Guild Wars 2

I’m not too sure how the aggro works in this game, but for me it seems to be that I am simply a magnet for all and any attacks.

My main is my warrior, most played, with my alt thief (also 80) right there behind it.

But as a warrior I notice that I take aggro….alot…from everything…all the time!

I can build glass…get aggro
I can build tank…get aggro
I can afk on the other side of the map…get aggro

In dungeons I have noticed this more and more as time goes on, I even put a test to it. Me and a group went into TA and used some random groups as a test, and for alot of these encounters, I never even attacked anything, or even went within 30 ft of the enemies, yet they will come running over to smack me in the face.

Used this test on the wardens prior to Tree battles, and they would endlessly kite around (as long as i didnt go too far) on me.

Used this in the jungle wurm encounter, every single red circle (their spit thing) came to me, even though I was just standing in the pathway near the entrance (or the log on high ground inside the room)

Used this on the pirate boss in Arah, and kited her for about 20 minutes while my team beat on her, following behind me.

Maybe I am just unlucky, but as a thief, guardian, or my ranger alts….i never get this.

Is there some built in hidden aggro mechanic for warriors?

i belive npc’s make certain checks to the players,
Shield/check
Amount of Thoughness/check
Damage/check

So depending on build/gear aggro is given, at least that’s what i encounter.
I always take aggro over people who are in full zerker vs my knight for example

It might be with toughness, I am building into tough/vit. but the Wurm test, I was trying to use 2 weapons for the test and noticed that actually having my longbow equipped caused me to take aggro more than my hammer.

From personal experience, if there’s a guardian in the group, he be the defacto aggro magnet. If not, it will be myself or any other warrior in the group.

There’s a number of factors that go into aggro. Some of them include: distance to target (melee = more aggro), damage, “block” skills and shields (1 reason i think guardians always pull the most aggro), CC skills, and toughness stat on party members.

Anecdotally I’ve observed that mobs tend to prioritze their “hate list” more like an actual human player would. Meaning that, say one member has much less HP’s than the others, that seems to place them toward’s the top of the boss’ hate list (observed when for example a player is rezzed, they get up with about half their HP while the other group is still mostly full – the boss seems to immediatley turn attention back on them). Exaclty how it does actually work I’m not sure but the above example kind of illustrates the way I think it’s prioritzed.

Incidentally though, as a Warrior if you seem to just somehow automatically default to the top of a boss’ hate list then I’d consider that extraordinarily lucky. Despite a conventional Tank / DPS / Healer trinity mechanic in GW2 PvE, as a Warrior I still strive to get the aggro on me because I’m generally the least squishy. The more I try to build my Warrior to be less squishy the more resources I take away from my DPS capability as well, meaning that the squishy glass cannons are the one’s we’d like to keep the aggro off even more so.

This of course assuming your group doesn’t have a Guardian that is built to tank even more so than your Warrior that is. Generally I am the “tankiest” guy in the group though and it would be a HUGE weight off my shoulders to have the mob’s / boss’ aggro just automatically default to me. Aggro seems to be such an esoteric and capricious mechanic in this game that, at least for myself and my very limited dungeon experience so far, I struggle to pull and keep the aggro on myself reliably and I’m hardly sure of any “sure fire” ways to get the aggro on me. If I had it like you do with acquiring aggro so easily (automatically even) I’d consider myself pretty kitten great at being a Warrior.

I mean no insult but honestly, if your group doesn’t have a “tankier” Guardian or Warrior along who would you and your group prefer the aggro to be on? I mean at the very least, keeping the aggro on one person (and hopefully it’s at least a Heavy Armor wearer – one with some melee range damage mitigating abilities too even better) makes it easier strategize and manage the encounter. A boss switching aggro willy nilly and bouncing from party member to party member is generally pure chaos and a “skin of your teeth” situation in my experience.

I’d be stoked if I was you!

i always have agro on my warrior even with support guardians i stack toughness and healing power though and usually run with shield so thats what im built for face tanking can do it anywhere and it works i like it personally. but yea they do go for the more toughness and healing power and shield classes over the all zerkers

In my experience mobs prioritize the target they can kill the quickest; this not only includes the HPs and armor but also the time it would take to be in attack range of a potential new target. Once mobs have decided on a target this target will get an “aggro bonus” so another target must be significant easier to kill than the current target before they switch aggro. In addition mobs seem to evaluate their target priorities every couple of seconds or so.
Some bosses seem to have two or more preferable targets at once, one for their melee attacks and one for their ranged attacks.

This explains most of the behavior I’ve seen from mobs but sometimes they do something completely unexpected. I assume each mobs adds a randomly generated number to each potential target’s “time I would need to kill it” to keep things unpredictable.

According to a dev different monsters like different targets.

Some like high toughness, some like melee, some like ranged, some like highest damage, some like the light armour.

I haven’t really figured out a way to predict whether I’m going to get agro yet.

DesertRose.2031:

In my experience mobs prioritize the target they can kill the quickest; this not only includes the HPs and armor but also the time it would take to be in attack range of a potential new target. Once mobs have decided on a target this target will get an “aggro bonus” so another target must be significant easier to kill than the current target before they switch aggro. In addition mobs seem to evaluate their target priorities every couple of seconds or so.
Some bosses seem to have two or more preferable targets at once, one for their melee attacks and one for their ranged attacks.

This explains most of the behavior I’ve seen from mobs but sometimes they do something completely unexpected. I assume each mobs adds a randomly generated number to each potential target’s “time I would need to kill it” to keep things unpredictable.

Yes, what this person said about how bosses prioritize their “hate list” is pretty much what I’ve surmized through observation. This person just said it a lot more clearly and succinctly than I could.

What the poster above me said about the Dev’s answer is very interesting though and I can see how this could in fact be the case. Does anyone have a link for this quote by any chance? Or was it from a twitter comunique or something?

My elementalist is an aggro magnet. I’ve always assumed this is probably due to group-wide buffs, regen and AE damage/fields.

My shout warrior (60’s) gets ignored pretty well in CM when grouped with 80’s, but that could be a level difference thing.