Guild Wars 2

One thing that I notice that is not explained very well is the initial aggro some pets have vs others. You see mention on the wiki which pets make good tanks and you can see a little bit about aggro, but there is very little on which pets actually hold aggro by design. There are a few forum posts with different theories and problems such as this post from a year ago and even farther back is this other post. There have been a number of changes since then.

After some testing, Canine, Porcine, Ursine and Devourer pets have a much higher aggro on initial engagement. You can test this by sending in a pet to attack (F1) and then standing right next to the target. If you send in a bird, cat, or other pet the mob will turn to attack you. I’ve used this tactic to kite various mobs around while my pet whittles down the mob while I run around, eventually kill off the mob. The pet never got aggro and all I had to do was move.

I also suspect that this doesn’t have anything to do with the initial “hit” as it does with the initial aggro itself. On several tests, the mob runs right past me and straight to my pet. I also have not tested every mob so some creatures may react differently. Dungeons also may behave separately.

What are your experiences with this? Does anyone have any extensive testing with pet aggro?

Well, if the NPC you are attacking is close enough to you, then he’ll come to you.. However, if you cripple and move backwards, they’ll turn their attention to your pet, since it would take them too long to get to you (and the AI decides to focus the pet then).

Just from my personal experiences (capping WvW camps and sentries, for instance)..

I actually just starting searching around for an answer, and I quite agree. I had a moa pet working, and the NPCs went right past her and came after me. When I put on a dog, I did not have that problem.

If I’m not mistaken, NPC’s will aggro on the target with the highest toughness. Devourers have the highest toughness of all our pets. Try running full Knight’s gear or something and see how often they aggro on you instead.

When I am testing builds in Heart of the Mists I often find that I can’t do it with my dog active because they will ALWAYS target the hound and ignore me, which kind of invalidates the point of testing the build. My bird however is always ignored in favor of me.

So it does seem the tankier pets can hold aggro better, which is pretty solid design really.

It was part of their initial design philosophy. The whole Damage, CC, Support model they were touting. The idea was that you would use CC to incentivize the AI to attack the tankier people/pets while support gave them the sustain needed to survive (+ proper dodging) and then people wail on them with damage. If aggro breaks, repeat the cycle over again.

Instead everyone just goes straight damage as the incentives are skewed due to pseudo difficulty design. Thus resulting in, imo, the biggest design failure to this game.

Ai from what ive heard and experienced in game have a few deciding factors on there threat and choice of target. It is part of what gave the illusion early on in hte game that tanking was impossible.

1st: Can I reach my target: If the mob is CCd and there current high threat target is a high distance away they will have a higher chance of swapping to a closer target. This makes chilling/crippling/immobilizing a huge help if you want to keep threat on a specific target (I use cripple in fractals when I need to heal because it encourages the mobs to either go after my pet or after the tankier heavy classes)

2nd: Whos the most kitten looking person in the area. The mobs from my own experience definetly relate to high toughness on our armor sets. If you have high toughness your more likely to be attacked. But without the above CCs it can be difficult to keep them on you. Thus wearing knights or soldiers could indeed help you take agro (Althout it simply doesnt have enough of an impact in a fight in todays game world a difference….hence the “zerk meta”)

3rd: Did that guy just stab me? He just stabbed me didn’t he…kitten THAT GUY: Damaging defenitly causes threat. Although This largely seems to depend on power damage primarily. This is due to the fact that threat generated by our damage doesnt seem to last very long. A zerker war could yank threat off of a knights guardian right at the end of a yolo blades chain but the knights guardian even if hes doing less damage will probably still take the majority of hate.

On the other hand conditions in my experience dont generate a massive amount of hate. Probably due to how spread out there damage is. This leads me to believe that condis were meant to be a “silent killer” as far as PvE is concerned (less damage but very little chance of grabbign agro and getting wacked).

However due to the fact that such builds simply are not NECESSARY (i.e. we dont NEED to have them with the exception of the more recent additions to the game (Im looking at you husks)) this largely goes unnoticed and unexplored and sadly until something happens to weaken the current PvE meta (Return of the growing cleave effects from other games (I.E. If I hit more than 2 people with this sword swing im seriously going to kitten your kitten up) or spreading debilities (contagious disease effects that stack the longer people are in proximity))

But as far as threat goes. Our tankier pets DO in fact generate and hold threat more effectively despite doing subpar damage. The reason for this is that threat from damage seems to be (temporary) I.E. it happens and then its gone. While that high toughness number is ALWAYS there and its always kittening hte mob off.

(One Mob looks to another…“Hey…you see that bear? I dont know why but its REALLY kittening me off….like seriously…can we shank it or something? No dont look at the warriors lets get that kittening bear”)

Imagine if the pet had increased health and toughness in dungeons and would aggro the enemies in dungeons just like it does in open-pve

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

If I’m not mistaken, NPC’s will aggro on the target with the highest toughness. Devourers have the highest toughness of all our pets. Try running full Knight’s gear or something and see how often they aggro on you instead.

Toughness is at least one big part of the system. I often draw aggro from champs in a blob because I run around in my WvW zergling gear when doing overworld junk. The higher toughness than the zerkers around me draws aggro constantly ironically making the stats less likely to aid in my survival in pve.

It’s rather odd that Anet would set it up this way when GW1 had AI that prioritized the squishier casters in a group first making encounters much harder than they were before the update.