Guild Wars 2

I have an Asura Engineer and an Asura Warrior. Neither of them can get past the Beta Test portion of the Infinity Ball story line.
The Veteran Destroyer Harpy can one shot both of them. Actually it takes two shots on my warrior until I’ve died enough times for my armor to start degrading.
It kills Shodd almost immediately and both of the peacekeepers that I run past.

How can I possibly survive this with level-appropriate equipment?

I tried using pistols, rifle, and grenade bag with my engineer, dropping healing turrest or rifle turrets when I can.

For my warrior, I’ve tried rifle, shortbow, axe & shield, mace & shield, axe & axe and a few other combinations that all failed. I used the bolo just so I could have time to run away. It didn’t help.

I need better strategies. What else can I do?

I read that other thread. It seemed to be you saying that you were able to do it and other players saying that they weren’t able to do it.
The biggest problem was not being able to lose aggro so the harpy would follow me around and one shot me.
A thief has stealth and an elemental has summons to distract the harpy for a few seconds
My characters don’t have things like that, so I die, repeatedly.
I have done story missions for my human ranger all the way to the end of her story and never had a mission that was as impossible as this level 12 story mission for my stupid asurans.
I don’t think a mid-level story mission should take a super-tweaked build just to survive. This mission is not fun and needing a non-level-appropriate amout of skill just to survive is not productive.
My best course of action at this time is to hope that I have Guild mates online who are willing to come help me.
In the mean time, I am abandoning another Asura and playing my Sylvari thief instead.

Edit: I still need strategy advice for an engineer or a warrior since I am not playing an asuran thief or asuran elemental.

jrdepriest.5182:

I read that other thread. It seemed to be you saying that you were able to do it and other players saying that they weren’t able to do it.
The biggest problem was not being able to lose aggro so the harpy would follow me around and one shot me.
A thief has stealth and an elemental has summons to distract the harpy for a few seconds
My characters don’t have things like that, so I die, repeatedly.
I have done story missions for my human ranger all the way to the end of her story and never had a mission that was as impossible as this level 12 story mission for my stupid asurans.
I don’t think a mid-level story mission should take a super-tweaked build just to survive. This mission is not fun and needing a non-level-appropriate amout of skill just to survive is not productive.
My best course of action at this time is to hope that I have Guild mates online who are willing to come help me.
In the mean time, I am abandoning another Asura and playing my Sylvari thief instead.

Edit: I still need strategy advice for an engineer or a warrior since I am not playing an asuran thief or asuran elemental.

Bolded mine. (and oh so much THIS)

I’ve done the personal story through to “Ships of the Line” both with an Asura Warrior and an Asura Thief.

As a Thief, without the Golem to tank for me, on many missions, I would not have been able to complete them. Warrior? I didn’t even think twice about anything. I just waded into every fight, killed everything, barely lost any health, and had a blast.
With the thief? I was lucky to survive 3 hits. Lyssa help me if I couldn’t stealth, and those mobs that have no leash and spawn on top of the character when you respawn after you die? Had to zerg-death those. Oh yeah, that was a big ball of joy right there.

And yes, I’ve tried it with Knight gear as well as Berserker gear as well as Valkyrie, Carrion, and Rampager sets. I can craft it all myself, and while Knight gear helps, ultimately it’s still frustrating in blue/green gear. And to expect every player to have full tricked out masterwork, rare, or exotic for the personal story, at every level, is ridiculous. The content should be balanced for a set of fine (blue) equipment.

Jeffrey Vaughn: I have played every “north american” MMO since Meridian59. The personal story is EXTREMELY FRUSTRATING as a medium or light armor class. In my opinion, it is balanced for the Warrior, and no Quality Assurance testing appears to have been done for Thieves or any other non-Warrior classes.

The personal power disparity is extraordinarily jarring in this case. It’s night and day. It’s fun vs. frustration. It’s not challenging to die in three hits. It’s not challenging to have to zerg-death by yourself because of bad event scripting. It’s broken. YOU, Jeffrey Vaughn, need to fix it.

Don’t tell us how you used your “l33t strats” to get around broken/inappropriate content. Fix the freaking content!

That is certainly your prerogative. However, it has been my experience that when your average customer runs into such roadblocks, they simply stop playing. Or at the very least, play less or do not continue consuming that content.

Personally, I cannot logically see any benefit to making the personal story inordinately difficult, frustrating or tedious. As evidenced by this thread, however, what makes something difficult is an opinion debate.

If a design goal of the personal story is to make the player feel heroic, then for me and at least one other customer, it does not meet that goal at this step, with this class/race.

I remember this part of the storyline. It’s been a few weeks since I’ve done it, but here’s a tip.
The harpy will start to fly in the air and evade attacks (or some other similar animation) before its powerful attack. You need to dodge roll while this is happening, or run away. Come back and attack him afterwards. After I figured this out, it became much easier.
I hope this helps.

I felt like this encounter was a perfect example of a sticking point people have with GW2 when coming from other games. Unlike so many fights before you can’t just stand still and autoattack things until they’re dead. If you don’t dodge the fireball, you’re toast. I’m not sure if it’s the intent of the design, but the lesson you need to take away is “watch for attack animations and dodge when needed”

Until you get more used to watching what the enemies are doing (as opposed to watching for cast bars or watching your own cooldowns) dodge and block effects will feel useless and encounters will feel impossible. When I adjusted my thinking I found the game’s difficulty snapped into perspective.

vjek.4270:

That is certainly your prerogative. However, it has been my experience that when your average customer runs into such roadblocks, they simply stop playing. Or at the very least, play less or do not continue consuming that content.

I would argue that you, alone (and even you with a few others), do not represent the average customer. I dodged, I dipped, and quite frankly, I barely put any real effort into beating this story quest as an elementalist, the squishiest class. I have to agree with Jeffrey. I did this with blue/white armor that wasn’t even level-appropriate for me, dodged a fireball here and there, and killed the harpy without too much issue. It was pretty tough, but I didn’t die, and I felt it was a rewarding experience as a result. I do not feel the story, this part in particular, is too difficult, and I do not think it would be nearly as rewarding if the game’s story were spoon-fed to players because a few users cannot up their game to an even mediocre level and complete quests. Sorry if that offends you, as it was not my intent; you just need to actually dodge.

I think it’s more that the game doesn’t teach you how to dodge, how to watch for attack animations, and how to be fluid in moving. I know I still stop moving here and there. I’m used to MMOs where you stick, cast, move. I’m sure plenty of people are. In that mind set “gotta dodge” doesn’t factor.

So, yes, if you know about dodging and timing it right, this isn’t a hard fight. If you don’t, this is a road block you won’t pass. The mechanics to get past it simply won’t click.

vjek.4270:

… when your average customer runs into such roadblocks, they simply stop playing.

I am sorry, but this hardly sounds like the case of the “Average customer”. I have seen many Asuran Engineers and other classes running around in higher level zones and am pretty sure that they have completed this mission.

My Asura Guardian had this mission as well and was able to pass it without the use of any specialty armors or weapons in the process. I think that the problem is that you are focused too much on your equipment and not enough on your tactics. Equipment in this game, while important, does not determine if you are going to succeed or fail a mission. As others have mentioned, the mission is doable with the use of dodging. With an engineer, there are many skill alternatives to turrets you can run as well that can assist you in this process.

Elixers, for example can give you a boost that might make it easier to escape the harpy momentarily. Likewise, I would advise against using the healing turret in this particular instance since while being another target to distract, can be one-hitted by the Harpy, thus depriving you of that heal for a short time.

Anyhow, I can understand how being stuck on one mission might be frustrating, but so far there have always been different alternatives to be considered in just about every mission. Should this continue to be a problem, bring along a friend!

vjek.4270:

Personally, I cannot logically see any benefit to making the personal story inordinately difficult, frustrating or tedious. As evidenced by this thread, however, what makes something difficult is an opinion debate.

Yes, the question is: if Jeffrey is testing this out himself and able to do it with the same class you’re using and no bonuses, and since there are many players who have successfully completed this mission, what possible reason could he have for meddling with it? You’d need a much stronger case than “I get frustrated” if you’re asking them to kitten the difficulty.

Personally, I’ve done two missions so far where I was forced to grind through while dying repeatedly. Yes, it’s frustrating and annoying, but I don’t know if I was doing something wrong. Most missions I do first time without dying (as a ranger) and when I do die, I usually find a change of tactic makes a huge difference.

For example, on one of the Norn missions, there was a boss that kept knocking me down with turrets. I lost spectacularly when I decided to just run in and take him down, but on the third attempt, I used a cloak (it was part of the mission, not because I was a thief) to put myself in a completely different starting position, using the terrain to block where he likes to put down turrets, and he went down easily.

Loruuna.5978:

I remember this part of the storyline. It’s been a few weeks since I’ve done it, but here’s a tip.
The harpy will start to fly in the air and evade attacks (or some other similar animation) before its powerful attack. You need to dodge roll while this is happening, or run away. Come back and attack him afterwards. After I figured this out, it became much easier.
I hope this helps.

This sounds like good advice; I’ll give it a try later.
I didn’t notice the correlation between the evasion and the fireball attack and frequently ran out of endurance from dodging when I didn’t need to.

Edit: I do want to add that having the harpy hang around the spawn point after you die is pretty mean.

Edit2: I was able to beat it using this pointer. I was able to evade the first fire attack and pummel the harpy enough so I was able to kill it while I was downed with the next fire attack.
Shodd didn’t even die, not one time.

Thanks!

Also, I stayed at melee range the whole time instead of starting off a crippling axe from range, used axe + horn, and I switched my skills to include “for great justice”.

Basically, I tried playing to the warriors strengths with shouts and whatever instead of playing it like a melee ranger.

I don’t know if I can come up with a good way to survive as an engineer.

I don’t even have the rocket turret, just rifle and healing.

Awesome, I’m glad that was useful!
The shield skills, when timed right, can be helpful as an engineer. If you’re not used to timing them, I suggest practicing on some normal mobs before you start the storyline.
I don’t remember if the harpy’s attacks count as projectiles, but the first shield skill reflects them for a short amount of time. If they’re not projectiles, then the second skill will be of use. When you release either of the skills (when you’re close enough for the first skill) you can interrupt the harpy’s attacks.

I personally wasn’t aware that the personal story missions were even considered challenging, blew my way through it on all 4 of my 80’s :/ including an ele and thief neither of which I ever faced any type of difficulty at all. I played most of my personal stories while watching tv shows, hardly paying attention, generally without deaths. I just don’t see the need to tone them down.

i think this game’s harder for altaholics. there’s enough differences between professions that it can be hard to transition (though the recent guardian gs skill changes have actually made that easier for me there).

whenever i’m having difficulty with something, i usually reassess my profession skills and my approach. there’s very little pve (outside dungeons and the fire ele zone boss in metrica province) that seems to be intended to be difficult.

vjek.4270:

However, it has been my experience that when your average customer runs into such roadblocks, they simply stop playing.

I am a very average customer, too, as well as an Asuran Engineer with the Infinity Ball background. And I cannot confirm that this mission was particularly “roadblocked” for me. I cannot even remember having experienced any difficulties when playing this mission (there were other situations that were way more memorable in that way).

I did not use any particular strategy either. I guess I just played a “cautious chicken” as always: I dropped my turrets early to give the mobs something to chew on, kept my distance to the enemy, and played the general dodging game to get out of harm’s way while wearing down the enemy from the distance. I can’t remember whether I was using flamethrower or grenade kit at that time (to counter groups of mobs), but it might be possible.

~MRA

I played this mission recently on my Asura Guardian. I certainly agree it was hard, it took me several attempts before I could succeed, but it’s not impossible. For one you can dodge the big attack so pop a ranged weapon and keep moving.

It was definatly one of the hardest story solo’s I’ve faced, But It’s not impossible. Also, have you tried asking someone to go in with you if your finding it so hard?

Haha, I remember this episode of the personal story very clearly. I died so many times on my thief. The thing just wreaked my face hardcore. I tried respeccing, and changed my gear up a little. No avail. In the end it just took me trial and error until I found a strategy that worked…. and you know what finally did the trick? Shortbow’s aoe poison field. I just ran around the portal in a circle dropping the field, and eventually the harpy died from poison damage alone… it took bloody forever, and several tries… because even one slight misstep, and game over.

Easily the most difficult storyline fight I’ve had on any of my characters ever. Easily. And it so randomly placed in mid level play…. still learning the profession, possibly the game… fewer tools really available to you. Just out of left feild, BAM hardmode in your face.

this mission was hell easy for me with my elementalist, how to beat it also is how do you use your spells and how do you use them?
same goes with every other class, if the gm even doesnt uses traits, well it also says something about his skill itself if he also can easily beat him.
Learn about what weapon choice you need to do, every weapon has its powers, and some are even the counter to that harpy.