Guild Wars 2

As an Engineer in PvE, does anyone else feel like they have a giant target on their heads for boss fights? Anytime we get to a boss fight it is always my Engineer that gets targeted the most.

Learn to take it in stride, As an engineer you do lots of stuff even if you dont mean to. Enemies hate diffrent things, I can tell you though, dont be the first one to fight them. As that seems to be a HUGE factor as for who they wanna fight. If you are running a dps build, let the tankiest dude smack them first so he can keep aggro. If running turrets, bosses just kill those cause they hate them. And if you are running EiB/Elixer gun, take it in stride and tank like a boss.

this is assuming you are running dungeons in a non stacking manner, I dont stack sooooo, I dont know what to do in that kinda situation, from waht I know it shouldnt matter if you down when stacked anyways.

I certainly seem to recall getting what seemed like an absurd amount of aggro on my Turret Engineer; there were times when I would kite bosses back and forth, frantically trying to avoid their attacks, and times when I would be the bosses’ sole target until I went down…and resume being their sole target when I got back on my feet. Things got downright creepy when I ran Ascalonian Catacombs – groups of enemies would split off of fighting my allies to converge on me.

And that’s why I’ve gone bunker.

There are at least 3 things that I know of that make Engies somewhat more aggro-prone than other professions.

Engineer carry shields, this alone is enough to enrage Gaheron in CoF, I have had to tank this fight using toolkit, since when you have a shield, the bosses “see” it even when you are in kits.

Permanent Burning, believe it or not, is as much an engineer thing as it is a guardian thing, and this drives certain bosses, like the Troll in HotW completely insane. If you drop the first burn from range (as engies are a ranged class), it belongs to you for the remainder of the fight.

Straight up toughness rating (which is added to with shield), since Engineers have a few good traits in that line, or choose to use some toughness in their build for whatever reason, engies will often have more toughness than other members of the party, this isn’t armor rating, by the way, since heavies would get more aggro (and should) this is compensating for not having heavy armor in some cases. This kills the engineer.

Source: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Aggro#Gaining_and_losing_aggro

I will say that it certainly seems like on my engineer that I pull aggro 90% of the time. I know it’s not my damage as I generally run FT (judge all you want, I love it — even though it’s not optimal, it’s still respectable with the right traits and sigils). Best I can tell, bosses tend to prefer beating on meat shields (high toughness and vitality), which is fine as engineers have utilities/traits that allow them to take a pretty stiff beating for a pretty substantial period of time.

Edit: If you need to dump aggro, I’d recommend using Elixer S — the toolbelt skill grants stealth and as a utility can be a decent panic button. You can also use flame turret’s smoke screen and immediately detonate it for area stealth. Both decent dumps depending on how your build is aimed.