Guild Wars 2

I have been playing my guardian since day -3, and I have NEVER lost agro in dungeons except 2 times which I lost agro to ANOTHER guardian in the group. And of course when I died but those don’t count.

Why is it that I am ALWAYS getting the agro of ALL the monsters in the dungeon? small mobs, normal, purple, bosses, ETC… they all agro me…

I only ask this because I really wondering WTF is going on

This is total speculation and may have no accuracy at all:

Healing in most MMOs generates large aggro, and I suspect Guild Wars 2 is no different. If that’s true, maybe our Virtue of Resolve is constantly increasing our aggro.

I dunno. Aggro formulas in this game seem more complex than a simple damage/healing done factor; but I have no idea what all factors into it.

Guardian has extremely high DPS in general and most of it is AOE, and there may be extra aggro drawn due to all the healing and armor you’ll be doing. No one really knows the aggro formula though.

Also don’t forget that with a guardian you’ll usually be parked at the front of the group tanking all the hits, so unlike the other professions, which will be losing aggro regularly as they kite and roll around, once aggro is on you it will be there to stay.

Also, mob aggro in general LOVES thieves. I have no idea why.

I agree something is up. Take the supervisor at supply camps is WvW. These guys are glued to me. They’re +10 players pounding on him, and he will chase me none stop. I’m not even attacking him.

Aggro is decided (mostly) by damage and proximity. Guardians generally stay close and do good amounts of damage. Other factors that may decide aggro are also present in the Guardian, like granting boons or providing healing.

From what I understand, 3 main things that affect aggro at least for general mobs (some have special aggro mechanics like going after revivers):
1. Proximity
2. Squishiness (there is a tendency for enemy to go after characters with low armor/hp)
3. Damage output

So if you build a melee glass cannon guardian, you should be able to keep aggro a lot. Bunker Guardian sometimes have a harder time.

I have no idea but I ALWAYS have the guild claiming person in supply camps running after me when I’m taking it with a few others. ALWAYS.

And I thought I was the only one!

We ran AC yesterday and I was the one always aggro’d. Not that I hate it, but it’s annoying to use heal early on fights. lol

But it feels I’m saving the group. :p

Damage output is huge. I can tell you I never have any aggro on my necro until I spread 25 stacks of bleeding to everyone. Mobs will stop and run towards me, lol.

No your not the only one,

I am always so reticent to post anything like this on these forums because normally the only answer you get is a rude one, telling you how you cant play. and to go back to wow if you want it to be different.

So seeing as someone else has started this…

HELL YES! (and I have watched this carefully for a weeks or so now, heres my ‘findings?’

Based on Guardian with full exotic (including weapon) and (2 warriors 1 guardian 1 mesmer and a thief in this particular group – the 2 warriors are also fully exotic’d up and the thief is 3/4 done (my wife))

I am doing dungeons every night with my guild and I have noticed MANY (and I mean MANY times) that the mobs hone in on my guardian and stay there until i’m dead. In nearly everyone of these instances the rest of the group members are almost all full health.

I decided to try some alternate ways of fighting, to watch the outcome (I knew I should of video’d this.. was thinking it at the time!)

I use a 2 hander, and a scepter/shield combo.

I waited for one of our warriors to pull, I then stood back for a good 8/10 seconds. Maybe longer, I didn’t have a stopwatch on! Then I started to attack with my scepter, my thinking here was that if I do LOW damage (which the scepter does compared to the warriors thief and mesmer) then theres no way I should pull aggro.

Wrong, I pulled it after about 3 hits on the mob. At this point I had done NOTHING else. The mobs that came after me were the others – not the target, incidentally. I kept attacking with the scepter (the original target) and tried to get the other mobs caught up in AOE’s from the others, so the aggro would swap, and I could be more useful. I quickly ran out of evades of course, and because healing draws the main target also, I was quickly dead.

This above example was accurate many times in the same night, I tested over and over (the dungeon incidentally was Citadel of Flame – Story Mode)

Another example that I tested a fair few times was the explorable mode of caudecus’s manor. The 2nd storyline, and often touted as the hardest of the 3. The infiniately spawning mobs caused us much problem, because we were coming at them from the top path (not knowing about the barrels at this time)

However, this game me a LOT of fights to try different things on.

Simply casting Hold the line, stand your ground, or any other shout seems to pull aggro IMMEDIATELY.

Heals – dependant on how long you leave the casting of heals sometimes you can get away with 1, but never a 2nd.

Our AOE attacks draw immediate aggro too, if used too early in a fight.

I have also noticed that the guardian simply cant melee mobs, in almost all incidences the guardian plays range (which frankly is poor) and support (which draws amazing amounts of agro)

Now, before the flaming starts here!

I know how to deal with agro, I have many, many years of experience in managing it in MMO’s and I also know that GW2 is supposed to be different in this respect, but however its looked at the principles are the same… Stay out of a fight for a while, let the warriors or ‘fronlline’ build some aggro then your less likely to take it.

Or thats how it should work.

In the case of a guardian (and I’m suprised more havn’t come forward saying this) it simply does not work that way.

We pull aggro VERY easily, and we cant loose it after, not until we are a squishy mess. This is not fun, and it is NOT playstyle, I assure you. It seems to me, that guardians are indeed singled out by mobs.

Maybe this needs to be looked at, maybe not.. But my personal experience is as above, and its not altogether fun, when no one else dies and you die repeatedly during a dungeon run. For a smile heres an actual conversation we had at my expence (remembering of course how useless the members of Destiny’s edge are in dungeons)

Member 1: Hey Art, you look almost exactly like Logan!
Member 2: Haha, you could be his brother!
Member 3: Yeah he even spends most of his time on his back like you too!

lol..

Do I suck, or is there something in what this thread is saying?

I see it too. When I do dungeons sometimes aggro bounces around. But once I do get it, the mobs are on me like white on rice and won`t relent until I`m dead. Like the last part of AC when you guard the charr thats rebuilding the cannons. Every single time when the warriors,necros,and rangers spawn they all shoot straight for me and then I get chain crippled, shot with arrows, chain feared and whatever else they do until I`m dead. Can only heal and dodge so much before they finally get me.

Another good example is the last boss in hotw that summons all the jellyfish. I won`t even be attacking the boss and I get hit with sunken rock everytime it refreshes and have like 20 jellyfish chasing after me. Meanwhile everyone else in the group is killing everything but the mobs are glued to me and will not relent.

Me too.

I’ve taken to running an all toughness build for this very reason. Regardless of what I do, I’m gonna pull the aggro in a group/raid, so I just hedge my bets with more dmg reduction. Sucks. If they are going to make me a tank, then give me tank skills.

One of the factors influencing aggro in GW1 was health. After someone soaked a death, they would have -15% max health until they worked it off. This would make that player a target… and they would often be at -30% soon. Repeat.

It makes sense that a mob tries to kill the player which has the greatest threat/difficulty ratio. The low natural health of a guardian (easy to kill) and proximity (you’re in melee range) can help support this. Healing also makes the guardian a threat, which also reinforces the behavior.

What I love is when I run past a player fighting two mobs on Orr, and his ‘spare’ mob suddenly peels off and charges after me. I didn’t even get within 15 feet of it!

Yeah, Guardians for some reason just have a huge amount of implicit threat.

It appears that the probability a mob will aggro onto you is related to your armor (toughness?) value in some way. ie. higher armor = more aggro. This has let my dungeon group cheese many fights because i can often kite over half the mobs even while doing ZERO damage to them besides an occasional tagging shot.

It is unlikely that it is related to health pool or damage, thieves do not get mobbed in the same way, and the only non-guardians getting much aggro off me are also running toughness builds. Some mobs do, however, choose one target and stick with them til they are dead or downed.

In the past I have heard that people have heard that the devs made guardians specifically get more aggro than other professions, but I don’t have any confirmation.

Sidenote: I find this to be a rather elegant solution for the ‘tanking’ role. It lets players who build toughness make use of it, and takes away the need to micromanage a hate list just to be effective. Doesn’t make a lot of sense as far as AI goes though

ens.9854:

Doesn’t make a lot of sense as far as AI goes though

Mobs take stacking toughness as a personal challenge to their ability to break through it.

“Tough guy, eh?”