Guild Wars 2

Hours spent failing at an event that for whatever reason, has not been tweaked. This is unacceptable. People have been complaining of the bugs and difficulty since early September.

Some problems with this event chain other than any bugs that may still exist:

-This event is in a zone that nobody really spends any time in, so it is difficult to recruit people with map chat.

-Other than for Obsidian Shards for legendaries, there is no real reason to go through the trouble of doing this event. The gear stats/appearances can be found at other temples or dungeons.

-The pact escort is extremely difficult without a huge number of people. Massive amounts of mobs with veterans appear every couple steps, with respawns behind, because it is so slow and painstaking. Their health depletes too quickly and never recharges. This step alone is very rough to get through.

-The priest. Clearly the worst part of the chain. Again, you need a huge number of people for this. The priest can port to your location and one-shot you, puts AoE circles on the ground that will nearly instantly one-shot you, fears you into these circles, summons veterans that buff and heal? him, and summons a champion abomination, which in itself is an event. At any given time during this event, 50% or more of people are dead, with only a few that “survived” in rally state. Also, there is only a 10 minute timer to kill the priest.

-The nearest waypoint from the boss fight is far away, with a run through the normal, extremely annoying undead mobs of Orr. Many of the people invited to these desperate zerg attempts don’t understand the concept that they will not be rezzed, and that they need to run back.

-The temple defense event is almost never done. I have tried this with a few people, and it was very difficult. There is too little time to properly recruit for it, and the pact loses their morale very easily.

-This event is so bad that people actually leave their servers for the sole purpose of finding unbugged or uncontested Balthazar temples.

I’m hoping that they add some sort of temporary fix soon at the very least, since the problems continue to persist. Add the Obsidian Shards to another karma vendor at a different location maybe, or put a dungeon at the temple, so people would be willing to endure the misery to keep the dungeon available. No other event in this game is as frustrating as this.

I completely agree. This is the worst event in the game by far. Last night me and my friend (we are both going for a Legendary) wanted to get some Obsidian shards. For the past 3 days the temple has been contested and we decided to try to complete the event.
After HOURS of recruiting people, fighting tons of mobs, dying again and again and AGAIN and running back, we couldn’t do it and left with frustration (as did everyone else on the map)

This event has so many problems. It’s just way too difficult.
If this was a fight in an organized raid or something it would be acceptable. But this is in the open world, you have to do it with randoms and they cannot be organized. We tried to organize them, we tried to explain to them what they should do during the fight, and that they should TP to a waypoint and run back if they die, we even made a small team of 4 people just before the event started to go and clear the event in Sentry waypoint because it’s the closest one to the temple and we wanted it to be uncontested. But about half of the players didn’t even listen and just stood there and waited to be ressed making us lose time and ultimately fail the event. Twice.

The fight itself is a joke. It’s cheap difficulty, almost all his attacks 1-shot you and they happen so fast you don’t have time to react. The only one that is dodge-able is the fire projectile. Aoe fear, insta kill aoe, insta kill life drain and on top of that, adds! This is just one of the most badly designed fights I have ever seen.

Something has to be done, the diffuculty must be lowerer, or the timer removed, or maybe the Obsidian Shards should be added to other temples as well.

What makes this event impossible are players who die and refuse to run back, buffing the boss since they still count as “in the fight” were scaling is concerned. This makes it impossible for the survivors to stand a chance.

Player laziness is the culprit here, not content design. If you die, run back. Simple.

Vasham.2408:

What makes this event impossible are players who die and refuse to run back, buffing the boss since they still count as “in the fight” were scaling is concerned. This makes it impossible for the survivors to stand a chance.

Player laziness is the culprit here, not content design. If you die, run back. Simple.

I’m sorry but if you think a fight that requires that everyone dies, respawns and runs back to the fight as fast as possible is good design, you probably haven’t played any MMOs that actually have interesting and well designed fights.

Although I do agree that players that just sit there dead are also at fault, the main problem lies with the design. An event that is meant to be completed by random people that are not organized shouldn’t be this hard. And if you really want to make it hard, don’t use such cheap ways like 1-shot attacks with <1sec animations.

I agree with most of the above. I have only been able to complete this chain once, just after I hit lvl 80. After that most of the time I haven’t been able to even try the event, seeing as every time I go to check it out the pact npc’s are stuck in one spot and never move. I don’t understand why this one buggs out so much, which for me personally is maybe the biggest frustration in all of this.

Pls AN, fix this event as it has been bugged for a very, very long time. I love your game very much, but this is unacceptable.

The difficulty doesn’t bother me as much as the die and run back zerg mentality of the whole event. It’s very clearly designed in such a way that players will die, and will die often enough that if they don’t run back quickly the event will fail. This is poor encounter design, since the biggest factors in the difficulty of the encounter are how far away the waypoint is and how many players run back instead of lay around dead.

Change the whole thing to lock out players from re-entering the event once it starts, and reduce the damage to reasonable levels.

Voidspawn.1934:

Vasham.2408:

What makes this event impossible are players who die and refuse to run back, buffing the boss since they still count as “in the fight” were scaling is concerned. This makes it impossible for the survivors to stand a chance.

Player laziness is the culprit here, not content design. If you die, run back. Simple.

I’m sorry but if you think a fight that requires that everyone dies, respawns and runs back to the fight as fast as possible is good design, you probably haven’t played any MMOs that actually have interesting and well designed fights.

Although I do agree that players that just sit there dead are also at fault, the main problem lies with the design. An event that is meant to be completed by random people that are not organized shouldn’t be this hard. And if you really want to make it hard, don’t use such cheap ways like 1-shot attacks with <1sec animations.

I’ve played plenty of MMOs over the years. Some of the best bossfights in MMO history had a mechanic where the boss kills you in a single, unavoidable hit. Vaelstraz comes to mind, a fight were the entire point is to kill him before you run out of raid members. Technically the Priest of Balthazar is far more forgiving since you can still get back up after he uses Marked for Death, since it only downs you and good players will still stop to help you back up. Other than MfD his abilities are his fireballs and his AOE stomp, both of which are easy to see coming and, if you’re ranged or melee, you only need to watch out for one of them at a time. 90% of failures on this boss are the result of fully dead players not running back. The fact that dyeing on a boss in an MMO is hard for people to accept nowadays shows how badly casualization has poisoned the playerbase.

I would go so far as to say that Anet needs to add more bosses in events with this level of difficulty. Bosses shouldn’t be limited in difficulty because they’re “meant for event zergs.” I do agree though the shard vendor shouldn’t be tied to a boss like this. Putting him at the Pact Rally point or Fort Trinity after successfully completing one of the invasion events is a far better way to do it.

Other than MfD his abilities are his fireballs and his AOE stomp, both of which are easy to see coming and, if you’re ranged or melee, you only need to watch out for one of them at a time.

Given the ridiculously overdone particle effects in this game, you can’t even see the priest 95% of the time, making dodging anything more about range from him so that the stomp doesn’t affect you, because you cannot see it coming when he is covered in giant blue-red flames plus the six million other explosions, slashes, domes and psychedelic shimmery crap produced by everyone’s attacks. All you can see is a something surrounded by a mass.

Kierlak.5209:

Other than MfD his abilities are his fireballs and his AOE stomp, both of which are easy to see coming and, if you’re ranged or melee, you only need to watch out for one of them at a time.

Given the ridiculously overdone particle effects in this game, you can’t even see the priest 95% of the time, making dodging anything more about range from him so that the stomp doesn’t affect you, because you cannot see it coming when he is covered in giant blue-red flames plus the six million other explosions, slashes, domes and psychedelic shimmery crap produced by everyone’s attacks. All you can see is a something surrounded by a mass.

That sounds more like a personal problem to me. I’ve fought him from both ranged and melee in huge clusterfraks of players and particle effects. I have yet to experience trouble telling the 20 foot lump of muscle and spiked armor from the other players.

At this point I can only give you this for advice. I know you won’t listen, but it’s all there is left to say: DODGE!!!!

It’s not about telling where he is, it’s about being able to see him clearly enough be able to see the jump into the air for the stomp. When he is covered by moving particle effects it is absurdly hard to see when he jumps.

It’s a terribly designed fight, the pre-quests are terribly designed, and the attaching of the vendor for the legendary ingredient to it is a terrible decision. How do we know it’s a terribly designed fight? People change servers to be able to buy their ingredients, because their server cannot kill it, either due to bugs, or far more often, due to not being able to field a massive enough zerg to kill him before the timer runs out.

The Pre-Events are really quite easy, especially when compared with the end Event. I would like to see harder Pre-Events but I think I am in a minority there

I think one problem is that Events prior to that Map are pretty easy. People arrive at the map and are not prepared for such a thing. I did that map in one day, including a succerssful try at this Event but not thanks to me because I just wasn’t expecting it to be hard at all meaning I was one of the many not to retreat and run back until someone shouted at me. The next day I was in Malchor’s Leap but I do go back to Straits of Devestation because I like the Events there.

In other words I now know what to do, most do not. Those who go to that map probably don’t go back unless they have to so there will always be a majority of people new to the Event so it will fail. People will never run back or understand what is happening.

I don’t know if others go back much like I do. Maybe if that happened instead of waiting until they need the Shards it would be completed more often.

EDIT: I have never seen it bugged. Done it many times, failed most but not because of bugs.

Thord.2017:

The Pre-Events are really quite easy, especially when compared with the end Event.

I still think that the Pre-Events are too difficult (with only 2-3 people doing it).
There’s an event in Royal Forum Waypoint where you need to defend the submarines.
Basically this first chain of event is fine, you can complete it solo or with 2 people.

But the subsequent event is just ridiculous, you have to protect the submarines and at the same time clear the platform to capture it. Doing it with 2-3 players is just impossible, another 2 players actually joined later on but still can’t complete it, the capture bar can easily be reduced back to zero and tonnes of Risens are harassing the submarines at the same time (both land and underwater).

Anyway, we gave up.
It was actually quite sad to leave an event just because we don’t have enough people to help complete it.
Or probably we were just doing it wrong.

Yes—dodge—but when you have so many people and aoes all over the place, it gets kinda laggy. 1 half second mistake and you’re down and out.

I’ve never seen a successful Balth attempt, tbh. His healing is a kick to the face, especially if you got him to like ~15% HP——so close!!! 2 mins more?? gogogogo

Then he heals up and everyone wipes. Nothing but a 5s repair bill everytime, lol.

The few times I’ve seen this event succeed, it involved taking out the Abomination and the other Vets & Champs, then focusing on the Priest. It also involved people taking utility skills that were stun breakers (to avoid being Fear’ed into the Banners) and people res’ing each other. This “if you’re dead, don’t expect a res, just WP & run back” is total BS.

If all you do is focus on the Priest, you’re gonna get beat down. Support each other, take out the adds, res downed people and you’ll get through it. You know…that’s kinda the way ANet designed the game.

ShadowbaneX.6273:

The few times I’ve seen this event succeed, it involved taking out the Abomination and the other Vets & Champs, then focusing on the Priest. It also involved people taking utility skills that were stun breakers (to avoid being Fear’ed into the Banners) and people res’ing each other. This “if you’re dead, don’t expect a res, just WP & run back” is total BS.

If all you do is focus on the Priest, you’re gonna get beat down. Support each other, take out the adds, res downed people and you’ll get through it. You know…that’s kinda the way ANet designed the game.

There’s a difference between a downed player and a dead player. Reviving a player who is already dead is almost pointless. They’d get there faster if they ran and the people who where reviving wouldn’t be put in such a bad position and can do something, productive.

I haven’t seen many pure pug swarms really do this event with any measure of success, it’s usually a coalition of a few organized guilds that beat it. I usually just luck out and follow them when they do it.

The difficulty isn’t the issues with me, it’s the timer, I’m sure pugs could probably knock it out but they would need more time…lot more time. Another note is the vendors as mentioned in another thread really just need to be available a 100% of the time elsewhere. Seeing Temple of Balth threads all over this forum simply because people need their shards is just sad really.