Guild Wars 2

Heyo! I’ve been watching some of the higher level PvE content recently, and I’ve noticed that most rangers worth their salt are able to send their pet in to draw an enemy’s aggro, allowing the ranger to rotate behind the enemy and do loads of damage with no fear of counterattack. I’ve been trying to get this to work myself, but for some reason, my pets don’t seem to hold aggro for me particularly well, especially in melee combat. I open up with Hunter’s Shot for the invis and pet swiftness, and when my pet starts attacking, I rotate around behind the enemy and start swording them. As soon as I start attacking however, the mob drops aggro on my pet and starts going for me instead. Is there something I’m doing wrong? I’m running a Fern Hound and Jungle Stalker, for reference.

There is no set way to gain aggro in gw2. However, it helps to have your pet attack first. Try using the F1 pet command to send your pet in, let it attack a few times and then begin to take it down yourself.

It works best for distraction though. Say you want to commune with a skill point next to a champion. Just send your pet in, don’t attack yourself and get the skill point.

The solution is to have as many bears as possible, and stay in 1.5k range use 1111111.

Seriously though. Agro is decided by two primary things. Toughness-vit values and proximity.

As long as you have a pet with high toughess/vit (id seriously reccomend a drake NOT a bear) in close range of the target the target will go after that pet 90% of the time.

The other 10 percent of hte time is when you have similar toughness-vit value to your pet. Meaning your both equally good targets in hsi eyes. In this case hes gonna go running after you. The way to avoid this is with the second of the two things I mentioned. Proximity.

This works in two ways. Distance and the ease of crossing that distance.

If theres 600 range between you and the target odds are he will still come after you. But if theres 800 range odds are hel go after the pet. But thats not a set thing because you can influence it.

Cripple is the way to do it. A crippled mob prioitizes nearby targets. Even if that target isn’t an “agro magnet” Because it would take too long for the mob to reach the more attractive ranged target.

Certain mobs have exceptions. Some bosses seem to have unique agro mechanics (lupicus is a good example of this…as he tends to “fixate” on a target and focus on him until his phase shift…certain mordrem have also been known to prioritize fruther targets for there special abilities)

It very much is possible to manipulate agro in this game. It just takes a bit more experience to learn how. And its possible to glass burst most encounters in the game ANYWAY so no one has bothered to ever really learn how.

Edit: Do not use this logic in Orr in general. The mobs there seem to prioritize weakened targets. Especially in the dungeon paths there known to swarm downed or injured players ignoring the rest of the group.

One thing to add is that enemies will sometimes attack you if you are doing vastly more damage than your pet. They will go out of their way to attack you even if your farther away.

Also, some enemies (like Risen) will almost always go after players and not pets, and there’s little you can do about it.