Guild Wars 2

Just did Maw for the first time after the boss buff, and I’d have to say the buff is WAY over the top, and definitely a change for the worse.

The Maw shaman fight used to be a 20 second nuke fest, and there was a good chance you’d not even get a reward if you weren’t careful to get stuck in early. That was bad.

So the boss has been buffed, and now it’s a 5 minute nuke fest. There are no new tactics worthy of the name (I didn’t even notice the new “ice vortexes”, which got completely lost in the usual graphics lag mess that is the shaman fight). Frankly with the changes to Tequatl in this patch that’s probably a good thing – but in practice it means that all you do is stand there and cycle through your skills, watching the boss health creeping down for minutes on end and getting thoroughly bored. I could have gone Ay eF Kay (1) in the middle of the fight, still have gotten the chest, and had more fun into the bargain.

Frankly, this wasn’t a good call. Upping the boss’s health a bit (to make the fight last a LITTLE longer and let people actually have time to get back and stuck in before he died) would have been fine. Anything more was unnecessary; and upping to THIS extent was simply pointless and boring.

(1) Apologies for that, but the ludicrous site obscenity filter thinks it’s rude if I spell it correctly.

Thats what they do in GW2 if something needs to be harder they just make it have a billion HP.

Inb4 some fanboi comes along saying “it’s only been a day, be patient, give it a few weeks, people have to learn the fight, it’ll get faster in time, why do you want everything given to you for simply logging in”.

I don’t mind harder fights, but sadly this will lead to reduced number of people actually doing those events.
Tequatl is really enjoyable, but after everyone gets the achievements, I don’t think as many people will bother with it (at least not on my server). And a lot of ppl are needed.

Jeez people it’s only been a day, be patient, give it a few weeks, people have to learn the fight, it’ll get faster in time, why do you want everything given to you for simply logging in.

XD

At least now people actually have chance to make it to event once they see grawls are attacking. Good thing shaman fight lasts longer than my loading screen, i will probably be able to get there in time now.

WereDragon.6083:

Jeez people it’s only been a day, be patient, give it a few weeks, people have to learn the fight, it’ll get faster in time, why do you want everything given to you for simply logging in.

Yeah, Last night I did Maw and Shatterer, and neither were in any way better. They just took a bit longer (maybe 150% as long for kitten, 1000% longer for Maw), but I felt no more threatened than usual in either fight, and it just was more boring.

Claw actually had a few changes, he seemed to use his Fear more often in the first fight, and the avalanches are backwards now, but it wasn’t actually any harder to do (might have been with less people).

ANet should follow a simple rule when trying to buff a boss mob: Do not raise their HP. If they have to raise their HP then they’ve probably failed at something else and should fix that instead. Making a fight take longer makes it LESS fun, not more.

At least now people actually have chance to make it to event once they see grawls are attacking. Good thing shaman fight lasts longer than my loading screen, i will probably be able to get there in time now.

This isn’t how I would do it. If they want to make the event take longer start to finish, the best way would be to make the Grawl portion last longer. This way, peopl can do all the phases of the event, rather than just the last phase. Ideally they would also buff up some of the middle phases when you have a lot of people, like instead of spawning six shamen and a bodyguard at all times, spawn a ton of them when there are a ton of players, and make some vets, and the currently vet guard into a champ. Make that phase take 1-2 minutes instead of ten seconds.

I was actually hoping for a more exciting Shatterer. Y’know, not just standing left, pressing 1. But it was same old, just took longer. -_-’ Harder is good, more tedious isn’t.
Increased health pools are just lame, look at HotW.

The problem with Shatterer, and many of the boss fights, is that they’re more boring now. Do ANet play their own game?

Previously, I could stand by Shatterer’s right claw, auto-attack for two minutes and receive a reward. In buffed version I stand by Shatterer’s right claw, auto-attack for five minutes and receive a reward.

A more interesting change would have been to buff the HP and damage-output of his adds; they should represent a danger, not trash that dies to incidental AoE within a second of spawning. To keep the group mobile, Shatterer should be casting some ground-based AoE.

Mechanics are interesting. Increased HP – usually not.

lol……whining about a fight taking 4 or 5 minutes instead of 60 seconds. some of these events were over before you could even get there from the waypoint. the extra hp was needed.

and maw is fine for a starter boss…..the vortexes are noticeable but easy enough to deal with as a starter boss should be. same goes for fire ele.

that said…I agree that there is a fine line in balancing time investment vs. reward……and that the higher level world bosses should have their difficulty tweaked by new mechanics and not just stat number increases or time-limits. it’s better than nothing, but still feels unsatisfying for some events.

if jormag had the same number of stages/mechanics, but could be done in about half the time….you’d have a nice sweet-spot. unfortunately, no matter how much “fun” or engaging a world boss encounter is initially…..you will eventually stop doing it if the reward doesn’t match the time investment. 5-10min is fine given the current rewards…………..but the new Teq will be a one-and-done for me unless they improve the rewards drastically.

I believe the increased HP and some added mechanics here and there like for the Fire Ele vortex are just placeholders until they iron out unique and challenging mechanics like that of the new Tequatl for the rest of the world bosses. If this is not the case, then:

BWAAHAHAHAAHAHA

lol……whining about a fight taking 4 or 5 minutes instead of 60 seconds. some of these events were over before you could even get there from the waypoint. the extra hp was needed.

Only if they make them engaging enough to justify it. In the case of most of these fights, the pre-events gave plenty of time to get there before the end. If you just try to log in when you see “Attack the Shaman” on the trackers, then yeah, you’re sol, but if you go as soon as you see “The Grawl are being aggressive” then you should get there with about ten minutes to spare.

Stx.4857:

Thats what they do in GW2 if something needs to be harder they just make it have a billion HP.

That is exactly what I said last night while was everyone was auto attacking for 5 minutes and laughing at his health in map/say chat last night

When you check your inventory/salvage/open bags or talk to others in chat during a fight in a game then it’s not a very engaging fight. Or is it just me?

Seems to be a common thing these days. I quit BL2 because of UVHM. Not because it was hard but because loads of health on monsters is just tedium.

Paul.4081:

When you check your inventory/salvage/open bags or talk to others in chat during a fight in a game then it’s not a very engaging fight. Or is it just me?

Yeah, I also salvaged during Shatterer yesterday. Never did that before, as it didn’t last long. But now the fight takes time without actually being challenging, so salvaging / TP is necessary to fight the boredom.

See, I’m the opposite of most posting in this thread. In my view, Teq is kittenedly over-the-top in terms of difficulty, but the new bosses are just about perfect. You can die, and if you’re not paying attention you most certainly will die, and it’s possible to lose. That’s about perfect for me.

The “do a highland jig while juggling flaming tigers and doing brain surgery with your left foot on a rollercoaster” level of insane that is the new tequatl – that’s just wrong.

I used to do lots of world bosses, sometimes even the same one twice a day with different characters.
Today, after pewpewing the maw for 5-10 mins, I realised I felt more like doing my math assignments than continue playing. That’s how boring it was.
You’ve failed, Arenanet. You’ve failed miserably.

Personally I like the changes. Out of the bosses I did get to try last night.

Tequatl: Enough said about this one… I’m loving this fight even if I’ve never managed to get him to 75% yet.

Maw: No big changed that I could see other than the fight being longer now, which is a plus in my book… at least gets me enough time to actually zone when a guildie calls out that it’s starting, and guessing it’ll also give better chance to actual low levels to get credit.

FE: No big changed that I saw, but seems it’s a little harder judging by the amount of dead people on it.

Golem: Great change. I love this fight now and how you actually have to pay attention and move out of the electric fields, If anything, I’d say this should be the example to follow on open world boss fights.