Guild Wars 2

Is anyone else tired of hacking at Jormag’s toe-nails?

I accept that the bosses (especially major ones) in mmo will always be bought down to a killing science by the mass amount of players looking for the most efficient way of taking it down. But to be honest I really wish that efficiency didn’t point me directly at smacking away at a dragon’s foot.

Yes there are adds around and maybe a crystal or ice wall will pop up, and those are good. But has anyone ever stood at the edge of the cliff before The Shatter started and looked around seeing 30-40 people all spread out like a pretty awesome army and thought “Wow this mass scale PvE combat is great”, but as everyone rushed to stack to one spot next to the dragon’s right paw you thought “Oh well, lets just get that chest and see if I can get anything not blue.”

I love these great epic dragons Anet has given us, but I really hope someone can come up with a solution to make it more of a fight and less of a chore.

I don’t mean making them harder, or saying it’s too easy or anything like that. Cause I confess I stand there and fight the feet like everyone else. I just meant I wish the dragon was less like a giant turret and more like a living kitten.

Admittedly I have presented no solution here at all, but I suppose I’m just wondering if this view is shared.

I agree. The fact safespots are used for all these fights makes them rather boring. I think the first step to making the fights interesting is the removal of the safespots so people have to fight the dragons the way they were intended. I’d always hoped the dragons would fly around the whole zone as they took damage (e.g. every 25% hp lost it moves to another area within the same zone and wreaks havoc). Even if the locations aren’t far from each other, just the dragons actually moving would make the fights more lively.

I kind of prefer fighting dragons with ranged weapons so I can actually aim at the head convincingly rather than sitting bashing it in the foot until it dies.

There are safe spots? I never knew.

I have only killed the dragons a handful of times. I die a lot, even just trying to get into pistol range…

The safe spots are quite annoying. You would think the highest source of dps coming from its paw would make the dragon turn and smack them away but it doesn’t. The Shatterer is I think a great example. If you stand in front of it with ranged weapons (I have couple times) it is quite difficult staying alive. It shoots out several high dmg aoes summons minions and swipes at it. It actually feels like an epic fight with how dangerous up front can be. The side however you avoid 1 move every 10 or so seconds it feels like. Very easy.

Dragon fights are boring. Some models will never load on my screen during the fight and you’re lucky to have a green in your “epic loot” even decked out in full magic find. The waypointing to get there costs more than the event rewards you with. Safe spots make the fight too eas… Let me explain it in simpler terms. I can literally flick on autoattack and afk to get a drink and come back to be alive with full health and a gold medal for the event.

Until improvement is made, I don’t see any reason to do it.

magic find doesnt effect chests

But yeah, safe spots are the number 1 reason the shatterer and claw fights are ridiculously easy, if you had to actually stand where their attacks are aimed they are both very deadly in their own rights, shatters aoe’s can hit hard and claws ice shards can push you back killing you or setting you up for the icicle drop, heck even the second phase the adds on the sides that people have gotten used to ignoring can often 2 shot you if your squishy.

I’m glad I’m not the only one who feels this way. I like GW2 better than just about every mmo I’ve played yet, but I just wish they can alter these dragon fights so that it’s more dynamic rather than a static grind.

What do you guys thing could be done? I’d obviously love to see the dragon moving and fighting like a creature, however I can understand how the arena for such a fight could be an issue since the dragon is so big.

The only thing I’ve come up with so far is to separate the “Dragon” into different sections and players need to co-ordinate and take down different sections in different ways (such as wings, or breath, or aura) in order to complete it.

I’ve no knowledge of actual game engineering so forgive me if it’s not actually feasible or anything, however I think it would at least give something to these battles.