Guild Wars 2

Just got instantly downed by a Battle Standard attack from an Elite Aetherblade (silver portrait). I’m guessing this is either a bug, or part of a ‘warrior promotion campaign’?

I mean, it’d be ok if it was dodgable but in the thick if the fight, attacks like that are impossible to see.

The Aetherblade Thug is capable of one shotting players. I know it can be difficult in the thick of battle, but if you are going to melee, you’d best find the Thug and kill him first.

Especially if it’s level 84. A level 84 elite Thug will destroy you.

This is why I Range attack and dodge often.

All my classes are ranged and I still have a problem with this, I mean it helps but only so much simply because there are a bunch of red circles on the ground and its impossible to dodge them all or walk out of them. I only mention this because it can be frustrating to get instakilled by a silver.

So it’s normal that a skill that’s supposed to be all about party support also happens to be an instant kill? I’m not buying that.

As for the no melee bit, it’s hard to not melee when there’s npcs all over the place. It’s good advice though.

The Battle Standard of a level 80 Veteran Aetherblade Thug deals around 4000 damage to my squishy thief character when it gets a critical hit. It’s nothing unmanageable.

The issue here is with an upscaled level 84 Elite Aetherblade Thug. The solution to avoid being one-shot by that Battle Standard is to not run in a big enough zerg to force them to spawn at that high level.

Yeah 4 level difference can be hurtful.

took a screenshot, though its not as high as the OP it still is quite insane

Moral of the story:

Don’t zerg events to scale them up to entire swarms of level 84s with too many people and mobs to see and dodge in time.

Battle Standard is a blast finisher, but an upscaled Elite Thug is a nuke. Try not to have a zerg doing these events. The best strategy is to spread people out across the map.

I could be wrong but the Champion Aetherblade thug didn’t seem to do nearly the same amount of damage as the elite. When I face the elite version I just swap to hammer and stun lock as much as possible and then tactically retreat if I take a big hit. The worst is when they just spawn and all do their knockdowns, if you don’t see them right away it’s game over.

Distaste.4801:

I could be wrong but the Champion Aetherblade thug didn’t seem to do nearly the same amount of damage as the elite. When I face the elite version I just swap to hammer and stun lock as much as possible and then tactically retreat if I take a big hit. The worst is when they just spawn and all do their knockdowns, if you don’t see them right away it’s game over.

It’s rare for Champions to actually scale up past 80, now. They were doing that for a while after Orr events were reworked last year, and it was causing an awful lot of screwy things. Now you’ll notice in most places that even in upscaled events the Champions stay at level 80, while the Vets/Elites can go up to 84.

A level 84 Elite doing more damage than a level 80 Champion isn’t too surprising, and it’s actually balanced out by the fact that the Elite can be crowd-controlled freely.

Duh… battle standard has a huge cast time… why didn’t you just out-skill the NPC and dodge? IMO it should do 80k damage and be unblockable to encourage more skillful play.

On a completely unrelated note, how is that scaling down of the clutter and particle effects in large scale PVE coming Anet?

Rennoko.5731:

Duh… battle standard has a huge cast time… why didn’t you just out-skill the NPC and dodge? IMO it should do 80k damage and be unblockable to encourage more skillful play.

On a completely unrelated note, how is that scaling down of the clutter and particle effects in large scale PVE coming Anet?

Well try to see the battle standart casting of a lvl 84 Elite Aetherblade Thug in a Zerg. Almost impossible and I like it, because it is another step to discourage Zergs. Also they can hit you you 30K with their Smash Attack.

But if you find the upscaled Thugs ridiculous, try the Molten Miasma in a Zerg. Lvl 84 Gunners spamming Tornados, up to three Elite Protectors using their flame shield, and fire fields in masse.

And what does it say? Don’t zerg or the mobs will farm you.^^

Walhalla.5473:

Rennoko.5731:

Duh… battle standard has a huge cast time… why didn’t you just out-skill the NPC and dodge? IMO it should do 80k damage and be unblockable to encourage more skillful play.

On a completely unrelated note, how is that scaling down of the clutter and particle effects in large scale PVE coming Anet?

Well try to see the battle standart casting of a lvl 84 Elite Aetherblade Thug in a Zerg. Almost impossible and I like it, because it is another step to discourage Zergs. Also they can hit you you 30K with their Smash Attack.

But if you find the upscaled Thugs ridiculous, try the Molten Miasma in a Zerg. Lvl 84 Gunners spamming Tornados, up to three Elite Protectors using their flame shield, and fire fields in masse.

And what does it say? Don’t zerg or the mobs will farm you.^^

I love watching the entire zerg get intsakilled fighting the molten alliance. I see two protectors out, shielding all the enemies, and still people are happily using AA on everything else EXCEPT the protectors. Boggles the mind really.

The Spiral King.2483:

Walhalla.5473:

Rennoko.5731:

Duh… battle standard has a huge cast time… why didn’t you just out-skill the NPC and dodge? IMO it should do 80k damage and be unblockable to encourage more skillful play.

On a completely unrelated note, how is that scaling down of the clutter and particle effects in large scale PVE coming Anet?

Well try to see the battle standart casting of a lvl 84 Elite Aetherblade Thug in a Zerg. Almost impossible and I like it, because it is another step to discourage Zergs. Also they can hit you you 30K with their Smash Attack.

But if you find the upscaled Thugs ridiculous, try the Molten Miasma in a Zerg. Lvl 84 Gunners spamming Tornados, up to three Elite Protectors using their flame shield, and fire fields in masse.

And what does it say? Don’t zerg or the mobs will farm you.^^

I love watching the entire zerg get intsakilled fighting the molten alliance. I see two protectors out, shielding all the enemies, and still people are happily using AA on everything else EXCEPT the protectors. Boggles the mind really.

It shouldn’t be that shocking. If you didn’t do the Molten Alliance dungeon, you really wouldn’t understand the mechanic, and how often are you required to read a buff in this game to know how to appropriately respond to that buff?

People will just learn to avoid those mobs all together. Path of least resistance.

Yup. Many veteran and elite lvl 84 mobs are capable of 1-shotting ppl.
Just be careful when you see them.

Typically, many of them appear in overly scaled miasma events.

only 27k?

i got hit for 31k lol

Let’s not forget that they might have 25 stacks of might on them too which can explain the high damage