Guild Wars 2

I’m incredibly fed up with the quest “Breaking Blade” for the human street rat. The level of difficulty is insane. I’ll go through it more with a list…

• I’m a thief. Not the most durable of classes, but evading, dodging, and shadowstepping should get me out of the way, right? Wrong. Right after I walk into the bar, angry bandits spawn outside, trapping me and my companion (Quinn) inside the bar. Much dodging, rolling, and stabbing later, I’m dead. I come back, flustered. This time I run outside as soon as I pull to use a ranged weapon against these enemies. I dodge, shoot arrows, dodge, shadowstep, but it’s all in vain for they’re constantly auto-locking onto me with pistols. I get down but manage to take one out. 3 more are left and they’re camping Quinn’s body. I come back the next time and take them all out.

Death Count: 2.

• Suddenly, MORE bandits spawn, alongside a boss. I didn’t have time to heal Quinn, so he remains on the floor. I die from the surprise attack, as well as being cornered in the bar. I come back, die, come back, die, come back, die…- But I manage to defeat all of the bandits, except for the boss (Doc Howler).

Death Count: 4.

• Long story short, I try all weapon combos I can. After 20 minutes of looking things up online, I try to use a S/P combo and blind her so few of her attacks hit. No success. Each time I manage to get her to about 30% health, then I die. Eventually, all of my armor has deteriorated. I look for someway to repair it in the instance, but there is none.

Death Count: 10.

What am I doing wrong? I’m level 10, the level of the quest. My armor is decent. I am taking advantage of dodges and shadowsteps, blinds, and such. However, even if I dodge/shadowsteps away, she simply shoots me from afar, hardly helping anything.

I’ve had to restart this twice because all of my armor had deteriorated.

Is this quest intentionally hair-pullingly hard? Is there any intention to nerf it? Has anyone else had the same problems?
Sorry for the wall of text, but this is just insanely annoying.

You must be on the level 8 part where you chose to save Quinn instead of stopping the poisoners at the well. I see you are at a level 10 part. I wonder if that is in store for me next.

Trust me the well is just as bad if not worse. Pretty much all the personal quests that involve fighting are this way. My mesmer died so many times that I was nude before I rage quit the game.

Am I the only one without problems? My advice is to pull them and properly use cover.

…Cover? The only cover available is in the building behind the bar. That means I’m still getting shot at, but the only stun I’d have would be a headshot (Much worse than black powder). I could roll and shadowstep, but it’d be much harder considering my camera would be half blocked by the banisters. If your character goes too far outside, Doc Howler resets and regains all health. The problem isn’t huge, heavily relayed attacks. The problem is the constant onslaught of poison and bullets that whittle my health down rather quickly.

I had a similar problem with this quest – Also as a thief, also at level – ended up dragging in a hunter friend of mine (2nd person made a huge difference)

I’m not sure the numbers were my problem – ancillary bandits, while challenging, could be dealt with – most of my problems (once I sorted out what was actually happening) was with Quinn, who also seemed to be relatively useless (I don’t recall my Logan ever coming out to fight) but primarily with Doc Howler – Oscill basically hit on the issue – based on Doc Howler’s attack rate and outgoing damage, and the relatively tight quarters of the fight environment, a Thief is at a substantial disadvantage, as we have no real way of interrupting the hailstorm of fire that character puts out – the blinding effect helped Oscill quite a bit, I also got doc to about 25-30% health by balancing fast heals, and lots of dodges/blade fury – but the unrelenting stream of ranged fire was a real disadvantage to a class with no interrupts and limited health/dodges

having a 2nd character up would have made a HUGE difference, but I was never able to keep Quinn up through the first wave of bandits, and Logan I don’t believe shows up until the 3rd wave (Doc howler shows up with the 2nd wave, as I recall)

with the number of bandits reduced, keeping Quinn up might be easier – thanks for that – but I still think it’s mostly Doc Howler and the particular class build of a Thief at level 10 that seems to be my biggest problem, at least…

Logan is working as intended: he always runs from fights so it’s actually abnormal to see him put up any kind of fight at all.

i was in the same boat just a few hours ago. i was getting killed on the second wave then i tried pulling 1 at a time by standing in the corner behind the bar out of their aggro range. once i was able to figure that out the rest was simple. i kinda used Quinn as my meat shield so i can dual pistol from a distance then swap to dagger/pistol combo if they got into range without bringing in more agro. hope that helps gl

Same personal story quest as TO – human warrior – lvl 10.
Impossible for me to kill Doc Howler. Gave up after trying repeatedly and always died and died and died until my char was naked.
Logan doesn’t help at all. He sits on the stairs down to the cellar in invisible camouflage mode. You can’t talk to him or beg him to join the fight and help.
Funny thing is I can’t even invite other people (guildies) to help me. They can enter the instance, but not “my” instance. Is that intentional?

I’ll go on levelling the warrior further now, maybe it will make a difference when he’s level 20 -sigh-. Or I’ll give up on him completely, don’t know yet.

Hi Oscill.4325

I am having the same problems on my elementalist, the number of mobs you are supposed to deal with at once makes me think the Personal Quests are either meant to be done in a group or the devs did not even bother to test and balance them for light armor classes.

Dodging and cc abilities only go so far, as I cant cc and dps and heal at the same time so I end up with even more mobs spawning on top of me or on top of my NPC helpers so I cant revive them.

Leaves me no choice but to quit the quest, even if I respawn at checkpoint I am then facing 10 plus mobs with no help. Constantly running in circles just to stay alive (never mind standing to do dps or heal) is no fun.

The NPC’s attacks are very weak and the AI they have is a joke, more often than not they make the situation worse.

I have no problems with the other PVE content and the dungeon difficulty is fine too, how they got both of them right yet kittened up the Personal Quests amazes me.

I found the battle of Claw island to be ok so long as I was very careful with pulls and positioning but since then it is just wave after wave of mobs.

Whatever I do I inevitably get surrounded by mobs and get ganked, half the time the NPC’s either attack just one mob and ignore the rest or just stand there doing nothing.

The difficulty and balancing is all over the place, which is why I can only conclude that no balance testing was done. Warriors and Guardians dont seem to have as much trouble.

If the devs want the Personal Quests to be that way thats fine but they should stop calling them personal and change them to group quests.

Getting repeatedly ganked as soon as I respawn is no fun in any game.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

For the 9/27 update, I reduced the number of banits in each wave, so you aren’t expected to fight 3 at once.

I’m also looking into Logan’s behavior, he’s attacking…very…slowly…if at all, and I can’t see why.

I am sorry Jeffrey but this kind of balancing work should have been done before the game was released, the damage to peoples immersion is huge and enjoyment of the game has been ruined.

Was any actual balancing tests done at all, I can only speak for myself as an elementalist but it leaves a really bad taste.

The difficulty level on many of the Personal Quests is all over the place, from easy to well nigh impossible without guildies to help.

It is so bad for some they have given up altogether on the Personal Quests as they cant afford the repair costs.

This is THE event that lead to me swapping from Mesmer to Guardian.

I got past it, but it took, if I recall, about 90 minutes.

Quinn died fast, and I had to restart from a checkpoint multiple times, never able to revive Quinn due to his death location.

While many events are like this one (multiple enemies spawn at once in all directions, leading to a gankfest death of the PC and then the NPCs – leading to a solo rest of the mission), this one is the worst, IMO.

That being said, I’m only to around the level 16 mission on the Mesmer (who’s now 29), and I only went past level 53 mission on my Guardian to get the Fort Trinity PoI, encountering multiple buggy events along the way (Forging the Pact and the one with the mortar guys on the bridge that just stand there). I’m up to 71 (or is it 73) on the Guardian and plan to stay there until I hear the loot from the last mission is fixed (and not level 30 blue items).

But back to the thread subject – this event was one of those I’ve done that was NOT bugged – but a prime example of how unfun many of the Personal Story missions are. For a game that involves lots of movement and rolling and such – I’m amazed at how short a leash many mobs have before they reset. Some classes MUST move quite a bit or get 2 shot, yet if you move just a little too far, that mob you have down to 10% suddenly is invulnerable and moving back to it’s spawn point – restoring up to 100%.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

For the 9/27 update, I reduced the number of banits in each wave, so you aren’t expected to fight 3 at once.

I’m also looking into Logan’s behavior, he’s attacking…very…slowly…if at all, and I can’t see why.

I think the main problem for some players on this thread is the boss Doc Howler. Generally, I just want to be able to solo the Doc so that I don’t have to waste a life to revive Quinn only to have him charge in and die again.

Oscill.4325:

I think the main problem for some players on this thread is the boss Doc Howler. Generally, I just want to be able to solo the Doc so that I don’t have to waste a life to revive Quinn only to have him charge in and die again.

I was exactly in the position as you: playing as a Thief (of appropriate level), Quinn was lying dead in the bar, all goons down, but Doc Howler was impossible to solo for me.

Here is the trick (strategy?) how I finally made it through that mission:

1. Reviving Quinn: My main problem was that Quinn was lying inside the bar. Hence, I could not revive him without aggroing the Doc. I equipped short-bow. From outside the bar, I pulled Doc Howler. Once she was outside, I used Infiltrator’s Arrow through the door of the bar to get close to Quinn. Then, I started immediate to rez, keeping an eye on the doc. Once she was close again, I used Hide in Shadows to flee like a little kitten out of the bar, turned immediately left, down that small alley, jumped on that little ledge left at the end of that alley, and hid behind the house. This way, Doc Howler lost aggro and returned to her position inside the bar and I waited for my cooldowns. After about three runs, I had accumulated enough rez to get Quinn back to his feet. However, I stopped at, say, 99% rez such that he would get up to his feet immediately in the next run.
2. Getting Quinn out of the bar: With Quinn on his feet we immediately tried to leave the bar. Since Quinn aggros Howler this meant that I tried to get her attention and slowly moved backwards until we were way outside on the marketplace. The reason behind this was that if Quinn dies the next time, I could rez him safely outside of the bar.
3. Fighting outside the bar: Quinn went down several times (as expected), but now I could rez him. However, Doc Howler resets to her position in the bar when she loses aggro. So I rezzed Quinn (outside the bar) to 99%, pulled Howler with the bow outside, and finished rezzing Quinn. Then we fought outside. When Quinn went down I ran again like a little chicken until Howler reseted. After two or three trials (where Quinn tanked and I was using every condition, CC, stealth a thief has at his disposal) we finally succeeded in bringing her down.

I understand that the mission is beyond any doubt too hard to solo for one thief. But although I fought like a coward (and I misused game mechanics like aggro and reseting), it WAS possible after all, and I didn’t even die more than three or four times.

~MRA

On my thief, I died 6 times to doc howler.

Terrible.

First off, I want to say that I do really enjoy this game.
HOWEVER!
I’m currently in the Breaking the Blade personal story as a level 12 (leveled down to 10 for the instance) Elementalist. I can take care of the first wave of bandits as well as the two that come in with Doc Howler…. But Doc Howler is either unneccissarily difficult or bugged. I have been trying to beat her now for the past few days (obviously not straight) and have been unsuccessful in every attempt. I have tried the whole “use cover” thing and the “rez Quinn and let him tank for you” and to be completely honest, neither of those worked. I manage to get Doc down to about half or quarter health and then she absolutely obliterates me. Sometimes, she doesn’t even seemingly take damage (her health bar doesn’t move!) I don’t know whether light armor classes just won’t be able to beat her? That wouldn’t make any sense. I’m just extremely frustrated and just about fed up with the game at this point. I can’t really move past this point in the game, which is just driving me absolutely insane. I’m really about to stop playing the game out of pure frustration….

I’m glad I’m not the only one having problems with this quest. I’m playing a thief and while I normally kick a good amount of butt, I just keep dying over and over again to Doc Howler. It’s been good practice for my dodging and rolling, but I am losing all my money to freakin’ armour repairs. I’m leaving this mission alone for the time being until I can (hopefully) recruit a friend to help

beat it last night finally but had to get a buddy to help. Phew!

Curious. I chose to save the people and sacrifice Quinn for the good of the many. I am such a great friend I know! I ended up fighting Doc Howler at the well and when I faced her at level 8 which was the mission level, she killed me and by the time I got back, she had killed Logan and six Seraph. I ended up dying so many times that I lost all my armor.

I went back at level 12 with one more utility slots and more skill choices and beat her with my mesmer without loosing anyone.

The part I am curious about is the next mission was up again Pete in the bar. Since he had killed Quinn, me and Logan decided we were going to just murder him. Draw him into the bar and kill him. No jail, no trial, no magistrate. Funny thing is afterwards, I go there are other people like Pete who deserve the same treatment and Logan is like “Good idea! I will be in touch.”

So did you kill Doc Howler or arrest her?

I killed her because my thief is all about ferocity

My suggestion: bring a friend along when you do the quest.

I bankrupted my thief on repair costs at level 10, same thing at level 12, took her up to level 15 while getting more coin, died a whole lot more, and finally succeeded. How? By only using 4 skills every time they became available – auto-attack, Black Powder, healing, and praying to Kormir. One time the cooldown timing worked to success. Every other time I couldn’t get her below 30% without dying, teleporting outside to heal, and starting over again. My favorite GW1 professions were monk and assassin. While guardian is like my smiting monk on steroids, the thief is a big disappointment.

I decided to try the other option and protect the people of the city, until I found this thread I regreted it, thinking that saving Quinn might have been easier. Playing a Necromancer. That was the mission when I finally decided that personal story is not worth playing it, it is so painful that so many of them are way too hard.

This quest was hell. After many failed attempts, my final strategy that got me past it on my elementalist (fire spec, yeah… not so good here) was to switch atunements like a schizophrenic. First earth to get the tanky elemental pet out, then water to setup a heal field, then fire to blast away, then air to run like hell. Repeat that over several times and forget about any help from the NPCs. Oh and this was all to kill the lieutenant boss before the main boss. The main boss dropped relatively easily in comparison to Doc Howler. This is the mission that taught me that “elementalist” means character who uses ALL the elements to survive, not just one or two.

wow, how did people die to Doc. Howell? My alt necro is a street rat that beat Doc. to crap without a scratch, lol.

Developers, I hope you do not nerf any of the quests. The crying in this forum is insane. Main mesmer and alt necro never had problem or found any quests hard.

Rain King.5914:

Logan is working as intended: he always runs from fights so it’s actually abnormal to see him put up any kind of fight at all.

I see what you did there HAHAHAHA

Rukia.4802:

Rain King.5914:

Logan is working as intended: he always runs from fights so it’s actually abnormal to see him put up any kind of fight at all.

I see what you did there HAHAHAHA

Charr kid from Lion’s Arch in RP with other kids: “I’m Logan, and I’m gonna run away!”

I’m playing a human thief and am similarly really struggling with getting anywhere close to killing Doc. I quite understand that it may be my playstyle, my skill or whatever, but I’m finding this ridiculously hard and just can’t be bothered any more. I want the game to be enjoyable, and in general it is, but this quest is just stupidly frustrating and there really should be some other workaround than trying to get strangers in to help out.

I have done this quest a wile ago as a thief and I didn’t have any problems, (I’d geus during headstart)

I would point out that I did this (I chose to let Quinn die and save the people) 8 or 9 days ago and had no issues. Almost easy.

I went in at level 10 today on a Guardian (admittedly I could have had better weapons) and died 3xs. Ok. I am patient. I went back out and got to level 13, all armor was 9-12 and my weapons were level 10-11. I had a mace/shield + scepter/torch. Started with the scepter combo to get some fast DPS on Doc Howler and then switched to mace/shield. Popped every block and heal and still died. She is hitting for a TON too much damage.

2nd time around I kind of backed her into a corner and dodge rolled back and forth ASAP. I actually died and got her as I went down. (I popped the F1 to set fire to her just before I died and got her with the DoT.) Then of course Pete came in and died with a whimper. Doc Howler needs toning down, imo. That early in the storyline it will turn people off, I think.

What I’m wondering about:
When you defend the well, you manage to defeat Doc Howler. I assume she was arrested (bad buddy, who wanted to kill many people? No way she could be sent off to live freely).
Next part with the ambush on Pete, guess who is the second to last enemy? Doc Howler. How did she get there? Was she busted out? Am I the only one, who is irritated by that, because Logan just ignores that fact? (Jailbreaks seem to be focused on only in another personal story choice)

This seems like a huge oversight in story telling.

And another thing: Riot Alice tells me in that final mission, that she got out because of my advice. Thing is… I gave her that advice, while being disguised as a bandit. She just thought, that she maybe have known me, but didn’t indicate, that she really knew my real identity.

It’s totally ridiculous how difficult the storyline quests in general are in relation to the level they -claim- to be. And I ow how to play my toon just fine, thanks. Thief is a glass canon to begin with with almost no chance of surviving any “endurance fight” where the mobs just keep coming or are more than two. It’s a real “fun” killer in this game how difficult what should be “soloable” is and not everyone wants to to nor wants to be forced to group for everything. Sometimes you just want to log in and play, chat with folks while doing so, etc and not have to stand around -begging- for a group or partner.

I actually did the human street rat personal story, the level 8 one at level 6. It wasn’t a cake walk for sure, but I did survive it with a rally or two. None of the story quests I did afterwards were easy either, but as they got stronger, I was able to devise some sort of strategy against them with not an incredible amount of effort.

It should be difficult, and possibly harder than other events you can do solo, at least this way there is some sort of challenge in the game. I look forward to more of them, just make sure you have appropriate gear and runes on your armor and you should do fine as long as you have a plan.

Level 11 Elementalist, down-leveled to level 10 for the quest.
Fully crafted level 10 armor and weapons.

Dead 7 times in a row to Doc Howler in the bar.

Don’t know how to give constructive criticism on this without swearing. Something is not right here.

Rando.4526:

Level 11 Elementalist, down-leveled to level 10 for the quest.
Fully crafted level 10 armor and weapons.

Dead 7 times in a row to Doc Howler in the bar.

Don’t know how to give constructive criticism on this without swearing. Something is not right here.

You are sooo not alone. I like challenge but some things are just ridiculous. When certain classes need to be several levels higher than the storyline quest just to get the traits etc to survive (hopefully) and then the rewards are already out-leveled too…something is definitely wrong.

Sorry, this quest is totally wrong. My thief is lv 16 and i choosed save the citizens. It’s totally impossible to kill Doc Howler, no matter what i do, what gear i used, it’s just impossible to kill this as a thief without help or Quinn alive. I really don’t know what to do anymore, just quit this, wtver.

I just tried as a level 14 thief with mostly green level 14 gear (d/p). I got doc to about 10% 3 times and dieded 2 times.
The last time when i was downed and used the cloud, she ran into the inn and healed to max before i could get out of downed state.
Stopping doc from healing would make this quest much less punishing while still giving a good hard fight if you dont want to die.

Doc Howler’s still awful. Fighting inside the tavern is awful but I can’t keep the bandits and Quinn outside. If I could, I could rez him, but he’s pretty useless. The bandits are cake, but Doc is just nasty. I’m on my mesmer, lvl 10, and bringing skills that transfer conditions. Lots of damage but she’s blasting me, and if I get too far away, she regens all her health super fast. I’d take MKT over Doc Howler any day (of course he doesn’t regen at all). Suppose I’ll wait and get a friend to help. Maybe someone to keep her entertained while I heal. Just being able to use the area outside the tavern more would be great, but everyone runs inside like it’s 25cent wings in there.

Just wanna add Ditto to most of the above comments about “Doc” being just impossible to beat,I’ve only been playing for a few days ,so I might just not be skillful enough to play this game

I’m also gonna jump in and say I’m having the same problem.

As a lvl 11 thief I found that the waves of bandits that come in pairs go down pretty easily with the shortbow, if you can get behind the bar and position yourself so you can kinda see the door. They’ll come in and won’t aggro so you can take the first shot, and the trick arrow auto attack does the rest. As long as you get back behind the bar you can do this until Doc shows up.

But she’s another story. The sword/pistol combo seems to work in theory, the blindness and the stuns work…to a point. But even then she’s firing relentlessly and causing at least twice as much damage as I’m doing. Meanwhile I’m dancing around the bar like an idiot, dodging, stunning, praying to Kormir, and it’s all just not enough.

I don’t think I’m gonna go back to the personal story for a while. Not that coming back five levels later will mater, but maybe I’ll have recruited some help by then or at least have regained some patience.

THIS IS kitten ME OFF! im level kittening 15 kitten doc is elite and i cant get her past half of her life without dieing. i didn’t save quinn because he was “we” “tod” “ed”. so im soloing this part. you guys need to rebalance all the single story missions this is crazy. i have 710 health! thats not enough by any standards my dps isn’t even that good at this low of a level. this needs to get fixed sooon!

I didn’t have a problem on my thief- who was approximately the same level as the quest I believe. Perhaps a bit lower. I’m glad the waves were toned down to two though!

With regards to Doc Howler, from what I remember, she didn’t hit very hard at all? So this is definitely not skills on my part, because she barely did any damage- at least during my experience. I think I used shortbow and pistol/dagger. Cloak and dagger was quite useful for avoiding damage…

Having said that, my gear was also level appropriate, so do make sure you have level appropriate armour and weaponry. This could be the issue.

I also am having a difficult time with this quest. I’ve tried multiple weapon combinations. My armor is level appropriate, and my character is even a few levels above the suggested level. I really enjoy my thief, but at as for someone who plays for the story, this is a letdown.

I’m also having big problems with this storyline mission. I’ve tried multiple times on my thief who is leveled beyond the quest requirements. Closest I’ve come is with shortbow and try to kite. It’s very effective even though she’s using ranged. Problem I get is that at some point she resets and I have to start all over again. If I run inside her reach I get hit to much and die… Over and over again.

I must have passed this on my mesmer, but I can’t remember any difficulty there.

This needs to be fixed. I have resolved to subscribe to this thread to know when there’s any point to try again.

I’ve had no problems killing Doc Howler on my Level 10 thief by making extensive use of the bleeding condition through dual-dagger death-blossom and the caltrops utility skill followed by “roll for initiative” for even more death-blossoming goodness.

Straylight.7408:

I’ve had no problems killing Doc Howler on my Level 10 thief by making extensive use of the bleeding condition through dual-dagger death-blossom and the caltrops utility skill followed by “roll for initiative” for even more death-blossoming goodness.

I did the exact same thing.

For me, the quest that makes you help Quinn was FAR more difficult. Enemies coming from nowhere? Quinn doesn’t help at ALL… that one was the one difficult.

Ok, well I chose to save the town as a whole. So that means Quinn is dead….. All of these suggestions say to let Quinn take the damage , well I do not have that at my disposal. So i have died about 7 times on Doc Howler. I really have ran out of options now.

My very first character that I made at launch was a thief, and I don’t remember this quest really frustrating me at all. I can’t even remember if I died at all…

I have recently leveled a human engineer who did this quest without being downed… in a mix of white and blue gear.

It is a challenge sure, but I personally didn’t find it to be too hard.