Guild Wars 2

Rottaran Owain.6789:

aeneq.1760:

Yes they are oneshot, I specifically went for examples that illustrated this point. There are also a lot of other examples of combination attacks that although dont take all your health in one blow still means you die without any chance to react to it.

Seeing your life bar being slowly drained or in chunks it is just a visual effect, like for instance you run up a corridor and suddenly a skeleton on a wheel comes rolling at you, if you are not smart enough (to use a shield or dodge in GW2) then you are dead, maybe from 50 small attacks but it doesnt change the fact that you cant do anything about it.

No, you can survive any of them taking the hit with proper gear and health. Any of those hits can be survived via armour or extra health. Being stunlocked by skeleton wheels can be stopped with a high poise (which comes from heavier armour) for instance, and all the other examples are just a matter of having enough health to take the hit. As I said, being one-shot when you have base vitality and cruddy armour is very different from everyone being one-shot no matter how they’re built or set-up.

Also, most bosses one-shot most people because most people neglect to upgrade their armour and health in that game, from my experience.

^ idk why he put the pinwheel skeles on that list, they are definitely NOT one shot, they are designed to hit you very rapidly to eat your health away. They def cant kill any player in one hit

Been trying for an hour to get past Deadeye.. but what with his constant blipping then by the time I’ve located him.. ding killshot (dodged). second kill shot (dodged) then he instantly blipped and third killshot does 78k dmg cos I was on cooldown….. sick!

Nothing remotely challenging about that kind of crazy mechanics/dmg combo.

As for the last fight, I have seen so many players try it its just silly season though luckily my necro is unlikely to see it this side of the millennium -

Bloodstealer.5978:

As for the last fight, I have seen so many players try it its just silly season though luckily my necro is unlikely to see it this side of the millennium -

Necro power my friend, necro power!

GW2 Necromancer (Power Reaping) PoV – Liadri The Concealing Dark In 1min 46sec :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmPyunpHB3c

They wanted to make an event that was meant for only warriors to enjoy- they succeeded. Great listening to all my warrior friends brag about how they breezed through the event and can’t understand why anyone else would have any difficulty.

Grimwolf.7163:

I can’t be the only one who hates these; they’re stupid as hell.
It’s not fun to lose the whole thing and have to start all over again because of a single tiny mistake. Especially when said attacks are poorly telegraphed with specific methods for avoiding them inside a tiny dome that limits your field of view.

All this is a direct consequence of damage mitigation through dodge being a method far superior to all others. As a result all increases of difficulty progress alongside one (or more) of the three paths.
1. increasing penalties for not dodging (one-hits, and dodge-or-die approach)
2. making it harder to dodge (attack spam, massive aoe barrages, preferably one after another so that the target would be hard pressed to regenerate endurance, or making the attack tells less and less visible)
3. completely circumventing dodge mechanics (revolving laser walls in Aether blade retreat that can’t be dodged through, for example)

In the end, any “difficult” fight requires less and less tactics, becoming pure arcade game, and heavily punishing even the slightest mistake. And the only important stat becomes pure DPS – because the game ignores everything else.
The problem? People that want to play arcades play arcades, not MMO’s.

woomera.9841:

Bloodstealer.5978:

As for the last fight, I have seen so many players try it its just silly season though luckily my necro is unlikely to see it this side of the millennium -

Necro power my friend, necro power!

GW2 Necromancer (Power Reaping) PoV – Liadri The Concealing Dark In 1min 46sec :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmPyunpHB3c

What a nice class you have!!!!! You don’t even need to face your foe when attack

MAMAMAMAMA goDDDDD

Rottaran Owain.6789:

Funny thing actually, other than death by falling, there’s no one-shots in Dark Souls. There’s high damaging attacks that can kill you in one hit if you don’t have good health, but nothing that does so much that you can’t survive it.

THIS. Too many people draw a comparison to Dark Souls, when it is not a good comparison. For starters, Dark Souls is far better designed, doesn’t have the same camera or control issues, and has better boss tells. And yes, it also doesn’t have one-shot kills.

Dark Souls, it also feels more satisfying when you kill a hard boss because it feels like it was all you.

This- when I do manage to get by a gauntlet fight, it feels like dumb luck and nothing more.

Rottaran Owain.6789:

Funny thing actually, other than death by falling, there’s no one-shots in Dark Souls. There’s high damaging attacks that can kill you in one hit if you don’t have good health, but nothing that does so much that you can’t survive it.

With one exception.

The Bed of Chaos.

And there’s a kitten good reason as to why this fight is considered the greatest design error of Dark Souls.

fungihoujo.8476:

They wanted to make an event that was meant for only warriors to enjoy- they succeeded. Great listening to all my warrior friends brag about how they breezed through the event and can’t understand why anyone else would have any difficulty.

How is it that Warriors “breezed” through it easier than anybody else, exactly?

I’ll also add this image to the thread for reference.

This is a screenshot taken in-game while I’m fighting Liadri.

What’s happening in the picture is me trying to lure her clones into a portal that’s in the corner of the arena and I can’t see what’s going on due to the camera.

Is this considered a reasonable challenge or am I just not good/skilled enough to do this?

I honestly don’t think players should be punished for content like this nor have a reward that requires you to go through this frustration.

My contribution to this: I avoided it from the beginning because I KNEW this was going to be nothing but frustrating for me. I went in today because the daily required it.

I KNOW the first boss has an easily-seen 1-hit KO. And here’s my screenshot from about 2 seconds before he killed me with it. Anyone want to tell me what build or gear changes can help me fight an invisible enemy? Or one that can one-shot me during my latency period?

One-hit kills are bad design, a nod to being difficult without actually having to design any challenge. The devs don’t know how to create challenging encounters without breaking the rules of their own game.

Difficult is fine.

• Needing to learn a boss’ mechanics, gimmicks or pattern before being able to defeat them
• Needing to watch for particular telegraphed attacks in order to avoid being one-hit killed or severely damaged
• Requiring multiple tries at the problem
• Having to rethink strategies and change builds (traits/gear/profession) in order to succeed

Punishing is not.

• Small enclosed space and needing to go near edge of dome at times causes very awkward camera angles or sticky camera issues for characters of different races/heights.

• A zerg being directly under your dome may cause sudden framerate drops (lag at critical moments) and culling of the enemy and its animations (dodge an animation you didn’t see, or that didn’t play until it’s too late? Haha, too bad, yer dead.)

• One hit kill mechanics in conjunction with very long iteration times to get back into the fight and multiple death penalties (have to be rezzed or waypoint with cost, have to run back, have to pay a ticket that must be farmed or paid for each time AND have to queue for fight again. One would have been enough.)

• Intentionally concealing telegraphs or player vision to make things harder (Suriel’s hand wave is ridiculously understated for such a small model, Shadowfall AoE blends in with the grate flooring, orb that produces periodic blinding effects that most players get around by turning off post-processing.)

Iffy things are RNG and time limits.

• Luck based mechanics like where the rift orb chooses to spawn or where Strugar chooses to throw the meat are… ehhhhh.

Personally, with less punishing iteration times for getting back into the fight, I wouldn’t mind. With abovementioned one hit kill + multiple defeat penalties and fighting latency/lag/FPS and camera angles, it can feel ridiculously arbitrary and beyond a player’s ability to control.

• Time limits do force a player to balance survivability with damage ability.

With the current meta and one-hit kills being present though, it just solidifies the call for “more zerker all the time, just get good to avoid damage, burst the mob down before it has much of a chance to do too many of its special gimmicks.” Not sure if that is intentionally meant to be encouraged.

Also, please note:

• Picking up items is sensitive to latency.

I live halfway around the world from the servers, I regularly lose the F interact battle for supply at supply camps to players with better ping. I believe this makes the Strugar and Chomper fight more difficult for different players.

• Requiring dodging at precise timings is also sensitive to latency.

It can be tricky to time the evade window just right for those hovering at 300-500ms ping. Having slightly less absolutely-pinpoint-timing critical dodge mechanics would likely be greatly appreciated by those not living in North America.

An marked improvement would be to have the top half of the Crown Pavilion its own separate instance. This ought to reduce the lag from the zerg, while still keeping the ability to watch others fight.

(I am of two minds about that – on one hand, it’s nice to have privacy to learn the fights and just solo on one’s own and not have to wait for others.

On the other hand, it can provide the opportunity for community building and player interaction by players being able to talk to each other, share tips and frustrations, demonstrate strategies, have a guild outing, etc.

But it’s 50/50 in the various overflows, sometimes loners just like being loners. One possible ideal would be to leave this up to player choice and have both a private practice arena and a public demonstration/show off place.)

I completely agree with Jeromai.8203’s post, but wanted to point out the issue most glaring in the last two living stories “ultimate challenges:”

Jeromai.8203:

Difficult is fine.

/snip

• Time limits do force a player to balance survivability with damage ability.

With the current meta and one-hit kills being present though, it just solidifies the call for “more zerker all the time, just get good to avoid damage, burst the mob down before it has much of a chance to do too many of its special gimmicks.” Not sure if that is intentionally meant to be encouraged.
/snip

Essentially most enemy challenge design in GW2 since the beginning and especially in the last few LS releases has been “Give the enemies very high DPS, very high health, add in some one shot kills and throw in time/goal/pressure restrictions.”

Like Jeromai says, this leads people to favour the highest DPS builds while using professions that have the best ability to straight out avoid damage or aggro (Mesmer, Guardian, Thief) or kill things so fast it doesn’t matter (Warrior). It’s pretty bad when most of the population has a hard time killing Liadra, while a zerker warrior on youtube can essentially beat phase 2 in less than 5-10 seconds through fear + pure zerker DPS. Same with the candidate trials even after the patch. With enough DPS and Zerker gear you could kill Plunderer’s as they did their bag drop animation and before they could complete it.

Again, the combination of all of this naturally forces players to move away from more defensive, balanced or even unique tactical builds and towards brute force + might stacks + dodge. There is way too much focus on just dodge/power and way to little focus on other combat mechanics in GW2 PVE design.

There should be a lot more enemies in all of Guild Wars 2 content that commonly use (like players) boons, conditions, blocks, reflects, and heals, while having less hp. They should also be stripping and converting player boons or transfering conditions as well. Not only would this be a good challenge, but it would make all builds and professions more useful when going up against PVE content. Player boon stacking hardly ever gets touched by enemies, while things like player condition removal and boon stripping are usually useless, since the vast majority of PVE mobs don’t use conditions or boons in any meaningful way.

Get away from one shot kills, gimmicky mechanics and player bursting strategies. Start promoting multiple builds for beating challenging content and using all the base combat mechanics to their fullest.

The obstruction problem is kitten annoying.

Are you talking about the very first boss? He didn’t one shot me and I am pretty sure I got whacked with his big attack once or twice. Of course I was running around a bunch so maybe not, but if only all the fights were as easy as that guy.

But this is not what my post is about. My argument is that if you go on one on one, nothing should be able to 1 shot you! simple as that! When i think about it, I don’t think it would matter if had 50k hp i still would have been 1 shot unless i had endless endurance do dodge.

Reminds me of the Safety Dance from That Other MMO. God how I wish that wasn’t my least favorite encounter maybe ever.

It’s the last boss of a series of 12. It’s meant to be hard. All of the mechanics are there, and the method of beating her is there. Take out the orbs. Learn the patterns for the AoE. Learn how to efficiently move around and pull her mobs. The fight is extremely hard, yes, but it’s fair.

The downsides of one-shots is that it makes all defensive gear feel so worthless…personally, I think games should be without.

Balekai.6083:

I completely agree with Jeromai.8203’s post, but wanted to point out the issue most glaring in the last two living stories “ultimate challenges:”

Jeromai.8203:

Difficult is fine.

/snip

• Time limits do force a player to balance survivability with damage ability.

With the current meta and one-hit kills being present though, it just solidifies the call for “more zerker all the time, just get good to avoid damage, burst the mob down before it has much of a chance to do too many of its special gimmicks.” Not sure if that is intentionally meant to be encouraged.
/snip

Essentially most enemy challenge design in GW2 since the beginning and especially in the last few LS releases has been “Give the enemies very high DPS, very high health, add in some one shot kills and throw in time/goal/pressure restrictions.”

Like Jeromai says, this leads people to favour the highest DPS builds while using professions that have the best ability to straight out avoid damage or aggro (Mesmer, Guardian, Thief) or kill things so fast it doesn’t matter (Warrior). It’s pretty bad when most of the population has a hard time killing Liadra, while a zerker warrior on youtube can essentially beat phase 2 in less than 5-10 seconds through fear + pure zerker DPS. Same with the candidate trials even after the patch. With enough DPS and Zerker gear you could kill Plunderer’s as they did their bag drop animation and before they could complete it.

Again, the combination of all of this naturally forces players to move away from more defensive, balanced or even unique tactical builds and towards brute force + might stacks + dodge. There is way too much focus on just dodge/power and way to little focus on other combat mechanics in GW2 PVE design.

There should be a lot more enemies in all of Guild Wars 2 content that commonly use (like players) boons, conditions, blocks, reflects, and heals, while having less hp. They should also be stripping and converting player boons or transfering conditions as well. Not only would this be a good challenge, but it would make all builds and professions more useful when going up against PVE content. Player boon stacking hardly ever gets touched by enemies, while things like player condition removal and boon stripping are usually useless, since the vast majority of PVE mobs don’t use conditions or boons in any meaningful way.

Get away from one shot kills, gimmicky mechanics and player bursting strategies. Start promoting multiple builds for beating challenging content and using all the base combat mechanics to their fullest.

Sadly, anet’s idea of a challenge is one shot kill type mechanics. I seriously like the pattern learning of Liadri boss but the one shot kill just wasn’t necessary. Nothing in this game should one shot you, it’s just lazy design.

For example, Liadri basically gives you no chance to learn the mechanics without dying at all. If they made the illusions do 1/2 damage or 3/4 damage. Then players would be able to “LEARN” as they played and potentially, the extremely good players could get it in first try. But here, we have to die at least 3 times ( and this is a huge understatement) in order to learn the mechanic.

And this is probably where anet MMO designers FAIL at. They forgot the first rule of making games, to teach through playing. Incorporate the tutorial basically in the playing. Not teach through dying. A good designer would know this.

And to say that as designers, they have to come to the fact that they can’t please everyone is a fat load of bullkittens. Most GOOD games have overwhelming positive response. In fact, a good example is their super adventure box where they really did things right here. Coins: account bound. Attainable, Achievements hard but not ridiculous. Even if the forum was a minority, they shouldn’t throw off all criticism and pretty much say “we’re the outliers”

They’re right that the forums are a collection of a minority of players that usually have negative views, but there are issues here that going beyond forum complaining and to actual encounter design across GW2 as a whole, which is at the route of the agnst. So if anyone from Anet is reading, I guess question form might be better way to convey the message:

Why is it that most of the challenging content, intentionally or not, is focused around evading damage all together and high player DPS?

If this is not the case, why after each one of these challenges or the hardest dungeons, more and more players are gravitating towards zerker builds? Gameplaylay and youtube/guide evidence show that what takes balanced parties and/or less focused DPS builds lots of effort, can essentially be done solo or with great ease by a Zerker player(s) via seconds of burst damage and a bit of CC/Cheesing?

Why aren’t other mechanics that players have access to in which some professions are centred around, not being implemented more in these challenges? Much of this content is open season to “cheese” with no true penalties for going full Zerker and avoiding the fight mechanics all together. The response or “fix” from Anet seems to always be adding in harder enviromental conditions or aggro which just makes it harder on everyone, while Zerkers become even more optimal for the content. For example the Candidate Trials “fix” made it harder on Zerkers to cheese but still doable, while making it near impossible for all other builds to cheese or do so legitly, because of the huge aggro range and massive hp bars of the Vets. They didn’t fix the problem, they just gated the content even more towards Zerker builds.

Couldn’t there be more challenge design around enemies using protection + weakness combos that must commonly be removed for Zerkers to do their damage? Enemy healing mechanics instead of higher and higher HP to make Conditions, DoT or CC more viable? Couldn’t there be more enemy interaction with our conditions and boons so players don’t always have complete command over buffs/debuffs stacks in PVE?

Why are 1-shot enviromental mechanics being implemented instead? Again this makes the game more arcade-like wherein potent Healing, DoT, Armor/Protection, and Conditions are marginalized or useless? For example the above in the Liadra fight are completely marginalized as CC/Conditions can’t combat “the enviroment” and Armor or Protection can’t mitigate 1-shots kills. However blocks, dodges and invunerability can do both.

Why couldn’t the 1-shot kills be 15K-25K damage hits from Liadra herself amd her minions instead of the enviroment? Why couldn’t Liadra have more attack DPS, much less health, but use damage mitigation (blocks, weakness, protection…) and moderate heals that can be CCed? Not only would the fight be more interesting and still a great challenge, but it would have balanced the success rate between classes and builds rather than just favouring full burst/evade on certain classes.

In summary i’m fine with extra challenging content. However, the answer 9/10 should not be: “Go Zerker Warrior, Mesmer/Thief/Guardian in that order of preference to succeed.”

@Balekai.6083

I too believe in balance, all 9 of my chars, none are zerk build, but rather balanced and focused in the main on what they’re supposed to do best. This is the case not just in gw2, but in gw1 and other games i play. Overall it’s always worked best for me.

I can’t afford to start re-gearing all 8 classes just to see if one one class, or a different set of gear/traits will work best for particular small aspect of the game.

This also why i avoid dungeons, that are full 1-shot mechanics. That kind of “challenge” does not challenge me, only serves to annoy me and abandon the content.

Balekai.6083:

Why is it that most of the challenging content, intentionally or not, is focused around evading damage all together and high player DPS?

Every content is going to be focused, intentionally, around evading and other active defenses because the combat system tries to be as much reactive as possible. Passive defenses are there in order to protect from the damage you cannot avoid (cause active defenses are usually limited) and the one you miss to avoid up to some degree.
There’s no skill on gearing/traiting for defense (this is not BuildWars anymore, or at least, it tries to not be it), so the more challenging the content is meant to be, the more it’s going to favor active defenses.
Active defenses are unrelated to High DPS, they are something that every player should try to use and get better on.

Balekai.6083:

If this is not the case, why after each one of these challenges or the hardest dungeons, more and more players are gravitating towards zerker builds? Gameplaylay and youtube/guide evidence show that what takes balanced parties and/or less focused DPS builds lots of effort, can essentially be done solo or with great ease by a Zerker player(s) via seconds of burst damage and a bit of CC/Cheesing?

There are 2 main reasons in order to go full DPS.
The first one is that there are a lot of situations where killing fast is actually the best defense. An obvious example would be a battle where enemy waves attack over and over on a timed basis (pretty much like candidate trials in the last LS patch). This is not exclusive to GW: offense always has been king in this kind of fights since otherwise you end overwhelmed.
The second one, which has less to do with combat effectivity, and which is the main reason people is gravitating towards zeker gear, is farm speed. It’s pretty obvious that the faster you kill the better you farm, and there’s sadly too many people seeing nothing but loot on every content piece.

Even if popular, however, full damage is far from being the only way to complete content.
Most of my guildmates run with fairly defensive builds (shout-heal warriors and that kind of things, even some people on full soldier gear) and we have completed every content in the game without any issues.
In my case, I gear my character the most toward offense I can while feeling comfortable. Since I only play with kinda defensive builds or PuGs, I use a Guardian with a mix of knight/zeker gear and 0/0/30/30/10, which is pretty balanced I guess. No way I’m going to build for full offense (even if I would prefer it for sure) or use something like a thor ele when the party is not adecuated to it.
Still completed the Aetherblade Retreat timed achievement at first try, and completed it again at second try while one of us was relogging in order to complete (on a really dishonoring way :P) the AoE related one. So no, high DPS builds are far from needed; great for farming, that’s for sure, but not needed at all.
That doesn’t mean that everybody should go full defense. People should try to, while playing on their way, contribute as much as possible to the group, so if you end a lot of fights at high HP without having felt any real danger, that means that you should drop some or your defense in favor of a bit more of damage, and keep doing this until you start feeling pressure.
I gravitated myself towards zeker gear because of boredom. Playing with the first gear I crafted (a mix of Knight and Cleric) most game was absolutely unpunishing, so I had to drop tons of defense in order to feel that my active defenses meant something.

BTW, the most challenging content in this last patch is not defeating Liadri, is defeating her while having thrown 8 orbs during the fight. Being able to burst her on a few seconds is not going to help a lot with this.

Balekai.6083:

Why aren’t other mechanics that players have access to in which some professions are centred around, not being implemented more in these challenges? Much of this content is open season to “cheese” with no true penalties for going full Zerker and avoiding the fight mechanics all together. The response or “fix” from Anet seems to always be adding in harder enviromental conditions or aggro which just makes it harder on everyone, while Zerkers become even more optimal for the content. For example the Candidate Trials “fix” made it harder on Zerkers to cheese but still doable, while making it near impossible for all other builds to cheese or do so legitly, because of the huge aggro range and massive hp bars of the Vets. They didn’t fix the problem, they just gated the content even more towards Zerker builds.

That’s not true. They actually have surprised me by using regular monsters for the gauntlet instead of those Unshakebale and Defiant annoying champions., so we have been able to use blinds and CCs that otherwise were useless, greatly widening the variety of tactics at our disposal.
I’ve already said it, but zeker build, if even possible, is clearly suboptimal for the real challenge of the patch: Liadri + 8 orbs.

I’m not going to say anythiong about candidate trials, since I completed it pre-fix and never put a step on it again.

Balekai.6083:

Couldn’t there be more challenge design around enemies using protection + weakness combos that must commonly be removed for Zerkers to do their damage? Enemy healing mechanics instead of higher and higher HP to make Conditions, DoT or CC more viable? Couldn’t there be more enemy interaction with our conditions and boons so players don’t always have complete command over buffs/debuffs stacks in PVE?

Yes, it could, and it should.
Granting enemies prot+weakness, however, doesn’t just affect zekers but every direct damage setup, and about having healing instead tons of HP in order to make Conditions, DoT (I guess you mean just poison) and CC more viable, I guess you know that warriors are the CC beast of GW2, don’t you? My guardian with no poison and probably the worst interrupts in all the game hates you BTW :P
About enemy interaction on buffs/debuffs, I’m pretty sure that there are enemies out there that do something like that. They are not common, that’s for sure, but I’m not sure if boon corrupt/steal should be a common NPC practice tbh.
At this point I’m starting to think you play a Necromancer, tell me that I’m wrong.

Balekai.6083:

Why are 1-shot enviromental mechanics being implemented instead? Again this makes the game more arcade-like wherein potent Healing, DoT, Armor/Protection, and Conditions are marginalized or useless? For example the above in the Liadra fight are completely marginalized as CC/Conditions can’t combat “the enviroment” and Armor or Protection can’t mitigate 1-shots kills. However blocks, dodges and invunerability can do both.

You hit the nail on the head here. It effectively makes the game more arcade-like, because that’s actually what they want to do.
The new generation of MMOs is trying to innovate by approaching to action games: active defenses, casting while moving, FPS-like aiming for attacks, and so on.
So yes, healing and armor are expected to lose effectivity in favor of blocks/blinds/evades.

Conditions are far from useless in the gauntlet; they actually work pretty well. Where conditions (excepting vulnerability :P) become useless is in team enviroment cause stacking limits.

Balekai.6083:

Why couldn’t the 1-shot kills be 15K-25K damage hits from Liadra herself amd her minions instead of the enviroment? Why couldn’t Liadra have more attack DPS, much less health, but use damage mitigation (blocks, weakness, protection…) and moderate heals that can be CCed? Not only would the fight be more interesting and still a great challenge, but it would have balanced the success rate between classes and builds rather than just favouring full burst/evade on certain classes.

You keep insisting on getting rid of the 1-shot and disencouraging “evade” builds (every build can evade, it’s the core combat mechanic of GW2 ffs). The game encourages you to actively avoid the attacks and tries to get rid up to some extent of the classic passive defenses (things like a 40% evade rate and so on) and healing.
You should already accept this, since it’s one of the core design philosophies and is unlikely going to change.
About making Liadri’s DPS higher … Liadri already hits like a truck XD. If you haven’t experienced it, then it means that your tough build is working perfectly fine.
If she charges on you when on a glassy character, you want to be fast cleansing the cripple, popping some defensive CD (like an evade) and getting away from melee ASAP cause you are gonna be dead in about 3-4 seconds (In fact, you may expect to lose half of your max HP if you don’t avoid the charge itself).
A defensive builds greatly mitigates this damage so you can be less focused on it and more on the real threat which are the 1HKO moves. A glassy build, on the other side, is going to have a much shorter fight but a much more intense and focus requiring one (as long as it is well designed and can’t be finished in under 10 seconds :P).

About making her more resilient in order to avoid an extreme burst that could finish the fight in seconds, I pretty much agree.
Protection is OK for dungeons, but probably a mistake for solo content since not every class has a reliable boon removal tool. Weakness is a much better solution and Liadri actually applies it all the time :P
Block/Evades might sound great as long as the AI is really good on using them. If not, it would greatly randomize the fight. A Heal that should be interrupted could work better.
HP triggered invulnerability shields also work wonders, since forces a minimum amount of bursts, thus usually a minimum amount a CDs on the fight.

In summary i’m fine with extra challenging content. However, the answer 9/10 should not be: “Go Zerker Warrior, Mesmer/Thief/Guardian in that order of preference to succeed.”

Actually, many people who have played the gauntlet which different classes had stated that Necromancer is one of the easiest, if not the most, class for beating it and I swapped myself my main Guardian for an alt Engineer in order to beat Liadri the first time.
And I insist, the extra challengign content in this patch isn’t Liadri, is Liadri + 8 orbs, and I’m pretty sure that zekering is far from the best way to beat it (I swapped some zeker items for knight/soldier ones on my guardian in order to do this).

hahaha, OP, getting 1shotted on the first boss…some srs soldier gear you got there BREH!

no amount of facetanking with vitality gear will get you far enough here.

Read their stats, act accordingly…

This is what you can expect to see with future content!

Predictable, repetitive, not well thought out rubbish.

Celyth.3085:

hahaha, OP, getting 1shotted on the first boss…some srs soldier gear you got there BREH!

no amount of facetanking with vitality gear will get you far enough here.

Read their stats, act accordingly…

That’s not funny, not funny at all!

This is a problem that people predicted the moment we heard about the Dodge system in the game.

If you give players a ton of ways to completely avoid damage (Dodge, blocks, invulnerability, etc) and make those abilities extremely “cheap” (Low cooldown, low or no resource cost, etc) then eventually the only way to really kill the players is to make it so that they die in one hit if an attack does manage to get through.

Actually, the other extreme is to have enemies that attack so absurdly fast that you can’t dodge/block them all, and that happens in GW2 as well sometimes.

It’s actually similar to the old “Sunwell Radiance” issue back in WoW…if you give players too many ways to simply avoid damage, then the damage has to be ridiculously high when it does land.

You’re only one-shot if you blatantly screw up. So yes, it’s meant to be a challenge. Get good.

Celeras.4980:

You’re only one-shot if you blatantly screw up. So yes, it’s meant to be a challenge. Get good.

Do 8 orbs achievement with a ranger or necromancer. No thief, no guardian, no warrior.

Do 8 orbs achievement with a ranger or necromancer. No thief, no guardian, no warrior.

I’ve beaten her with Ranger and Necro so far, and plan on doing 8-orb with my Necro tonight. (I’m wondering if a “Hit her with 2 orbs, gather a bunch of shadows, get them all to walk into a pool at once and spawn multiple orbs in Phase 1” strategy would work at all. Supposedly there’s only 4 shadows up at a time, but even that would mean only doing 2 orbs in Phase 2. Hm)

The “lack of vigor” is greatly overstated as a disadvantage. I didn’t even use dodge when beating her normally on my Necro. If you’re doing it right you shouldn’t even be dodging that much in the first place.

Dirame.8521:

Grimwolf.7163:

The “first boss”? I’m pretty sure at least half the enemies you encounter in there have frequent one-shot mechanics. And most of them have very subtle tells on top of it.
The Queen’s Gauntlet is a microcosm of every mistake one can make in designing special fight mechanics.

The only mistake is the stacking of one shot mechanics into one fight. If the AoE 25% of your HP and the exploding dark things took 50% of your HP, I’d be more inclined to call it a fair challenge but this fight is just cheap as all hell.

You’re definitely a pro if you can finish it, that’s for sure.

I finished it. I am now pro.

The only mistake is the stacking of one shot mechanics into one fight. If the AoE 25% of your HP and the exploding dark things took 50% of your HP, I’d be more inclined to call it a fair challenge but this fight is just cheap as all hell.

How would that even be a fight then, though? Shadowfall only doing 25% of your HP?

What would even be the point of the fight if you can avoid every Shadowfall AND it only does 25% of your HP in damage? At that point there wouldn’t even be a failure condition, you’d just be able to stand there and auto attack her down like every other zerg mob in the game.

One shot mechanics are kind of terrible. I enjoyed most of the gauntlet, but I feel the fight I’m stuck on sums up everything wrong with the Gauntlet.

Salazan. The fire ring asuran guy.

So we start this fight. He’s in the center of the small arena and I’m up against a wall. Fight begins, he summons his fire ring and I’m expected to avoid his attacks. But I can’t see his attacks. Why? Because I play a charr, and the camera angle makes it almost impossible to see his fireballs coming or where the ground AoE is. This is exactly as much of a test of skill as Troll’s End is. I can’t react accordingly if I can only see half the screen.

His fire ring ends. Finally! I can move again. Circling him constantly, staying alert and dodging every so often to avoid damage. I get him to about 50% health and suddenly I go down. What hit me? None of his attacks were anywhere near me. It’s only then that I see what happened as his second fire ring appears on my screen.

I keep getting downed by an instant kill skill I can’t see coming because I don’t live in an area that has access to broadband internet. I play with a latency, which has always meant I had to try just a little bit harder than everyone else to play decently well. But I was always able to compensate. In spvp I use a staff on my elementalist. Sure as Hell isn’t optimal, but it’s AoE damage and team support makes me pretty strong at mid and in 3vs3 and above fights, and doesn’t require me to have pin point timing with every attack. In WvW I run with a zerg or a larger group. In dungeons I of course have a team to fall back on. And in all of these game modes it’s rare to run across something that kills me so fast I don’t have time to do a dodge roll and negate MOST of the damage so I can use my fine healing skills to get back in the game.

But here I am getting killed instantaneously. I do not have time to react, I can’t use my skills intelligently to compensate for poor twitch reflexes, and I am getting so frustrated constantly trying in hopes that I’ll get lucky or see some way I can work around the problem. But I can’t because you cannot counter something that kills you before it happens.

1-shot mechanics are perfectly natural sources of difficulty in a game that offers dozens of ways to consistently avoid them. In fact, this is really the only way to achieve a legitimately difficulty encounter that is skill dependent due to the amount of self-preservation abilities in this game. If you’re complaining that this fight is poorly designed and and cheesy you’re likely frustrated at your own lack of skill/strategy to complete it. Nobody wants to come to terms with the fact that they’re not as good as they think they are, or that they will not get 100% of the content done regardless of time spent.

Those who actually put the time in to learn the fight’s mechanics and come prepared with all of our classes’ tools can consistently beat Liadri, and find doing her non-hard mode (standard kill) quite easy.

I’ve killed her at least 15+ times while getting “Light Up the Darkness” (many times on accident, i.e. killing her too quickly) done on my Charr Engineer, who is wearing full Berserker’s gear and is big as hell.

One shot mechanics are frustrating, especially since I can’t even see the red circles (colorblind).

This is why I’m not doing the Gauntlet. It’s a great idea but I got in there on an 80th level guardian and got one shotted on the first fight when the guy was quite far from me and shouldn’t have been able to hit. I thought it had to be a glitch, tried again, almost beat him and then one shotted again.

It’s no skin off my nose to not take part in the event, I personally like the zerg rushes in the Pavilion better, but this is poor game design. I’d expect this cheap behavior in an old NES game, not a modern MMO. No one likes one hit kills and from what I’ve heard, the whole Gauntlet is this way. I suppose it’s perfect for hardcore players and thank goodness it’s optional!

At everyone saying one-shot mechanics are bad:

One-shot mechanics are bad IF AND ONLY IF they offer no counterplay. If you’re getting one-shotted with no means of preventing, avoiding, or negating it, then yes, that is bad. However, that’s not what this is. This is one-shot mechanics with very significant counterplay. You can avoid them.

Sky.8035:

I’ll also add this image to the thread for reference.

This is a screenshot taken in-game while I’m fighting Liadri.

What’s happening in the picture is me trying to lure her clones into a portal that’s in the corner of the arena and I can’t see what’s going on due to the camera.

Is this considered a reasonable challenge or am I just not good/skilled enough to do this?

I honestly don’t think players should be punished for content like this nor have a reward that requires you to go through this frustration.

Thats a camera issue that has been since the begging of the game, and still isnt fixed, is painfull but you can do it, agreed they never must have put it in the border of the dome (or must have fixed that problem before patch).

Kind of ironic how a boss that requires on average 50+ tries for most people requires FARM to even attempt.

Most people have too much of a life to farm that many tickets, or lack the inclination to do the same thing over and over again like they would have to in other games.

I thought GW2 wasn’t about grinding, or catering to hardcores who do nothing but play the game 24/7. I was obviously wrong. Not to mention that the repair costs and gear/spec requirements cost a load for somebody who hasn’t been playing forever.

Not to mention that the last fight is impossible for somebody with high latency, or on a server that lags due to high traffic.

If you seriously think completing this event makes you a better person irl than somebody who lacked the inclination/capability of doing so, I challenge you to hand in your Liadri achievement(s) for a Nobel Prize/Fields Medal.

Anet learn from your mistakes, just because a few lucky players were able to beat it without too much hassle does not mean you didn’t stuff up bad for about the 10th ( give or take ) time in a year. Your customers are your players, I would try everything to keep them happy. Coming from me, a hardcore player “One Shotting” was about the laziest and most pathetic answer you could have come up with.

If it’s not fun for you DON’T PLAY IT!

I had a blast playing gauntlet.

Sylentir.8913:

At everyone saying one-shot mechanics are bad:

One-shot mechanics are bad IF AND ONLY IF they offer no counterplay. If you’re getting one-shotted with no means of preventing, avoiding, or negating it, then yes, that is bad. However, that’s not what this is. This is one-shot mechanics with very significant counterplay. You can avoid them.

Seconded. I too don’t really see the problem with oneshots when a fight is so short anyway. Within the constraints of the game mechanics we have, oneshots and the dodge mechanics are a perfect match.

Granted, there are design issues with the whole thing. The camera problems and the environment blending in with red circles are all valid issues, but it still doesn’t make if impossible to get by a long shot. Personally, I get the feeling that it is simply the difficulty, people would blame whatever effect they think killed them no matter what.

This is why I’m not doing the Gauntlet. It’s a great idea but I got in there on an 80th level guardian and got one shotted on the first fight when the guy was quite far from me and shouldn’t have been able to hit. I thought it had to be a glitch, tried again, almost beat him and then one shotted again.

Do people even read the “This guy does this” text beneath the mobs’ names?

Seriously, basically every boss has that text telling you what they do, summed up in a few words. Between that and the HUGE WINDUP ANIMATION the first boss does, there’s no excuse for thinking, “Oh, it’s a glitch, I quit.”

For the record I beat the first boss on a level 10 Guardian still wearing nothing but starter gear. I know that paying attention to mechanics is a tough change from, “AFK with auto attack on, get loot” but give it a try.

Kind of ironic how a boss that requires on average 50+ tries for most people requires FARM to even attempt.

Most people have too much of a life to farm that many tickets, or lack the inclination to do the same thing over and over again like they would have to in other games.

I thought GW2 wasn’t about grinding, or catering to hardcores who do nothing but play the game 24/7. I was obviously wrong. Not to mention that the repair costs and gear/spec requirements cost a load for somebody who hasn’t been playing forever.

Oh look, the “I have a life” excuse.

Or you could have just bought a few tickets. Yay, problem solved.

crestpiemangler.7631:

Kind of ironic how a boss that requires on average 50+ tries for most people requires FARM to even attempt.

Most people have too much of a life to farm that many tickets, or lack the inclination to do the same thing over and over again like they would have to in other games.

I thought GW2 wasn’t about grinding, or catering to hardcores who do nothing but play the game 24/7. I was obviously wrong. Not to mention that the repair costs and gear/spec requirements cost a load for somebody who hasn’t been playing forever.

Not to mention that the last fight is impossible for somebody with high latency, or on a server that lags due to high traffic.

If you seriously think completing this event makes you a better person irl than somebody who lacked the inclination/capability of doing so, I challenge you to hand in your Liadri achievement(s) for a Nobel Prize/Fields Medal.

Well, you can turn in 15 Watchwork Sprockets and 20 silver for 5 tickets, so you don’t need to grind at all.

As to the second half of your post, I don’t even know what to say to that. I’m sorry you’re upset you can’t beat it, don’t draw completely irrelevant comparisons?

People who can beat her better than those who can’t in-game, not IRL.

Eurafrica.9307:

Well, you can turn in 15 Watchwork Sprockets and 20 silver for 5 tickets, so you don’t need to grind at all.

As to the second half of your post, I don’t even know what to say to that. I’m sorry you’re upset you can’t beat it, don’t draw completely irrelevant comparisons?

People who can beat her better than those who can’t in-game, not IRL.

The last part only addressed the elitist crowd who thinks that beating Liadri correlates with more success in real life and think that they are entitled to more than others who can’t.

Since you belong to the latter crowd, what are your qualifications in real life? Have you won a Nobel Prize? How many PhDs do you hold and in what area?

The last part only addressed the elitist crowd who thinks that beating Liadri correlates with more success in real life and think that they are entitled to more than others who can’t.

You mean that crowd of zero people?

Don’t invent people to attack. It comes off as incredibly childish.

Since you belong to the latter crowd, what are your qualifications in real life? Have you won a Nobel Prize? How many PhDs do you hold and in what area?

This comes off as absurdly childish as well. Do you do that with everything in life?

“Oh, you took out the trash? Sure, but are you Michael Jordan yet? Pfft.”

Bovinity.8610:

This is why I’m not doing the Gauntlet. It’s a great idea but I got in there on an 80th level guardian and got one shotted on the first fight when the guy was quite far from me and shouldn’t have been able to hit. I thought it had to be a glitch, tried again, almost beat him and then one shotted again.

Do people even read the “This guy does this” text beneath the mobs’ names?

Seriously, basically every boss has that text telling you what they do, summed up in a few words. Between that and the HUGE WINDUP ANIMATION the first boss does, there’s no excuse for thinking, “Oh, it’s a glitch, I quit.”

For the record I beat the first boss on a level 10 Guardian still wearing nothing but starter gear. I know that paying attention to mechanics is a tough change from, “AFK with auto attack on, get loot” but give it a try.

Unless you weren’t FACING him to see the wind up, which I was not. I was dodging away, the camera was at my back. I couldn’t see his wind up therefore, I had no idea he was even doing it. If you were quite a bit away from an enemy and they suddenly one shotted you, wouldn’t you go “WTF?! Was that a glitch??”

Also, thanks for the assumption I’m an idiot who uses auto attack to grind for loot and can’t use game mechanics. Sorry buddy but I actively play and the backhanded insults aren’t needed by you. I happen to play with a modified controller though, disabilities and all, and sometimes my buttons don’t respond right. Not Anet’s fault but one shotting and buggy camera angles hardly help.

I don’t think the Gauntlet should be gotten rid of either, it’s making a lot of players happy and you know what? I’m glad the hardcores got content that they can enjoy but I’m even more glad it’s not mandatory to enjoy the event.

If you were quite a bit away from an enemy and they suddenly one shotted you, wouldn’t you go “WTF?! Was that a glitch??”

No, I’d ask, “Huh, now what was that so I know next time.”

Bovinity.8610:

If you were quite a bit away from an enemy and they suddenly one shotted you, wouldn’t you go “WTF?! Was that a glitch??”

No, I’d ask, “Huh, now what was that so I know next time.”

Well I obviously I didn’t think that the first time. My bad.

However, I did learn the second time that’s just what he does and he’s as cheap as an old NES era boss… and honestly, if I want to deal with those game mechanics, I can plug in my NES and try to beat Ghosts N Goblins again.

..and rip my hair out because that game.. my god…