Talk:Aggro

Active Gameplay

"You don't hafta run faster than the dragon, you just hafta run faster than the other guy!" Zolann The Irreverent 21:11, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

I was really wanting to write something like that into the article. :) A good example of someone using the simple system of shaking aggro using closest target is this video of Bobby Stein playing. He is clearly not a good engineer player but at one point he drops a turret in a hurry while running away to clear the aggro which was about to kill him. -- aspectacle  23:46, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

Positioning suddenly becomes even more important. Mediggo 06:58, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Active Gameplay FTW. --The Holy Dragons 08:03, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Zolann that comment made me laugh so hard!! I wanna find a way to sneak that in there. --Xu Davella 00:19, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Distance =/= Aggro

In the second link, it clearly states that close proximity is not always the primary factor for deciding factor. In fact, Colin clearly states that sometimes the farthest target may be chosen, or a target with a specific armor level. The last couple paragraphs on this page make it seem as if whoever is closest will always be the focus of attention. Can someone edit this up a bit, to make it more accurate to the actual aggro system? Khamul787 01:52, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Aggro, Determination of and breaking thoughts

Having aggro -- In GW1, aggro likes to favor what appears to be quickly killable. That is, things with low HP, low Armor, that are suffering Degen, that are moving slowly or towards them. On top of that are a couple other considerations. eg: What of the potential targets has attacked the NPC. Or perhaps, dealt it the most damage.

That is however, a different edition of the game. It would be surprising to see aggro implemented identically here. It would not be hard to setup an aggro system in GW2 where these criteria are configurable. For us, the end users, testing each of them may be difficult, but I list them here to give some ideas of what might decision mechanics might be involved. Of the types of things to look for. Any discoveries here might well fit on the main page.

Starting aggro -- Generally, in GW1 you start aggro by walking within the aggro bubble of the creature. The same sort of bubble may well apply here, but it's not neatly outlined on the radar, and it may not follow the same neat size for every foe. It also became apparent to me that a foe had to be looking your way in GW2 to see you. No eyes on the back of their heads. Do foes always aggro singly, or are there also groups of foes where aggroing one aggroes them all? The answer here might be worthy of inclusion onto the main page. One aspect of aggro from GW1 I always found odd was corpse aggro -- by aggroing a dead foe, you'd aggro his entire still-living group. Would that particular mechanic apply in GW2?

Loosing aggro -- Speaking less in the sense of sending aggro off to a different target and more in the sense of a 1 play confrontation with multiple foes... Lets take a hypothetical scenario: You with a foe on a cliff edge. You leap off the cliff edge, and survive (shock!) your landing on the ground far below. Will the foe follow you off the edge? (doubtful, if the far side is outside the intended range of the foe -- I was unable to knockback foes off of cliffs, they are probably bound against such mishaps) Will the foe continue to attack you at range? (doubtful, unless the developers *want* to fight odd pathing behaviors -- needs testing). Torrenal 05:37, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Edits

I made some changes, based on Colin's interview. I suppose it's a simple aggro-table, heavily weighted by distance. Hope I haven't hijacked your article. 0:D Eva Von Heltzer 05:46, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Some thoughts on cleaning this article up and removing unproved information/misinformation/guesswork.

Just a note here, I watched the entirety of the video and read the interview, as well as searched around and could not find anything at all about the Guardian getting extra threat at all. If this was indeed mentioned somewhere, could we get a source linked first and have this removed until then? There are a few other things that are likely outdated and only occurred in beta builds, such as the mobs zipping back to their spawn. Currently, if you kite a mob far enough it will reset and walk back at whatever their normal run speed is, regenerating health constantly, but not immune to anything(even roots).

The other big thing here is that the mechanics for aggro they talked about are the "defaults". Having played through all of the dungeons on story mode as well as Explorable mode, and done almost every dynamic event, I can say with certainty(and the interview says as much anyway) that many regular mobs do not use this aggro logic. Especially the ranged mobs. Bosses and Champion mobs are a whole other matter and they almost all have different aggro mechanics because of their ability set. A big disclaimer somewhere to this effect would help a lot, so people don't spread misinformation from misunderstanding.

I don't really enjoy editing wikis anymore after dealing with extensive trolling and people editing things just because they don't agree with an idea or fact, but thought I would throw this out there for anyone else who wants to clean this page up and maintain it. It is becoming a problem now that a few people have seen this article and keep reposting it as fact. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 192.168.104.81 (talk • contribs) at 06:48, 9 September 2012 (UTC).

No hints

Aggro still is unexplained. And i am not talking about anyone here. Anet themselves say too little about it to be fully understood and working. When i am fighting with one mob and not shooting any other i expect other mobs keep aggro to the players they fight. Instead I was killed today two times by mobs that misteriously lost aggro of other players that hit them all the time. Risen gorilla and risen plaguebearer came to me though I was on lower deck, away from them and two mesmers and ranger were hitting them all the time for past 2 minutes. They broke aggro with me the moment they killed me. What the hell was that supposed to be? 7 Dec 2012 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 89.69.206.180 (talk • contribs) at 19:14, 7 December 2012 (UTC).

Aggro is left mostly unexplained because players would abuse it to no end if they knew the exact workings of threat and aggro. Several mobs have unique aggro mechanics, and certain actions (like reviving) can cause mobs to seemingly ignore threat of other players. Wild-looking changes in aggro might also be caused by bugs. Mediggo (talk) 13:18, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

I'm wondering if reviving really does effect aggro. People often say Mai trin targets ressers, but she has a strong disposition towards targetting people far away, and downed targets tend to isolate themselves away from the group/Horrik. In addition, reviving might be showing a false positive because of res traits. You see this in raids when a warrior resses and hits the 1400 Toughness mark with their res trait. This might make you think the boss is aggroing on ressing, when it's actually aggroing on toughness. Finally, a friend suggested that 'healing' done might be a factor for some mobs. If that is true, then reviving would certainly constitute a massive amount of healing. I haven't found any mob or boss that can verifiably target healing/ressing over toughness/trait procs/damage done/distance though.I'm all for throwing "Ressing" off the aggro list.--Rain Spell (talk) 00:39, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

Mai Trin and raid bosses have unique aggro/attack mechanics, they aren't suitable for researching general aggro mechanics that are shared by common hostile NPCs IMHO. 86.50.88.59 18:40, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Raid bosses don't all have unique aggro mechanics, especially the ones that aggro on toughness. (VG, Gorse, Xera) Aggroing on toughness isn't a new mechanic, it's just more noticeable in boss fights/fractals. I used raids as an example of where someone might have mistaken ressing as drawing aggro, when toughness did instead. One of the reasons bearbows use a bear pet is because it has high toughness, forcing most enemy npcs to attack it instead. (Even if they don't realize that's why it's "easier" to stay alive with a bear than a bird)

I do agree that they may not be the best examples, but I can't see why Anet would reinvent the wheel for a raid boss when the old version worked just fine.--Rain Spell (talk)

level evidence for heightened aggro in higher level areas?

I noticed when I was trying to get to the rich ori vein with my lv 16 engineer (yes its possible and its a known trick with karma tools from a certain krytan map) I had a huge lens-like filter around my character and enemies were hyper responsive to her there. It was like her low level was a beacon for Karka and all manners of lv 80-82 creatures to come find her and deal their horrible version of death to her. I wish I could take an image of the screen before I got one-shotted so many times. As a lv 80 there, I have to be within 5-10 feet or melee range to get their attention. Also they chase forever if you get caught as a low level. So the aggro bubble seems to be non existent if you're made to be there. 67.9.176.236 03:16, 17 January 2013 (UTC) Yumiko

Agreed, I seem to observe this even when difference in levels is smaller ~5-10 159.205.137.190 10:46, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

I specifically came to this page to see if there was any mention of this very thing. I've been doing herb node runs today with a whole slew of characters, all but one of which is well over the level of the area, the other is a temporary "char slot filler" that is 2-3 levels below depending on where he's running. In the 4 runs I've done today, I absolutely can verify (anecdotally, ok, but it's completely obvious to me) that this lowbie was drawing aggro from significantly farther off. Mosquitoes, Worms, and Raptors standing at their spawns would ignore every one of my other characters as I moved through a memorized path while virtually everything I breezed by with the other chars would come after the new guy...every...single...run. At first glance it seems rather !@#$ish for devs to code in extra aggro for the chars that are most adventurous and least able to handle it. But perhaps it is indeed to keep lowbies away from those relatively valuable nodes and other goodies they'd otherwise have a free and easy path to. Kruhljak (talk) 12:28, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

With 22 characters having completed Verdant Brink, I made a new char, and took him there at level 2, with the intention of trying to complete the map. I can confirm that aggro is indeed much greater at level 2/3/4/5 (so far) than it was for any of my characters at level 80. Specifically, at the Ancient Tree skill point, I have always landed directly on the commune point, and have never, on the other 22 characters, attracted any kind of attention from the Iztel who live around the poison fields there. This time, all 3 of them rushed me as soon as I landed, obviously one-shotting me, before I had a chance to even start to commune. Magua (talk) 19:35, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

How do Vitality/Health and Toughness/Armor affect aggro?

All other things being equal (such as range from the foe and damage done to the foe), how does a foe (enemy NPC) prioritise which target it will attack based on Health and Armor?
For example, if 2 characters stand equidistant from a foe and attack it once and deal exactly the same damage to it, and they both have equal Armor, but one of them has more Health, which one will the foe prioritize?
Similarly, if 2 characters stand equidistant from a foe and attack it once and deal equal damage, and they both have the same Health, but one of them has more Armor, which one will the foe attack first?
--60.53.225.42 13:33, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

Defiance bar & Aggro

It has to be verified, but it seems that players who deplete the most an enemy's defiance bar tends to take a lot of aggro, too. As nobody is talking about this in this article, I wonder if anybody noticed it or if I'm just totally wrong about this. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 88.183.186.204 (talk) at 11:31, 18 March 2017 (UTC).

This would be easy to verify by having a group of players (probably no more than 5, else it would upscale) and having one person (who doesn't have the enemy's aggro) be the only person to break their defiance bar. Probably a mesmer with Signet of Humility since it does enough damage to break most defiance bars by itself. From experience, I haven't noticed any changes in aggro from breaking their bar, especially on enemies where I would prefer to have them stand in one place for me instead of chasing the person running around. —Intricity (talk) 20:50, 21 July 2017 (UTC)