Guild Wars 2

I’ve done the Ossuary once or twice solo, and didn’t have any total wipes, but the NPCs were a bit of trouble a few times. I got lucky and noticed the unmarked champ roaming the outer ring while walking out from the center area to the first altar. Even with waiting for it and the veteran knights to be cleared out of my path to the alter, the NPCs were still managing to back-aggro the knights as they patrol by behind me(while I was still on the altar).

Going from altar-to-altar, I avoided the outer ring and went back towards the center and found another straight path out to the next, as someone else previously suggested. In doing this, I did lose sight of the champion and it came very close to patrolling around into the NPCs while I was at one of the altars.

Overall, I wouldn’t consider the quest to be hard, but putting in a hidden “walking death trap” that can easily turn this quest into a no-win scenario isn’t very fun. It would be nice if this was a challenging mob that really put your skills to the test if aggro’d. But as it is now, this champion is just a ridiculous “you fail now” timebomb waiting to ruin your quest.

The Veteran Risen Abominations in a few other story quests can be a bit of a nuisance, as well. I didn’t have any mission I’d label as too hard or impossible, but they are overpowered compared to the NPCs (these guys are supposed to be of some help, right?) and are not fun to fight because of their “cheating” unstoppable buff. In the story quest “Shell Shock”, they will either wipe the NPCs out before you can even put a significant dent in thier HP, or ignore the NPCs while you run in circles waiting for them to kill it. I like a good fight versus something that I have to dodge “big hits” from, but not an enemy that cannot be outran/kited and can take over 50% of my HP with every “normal” hit. I’ll go toe-to-toe with a champion, but I go out of my way to avoid a Veteran Risen Abomination.

Question for devs

How much of what you base “do-able” on is actually the fact that you already know each quest/dungeon and what to expect? That boss X spawns right there and patrols between y and z points, a group spawns in area q, etc.

Once I know what to expect, it generally tends to be a little easier, too. But the first time (or three), it can be very challenging and sometimes, to be honest, I eventually skip it altogether as too annoying or frustrating (i.e. not enjoyable or important enough to bother).

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

(I did it as a thief.)

^^this is where your “statement got bugged”

Reading the thread I see 2 obvious conclusions:

1) I did it fine on my Thief
2) I did it fine on my Warrior

that also corrisponds with the sentiment all over the forum about those 2 classes.

Q @ Anet, why did you add so many classes if its all about thieves and warriors?

I solo’d all my story quests on my elementalist, no problems.
Sure, it was challenging but definitely doable.

Honestly, I get disappointed when people think everything is too hard. Maybe you need better gear, or practice dodging, or a different strategy? The difficulty of this game is what makes it so good, in my opinion. And while I do like WOW, one of the main reasons why I couldn’t play anymore was the feeling that everything was just given to us. No, I play this game to be challenged. The bigger satisfaction when I actually make it!

Orion the Cursed.1206:

Its not exaggerating. I know how to do dungeons. You forgot the event needed to open the door to Arah? You are basically acting smug although you basically skipped the hardest part of the “personal story”. Can you open the doors with only 5 players?

I didn’t skip it, I just did it a lot earlier than the last story step, so I didn’t understand that that was what you were talking about. How have you been doing missions up to that point if you hadn’t opened the door to Orr? Maybe if you were a little clearer about what your issue was, it would help – you said the problem was the last story step, not opening the gate, and there’s quite a lot of story left after the gate.

But honestly… yeah, it doesn’t take that many people to open the door. I didn’t count, but there can’t have been more than ten of us when we were doing that run.

I also didn’t have to get a group together for it, because I didn’t even know in advance it had to be done. I just thought, “Hm, I’ll follow this DE,” and it just happened. I didn’t really think of it as a massive undertaking, I guess.

I’m sorry it’s bugged on your server, though, and I hope you get to do it soon.

I’m just concerned you’ll find it a bit of a letdown when you do it, because you seem to have it built up in your mind as something much more challenging and dramatic than it is.

Gaz.8194:

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

(I did it as a thief.)

^^this is where your “statement got bugged”

Reading the thread I see 2 obvious conclusions:

1) I did it fine on my Thief
2) I did it fine on my Warrior

that also corrisponds with the sentiment all over the forum about those 2 classes.

Q @ Anet, why did you add so many classes if its all about thieves and warriors?

My main is a thief and I have several alts including a lvl 69 Ele and 48 Mesmer. I definitely found doing personal story the easiest on my ele, and hardest on my Mesmer. That said, none of the story missions have been unacceptably difficult. I rarely get downed in any mission, and on a few occasions I have actually died once or twice.

My point is that it is quite possible to solo these missions with different classes.

How much of what you base “do-able” on is actually the fact that you already know each quest/dungeon and what to expect? That boss X spawns right there and patrols between y and z points, a group spawns in area q, etc.

I’m just going to point this out, but most devs do not know “That boss X spawns right there and patrols between y and z points, a group spawns in area q, etc.” I mean, only one or two devs are actually in control of setting up the pathing and that sort of thing on a given mission, and after they’re done it’s played over and over by plenty of other devs who work in completely other fields of the game and have no more idea of those things than the players do, and also by internal testers who don’t know much of anything, so don’t spend too much time worrying about devs only believing something is a reasonable challenge because they “beater” their way through it.

Replying ‘Anakita Snakecharm.4360’,

Thats why i said you are lucky because you joined the event near its completion. As well as being lucky the event wasn’t bugged at that point. This is a common bug on most servers. ALL these events are bugged on my server and wont start… (something to do with the game not recognizing ‘Anchorage Waypoint’ as under Pact control)
—————————————————————————————————————————————-
The Pact are preparing for the assault on Arah.
1. Collect scrap metal to help Ballistician Dexa build her siege weapon (80)
2. Help Crusader Angaria signal reinforcements for the assault on Arah (80)
3. Escort Scholar Didi to the signal flare site to summon her golem prototype for the assault on Arah (80)
The Promenade steps are under assault by the Pact.
4.[Group Event] Help the Pact seize the steps of the Promenade of the Gods (80)
The Pact is attempting to capture the Promenade hall.
5.[Group Event] Help the Pact capture the hall of the Promenade of the Gods (80)
A high Orrian wizard is defending the Gates of Arah.
6.[Group Event] Defeat the Risen High Wizard and secure the Promenade of the Gods (80)
Defend the Gates of Arah.
7.[Group Event] Ensure that the Pact holds the Gates of Arah (80)
The Gates of Arah are under Pact control.
—————————————————————————————————————————————-
The guide:
http://sunniersartofwar.com/blog/2012/09/04/guild-wars-2-how-to-get-to-arah/
—————————————————————————————————————————————-
How do you capture/defend the 3 points and assault the gate at the same time with only 10 people? I needed 30+ just to defeat the high priestess of Lyssa (previous massive event). 5 people to hold each (3) capture point and 15+ people to fight her.

The guide specifically stated its impossible to do the event with 10 people
———————————————————————————————————————————-
“…However, unlike the other dungeons, it is blocked by giant gates that can only be opened through world events.

You will need dozens people to complete these world events…"

“Once you find the current main event, you will travel south with a team of NPCs and a handful of players, gradually grabbing the attention of more players in the area until your group is quite large (we probably had 20 to 30 people with us by the end). Your final waypoint will be Anchorage Waypoint, which is where you stage the upcoming assault.”

“…The group should try to split up and have three to five people at each event to ensure completion….”
—————————————————————————————————————————————

I know what happens at the end because i checked youtube after i have given up on being able to do the final mission. Its not what i build up in my mind, its the fact that i cant complete it for reasons beyond my control.

So now i spend 3+3 silver daily to WP in and out of Orr to see if the event is fixed. Its a huge waste of time and at this point not even worth it anymore. Most people on the map are either bots or rather continuously farm Grenth and Caer events because its more rewarding.

P.S. This is my only complaint with the game. I had to replay ‘recapturing claw island’ and ‘rescuing the pact archeologist’ few times because of their bugs and i was ok with it because at least i could redo it immediately till it worked, but forcing me to do a ‘massive event + dungeon’ is unacceptable even if it wasn’t bugged. The reason i support this game is GW1 where you could CHOOSE to do EVERYTHING BY YOUR SELF if you wanted. I dont want to play a WoW clone

Blueroseknight.7954:

Why not just rez and eventually win through attrition? That is how I beat all of my missions. For some reason they thought that letting you rez as much as you want was a good idea so you may as well exploit it ;-P

This is what I had to do until I joined a faction, the difficulty is totally skewed and as such you kinda need npc help, which doesn’t really come until you start your Claw island and onward quests.

Updating my post on page 4 of this thread — I went back and tried again and got through Armaments without going down. I’ve been watching update notes for anything about armaments or thief skill balance changes that I thought would make a difference and I hadn’t seen anything, but I strongly suspect that the boss in “Armaments” got nerfed — ahem, “tuned”.

I did a few things differently/smarter this time:

- I used steal because in the mean-time I’d learned what it did (I thought it stole coppers or something so wasn’t using it before). I was hoping to steal the bosses summon-dredge ability, but I didn’t steal that, I got a mace attack instead.

- I ate a boost-precision consumable ahead of time

- I had added the Mad Memories: Complete Edition backpack

- I think I’d gained 3 levels since my prior attempt due to exp gained while getting the backpack.

I think that either that mace ability I stole was really powerful, or the bosses hitpoints have been significantly reduced, because all I did was hit “thieve’s guild”, “call wurm”, “Steal”, use the stolen mace attack, and when I looked at the bosses hp he was down 75% already. I went into heartseeker spam and he went down after 3-4 of them.

Now I was a level 33 thief doing a level 22 story quest, so I think “easy” difficulty is what it should have been, so I don’t think they over-nerfed this boss, but if it is that easy for on-level players then it maybe got over-nerfed.

As far as kiting goes (several posts above suggested that), once the boss spawned I ran away to get all my skills ready, and he followed me a very long way, and I almost ran out of room before he stopped chasing me. Another difference this time was that when he stopped chasing he didn’t return back to the cave and he didn’t summon a whole new crop of dredge. One dredge followed me even further and I killed it before taking on the boss, who was by then alone. So one possibility is they changed the cooldown on his summon skill, because I don’t think he used it after I started running away.

The final build I got him with was 0/10/0/10/0 (+3 unspent trait points), dagger/pistol + shortbow (I only used the shortbow getting up to the boss), with Hide in Shadows, Call Wurm, Spider Venom (never used it), Signet of Agility (never used the active ability) and Thieve’s Guild.

I post this info because the thread’s OP was about the Armaments quest, even though it got very highjacked into a non-thief-specific direction (and away from the OP’s mentioned story missions too).

To me unless it’s a legitimate balancing problem or a glitch from stopping you from progressing without difficulty then just do something else to level up and come back. There’s a whole world out there to see ya know :P.

And if a mission seems to hard even if you are over the level recommendation there is a way to do it I promise.

I’ve had a few issues with the Norn specific missions as an engineer. After that, no problems. Some deaths, but no problems.

I actually think part of the issue is related as to why I log into my favorite MOBA game more than I do GW2 now— difficulty may arise, but challenge doesn’t. During the times I’ve had difficulty, it wasn’t challenging. There didn’t seem to be a “oh, I should have…” moment. It felt like I needed to just replay the event until I got lucky.

At level 80 I feel like I do the same keyboard-dance all the time. Rarely do I have any skill moments other than dodges, which are limited.

I had no issues, but maybe it would be nice to have a difficulty level and rewards scaling to the level you pick. I would like to take on a more difficult personal story on another character, it would keep me more interested and play for longer!

The biggest help to me would be better AI for some characters in personal stories…..like Logan Thackery. This dude is suppose to be really strong but sometimes he just stands around while im being ganged on…..

The AI are useless. Everything about this storey mode seems like a step back from the original Guild Wars game. When missions became too difficult you just formed a team of human players, discussed tactics then felt a great sense of achievement when together you progressed to the next area. Even if for some reason you preferred to play alone, you could take along AI characters that were active and pretty good and choose which classes you thought would be most useful.

I don’t think it is too hard; the model in which it is all presented is restricting and I hate to say but lame. If the story mode gets hard you either make sure you are a few levels above the recommended requirement or get other players to help you. I’ve asked for help from other players and never get a response, it seems I am destined to do this whole story mode alone, I have Skyrim for that.

I almost couldn’t believe it when I realised the personal story in this game literally meant “personal” single player game.. It wasn’t what I expected from the mighty Guild Wars. I bought it online and it cost about £65, I expected the PvE story mode to be like GW1 on steroids x 10, I am so so disappointed by it. I am going to stick with it (becuase it cost so much) but I am not sure if I can make it to the end of the story line. Its just too tedious, im glad I have stuff like dynamics events to distract me from it but there are only so many times you can get excited about a giant troll repeatedly spawning.

If the GW1 storey mode was combined with the GW2 dynamic realtime world it would be truly epic. What a shame eh.

Sorry for waffling on but in my book, the difficulty isn’t the problem, it is the delivery and the means you have to go about doing it.

personal stories i thought should have been harder i was doing most of the stories 3+ lvls higher then i was………………

Ryujinshi.5618:

The biggest help to me would be better AI for some characters in personal stories…..like Logan Thackery. This dude is suppose to be really strong but sometimes he just stands around while im being ganged on…..

This, please. NPCs that are stronger, or less brain-dead, or hopefully both, would help me feel more like I’m playing an epic and less like I’m babysitting heavily armed toddlers.

i think many parts of the story have been made easier since this post has been started, much too easy!! i did the whole story in the beginning, no real problem back then, yesterday on alt i did the battle of claw island which had been quite hard; was the only time i had to use repair canister, but i was not level 50. well yesterday i prepared for something challenging that did not come; it was so easy that it was ridicoulous. and very disapointing. not evyone complained about the diffulty in state of making things so easy we should have given the possiblilty to choose an easy mode and leave it as it was for others. a personal story should be challening at some parts.

There were a few points that were challenging, but what I noticed is that even if I did die, it didn’t seem to matter. I never had to start over, I would just pick up where I left off.

-At the end of my Order quest line the NPC I had to protect died—no failure/restart.
-Battle of Claw Island: died at the end, completed mission anyway.

I’m not knocking anyone that can’t complete the quests, but it just goes to show how useful a difficulty switch is.

The best I can say is that the story rarely made me rethink what I’m doing. There was a certain, annoying archer boss in Orr who for no good reason had to be solo’d and was difficult out of purely poor design, but the rest was just..meh.

Consider the certain spy in the Pact that you confront. This was the saddest minion ever. The location seemed random, the intensity zero and the fight was a joke. Come on, all we could ask for is a great boss fight. Karka are more deadly. I wanted to see the mesmer get shown off here (I haven’t played one yet), instead it just looked embarrassing and no one else in the encampment seemed to care.

Still, difficulty I can excuse, but the design needs to be there first.

Last boss on Ossuary of Unquiet Dead is impossible. I’ve already been trying for 1 hour but I can’t beat it. All NPC’s are dead too. Uninstalling this game now and will go back to wow until this is fixed.

Simon.9752:

Last boss on Ossuary of Unquiet Dead is impossible. I’ve already been trying for 1 hour but I can’t beat it. All NPC’s are dead too. Uninstalling this game now and will go back to wow until this is fixed.

But playing WoW will not improve your GW2 skills so don’t except this to be “fixed” that way.

the battle of claw island is especially annoying (several deaths and checkpoints later). the respawn rate of mobs is too high. and then there is the underwater one in Straits of Dev with no clear obvious paths to reach locations. Give the player some hints. Not just a star on the map that seems to be on the other side of a wall.

sileri.6984:

Maybe I’m naive but I just don’t see the average casual player reading a guide to their class or posting on a forum. And, perhaps my naivety again, I don’t think they should have to do those things to get through the game.

Exactly! Casual gamers DO NOT look stuff up. The moment you do that you are NOT a casual gamer anymore.

SFtheWolf.5179:

I consider the personal story difficulty unacceptably low. I’m constantly making characters interrupt their own lines because I’m doing damage too fast for them to keep up with the dialogue triggers.

I don’t kite, I don’t use special farming builds, I don’t play just one profession with an easy-mode combo, I just trait sensibly and learn to use the effing dodge roll.

Absalom.3927:

LoL, i’ve done each quests from 1 to 80 alone and with a level under the suggested because they were too easy (and i’m elementalist).
At least they need to increase the difficulty, not decrease.

Video or you all are lying!

Morthur.3894:

….. (because let’s face it: the vast majority of the GW2 players simply complete their PS without ever coming to the forums and whining because of the supposedly “impossible challenge” it presents).
….

The only part of this that is definitely correct is the vast majority NEVER comes to the forums. What you don’t know is if they finished their PS or not.

I found one particular early story mission for my Sylvari Mesmer quite difficult at first, but then I just went away and levelled up a bit so I could drop some points into various trait lines as desired and acquired some new equipment and I breezed right through it. I actually think the personal story difficulty is pretty tight really with only the odd occurrence of something I’d consider unreasonable. At times it seemed to feel more like a personal test to prove how much I had learnt from the thousands of other dynamic events, dungeons and other activities I had participated in.

Good grief.

I am an aspie and I have completed the personal story on 2 alts. Only twice did I have to leave instance, level up, and try again. One with thief in Orr and one with weaksauce lvl 9 elementalist.

Folks who cannot beat these missions with a correctly levelled character are either using weapons/armour way below their level, are aged 14 or younger, or have some serious ADD.

Edit: ossuary of Unquiet Dead boss impossible? I had more problem with getting to him than defeating him with my thief (my warrior took a different path). If I remember, I got him first time with maybe 2 deaths, and I am dumb as a brick.

@Kashrlyyk: The personal story is not casual mode, world pve is. I am quite inclined to take SFtheWolf and Absalom at thier word regarding difficulty because most people I know can do both of those things.

I did play my Mesmer and had some hard times (some cause bugs), mostly in situations, where my NPC-allies died. I did play my ele later and was bored to hell, so easy was the story…

Shannon.9583:

All you guys need to do is come back when you are a few levels higher. The storyline missions get easy if you out level them a bit.

This is only true for some professions. Although this was soloable on my Ranger (at level 80) and Guardian (on-level at 68), my Thief is unable to complete this Level 68 “Sink the Boneship” PS segment at level 80 equipped with all Level 80 Rares with 3-4 Exotics.

One non-boss Risen Shark 2-shots my Thief, and since it’s underwater, I have the double-whammy handicaps of ridiculously underpowered offensive capabilities (almost totally ineffective speargun… the sharks barely notice that I’m shooting them) PLUS none of the Thief’s ‘trademark’ defensive skills (stealth, Thieves Guild, Caltrops, Dual-Dagger melee acrobatics, etc.) to mitigate the absurd difficulty level.

Also, to those who say “get a friend” I would respectfully point out that some of us, sometimes, enjoy soloing and don’t want to be FORCED to group with anyone for these story missions. I tend to agree with previous posters who say that the Personal Story missions should be soloable by all profs on-level, so even if it WAS possible for Thieves and other profs to solo this level 68 quest at level 80, we shouldn’t have to wait until we out-level the quest by 12 levels to complete it, especially when we suddenly discover that some of them STILL are not soloable even at level 80.

Lolyta.4582:

Shannon.9583:

All you guys need to do is come back when you are a few levels higher. The storyline missions get easy if you out level them a bit.

This is only true for some professions. Although this was soloable on my Ranger (at level 80) and Guardian (on-level at 68), my Thief is unable to complete this Level 68 “Sink the Boneship” PS segment at level 80 equipped with all Level 80 Rares with 3-4 Exotics.

One non-boss Risen Shark 2-shots my Thief, and since it’s underwater, I have the double-whammy handicaps of ridiculously underpowered offensive capabilities (almost totally ineffective speargun… the sharks barely notice that I’m shooting them) PLUS none of the Thief’s ‘trademark’ defensive skills (stealth, Thieves Guild, Caltrops, Dual-Dagger melee acrobatics, etc.) to mitigate the absurd difficulty level.

Also, to those who say “get a friend” I would respectfully point out that some of us, sometimes, enjoy soloing and don’t want to be FORCED to group with anyone for these story missions. I tend to agree with previous posters who say that the Personal Story missions should be soloable by all profs on-level, so even if it WAS possible for Thieves and other profs to solo this level 68 quest at level 80, we shouldn’t have to wait until we out-level the quest by 12 levels to complete it, especially when we suddenly discover that some of them STILL are not soloable even at level 80.

Recommend: Thief wield spear underwater, spam 5

Please bear in mind I haven’t read all 7 pages of this thread, so I apologise if these suggestions have been made before.

Gaz.8194:

Reading the thread I see 2 obvious conclusions:

1) I did it fine on my Thief
2) I did it fine on my Warrior

that also corrisponds with the sentiment all over the forum about those 2 classes.

This reflects my personal experience also. I’ve had no difficulty at all in PvE with my Warrior (except Champs, ofc)

The personal story if anything is too easy. Again, as a Warrior.

Warriors have reasonably good crowd-focused abilities (with off-hand axes, greatsword, hammer etc) and some good AoE with longbows. Crowds of mobs are rarely an issue if you’re equipped to cope.

I can appreciate that other professions might have difficulty with this. I don’t have vast experience with the other professions but it’s almost always the case that some classes are better with crowds of mobs than others.

Instead of calling for a “blanket nerf” (as someone did earlier in this thread) maybe ANet could think about changing the number/frequency/level/type of mobs coming at the player depending on their profession and trait selection?

(The following is just an example – I have no idea if this is accurate with regard to mesmers or not; it only serves to illustrate my point)
A mesmer may get a better, ‘fairer’ challenge given one Veteran, whereas a Warrior may have a more challenging experience with 7 similar-level trash mobs that apply lots of conditions.

I guess it all comes down to playing towards the strengths/weaknesses of a character’s profession/build. Provide a challenge for them, but not something that clearly disadvantages them – it currently seems to favour particular professions over others.

And after all, isn’t this is a “Personal” story?

This isnt a fix to the problems that people are having, but if players were able to go back
in the storyline to the previous story, they could then opt to change their choice in how they went forward.
Many of the storylines have choices as to how you wish to proceed depending on how you answer the questions, and this then determines what the next encounter is.
Some of the fights that you have to do are far easier for some classes than others.

Wait! I want the personal story to be HARDER!

I want it to be a training ground for dungeons and pvp.XD

I have low reflexes and bad camera control, so having hard personal stories could help me get better. Maybe.XD

I have completed the game with Ele, Warrior, Mesmer. I consider a mission difficult if I have to corpse run more than 2 times on any of the characters.

I would say this include the 2 Claw Island missions and the Rubicon mission in Timberline Falls. If you choose the escort mission in Mt Maelstrom, that is difficult as well.

All the above missions are quite long, so having to corpse run multiple times makes them not fun to play.