Guild Wars 2

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.

MithranArkanere.8957 sorry if you don’t believe me. I didn’t lie. This is how I do it every time and it’s one of my favorite events. I’ve done it more than a dozen times.

It seems like you’re playing a different game than I am. My points are very straight-forward.
But you can, as you have, discount them all simply for the sake of backing your position of “this event is impossible” and not learn anything. Doesn’t change the fact that my points are valid.

I believe it’s possible, certainly, so I don’t think the people who claim success are lying. But my perception is that you’d need:

1) very low latency
2) excellent skills, roughly in the top 5%
3) a good profession build/gear designed for some survivability, but enough burst to get down 1-3 adds quickly if you get aggro while dodging aoes
4) a bit of luck that you don’t dodge one aoe straight into another

After a few attempts I did realize some things I needed to do to fix my build and strat (necro with a menagerie of pets was useless since they died instantly, low single target dps w/ dead pets, and no heal available), and now I can stay up for a few minutes at a time now that I have more talent points spent and some surv gear.

With the elemental there are more variables out of your control than other fights where being 1-shot is possible, which over the course of a long fight means the majority of people will get bit even if they don’t ‘screw up’ per se.

I don’t know that the fight needs a huge nerf, but imo it could use a minor tweak. Perhaps reduce the respawn rate on adds by 10% or something so there’s more benefit to getting them down.

A fun tweak would be to have “fire blankets” or something about the room so that there was a way to protect a downed player/rezzer against the initial burst of a follow-up aoe and defeated. As it is now, anywhere inside the bridge trying to rez even a downed player is tantamount to suicide.

I’m having more fun with it than I used to, but I agree that the cost of dying even a few times, combined with the long length of fights where everyone stays dead or stays on the bridge, means that I’m not inclined to do it very often.

“There is no need to keep moving”
———————————

Yeah right… NOT!

I have stood still for 20+ seconds on the fire elemental. Once the embers are cleared, why not? Do you somehow think that you will dodge faster just because you are strafing?

As you only have access to a smaller part of the room anyway (where you have cleared the embers), the space to strafe in is limited as well.

1) very low latency
2) excellent skills, roughly in the top 5%
3) a good profession build/gear designed for some survivability, but enough burst to get down 1-3 adds quickly if you get aggro while dodging aoes
4) a bit of luck that you don’t dodge one aoe straight into another

Skills, not so much. It is mostly about teamwork and concentration. If you are a couple of decent players that actually focus embers immediately, that makes a HUGE difference.

As for concentration, you need to be focused on dodging out of lava fonts for a good 10 minutes or so. Perhaps that could be called skill. Personally, I would call it good mental/bodily health.

Here are the key problems with this encounter:

1. The margin for error is extremely small and the penalty is too severe.

You have maybe a second to dodge the knockdown meteors, and if you miss one, all but the toughest of characters will almost always die due to being knocked down in that fire field. And the lava fonts from the fire imps don’t even have a delay before they start ticking damage, but at least they don’t knockdown.

Either reduce the number/frequency of the knockdown meteors or make them do less damage. Let’s compare this to the lieutenant in Ascalonian Catacombs, the one that does that AOE pull+frenzy attack. While the penalty is severe—roughly on par with one of these meteors—the margin of error is reasonable, and what ultimately balances it out. There’s a noticeable wind-up time for the pull-in, and he doesn’t just spam it continually.

Another comparison: The Maw event with the Svanir shaman in Wayfarer Hills. The penalty for not avoiding the large AOE ice comets or ice storms is heavy damage or even downed/defeated for weaker characters, but it’s balanced out by giving you a bit more time to react AND the fact that he doesn’t carpet-bomb the area — there are small “cracks” in between each large AOE circle, giving players a small refuge to escape to. In Thaumanova, it’s possible to have multiple knockdown meteors hit the same spot. Even if not, there’s the worry of having the imps’ lava fonts layered on top too.

2. A key gameplay mechanic, being downed, is almost negated.

Again, back to the severe penalty. Because you’re downed inside a fire field, it usually results in your defeat, causing players to ignore you. Is this really the intended effect? Even during the Svanir icebrood events which have fairly severe penalties for not dodging, I can usually find an opening to at least contribute to a defeated character. But Thaumanova? Absolutely not.

3. Inconsistency of difficulty and lack of precedent.

Why are some “epic” world boss events like the Shatterer disgustingly easy compared to events like this?

I agree with others that challenges should be in the game, but this is unsuitable for the level 15 Metrica Province. I’ll emphasize that other starting areas have fairly difficult events (at least for new players) that are more reasonable. Wayfarer Hills is probably my favorite starting area because of the well-balanced events. Queensdale has very strong cave troll, but it’s balanced out because there’s only ONE, and players can control it better with their relatively plentiful cripples and immobilizes.

There’s no precedent for this level of hair-margin dodging combined with the one-hit kills. If anything, this event should set the precedent for future encounters (like dungeons).

I brought my level 80 engineer to this event just to make sure I wasn’t delusional. He’s equipped with full Knight gear (power/precision/toughness) with like gems, and +300 vitality from traits, so I’m not exactly “squishy” — yet one knockdown resulted in losing 80% of my health, and only surviving if I could get a heal or condition removal off in time to remove burning. That’s assuming I wasn’t targeted by another knockdown meteor or one of those instant-hit lava fonts from the imps.

I managed to beat it reasonably well, but mostly by cheesing the fire imps and elemental with my 1500-range triple-throw grenades, giving me plenty of leverage to kill imps before they could reach me or get in range for a lava font. It also helped that relatively few people showed up, reducing the number of imps that spawned. Let me emphasize that it was my various high-level traits and stat bonuses that made this tolerable, all of which I wouldn’t have access to at level 15.

Yes, I’m sure some characters can handle this encounter better than others — say, rifle warriors due to having a naturally largest HP pool, heavy armor ,and assuming they prioritize toughness (we’ll ignore the fact that toughness isn’t available on armor until level 15 and they may not have upgraded just yet), but for everyone else it’s actually in your best interest to just get in a good number of hits and not come back. In fact, after dying a few times on my thief and choosing to leave, I got my first ever gold medal on this event.

Tim.9850:

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.

I think everyone’s idea of easy is different.

Overall, this boss is way too difficult for a starter zone as it stands. It can be done by a decent sized group that EXPECTS to die and run back in from the nearest way point multiple times. In this event you DO NOT wait to be rezzed. Respawn and run back in.

The problem for newbies is that they go from events where you rez people, have time to dodge etc. to an event that is essentially no rez, one hit kill, etc. So they think it is impossible and frustrating – not a fun thing.

NPCs giving fair warning and directions might help.

Yeah i just did it today, it was tough. You can double team it with two people, well level 80s, I took down 60% of its life by doing rotational strategies, one person goes in long range from the stairs, the furthest exact point u can deal damage, and I was on quickness zephyr and short bow, rapid fires, throw down as much damage as you can before you start getting some attention from the elemental and new embers coming. usually theres a timeframe after u clear the initial embers nearest you to open up a window for attack. if one goes down, the other player does nothing and stays alive so it won’t reset. and wp back or if its safe a revive will do.

But that’s with two 80s and took a while. Was approximately… eight rounds of in and out, same thing after embers respawn, clear it before moving in to throw down some damage and still died a few times to get it to 60%. i think another six rounds would finish it. for the actual level 15s, this would be quite the impossible… you can do rotational strategies but you’ll die too fast and not have enough dps. it’ll be constant suicide run, making sure someone is there so it won’t reset. it’s like a dungeon level boss with dungeon level strategies. which you expect only if you’ve experienced dungeons. For a level 15 event its rough. The behemoth was super easy compared to this… and the dragons are of course even easier. It’s fun though… if you’re level 80s… > < it was dumb that the npcs were just standing there too xD

“Skills, not so much. It is mostly about teamwork and concentration. If you are a couple of decent players that actually focus embers immediately, that makes a HUGE difference.”

That’s fair, though given that I play solo 99% of the time, I find I end up having to rely on my own skill and hope for a bit of luck on spawns/aggro as I’m dodging/kiting.

Imo it’s fairly rare to find other random players who can get on the same page on the fly in this event because there’s really no warm up or margin for error.

This is not really relevant information but if ure interested. Actually I just tried and I realize u can pretty much solo it, the second time i killed it, i didn’t die as many times because I knew its patterns. With good practice i think you can have it steady with no errors. After you clear out the first initial nearby embers, it doesn’t have a lot of offensive, there is a small window of opportunity. So i pop my stability skill, get to the top of the stairs where i can just reach it, pop my quickness and unload all the damage i can possibly do. by the time my stability ends at 23 seconds, i realized that only then itll start to catch on and attack me. at that time i will withdraw even if it hadn’t attacked me yet. i was often waiting for it to actually target me first so thats why i died… then i wait til my stability comes back which is about 2 min, and during the time, clear out respawning embers. each run i can put about 5-10% damage to its life… but still that is if you’re level 80 xD otherwise itd b so hard to get in enough damage

I think the wiki is confusing the ember’s aoe with the bosses’ aoe.

The bosses’ aoe is that bright red circle that causes a meteor to drop on you. This knocks you down and will most likely kill you outright unless you’re at the edge of the room and won’t be hit by anything else.

The ember’s aoe are the those easy to see lava fonts in pairs of 3. They don’t cause instant death.

Every guide I’ve seen says that killing off the embers will stop the aoe. This is NOT true. The boss itself is what shoots out the 1-hit meteors and the times when you dodge out of one circle of death into another that spawns right on top of you is not something you can prevent. It’s not because you can’t down the adds fast enough, it’s because RNG decided to screw you over.

Ok so this is stupid ridiculously hard
Hard in NON-Starter zone being hard as heck with a zone boss sure
But Come on This Freakin Fire Elemental is 100x STRONGER than the Swamp boss in the human area
this thing is beyond Overpowered and even remotely attempting this will get you killed over and over and over and over
You can’t kill the embers fast enough You can’t hurt the elemental hard enough to stop it from Regening after it’s wiped the room
If anyone goes after this thing following events that are even tagged INCORRECTLY (lvl 1 – 15 zone lvl 17 Mobs) You should at least delevel to 17 Not 16 as the RNG system is ludicrously zealous for mobs dmg vs our dmg
In short Tone this encounter back a bit You’ve got the overpower gauge needle spinning endless about to explode

One more thing, the risk/reward for this boss is stupid. I don’t remember seeing a chest or any other decent reward for this event. This is probably the biggest problem because it reduces the incentive for players to join in to help.

Everytime I’m in the zone and here map chat requests to help out I ignore it if I’m on a high level char. The repair costs are too high for the reward.

lol technically, you should be level 80 before trying this XD. but no it WON’T reset, if everyone is wiped. we tried, and as long as someone, even one who is downed remains on the premises, it did not reset. so keep someone there at all times, unless you can solo without dying at all xD

There IS a chest at the end of the event. It looks small but yes there are a bunch of items you can pick up as long as you have contribution.

I died five times total the first run, three times the second run. so my repair bill wasn’t bad. lol so if you’re in a high level char, you should help and be alright as long as you treat it like a dungeon boss. At high levels embers are easy to wipe and so is damaging the boss, but surviving is the challenging part. For level 15s… well… tough luck lol just join in and get some high levels to help you. but this is ridiculous for a level 15 zone. needs to be toned down. maybe leave its life massive but less fatal damage… or just simply remove the knock down. lol that would leave it tough but a nice challenge

Imagine it scaled to a level 80 map…. its life will take forever to bring down

takatsu.9416:

lol technically, you should be level 80 before trying this XD. but no it WON’T reset, if everyone is wiped. we tried, and as long as someone, even one who is downed remains on the premises, it did not reset. so keep someone there at all times, unless you can solo without dying at all xD

There IS a chest at the end of the event. It looks small but yes there are a bunch of items you can pick up as long as you have contribution.

I died five times total the first run, three times the second run. so my repair bill wasn’t bad. lol so if you’re in a high level char, you should help and be alright as long as you treat it like a dungeon boss. At high levels embers are easy to wipe and so is damaging the boss, but surviving is the challenging part. For level 15s… well… tough luck lol just join in and get some high levels to help you. but this is ridiculous for a level 15 zone. needs to be toned down. maybe leave its life massive but less fatal damage… or just simply remove the knock down. lol that would leave it tough but a nice challenge

Imagine it scaled to a level 80 map…. its life will take forever to bring down

It needs to be toned down to be on par with the Shadow Beast in the swamp over in Queensland
It’s strong and has some life to it but it doesn’t spawn 1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 Mob adds who can infinispam an AoE that has Knockdown InstaGib Dmg and a Mega DoT then the Boss has that Firey wave that does so much dmg to anyone under 17 (which is the level of this stupid thing Again not a good idea in a 15 zone when you delevel everyone else to 16)
One wave even on my heavily armored character was over 1500 so unless this is supposed to be meant as an InstaGib move by this thing It’s Broken It’s trite and For how hard you work to get to this point this whole thing needs to be flipped around and there be a BACK entrance to the 15-25 zone nearby…As is in the 15 Max zone…too much…WAY too much
I always feel like the devs who worked on this were having a severely bad day and basically want us to know it….

Actually, I think I first completed it sub level 20. No you don’t need to be level 80, but you do need a lot of players and they need to know that they shouldn’t wait around to be rezzed. Although it is good to know that if at least one dead player stays in the area it doesn’t reset.

Lol, I think I missed the loot from the chest. Another thing good to know.

loll @aeon thats why i said its ridiculous for level 15 area XD
yeah, we were coordinating a bunch of ppl so we got people not to revive people, unless its just possible since they’re close or on the bridge

however, i often saw people rushing into the actual chamber, but you need to stay on the steps or right at the top of the steps or else its a suicide run. u still have a chance on the steps and even a chance for revival, as we revived quite a few people while the coast was clear

I think the Ember spawn is the biggest issue. This event is clearly intended to be done by a large group, but the more people you have, the more Embers spawn…and if people aren’t killing them quick enough, they pile up…and then you have 15-20 Embers on the floor spamming AoE death all over the god kitten place.

Kiting them around isn’t exactly a piece of cake when there are red circles of death literally EVERYWHERE…

For everyone complaining that this event is tantamount to IMPOSSIBLE, its simply not true. It’s a challenging event and should set the difficulty bar for all world boss DEs. Mechanically its right on par, and the only adjustment I would really see warranted for this event is giving an extra .5-1 second telegraph on the meteors. Their damage is pretty reasonable as a DoT, but combined with the knockdown it’s a touch too twitchy. Just a sliver more time to react to them would take thing event down to “hard” from “super hard” for most players.

Personally I’ve completed the event twice with zero deaths, and on average I might go down once or twice, and have a 50-50 chance of catching a rally or dying completely.

The strategy is pretty straightforward:

1. Quickly down adds and try not to pull more than you have to. The embers are very weak in terms of HP, and recting to the quickly can usually remove them before they can cause too much trouble in terms of massive AoE fields.

2. Split up! The larger the cluster of players in close proximity to one another, the more the event likes to drop multiple meteors in that area, greatly increasing the liklihood you’ll end up in a no-escape situation.

3. Protect and res downed players! One or two guys on a downed player, along with that player bandaging can usually pick him up in seconds, and heal more than the DoT hits for. This doesn’t mean to go stand in a fire, but players that go down usually do so on the edge on an AoE, leaving them in a position where it is possible to help them up without catching yourself on fire.

4. PLAY DEFENSIVELY! Remember how I told you to pick up downed people? As soon as you hit F, watch like a hawk and be ready to dodge instantly if another meteor drops. if you don’t have enough endurance to dodge, don’t do anything that’s going to impact your mobility (like ressing). You’re not doing anyone any favors by joining that guy on the ground. This event requires you to see and react to adds, ground targeted meteors, and the occasional ground-tracking fireball. One of these things alone is easy to deal with, but when you lump them all together your concentration is paramount. Don’t worry about your damage rotation. The elemental does not heal and has a massive enough pool of HP that as long as you can keep yourself alive you can easily grab gold autoattacking the elemental and using your cooldowns/initiative to wipe out adds.

5. The Dead are DEAD! Like a lot of the harder PvE in the game, it simply takes too long to combat res fully dead players. If you see someone that’s completely dead, ignore them. If you yourself are completely dead, waypoint unless the event is almost over. This is simply a fact of the game. Combat ressing dead people is supposed to be nearly impossible in most situations, while combat ressing downed players is usually achievable in most situations. The fact that large zergs make ressing the dead doable in the majority of very easy events in the game doesn’t change the fact that ressing the dead is almost always a waste of time in any of the harder content in the game.

Why should I have to ‘practice’ this event just so I can do it ‘properly’ once? Why should I absolutely have to have the highest possible skill in order to do this event? Why should I have to be level 80 and experienced in dungeon runs in order to do this event?

Why would you expect a NEW level 15 player that has been running around SOLO to be able to cooperate with exacting precision with at least 1 more NEW level 15 player and NOT have the equipment necessary to do it with ‘ease’ ?

All of your strategies rely on the OLD gw1 method of partying with others that know what they’re in for.

GW2 is a solo game that you just happen to be able to encounter others doing the same thing on occasion. You cannot under any circumstances expect the random low level player to have this level of skill and be able to cooperate with others properly when the death rate for this event is 100%.

I play the Frozen Maw event every day, many times a day cause I like it. I’m 80 Necro with plenty of high level skill and even then I get knocked down sometimes or targeted (more often than not) and dropped to 10% health in just a couple seconds just after I used up my dodges. It’s fun, challenging, and rewarding.

Thaumanova on the other hand is just a practice in futility. I know all the suggested tactics and they don’t do any good for ‘random player’ that doesn’t know them by heart which is EVERY SINGLE PLAYER that doesn’t visit this forum and look up THIS POST or any other site that might have a guide on defeating the OP event.

Should it be hard? yes, Should the embers be able to fire off 3 consecutive DoTs that predict your movements so you’re GOING TO DIE? no. Should the average player expect to be able to defeat this event without killing his desire to do more events? yes.

I’m sorry, but I shouldn’t have to be a top tier player in order to finish off a single starting area boss that is meant for NEW PLAYERS.

Now if this was an end game boss this would be awesome but as a starting area for noobs that haven’t had ANY precedent for cooperative tactical play it’s just way too much to handle.

I’ve only seen the end once and they said it took them nearly an hour of hit, die, port, run, hit, die, port, run, (+3 then fix armor & repeat). I got there too late to contribute and the chest was bugged at the time too.

You can respond with tactics all day long, but that doesn’t do any good for ‘random joe player’ that just started, accidentally figured out how to dodge a few minutes ago, likes to stand right next to the monsters as a caster, and has almost got a handle on what this ‘aggro’ concept is. Oh and don’t forget that he may or may not have all his armor yet and you can almost guarantee that it’s not max level for his level either or has a decent gem in the slot.
Now, throw in your acronyms, keeps screaming ‘kill the adds first’ – ‘wtf is an add?’, ‘omg stay off the bridge’ – ‘I can’t get off the bridge it’s covered in FIRE and the other side is covered in quick-spawning monsters!‘. Now he’s dead, disillusioned at what just happened cause all the other bosses and events don’t one-shot him, and wondering why no one will res him and they keep screaming ‘port out and run back!’ at him.

Yeah, that’s awesome right? Great experience for a NEW PLAYER. Yes, as a long time GW player I can expect these sorts of things – in higher level areas. As a new player during the betas (it was harder then) I wasted almost an hour with another 30+ players attempting to do this and gave up. Making new chars for each other zone I found that the WE’s were so much more fun cause you didn’t necessarily get one-shot or burned to death while being knocked down in the fire. As a low level player that can’t spec out his armor you will die from the burning after being knocked down in it, there’s no ‘yay I still have 1hp left after dodging when I could get up and the burning stopped’, no, you are going to die from that.

Anyway, I wont play that event anymore, the rewards are most definitely not worth the amount of total frustration from it.

I agree that this is too hard for new players. This level of difficulty should be more consistent in higher level locations, which there seems to be a lack of. You have huge zergs taking down champs with a ton of life but barely any retaliation. Behemoth is just stand and shoot at it and dodge a red circle here and there. It also usually has a ton of players like twenty or thirty in my server.

With a level 80 I solo’d it just this morning with zero deaths. The fact that no one shows up also makes this more dangerous. This was my fourth run doing it. Takes an 80 four practice runs lol… A new player is not going to know what to do. The embers all need to be cleared fast then there is a small window of time where u can pound high dps at the top of the stairs at 1200-1500 range. Around 20 secs then dodge out and repeat as there are new embers now. I believe the best tactics is to do rotations. Two players max at a time standin at max range on stairs for twenty seconds then dodge out and switch and take out embers. If the two get downed there is a high chance u can res them, ESP with a few people reviving at one time. Everyone will just die if you all rush in together. Howver New players don’t have enough damage to clear these embers super fast nor put any significant damage into the elemental in 20 seconds. It would take a long time xD

Not sure if I get the stay off the bridge stuff people have been saying. The bridge is possibly the most useful place. You lure embers one or more at a time while backing up and they bottle neck into the bridge. Then hit them all. Most skills can aoe and stuff they will die faster. Once they’re cleared you have a windo of opportunity to take the stairs

Take out the knock down effect, reduce the damage and give a higher delay of the red circle before meteors hit. With that new players should be able to do it fine bc u can clear the bazillion ember circles with two dodges rolls etc, and stay alive still. Next buff events in higher level maps to this kind of level

I actually do the event from the other side of the room from the bridge, behind the elemental, at the top of the stairs. Back there its a bit easier to spot and deal with the ember spawns for me, lots of room to maneuver, etc. There’s also a lot less visual noise to distract from spotting AoEs

For the folks saying its too hard for new players, I hadn’t really considered it but you’re probably right. The thing is, where do you draw the line between “thing 80s will actually go back to the zone to do” and “cannon fodder to teach you how to play the game”

A big part of the game is the idea that the majority of the world has something to offer at 80. An equally big part of the game is just plain easy. If there was any concept of gradient difficulty in terms of zone level I’d agree a lot more, but the fact is that nearly every zone has those one or two things that are just plain harder.

I think we should keep these, but maybe tag the events differently to tell players that they’re actually difficult. Like you’ve got the [Group event] tag… maybe something like [Elite event] to notify players that the content in front of them is probably going to require their a-game and at least level appropriate gear?

I’d hate to see the fire elemental nerfed to the ground because I really do think its a fun event and something rewarding to do at 80 as I more often than not pull a 74-80 rare or two from the end chest. Should it get a small adjustment in the reaction time on the meteors, or maybe the fire damage to make it slightly less one-shotty? Sure. Should it be made as easy as the boss at the end of your tutorial? I don’t think it should.

ok while in hindsight this event might not be as “difficult” as others (like dungeons), they’re still relatively hard to their target market – newbies. If this happened at the reactor event at the volcano thingy, I’m all for it (I think it does happen, but there’s no bottleneck there). But here, the people doing them are probably completely new to the speed and level of gameplay required to kill this boss.

I have to agree with most of the posts saying this event is too difficult. On it’s own, for experienced gamers, it’s not a difficult event. But up till this point, there’s been no fight, quest, champion or anything that has gotten new players prepared for the mechanics of this one.

A boss this low level should not have this difficulty. The whole point of leveling a toon is so you can be learning how to play it bit by bit.

I’d vote for toning this event down a little. If not, I’d vote for making all of the events in the area prior to this event (assuming this is the area’s ‘end boss’) have ONE of the dynamics of this fight – then the Fire Elemental combines all the things you should have learned up till then.

There is no way to dodge, revive/help others and fight all at the same time and stay alive. If you make one mistake, it’s over. That’s a little harsh for the level this fight is, IMO.

It’s not about difficulty.
It’s a stupid, unforgiving fight with multiple insta-down effects.

The moving fire blade downs you, but is easy to dodge.
However, if you are downed when it comes at you, you’re insta-defeated.

The falling meteors are stupidly fast.
So fast, they the ground about 0.25 seconds after the circle appears.

You can actually dodge out of Meteor A’s circle into an open space, and DURING the dodge animation, a Meteor B’s circle appears in your destination, and you are hit no matter what.

To aggravate this, if you get hit by it, you are downed.
While downed, you can’t avoid the moving flame blades, and are defeated.

It’s not the mechanics that are difficult.
It’s the damage they deal that is just ridiculous.

One thing to keep in mind in all this is that Lava Font has a 1200 range, and Embers spawn 3 of them in quick succession. Meaning that in theory a ember on one side of the elemental can spawn fonts on the other side of the elemental. Or for that matter, a ember barely out of spawn can drop fonts right on the bridge.

It is funny really, as i think about it i find embers annoying in general. I revisited Fireheart Rise, and it is crawling with them. And if they can see you they can drop fonts on you. And you know another annoying enemy that drop fonts? Destroyer Crabs. Lovely creatures, those…

didn’t Anet block people from bringing ember-spawning food to WvW recently? Should be a hint i think…

I soloed this on my Necro, lvl 80 ofc. As low lvl its almost impossible to survive. So, it need adjustment. Just a little bit easir for lowbies and harder for max lvl, dunno how anet will balance it, but it need to be done.

Soloed it already, no change needed.

I had a nice pick up group of fellow newbs, and we got wiped. Yet, I still thought it was a blast. Sometimes not being able to win everything everytime is rewarding too.

I think this fight is awesome. I wish there were more like it. Most of the other event bosses go down too easily to a zerg, this one eats zergs for breakfast.

I have absolutely no trouble with my elementalist, but my elementalist is built to take a beating (25 air, 25 earth, 20 water, vitality or toughness on every piece of gear).

I think this fight is way too difficult for a starting zone. I see no need to brag about having defeated him with a 15+ character, because considering the level of this zone, that is just sad.

I feel this battle should be roughly as difficult as the Shadow Behemoth, which appears in a zone of equal level, and is a lot more doable and more fun. Just because some experienced players are able to take him down with about 3 players, does not take away from the fact that the Fire Elemental is way too difficult for the new players between level 1 and 15 that encounter him.

It should be fun, not impossibly hard.

I just did the fire elemental on my level 14 thief. It wasn’t particularly difficult, no more than usual anyway.

It’s a tough fight and it’s not very friendly to new players, that’s for sure. The best way to learn is to have a challenge to overcome, and that’s why I like it the way it is. Any new player who enters the fight, observes, learns, and executed will be a much better player down the line.

Heck, the fight was possible during BWE3 when it was overtuned to the point of insanity. It’s fine the way it is now.

Nurvus.2891:

It’s not about difficulty.
It’s a stupid, unforgiving fight with multiple insta-down effects.

The moving fire blade downs you, but is easy to dodge.
However, if you are downed when it comes at you, you’re insta-defeated.

The falling meteors are stupidly fast.
So fast, they the ground about 0.25 seconds after the circle appears.

You can actually dodge out of Meteor A’s circle into an open space, and DURING the dodge animation, a Meteor B’s circle appears in your destination, and you are hit no matter what.

To aggravate this, if you get hit by it, you are downed.
While downed, you can’t avoid the moving flame blades, and are defeated.

It’s not the mechanics that are difficult.
It’s the damage they deal that is just ridiculous.

Pretty much this. I don’t know if it’s latency or what, but I hardly ever actually get a chance to even dodge out of the meteors before they hit and knock me down (“Oh, hey, look, red circle of death…” goes to dodge and SUDDENLY OW)…and then I either get embers dropping burning circles of death on me while downed, or another meteor right on top of it.

I must be a masochist, though, since I tend to do this fight every time it’s up and I’m in the area.

Nyaochan.1756:

I must be a masochist, though, since I tend to do this fight every time it’s up and I’m in the area.

I consider it a painful right of passage for every new character that I make. Once I’ve completed my starting 1-15 zone, I always go on a marathon run around the other starter zones for their Skill Points. When ever I’m in Metrica Provence, I make sure to do the Fire Elemental fight once. It forces me to re-examine my skill options on every character as I stock up on stun breakers (to cancel the AoE Knockdown) and as much condition removal that I can possibly get.

Having been forced to think outside of the box, I seem to adapt better in later zones when unusual situations cause me to feel the need to switch my skills around. From a learning perspective, the fight is kind of invaluable since it forces you to mentally figure out how you’re going to deal with many different factors at the same time.

Yet having said that, I’ll once again repeat (like I’ve done previously in this thread) that this fight is completely insane for a 1-15 zone. The dev who designed this fight admitted on the Beta forums that the mechanics of this fight would better suited for a 60+ zone (in hindsight). The fact that ArenaNet has still left this fight relatively intact from its Beta version still baffles me to this day.

I think many of the events and enemies in this game are just poorly designed… The dodge roll is just a way to delay damage just enough for heals to cool down so you can eat that damage while attacking again. They really should have looked at action combat games and took notes on how they worked before adding a dodge in this game.

I mean most of the enemies and stuff in this game don’t even have any amount of telegraphing to their moves (or least not very well done telegraphing in the rare case that an enemy does… some just have a glowy effect to differentiate two of the same attack animations, that often just blend in with surrounding effects lol… okay, so they have those red circles sometimes, which totally ruins the immersion, that sometimes don’t even appear until after the attack lol).

There are a few enemies, far and in between, where they have decent telegraphing, but for the most part Anet did a poor job on this front; which I think is one of the main reasons people have difficulty with many event bosses and certain enemies.

If an event like this had proper telegraphing would people still die? Yes, I have no doubt they would, but at least players could more naturally and intuitively realize “oh, crap: I’m screwed” lol (rather than be confused as hell as to what hit or killed them =/).

I agree with some other posts that the event needs to be tweaked and suggest that the event be brought down a tiny tiny bit. If one things needs to change, it would be at least 2 extra seconds before being downed by the AOE. I don’t mind being hit and then burning for a good deal of damage for those 2 seconds, compared to being nearly instantly downed if it appears.

He really isn’t that difficult once you get everyone on the same page… I’ve beaten him maybe 8-10 times since release and haven’t had any problems once I got people listening to me and understanding what to do. The biggest thing is keep moving. Don’t stop just continuously circle around him while paying attention the aoe on the ground. If one direction seems like aoe is just littering the floor and there’s no path to get through, switch directions but keep circling.

If everyone is doing this and just concentrating on hitting the boss while ignoring the embers, he goes down quickly. It’s just getting everyone to stop crying for res and tell them to wait on the bridge (outside aggro) then once a good amount are gathered, charge in, target boss and circle.

So I found myself wanting to complete the Boss Achievement and the fire elemental had the last charge for the key needed for the achievement, problem was nobody was online.

Anyway, I killed the elemental on my own (thief full dps, no vitality, no toughness) getting hit by 1 thing ment downed, failing to kill an ember while downed ment having the boss HP reset (since I was alone), took a lot of tries in 2 hours and I got him without running outside.

Best strategy seemed to stay still outside of ember aggro range (if all embers are up no additional embers spawn) and dodge flares/aoe circles. It is a bit overtuned for groups of less than 6 or so people, and don’t try it alone. Oh and the steam ogre is a wuss compared to the Elemental.

The fire elemental is far too hard even for most level 80s.

Now what are you going to do if you’re a level 15 character that hasn’t even unlocked your final utility slot and probably don’t have a stun break with what limited skill points you have?

Atmaweapon.7345:

The fire elemental is far too hard even for most level 80s.

Now what are you going to do if you’re a level 15 character that hasn’t even unlocked your final utility slot and probably don’t have a stun break with what limited skill points you have?

It’s not too hard…. I beat it between the lvl’s of 15-25. Refer to my above post as to the strategy best used against him.

NightShadow.1429:

He really isn’t that difficult once you get everyone on the same page… I’ve beaten him maybe 8-10 times since release and haven’t had any problems once I got people listening to me and understanding what to do. The biggest thing is keep moving. Don’t stop just continuously circle around him while paying attention the aoe on the ground. If one direction seems like aoe is just littering the floor and there’s no path to get through, switch directions but keep circling.

If everyone is doing this and just concentrating on hitting the boss while ignoring the embers, he goes down quickly. It’s just getting everyone to stop crying for res and tell them to wait on the bridge (outside aggro) then once a good amount are gathered, charge in, target boss and circle.

I defeated him a few days ago with my level 80 character and two other level 80’s… and we died several times…. in a starter zone….

Yes, it could definitely be toned down a bit. Its an interesting fight, and certainly doable… but way too hard for the zone it is in.

Noooooo! It’s the only fun and challenging boss in all of the open world! Don’t change the Fire Elemental!

Not to mention, a very small group can defeat him. While he can hit hard, he’s got very low HP for a boss. You just need to kill the adds first so you know what to dodge. The adds and the boss have the same AOE circles, but the Boss’ circles hurt much much worse and knock you down. (most likely downing you) You gotta help people up when they are down too!

With an effective group, it’s fine. Less forgiving than easier paths of CoF or AC, but still not as ridiculous as other dungeon paths.

This is an open world event, in a starter zone. It doesn’t need to be more difficult than explorable mode dungeons. A starter zone is not going to have the coordination and reflexes to handle this fight properly.

Just a few changes would make it manageable:
Slight increase in the time to respond to the bosses meteors, which knock you down.
Reduction in meteor damage to do about 70-80% of the average untwinked level 15’s health. It would still be a threat due to embers, but not as unforgiving.
Slight reduction in the spawn rate of embers.

Then, reduce the ways people can grief others by dumping ember aggro on them (and yes, intentional griefing regularly happened as of a month ago in Henge).

It’s a group event, not a dungeon boss.

You should not have to create a group and coordinate yourself with them, you are supposed to be able to pitch in and help however you can and get it done somehow.
You are supposed to defeat it with no plans, just spontaneous collaboration.

As it is, it’s simply not fun, and no amount of the usual “I like it, make it harder” trolls and people boasting about being able to do it with no problems will change that, what counts is what you see in-game, and I’ve only seen it against this one boss.

I’ve spent about 3 hours trying to convince people to do it, and no one wants to do it. Not in my guild not random strangers, not asking in cities. I’d try to do it alone, but despite what people seem to boast around here, it’s impossible to do it alone. You can’t dodge the surekill AoEs, as they hit before the red circle appears, and if you manage to predict them and dodge, they’ll simply appear all over the place. Dodge one, another appears mid-dodge right where you’ll end up after dodging, the fire grazes you, you try to dodge again and remove the burning with a condition removal skill… it gets reapplied instantly while you are waaay far from the fire circle, the burning ticks two times… you are defeated. And then, every single time, a fire ball falls over you to finish you.
You can’t avoid the embers from anywhere you can hit the elementals. At least two will always see all the way from the bridge, and run straight to you within the entire orange circle. It doesn’t help that moving the camera with right click will randomly target the embers around, attacking them and bringing even more to you.
And what can random strangers do? Not revive you. I’m yet to see a single instance in which someone that tried to revive didn’t got hit by one of the surekill fireballs. .

So dodging doesn’t work, healing skills do not work, condition removal does not work, reviving allies does not work, protective boons do not work, condition-inversion skills take to long to reload to work… what’s left for the average level 1-15 player? Get in, deal as many hits as you can before you get defeated, revive on waypoint, rinse and repeat.
If that’s fun, may Grenth come and say so…

And what can I say when I spent four hours until enough people came by to get some hits in before getting fed up and leaving over 40 minutes after over 3 hours of waiting, just to get the update patch hit right before the last hit defeats it?
For any other thing in the entire game I’d just shrug and do it some other time, no big deal, but with this one, it felt like getting gunk frosting added to the dolyak manure cake I was already getting.

An open world group event in which most people spend all the time defeated should simply not exist. It’s happening here, so it must be redesigned so that no longer happens.
There isn’t more to it. It’s as simple as that.

Want to keep this challenge untouched? Just add or change some dungeon so it gets this exact fight as one of its bosses. It could be fine as a dungeon boss. But not as a fight that will get harder as more people come, when most people come to stay defeated on the ground.

Group events are, well, GROUP EVENTS!

With that in mind, it usually means that players should be more aware of the enivornment they are in. Concentraiting JUST on the boss itself is a silly strategy. Yes this boss is tough, yes there is strategy, but more importantly TEAM WORK is required to beat this baddy.

For those who allegedly say they have soloed it, kudos to you, but such events are meant to bring players together. This is an MMO afterall

While I like the teamwork this boss requires to defeat it, I do agree that the difficulty needs to be toned down a bit. The damage from the flame globs that rain down on you should be reduced to just two hits, OR it shouldn’t knock you down. That alone would probably make the boss manageable by a group of players.

Nyaochan.1756:

I must be a masochist, though, since I tend to do this fight every time it’s up and I’m in the area.

Same. I can’t seem to stop myself running in, and yelling at myself for doing something so annoying for so little reward.
I’ve done most of the big DEs in the game – all dragon champions, most of the Orr priests – and this is by far the hardest. In a starter zone.

I think the worse part about it is it teaches people who may be new to the game that helping downed players is a really bad idea … not exactly a great lesson later on.

Apparently this DE was re-balanced with today’s patch. Anyone have any further information on what this meant exactly?

I can help a bit, In basic words, he got nerfed to hell imo.

His fire aoes now Launch you instead of knocking you down.
He does less damage slightly.
There are almost no embers around this time, much less than before.
I didn’t noticed much about the number of fire aoes he does but i’ll assume its slightly less.

So glad to see it. Why have something a bit more challenging that makes you actually think when you can have just another generic HP pinata? Stupidity > skill

supergica.8652:

So glad to see it. Why have something a bit more challenging that makes you actually think when you can have just another generic HP pinata? Stupidity > skill

I had no issue with ArenaNet doing a Copy & Paste to put the Elemental fight room sequence into another zone as it already was. If you dropped it in a 60+ zone, then people should have enough knowledge and experience to fight this thing properly. The dev who designed this fight even admitted on the Beta forums that he liked the fight’s design, but realized in hindsight that it was poorly placed as a starter zone boss.

Starter zone boss events should be fun fights that encourage cooperation and teach new players a bit about how to fight a mega boss (in preparation for things like the dragons in later zones). The original version of the Fire Elemental didn’t do that. It taught people to ignore their fellow players and leave them for dead since you’d die if you tried to save them in the combat area. Also since it was realistically deemed as “too hard”, people avoided this fight at all costs and we effectively being deprived a zone boss for the Asura starter zone.

Llywellyn.4635:

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

Have to wonder what class you’re playing. I’ve heard this tactic from legionmates, tried it and still near one shot. Mostly players would be downed and dead at bridge bottleneck and not able to make it into room.
Really, it’s a level 1-15 zone….
World events and Dungeons like AC should be accessible for the level of area.
There’s supposed to be changes to event with 15th November update. I sure hope so for new players.