Guild Wars 2

I dont like being blunt about things. I like sleeping over things as to not post something I might regret later on. But Im afraid this requires a post and I have to let you know where you have failed and how you could have improved because as it is right now, some people managed to get it and I feel neither admiration nor awe about them and they would complain if you were to change it now.

I have spent over 40 gold in retraits, regearing, buying tickets, repairs, food, 2 classes, ele and guardian since those are my only lvl 80s, over 120 tries.

Before I go on,let me tell you where you failed and how you made a potentially great boss into a total mess.

1 hit KO mechanic: In and by itself it is not a big deal, given proper counterplay and cooldown. P1 phase is beautifully designed. Patterns are easy to follow, kamikazes are slow. Overall well done. Then come the problem. The orbs. people with ranged attacks cant do much about it, they appear as “obstructed” even though there is absolutely nothing in between. These add an element of luck, luck that it will either pull you to safety or (most often than not) your doom. Phase 2 it gets incredibly convoluted, too convoluted, 1 KO mechanics are all over the place, you have little to no room to run to, crippled your dodge dont take you very far, the AoE covers effectively 75% of the map. This offers very little counterplay for classes which cant simply put a couple of clones and run around. If you need to be facing her to deal damage any damage then you have to either choose to run and hit a couple of times or die to kamikazes or AoE. Which brings me to my next point;

Time Limit is usually tied to lazy design: Plain and simple. It diminishes the your options; gear, traits, weapons, playstyle. Surely being a bunker and outlasting her wouldnt be fun, but as it is right now you have to give up damage for some tankines/sustain. When you do that you run out of TIME. A simple fix would be increase the time, whih brings me to my next point;

Why is this not instanced and personal?! Time limit was (hopefully) introduced to prevent people from stalling rooms, but why isnt this instanced like the drinking contest? And if you are going to make it public, at least PLEASE move it to another rom, not everyone runs Nvidia999999 or whatever number it is right now, when you have a zerg below or nearby you the FPS drops are insane. WHich bring sme to the last point;

Camera a nd red circles, FIX IT: The camera is the thing killing me 80%of the time, plain and simple. You cant see more than the back of your head, this makes the already hard to see red circles even harder to see, same for anything approaching you. For the love of God, Allah, Mathematics whatever you workship please make the walls disappear when you are inside (for you only). Also make the circles a little ( A LOT MORE) visible, cant count how many times I cant really tell if Im on the circles or outside of them, that if, I see them.

Overall I think this boss has the potential to be a great fight if something is tuned down a bit, I believe taking away the random fact about orbs and making p2 AoE less often and cover less.

You made GREAT encounters, such as the lady with the book and the quaggan, please bring this kind of design more often, it shows some work, it shows that there was thought put into mechanics and counterplay. The last boss feels convoluted and that just just threw a bunch of stuff together to make it impossible for the average john.

Get this right, 1 hit KO mechanics are not fun when they have less than 3 second CD.

Agree with the bugs, other than that the fight is fine as it is.
Change any of the mechanics and everybody can do it.
They point is that they shouldn’t. The orbs can be killed with ranged attacks, just use one with pbaoe on impact or something that doesn’t count as projectile – problem fixed. There are only a total of 3 orbs in the entire fight so that shouldn’t be a problem,
plus they take a very long time to charge and pull you so you have plenty of time to counter that. Aoe is fine, just learn the patterns and avoid it.
Time limit is fine too, it’s part of the challenge and without it i would have beaten her on my third try which would have been far too easy.

Just keep in mind, this content is for hardcore players. It’s challenging on
purpose. It was completed by every class. It was completed by zerkers as well
as support characters and condition based characters.
If you can’t do it then that’s a player issue.

I’m not entirely sure about other points but your second point, time limit, is what I hated most there. I’m full zerg geared Ranger, and I used greatsword+Longbow during that fight, and still 2 times when I got her down to 5-20% health, the floor would fall and I’d fail because of that. And I did phase 1 perfectly. If nothing else, at least increase the time limit by 1 or 2 minutes.

If/when the player knows the tactics and is doing the fight correctly with his/her build and gear, the game shouldn’t punish her/him by taking the floor off just because timer ran out…So frustrating.

Crovax.7854:

Agree with the bugs, other than that the fight is fine as it is.
Change any of the mechanics and everybody can do it.
They point is that they shouldn’t. The orbs can be killed with ranged attacks, just use one with pbaoe on impact or something that doesn’t count as projectile – problem fixed. There are only a total of 3 orbs in the entire fight so that shouldn’t be a problem,
plus they take a very long time to charge and pull you so you have plenty of time to counter that. Aoe is fine, just learn the patterns and avoid it.
Time limit is fine too, it’s part of the challenge and without it i would have beaten her on my third try which would have been far too easy.

Just keep in mind, this content is for hardcore players. It’s challenging on
purpose. It was completed by every class. It was completed by zerkers as well
as support characters and condition based characters.
If you can’t do it then that’s a player issue.

Problem fixed? How about broken design if you cant use your skills properly… The problem is not fixed, it should not even be Obstructed. The fact you’re saying that is a fix is sad.

Also it was not completed by every class. 5 out of 60 testers completed it. They didn’t say it WAS done by every class they said it CAN be done.

Otaur.9268:

Crovax.7854:

Agree with the bugs, other than that the fight is fine as it is.
Change any of the mechanics and everybody can do it.
They point is that they shouldn’t. The orbs can be killed with ranged attacks, just use one with pbaoe on impact or something that doesn’t count as projectile – problem fixed. There are only a total of 3 orbs in the entire fight so that shouldn’t be a problem,
plus they take a very long time to charge and pull you so you have plenty of time to counter that. Aoe is fine, just learn the patterns and avoid it.
Time limit is fine too, it’s part of the challenge and without it i would have beaten her on my third try which would have been far too easy.

Just keep in mind, this content is for hardcore players. It’s challenging on
purpose. It was completed by every class. It was completed by zerkers as well
as support characters and condition based characters.
If you can’t do it then that’s a player issue.

Problem fixed? How about broken design if you cant use your skills properly… The problem is not fixed, it should not even be Obstructed. The fact you’re saying that is a fix is sad.

Also it was not completed by every class. 5 out of 60 testers completed it. They didn’t say it was done by every class.

Did any of the devs even say that this was a bug? No.
For all we know it could be to force you to use pbaoe skills, which every class has access to.

Also 5 people completed it, but among those 5 people, every class was used.
That was said multiple times now. Also i was referring to numerous
forum threads where people are saying how they beat her
with support or cond builds.

Crovax.7854:

Otaur.9268:

Crovax.7854:

Agree with the bugs, other than that the fight is fine as it is.
Change any of the mechanics and everybody can do it.
They point is that they shouldn’t. The orbs can be killed with ranged attacks, just use one with pbaoe on impact or something that doesn’t count as projectile – problem fixed. There are only a total of 3 orbs in the entire fight so that shouldn’t be a problem,
plus they take a very long time to charge and pull you so you have plenty of time to counter that. Aoe is fine, just learn the patterns and avoid it.
Time limit is fine too, it’s part of the challenge and without it i would have beaten her on my third try which would have been far too easy.

Just keep in mind, this content is for hardcore players. It’s challenging on
purpose. It was completed by every class. It was completed by zerkers as well
as support characters and condition based characters.
If you can’t do it then that’s a player issue.

Problem fixed? How about broken design if you cant use your skills properly… The problem is not fixed, it should not even be Obstructed. The fact you’re saying that is a fix is sad.

Did any of the devs even say that this was a bug? No.
For all we know it could be to force you to use pbaoe skills, which every class has access to.

Poor design is poor design I guess.

Crovax.7854:

.

Just keep in mind, this content is for hardcore players. .

Ok, you dont consider 40 gold, more than 120 on a single boss, over 3 days of trials, around 7 hours of pure play, retraiting regearing solely for the purpose of beating this boss hardcore? Then geez, what else could it be?

Im sorry, but right now it is borderline impossible to do, has too many luck elements on top of the already punishing mechanics.

Remove luck away and it will be skill, which improves with time spent. Right now I can either die in the first phase than at 10% hp in 2phase. Nobody is that incoherent. Luckplays a much too big factor. P2 needs to be toned down, period.

Fortus.6175:

Crovax.7854:

.

Just keep in mind, this content is for hardcore players. .

Ok, you dont consider 40 gold, more than 120 on a single boss, over 3 days of trials, around 7 hours of pure play, retraiting regearing solely for the purpose of beating this boss hardcore? Then geez, what else could it be?

Im sorry, but right now it is borderline impossible to do, has too many luck elements on top of the already punishing mechanics.

Remove luck away and it will be skill, which improves with time spent. Right now I can either die in the first phase than at 10% hp in 2phase. Nobody is that incoherent. Luckplays a much too big factor. P2 needs to be toned down, period.

There is literally nothing in this fight that requires luck. Everything has a set spawnpoint. As i said, clearly a player issue. You might want to look in your
respective class subforums; i’m sure there are plenty of helpful
threads with tactics for various setups.

Otaur.9268:

Crovax.7854:

Did any of the devs even say that this was a bug? No.
For all we know it could be to force you to use pbaoe skills, which every class has access to.

Poor design is poor design I guess.

So i guess it’s yours to determine universally what is good design and what isn’t.
I think it’s good design because it encourages diverse skill usage.

Crovax.7854:

Fortus.6175:

Crovax.7854:

.

Just keep in mind, this content is for hardcore players. .

Ok, you dont consider 40 gold, more than 120 on a single boss, over 3 days of trials, around 7 hours of pure play, retraiting regearing solely for the purpose of beating this boss hardcore? Then geez, what else could it be?

Im sorry, but right now it is borderline impossible to do, has too many luck elements on top of the already punishing mechanics.

Remove luck away and it will be skill, which improves with time spent. Right now I can either die in the first phase than at 10% hp in 2phase. Nobody is that incoherent. Luckplays a much too big factor. P2 needs to be toned down, period.

There is literally nothing in this fight that requires luck. Everything has a set spawnpoint. As i said, clearly a player issue. You might want to look in your
respective class subforums; i’m sure there are plenty of helpful
threads with tactics for various setups.

Otaur.9268:

Crovax.7854:

Did any of the devs even say that this was a bug? No.
For all we know it could be to force you to use pbaoe skills, which every class has access to.

Poor design is poor design I guess.

So i guess it’s yours to determine universally what is good design and what isn’t.
I think it’s good design because i encourages diverse skill usage.

By all the threads complaining about all the bugs released this patch, it’s poor design. Defend all you want.

Burrows in AC have the same mechanics. That “bug” was there from the start.
I’ll just tell you what i told the “casuals” who complained about aetherblade retreat being too hard:

Observe
Adapt
Overcome

What i want to say is: If you like it or not, the orbs are the way they are now and probably will be for the remainder of the event. Instead of complaing try what works for you and include that in your approach.

I feel like this game isn’t meant for hardcore players. The top level gear is meant to be accessible to everyone after doing a reasonable amount of work. I don’t think the reward should be given for the hardcore arena match. It should be gotten by everyone who tries hard, and if people want challenge on impossible difficulty, they can do it for achievement points that don’t have a reward.

Saying that content should be hard so that only 5% of people can beat it doesn’t fall in line with everything GW2 has manifested itself to be up to now. And to me, the bragging rights of 5% aren’t as important as the enjoyability of the whole playerbase.

Everyone has a different preference as to difficulty. They can’t make it suit every person.

The bad camera angles and bad visibility of aoe circles or monitor flare have nothing to do with difficult gameplay, it’s just bother. And frankly, it feels disrespectful knowing someone programmed it that way intentionally just to bother us. I wouldn’t do that to the community if I was designing this.

My biggest issue is with the stupid camera. P1 is fairly easy now. P2 though is a pain because you have to constantly move and the problem is you cannot see where you are or if you are in the dead zone for the AOE. Expecially playing with a Charr.

This fight is bad for a number of reasons.

1. It doesn’t feel like it was designed to challenge players, it feels like it was designed to make players fail.

Long story short, a designer doesn’t give enemies instant kill attacks unless he wants the players to die. When he gives an enemy constant use of instant kill attacks, it makes me think he was basically thinking to himself “ha, lets see them beat this!”. Think about all the constraints being put on the player — you’re given an extremely short timespan, you have to constantly avoid aoe that kills you in a single hit, you have to constantly avoid clones that will kill you in a single hit, you are being randomly pulled to different areas by orbs with no rhyme or reason that can’t even be broken unless you move into melee range, in which case they’re still fulfilling the purpose of sending you to a specifc area whether you want to or not, all the while you’re constantly being pelted by high damage missiles that you can’t afford to dodge because you need to save energy to avoid being instantly killed. How many constraints can you put on a player before you’re simply not being fair anymore?

I could write an essay on this topic, but I’ll leave it at this.

2. It doesn’t line up with the gameplay style of other boss battles in the game

I’m not saying dodging isn’t an important part of the game, but as far as this fight is concernt it is the only important part of the game. Since when are we playing a game where you’re never allowed to get hit by anything for an entire fight? This doesn’t line up with the feel of combat elsewhere, and it feels forced. It also leads to the next problem…

3. Class disparity

This battle is undeniably unfair to the necromancer and ranger, each for their own unique problems. The necro’s problem: Has no invuln, no block, no aegis, no natural access to vigor. When a class is forced to buy two new weapons, and put energy sigils on them just to have a fair chance, it’s a red flag that the designer was too heavy handed with the AoE in this battle. Which is a problem for ranger as well — AoE cakes the entire floor and your pet will die instantly. What’s more is the ranger’s invuln doesn’t block the instakill from this boss, unlike the warrior’s. Your only option is to kite with frontal shortbow attacks on a flanking weapon, do poor damage with close range longbow attacks while the boss is constantly jumping on your face, or peck at it with singular axe hits. These options all suck. Also, the ranger’s condi removal is tied to their pet, which (again) is dead. It can be done, but these classes are extremely kitten in this fight. The effort it takes for a necro to finish this battle compared to a warrior is absolutely staggering, and it’s not fair.

I’d like to ask the designer of this content to take a moment and think about what his intention was with this battle. The fact that they seemed proud that only 10% of their testers were able to complete it says to me that they were deliberately trying to reach some kind of quota for making content that people can’t beat. What exactly are they trying to prove? I don’t think that’s an appropriate goal for a designer, and it doesn’t lead to a positive or enjoyable experience for many people who look forward to these events.

I rather die 125 times on a boss and keep trying until I succeed than face roll boss spamming auto attack without the need to even dodge.

Yeah, with my Norn Guardian I just CAN NOT see those kitten mother kitten red circles! I hope this gets fixed!

I watch other people dodge them and keep thinking I can do that…then I go in prepared to dodge and BANG! Dead!

Now I don’t know if it’s on my end but I have experienced a lot of bugs already:

Queue bug, queuing up only never to be put in a fight…wasted ticket there, like 5 already…

Several of the attempts at Subject 7 I started out with like 10 little oozes…

Massive lag and connectivity issues in queens pavilion…

Liadri’s red circles not showing up for me…

?

Did it after 80+ attempts on my ranger. Was extremely difficult. Memorize the patterns. Even p2 has patterns (orb spawns).

I had to retrait my traits MANY times.

I had to use skills I did not care for or use often.

I had to research and buy expensive foods to compensate for my pet (or lack of).

My pet remained dead for the entire fight, so I lost a lot of dps.

Most of the skills I normally use were useless for this fight (signet of stone – supposed to make me invulnerable, doesn’t work. My 3 condition removals don’t work because 2 of them are tied to a pet which is dead, meaning it can’t be used unless the pet is alive, and the 3rd condi removal is a stationary healing spring which I can’t stand in due to AOE.

I could not shoot any of the orbs because of the arrows being obstructed.

The #4 on my greatsword did not block the AOE like it should (works for every other projectile/aoe out there).

My razer naga mouse decided it wants to start breaking (it’s 4 years old), so the right click only works half the time. That alone killed me more times than I care to count. I ordered a new mouse from their site, but it will take a week to get to me.

Fortunately I was already geared out in berserker armor so that was the only thing I had gunning for me.

Yet, despite all this, I still beat Liadri. Call it skill, call it luck, or call it perserverence. If I can do it with a terrible AI, unfamiliar build, unfamiliar skills, and a half broken mouse, I am confident you can do it too. Just keep trying.

I have to say I completely disagree with the majority sentiment in this thread. Sure there’s the occasional annoying ‘obstructed’ or bit of lag while fighting Liadri, but the vast majority of the time I encountered no issues while fighting her. The Liadri fight is just like playing Dark Souls, every time you fail you learn what you did wrong and improve upon it. For everyone claiming it’s impossible on some classes, my guild has had at least one person of every profession (except for Thief) complete the challenge within the first 72 hours of content.

With exception of the Mad King’s Clock Tower, this might be the first genuine challenge offered to the player base of GW2, and I find it disconcerting that people have so many issues with it. Just as a game that only caters to ‘hardcore’ players is not fun to casual players, the opposite is also true. Liadri (and the entire Queen’s guantlet) has been some of the most fun I’ve had in PvE since release.

If you find yourself 40 gold in debt against Liadri, perhaps it’s time to stop blaming all the ‘bugs’ and ask yourself what you’re doing wrong.

Its the common L2P issue , this is meant to test you PVErs who cringe at the sight of challenge , its clearly working as intended because its so difficult you guys are saying she’s bugged lol , took me 30 tries to beat and half of those 30 to figure out where the orbs were coming from and why was i being instagibbed. Got it down to a science and thrashed her with ease…how is it possible i did it and you guys proclaim it impossible?

Brienson.7319:

This fight is bad for a number of reasons.

1. It doesn’t feel like it was designed to challenge players, it feels like it was designed to make players fail.

Long story short, a designer doesn’t give enemies instant kill attacks unless he wants the players to die. When he gives an enemy constant use of instant kill attacks, it makes me think he was basically thinking to himself “ha, lets see them beat this!”. Think about all the constraints being put on the player — you’re given an extremely short timespan, you have to constantly avoid aoe that kills you in a single hit, you have to constantly avoid clones that will kill you in a single hit, you are being randomly pulled to different areas by orbs with no rhyme or reason that can’t even be broken unless you move into melee range, in which case they’re still fulfilling the purpose of sending you to a specifc area whether you want to or not, all the while you’re constantly being pelted by high damage missiles that you can’t afford to dodge because you need to save energy to avoid being instantly killed. How many constraints can you put on a player before you’re simply not being fair anymore?

I could write an essay on this topic, but I’ll leave it at this.

2. It doesn’t line up with the gameplay style of other boss battles in the game

I’m not saying dodging isn’t an important part of the game, but as far as this fight is concernt it is the only important part of the game. Since when are we playing a game where you’re never allowed to get hit by anything for an entire fight? This doesn’t line up with the feel of combat elsewhere, and it feels forced. It also leads to the next problem…

3. Class disparity

This battle is undeniably unfair to the necromancer and ranger, each for their own unique problems. The necro’s problem: Has no invuln, no block, no aegis, no natural access to vigor. When a class is forced to buy two new weapons, and put energy sigils on them just to have a fair chance, it’s a red flag that the designer was too heavy handed with the AoE in this battle. Which is a problem for ranger as well — AoE cakes the entire floor and your pet will die instantly. What’s more is the ranger’s invuln doesn’t block the instakill from this boss, unlike the warrior’s. Your only option is to kite with frontal shortbow attacks on a flanking weapon, do poor damage with close range longbow attacks while the boss is constantly jumping on your face, or peck at it with singular axe hits. These options all suck. Also, the ranger’s condi removal is tied to their pet, which (again) is dead. It can be done, but these classes are extremely kitten in this fight. The effort it takes for a necro to finish this battle compared to a warrior is absolutely staggering, and it’s not fair.

I’d like to ask the designer of this content to take a moment and think about what his intention was with this battle. The fact that they seemed proud that only 10% of their testers were able to complete it says to me that they were deliberately trying to reach some kind of quota for making content that people can’t beat. What exactly are they trying to prove? I don’t think that’s an appropriate goal for a designer, and it doesn’t lead to a positive or enjoyable experience for many people who look forward to these events.

Sound like you new to uptempo battles lol

You want to talk lazy? The Shadow Behemoth, Fire Ele, Jungle Wurm, etc. fights are lazy. You just sit there with a zerg, and spam 1.

Liadri? No no no. This is an example of excellent design. Heaven forbid that you actually have to use game mechanics to avoid getting killed.

I’m on ~15 tries so far and can pretty reliably get her into phase two. I then proceed to damage her as much as I can but usually I die of her auto attack or didn’t save a dodge.. I guess its very possible and I’ll get it sooner or later, but I find the amount of damage each of her autoattack in phase 1 way too harsh – it really leaves me in a bad state when I get to phase 2.

but apart from that, I think the fight is ok-ish..

what bugs me most is the stupidity of the design with having to waypoint and walk all the way constantly. there are 4 npcs, they should just ress the players. I really see no point in this except to annoy players for whatever sadistic purposes. even adding a waypoint up there would be better than forcing players to walk for 2 minutes for every mistake they make.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

You want to talk lazy? The Shadow Behemoth, Fire Ele, Jungle Wurm, etc. fights are lazy. You just sit there with a zerg, and spam 1.

Liadri? No no no. This is an example of excellent design. Heaven forbid that you actually have to use game mechanics to avoid getting killed.

When did step out of the barely visible red circles while combating the lousy camera become hallmarks of excellent design?

While I’d agree that most of the world bosses are awful Liadri is no better. The encounter is uninteresting and only made difficult by the poor design of it.

You mean excellent design. I love content that not everyone can do, even if that includes myself. It’s called a “challenge”. If you can’t do it, it’s not Anet’s fault.

or didn’t save a dodge..

Try staying closer to the center. I barely ever had to dodge and sometimes it’s easier to run back and forth between 2 safe zones (or, better said, it’s always easier but the clones will reach you this way and you’ll have to deal with them).

Smooth Penguin.5294:

You mean excellent design. I love content that not everyone can do, even if that includes myself. It’s called a “challenge”. If you can’t do it, it’s not Anet’s fault.

Are you a bot? Because you’re starting to sound like a broken record. I’ve done the content. It’s still awful.

But please explain to me how this super original idea of stepping out of dangerous circles makes for compelling gameplay and is any different from the mechanics used by most of the world bosses including the fire elemental you yourself cited. I’m looking forward to it.

I’ll say it again here. I’m amazed, in a bad way, that the AoE circles are so hard to spot and the floor is sort of a grating on top of that. Another negative thing is that turning down graphics or whatever that post processing thing is helps. It’s an encounter that gets harder with eye candy enabled? That AUGH GODS MY EYES thing, seriously.

Ignoring those, I will continue to try to overcome. It’s challenging and that’s fun in its own way. I’d rather sort out how to deal with the mechanics. It’s the cosmetics that’s bloody annoying.

Yeah, i think the blinding flashs should be removed. Most likely most players are turning off post-processing anyway.