Newbie question about agro

/rant on

I am growing tired of healing/rezing tanking elementalists and whatever class that are not meant to be tanking. I understand sometime mobs go directly to the casters in a group even if they haven't done anything yet, I don't mind healing them. but those casters who love to be the leading green dot on the mini map, those who love to initiate attacks, really start to aggravate me.

Those kind of casters are not rarely seen neither. I tend to run into a few of them every evening. maybe it's just that GW has more unskillful players than other games? or am I wrongfully blaming players for this?

I coming from playing a lot of everquest. In EQ, most of the casters have learned their agro management by mid levels. They learned to let the tank/puller to agro/pull a mob, they learned to deep breath, count to 3 before casting any high agro spells when a fight starts.

But some "high level" GW caster players, no, they go the total oppsite way. They want to be the first one to get beat on by 3 angry mobs, they seem to enjoy seeing their health bar drop to 20% within 2 seconds of beginning of a battle and yell "monkz heal me!!1!!1one"

/rant off

So, how does agro really work in GW. Am I way off on understanding that it can be controlled? I know mobs may randomly pick a caster at the beginning of fight and doesn't want to let go until he/she is dead. As for tanks, best they can do is try to block the path and hit as hard as they can. But when a mob is agro'ed on a caster, what can this caster do? stop attack? step back? or continue attack because nothing changes the situation?

Please advise because now I've tried monk, warrior primary professions, I'll try a caster next : ]

You can't do much about the aggro, there are just 2 options:
(1) The Monsters are weak and the Monks have much Mana: Just tank them
(2) Monsters are too strong or Monks have low Mana: Try to run, so you get less hits

Nothing more, so the best way is killing Monsters fast and try to stand back, cause most go on the first one too attack.

But your right, most ppl are pretty dumb, i learned to do it while Borlis Pass i think ... but that was January Beta. I think the game is too easy in the mid-mission, casters don't need to aggro control there and many mobs are ranged, so you can't really do it.

So you end up with a huge number of dumb players in the desert mission, the first ones that are not super easy anymore and require at least a little bit of thinking.

Just my 2 Cents ... plz make the game harder! ^^

Run like a idiot until the mob decides to attack something else, like the warrior and leave the monks and elementarists alone.

Playing a warrior feels useless at times with a AI that shows things as animals in the game have more inteligence that the adverage player.

I think I have done that before, in a mission. I was just messing around...

one thing to remember is there are whats called the PBAOE'er's.. or in full term the Point Blank Area of Effect caster's.. the ones who want/need the critters close by them to actually be able to pull off their strategy.

Because of this they will tend to run ahead and try and aggro things on to themselves, because thats what they need.. the more around them, the more effective their build can be - assuming they can survive to pull it off.

however, what your experiencing ia all the ifdiot's who probably should be playing warrior's and not caster's anyways.. so your right to rant about them...

just wanted to point out that there is a whole slew of builds and setups for caster's to be PBAOE nuker's .. and just because a caster wants to aggro everything means they are stupid.. they might be using a pbaoe build/strategy.

As for the agrro - the only way to 'control" aggro is basically run around till they decide to attack something else.. or try and get them to aggro on 1 person and hope they stay aggro'ed on him (ie warrior runs in way ahead of anyone else, gets aggro.. and hopefully keeps aggro).

A tip for losing aggro is to just run circles around a couple teammates, the mob will quickly change targets.

I must admit, I'm a tanking elementalist. But, I've got very legitimate reasons for doing this. Profession-wise, I am an Elementalist/Warrior. The reason I picked warrior as a secondary class is for precisely this reason. As a nuker using mana-heavy, slow recharging spells, it made sense to me to be a warrior. I ran my swordsmanship to 10 (I'm level 20 and I'm 12/11/10 in Fire, Energy Storage, and Swordsmanship, respectively) and got a fiery dragon sword. The skills I have equipped right now are glyph of lesser energy, aura of restoration, phoenix, inferno, conjure flame, glyph of elemental power, fireball and searing heat. I nuke with phoenix, fireball, and searing heat, and I can get an extra one of those off with glyph of lesser energy. Once my mana is down, instead of sitting there waiting for my attack spells to recharge and my mana to regen, I can rush in and continue fighting melee, then, if necessary, start again with the nuking when everything is recharged and regen'd. I cast Conjure Flame before battles so I do extra damage with my fiery dragon sword, and I have inferno for up-close as well. I even carry around three different off-hand flame artifacts, for different situations - I start off with an Energy +12, improves fire casting and recharge times 20% chance artifact to help with the nuking, then when I go in for melee I switch to an Energy +8, Armor +5 (while enchanted) Health +45 (while enchanted), and since Conjure Flame and Aura of Restoration are both enchantments, I always have those bonuses while I'm in melee. I also have an Energy +10, Health +30 Fire Magic +1 20% chance one for just in case. So yes, there are sometimes idiots that don't know what they are doing. But in a game in which you're supposed to have multi-classed characters, is doing something like that in an intelligent way so wrong?

And if you think what I just described isn't intelligent, go ahead and say so.

Best advice I can give for how aggro works is to play a ranger solo with a pet.

I'm serious. Spend a good long time pre-searing and you'll get a pretty good handle on it.

Some tips-

1) If the monster's approach is impaired -either slowed or crippled- they will generally switch to the nearest target hitting them and forget about you.

2) If there is a toon blocking the monster they will quickly switch targets. Try this- have your ranger and use your bow to draw a melee creature. Don't move, let your pet approach until you're both in melee range. Now, use the strafe buttons to circle around to the other side of your pet keeping the pet between you and the monster. The monster will switch targets if the pet is hitting them.

3) If you hit them with an arrow at long range (using a longbow, for example) and the pet hits them if you move beyond your aggro range the pet will hold their attention. About using longbows- your bow range is greater than your aggro range and you can use this to your advantage.

All of these strategies work against the AI most of the time. The really long range on the longbows is really why a ranger w/ a longbow on switch is the optimum puller- the monster will change targets when they get hit by a warrior if the ranger has moved out of aggro range. -Note that with a longbow the ranger is still in the fight at this range-

With that said, casters can be great pullers. For instance, a mesmer that slows the target after it's been pulled a significant distance will not be hit if another target presents itself.



Hope this helps.

Well, here goes, and this is over 600 hours experiance.

Most MOBs will aggro within your bubble on the mini-map. That said there are two situations in which they attack. This applies to whoever is doing the aggro.

A) The most common situation. Front runner aggros the MOB(s). All party members run in as the MOB(s) is starting to engage the front runner. Before the MOB fully engages the front runner, the MOB(s) locates a party member with weaker armor, or higher DP and attcks that target. Many times this is the caster in back that randomly dies. Often a monk. That MOB will continue it's parade till al party members are dead.

B) Professional aggro. The front runner, best to be a warrior for the armor, aggros the MOB(s). The rest of the part stays out of the MOB's aggro bubble until the MOB fully engages on the tank (I know of Armor of Earth, which is great except for pulling when you need speed and the casters need to be WAY back). After the MOB(s) ball up on the tank(s) the rest of the party jumps in to attack. This almost every time will keep the MOB(s) off of your casters and make Healing seed about the only spell a monk will need. It will also keep your area of effect need radius small, since all the MOB(s) are centered in one place.

Many people do not know of the second technique. I would not know of it unless a friend of mine had convinced me that the two of us could solo Farmington, err well used to be Riverside, as new level 20s with low level armor. I had Amnoon armor and he had Ascalon armor. He was monk and I was Warrior. I could ball them up and stay alive long enough to allow him to get in and start Healing and Smiting. He really never got atacked, unless one of us slipped up. Then he would just run to the other side of me and get me in between him and the MOB(s). That would almost always get rid of the straggler missing out on all that Smiting love.

I hope this makes sense. I would love to see more casters stay back untill the MOB(s) engage. I often get attacked playing my necro, because there is one or two casters wanting to see up close the pull from the warrior.

I would like to note, that some MOB(s) have bigger radiuses(sp?). I cannot remember exactly which ones, but I have seen one that seemed to be one and a half the normal radius. I think that was in the Fissure, from a ranger, so it may have already been aggroed, or linked.

Quick note on MOB linking. Some are linked, as if there was teamspeak running between them too. You can not do anything about that. Just let the group engage and go about your killing.

thanks everyone