Guild Wars 2

Particularly the first event. I’ve spent the last hour trying to do this event, and I have to say it is impossible. There are several reasons why, but it basically boils down to this: the event was designed back when there were meant to be a ton of weak mobs all over orr. Since the mobs have been buffed, the event has become too difficult. The first problem is as follows:

#1: The NPCs die stupidly easy. There are several parts where a veteran behemoth just charges right through the group, and he can kill them almost instantly once his frenzy is up.

#2: The enemies are all Risen Nobles. The problem being that Risen Nobles have a teleport + damage AoE power. This attack cannot be interrupted because it is instantaneous. This attack cannot be stopped; not even killing the noble will stop the damage patch. This attack is used in swarms, with 6 or 7 nobles using it simultaneously. This attack cannot be out-healed, due to its high damage and the fact that there are 7 of them at one spot.

#3: The friendly AI is too stupid to not stand in the damage patch, and pretty much every enemy will ignore all players and go straight for the NPCs. This is made worse by the fact that enemies surround the NPCs and cannot be intercepted.

#4: This is not a group event. It is a regular event, even though no single player can complete it.

#5: There is no NPC to start the event. The event just starts regardless if anyone is ready, which means that the NPCs just suicide themselves against the first wave of enemies. This makes forming a group for this event impossible, since no on is willing to stand around waiting for the event to restart after it has already failed.

Combine all of these and you get what is an impossible event to complete. Much like the balthazar event chain, it needs a revision to make possible.

The new Risen Nobles are indeed the biggest issue in these escort events, especially when their attacks are scaled up. They are the reason 90% of the Balthazar escorts fail.

#1, 2, 3: The best tactic for this is be the frontline and lure Risen Nobles away from the squad — oh yeah and don’t stop moving.

#4: Definitely should be marked a Group Event. I can’t do it as a Guardian alone.

#5: NPCs spawn about 9 minutes after failure of the event.

I recommend 3-4 players for the first event. Anymore and the mobs will upscale.

This change has been here since February I believe. It’s the Risen Nobles which are the problem.

Risen nobles AoE are a serious issue.
Stacked ground AoE are dealing too much damage.
(In champion form it’s even worse the ability becomes ridiculously overpowered.)

I think it’s rather obvious that this was implemented as an anti-zerg ability.
They need to lower the damage on the pulse and add a condition instead.
I would suggest blind.
Blind spam would create a nice anti-zerg effect without automatically killing anything that stands in a stack of AoE.
Like instantly killing the NPCs you have to escort.

Remember this problem has been around since February. Don’t expect a sudden fix.

Lol, the Ancourage hasn’t been open forever on my server. :/

Why you gotta hate on Warmaster Chan?

I agree with the OP. NPCs should have a LOT more HP in my opinion.

It was done today on TC though I didn’t see it. Very annoying event in general; winning the fight, ressing any NPCs that go down, but they’re like ‘well, this is hard, we should go back…’ and the event fails when they’re actually closer to where they’re going than where they came from. How’d the pact manage to recruit such wimps to begin with, anyway?

I had a theory it could be done with excessive application of ‘fear me’, though even then the poison cloud may make them give up. What on earth is their ‘morale’ based on, anyway? It could almost be used to measure distance travelled…

I think it’s a bugged on my server. There’s an area where there are +20 stacked Risen. Like I’ve only seen Gates of Arah event finished twice in the past couple of months.

Those pack of Risen were supposed to despawn upon event failure. The only workaround for this bug is using a skill like On My Mark! to lure one towards you and take it out one by one.

Harbinger.8637:

I think it’s a bugged on my server. There’s an area where there are +20 stacked Risen. Like I’ve only seen Gates of Arah event finished twice in the past couple of months.

Those are the risen at the end of the event. They pose a big threat but there is a way to beat them by yourself. You see, if you manage to preserve the entire clan’s morale, then it is possible for all of them to die but still have enough morale to all be rezzed and continue the event. This has to be done tactically, and is best at the poison cloud section of the event, because lets face it: they’ll all die there anyway no matter what you do. Then, once they are all dead, you can run up and take out that horde of risen very quickly.

The advantage to that horde is that it is tightly packed. Because of this AoE effects can just tear them up. I have been able to kill all of them in one go on two different classes solo: On my thief I would go into stealth, drop smoke screen and caltrops on them, lay down the poison cloud for weakness, then switch to d/d and spam death blossom on the group. The nobles only use their AoE as a gap closer, so maintaining close distance is key. Once initiative is usesd up, I use a closely circling Dagger Storm to apply more bleeds, then afterward vanish in stealth and lay down caltrops again, repeating the process soon afterward.

On the engineer I used hounds of balthazsar, then smoke bomb + fire bomb, then I followed that up with the pistol’s auto attack + coated bullets to do massive AoE damage to the whole group. They didn’t last very long after that.

The really hard part of this, of course, is getting them to the poison cloud phase alive. I’ve only managed to do it once, and that was a fluke since the majority of enemies didn’t even spawn on that run. Every time they die earlier than the poison cloud, and not once have I managed to get them to survive that part. At the poison cloud they scatter, so you can’t heal them up.

Nice one, gg, but they can also be single pulled with most single target weapons.
I killed the whole pack a lot of times.

This pack of event mobs not despawning should be reported in bug section.
This event is near impossible AND bugged.

A better screenshot of what we are talking about.

It’s usually around 15 mobs and often a vet abomination.

This event needs to be addressed, the npc’s just die way to easily!

I came looking to make a post about this event this evening but the original poster hit the points I wanted to discuss.

I strongly agree with his assertions that the event needs to have someone to kick it off. Trying to gather support to escort is more difficult if the group suicides into the first orrian eyes by the time anyone can respond.

Risen Nobles marks damage is out of control, mostly due to how it is able to stack. The more players you have nearby, the more nobles you face which just forces a quicker end to the event.

The large number of balled up risen nobles at the end of the chain that never despawn is clearly a mistake.

The one thing I would add is that if you removed Squad Morale from this escort, those complaints all vanish. Recall that the group that requires escort across Malchor’s Leap does not have the squad morale despite constantly wiping at collonade, wrens, the champ knight and that last town prior to the portal.

I was seriously hoping this would be fixed by now… Given the “morale” mechanic in a couple of these events (namely Gates of Arah Pre-event and Balthazar chain), meaning you can’t let the escorted die too much, the current state and amount of Risen Nobles is ridiculous.

A noble by itself is fine, but when 10 or more spawn at once they simply insta-gib the NPCs. You can’t do much about that. Even granting them protection tends to be for naught.

ANet needs to either remove the morale mechanic, lower the number of risen nobles, or lower their AoE.

For Warmaster Chan, for the first spawn run ahead of them and suck up all of the aggro, for the next spawn stand to the left and suck up the next bunch of aggro, for the third spawn, run north-west and suck up aggro (try to aggro the vet abomination too) and then for the final spawn just stay ahead of them again.

I’m lucky I’m on a guard so I can sponge hits, but the event basically involves players soaking up the noble symbols and then just burning them down asap while putting regen/prot on the NPCs.

Balthazar is fine, it just requires co-ordination.