Guild Wars 2

In Caldeon Forest there is an event which I believe to be seriously overtuned. There is a krait witch who is fairly labeled as a group event, but she has a skill which seems to one shot most people and she uses it frequently. To put this into perspective for some people, she is just as difficult as Kholer from explorable Ascalonian Catacombs with one exception. She’s in a level 10 zone.

I was killing time waiting for a Twilight Arbor group and I came across her. My ranger is wearing full level 80 exotics. I frequently run Twilight Arbor and other dungons (including AC with the Kholer fight who is mechanically almost identical, although he doesn’t have a ranged attack which hits for as much as the witch) and I was defeated during this fight and had to keep a serious range from the mob when I returned.The people around me were being one shot and generally not enjoying the experience. I don’t think there are any encounters in Orr that are this hard – and I’ve solo’d group events with my pet before.

I’m not opposed to difficult events nor do I think group events should be trivial, but the absurdity of this event was too high for me to ignore. I understand that I’m downlevelled and that full exotics aren’t supposed to make me invincible, but when this encounter was harder than dungeon bosses (even with a group of about five others) and people are being one shotted – at range – in a level 10 area, something is wrong.

Yeah, I ran into that the other day when I was completing the zone, and I agree that it’s either massively overtuned, or just plain bugged somehow. It was so bad I simply walked away after 5 or 6 deaths because no headway could be made on her. This and the fire elemental are the only fights I have come across myself (so far) where I simply can’t imagine this level of absurdity being intentional.

The only times I’ve beaten this encounter was with at least 8-10 other people. She’s got this multi-target harpoon that hits hard, drags, and then stuns (iirc) you in her point blank poison cloud.

Doesn’t instant kill, but close enough.

This is definitely one of those fights you don’t try without a group of 8 or more. And 2 should be on revive duty.

I remember the first time I encounter this event was on my ranger at lvl 8. There were 2 people fighting and 8 on the ground dead or downed. Sent my pet in to fight and then I went around rezzing people and taking shots at the witch when I could. It was a tough fight but we managed to kill her.

Never had a problem with it since, as long as the group was big enough and people were willing to revive as soon as someone went down.

Probably one of the better encounters in the game.

Agreed, no idea why she’s ten times harder than any other events boss in the zone, and a boss this hard in a 1-15 zone is just silly, new players are going to lose a lot of self-esteem from repeatedly dying. (Same problem as the fire elemental in Metrica Province).

I myself have only beat her once with 3-4 other people, by waypoint zerging, and by the end we were all naked.

I disagree, she’s a boss, and bosses SHOULD be hard. I fought the witch with a group 3 times and won 2 times and if we are able to kill it every time then it won’t be challenging and not fun.

SameHH.1048:

I disagree, she’s a boss, and bosses SHOULD be hard. I fought the witch with a group 3 times and won 2 times and if we are able to kill it every time then it won’t be challenging and not fun.

Funny how this is different to 98% of the events in game.

Being one-shot isn’t a fun mechanic. Not at level 15, not at level 80.

Yet somehow this seems to be the only mechanic ANet knows to make something “difficult”.

I noticed this too, the two times I did this fight I spent so much time rez’ing people! Which is kinda lousy ‘cause that doesn’t seem to count as “contributing” to the event. >.<

Her ability that pulls you in and (near?) one-shots you is what made her so tough I think. If I didn’t activate death shroud and run away within a couple of seconds of being pulled, I’d die every time. And if I’d been playing my Elementalist (a lot squishier) that move would probably have simply one-shot me.

Not fun for a newbie, particularly because for a good chunk of the time I’d imagine that there are not enough people around to make this fight easy enough so as not to be a wallet-squeezing death fest. Honestly, since I’ve seen the fight already I’ll probably skip this event on my next character unless there are a lot of people around when I encounter it. It’s just not worth the waypoint and repair costs (to me), otherwise.

I came by to make this exact point. I’m there this morning collecting vanilla beans (another touchy subject), and I saw a few guys trying it out. I’m there with level 80 exotics and I can survive that pull, but the other guys can’t.

I rezz’ed each of them a few times then went back to the almost non-existent vanilla beans. There’s no point in that boss and the drops pretty much suck too.