Guild Wars 2

I’m starting to wonder if NPCs are somehow aware of rangers’ “while flanking” trait.

I can not for the life of me get beside or behind enemies in PvE to make this happen. They are always, ALWAYS facing me. I do serpent’s strike and watch as they perfectly pivot to track my movement.

Even in large world boss events (aside from static bosses like dragons) I get singled out from a medium zerg. I just came out of the champ centaur event where we had roughly 15-20 people attacking and the boss shot it’s projectiles at: [Me, me, me, me, someone else, me, me, me, someone else, someone else, me, me, me, me, me, me, someone else, me .etc]

Any one else running a zerker ranger finding yourself faced by bosses 70%+ of the time, if not more?

Is there something that I’m doing wrong (or right), or are npcs actually aware of my flanking trait?

Well I played with another ranger all last month who was Zerk… Kept pulling aggro from me pretty consistently even though I had 2x as much Toughness & Vitality as him. I dunno, but I never remember seeing Ele’s or Engineers doing this. Staff Guardians, yes, every time almost. But not most medium or light classes.

DarkWasp.7291:

Any one else running a zerker ranger finding yourself faced by bosses 70%+ of the time, if not more?

Yeps.. Noticed that also.. Even stranger though: If I keep in front of the enemy (with a ranged weapon), the boss will go for my pet. If I get on the side/back of the mob, it’ll turn to me as well.. That little increase in DPS due to our flanking trait can’t be the cause of that, right?

Tribio.8531:

DarkWasp.7291:

Any one else running a zerker ranger finding yourself faced by bosses 70%+ of the time, if not more?

Yeps.. Noticed that also.. Even stranger though: If I keep in front of the enemy (with a ranged weapon), the boss will go for my pet. If I get on the side/back of the mob, it’ll turn to me as well.. That little increase in DPS due to our flanking trait can’t be the cause of that, right?

It’s not the damage itself, the bosses prevent it from happening so they can’t even feel the effects.

I’m just thinking it’s something in the programming that says hey lets be a smart AI and not allow additional damage to be done to us.

Either that or something screwed up in the attempt to prevent pet aggro that always redirects to their masters.

I posed this question to Battosai as something to ask devs. Being a pvp podcast, it was never asked. I notice rangers frequently getting aggro. In particular, I often get the most in most dungeon runs I do.

Why might this be? I think others in the group secretly aggro leech by taking a few knights pieces. Bosses will focus mostly based on who’s doing the most DPS as well as who is closest. With melee sword berserker ranger, the boss will tend to focus you. Mobs will as well.

It’s penalizing against rangers in a few intangible ways. People see the ranger dying and assume rangers cannot melee because they’re too squishy. Compounding that, new players rarely properly use sword weapon evades while also being on autoattack so when they fail a few times they come to the forums assuming that “it can’t be my fault, this is ANET’s fault!”. When in reality, the ranger was doing so much damage that the boss focused him a lot. Not knowing how to use weapon evades, he died.

Also there’s the misconception that ranger lacks damage and therefore always needs full berserker and 30/30/0/0/10 when in reality you NEED fortifying bond and nature magic and spirits and a 20/25/0/25/0 build. The ranger is often afraid to take a knights piece or any vitality for fear of lack of damage.

The bias against pets and spirits also led to these misperceptions, as spirits were seen as too squishy and too little use while pets were kind of invisible: their damage numbers don’t appear in the combat log.

Thankfully this is changing. I don’t think there’s a bug, I just think you’re getting a ton of aggro because you’re up in the boss’s face and actively caving it in.

Not sure about the flanking thing, but I’ve noticed that when I aggro Risen, they always go for my pet first…until I fire off Barrage. Basically everything I hit makes a beeline for me. It’s less noticeable in a lower level PvE, but it’s there.

I’ve noticed that barrage is a massive agro magnet, also dungeons seem to attract everything.

It’s not just melee like I saw mentioned, certain mobs will always aggro a ranged attacker first if there is one too.

Manekk.6981:

It’s not just melee like I saw mentioned, certain mobs will always aggro a ranged attacker first if there is one too.

Yep, on the centaur boss I stopped meleeing and started using exclusively the LB. (Mainly because me entering melee range was getting me and everyone around me insta-downed)

I tried running away and back, stealthing and halting my attack. It still kept lobbing projectiles at me. Even if it stopped, all i had to d was land one weak hit and I was the target again. I also noticed this way in the past when I was in PVT gear and using bears.

Sandpit.3467:

I’ve noticed that barrage is a massive agro magnet, also dungeons seem to attract everything.

Well when Escorting the Pact to Balthazar, I actually count on this a great deal…
(by Standing far AWAY from the Pact redshirts so all the nobles Blink to me instead).

I’ve seen it pull aggro off Engineers too which is amazing. The only thing it can’t seem to pull aggro off is other rangers :p (and again: Staff Guardians)

Ya I always see mobs literally walk into my barrages. I believe they do the same for 100b but someone ought to check that. It looks like there’s code telling the baddies to get in our aoe and eat it. Whirling defense is another attack that pulls tons of aggro.

This is a problem I have noticed as well…aggro is definitely broken in this game. If someone is tanking a boss, that person should be able to get that boss to turn and move where they want them (bosses special abilities excluded, ie leap attacks etc)…but this just doesn’t happen, the boss is turning every which way trying to hit everyone…and as a ranger, with high dps, you happen to be the lovely target more frequently than others. I think the new hunters shot is suppose to help with this, but it’s not doing much at all…will be doing a post about that in a moment, come give your opinions.