Guild Wars 2

The current dragon fights, while epic and awesome are in some serious need of an overhaul.

When fighting dragons, a lot of the time everyone just zergs the dragon, ignoring the cannons, ice elementals etc. It should be a requirement of the fight to make sure those cannons are used on Tequatls bones wall, Jormags elementals should destroy cannons if left alone, Shatterers prisons should kill trapped players etc.

If they are not used/defended/utilised, the dragons and their minions should win the fight and defeat all the players in the area, and take over the zone like in a failed dynamic event chain.

At the moment they are a win/win situation, you dont even need to really do much to get a gold reward, and can ignore all the mechanics.

I want those fights to be an epic challenge every time, not just a zerg fest.

The Dragon fights…except maybe Claw of Jormag were the single biggest letdown in this game.

I mean they look great, have a pretty epic setup and the animations especially are really good. But the fights themselves are just hugely disappointing and basically glorified loot pinatas.

The Shatterer for example doesn’t seem to have any real mechanics…or at least nothing noticeable once you have 20+ players fighting him. He doesn’t down anyone, doesn’t attack anything….just dies and drops loot.

Tequatl has a few mechanics, but none of them really seem to matter much. Sure, you can do various thing, attack bone walls, fight adds and minions etc. but you might aswell just spam damage into the boss while watching TV.

The Claw is definitely a step up but doesn’t seem to scale well beyond 30 players or so.

I think a problem is that GW2 basically never wants you to fail. You should always win…and that is kind of boring. Because even if the Dragons did occasionally kill a player or two….they’d just respawn and walk back….still kill the Dragon and still collect loot.

Failure has to be a real possibility or ANet and I are going to have a very underwhelming relationship.

The dragons should be Dynamic Events with consequences for failure, on a grander scale than the normal events that occur around the world.

You expect too much right now. They said the current encounters in the game are tame compared to what is coming. The content in the game right now is to test the waters of the player base. Once they get comfortable I expect to be destroyed by my overlord arenanet masters.

What’s surprising about that? The whole game was clearly designed for casual players: no skill needed, no rotation to learn and master, gear doesn’t matter, you basically can’t fail anything,.. I’m sure it’s really fun for little kids but if you’re looking for a real challenge you have to look for another MMORPG.

i agree the dragon fights REALLY need changing.... you dont get any chance to go there and fight unless u r already there.... I waited for four hours today to get to fight it.... i took 5 mins yes 5 mins to get there and it was all over.... that to me is no fun i logged off and havent played since...

@Leto, I disagree with you, and this thread is not here to start saying the game is lame etc. Its a good game, better than any other MMO available at the moment. To quote Mr Gump “that’s all I have to say about that”.

@Torvarren – I hope you are correct, I enjoy the game but these dragons really need to be able to stomp 100+ players if all they are doing is zerging.

Lol torvarrens post gives me hope. I mean just lookit the unused asura gates in LA and all the gates blocked and guarded by NPCs. Hope there is a lot more coming

But in general what’s the dumbest thing is how I can just stand at its feet and whack it with my sword, taking no damage even when the foot steps on me xDDd

Torvarren.6295:

You expect too much right now. They said the current encounters in the game are tame compared to what is coming. The content in the game right now is to test the waters of the player base. Once they get comfortable I expect to be destroyed by my overlord arenanet masters.

Yes, it wouldn’t be much different from how they handled GW1 and its expansions…

Jiminimokna.1270:

@Leto, I disagree with you, and this thread is not here to start saying the game is lame etc. Its a good game, better than any other MMO available at the moment. To quote Mr Gump “that’s all I have to say about that”.

You asked why there’s no challenge, why it’s just a zerg fest and I gave you the answer. It’s not flaming the game it’s just stating an obvious fact.

The game is meant for casuals, they are the ones more likely to spend real money on their gem store so they are the ones Anet is targeting hence the face roll easy mode that is GW2.

Here’s an idea. Make an NPC that the dragon and mobs want to kill. Put a curse on the NPC so it can’t be healed, only rezzed if down. Make waves of champion and veteran mobs that attack the NPC. If the NPC goes to a down state, the dragon’s health resets. If the NPC goes down too many times, it dies and the event fails. We have to wait another 3 hours for the next chance.

Make the loot scale inversely based on how many times the NPC goes down. If it goes down zero times, players get the best loot from the chest.

If the dragon event is successful, make the next event a little harder by increasing the dragon and mob’s HP. Conversely, make the event a little easier after each failure.

Give players XP, karma, and gold even if the event fails. Just no loot chest unless the event succeeds.

On my server we actually do fight the ice elementals because the dragon fears us back there lol!

I would like to lose to the dragons, a lot, so if you do win it is epic. Like maybe a 5% chance of pulling off the win, and of course guarantee some decent loot if you do pull it off.

I suggest making the timing of the dragon events random. When they’re regular and predictable they become a farm for a bunch of players who just stand around and wait for others to do the pre-event work, auto-attack the dragon, and reap the rewards. Random timing would make it more of an actual “event” and would actually excite players when they happen.

I also suggest making either the pre-events able to be failed, or the dragon fight itself able to be failed. Making the dragon fight a guarenteed win ruins the epicness, and if it were possible to fail the event that causes the dragon to appear, players would be more motivated to contribute rather than stand around and wait for the dragon to appear.

The 3 biggest changes I would like to see with the Dragon events, and in general any zone boss events are:

1) The precursors should be much more significant both in numbers & time to complete. A good chain example is the Flame Temple in Diessa Plateau that is a long chain that leads up to opening the temple. A Zone Boss should require as much lead-in if not more IMO

2) The bosses themselves need to have less predictable behaviors/mechanics. They should have a greater array of abilities that get randomly used and there should be a pool of mechanics that randomly change from spawn to spawn. Ex: Sometimes Shatterer is immune to player damage & must be killed by siege weapons while players protect them, other times the siege weapons have to solely be used to kill minions to keep from overrunning the players, etc…

3) There needs to be a definitive & significant lose condition. Time, NPC’s kept alive, equipment destroyed, whatever there needs to be a way for players to lose and in the losing there should be an effect on the zone.

I agree they should be harder, I’d also like to see their spawn times more random. As of now it’s too easy to just farm all three one after another. It’s rare they are more than 40 minutes apart.

It would likely be best when a dragon has a wall up to prevent all damage to them. That would force people on the front line of Teq to go back and take down bone walls.

For Shatterer, the lack of mechanics I think is by design, dragons spaced out at 50, 60, 70, and each one has more and more mechanics to learn. Shatterer is ment for newbies to cut their teeth on and be straight forward.

I wish they made it so dragons wipe the floor with players.

Even with 100 players, it should be a gruelling victory and the dragon should wreck stuff.

The pre-nerf Flame Legion Shaman did a kitten good job of destroying people.

defrule.7236:

I wish they made it so dragons wipe the floor with players.

Even with 100 players, it should be a gruelling victory and the dragon should wreck stuff.

The pre-nerf Flame Legion Shaman did a kitten good job of destroying people.

You mean the shaman from the Iron Marches? North-West? I did it a couple of day ago with a group of 5-6 people. Man that was fun!

Difficulty. Yesterday morning there were only 4 or 5 of us against Shatterer. It took a long time but we did finish it (maybe 30 minutes, can’t be sure). I only died twice. Those mobs that appear were smaller in number. Healing crystals same number but seemed easy to destroy.

The only consequences of taking such a long time was, as far as I remember, the guns were destroyed. The dragon just went so far then stood still with adds arriving from time to time. So, all that happens if it takes longer than normal if guns destroyed. Surely if he got that far he should kill all NPCs, not just those by the guns and “Event failed”. The adds were easy to deal with so maybe I could even have done it alone.

Jormag imho is good…it takes a lot of time and its fun because you have to evade things, destroy ice pillars and if you ignore elementals as OP says they come to kill players from the back……

I tried the Shatterer also sometimes….
Its really a delusion, that is pure zerg and it lasts nothing…..

I don t want dragons to become difficult, but mechanics like those of jormag that requires people to do something and that makes the fight a little longer are really good imho.

You have to remember that this isnt meant to be a pve game. Its a pvp game through and through though its not really balanced at the moment with things like heartseeker spam and such. Anet has even said its a pvp game and GW1 was even based highly around pvp.

Be nice to have specific loot from specific dragons not just random blue, green yellows

its not mainly a pvp game i wish people would stop saying that... anyway offtopic sorry.. I think more things to do on dragon fights is a must.. and also make them take longer...

Before changing it difficulty, make sure to give us better reward from chest because when dragon’s mobs drop waaay better loot we have a HUGE problem.

Jongi.7612:

You have to remember that this isnt meant to be a pve game.

lol.