Guild Wars 2

Yes, I know another Watchwork Knight compliant thread, but this is hopefully different. Most of the complaints I have read about the new way the Watchwork Knights talked about one or two things players did not like, never really gave a reason other then that it was hard and not friendly. So I figure I will try a stab at this and maybe it will help show how much the change really impacted ME as a player.

Timer: The Watchwork Knights, from the patch notes sounded like a warm up to the final fight and confrontation to Scarlet, the “Final Boss” of this story. There was no mention or reason story wise to apply a timer to the three Knight, other then defeat them at the same time. The only reason to add a timer of sorts from a mechanical stand point is to prevent an overlap of events with itself every hour and with the Hologram on the Breachmaker. Sure you could add tension to the fight with a timer but with the other three mechanics to the Knights it, just turns into frustration and stress. The timers have no added value other then adding to the “You must be this <Insert Adjective> to win” and just make people depressed or angry.

Split the Group: This 50 person maximum per knight is fine as long as it provides a challenge and not a impediment. I am to believe that almost all encounters to the game use a form of “Scaling” to the number of people in the event radius, I assume this is correct for this encounter. If the encounter only allows 50 people to participate in the fight, I hope the fight does not scale past 50 people from “bystanders”. If this encounter is one of few that DO NOT scale to the number of people, then I think it’s set to high and feels like it’s scaled to be a 75-100 people vs. one knight due to the high damage reduction and mitigation. If the 51st person at a Watchwork Knight event scales it up, why does it? The 51st person can in no way effect the Knight, and can offer the group a small boost if there made to buff but that’s only bringing 50% effectiveness to the table. Also if “bystanders” are scaling the event it only makes players more aggressive to them since there seen doing more harm then good.

The Three Mechanics: I noticed two new mechanics that are shared between the Knights and one that is unique to each of the Knights. This mechanics could of been really fun but are in reality negatively synergistic and confounding. The first is the needing a color buff to do damage to the knights. Originally the buff was a high risk/ high reward since you took 50% more damage to output 50% more damage, this was fair. Now it’s a no reward for a high risk in which you are granted 100% use of your current damage, and now take the same amount of damage if you had the buff or not. No extra damage, still get killed without the buff. The second mechanic that is shared is the “Mode Change”, where the Knights reflect condition damage or take extra from conditions. This is a an interesting change and would be more welcomed if it was not crippled by the other mechanics. For example the Static Watch Knight seems to have double the toughness of it’s other counterparts and seems to have the longest of it’s “Reflect Conditions” mode, thus will take the longest to kill. The Synergistic Knight has normal armor and a heal with a shorter “Condition Reflect” mode, which can lead to a faster kill. In all honestly I think the Static should have a shorter “Reflect” then Synergistic, and Synergistic lengthened. As for each of there special mechanics they are lacking in clarity and are hard to pin point or combat in it’s current state.

I am sure it’s far too late to make changes since the next big thing is around the corner but maybe, just maybe you could revert the changes to the Knights and extend it a week longer. I did enjoy the Hologram fight more then the Knights and it’s a shame I have to fight such a confounding foe to get there.