How can I make enemies attack me?

I have a problem that whenever me and my henchmen engage the enemies, they just run straight past me and start attacking my healer or my mage. Now it's cool that the AI is smart to do this, but surely there is a way to force them to attack me instead? Like in some other games there are abilities that would make an enemy attack you instead of someone else. I haven't seen any such abilities in GW yet and I'm already lvl 17 on my Warrior. But surely there is some other method to doing it?

I believe (not 100% sure) that what the AI of enemies targets is based on proffession and armor rating. So casters will be targeted quicker then melee, and in the middle assassins, rangers and paragon. Besides that it will attack Monks primairily and oftenly ele's aswell, while others might get left alone more.

So to answer you quickly, there is no skill to taunt enemies onto you. There are ways to prevent enemies from rushing to your casters though. As you are a warrior you can take hits better. Go into battle, with your heroes flagged just a slightest bit back, let the enemies settle on you (once they are attacking someone they tent to stay on it for a bit) and let your heroes come in. But make sure you know how to play or otherwise this will result in quick deaths

Another alternative is running around in 15AL armor. Not such a smart idea, as they will kill you in a wink, but at least they attacked you right? ^^

Also adding an MM to your team is a good thing to do. The minions it creates are a wall of fleshie things blocking the way to your casters.

But ofcourse you can not prevent enemies from attacking your backline at all. Best thing to do is play a SY! (Save yourselves!) warrior, to give your whole team more armor, and rock on

You can't force an enemy to target you with a skill. usually if you hit on an enemy enough though, it will turn around and target you. try to focus on attacking the most threatening enemies first before they can do major dmg to your party. i like to use the skill save yourselves to give all my weak backline heroes hgh armor so that it doesn't matter much if they are getting hit.

you need to flag your henchmen out of range

afterwards you go in and when everyone is attacking you

unflag

Flag your heroes behind you. Use the environment. Often, you can pull the enemies around an edge in the terrain and block their path by standing at the edge. Now unflag the heroes.

For pulling enemies, always carry a flatbow or longbow with you in addition to your regular weapon and use the weaponset/switch-weaponset feature. Pull the enemies with the bow and then fight them with your sword/axe/whatever.

All I really want is for them to bunch up so it's easier to AoE

I'm guessing you're a recent wow player

First get them all to attack you as already discussed. Go to the ranged target you want to take out first, so that the melee will follow you and make for a tight ball of enemies. Then use an AoE snare (possibly from a hero) such as something from the ele water or earth line. Then have some AoE damage fun.

The best you can do is keep your hp a bit lower than your heroes, it will put you higher up on aggro list. If a mob is knocked down, it usually seeks itself onto the closest target as well. With Save Yourself, you will also have 100 armor less than your party which will help getting AI to think of you as a squishy target.

Rule is simple.. AI has some mechanics to try find the easiest foe to kill based on HP, armor etc, so your job is to make it appear you're the one.

Also, you can try pull mobs around corners, block the corner and have your team on the other side. Flag your hench/heroes if needed. Mobs can get trouble getting around the corner you're blocking and will give up and just go for you instead.

AI picks the target based on armor rating/weapon in hand/health/weather/latest lolcat picture. The only skills that influences these are Earth Shaker and Deep Freeze (ES makes them attack the warrior (still works), Deep Freeze usually makes them attack the closest target (may not work any more)), or this:

Ok, here's some help, and some info. Firstly, forget bunching up to AoE. While this may be useful in the short term, enemies will actually run out of AoE and scatter if too many AoE spells or multi-target moves hit them in a short span, which can cause havoc. Running enemies can run into other groups of enemies and cause you to lose control and get wrecked.

Here's some info on how to properly "tank" in Guild Wars:

First, see this link: GuildWiki: PVE Tactics. Once you've read that, come back here and read more.

Pulling:
As a warrior...scratch that, as a tank(applies to Dervish and any other melee tank really), you should always have a bow as one of your extra weapon sets. The stats on it don't matter, and a longbow is likely best for it's arc and long range. Use this to pull. If you'll be "tanking" flag your henchies and heroes and your party if there are other players in group back out of range, preferably near the back edge of your "earshot" (aggro bubble on the minimap). If you can send them around a corner, like a hill or whatever, even better.

When pulling, use your bow, to attack the chosen enemy, then immediately hit Esc to cancel action and switch to your other set. At no point should you run away, and do NOT break line of sight by running back to your group as this will make the mob that comes reset.

EDIT - you do not NEED to pull with the bow, but it's convenient. Running in after flagging your group back may lead to you being out of your healer's range and dead before they can get there if you pull too many.
End Edit

Once the mobs are in range and have hit you once or twice, or been attacked by you and turned to face you, your allies can come assist, unflag them. Do not run around when fighting mobs while tanking. Your skills will automatically target a nearby enemy if your current target dies, but if you click and miss one, moving aroudn that way can trigger the enemy to think you're fleeing and will target someone else. use 'tab' and 'c' (target next foe and target nearest foe, respectively) to target, and spacebar to initiate attack, you'll move in range automatically with no wasted motion.

What to do if you can't set up a pull:

Sometimes the enemies will get the jump on you. Maybe you weren't paying attention and brushed an aggro radius. They could have popped up from under your feet, or dropped in from above. It happens. Don't panic.

If the mobs are running toward other party members, you have a few options:

-attack the 1-3 enemies closest to you and hold those. No matter how well you tank, you can't hold ALL the enemies. Your party will manage.

-If you have any of the following, use them: knockdowns, crippling strikes, increased movement speed abilities. Use whatever you've got to let your party maneuver. Sometimes it's not about getting aggro off of the Monk so much as slowing, knocking, and blocking the enemies from reaching the monk while the rest nuke it.

-Run! Seriously, don't be ashamed to run away. It happens. Take a safe path, preferably one you've recently cleared and haul your butt outta there! flag your group ahead of you to make sure they don't keep fighting!


General tips

I couldn't think of a specific category to put these in, so here they go:

Body Blocking

If you can, physically keep the mobs from attacking your group by standing in the way! For example:

o oo
oo oooo <---enemies
----------|XX <---you (and maybe a co-tank)
..............|
..............|xx
..............|xxx <--- mid and backline
..............|x <--monk

Because the game allows clipping (objects can bump and block without passing through each other) you can physically block around a corner to prevent enemies from reaching your backline. If you have said backline also blocking the healer(s), even better. When all else fails (or before it can fail) body block.

Health and Armor
Having less health sounds counter productive, but it can actually be a good thing. Using a Major or Superior rune on your gear can make the difference in whether a group will target you or ignore you. This is because the enemies tend to go for lower health targets first. Plus, that rune means bonus stats for your main damage abilities. Make sure HP boosting enchants are on your weaker targets and don't let your own HP be boosted until you've already got aggro. You may need to discuss this with your healer. If the healer is a hero, right click their boost ability on their bar to disable it, and then right click again to reactivate when you'd like them to use it (or disable it and then hotkey it for manual use).


As someone else mentioned, it sounds like you may have migrated over from WoW. I can relate, I'm a former WoW player and the transition was strange, as I rolled tanks in WoW, and the mechanics are just not the same here. GW is way different, particularly in it's aggro mechanics. Hopefully this info will be helpful to you, and don't forget to read the Wiki, there's a ton of good info in there.

Tanking (as in the high health, high armor, hold the angry things way):

Don't do this. It seems like a good idea to get as much HP as possible and to be a damage soak. This is well and good, but you can only have so many damage dealers and your monk can only restore but so much before the energy runs dry. Plus, the more HP you have, the less likely the mob will attack you. It'll run right past, kill your monk, then the rest, then you. It's better to focus on a balanced, damage dealing build with one or two control abilities (like a knockdown or cripple) and at least one rez and one self heal or damage absorber (you want Lion's Comfort if you can get it, adrenaline based heal is nice. Dolyak Signet is ok, but you'll want an option to remove it should you need mobility).

Flexibility:

...in everything. Save some useful build types as templates. You may want a pure control build, something that might be lower damage, but with multiple knockdowns, cripples, etc. You'll want a tanking build with damage reducing abilities and a self heal. You'll want a nuking damage build. You'll want a balnaced build. It goes on. Play around with your skills and don't get locked into one build or play style.

Also, try different weapon combinations and learn what works and what doesn't. Hammers, Axes, and Swords all have their ups and downs. An axe works well in a damage build. A hammer is good for it's knocking ability. Swords are good pressure. Play with them and learn what each can do.


Guild Wars is a game that rewards intelligence. There is a strategy to things that you learn over time. Rushing in without thinking or planning your pull and attack will almost always get you kill unless you are comfortably above the level of your enemies, and sometimes you can greatly outlevel the mob and still get killed by sheer numbers. Thinking will keep you alive and avoid death penalties and time wasted.

Good luck, and hope some of this helps! (Also, sorry the post got so long!)

wow... cant be as detailed as tomakatt but if I personally want to get the agro then i cast my attunement enchantments then run in. I cant say for sure but for me i seem to get alot of the fire if i have more enchantments up then most of the other people(up to 6 ppl @ one time is about my limit/what i would do w/ a healer).

I KNEW IT! So that's why they always target me

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/h...t10436595.html

Why does everyone always assume that everyone else is coming from WoW? I played the game when it was free in beta, yes, but I don't like it and I hate what it's doing to the MMORPG genre. So when people automatically assume I'm a WoW player that's actually an insult to me. If you must know, the game I'm "migrating from", so to say, is Lineage2. There, you have a skill called Hate and Hate Aura (aoe hate) that is used to force enemies to attack you. Then you just bunch them up in a corner of the dungeon room or take them down with aoe. Very efficient xp.

Anyway, thank you all and thank you Tomkatt. Your explanation has cleared up all I wanted to know.

Afaik they have a similar aggro button in WoW. Often former WoW players come in and rage that they can't just press a button and win the game.

Say something about their mother and stick your tongue out at them,works every time.

In case anyone has not mentioned it, double clicking on a party member's name will make your character run to that party member. So, if you see your healer's hit points dropping run to them. Of course, if it is an evil mesmer at range that is the problem this is not a good idea.

If one of your heroes is a Ranger, drop a couple of cripple traps and stake your party behind them. If melee gets through they will be slowed down and your softies will get out of the way.

Purely a superstition on my part, but I've noticed that mobs seem to know there is a trap ahead and will try to attack something else rather than run over it. This is not a sure thing, but over a number of combats it seems to be have an effect.

You can try to run without armor and use frenzy

But if they target you, you will die

Chill

Most traditional MMO's have a threat/hate thing, I believe it was something that was first made in EQ.

It just sounded really lazy to me, but you don't actually have to do that in GW, unlike L2 you don't have to grind

As already covered, it is about learning the monster's aggro patterns and making use of those consistencies. Armor and health are the 2 biggest factors for what a monster will attack, but it also has to do with what is in range. For example, if a warrior with high armor and high health runs in first, the monsters will want s softer target that is easier to kill. This is seen by the monsters running past the warrior looking for other targets. If other players with lower armor/health are in range, they attack them (this includes heroes and hench). If, however, there are no other targets in range, the monsters revert back to that warrior they first saw. This means that you either have to know the range of those monsters and make sure your team stays out of that range until they have focused on you, or you have to flag the heroes+hench in a safe spot until they do.

And AoE can be used well to kill off larger numbers, but many of the AoE skills will cause the monsters to scatter. When they scatter they will look for a new target, which is not what you are wanting. Snares to keep them in place until they die work well, as do knockdowns, but the best method, when available, is to bodyblock them. Group them against a wall and keep them there with your body means they won't have anywhere to run to when they try to scatter.

It is a team effort, so unless you know how to flag your heroes and hench, or have a human team who knows how to handle the aggro, it won't happen.

Well, as for the reason people assume WoW migrations...well, it's the biggest MMO in existence right now. Unfortunately, every game out there probably has its share of people who play, or used to play WoW. As I mentioned, even I'm a former WoW player. If it weren't for the terrible community and running out of things to do (except raid, which I tried, but relies too much on said community), I'd probably still be playing.

Sometimes being called a WoW player is an insult, yes. In this case just an observation. Lineage has similar mechanics to EQ, WoW, and many other MMOs in the way of aggro, and noting a "WoW" mentality is something of a catch-all, since even though they may play similarly or have similar mechanics, WoW is the most played, and most well known of the bunch.

Don't take it personally, I don't think anyone meant to be insulting toward you.

Also:
^^ what he said.