Guild Wars 2

This event seems either very overtuned or bugged to do ridiculous amounts of damage. It just seems unfair, since even one mistake is almost guaranteed to kill you. You can’t revive anyone because standing still means almost certain death. It doesn’t promote team play, and it definitely doesn’t make me want to come back next time it happens. All in all, I’m just upset and confused. I died three times during the event before the elemental went down, and I got no chest or event credit for my trouble.

Please consider doing something about this event. Namely, the fire eruptions. They give you only a second’s breadth to react, and if you don’t, you get stunned and burned to death in seconds. This type of pass/fail mechanic just isn’t fun.

Actually this is how all events should be from the get go, as preparation for dungeons, and teaching of basic game mechanics like dodging (in freaking half seconds).

Atm, if you play some dungeons, the world just gets incredible boring. If you play events and all that stuff on the other hand, you are getting wrecked in the face when you then try to do some dungeons again.

Theres just a WAY to huge gap in the difficulty of open world and dungeons.

So either ramp up one, tune one down, or do both a little bit.

I agree that it’s super difficult. Actually, I haven’t killed him through the beta and since release. Maybe they could bump down his attack from 1-shotting you to 2-shots.

But there’s another post on this forum saying The Shatterer is too easy. which confuses me as to whether or not people want the game to be more challenging or easier.

The elemental is way too crazy for a starting area.

And who thought putting that stupid bridge there was a good idea? Every attempt I participated in basically went “bunch of people die on the bridge (as far as I know, the only way into that area, and just within the elemental’s attack range), other people get killed trying to revive them, repeat”.

Its easy.

Get in the room, spread out, kill the adds in priority over the boss.

That way the aoe is spread out, the adds are dead so the really lethal aoe does not occur and not everyone gets hit my the bosses fire lines.

Boss actually has pretty low health, its just you have to clear adds to allow you time to dps rahter than constantly dodging aoe.

A really good fight where proper execution means its fun and doable, but messing round on the bridge and ignorign adds results in a wipefest. We need more of these boses not less.

(and use dodge, and cds to get past bridge if people are stackign there)

Darani.8356:

All in all, I’m just upset and confused.

I don’t know why but that made me laugh irl

IMO, dungeons are easy compared to this guy. I’ve done a couple of dungeons, and maybe it’s due to the overall more organized nature of dungeon runs, but I die less in a dozen or so dungeons than one attempt at the fire elemental.

You need a bunch of people killing the adds if you want to down them in a timely manner. Trying to kill an add by yourself is not only time consuming, but extremely dangerous since having to kite out of their attacks only aggros other adds. It almost feels like killing risen in Orr, except you also have to worry about a huge mob trying to kill you with one-hit KO attacks.

The thing is, it’s a zerg in a newbie zone. We’re not going to get people to kill the adds with you. I can’t even get people to kill mobs closer to the east tower so the Svanir morale goes down faster in the Wayfarer Hills far north DE (seriously, that one takes like 15 minutes because the zerg kills everything way far away). How do I expect to get people not to try to dps the huge target in the middle of the room here?

I’d be more accepting of this sort of boss if it were in a higher level zone where the most of the bad players have washed out in the difficulty jump around level 25, and most everyone else has learned how to play well. But in a newbie zone, I really think he’s overtuned.

My only real complaint isn’t that you need split-second reaction time to dodge the 1-shots, my problem is that you’re looking for incoming fire against the backdrop of a giant fire creature. Not that I have a decent suggestion to fix it. It is a fire elemental after all. Difficult content is 100% a good thing in my opinion, even in the early zones. Let everyone know what they’re getting into right out of the gate.

Cameirus.8407:

Its easy.

Get in the room, spread out, kill the adds in priority over the boss.

That way the aoe is spread out, the adds are dead so the really lethal aoe does not occur and not everyone gets hit my the bosses fire lines.

Boss actually has pretty low health, its just you have to clear adds to allow you time to dps rahter than constantly dodging aoe.

A really good fight where proper execution means its fun and doable, but messing round on the bridge and ignorign adds results in a wipefest. We need more of these boses not less.

(and use dodge, and cds to get past bridge if people are stackign there)

IMO cameirus is right

everyone stops right after the bridge and starts dealing dmg
BUT this always ends up with the whole grp whiping right @the bridge…

go inside, spread out and kill the adds first! thats how it works
if your getting to much dmg and you heal is on CD than walk back over the bridge and wait till you can heal yourself, that way you wont die…
IF everyone is using the same tactics there wont be anyone on the bridge, so there wont be any AOE spam…

this way its pretty EASY do kill him
there is actually no need to make this boss easier IMO

it only needs one or two people to tell the “raid” what they have to do

Maybe an NPC shouting tells would work?

“that Bridge is a deathtrap, get in there….!”
“We are being swarmed by his minions, kill the firethingys” (cant remember their name)

Or something similar, the difficulty is spot on in my opinion, though as its a starting area, maybe a few hints would not go amiss.

Cameirus.8407:

Its easy.

Get in the room, spread out, kill the adds in priority over the boss.

That way the aoe is spread out, the adds are dead so the really lethal aoe does not occur and not everyone gets hit my the bosses fire lines.

Boss actually has pretty low health, its just you have to clear adds to allow you time to dps rahter than constantly dodging aoe.

A really good fight where proper execution means its fun and doable, but messing round on the bridge and ignorign adds results in a wipefest. We need more of these boses not less.

(and use dodge, and cds to get past bridge if people are stackign there)

It’s easy IF everybody follows the plan. We’re talking about a world boss here, where random people from all over come together to try and kill him. It’s not like a guild run where you discuss boss strats beforehand, hand out assignments and tell people where they are gonna stand. I’m ok with the AOE fire on the ground, but it needs to be tuned down just a bit. But IMO if it is a 1 shot kill, then there should be fewer of them. If they make it so that it no longer one shots or stuns you, then i would be ok with there being lots of them.

Another thing too is it’s a world boss in a starter area, and you dont really want to make a lot of newbies who have never dealt with hard boss mechanics nerd rage. I’ve dealt with this kind of stuff before, and i know how to adjust. But lot’s of new or people who have never raided before will go in guns blazing and get smacked down. And lot of times they wont change their approach and they get smacked down again. Eventually they end up just loitering on the bridge unknowingly making things harder for everybody else.

But having said that, my advice for people having trouble on any fight where there is a lot of aoe or things to avoid. Focus on survival first…if you find yourself dying a lot then just go into the fight and dodge AOE/red circles while you autoattack. Once you are more confident in dodging aoe, then start adding other spells into your rotation.

Cameirus.8407:

Maybe an NPC shouting tells would work?

“that Bridge is a deathtrap, get in there….!”
“We are being swarmed by his minions, kill the firethingys” (cant remember their name)

Or something similar, the difficulty is spot on in my opinion, though as its a starting area, maybe a few hints would not go amiss.

+1 for this!
really thats the solution here!!

@Cosmatman
I’ve killed it several times, and its really not that bad, I’ve just told people to get off bridge, spread out and prioritise adds.

Usually after a few deaths people start to listen and it does not take many to get it working properly, then as other people see it working, it tends to follow on from there.

And I think a starting area is precisely the right place for this. Shadow Behemoth is nice looking and all, but its too “stand and nuke”, it does not teach players anything about how to tackle these events.

TBH the only actual problem with it is that the only way to get into the fight is through a TINY TINY bottleneck where a ton of one shot aoe spam is being fired off lol.

Once you make it through that and just save dodges for the one shot meteor thing that gives you like 0.5 second warning and dodge the little fire blades on the ground it’s really not too bad.

However since you’re usually the only one who is in there you get molested by the adds. Which if there wasn’t a friggin bottleneck holding off everyone (partly a psychological effect) people could get in, kill adds and just dance til the boss dies.

I didn’t fight him at the Thaumanova Reactor but I found one in the 50 – 60 zone in the charr areas. Very difficult fight took a long time for our party to take him down since you have to do it 3 times… Basically we dedicated two people just to resurrecting so people could get up quickly. All in all not worth the 6k XP we got from the drawn out fight but was nice to come out with the win. We were pretty disappointed that there was not a chest to be found after that fight.

It’s tough in a newbie zone because people complain about getting 1-shot… because they only took the +Power gears and totally neglected +Vitality or +Toughness.

Adds or no, the Fire Elemental is a high-mobility fight. I left BWE2 realising that and went in with my Guardian and lobbed tennis balls at it while running around the Elemental’s perimeter. In the whole 15-minute of circle strafing exercise, I managed to get myself killed 3 times while being chased by 5+ Embers.

This is very hard if you do not know the tactics. I did it 4 times since BWE2 and have never ever got a credit (not even medal) even I stayed there for nearly an hour, sometimes at level 20, and usually died 4-5 times.

Yesterday I was able to finish it and get a silver with my level 15 warrior (ranged attack only), no death while I helped many from down state when killing embers. I am probably the only one who is constantly alive, so if everyone do the same, it should be easier.

What you want to do is, get inside. Basic tactics is Hit (with burst) and Run. The bridge is the last place you want to stay. There is no safe place around it and the limited space on the bridge gives you a lot of disadvantage. There are a few location inside that will provide enough range and get you out of LoS from her fire attack, that you can also heal yourself and pull embers to kill. Always avoiding the GTAoE and approach to attack when your burst attack CD is up, then hit and run. There is interval for her fire attack and it is also a good timing when the fire elemental is focusing her attack on somewhere else.

Unfortunately it is impossible to revive anyone since you will probably get yourself killed while reviving. So don’t expect to be rezzed but have hope when you are down .

Llywellyn.4635:

Cameirus.8407:

Maybe an NPC shouting tells would work?

“that Bridge is a deathtrap, get in there….!”
“We are being swarmed by his minions, kill the firethingys” (cant remember their name)

Or something similar, the difficulty is spot on in my opinion, though as its a starting area, maybe a few hints would not go amiss.

+1 for this!
really thats the solution here!!

+2

As it is a lowbie area it doesn’t hurt to “teach” a tiny bit more actively.
As it stands the fire elemental only really is dead ‘ard because the event scales to all the corpses littering the bridge. It’s a good thing there are no real physics in games otherwise that bridge may very well ahve collapsed under all the people waiting to be revived…

A lot of players I came across while doing this group event all felt that the difficulty needs to be adjusted. This is the first starting zone for Asura at level 1-15. I first ran through this event at lvl 36 with level 30 gear and died almost instantly due to massive amount of direct fire and burning damage. I came back to this event in mid level 40s and it was still very challenge as I could still get 1-2 shot killed by knock down + fire and burning damage.

I came back to this event again today, only this time I’m level 80, FULL exotic geared, 2500 Armor down scaled, as tough and fierce as I can be. This time I feel I can navigate myself a little better and could take a few hits before I go down. ALL other 8-10 players are dead and piles of bodies that I can’t afford to revive due to constant spamming and stacking red circle of aoe burn+knock down.

I preety much took down the whole event all by myself, at level 80, 20-30mins and I’ve to admit I’ve even been in the down state once. The entire thing felt like I was doing one of those ridiculous dungeon at a level 1-15 starting zone.

Obviously this group event isn’t tuned for level 80s down scaled but it certainly is NOT level 1-15 friendly. Any legit low level players that fit in the range of this zone will just keep throwing their bodies at great cost and rely on those higher level down scaled players to finished the event for them. But even then, those down scaled players are not having any easier time than they do as they’ll probably just last about a few more secs longer before their imminent death.

This fight isn’t all that bad, but players that don’t pay attention and just rush and spam like normal get everyone killed. In a lot of ways, this is the first “Raid Boss” of the game, and if you zerg in shooting the Embers all at the entrance and start pulling everything, you’re going to have a Zone wide TPK pretty quickly as the Embers all lay down AOE’s.

This is made worse when you have players waiting to be rezzed, and new players who have no idea the challenge this fight is run in and just start shooting willy nilly. This takes what should be a 10 minute fight at a most to a hour fight.

If you can get your zone organized, and you manage to get your team spread out, it is not all that difficult. The key thing, though, is not to zerg in. Unlike other fights up to that point, this one takes some thought, and that can be challenging for players still only 13+ levels into the game.

I was only there once so far and died like 10 times to the elemental. It was pretty hard to res everyone and stay alive, but we did it and it felt like an accomplishment… even while i had to travel back to the waypoint multiple times while the event was going on.

I also got a chest… but i agree, it’s a little bit too hard.

The damage is very high, but it is doable. I did it yesterday with 30 others. We rushed in dodging and hitting the elemental all we could, and since it doesn’t fill up its health bar again we can just do it over and over again. “DOABLE!”

All of these complaints were made back on Beta Weekend #3 when this was introduced. The event’s developer posted a response in the MASSIVE forum thread that was the result of many threads being fused together by the moderators. He realized that the damage was out of whack for a 1-15 area. In his mind, this would be a fair and well designed event for high level characters that have started to master the game. However it was admittedly unfair for beginning players.

Yet…. Nothing happened. Spawn rates on the adds weren’t visibly tuned. Nor was the damage output from the named mob toned down. Its AI targeting still created lock down points on the bridge. All things considered, basically nothing has changed on this event since BW3. The only “improvement” is that the event’s reward chest actually spawns consistently and it’s not longer invisible. That’s it.

There is no way that someone can honestly, and I mean honestly say that event is “easy” and “kittenit is no big deal.” The damage is massive for that area and level and it is ridiculous. It is doable, yes, but very frustrating when you compare it to other world bosses that are not that hard and they are in higher level areas! I mean a group of 30+, that I was in, 95% of us died in less than a second over and over again, most of us were spread out, and NO not all of us were on the dreaded bridge!

Two people got lucky and got in and managed, after dying a lot, to run in circles around the thing and I and a few others managed to find spots to do some DPS, but about the 5th time I died there was no chance as I had no where to dodge and no where to go as I burned up in less than a second. So that is massive damage and something I would never expect in an area that is that low of level. It needs to be taken down a peg or two, I’m not saying make it easy though, but come on!

Asum.4960:

Actually this is how all events should be from the get go, as preparation for dungeons, and teaching of basic game mechanics like dodging (in freaking half seconds).

Oh it teaches you a ton about dungeons: There’s always a waypoint you can zerg from.

Yayabingyi.2815:

There is no way that someone can honestly, and I mean honestly say that event is “easy” and kittenit is no big deal." The damage is massive for that area and level and it is ridiculous. It is doable, yes, but very frustrating when you compare it to other world bosses that are not that hard and they are in higher level areas! I mean a group of 30+, that I was in, 95% of us died in less than a second over and over again, most of us were spread out, and NO not all of us were on the dreaded bridge!

Two people got lucky and got in and managed, after dying a lot, to run in circles around the thing and I and a few others managed to find spots to do some DPS, but about the 5th time I died there was no chance as I had no where to dodge and no where to go as I burned up in less than a second. So that is massive damage and something I would never expect in an area that is that low of level. It needs to be taken down a peg or two, I’m not saying make it easy though, but come on!

I dont find it hard, but then my definition of hard is not “well I died once…” its “i got so frustrated at random RNG kills that I gave up after and hour”.

This fight is simple:
move into room
spread out
kill adds
avoid fire
kill boss

in that order.

Dmg has been toned back from beta, it no longer one shots you, and the knockback from the fire now does not cause instant death as you get time to move bfore it its you.

Its fairly simple, (maybe easy was not the right word). but its not faceroll. And thats good thing. All end of zone (which this effectively is) bosses should be a challenge. Shadow behemoth or the sylvari worm are a joke compared to this.

This is the boss Anet should model all the other zonebosses on, it rewards folllowing tacitcs and punishes zergs.

ZannX.4058:

Oh it teaches you a ton about dungeons: There’s always a waypoint you can zerg from.

Unless the waypoint is currently contested because of some other Dynamic Event happening at the same time

Cameirus.8407:

Its fairly simple, (maybe easy was not the right word). but its not faceroll. And thats good thing. All end of zone (which this effectively is) bosses should be a challenge. Shadow behemoth or the sylvari worm are a joke compared to this.

This is the boss Anet should model all the other zonebosses on, it rewards folllowing tacitcs and punishes zergs.

I actually agree with this.
Maybe then those bosses wouldn’t be down two minutes after spawning…

Shadow Behemoth at least had an interesting mechanic with people having to destroy the portals. The lack of the bridge bottle neck means though that people don’t all die at once, coupled with the clear animation when the Behemoth is attackable means that everyone is there actively participating in the event and not just dead on the ground scaling the event up without doing their part.
But Shadow Behemoth is so easy that, unless you are close by when it spawns, you will never see it.
And the swamp wurm is even worse. Is there even a trick to fighting it? Other than the AoE Fear, does it do anything? When I did it, I stayed in melee the whole time, using a signet to break out of fear one of the two times I got feared. Didn’t have time to fear us a third time…

The mechanics of this fight are horrible. Anyone saying it is easy is a dirty rotten liar! I’ve done the event about a dozen times in the hopes that I would improve and I can’t really say that I have that much. I’ve tried “getting off the bridge” as people have said and while I do agree that the bridge is a death trap the problem with going in the room is that eventually you are going to get major ember aggro. One or two I can handle but this evening I had 5 of them all ganging up on me.

Pretty much the only chance I had of not dying was if my dodge and heals were down (I was playing on a guardian and took a lot of support skills) I ran out of the room and waited for them to come back up.

I wouldn’t mind the chaos of the fight if the lava eruptions on the ground didn’t stun then one shot you. Half the time you dodge and end up on a new eruption.

Even though we eventually got it down every time just by zerging our way back after dying it is way too frustrating a fight. Horrible for a starter zone as there was tons of complaining. You won’t want new players thinking that the entire game is like this.

Passive Aggressive.3154:

The mechanics of this fight are horrible. Anyone saying it is easy is a dirty rotten liar! I’ve done the event about a dozen times in the hopes that I would improve and I can’t really say that I have that much. I’ve tried “getting off the bridge” as people have said and while I do agree that the bridge is a death trap the problem with going in the room is that eventually you are going to get major ember aggro. One or two I can handle but this evening I had 5 of them all ganging up on me.

Pretty much the only chance I had of not dying was if my dodge and heals were down (I was playing on a guardian and took a lot of support skills) I ran out of the room and waited for them to come back up.

I wouldn’t mind the chaos of the fight if the lava eruptions on the ground didn’t stun then one shot you. Half the time you dodge and end up on a new eruption.

Even though we eventually got it down every time just by zerging our way back after dying it is way too frustrating a fight. Horrible for a starter zone as there was tons of complaining. You won’t want new players thinking that the entire game is like this.

Thanks for calling my a liar, I’ll just respond by calling you a noob who needs to learn to play and we’ll call it quits shall we? :P

But no, its not meant to be able for you to solo it! you need a few people killing adds, but well, it is group content after all.

I can usually do it without dying now, unless I mess up, in which case I should die. So thats ok.

I don’t want the events to be too easy but there are situations in this fight where I personally don’t think it matters how good of a player you are. You are going to have multiple lava wells open up in a row underneath you and you are going to run out of dodges or abilities that will protect you.

I think the boss is actually easier with fewer than 10 people because he spams his OP abilities a bit less.

Passive Aggressive.3154:

I don’t want the events to be too easy but there are situations in this fight where I personally don’t think it matters how good of a player you are. You are going to have multiple lava wells open up in a row underneath you and you are going to run out of dodges or abilities that will protect you.

I think the boss is actually easier with fewer than 10 people because he spams his OP abilities a bit less.

Have you read this thread?

Kill the adds. The aoe is from the adds, kill them, it’s not hard if a few people do it, and you completely negate the hard hitting aoe, and all the boss does is easily avoidable and not very deadly fire lines.

I think that the event would be easier if the ember AoE didn’t knockdown as well as apply a large amount of damage. I feel the same way as the OP, I particularly hate how you’re penalized for attempting to revive people which in most group fights is really important to do.

As far as i know when i get knock down i am as good as dead. I am unable to do anything before i take another tick of damage and die. Did it once, took perhaps an hour, broke all armor and got no chest. Never did it again.

Fire elemental would be a very managable, if not downright easy, boss in the traditional raid-sense, where you would have a number of players working together and communicating, following one strategy. You’d have, let’s say, half or two thirds of the players on Ember-Watch and the rest attacking the elemental itself. Noone would die.
As it is, the encounter can fairly quickly turn into a disaster. You have two thirds of the players lying dead on the birdge (and causing the event to scale up and spawn even more embers), waiting, asking, shouting for revives. Of the living players you have half the players trying to do just that and dying in the process. You have a couple of players attacking the embers, one person attacking the elemental and one person standing at the start of the bridge shouting “Don’t revive the dead, you’ll just die as well. Kill the embers. Dead people go to waypoint and come back, it is faster. Kill the embers, they are what kills people.”
The whole thing creates an ambiance for a nice discussion on the difficulty of the event, repair costs, naked asura fighting monsters and the future of gaming – of course is interrupted by the “REZ ME!” “kittenrez?” “lol rez me lol?” “u kittens y u no rez?”

The event is fine. It may have been placed in the wrong spot. It’s the soylent green who make it near impossible at times.

I personally think the event needs to be redesigned to be more like the Svanir Champion Marauder, the end-area boss in Wayfarer Foothills. That one is plenty tough but is much more doable for beginner players. I’ve fought that boss a number of times and it’s not nearly so frustrating as the fire elemental. The only problem with it is that it doesn’t appear to spawn a chest.

Been fighting this boss daily for about 2 weeks and I have streamlined my attack with my ranger. Contrary to alot of posts above I STAY on the bridge, send my pet in to attack the boss, and kill adds with my ranged attacks. I can always dodge back out of range of the AOE, and dart in to attack the boss when the adds are down. I rotate my pets (bears both) as needed, heal when needed, pick up others WHEN I CAN.

Problem with this battle is that it is too hard to rez someone back from the dead in this battle. You rarely have time to get a downed person up. So you wind up with a ton of people dead just watching the fight. I usually have to tell new people not to spam “help” but just goto rez pad. The only place you stand a decent chance of getting a rez is on the bridge. If they change anything it should be to have a rez pad closer to the reactor for those who need to run back a tons of times.
The other problem here is that, if you die alot by the end of the battle your armor is toast. I have started fighting it naked, or keep a cheap set to throw away after the fight.
BTW I have fought and killed this boss SOLO using this technique, but it is a long fight!

You are supposed to dodge to avoid damage.

If you dodge on AoE, you’ll end up falling in another 3 that spawn right before you dodge, because each elemental can spam several AoEs every 5…10 seconds or so.
If you try to resurrect anyone, you are knocked down and die. If you use stability to get of of the knockdown, another knockdowns falls right at your estination point, 4 out of 5 times. I tried a combination of Arcane Shield and Obsidian Flesh to try and resurrect a single player that was OUTSIDE the orange circle area of the event. It didn’t work. Right after Obsidian Flesh finished, the knockdown came, then the circle of AoE, then the damage. 3 hits, down. On a level 80 with level 80 gear. I was dead over 1200 units (staff range) away from the border of he event.

I’ve tried it over 20 times, and players do not play it. They end up giving up, staying down, chatting about how hey should change the event, while the remaining who stay alive are knocked down and downed by single AoEs they could not dodge, then finished by the Embers, and either revive away or join the conversation.

In the end, you have both low level and high level characters winning the event by literally throwing corpses at the elemental until it fades.

It’s not challenging. It’s not fun. It’s not designed for a level 1-15 area. It’s just frustrating. It must be changed.

I think the event needs to be fixed. It is hard and easy at the same time. I was running the events leading up to this where you guide a golem there and he explodes. After he exploded and I realized there was going to be a boss I told my party to run away as fast as possible. One person asked why and died instantly before she even knew there was a boss. The other two and myself made it out and tried to spread out.

The large amount of AOE-KnockDown-Burns in the area make dodging a nightmare. I am fairly good at dodging, I can dodge the one I am in but then I land in another dodge again and now I cant dodge. With out being able to dodge the AoE’s you will die quick.

After the initial deaths when it is decided that there will be no rez because rezzing gets you killed we ported and ran back. Now there are many more people trying to get into the area. No one was trying to stay on the bridge. Everyone was killing the adds at the bridge the best we could but in the time it would take 3 people to rez 1 person there would be 4 more adds to kill.

There was no getting past the bridge. The constant stream of AoE’s meant that if you got close enough to attack the fire imps you were already surrounded by at least 4 of the AoE-KnockDown-Burn bullkitten.

Eventually we got in but still had problems with the spawn rate of the imps. This event gets you good at dodging but the penalty for missing a dodge or being out of endurance is to great. If you miss a dodge you die and in a low level area that is too much. You should have to miss both your dodges to die.

Biggest problem I see is the bottleneck getting into the area. The adds camp that bridge and killing them is impossible when you cant get close enough.

All in all this event needs tweaking. I like the general premise of the event being a dodge or die but the super high spam rate of the AoE’s and low recharge rate of endurance makes this a losing battle.

P.S. we did kill it and it felt great even though it was ultimately not worth it money wise We were still proud we finally one.

I wish to do this event just once.

I mean DO IT. Just once. Get in, fight off the embers, revive others, run around avoiding damage as much as possible…

You know, PLAYING THE GAME.

Instead, what I get is over 30 minutes of defeated people chatting about how horrible the event is, and how they have no more money to repair their armors.

As an starting area, there’s lots of people all the time in here, and so the issue is more pressing. This event is to be adjusted A.S.A.P..

Boss is pretty easy as long as you turn off any possible desire to stop and revive people. They were sacrificed to the flame monster for a reason. Keep moving and dodging.

I’ve done this event maybe half a dozen times and I’ve yet to be present when it completes, because I’m always running back from a waypoint at the time. Although I don’t think I’ve ever not had a gold reward from it.

If you found it easy, that’s luck not skill. Luck that there were enough people around who didn’t spend the entire thing dead on the bridge. Especially if you’re coming back to it with your inadequately down-levelled 80 character, probably with your guildies. Otherwise show me a video of you beating it single-handed on your genuinely level 14/15 character (with enough dead people sitting around to keep the ember count up) and I’ll happily admit you have mad skillz. After all, it’s easy, right?

This is an open world event in a starter zone. Nothing in any of the other starter zones even comes close. There is a valid argument for exposing players to this sort of difficulty, but a level 1-15 zone is not the place for it.

Last time I brought a friend along to show them how absurd it was, even explaining the basic tactics, and half way through his response was “yeah, I’m out”. Power players can stick to their explore mode dungeons, all the fire elemental does is annoy regular players at a critical point in their GW2 levelling experience (in terms of whether they can actually be bothered to keep playing the game if that’s indicative of what’s still to come).

Although, I have a screenshot in which I counted (I think) 14 AoE circles scattered around my corpse which I’m quite proud of. Oh, and the knock-down extends about a foot outside the red circles, which is my pet hate about this event.

Ojimaru.8970:

It’s tough in a newbie zone because people complain about getting 1-shot… because they only took the +Power gears and totally neglected +Vitality or +Toughness.

unfortunately not true, I was starting an alt with a friend who was in orr, the event started, I told him it was up, we ran in, and got 1 shot on the bridge, he was lv 78 with toughness and vit gear

This is a great event imo.

Some pointers:
—if someone is completely down, ignore them (you’ll also go down)

—if you go completely down, run back (don’t be upset no one rezzed you)

—you can skirt the red circles by a hair and not get hit – position your camera high up over your head so you can see them easy

—if you do get hit, run across the bridge until you’re out of combat and heal up. The burn can easily kill you

—if you can, run in (avoiding the circles) and don’t hit any embers to focus the boss

—you can stand right next to the boss (melee) IN the big flames and not get hurt – but the second you start taking damage, GET OUT (and across the bridge), you’re in an ember’s ground aoe and now have a burning DOT

—if you want to go after embers (too many are in the area and need culling) do it but be prepared to run out and dont go after the boss while going after embers at the same time

—dodge the flames that run along the ground – the burning will kill you – if you get hit, run across the bridge until you’re out of combat and heal up

—if you get hit by an ember (knocked down) use your anti-CC abilities and then run across the bridge

Addendum:
—save your dodge for when you are running to the bridge – you will need it! Using it while fighting will only land you in another ground aoe.

This event is just stupid. My tactics as elementalist, who is usually instantly killed by anything that fights in there – even with better and higher level armor:

- defeat the adds at the bridge, dodging half of the time instead of making damage
- run to the boss and hit him at least once with visible damage numbers to tag him and be eligible for the event reward
- be killed when the new adds spawn and run back from a way point
loop:
- defeat the adds at the bridge, dodging half of the time instead of making damage
- instead of fighting the adds, revive yourself from downed state if you got one hit, and were lucky and were only downed instead of defeated immediately
- if the adds are gone, run to the boss, hit him twice, don’t look if you actually hit and did any damage or not
- run back to the bridge
- new adds should have been spawned by now, and you are alive if you are lucky
repeat loop for 30 minutes

No fun.

I tried to fight the boss longer, but this always ends in death and a lengthy walk back to the scene. I am certainly more useful with continuously fighting the adds and occasionally resurrect players that died on the bridge. No need to play this for a second time.

garraeth.3267:

[…]

We know all of that.
Everyone does.

Let’s see those pointers:

• if someone is completely down, ignore them (you’ll also go down)
  This should NEVER be something you are supposed to do. It’s true that there’s time to revive and times to void doing so, but in this event, more than 9 out of 10 times you try to revive someone, you are knocked down and killed in less than 3 seconds.
  Anywhere else I’ve been able to revive people under fire by popping an Arcane Shield followed by Obsidian Flesh, you can’t do that here.

• if you go completely down, run back (don’t be upset no one rezzed you)
  Corpse-throwing tactics are not something anyone should do either. The point of a combat-oriented action game is to stay alive, unless you are something like compsognathus in Dino D-Day or a boomer in L4D, but there’s no professions like that in GW2 (there were necrobombers in GW1, but those were an aberration)

• you can skirt the red circles by a hair and not get hit – position your camera high up over your head so you can see them easy
  You can’t. The red circles appear late, and hit outside their area. If your character model is very big, like a tall norn or charr, this gets worse. 1/4 second of lag, and you are down, as you won’t see the circle in time.

• if you do get hit, run across the bridge until you’re out of combat and heal up. The burn can easily kill you
  If you get hit, you are dead. I’ve seen the thing one-hit killing level 80 players with level 80 blue&green gear. The burn WILL kill you, I even tried traiting to lose burning when dodging. It gets instantly re-applied when leaving on of those killer circles. And often there’s more than one of them, plus countless AoEs from Embers.

• if you can, run in (avoiding the circles) and don’t hit any embers to focus the boss
  That’ll give you about 5-20 hits before the embers focus on you. And that’s only if there’s at least 3 other people around. And since you can’t deal 20 hits in the time it takes for them to die, let’s make it 10 tops.
  10 hits, and then you ether run like hell to recover or get downed. Or get downed while trying to run away.

• you can stand right next to the boss (melee) IN the big flames and not get hurt – but the second you start taking damage, GET OUT (and across the bridge), you’re in an ember’s ground aoe and now have a burning DOT
  This doesn’t work. I tried that. Embers focus more on those that are in there.
  Also, right around the elementalist the killer running flares spawn. There’s no visual cue indicating they’ll come out from the main body of elemental they just pop around, so in your way to ‘inside’ one often spawns right there, and you’ll hit without even seeing what hit you. And those things down anything they touch.

• if you want to go after embers (too many are in the area and need culling) do it but be prepared to run out and dont go after the boss while going after embers at the same time
  They’ll get quickly revived. If the number goes down, the next killer circle will spawn one.

• dodge the flames that run along the ground – the burning will kill you – if you get hit, run across the bridge until you’re out of combat and heal up
  That’s easier said than done. Each ember can spam more than 4 AoEs every 5 seconds or so, and they start right away, without a warning. Getting out of one i’s easy, and you get little damage. But here, when you dodge one, you’ll fall into 4 that started right after you dodged. And last time I tried, you could not dodge mid-dodge.

• if you get hit by an ember (knocked down) use your anti-CC abilities and then run across the bridge
  Unfortunately, even if you use stability and get away, the burning and damage will kill you anyways, even if you also bring condition removal.
  And it doesn’t matter if you are able to get away. You’ll have to go back in to deal more damage, so you’ll have to wait for those to recharge (stability and condition removal skills have the slowest recharges), completely breaking the pace of the battle.

All of those, ALL of them, would be solved if none of its attack dealt more than 33…50% of the HP of the average level 15 player with level 15 gear that visits the event, and each ember could create only a single AoE every 5 seconds at most.

This event is horrible. If it were the culmination event of, say, Mount Maelstrom, it might be more acceptable (although I still think the bottleneck at the bridge is a dumb way to design the fight, regardless of what level it is), but we’re talking at the end of a starting zone.

If they’re progressing naturally up to the event, people do not even have full sets of gear yet (they’re still missing at least 3 slots). They’re still trying to figure out the optimal ways to play their own classes; which weapons they want to use, etc. They likely have only 1 active slot skill and only 4 trait points.

Then they wander into Fire Elemental, an event that not only one-shots you for not having a ping of less than a couple micro-seconds and gaming-trained twitch reflexes, but is designed with the greatest paradoxical juxtaposition of both needing a group and brutally punishing you for having too large of one (a group that, by definition of it being a world event, is going to not be organized in all but the rarest cases).

Fire Elemental teaches you to hate everyone you play the game with. It teaches you to automatically forsake anyone who goes into a downed state because the odds are 99 to 1 that you’ll get hit trying to res them. Increased ember spawns, combined with downed players being factored into the spawn rate teaches you that if you care about your own skin (and repair bills) to never take the initiative and cross the bridge personally because odds are you’re going to get severely punished for other people’s mistakes due to increased ember spawns. It teaches you that if you want to get any actual progress made, graveyard zerging is not only the most effective strategy, it’s as close to necessity as you’re going to get unless you somehow were blessed by the divine internet gods with people who actually listen to what you’re saying in map chat.

I’ve done the fire elemental several times since release (latest was roughly a week ago) and it has turned out the same every time: despite all of the amazingly insightful strategies given by the enlightened few in this thread (see: obvious common sense) also being talked through in map chat repeatedly, I wind up one of 3-4 people out of 20-30 who are actually throwing caution (and repair costs) to the wind to be inside the room alive and partaking in the fight. There are 10 people dead on the bridge, 5 people trying to res them, a handful standing around gawking because they have the good economic sense to not put themselves in the middle of the kittenstorm, and one guy yelling about how everyone is a noob. I last anywhere from 30 seconds to 10-15 minutes before the embers finally overwhelm me by raw numbers and I die. I then res at the waypoint, sigh deeply, make a kitteny comment over my guild’s voicechat service, and trudge back towards the reactor to try again. Repeat this for an hour, the fire elemental finally dies and I get rewarded with a whopping nothing because the chest is either bugged out or the game decided I didn’t contribute enough to the event. I then swear off ever doing the event again until two weeks later when I’m wandering by and figure “hey, maybe it’ll be different this time around.”

I have no clue how people could actually like this event unless they’re excessively masochistic or are one of those people that just revels in watching others fail slightly less than they do to stoke their kitten.

Preparations

• You need at least three good players in total (it is possible to do with only two players, but it will be riskier and take for longer due to lower dps uptime on the elemental). You can either hope that you get 2 random ones, or bring two friends. Your choice.
• Equip defensive utility (condition removal, stun breakers/survival tools)
• Make sure you have a dedicated dodge key that is always accessible. (ctrl/shift/mouse button)
• Equip a 1200 range weapon.
• Don’t go total glass cannon.

Phase 1 – Getting over that bridge
This is often the most difficult part, especially if there are a lot of fools around. Whatever you do, don’t attack any embers and don’t try to revive any fool (if people die on the bridge, then they will just be of negative value for the fight).

Instead, wait until the bridge is clear of lava fonts and run. Your destination is the area to the right, where you can jump down to the skill point. As you approach that area, phase 2 begins.

Phase 2 – Kill those embers

This phase requires constant movement and a preparedness for dodging. Stay away from the fire elemental and try to keep a decent distance to the embers while killing them as well, as their basic attacks have a relatively short range.

Fortunately, even if you go down, you should get rallied as soon as an ember dies. Make sure to be ready to dodge out of any lava font when that happens.

This phase is why you want at least 3 good players. While it is possible for a level 80 to do it alone, it can be time consuming and risky. And without others helping you, you don’t have the chance of rallying.

Phase 3 – Kill the fire elemental

When all embers near where you can jump down to the skill point are dead, as well as any ember that could possible aggro you when getting closer to the fire elemental, it is time for the final task.

Simply attack the fire elemental from max range while staying alert. The fire elemental can from what I have seen also very occasionally cast a bunch of lava fonts. In addition it also throws out a small moving fire in a line that needs to be avoided unless you enjoy getting downed. Finally, if any embers respawn, back off and kill them first before reengaging the fire elemental.

I have used skills such as Meteor Shower and the warrior rifle adrenaline shot in this phase without any problems. There is no need to keep moving, but always be alert on the dodge button just in case.

If you take damage and want to heal, you can always run to the edge near where you can jump down. It is far enough from the fire elemental that you will go out of combat after a few seconds.

If everything is done properly, you should only have any deaths if someone messes up (while all the fools at the bridge will die constantly and complain about how difficult it is). The fight will probably take 10 minutes in total.

And yes, I have done a whole fire elemental fight without dying with my level 17 warrior.

Anyone here claiming this event is easy, is outright lieing. That is fact.

This event is way overpowered, especially for the newbie area it is in. I wouldn’t be surprised if its the toughest mob in the game.

They need to get rid of the stupid repair and waypoint costs for this event, because its not fair. Spending 40 minutes fighting it, only for it to be half health, dieing multiple times. The last time I died I went back and the stupid thing was back to full health. That is not fun at all, just a waste of your time and your silver.

Its impossible to defend yourself against 4 elementals chasing you, with a HUGE range to throw their ground lava spells, that you can’t even defend against. All at the same time.

Yayabingyi.2815:

There is no way that someone can honestly, and I mean honestly say that event is “easy” and kitten it is no big deal." The damage is massive for that area and level and it is ridiculous. It is doable, yes, but very frustrating when you compare it to other world bosses that are not that hard and they are in higher level areas! I mean a group of 30+, that I was in, 95% of us died in less than a second over and over again, most of us were spread out, and NO not all of us were on the dreaded bridge!

Two people got lucky and got in and managed, after dying a lot, to run in circles around the thing and I and a few others managed to find spots to do some DPS, but about the 5th time I died there was no chance as I had no where to dodge and no where to go as I burned up in less than a second. So that is massive damage and something I would never expect in an area that is that low of level. It needs to be taken down a peg or two, I’m not saying make it easy though, but come on!

Its like other games where you always get the posts of people saying how easy the game is for them. Its their way of bragging.

If what they say did happen to be true (I don’t believe it), it would most likely be due to the fact that everyone else took the punishment of death, drawing the elementals away from the person claiming they didn’t die.