped (plus your traits), since they can’t be swapped in combat. So perhaps part of a mob’s initial threat assessment includes whether you’re DPS-ish, or heal-ish, or tank-ish. So an Elementalist with healing traits, a staff in water attunement, and with healing-ish utility skills might be classified as a healer.
2. Passive skills/traits that may be firing off even if you just stand there.
3. AoE skills.
4. Oppositional skills: lots of curing of conditions on a boss that depends on conditions, the ability to wipe boons off of bosses that depend on them, or the ability to reflect projectiles from bosses that use them a lot. That is, to what degree do your skills, gear, and traits allow you to thwart the boss.
5. The capability of setting up particular combos. Or the ability to self-combo particular combos. (For example, healing turret, explode healing turret for an AoE heal.)
6. Concentration/spread of trait points. Perhaps someone with 10/20/10/20/10 is viewed differently from someone with 30/30/10/0/0.
7. Level or upgrading of gear.
8. Fighting range versus boss’s preferred fighting range. So if you go in with a rifle and the boss prefers melee, it may be tempted to run after you to close the gap, but if you’re melee and the boss prefers to fight at range the opposite happens.
9. Your character’s character. (Or whatever you call that 3-way reputational thing you can roll over in the top right of your hero panel.) Perhaps if you’re fierce, you’ll have a higher priority.
10. Your burst capability. Depending on skills, equipped weapons, and traits, you may have a high burst capability and perhaps the boss wants to take you out early and not give you the chance to burst them down once they’re wounded.
11. Your damage type: fire-prone mobs may prioritize players who can dish out a lot of fire damage. (I know some mobs are, say, immune to poison, but don’t know if mobs can be prone to particular types.)

Bumping this on the matter of aggro.

From running a bunch of dungeons on explorable mode i, and my friend, have noticed a trend.

When someone goes down, mobs tend to deaggro on that person and chase after someone that isnt downed yet.
When i go down (on my Engineer) they keep aggro, infact its not uncommon it even attracts mobs i didnt have aggro on to come stomp on me while im down.

Just did AC exp. And for the sake of it, i kept track. Not a single time did mobs drop aggro on me when i went down, on many occasions mobs would even switch from someone else to me when i went down.
No one else seemed to have this problem, and for as far as i could keep track of other people when they went down almost always mobs would deaggro and run to someone else.

This situation makes it very difficult to rally once i get downed because i take much more damage, causing rezzing to be much slower. And ofcourse, i’d die much faster. I got downed no more then anyone else did, but i died several times more often.

I definitely agree that engineers seem to be aggro grabbers. Originally I thought it was because I was running a grenadier build, and a grenade engineer does extremely high AoE damage, and also stacks chill and vulnerability frequently. As a grenadier it makes sense that mobs will go for you, since you are probably doing more damage than anyone else.

But then I changed over to a strictly rifle and support build, and I still draw a ton of aggro. Even when I’m not attacking, enemies will go straight for me more than my other teammates in dungeons. There do seem to be exceptions to this, as while most enemies and a lot of bosses will target the engineer almost exlusively, there are several bosses that just seem to ignore you completely.

I suppose one of the better examples was a HotW story mode run I did with a team a few days ago. We were at that boss that stood in the center of the room and had a nasty knockback to anyone who got close to him. There were many pillars littered about that room. Now, I was the primary tank in that team (two elementalists, two mesmers, and me the engineer), so I had been taking aggro the whole time. Eventually because I needed to heal I stood behind a pillar to avoid his attacks when something interesting happened: the boss quit fighting. Instead, the boss just stood there, staring at my location behind a pillar, and refusing to do anything while my teammates pounded on him. For a solid 30 seconds I was behind that pillar just waiting for him to turn around and attack someone, but instead he just stared at me and waited. And then… he died.

I suppose the best thing about being the aggro drawer is that, if you realize that you are captain aggro, then there is a large degree of control and planning that can go into it. One of my favorite tactics is one I call the reverse death waltz: two teammates stand on your left and right with the engineer in the center. Draw the attention of the group, and then as they run toward you throw the freeze grenade right in their face. Then, you can walk backward throwing a ton of grenades in their face, while your teammates all attack the enemy group from the side. Since there is very little danger of teammates getting aggro, then can run up and melee all out while the enemy group slowly follows you into a barrage of grenades. Doing this, you can kill some of the largest and hardest enemy groups in the game rather easily.

It also makes melee bosses really easy, too. Once you get one that won’t stop chasing you, you can use the net turret to keep layering immobilize on that boss, who will just stare at you while everyone else runs from behind and melees it. Throw in many of the knockback abilities and a few defensive abilities like gear shield and elixir S, kiting a boss can get pretty easy. I’ve built my engineer to be durable just because of this aggro issue, and my teammates thank me for it.

I was reminded of this thread when running the Mad King dungeon. I did it with the same group 4 times and in every run all the “Mad King Says” targeted the only engineer in the group and no one else.

Something is going on.

For example, the swimming final boss in HoTw (not the one with the exploding jellyfish, the one that is alone) pretty much only targeted me. In fact, he only targeted me. Ever. I never lost aggro and ended up swimming in circles over and over again, tapping 1 and throwing grenades over my shoulder.

Never lost aggro. Never did anything else. What was funnier is that I didn’t even attack first, yet he came for me right away. And never left.

Another boss that did the very same thing was the ghost in route 1 of FOE. Just stuck on me right away, never left. It was annoying because I wasn’t supposed to keep it busy, and I never even touched it. Yet it remained on me, and the warrior couldn’t snatch it off. So I just left the room and let it whack me while the warrior went for the acolytes instead.

Or take Arah, Mursaat path. The fourth boss only shot me unless I was downed by the endless barrages. It got a bit silly kiting her for a large part of the fight.

I do not think the cause of this is engineer-specific aggro, however. It may be a combination of factors.
-I wear toughness/vitality gear
-I run a support spec
-I tend to revive people a lot (revive elixir)

Notice that most of the bosses where this happened to me are very late in the run. What if aggro is determined not only specific to the boss, but is also affected by how you played so far? It might simply tally up contribution so far in the run, and add a flat “aggro” value to the boss at the beginning of the fight based on that.

i grab aggro all the time as engineer but i put out 1/4 the damage of the rest of the party because im built tanky. I think aggro goes through these checks to determine aggro, but i could be wrong.

Proximity- within certain range of the boss. Pretty sure its only and A or B thing like, you are with A range or B range. So just because someone is standing on top of the boss, it doesnt mean they get more aggro. If you are close to medium its the same amount. If you are farther than medium, you get less aggro.
Frequency of hits- How fast you hit the enemy. Flamethrower does 10 per 1 skill. Thats a lot of hits
Damage- How much you do, third on the list, so not as important as the first 2.
Using a Shield- Using a shield

Im not sure if this is correct by any means, but I playing my engineer over 250 hours ive decided this is why i get aggro a lot. Warriors also get a lot of aggro because of the proximity and hundred blades/5 skill for axes.

I would be interested to see if someone could test this theory out.