Guild Wars 2

I realize that most of the people on these forums are uber, and will respond that I’m just a noob without skill. But I find Cursed Shore almost impossible to uncover solo, and it certainly isn’t any fun. My favorite part of this game has been exploring, but Cursed Shore has spoiled my feeling for the game. With the mobs every 20 feet but with a 50 foot aggro range, the stuns and pullbacks, you can’t take 10 steps without having to fight 4 or more mobs. And by the time you kill them the almost instant respawns mean that the mobs you killed 10 steps ago are back and ganking you.

I’m on a server with long time friends, but they are all 6+ timezones from me. Which means most of my time is spent by myself. I resent being forced by a game to play in a group, and having the thing I like best in a game being stiffled because you have decided I need to make new friends. Plus, grinding the mats I need to level my crafting to better my gear is almost impossible.

I suggest that you either make Cursed Shore a bit easier for a new lvl 80, or create another level 80 area that is explorable solo.

All of Orr is tough, and most people hate it, I think it was thrown together in a rush to get the game out.

The mobs are annoying, they are all the same, they respawn too fast.

I did it on my ranger solo, but pretty much ran through it.

And yes people will tell you how “elite” they are, and how it was a breeze, and not to cry, sad really.

It’s not impossible to solo, but the whole fast-respawn-mass-aggro is intended.

I just never go there solo. It’s quite atmospheric to have this “army” of undead actually make you group up. They’re dangeorus, don’t try this alone.

I understand the frustration. To be honest, I stayed there lone enough to get the waypoints, vistas and POIs then left the zone and didn’t look back. I love this game and have enjoyed each and every zone in it… until I got to the Orr zones. They are dark, depressing and way too crowded with monsters to enjoy the zone. I don’t know if it was a ‘thrown together to get the game out’ situation or just that the people who designed the zone were maybe in a dark mood when they did it, but it doesn’t feel like its consistent with the vibrancy and interest of the rest of the game to me.

I found Malchor’s Leap to be much harder.
Those stupid zombies have all sorts of CC and snares, so trying to go past them unharmed is often impossible.
That map took me twice what the other two maps took, as the enemy density is stupidly high and you can’t take two steps without aggroing at least 3 enemies.

But in cursed shore I could stroll around in ‘safe’ passages, avoiding enemies altogether, and the only things that gave me problems were the idiotic Champions that decide to sit on top of skill points.
People do not work together to fight them, since they give horribly bad rewards and take a lot of time, so instead, they wait until some poor guy comes along and attacks the champion thinking the others will pitch in, and instead they go commune, while the champion thrashes the poor guy.

I was an elementalist, so I used tanking skill like Obsidian Flesh instead.

I found Malchor’s harder as well. Cursed’s biggest problem is some areas are just too hard for the average group of farmers to bother with. People would much rather farm Meddler’s Summit and Plinx (even post patch) than fight all the way to Grenth, then lose and fight all the way back out. Even getting to Arah is easier.

I know that’s intended of course

I play as an Elementalist. Depending on the area of the zone, I’m either D/D or Staff. I’m by no means uber, only have a few Exotics, and my Traits are allocated for variety rather than singular focus on just DPS or just Support or just Survivability.

Cursed is very soloable. Just don’t avoid the DE zergs because that’s where the most fun is, and makes zone completion much easier.

Vondo.1460:

I resent being forced by a game to play in a group, and having the thing I like best in a game being stiffled because you have decided I need to make new friends. Plus, grinding the mats I need to level my crafting to better my gear is almost impossible.

I understand that this will seem offensive, but when you play an MMORPG and then complain about not being able to play the game solo…yeah, invalidated.

As for the crafting, I work 40-50 hours a week, have a ladyfriend (not girlfriend/fiance/wife), and two characters that I actively play. My guardian has a full exotic knight’s set, working on magic find (explorer?) set [2/5], and 4/6 of the tough/vit/power karma gear. My Mesmer is nearly 80 and has enough karma for two karma exotic pieces immediately at 80.

It’s not as fast as WoW, but put in some effort. :-P

-Hate

Gonna bump this, as I’m sitting in Malchor’s Leap right now staring down a skill point that is literally impossible to cap solo thanks to an active statue (which requires completion of a lengthy group meta-event to disable) and dense mobs.

Keep this in mind: ANet said it would be possible to solo the explorable content of this game. This was stated in several articles before and after the game’s release. So it’s not asking a lot for them to keep their word.

Group events are great, but by no means should grouping ever be required to obtain any objective toward 100% world completion outside of WvW. All skill points, POIs, vistas, and heart quests should be soloable. And they were, up until Malchor’s Leap. This should be changed.

The big problem with Orr is that the respawn times are far too fast. I don’t understand why it hasn’t been fixed yet. There are still several places where a mob spawns the instant that you kill the previous one.

Most of Orr seems to have a respawn timer of ~20 to 30 seconds which is just daft.

Hateborne.7942:

I understand that this will seem offensive, but when you play an MMORPG and then complain about not being able to play the game solo…yeah, invalidated.

I agree with this.

While being able to play solo in much of the game is a nice bonus (and to be fair, you can play 98% or so of GW2 perfectly solo, it’s just boring as hell :P ), it can hardly be a major requirement for the game.
Because, the exact opposite has to be (by nature of the genre) a focus of the game development.

ZaxanRazor.6235:

The big problem with Orr is that the respawn times are far too fast. I don’t understand why it hasn’t been fixed yet.

Because it’s on purpose?
It is the way they confer the design of the zone. Which is that we’re tackling a near-endless undead army. Am I really the only one who got the “Group up for this!”-message after a mere 5 minutes in Straits?

But mobs respawning the instant you kill another one, and it going on infinitely?

If that’s by design it’s just bad.

They don’t respawn indefinitely unless bugged. They can respawn instantly once, or if you were to take extremely long to kill that respawn (the respawn timer sort of cycles while the mob is also up, meaning a single respawn can be “queued up”).

This seems to be a result of the code which adapts areas to massive amounts of players, because it doesn’t happen all the time.

Probably a bit buggy, I suppose. I’ve seen it happen, but only in singular cases, and usually only if there actually were lots of players around, but considering Noll also didn’t scale up at all (causing his bugs), I wouldn’t be surprised to find out it doesn’t work properly. :P

A suggestion to OP. Find some guild that has your timezone, even on another server, and use (abuse) the guesting system to finally have a group to explore Orr with.

You don’t have to leave your friends’ guild, and you will certainly find people willing to help you in other servers with your timezone.

After all, that’s what the guesting and multiguild systems are for.

I tried solo with thief and an undergeared necro and it’s really just the drakes posing issues.
Rest is rather L2P. Take a minute to change one or two utility skills maybe.

Sounds like the OP needs to make a dedicated PvE/Dungeon build.

Heck, I’m a thief and Orr is a total cakewalk, mass CC? no problem!
Champions? takes too long to kill but I can solo them.
Events? Depends on the event but bar temples I can generally solo those too.

If cursed shore is impossible to solo , then i who got pretty much the whole map completion alone (Well i did not join parties , but on some parts random people passing by joined , not that i took them into account when the fight started) must have done some kind of trick.

So , you can solo , i pretty much did.

I’m willing to bet that OP is just too stubborn to change his build.

i solo it….. my ranger owns apparently then XD

The truth is that level 80 zones (including Malchor’s Leap and dungeon explorable paths) were designed to be difficult, and that the loot from those areas is supposed to be hard-won. That this difficulty level is higher than in other games is a game feature, not a bug.

You are not meant to solo those areas in their entirety. Instead, players are expected to help each other out against the more difficult veterans/dynamic events/huge mobs of risen.
And you don’t need to agree with your friends to play Southsun Cove for this (although it helps), because if a stranger sees you struggle against a tough opponent, that stranger is likely to come and help you for a minute. Or that’s the design intention anyway.

My only real issue is that some of the skill points simply aren’t soloable unless you’re incredibly lucky (this goes for Malchor’s as well). Guarded by a veteran (at least) with others nearby, with a respawn timer too quick for you to be able take them down one at a time effectively if you’re a low dps class. And if nobody else in the zone needs the skill point, it’s tough to find others help out unless you want to wait a long time.

That’s a bit too much luck involved. I actually don’t mind the difficulty level overall. It forced me to re-spec and actually put some thought into my build (made me realize how poorly I’d been doing it up to that point), but some of the details just become frustrating more than anything.

Well your forgetimg one thing .

game might be meant to play in groups but when did you last time try to find a group for exploration in orr areas?You find one these days because all are farming and nobody wants to do exploration! So solo able cursed shore sure sounds good to me. And Carrighan yes your the only one that got such message!

I currently have around 260k karma (mostly from religiously completing the daily achievement, stacking up the karma jugs and then consuming with boosters).

In the last 3 weeks or so since hitting 80 I have not yet been able to purchase a single piece of armor from the Orr temple vendors. It just seems that no one is doing the temple events any more.

I’d like to see this gear made available for purchase somewhere more accessible.

Honestly the Straights of Devastation is the hardest of the Orr zones to traverse simply because everything has a yank, cripple, chill, life leach, knockdown, or knockback.

But even still as both of my cloth classes(Elementalist and Mesmer) I’ve had no issue exploring any part of the map. The only thing I’ve needed help with was a skill point(or two) and a vista in malchors leap.

It’s not impossible, it’s just irritating.

It’s supposed to be a hard zone. Get better gear and it’ll help with your survival. There are tons of mobs, they almost all have brutal special abilities that are annoying, but there are some paths with fewer mobs or that are clear.

Learn to pick your spots. If you just blaze a direct path across the map, yeah, you’ll suffer. Exploration isn’t always about moving in a straight line across a map, it’s about finding a safe route.

Some parts of Orr are ultra dense with mobs and not places you wanna go without a good reason. It’s supposed to be that way. It’s Zhaitan’s back yard, not a park to waltz thru.

Plus, like it or not, this is an MMORPG. It’s supposed to be a social and multiplayer game. Granted that concept is a sad joke in MMORPGs these days, but it’s not our or ANet’s fault that you decide to make friends with people you can’t even play with!

It’s incredibly horrid in the way this zone is made.

HERE COME seems to have become the new internet meme when it comes to GW2 I’ve seen alot on the interwebs about how people feel about it.

Making a zone a zerg zone when events aren’t occuring is a bad design imo. It’s hard enough trying to get all of the wp when you venture into the zone the first time but there are things like the island with the temple that is ALWAYS taken over on my server. And in order to get to the port you have to run thru long hallways with both pullback mobs and spiders to read the area only to find there are veterans and a champ most of the time in the room with the port in it.

Rest assured OP it’s DEFINITELY NOT you in any logical sense. When people are telling you that they are either turning into Risen themselves right there at their desk (because they lose all humanity when they make comments like this) or they are decked out entirely because they had friends (or what they call them, “temporarily useful advancement tools” which of course aren’t friends at all you see)

I feel orr is soloable, hard, but is definetely possible. Im a ranger, and I survive there for long periods of time. I dont farm or anything like that, I just wanted to fight strong opponents. Still, there is this weird dizzying skill in some areas that make it impossible to fight, like the skill of a mesmer all over an area. THOSE I avoid, along some champions. BTW, I dont have ubber gear exactly…

Why are you Orr?
You need to be in LA doing Fractals. Dont get left behind cause you wont catch up. You will left out with bad gear stats and no one to group up with unless a few of you friends get on at odd hours. This is the gear grind now.

ORR – sorry couldnt help it.
Transfer maybe –
Orr is not fun alone it is very difficult and if you die you nearest waypoint is usually for trinity a map or 2 back. I wish you luck but unfortunately the focus of the game has shifted and there is no reason to be anywhere else other than the fractals. Gear and Loot and progression are all there in 1 spot and no where else.

I run around Orr solo all the time collecting nodes, killing mobs, and just enjoying the scenery. I’m a level 80 Mesmer/Elementalist with almost exclusively level 70 exotics on(as I’m still working on getting a dungeon set). Yes the risen are kitten(yes I typed out kitten so you won’t give me an infraction for it ANet) annoying, but to say the area’s not soloable is a L2P issue.

The atmosphere is great It gives you the “fear” feeling and you are actually “scared” to adventure alone which is great as design BUT, letting the game solo able in that zone will be out of context: you go there in a war zone with all races gathered.
I think this is the time to “hire” some mercenaries.
Players who travel alone can hire up to 4 NPcs in the party. Mercenaries will have a timed spawn so if a player takes them in his party, other mercenaries will spawn in 10 min. If players will come in parties, they will will able to hire mercenaries up to the party max number.
This ca be a good opportunity for A-Net to reintroduce the Heroes from GW1 with a twist.

The problem with that would be that everyone could bring mercenaries. The reason it worked in GW1 was because everyone left into their own instanced world.

I found the landing at the Straits of Devastation to be the most dangerous part actually. Ofcourse, it’s pretty easy to solo scout as a level 80 thief since I can just drop aggro and outrun everything, or if I feel like – kill everything (apart from strolling giants etc :P).

One of my guildies, a necro also doesn’t seem to have any problem strolling through it solo as there isn’t much that is actually a threat to him.

However none of that helps you so, how about just taking the opportunity to make new friends? Make it a game to try get one or two new people to take you to each new Poi?

Its not just Cursed Shore, its half the game. I’ve determined that Arenanet is a company of sadists who hate their customers, because they’re constantly trying to give us headaches by making us grind against hordes of mobs that respawn almost as fast as you can kill them… if you CAN kill them.

Was trying to get to the skillpoint near Blighted Arch in Malchor’s Leap today, and it’s impossible to even get to the statue alone. Enough mobs to make SURE you’re dead on top of the statue constantly stunning you. I believe the statue’s stuns are linked to the Legendary Priestess of Lyssa nearby, but I’ve never seen a big enough group doing the event.

Hell, even some of the storyline quests seem to require groups. Waves of over-armored undead slaughter the useless NPC ‘backup’ in no time at all. Try to rez the NPCs, and you get eaten alive by unfought mobs, so you’re stuck with a very aggravating grind in half the quests.

Hateborne.7942:

It’s not as fast as WoW, but put in some effort. :-P

-Hate

I found it to be faster. I was able to be max geared (except for the lame legendary bows) MUCH faster then in WoW. Take WoW and convert all raids into 5-man dungeons and you have this games gearing method.

On top of that, you don’t even have to do dungeons. You can get almost the exact same gear by crafting it. Crafted gear has 2 less status bonus. I crafted my exotic weapons and armor within a few days of maxing out Huntsman and Leatherworking. Now I’m super bored and don’t know what to do with myself.

Edit: typos…