Guild Wars 2

I am not sure if it is a bug with the mob AI or if it is intended but at times I am fighting Risen be it a storyline quest or a zone full of Risen and I will have Risen mobs come from everywhere and agro on me irrespective if I have done any damage to them or not and they will ignore other players, my pet (ranger) or npc.

If they always did it then I would lean towards it being something intentional but it is just now and then when it happens and they will swarm all over me and I am forced to just run around in circles until other players/npcs/pets kill them. I know there is a boss which has the focus target ability which behaves similarly but this is happening on mobs which have no special abilities, at least not labelled and most of the time they do not behave like this.

If it was consistent behaviour it is something you could plan around, but I don’t think any class is really built to have so many mobs mindlessly chase you around, if i stand still then I will get one shot by the wave of mobs.

Generally standing behind my pet with mob(s) in front of my pet with me backing off is good enough to get mobs off of me almost always, except Risen when they are in psycho mode. If they always behaved that way then you can build to help survive it but it is extremely inefficient to build a survival build/gear for the infrequent times that it happens.

It just feels annoying/un-fun scenario, when I can I just run far enough until I drop all agro but it is not always possible/desirable depending on the environment and situation.

I’ve noticed that on a select few my pet simply can’t take aggro, and sometimes I see this “zerg the human” behavior in various mobs. So far I’ve seen the gang mentality show up in Risen, Krait and one of the Skelks in … can’t remember the zone. Somethingfly. The one with the sea dragon and the giant undead shark.

I haven’t noticed it in any other zone or with any other mob types.

+1

Curious to see if it’s intentional.

The same thing happens with mesmer clones/phantasms, but this is actually intended I think. Enemy focus seems to be based on damage done to that enemy (as is normal in MMOs), so your ranger or, in my case, the actual mesmer is simply doing the most damage to things in the general area. Creatures are, in a sense, ‘partied’ together and know when you are damaging other members of their ‘party’ and change aggro accordingly. So, in my case, every now and again focus will change to the phantasm as I run away, but clones or other low damage output units aren’t likely to take aggro from much since PvE enemies ‘know’ when a particular thing is damaging them more or less and can alert all similar creates in the area to that.

As for the risen in particular, are you talking about swarms of thralls? I think something is intentionally built into their ‘frenzy’ skill. If grubs are around, grubs actually have another skill to attract risen to targets. In general, Risen swarm. And it’s not fun for a solo player (especially with respawn rates even for solo), but not a bug per se.