Guild Wars 2

So yeah, that was pretty stupid. I’m playing an Elementalist, so I can’t take many hits anyway, but this is the first story quest where I thought it was just too much. It was a bit bumpy from the start, but it only went downhill when I had to rescue Mira’s squad from the beach.

There’s however many enemies down there, with more spawning as you dispatch them. It took three separate attempts of slowly getting Mira’s health up as I kept getting interrupted by enemies, and I can barely take a few hits when reviving. Forgal got downed as I was running away from the beach with Mira and figured he was a lost cause as I’d only die trying to get back there.

Running across the courtyard to meet with the charr guy and three enemies spawn and I nearly get killed by them. Poison doesn’t help and they hit hard, and I just couldn’t do enough damage.

Then we get to the beacon. Running up wasn’t too bad, but then I aggroed a few mobs that by this point I knew I simply wouldn’t be able to kill. I run up, activate the beacon, and the mobs already there all join in as I run back. At this point I’ve got six mobs on me as I run back to the courtyard for the final stand, but luckily they deaggro when I get down there.

Now, the last stand. This basically involved me running in circles around the courtyard for the whole encounter. Had to swap out to water and heal myself with everything I had multiple times, and during this whole situation I didn’t kill a single enemy. Not one.

I’m by no means the best player, but I have a fairly good grasp at how to play the game as far as staying alive goes, using trait bonuses and swapping attunements to get rid of conditions and gain buffs etc. However, those don’t help me kill the enemies. I simply couldn’t afford to actively engage any enemy in that scenario because I’d lose due to their high HP and damage output, when I simply can’t stand there and take it.

This may have come across as more of a rant, so I apologise if that’s the case, but this really stood out as me having no chance whatsoever. Given the tone of the mission, this may have been intentional, but I doubt the idea was for me to just run past or circle strafe every enemy until the story finished.

Also it kind of glitched at the end of the mission because Forgal was dead, and it looked like there should have been a scene with him going up against the dragon. All that happened was (after the cutscene conversation between the player and Forgal), my character model just disappeared, then a couple of seconds later the door to the courtyard slammed shut. Then the screen just went black as Forgal said some stuff. Not sure if that was meant to happen, but yeah.

That’s how it goes. I think that was the mission where I ended up removing all of my gear to get it done so the armor I’d just spend all my gold on wouldn’t all end up broken within 3 hours of purchase. The best skills I was able to use for missions like that (did this on my Necro) are the ones that I could keep moving while doing, and just spam conditions and debuffs/buffs everywhere, so the NPCs could take care of them. I did a lot of rezzing NPCs too. That helped a lot.

Never had the opportunity to res any NPCs because I would have died in the process, but at least it wasn’t just me that had trouble.

Have not even tried that one, heard so much and was already quite fed up from other personal story missions with to many opponents (like the quest when you join the Priory as a Norn, which I only could get done with frends helping me).

As an Elementalist I also had to add some health, run back after dying and add some health, repeating for about 4 times.
The rest was a piece of cake though, kiting all day every day.

Yeah I mean kiting isn’t hard, but there’s no way that’s what they want you to do for the mission. Running past every enemy then circle strafing for five minutes isn’t exactly an epic last stand.

The annoying thing is, it’s a really fun and intense mission. Yet a lot of that is eroded away by the frustration that many of the non-soldier classes have with the ridiculous swarms of enemies and how they rapidly they respawn.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that even a skilled player can wipe very easily on such missions whilst the soldier classes get a huge amount of legroom for mistakes. It’s a little silly at times and really makes me wonder about just how much was tested. It’s no secret that warriors and guardians are very popular classes and first choices for a great many players, so perhaps feedback was biased due to so many claiming such missions were ‘easy’ or ‘fine’ even though other classes can struggle due to how our mechanics work?

As a level 59 Ranger, I’d say this quest definitely needs to be looked at. The risen either need to have lower hp or be in smaller groups. I shouldn’t be fighting 5+ enemies that have more hp than mobs outside of the personal stories, can poison, and have knockdown.

I have full green level 50 armor with precision and power, and my weapons are level 53 yellows. However, it takes quite some time to kill any of the risen. Lowering hp or mob amounts, preferably hp so they can keep the feeling of being overwhelmed by a horde of undead, would greatly increase the fun of this personal story mission.

Edit: After doing the quest after this one, they should definitely make the risen have low hp. The Ghost Rite does a good job of having a large amount of undead without slowing the pace of combat because you can only take a few hits before dieing.

I really enjoyed this quest – and all that have come since.

I went in as a mesmer and didn’t have any trouble at all. There were a few intense moments, but I let the NPCs do most of the tanking – as well as a bit of kiting.

If anything they might increase the recommended level a bit – but I thought the difficulty was spot on (no wipes).

To get to Mira I jumped off the little “cliff” down to her. Revived her without attracting the risen. Then just ran back to base ignoring the mobs.

Went to the beacon, ignoring everything and hit the button as soon as I got there. When the little movie was done, instead of going right back down to the courtyard and having the mobs attack me the whole way, I jumped off and went to the dock area and came back in that way.

I realized right away there was no point in fighting in the courtyard, so I just sat up on the wall and waited for whatever was going to happen. Then I jumped off the wall onto the beach and swam back around to the docks and run through the risen again to get the cut scene. As soon as that was over I ran straight to the boat.

No deaths. That was my first run through and I had not read any spoilers about the mission. I’ve realized that in most of the missions just standing and fighting is the wrong way to do it.

Thief here.

There were a few tough parts, but I found the quest to be much more doable than a couple others up to that point (like, oh, say Set to Blow…. had to get two other people to help on that one and we still wound up all dying).

Reviving Mira on the beach was the only part I had trouble with… the boat kept bombarding the area where she was. The Risen ignored me for the most part. The Risen I did have to fight weren’t too much trouble… but pistol off-hand for thieves has an AoE blind that makes most PvE cake.

If anything, I might say the objectives for Claw Island weren’t very clear. Especially after lighting the beacon, when I was supposed to hold off the Risen in the courtyard. They just seemed to keep respawning… nothing really indicates you just need to wait.

I did this one with my Mesmer. The early parts were easy, Mesmers are awesome at one-on-one encounters. The entire rest of the mission, from getting off the girl off the beach onward, was spent kiting and running. I didn’t kill many Risen except a couple of small groups on the way to lighting the beacons, and those groups respawned in less than 10 seconds by the clock. Finally I gave up and made no attempt to do anything in the courtyard except survive all the poisoning and apparently random hits. Somehow this resulted in my successfully completing the segment and I was then able to run to the boat and complete the mission with 30+ Risen right on my tail.

This mission tries to be epic, even IS epic for a few moments (the dragon breaking down the wall is awesome!), but the Risen need their HP reduced. I can’t emphasize this enough. The point of swarming hordes of undead is that you can slaughter them all but more keep coming. If we can’t slaughter any of them, it takes all the fun out of it. Risen should be brittle and do crazy stuff when you kill them (think of the Afflicted in GW:F), but they should BE killable!

If you want to go for the “never really dead” thing, then take a cue from Dry Bones and have them fall to the ground for a while before getting back up! At least that way we’d feel like we accomplished something!

Garenthal.1480

The annoying thing is, it’s a really fun and intense mission. Yet a lot of that is eroded away by the frustration that many of the non-soldier classes have with the ridiculous swarms of enemies and how they rapidly they respawn.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that even a skilled player can wipe very easily on such missions whilst the soldier classes get a huge amount of legroom for mistakes. It’s a little silly at times and really makes me wonder about just how much was tested. It’s no secret that warriors and guardians are very popular classes and first choices for a great many players, so perhaps feedback was biased due to so many claiming such missions were ‘easy’ or ‘fine’ even though other classes can struggle due to how our mechanics work?

Hard to say on this matter, I don’t remember being able to get story to go past the level 16 or 18 mission in the BWEs, so it seems like the content was only tested by the devs and the hardcore beta players that learn on a quick curve to report bugs and such, not really tested by the majority of the playerbase that would be playing it. Also this game has a lot of team oriented balancing, so even though it is possible to solo your personal story, with also the massive enemies spawning it seems more inviting to share the story with friends who at the current time get nothing but wasted time due to lack of reward from another players story.

Just did this with my Necro, so thought I’d throw in my 2 cents.
At level 55 I somehow was able to complete it without perma-dying, but found it about 30 percent fun and 100 percent frustrating (even tho the math is weird on that)
What I hated the most was the endless spawning. OMG with the spawning.
I mean, I’m the kind of player that wants to kill everything (hey I’m a necro!) but nooo, kill two baddies, here come two more. Kill three to make room to rez Mira here come four more.
Ok, now I’m at the tower button, and because, stupid me, thinks its going to take time lite this thing, I’m clearing out undead all over the steps and the platform. Well… guess what happens right when I down the last one… RESPAWN! Right out of THIN AIR! Two on the platform and two below. That’s just unfair.
BTW, I too felt a bit cheated by the cut-scene.
Anyway, just my 2 cents…

This mission is kitteny kitten kitten.

Why these devs can’t find a middle-ground, I don’t know: these personal story missions are either far to easy (boring) or impossible. I can’t begin to figure this one out.

Twelve mobs (that’s not an exaggeration) on me aren’t enough you have to keep respawning more on top of them? Really?

The mobs are not the problem

The fact that risen can frenzy is. It increases the damage output of them by times 2. So it feels like you are fighting 10 of them.

Mesmer’s have it easy here because we can remove boons, I feel sorry for classes that can’t

As an elementalist, I remember this mission as being particularly awful. I died at least 10 times trying to rez the girl on the beach. The only way I managed to finally do it was by summoning my earth elemental a ways down the beach from her and running back to rez her before the risen noticed. My norn guy died and I just left him because there was no way I was going to be able to rez him too.

I think one reason this mission was so bad is that there is no reset. If your ‘helper’ npcs are dead, they stay dead. Instead of your odds of completing the mission improving as you go, they actually get worse because now you don’t have NPCs to help you (not that they are much help anyway), and there are SO MANY MOBS!!!

I did die on some of the missions before this, but usually I deserved it. This was really the first mission where I felt it was nearly impossible to complete, and not completed in the way intended by the game designers.

I think the Battle for Claw Island is one of the outstanding set piece Personal Story instances in the game. It takes place in an expansive interesting environment and involves what seems to be hundreds of scripted NPCs.

My warrior has this personal story at the moment. After about my third failed attempt to revive the person on the beach, I realized that the scenario was indeed that the fort was being overrun, and that no matter how well I fought, more NPCs would keep coming.

At this point I decided to research the instance, viewing a number of fan videos and reading a swath of forum posts and blog posts.

I watched several videos where maxed out warrior types killed and dodged hundreds of Risen to accomplish the two objectives, and also saw several where people simply avoided mobs as much as possible, kiting and running to the objectives.

The conclusion I came back with was that it makes no difference if you kill a thousand or none. The only thing that counts is 1) rezzing the person on the beach, and 2) lighting the watchtower plus getting to the NPC or exit when directed.

I think those asking for the HP to be lowered on the mobs are missing the point as are those who think Warriors have an advantage here.

The instance is scripted that Risen will overrun the fort and continue to spawn as fast or faster than you can kill them.

There are only two outcomes, one is you try to do the impossible and kill Risen and you die. If you are quite skilled you might kill a huge number, but the instance will pop up more Risen for as long as it takes until you make too many mistakes and die. The other outcome is that by luck, speed, guile, or whatever, you manage to devise a way to quickly get to the downed person on the beach and rez them and then get to the tower and light it.

As a story, this one is a downer. There is no good feeling at the end. Your side got beat plain and simple.

So far this is my favorite Personal Story. My only criticism would be if later in the Personal Story an equally large epic kind of battle does not occur with a possible win outcome.

This epic Personal Story is a perfect example of why Anet should give players the option to replay any PE a player has completed. This is a real showpiece and one which it would be tons of fun to replay trying different methods and paths. Of course there would be no rewards and it would have no effect on your character’s real story.

Flame Of The Titan.3649 – frenzy is a effect (like some skills apply bleeds/poison/might/protection, etc not as a condition or boon, but as its own icon and effect, they shouldnt be removable), also in terms of boon removal on bosses, necros do have corrupt boon.

I had serious trouble the first time (being underleveled might have been a reason).

I think the biggest issue is that you cannot direct your friends, if you want to make it somewhere they won’t follow you because they will aggro something along the way. (And yeah, frenzy, hating it since I had to fight Mazdak)

That said, second time through it was pretty easy (if you don’t fight what doesn’t need to be fought):

If you keep off of the path you can reach Mira easily and then simply rush to the General and speak with him, don’t care about the Risen. Then make your way to the lighthouse, again ignore all the Risen, activate the light and jump off the cliff so the Risen won’t follow.

Now you’re back at the entrance, I spent some time trying to get to the central column but I couldn’t make it through the two Risen that kept respawning in the middle so I simply touched the right wall and made it to the two groups of Risen who were fighting the Lionguard and completed the final objective there, didn’t need to kite or anything. YMMV of course, I’m a guardian.

Andele.1306:

Flame Of The Titan.3649 – frenzy is a effect (like some skills apply bleeds/poison/might/protection, etc not as a condition or boon, but as its own icon and effect, they shouldnt be removable), also in terms of boon removal on bosses, necros do have corrupt boon.

Well I can remove it, so it’s either A bugged or B working as intended.

It feels more like a boon.

Flame Of The Titan.3649:

The fact that risen can frenzy is. It increases the damage output of them by times 2. So it feels like you are fighting 10 of them.

I thought I was clear: this isn’t about perception; I literally counted twelve mobs attacking me when I died. More than once. I guess I was the last supper.

Jalad Lantana.3027:

At this point I decided to research the instance, viewing a number of fan videos and reading a swath of forum posts and blog posts.

This is the personal story, not raiding, not explorer dungeons, not group-coordinated instances; I shouldn’t have to stop and do research to complete it.

Jalad Lantana.3027:

getting to the NPC or exit when directed.

That’s where I’m completely stuck; there are too many spawns on me the entire time and mechanics prevent completing the objectives.

As an Engineer it was pretty tough for the most part, but I did manage to get through it without dying.

I liked the idea of the mission, the seriousness and even the mass spawning etc, but going from piece of cake easy in the main PvE, to the level that some of these story missions have can be frustrating and take a lot away imo.

I think that’s the main thing causing people problems with them, most people are spec’d and geared based on the too easy DEs/hearts, then get thrown into something a lot different being forced to take hits.

If more DEs were on the same level as this mission, people would be better used to dealing with this stuff.