Guild Wars 2

Or perhaps to rephrase it slightly better: due to the absense of a dedicated healer and a good aggro mechanic, there’s no way to invest a boss’s difficulty in the damage he deals.

I know that in most MMO’s it’s often considered bad to invoke WoW as an example of how to do things right. There’s a lot of people with grudges towards that game for whatever reason. I don’t care. I’ve not played Cataclysm or Mists, but I have raided almost everything there is to raid up to and including Icecrown 25 hardmodes, so I like to think I know a thing or two about PvE that works.

Quite simply, GW2 PvE does not work.

Do bosses die? Yes. Are dungeons completable? Yes. Can any group setup at all complete a dungeon and defeat a boss? Yes, and while this was initially one of the game’s main selling points, I contend that it is now its prime drawback. Why?

Because if you want to create a dungeon that players can enter with any class setup whatsoever, then you cannot design bosses to account for the presence of certain abilities. You can’t give them high damage, because players might not be able to outheal it. You can’t give them a varied arsenal of abilities, because players might not be able to counter it all. All you can effectively do is give them a boatload of health and make even a group of exotic-clad players take 15 minutes to deplete it.

I like it believe that after spending 5 minutes in combat with the boss without dying, wiping or generally struggling to hold on for dear life, a group has proven their ability to defeat a boss. Everything after that is pure chore and a waste of time. Yet for some reason every boss in the game exists as a pure health dump. There’s not a single encounter in all of HotW explorable or SE explorable that can be rapidly completed. I’ve not fought a single storymode boss that doesn’t take forever.

ArenaNet, don’t you agree that it would simply be a lot more fun to be able to design a boss with interesting abilities? I know that with the way we can switch our utility skills and weapons on the fly and adjust our traits according to what each encounter expects of us, you’d think that perhaps bosses would have some more up their sleeves than “kite them around and shoot them from range.”

I understand that some players will come into this thread and rightfully point out to me the versatility of the Necromancer and how that class deals with conditions, the importance of the Guardian and how that class will take care of boons and heals, the CC of warriors or the combo fields produced by thieves and and elementalists, but the truth of the matter is that this all serves to reinforce my point. Yes, dungeons get easier when you take a diversity of classes, but they are designed to be completed by teams far less diverse in an attempt to increase accessibility.

How awesome would it be if there was a boss whose danger was not so much in having some AoE ability (as most seem to have) but in tossing around stacking conditions that would require rapid removal or even redirection. Then you could for a change not give him a bajillion HP but far less and make the challenge not in depleting the healthbar but in managing the way he afflicts group strength.

Blizzard learned this lesson long ago. Their first dungeons and first raids were nothing but encounters that were major health dumps. With each dungeon boss in this game I feel like I’m back to fighting General Drakkisath or Garr. There’s no fun to be had, here. There’s a reason why WoW’s later dungeons became much more dynamic. The drawback there is that certain encounters require the presence of certain classes, but that also adds importance to playing such a class. Right now picking a class really only revolves around a preference of playstyle and not so much your utility to the group. You want to be a Mesmer? Fine. But you could also be an Engineer. We don’t really care. It’s all up to you.

I’ve so far not completed a single dungeon where players were sad to see that it was over. After 15 to 20 minutes of fighting Wollam or the Destroyer of Worlds or whatever other sort of boss you run into, people have generally had enough.

I will say that Blizzard eventually overdid it in WotLK, where some 5 man heroics were nothing more than 10 minute rushfests where you pulled trash along with the boss and AoE’d it all down because you were geared to hell and didn’t care anyway. I feel that GW2 has the potential to strike a solid balance between the state of dungeons as it is now and WoW’s other extreme, but first the developers have to really change their PvE mindset for that to start happening.

So that’s it. Hope to see some people agree.

I am sure this sort of article have been mentioned many times. And I totally agree with your points.

PvE is just not engaging when all you do is dodge the red circle and kite…cycling thru your puny 10 skill bar rotation…Waste of time when the boss have boatload of health.

Most of all…BORING is what your dungeon encounter feels like at the end.

“How awesome would it be if there was a boss whose danger was not so much in having some AoE ability (as most seem to have) but in tossing around stacking conditions that would require rapid removal or even redirection.”

High priestess of lyssa gives 25 stacks of confusion to everyone throughout the fight. ;p

I do agree though. Bosses like the high priestess of lyssa were some of my favorite fights. Arah actually does some pretty kitten good fights.

1. Skaggoth thing – requires teamwork and co-ordination to stand on the things. Also requires you to have burning in your party setup somewhere
2. lupicus in general – multiphase, HP isnt so much that it’s tedious besides maybe phase 3. Could strip out the last 25% of his hp and itd be a much more enjoyable fight. especially seeing as failing past phase 3 is rather difficult compared to failing in phase 2
3. the jotun stargazer – requires reflection skills, or for the team to have picked up and carried crystals (which can and do break during the fight, causing you to have to rely on player skills)
4. High priestess of lyssa – requires some kind of AoE condition removal or for a team to be very very cautious the entire fight.
5. High priest of grenth – requires teamwork, co-ordination, and also each player must be able to solo effectively
6. If it wasnt so buggy i’d add simin to this list too. Good mechanics, bad execution

Other bosses that are honestly pretty good
1. Taskmaster – SE slavery – requires use of enviroment. Doesnt have tons of hp
2. The golems at the end of SE slavery – Requires teamwork and co-oridnation for the kill. Not that much hp.
3. Forgeman v2 – SE story – fun fight both designwise, lengthwise, and… thematic? Aesthetic? Basically the area and the boss look really cool.
4. Baelfire – CoF story – fun designed, unique to GW2, nice aesthetics
5. that one guy guarding the east braizer – CoF story – he makes this list for 1 reason, cool telegraph. His telegraph for his mechanic (spawning adds) is a vocal one. He says something before he does it. I dont think this is repeated anywhere else.
6. Baelfire v2 – CoF path 2 – fun design, good music
7. end boss CoF path 3 – debated putting him on the list. Loved his arena, it just screams final boss. His mechanic was also pretty ok. Lots of hp though, little tedious
8. Fimble – HoTW – Only boss in HoTW that deserves this spot. HP is fine, mechanic is neat. Everything else in HoTW is pretty gosh darn terrible though
9. that husk in CoE – fun design
10. icebrood guy in CoE – loved having to use environment. Fix the pillar glitch though please

Alpha’s not on this list. Not a good boss design. And making us fight him 9 times is stupid. Sorry to disappoint any alpha lovers out there.

There’s nothing from AC, TA, or CM on this list. I dont consider any of those bosses to be exceptionally good. They’re either bad, or just mediocre.

I’ve not played wow, unless you count 10 days free trail to level 20 is playing wow. aside from that and barely playing GW1 this is my first “real” MMORPG. I think I aggree with you to some degree. I know that arenanets philosophy is to make every group comp doable. But it gets easier the better comp you have. Now they say they have killed the holy trinity, witch I consider they have done, however they dont have to allow every comp, i mean if you run 4 eles and 1 thief you should not be able to make the dungeon. I think like you that the dungeons should have a few requriments like you say, in your example where we would have to deal with condisions this could be managed by a necromancer or a elementalist. both have good mass condition removers, if speced correctly.

this would make a dungeon rely more on team composition aswell on how well a team play together. witch would make the dungeon harder but this could be compensated with greater reward.

Nevertheless, i think that Anet all ready have considered this and that they will change it how they think it should be played, remember we are looking at a completely new game but far from a complete product.

While there may be fewer boss mechanics on average, each of them require more player involvement, as does normal fighting.

In WoW, all you generally have to do is repeat your rotation and step out of the fire. Consequently, more mechanics can be added without over burdoning the players. I played mostly as a tank and healer. As a healer I loked at the health bars only. OK, I had the ground at me feet in the corner of my eye, so I could evade AoE. As a tank, I could mostly stand there and repeatedly hit my priority-list macro. and (in raids) occasionally taunt for aggro-swaps with the second tank. Situational awareness was required only to round up adds. who might spawn (gasp!) at different corners of the room.

In GW2, even normal “white damage” fighting requires players to be on their toes, to watch for who has aggro, to dodge, to apply conditions (slows to allow other players to escape the boss following etc.). I play melee, so I have to be aware of terrain when circle-straving or dodging lest I strave or dodge into a wall. And this is concerning normal mechanics only.
Boss mechanics are usually less complicated than WoW raid mechanics. But as I mentioned above, this is offset by making the handling of said mechanics more engaging. Yesterday at Lieutenant Kohler in AC… I had to constantly be aware of the boss (does he do his pull next?), we LOSed him running circles around pillars until the rest of the group had the adds down.

Yes, Kohler only has a few tricks up his sleeve, but handling those is far more engaging than mainhealing or maintanking Yogg (I’ve done both on my paladin).
And to me, engaging means fun.

EDIT: Lots of HP
- Lots of HP is probably needed so “bring 5 glass cannons and the boss will be down before the last of them dies” is not a viable option, making boss mechanics irrelevant by just speed-DPSing the boss so fast he can’t kill all 5 players.
- Also, it gives us more time and opportunity to give in to ADHS and get killed by an unconcentrated mistake. It adds the requirement to not only have a lucky strek of 30 seconds of all players being aware of what to do, but a few minutes. Those few minutes mean that it takes more than a lucky streak but a group that know what they do.

The lack of holy trinity or whatever has nothing to do with Guild Wars 2 not having interesting fights. There are quite interesting, challenging and fun bosses, however, a lot of the other bosses are pretty bland and boring.
The problem is that they spent a lot on the few good bosses, and they probably didn’t have enough time/resources to flesh out the rest.
I don’t care for holy trinity, because I’ve never played an MMO that had that sort of combat, nor am I interested in seeing any kind of holy trinity combat coming to Guild Wars 2. After having to deal with huge profession discrimination in Guild Wars 1, I’m glad to see that every class is welcome in dungeon parties in Guild Wars 2. I’d rather have “bland” bosses with huge HP pools, than being rejected for a party on my favourite class, or being forced into one specific role I hate to play just to experience an “interesting” boss.

I’ve found WoW to have more bosses that are just pure health dumps than GW2 personally (caveat: haven’t played WoW since WotLK).

I just assume a certain level of health/mitigation from certain tiers of mobs (plain, vets, champs, etc …). Having said that, I’ve found some pretty big variations even among the same tier.

Is the contention that boss fights just take too long in GW2 in general? If that’s the case, then I think it just boils down to personal preference. I remember doing EQ raid bosses back in the days of vanilla EQ, and the big complaint there was that it took an hour or two to setup for a 30 second fight lol.

My personal preference would be to see non-loot fights (where no chest or specific drop is concerned) take less time.

Kruunch.3714:

You cited WoW as the model of boss fights that aren’t health dumps?

Hmmmm.

No, if you read again you see that I cite WoW as the model of developers that at first made healthdump bossfights and then grew to understand that there were more interesting ways to design bossfights. As you can see, I made mention of Drakkisath and Garr as exceptionally boring vanilla bosses. In fact I can’t recall a single person before UBRS was capped to 10 players that willingly went in there with less than 15 because the fights were such a drag. A lot of bosses in this game feel like 10 man encounters that we’re forced to 5 man.

If you look at a lot of post-vanilla bosses you see a lot of interesting mechanics that really demand class knowledge of people in the raid. It became far more than just depleting a big healthbar like in the old days of Molten Core.

My problem with GW2 is indeed that bosses take too long. Kohler was mentioned above as an example of a bossfight done right but even there the truth is that after you’ve dodged three or so of his hooks you’ve pretty much proven your ability to conquer this encounter and thus the 5 to 10 minutes of DPS that follow are nothing but a chore. A lot of fights simply take forever.

Eain.7825:

Kruunch.3714:

You cited WoW as the model of boss fights that aren’t health dumps?

Hmmmm.

No, if you read again you see that I cite WoW as the model of developers that at first made healthdump bossfights and then grew to understand that there were more interesting ways to design bossfights. As you can see, I made mention of Drakkisath and Garr as exceptionally boring vanilla bosses. In fact I can’t recall a single person before UBRS was capped to 10 players that willingly went in there with less than 15 because the fights were such a drag. A lot of bosses in this game feel like 10 man encounters that we’re forced to 5 man.

If you look at a lot of post-vanilla bosses you see a lot of interesting mechanics that really demand class knowledge of people in the raid. It became far more than just depleting a big healthbar like in the old days of Molten Core.

True but you’re also talking about the genesis of a game that’s been out for almost a decade. Every MMO that’s had at least one expansion changes up its boss fight mechanics, just to throw variety into the content if nothing else.

But I do get your point and I’m sure the next content patch and/or expansion that ANet puts out will vary up their boss mechanics accordingly. To that effect, I think GW2 has a larger leeway with its mechanics precisely because there is no holy-trinity. WoW (and other MMOs) ran into the problem of designing encounters that if you didn’t have the right class or XXX amount of said classes you couldn’t complete it. That (to me) is just bad design unless you telegraph that far in advance.

Since every toon in GW2 is responsible for their own mitigation, escape, utility and healing (by and large), balancing on a single character vs. a group dynamic opens up a lot more possible encounter strategies in my mind.

And in general I’ve found the encounters in GW2 much more fluid and dynamic than in other MMOs thus far (albeit there is over a decade’s worth of habitual gaming mechanics to overcome )