The art of drawing aggro

so flatbow has the best range? again, is range affected by professioN?

I don't believe it is affected by profession. Flatbow/longbow/stormbow have the longest range at 100' - it is longer if you have elevation as well I've noticed. I'd say that the aggro circle is about 65-70 feet out; a shortbow has a 60' range and tends to trigger the aggro with your circle before the shot is fired, so it bigger than 60', by a small margin. The longbow can reach a good distance beyond it, and if shooting from elevation I could believe getting close to the 130' range on it. I was using a pair of shorter range bows the other day with and realised I wanted physical damage, which neither of my bow were dealing, remembered the Ithas bow that came with the pre-order, got one and used that - it is truly impressive how far a flatbow (Ithas bow) shoots when on a slope.

Thanks GW Monkey, your post was very helpful. I was somehow always under the impression that monsters target the first thing they see, and will stay on that. I never really realised that if they run at you then enter another player's aggro bubble, they will get hate for the squishies and run right by me.

I guess I'll have to teach my guildies to stay back farther.

Creston

Yes, the monsters will attack the first thing they see, however, they also have a targeting priority. This includes many different factors such as armor levels, class, what's being cast, who is next to them, who is hitting them, who is hitting other memebers of the monsters group, and their pathing to different targets. In my experience, the higher the level of the monster, the more of these factors are taken into account.

There are tricks to influencing the monsters targeting. The main one is being the first one that they see and keeping the other members of your group (as discussed in the above posts in this thread).

Another one for melee monsters is when a person is getting attacked that you don't want attacked (squishies) is for the tank to run to the front (not the sides or back) of the monster and start attacking. The caster then fades back a few steps so that the monster refocuses on the tank. The main thing with that move is that the caster needs to move straight back and not to the sides or too far back. This allows the tank to be body blocking the monster so it can't reach the caster. This makes the tank higher on its prioirty list and you've made a clean transfer (So if you playing as a caster and see a warrior doing this, do your part and take a step back).

The art of drawing aggro, either move close to one group of monsters and let them come after you or use a range attack or get a ranger to fire a bow shots at one of the monster. If your a warrior equip a bow and launch at one of the monster to draw them toward you. Is it just me, or if the enemies has turn there back on you, you can sneak past them as long as your stupid henchies don't attack them first.

This is the way to do it, works wonders in UW.

GW Monkey, you must be doing something wrong - my longbow hits at quite a bit farther than the range you depict in your image. The range in that image on flat ground would be the range my shortbows/halfmoons hit at - just touching the aggro circle.

Here you go Monkey... LINK see I wasn't trying to flamebait you - I just get sick of people coming into forums and talking about things they have no clue about. I don't come on here and give advice to Mesmers - because I have never played one. It seems like such simple etiquette - if you don't KNOW, and I mean KNOW first-hand, not what you heard from a buddy, or read in a book, then sthu and let those who DO KNOW answer.

Elementalist/Necromancer (Warlock) here;
I keep a longbow in my backpack as well - it does have a range a bit beyond the aggro radius.
Some great strategies mentioned here.

When fighting multiple MOBS it really is most efficient to find and utilize a "chokepoint" where a professional warrior can keep them at bay.
Ever seen a Elementalist drop 8+ Creatures with a single spell?
Use chokepoints and its a common occurence. Mesmers and necromancer can get similar results as well. "Choking" the creatures together should be an advanced tutorial for GW play.

Oh..and I resent being called a squishie!
For the record, I am more of a "snap, crackle, POP!"



Talesin

FoW....What should happen against a group of 5....three warriors and two monks. Should you just stick to the warriors or should they work on the monks first. The monks heal the warriors...so they can make a small battle last for seems like almost too long!! Only problem with working the monks is that you leave the warriors to smack on everyone else....WHICH ONE FIRST?!?

flatbow/longbow/storm bow does not have the longest range. ithas bow has the longest range and even that is not 2 aggro circles distance on flat ground.

about tanking. in areas like underworld and fissure, underworld especially, it seriously doesnt mean sh*t what your armour rating is. im a warrior and typically do the tanking for the teams im in, but without any sort of protection i can take maybe 2 hits more than a monk before im flat on my ass. a difference of perhaps 2 seconds tops. you can get more than 2 seconds by spamming evasion.

so far one of the most effective tanks ive seen has been, oddly enough, a smite monk. but it requires building around the monk for it to work and it requires 3 monks to maintain life bond/barrier/essense bond/protective bond on the smite tank as well as heal seeding him constantly. with zealots fire/balth aura and divine boon spamming (to trigger zealots fire and negate dmg dealt), your smitey tank probably wont ever get below 99% health. and does pretty decent dmg to everything around him.

additionally, our 10hp (yes you read that correctly) warrior tank proved to be probably the best of the lot. 4 superior runes = -300hp which is a good start. any other way of getting hp as low as possible works well. death penalty if necessary. with 10hp and protective bond/protective spirit being maintained on me as well as maintaining mending on myself - we had a pretty much invincible tank. as long as the enchantments hold, any damage i take is reduced to 5% of my total hp and is covered by the regeneration rate of mending. you can do this with healing breeze too. and you dont need a warrior to do this. you can have your mesmer do it. in fact - it would probably be easier for a mesmer since all 4 mesmer superior runes are waaay cheaper than warrior superior runes.

warriors are absolutely not the best tanks - you can make a pretty much invincible tank with any character class at any level provided you have the right skill setup and teambuild.

as for drawing aggro:

http://forums.gwonline.net/showthread.php?t=352683

2 methods. take your pick. depends on the area largely. i need to do more testing to see what sets off creature aggro but in practice the method i described works pretty much without fail.

I can't speak for the Ithas Bow, as I don't have it. I assume you are directing your range statement toward me, and I can see you have misunderstood. You don't count the whole circle as aggro range, only the radius. So, when I say a longbow pulls at nearly double aggro range, what that means is nearly double the distance from your character at the center of the aggro bubble to the edge of the aggro bubble. 2 aggro circles laid next to each other on the ground would be 4X aggro range.

ithas bow's maximum range is still not double the radius of the aggro circle. long bow isnt anywhere near that range. ive had to pull the keeper of souls away from the vengeful bullies in unwanted guests - and ive tried a variety of bows. the terrain here is absolutely flat so this rules out the effect elevation may have on shot trajectory. eternal bow is actually inside the aggro circle - i.e. i aggro the keeper before i fire off a shot. very short range bow. long bow is slightly outside my aggro circle so i can fire before aggroing. ithas bow is over 1.5 aggro circle radius but less than 2. its sort of like 1.6 or 1.7ish - this is the longest range bow by far.

eternal bow is exactly half way between half moon and long bow. when we get to the serpent mountains in underworld pretty much everyone in the group is using bows (mine is eternal). this way we can size up effective bow range by comparing our relative distances to the called target. half moons full zoomed out were about an inch in front of me with my eternal bow. long bows about an inch behind me. on the radar that only a difference of millimetres. if you want to do actual tests and measurements i would encourage you to do so. but quoting 2 aggro circle radii as the effective range of a long bow is totally wrong.

I have done tests. I have played a ranger since the betas, played this ranger since the moment the servers opened for the 48 hour preview event. Go back and look at the link I posted - it clearly shows me firing at an enemy, and the radar shows that the enemy is at nearly double aggro range. Were I on higher ground, it would have been quite a bit more than double aggro range.

[hijack]

Believe me or not, I do know what I'm talking about. Usually. Search for any posts I've made that aren't about opinion but fact and you won't find technical fault with the information. As far as I knew, I was right. I was not and I'm quite pissed off about it.

I thought maybe I might be broken, a bugged character or something. I have an end-game ranger and enjoy playing him daily. Yet because of this I now know something I assumed was true, is not - Flatbows and Longbows are not equivalent in range. I didn't actually use a Longbow for that test but a Flatbow. They are supposed to be the same according to the chart here. Ah well. Garbage In, Garbage Out. (I also noticed doing this that shooting a moving monster requires you being one pace closer before the shot fires, interesting because this happens even if target is moving directly towards you.)

I wouldn't defend the statement or post screenshots proving it, if it were just made up. I thought they were the same. I did test it, but my tests were flawed by incorrect bow data... I never suspected; I had always assumed the Missile Weapon Properties chart was correct. It is not. I can't possibly be the first person to find this is wrong. I searched. No mention. Anyway I have long since salvaged my Longbows for Ascalons, being you can just go to a collector and get a max +15% dmg gt/lt 50% health, instead of hoping for luck in the nerf-o-rama drop days, or dealing with the silly GW economy. (Some offer 100k for the same stats on a dropped gold Stormbow.)

UPPER: What I thought was longbow range, fired from an Ascalon.
LOWER: Actual named Longbow, same terrain.


-= VS =-
Quite different.

Also contrary to popular belief, I am pretty sure Ascalons are all the same re: range, trajectory, ROF. I tested 4. Same as Flatbows. Ascalon == Flatbow .BUT. Flatbow != Longbow.

I'm annoyed that I was defending false data. I am starting to collect bows and gather empirical data, unless you know a way to get this stuff directly from the devs? That chart needs updating. In fact since it was done pre-release it should probably be taken down until verified. I know one error.


[/hijack]