User:Brother Roland/Tanking

Tanking and Aggro Manipulation

NOTE: This is currently a backup copy, and lacks the photos that go with it. The original resides here.

Hi people! It is i, Brother Roland here bringing you a guide to the workings of the games AI and how to better fight your enemies. This guide will be broken up into several sections to help people find what they need to know.

Index:

1. Aggro Bubble and You 2. Enemy Behavior 3. Tanking * Pulling * Tanking Method #1 * Tanking Method #2 4. Credits

1. Aggro Bubble and You:

The Aggro Bubble or Danger Zone as it's commonly known, is a white ring that surrounds your character on the Compass. It is the limit to which you can safely and stealthily move without nearby creatures noticing you. If an enemy unit passes into the Aggro Bubble, they will become aware of you and start attacking (unless they are of very low levels), including hidden enemies that "pop up". This ring also represents Earshot range which is the farthest most shouts will reach around the user.

For more info on the compass graphics, click here: The Compass For more info on distances, click here: The Danger Zone

2. Enemy Behavior:

Now, many enemies will act in certain ways when you come into their Aggro Bubble. Some low level creatures will simply ignore you until directly provoked, but the vast majority will start taking hostile action against you. Now, as far as the enemies are concerned, your doing one of two things: Fighting or Fleeing. What the enemies consider fighting, is anything that involves you standing still. What enemies consider fleeing, is anything where you are moving around.

Before they consider you at all however, they have to notice you first. Enemies are grouped together so that if one of the members of this group sees you, he will holler for his friends to follow suit. Also, if two groups are close together, when one notices you they will call the other group in as backup. This however has an exception. If you aggro one group by attacking it from outside the aggro bubble, it cant call for the help of another group until it can either see you or attack you. Therefore if you "hit and run" before they catch up to you, only one group can follow. This is commonly known as a "pull" or "pulling a group". Be careful with groups containing rangers, as they may carry longbows and attack sooner then expected. Also, it is important to note how the enemy will approach you. Most will charge straight on until they are within their weapon range, while others with teleportation skills may simply warp to your side. Some foes will use a charge that runs parallel to a line directed at you, allowing them to run to a point a few feet to your side, then cutting in towards you. Foes that teleport and run a bit to the side take extra precautions to body block effectively.

In areas with partially hidden groups such as Underworld, you may aggro a member of the group you can't see yet. This will cause enemies outside your bubble to charge, even though it appears for no reason at all. The "pop up" that you aggrod Just happened to be connected to those others, which is uncommon but does happen. When this happens the pop up member of the group may take several seconds to appear after first seeing you.

Now, when you are fighting (in the eyes of the monster), anything attacking you will continue to do so unless it is given a reason to stop. That includes in Hard Mode, believe it or not. That means melee creatures are not locked onto you until they take a swing at you with their weapon, and will therefore keep searching for better targets until they reach you and begin fighting. This is called target locking. The first thing that could cause something to stop attacking you is if you move, which they consider fleeing. The second is if a large amount of Area of Effect spells hit them repeatedly over a small amount of time, which triggers the monsters own "flee" action. This triggers more quickly in hard mode. The third is more common in hard mode and is when a monster will run away to heal. This will occur when they're health is brought below 50% and they actually have a healing skill to use. This effect is commonly countered by attacking the fleeing target, ignoring them until they return, or -if possible with the chosen strategy- back up a few steps and the target will follow.

When you are fleeing, anything targeting you will continuously look for a better target than you. "Better" by monster AI standards is usually the player with the least health and/or the least armor, but not always. For example: any creature with the elite necromancer skill Grenth's Balance will look for the target with the MOST health before casting, disregarding armor. Now, another factor that comes into play with choosing their targets is speed. If you are using a speed buff, or anything to make you move faster, or a speed debuff to make the enemies slower, they will stop chasing you. This effect only works if you move faster than the creatures, and since some carry speed buffs and debuffs of there own, it can be difficult to outrun certain types. One of the types that is near impossible to outrun are Drakes, which can run as fast as 50% faster than standard human speed.

Note: It is researched very little, but the application of speed buffs, debuffs, and knockdowns appear to modify the monster AI's priority as it reflects distance from themselves. For example, if the mob is debuffed, the distance from them to you that they are willing to keep following you from is decreased. This effect seems to last for the rest of the battle after knockdowns are applied, and only as long as the duration of the hex or buff when modifying speed.

Also, if you move 'through' an ally, any enemy melee ranged creature that was following you will not be able to pass through this person, and will either go around them, or start pummeling them instead. When they start fighting the other person in your place, this is called body blocking.

There is a limit to how far an enemy will follow you when your fleeing. First they will have a timer for how long they can follow you without making a hit before they give up, second they have a physical barrier to following you past a certain point. Once you pass this invisible line anything in that group will stop in its tracks, turn around, and start heading back to where it started. This line is only ever ignored if the foes chasing you are spell-locked, which means they already have the command to cast something engaged, and therefore cannot do anything else until it is cast. Stationary groups have a circle around their location roughly the size of the radar, while patrols will follow for much longer.

People should also be aware that the Enemy AI, as well as the Hero and Henchmen have absolutely perfect "Situational Awareness". This means that everything computer controlled can see all the info about battles, including who's casting what, how much health, armor, and energy each person they see has, as well as if they are fighting or fleeing. This Awareness is dangerous because if someone is being targeted by a creature, and gets a beneficial spell cast on them by a team mate, the creature targeting that first person now knows that second person is there, regardless of how far away they are. This also means that enemies and heros with interrupts can use them very well, as they have perfect reflexes and know everything that is being cast.

For more info on breaking and holding Aggro, click here: Aggro For more info on the behavior of Hard Mode monsters, click here: Hard Mode Monsters For more info on Body Blocking, click here: Body Blocking

3. Tanking

Tanking is a role that is rarely taken in standard play as most creatures can be dealt with easier than tanking would require. Tanking, simply put, is using the rules of Aggro listed above to change what the enemy does. Usually, this involves a warrior or other highly armored/protected player holding the majority of the Aggro so that the less armored members of the party are not damaged, and Area of Effect skills are more effective.

The first thing we will go over is tools. Depending on which approach you wish to use, this part can be quite diverse. Most will want to take some form of self healing to stay alive, as a monk healing you while you are moving will cause an aggro break. Many will also take extra defences to reduce damage received from enemies. The one tool that you will want the most is a longbow. It doesn't have to be pretty, heck it doesn't even have to be max. It just has to be a longbow, because as the name suggests, it shoots a really long way. The second tool that you need is your characters body. Positioning your character is at the heart of tanking, as without a physical body to work with, tanking wouldn't work.

3. A. Tanking: Pulling:

Pulling is the first step to most fights where people are using caution. This involves using that longbow, or simply your aggro bubble to get the attention of a group of enemies and allowing them to follow you to an advantageous battleground. This is probably the most dangerous part of tanking as you will be without healing support and because your going close to enemies. This means you risk being out of resurrection range as well.

Now, the location you move your enemies too is probably close to where your group is waiting, and has some key feature that will help you in the battle. Things to look for in battle zones are: elevation, walls, and no nearby enemies. Most good battles place your team above the other, ensuring any rangers or ritualist spirits on your team can shoot really far. Walls are useful because sometimes your enemy will use many projectile spells on your team as well as ranged attacks. Walls stop these from hitting you and allow for relative safety from most rangers and earth elementalists, but at the cost of your own not working either. Finally, the chosen location shouldn't have any other creatures running around nearby, because they may join in the fight and overwhelm you.

Now, once you have these enemies following you there's a few things you can do with them. If they are too much for your group you can flee, using a speed buff or simply moving past their maximum range. If they are of reasonable size you can start tanking them. If they are a small group you can forgo tanking and simply kill them all, assuming they hold no threat to your group if you do so.

However, If you know for a fact that two groups of enemies are hostile towards eachother, then there is yet another option. If you are capable of making yourself a horrible target via high armor or high speed (or both), you can pull two groups hostile to eachother together and run for it. They will happily fight amongst themselves until one of those groups is destroyed. This is not only easy to do, but really fun to watch. Just make sure you can make yourself a bad target, or else they will both follow you until you die or you make it to your team, where they will choose the weakest and attack.

3. B. Tanking: Method #1:

This is the simple method and is pretty much the same for every situation. It involves you stopping in the battlefield and allowing the enemy group to target lock on you. This means that all of them are actively attacking you. In this state, your party can now heal you and attack them without fear of being attacked themselves. It is important to note however that this does not work if you move, and is by no means a perfect way to tank.

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Above is a picture of a successful pull. The foes are all targeting the tank, while the team fights them.

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Above is the Radar from that fight. The character in the center is the tank, and the rest are the party. The red 'X' shows where the team was located before attacking.

Some simple tips on how to do this better are to avoid being attacked during your run as much as possible, and to turn around at your location and stand next to the casters of the enemy group. This will cause you to last the longest possible time and group all the melee ranged creatures next to the casters where they can all be hit by spells together. Avoid repetitive area of effect spells if at all possible with this method, as any break in target locking will most likely be impossible to fix, and occur with more then just one enemy. Call a target to let your team know its safe to start attacking, this will stop many aggro breaks from occurring from attacks before your ready.

If a monster breaks away from you, you are faced with a choice. If nothing is attacking you anymore, you can either abandon tanking and just fight, or you can try to body block enemies following your allies around. By placing yourself on the same side of the enemy as your ally (right on top of your friend), you prevent them from following if your friend moves backwards. If only one or two break off and you still hold the vast majority of the Aggro, stand still and keep fighting them. Your primary job is still to keep them from attacking everyone else, and that outweighs attacking the few that are running around free. Damage is therefore secondary when you are tanking.

3. C. Tanking: Method #2:

This method is used mostly in The Deep which is an elite mission. Like the other method, this one won't vary much from battle to battle, and it's not perfect. However unlike the first method, it relies on the monsters' movement to work properly. First we will look into the start situation again: we have a bunch of creatures on our tail ready to fight and we are approaching a battlefield. These foes are predictable, and will do roughly the same things every time you see them. So when they see you, they will follow one of the three above listed movement patterns to get to you. Because they generally follow in a straight line, if you are in the line between them and the intended target, they will run right into you, either getting stuck or quickly swerving around to continue on their way.

This method is based on the monsters either seeing you or your teammates, and trying to get to them in that "shortest path", while you block that path. This will cause everything targeting you to stop with you and attack, and anything targeting your team to bump into you and change targets, unless it can find its way around or teleport. The problem however is that you have to get every single one of the enemy paths to merge into one at some point for this to work. Where does that happen? Well instead of allowing you to guess wildly, I'll tell you. All paths on one side of a corner or curved wall must merge together at some point to reach the other side of the corner or curved wall as efficiently as possible. But there in lies the greatest challenge that this method offers: 1. finding a corner that works, and 2. getting your team to move to the far side of it. The first part gets fairly easy over time because all you have to do is walk around and look for a nice wall + corner setup. The second part however varies in difficulty, from ridiculously easy to nearly impossible.

The easiest time you will have with moving your party is when you are using henchmen and/or heros. They can be ordered to move right where you want them, and they will actually listen to you. Real people pose a problem however: they have free will. Most people won't give up that free will without good reason and if you start ordering around a pick up group, it probably won't end very well. The main barrier that causes this is ignorance. People don't know what your trying to do, and therefore dismiss it as pointless or a waste of time, or know what your trying to do but don't trust you to handle it or see it as unneeded. Some will consider it and learn, but it takes a gentle touch to get it to work. That is why this method is best left for organized groups, or solo exploration with your band of loyal henchmen. Like said earlier, true tanking is rarely needed.

Now, this method follows the same priorities as the first method. If something makes it past you, your better off stopping the big group then the few lucky ones that sidestepped you. However, unlike the first method, we do something that was forbidden: we move. We wont move very much, just a step forward or back. This is just enough to cause every caster that has you targeted to switch to target the monk behind you keeping you alive. they will run up, get stuck against you, and attack the monk. At this point, if the monk, or any caster that happens to be in range moves backward out of range, the monster will once again target you. At this point you will have almost every one of them stuck to you like glue, where they can be bombarded with every offensive spell in the book.

Now however, you have to be careful because some of those monsters may run away, and if your attacking them in melee your character will try to follow. If this is allowed everything else will move past you and your party is done for. If you see your target run away, either move slightly backward to counter, or switch to the new closest target.

The best part about this method however is that it takes far less self healing to work. You can take all attack skills and still manage to survive because your monks are allowed to heal you for the whole pull on the way back. This is because even if the monsters catch sight of the monks, they can't get them when your blocking the corner.

On to some diagrams to help people understand the workings better.

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Above is the curved wall setup i described. The Olive circle is your party, and the bright green dot is your tank. Now, the red line is parallel to the point on the wall your tank is next to, and represents the safe-zone in which you can pull enemies without them finding there way around you. You should notice that the radar and the drawing are very similar, as the drawing is a simplified view of the radar.

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Now, this is the corner method. As you can see we have a slightly larger safe-zone to work with, and it can now be adjusted with positioning changes. Also note that in the radar one of the enemies made it past, but my priority stays on the big group stuck at the corner.

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Those two are the extremes of your safe-zone on a 90 degree corner. These are probably best to be avoided as they are both prone to leaks.

When you have a ranger in your party, they can do one of two things: move to the edge of the safe-zone to shoot arrows, or do nothing. This strategy works well with AoE, and therefore Barrage is very effective. Here is another option however:

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This setup used a corner, but one that provided no obstructed view. To find these you will have to run along the edges to figure out exactly where they are, but your rangers will love the full view. As you can see, there is a group nearby that if aggrod would cause problems. Since they are a stationary group however, they pose no threat.

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The above method is a variation of the corner method. this is a 1-5 degree corner, which amounts to the end of a wall. This setup is most common in the jade sea as you will only have waves to work with. This method offers the greatest safe-zone possible. When doing this, make sure your end of the wall is the shortest path to your party, and not the other end, as the enemy group may just go around the other way instead.

Now comes the part of the guide where we look at some more advanced stuff you could do to make your pulls and blocking more effective. Lets say you have a group of enemies that are just outside your safe-zone. To get them to stick to you, they have to follow you at the proper angle.

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If we pull as the blue arrows show, they approach at the proper angle, and will therefore be blocked perfectly fine. While slightly more dangerous, this can save time by making a single corner more flexible to the enemies around it.

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This is the worst-case scenario. All your enemies got around you, your team is being attacked. This happens to me the most with Onis, since they appear as "pop up" groups of 3-4. You can still fix this.

Standing still at the corner, you instruct your team to run "through" you, not around, to the other side of the corner. Since partied creatures can pass through eachother, this will act as a filter on the monsters and they will once again be stuck. This can be done with heros/henchmen with a simple order change, however people like to take a longer route out of politeness unless told otherwise.

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This Method is one of my favorites because while unstable, is quite versetile. This pull involves enemies that start fairly close to your party and move around a building to a common point. Now, just because they started somewhere that would break the aggro doesn't mean they are currently at such a place. Simply make sure your side of the tower is the shortest when they spot your party.

Thats it everyone. Hope this taught you something, or at the very least was an interesting read. I can settle for entertaining you.

4. Credits:

Written by Brother Roland Sources: Guild Wiki, Guild Wars Official Wiki, Guild Wars Guru Forums, In-game Experience. Collaborators: -none yet-