54 replies to this topic

[Bloodtau]

How does it even work? Been lots of times where literally everything on the map has been on me and my party could not take agro at all.

I know this game wants no trinity but more support based classes really need some kind of taunt skill =/. They want "team work", well taunts fit in this team work even more

[Trei]

I think "aggro" is a joke in games with taunt mechanics.

Is your group so lacking in team work that they cannot help you with your boss aggro without depending on taunts?

Do they not know when to use chill, protection, push/pull, cripple, weakness, heals... ?

Edited by Trei, 03 March 2013 - 03:54 AM.

[Bloodtau]

Trei, on 03 March 2013 - 03:49 AM, said:

I think "aggro" is a joke in games with taunt mechanics.

Why's that? classes that can pull your team mates out of a bind are always useful. Right now the combat in this game when it happens involve running around like a headless chicken

[ExplosivePinata]

It's bizarre without question.  I always felt the attractness in GW was over zealous.  The patrols always honed in on me/us lol.  In GW2 Orr is an example of how to piss players off.

[Bloodtau]

There is theories going around that toughness can affect it. Has this been backed up with proof at all? I DO run rabid gear, so it could make sense in a way if so

[Trei]

Bloodtau, on 03 March 2013 - 03:52 AM, said:

Why's that? classes that can pull your team mates out of a bind are always useful. Right now the combat in this game when it happens involve running around like a headless chicken

Your reply came before I finished editing.

My group and I don't run around like headless chickens though, I'm sorry yours apparently does.

[ExplosivePinata]

Trei, on 03 March 2013 - 04:03 AM, said:

Your reply came before I finished editing.

My group and I don't run around like headless chickens though, I'm sorry yours apparently does.

Headless chickens are players too!

[Bloodtau]

Trei, on 03 March 2013 - 04:03 AM, said:

Your reply came before I finished editing.

My group and I don't run around like headless chickens though, I'm sorry yours apparently does.

Every single group you join must be god mode then.

[Trei]

Bloodtau, on 03 March 2013 - 04:13 AM, said:

Every single group you join must be god mode then.

No, just my regular group.

I see headless chickens in pugs sometimes.
But then again, there are such headless chickens even in games with the pve crutch we know as taunt.

[Necropolis]

Yes, the aggro is GW2 is a total piss off. My necro has always used loads of toughness. I run mostly minion master & no matter how I go about gaining aggro, I am always the target in a very aggressive way. So I decided to test that theory by slapping on total garbage for gear, low level junk withy no runes or anything incleding removing all accessories, all junk I picked up along the way for other starter characters. Well, with virtually no toughness I hardly ever became a target. My minions seem to maintain aggro 90+% of the time. It can be very annoying but for me as a minion master I didn't mind being the target because it allowed my minions to kill the mobs & stay alive much longer since they are practically useless squishy dumbasses & me having loads of toughness, I could handle the beatings easily enough. For my elementalist though, cant barely stand it, squishy geek! LOL

Edited by BrahFromZa, 03 March 2013 - 04:32 AM.

[Jetjordan]

BrahFromZa, on 03 March 2013 - 04:31 AM, said:

Yes, the aggro is GW2 is a total piss off. My necro has always used loads of toughness. I run mostly minion master & no matter how I go about gaining aggro, I am always the target in a very aggressive way. So I decided to test that theory by slapping on total garbage for gear, low level junk withy no runes or anything incleding removing all accessories, all junk I picked up along the way for other starter characters. Well, with virtually no toughness I hardly ever became a target. My minions seem to maintain aggro 90+% of the time. It can be very annoying but for me as a minion master I didn't mind being the target because it allowed my minions to kill the mobs & stay alive much longer since they are practically useless squishy dumbasses & me having loads of toughness, I could handle the beatings easily enough. For my elementalist though, cant barely stand it, squishy geek! LOL

so you're pissed that you had aggro before when you were tanky, but now you miss it when you are squishy?

Aggro is great in this game imo.  Really keeps you on your toes.  Taunt would ruin it and create a trinity feel (yawn) which has been done to death.  I play a LB ranger with entangle as elite in dungeons and I save my team mates on a regular basis with my control skills.  Having to think about movement and skill timing and placement is a lot more fun and engaging than just hitting taunt if someone has aggro.

[ShezuTsukai]

I liked aggro in GW2 a lot more when my stealth shifted aggro to someone else much to the chagrin of my engineer guildie. Now he just laughs when the mobs continue to chase me even when I'm stealthed.

[Arewn]

I'd welcome a taunt mechanic with open arms if done well. Something along the lines of League of Legends taunts: a form of CC which last a few seconds. It'd be useful in the same way a stun or knock back would be.
I like the GW2 aggro as is.

[lalangamena]

aggro affected by:

toughness,
damage
blocking
reviving
low HP

not sure if it is affected by healing, if yes by very small amount.

The CC (Crowd Control or Combat Control) could be the answer for tanking, but alas, the bosses are unaffected by CC, and conditions stick to bosses for half the duration.

[AsgarZigel]

It's really not that hard. The two biggest contributions to aggro are proximity and the amount of armor (and probably health, though I'm not 100% sure with that). Damage counts into that as well, but not as much from what I've seen. If you have a warrior or guardian in melee, he usually can keep the aggro no problem. Defensive Boons and block skills might play into this as well.

Some ranged bosses either attack everyone at once or select the target some other way, appears to be random. (Like the Flamethrower like skill the Searing Effigy uses)
The behavior of some mobs can also be influenced by how far away from them you are. (The vines in Twilight Arbor use their ground slam only when an enemy is near, which means less rapid fire spit attacks)

If you want to take aggro from someone squishier than you, tell the other guy to run/dodge away and attack the mob in melee, skills that pull/teleport yourself to the target are pretty useful for this.

[drkn]

What lalangamena said seems to make sense; i'm running a tanky dps build on my guardian, with power/toughness/vitality or power/toughness/crit dmg armor, runes of soldier, ruby jewelry and berserker weapons, along with mixed offensive/defensive traits; i have ~2850 armor (high-ish), 3k+ attack (high), ~35% crit chance along 74% crit damage (high and crits land often), loads of blocks, traited revives and boosted lowest hp pool (to ~18k total, still lower than base of a warrior).
I am focused almost all the time in dungeons lately, especially after i've sacrificed some hp for more crit dmg and chance. One of the last Lupicus fights - i was focused the whole fight except for grubs, as they seem to be random; dredge fractal - i was focused by the boss a lot even though i only immobilised it on the spots without dropping dps.

That said, i think the aggro in this game is perfect, especially compared to games with 'active' tanking and taunting. It's unpredictable, so you can't just stand there as a dps toon, watching the dps meter and not worrying about anything. The combat is much more reactive and demanding this way, and the main way of managing incoming damage is avoiding it, by well-timed dodging and blocking, rather than soaking or mitigating with some sort of boosts. With the dodge mechanics, everyone is a tank - whoever has the aggro at the moment can drag the boss on the other side of the room and manage it there, no problem!

There's more to teamwork than that, though. Bosses are affected by blind and immobilise - although they're less effective against them, they go through defiance stacks. Almost every profession can share boons or pop boons like protection and aegis on their teammates. Boons are not just buffs increasing one's dps in this game, they're an integral part of tactics.
You have defensive utility skills, too - blink, mist form, stealth, lightning reflexes, elixirs, and all that everything else. The real problem is player approach to GW2 encounters - everyone has to have some means of survival and hone their dodging skills, can't go full dps build and just stand there.

[Resolve]

Bloodtau, on 03 March 2013 - 03:52 AM, said:

Why's that? classes that can pull your team mates out of a bind are always useful. Right now the combat in this game when it happens involve running around like a headless chicken

As a Thief, I have tons of ways to help my teammates. As a Guardian, even more.

If you're running around like a headless chicken then your party isn't playing very efficiently.

Arewn, on 03 March 2013 - 05:07 AM, said:

I'd welcome a taunt mechanic with open arms if done well. Something along the lines of League of Legends taunts: a form of CC which last a few seconds. It'd be useful in the same way a stun or knock back would be.
I like the GW2 aggro as is.

Agreed! That would work really well.

[matsif]

there is no need for a taunt when through positioning and dodging you can avoid a lot of damage anyways, and there is enough CC between each class that you can keep stuff grouped up nicely to nuke it off anyways.

if you are so scared of aggro that you turn around and run, drawing the mob off of the melee players in your party and out of any aoe zones your party set up (if any), and thus slow down the killing time of the mob/boss, you really need to stop and think about how many better ways your class has to avoid damage instead of just running away like a coward.

[Dasviidonja]

Yeah "taunt" skill is for wimpies. I've soloed so much in MMO's I laugh at those that think they need it or someone to have it to get stuff off of them. This is a game about "skill" your skill not others skill.

[Juanele]

taunt is the worst skill ever made for these games

[Westwater]

Arewn, on 03 March 2013 - 05:07 AM, said:

I'd welcome a taunt mechanic with open arms if done well. Something along the lines of League of Legends taunts: a form of CC which last a few seconds. It'd be useful in the same way a stun or knock back would be.
I like the GW2 aggro as is.

I believe that's how taunts in TERA work.  Instead of there being aggro meters, when you use a taunt you just get the target's attention for a few seconds.

[Gilles VI]

Bloodtau, on 03 March 2013 - 03:34 AM, said:

How does it even work? Been lots of times where literally everything on the map has been on me and my party could not take agro at all.

I know this game wants no trinity but more support based classes really need some kind of taunt skill =/. They want "team work", well taunts fit in this team work even more

Most of the time aggro comes for distance or damage, in some cases I noted bosses go on party member with higest DPS, and there are even some bosses that focus on downed people, and some on people that try to rez those downed people.
Lupus for example goes for highest damage in phase 1, and for highest toughness in phase 2 &3 (huray for me being a guardian )

And it's easy to deal with if you know how.
Just use some form of cc's, or stop atacking, if he focus downed people then try to use skills to rez em, not manually.

As others said, I find games with a taunt mechanic to be completely ridiculous.
There is absolutely no challenge in killing a boss if he just focuses on 1 party member and then all others can just stand still & spam skills.. (ala WoW, Aion,...)

Edited by Gilles VI, 03 March 2013 - 07:38 PM.

[whodouthink9999]

Ya i never get aggro in this game I've stacked toughness as an engineer getting almost no aggro and now i have full beserkers set and i can't seem to not get aggro in dungeons. Especially HotW i don't know what it is about me and that place the last boss of path 1 i believe(the one in the square room with the 3 totems)he always attacks me no matter what i do i dodge roll out of any attack i can while using any sort of CC that will help me in any way and he will almost never turns off me. I've even tried not attacking while kiting and he still comes after me so I'm forced to LoS and run around pillars. Same goes for the underwater boss but that feels more like my Grenades being the main issue as they are pretty powerful when it comes to underwater weapons probably the best underwater weapon out there.

Dasviidonja, on 03 March 2013 - 06:30 PM, said:

Yeah "taunt" skill is for wimpies. I've soloed so much in MMO's I laugh at those that think they need it or someone to have it to get stuff off of them. This is a game about "skill" your skill not others skill.

So we as players shouldn't have a skill that helps others in a bind good to know teamwork isn't something that is counted as skill in your book. Gw2 seems to be more about team skill than anything else with it's multiple skills that are used to protect or prolong a parties existence, Lack of any sort of long CC most cc lasts 3 seconds at most(requires the party to cc instead of a designated CCer),  Combo Field System, and downed state. So a Taunt that would allow a few seconds of CC would probably be at home in Gw2.

[Craywulf]

Bloodtau, on 03 March 2013 - 03:34 AM, said:

How does it even work? Been lots of times where literally everything on the map has been on me and my party could not take agro at all.

I know this game wants no trinity but more support based classes really need some kind of taunt skill =/. They want "team work", well taunts fit in this team work even more

Taunt mechanic provides an illusion of teamwork, and it's much easier to execute than non-taunt mechanics. If you really want to get technical, Taunt mechanic would fall under what ArenaNet defines as control, and we know GW2 has a wide variety of control skills. It just takes greater effort and brings depth to other professions that would otherwise never use a taunt mechanic.

Basically not having taunt, allows the A.I. a fair chance on who they attack. I'm all for making smarter A.I. as I think it's one the biggest problems in PvE. I got used to this non-taunt system in GW1, You learn VERY early what "pulling" is and how to do it effectively. It takes true teamwork for it to happen.

[Lordkrall]

whodouthink9999, on 03 March 2013 - 07:38 PM, said:

So we as players shouldn't have a skill that helps others in a bind good to know teamwork isn't something that is counted as skill in your book. Gw2 seems to be more about team skill than anything else with it's multiple skills that are used to protect or prolong a parties existence, Lack of any sort of long CC most cc lasts 3 seconds at most(requires the party to cc instead of a designated CCer),  Combo Field System, and downed state. So a Taunt that would allow a few seconds of CC would probably be at home in Gw2.

Ah yes of course, because using a skill that forces the enemy to attack you is teamwork.....
The thing is that the agro system in GW2 requires quite a bit of team work and very good understanding of the game.
If someone feels the need to have a specific skill to get agro away from a team member they simply don't understand the game and combat system enough.

[Dasryn]

those of you that remember me from about 2 months ago, i found a way with help from others on this site to be able to completely manage aggro and essentially "tank" with my guardian using a sword and shield build.

toughness is a factor that attracts aggro but not the whole mechanic.

i think that was my main drive with my guardian, to find a way to tank.  once i achieved all exotics, tier 3 human cultural, and was tanking all dungeons i was in, i felt complete.

so i rolled a ranger ad im loving this class so much like seriously, f*ck what ya heard, DPS is where its at.

[Bloodtau]

Gilles VI, on 03 March 2013 - 07:35 PM, said:

Most of the time aggro comes for distance or damage, in some cases I noted bosses go on party member with higest DPS, and there are even some bosses that focus on downed people, and some on people that try to rez those downed people.
Lupus for example goes for highest damage in phase 1, and for highest toughness in phase 2 &3 (huray for me being a guardian )

And it's easy to deal with if you know how.
Just use some form of cc's, or stop atacking, if he focus downed people then try to use skills to rez em, not manually.

As others said, I find games with a taunt mechanic to be completely ridiculous.
There is absolutely no challenge in killing a boss if he just focuses on 1 party member and then all others can just stand still & spam skills.. (ala WoW, Aion,...)

Well i'm condition based range class and I still seem to get a bat load of agro...

[Lordkrall]

Bloodtau, on 03 March 2013 - 08:30 PM, said:

Well i'm condition based range class and I still seem to get a bat load of agro...

Because you have low armor, conditions also generate quite a bit of agro since they are doing constant damage instead of just one spike.

[Bloodtau]

Lordkrall, on 03 March 2013 - 08:31 PM, said:

Because you have low armor, conditions also generate quite a bit of agro since they are doing constant damage instead of just one spike.

So low armour also draw agro? It can't be that indepth can it...

[Gli]

Gilles VI, on 03 March 2013 - 07:35 PM, said:

There is absolutely no challenge in killing a boss if he just focuses on 1 party member and then all others can just stand still & spam skills.. (ala WoW, Aion,...)

But that's what the game sometimes does of its own accord anyway. I've been in countless fights, even one as recently as 20 minutes ago, where tough boss or champion mobs stubbornly just chase 1 single player for minutes, regardless of what anyone else is doing, only taking a break when some CC manages to come through between the 'Defiant' stacks.