Guild Wars 2

As for right now most instabilities are okay, and can be bypassed for the most part. However, there are two that make life a living hell. First is one is outflanked and the other is last laugh. For most easy dungeons they’re managable but for harder ones they make it near impossible.
Outflanked increases mob damage by (what seems to be) x2 but which makes crits from mobs x2x2. That makes your common mob a potential instagib machine. Second problem is how it considered you being on the side, which is only 45 degress from your front. For most dungeons it’s pretty ignorable sinse you stack and stay there, however, for shaman, for example, it makes it a living hell.

For last laugh, it’s just a terrible idea altogether. Since dungeon makers decided to go happy with the mob spawns then the practice of “stacking” is almost a neccesity (cliffside, dredge, ect) and this is just a spit in the face to players as htey get knocked back, back-to-back with no diminishing returns, apparently undodgeable and unblindable. Stability can’t be kept up 100% of the time and it just makes harpies more annoying than they should be.

I’m one who thinks instabilities were a terrible idea altogether but these two just seem way off the charts. They don’t mix well with the dungeon either and most of the time they seem unrefined, untested and just some wierd dressing they decided to put over the dungeons to try and make them interesting.

I agree that some instabilities seem a little unbalanced, but I disagree with the ones you mention. Outflanked simply encourages keeping in mind your positioning, while Last Laugh is one of the few instabilities that actually impacts how the dungeon is played. Examples of bad instabilities would be Bloodlust, Fleeting Precision, or Overextended, which are just straight up DPS throttles. Instabilities are intended to change the way you play encounters, and if you don’t like a particular one, you can just do a different level (as you have 10 choices per tier, and rewards differ very little in-tier).

I once said instabilities were unfun…

A dev replied people loved instabilities.

My latest picture of the lfg tool says otherwise.

Can a dev confirm that people still have fun with instabilities or my opinion they avoid isntabilities as much as they can is now confirmed?

P.S. outflanked should not exist in a “lag friendly” (cit.) game.
Expecially when you get a frontal attack dealing 4X intended damage.

I guess people experience certain difficulties differently. Last laugh was interesting imo, but the worst we had with that was dredge (clown car with last laugh is interesting, believe me), so I can’t really comment on harpies for example.
We had a not so fun time with bloodlust on cliffside until we got to the top because most mobwaves don’t count for the reset if you kill something. The bonefiends in the final archdiviner confrontation however did, so at least that fight wasn’t so bad.
And I have to agree about outflanked. Careful positioning will ge you only so far. Especially if you have a scenario like volcanic when the elementals spawn all around you.

Zephyric Reaper.3049:

As for right now most instabilities are okay, and can be bypassed for the most part. However, there are two that make life a living hell. First is one is outflanked and the other is last laugh. For most easy dungeons they’re managable but for harder ones they make it near impossible.
Outflanked increases mob damage by (what seems to be) x2 but which makes crits from mobs x2x2. That makes your common mob a potential instagib machine. Second problem is how it considered you being on the side, which is only 45 degress from your front. For most dungeons it’s pretty ignorable sinse you stack and stay there, however, for shaman, for example, it makes it a living hell.

For last laugh, it’s just a terrible idea altogether. Since dungeon makers decided to go happy with the mob spawns then the practice of “stacking” is almost a neccesity (cliffside, dredge, ect) and this is just a spit in the face to players as htey get knocked back, back-to-back with no diminishing returns, apparently undodgeable and unblindable. Stability can’t be kept up 100% of the time and it just makes harpies more annoying than they should be.

I’m one who thinks instabilities were a terrible idea altogether but these two just seem way off the charts. They don’t mix well with the dungeon either and most of the time they seem unrefined, untested and just some wierd dressing they decided to put over the dungeons to try and make them interesting.

I’ve done both of these.

33 (outflanked) … was painful. I don’t think we’d have finished with the original PUG (I joined midway after someone dropped, on cliffside, and then another dropped and we got a player who was very experienced).

I just did a run at 39 (last laugh) last night. Parts of it were frustrating, but I dutifully brought my guardian’s stability consecration & shout, traited for reduced recharge, which let me keep about 50% uptime on stability for the party. The damage wasn’t too bad, it was more the CC effects. Cliffside was the hardest for this again, but — though arms and chest took a while, it wasn’t so bad. (Outflanked was worse, especially for chest.)

In both cases, we might have quit if we’d gotten Dredge. The other who joined for 33 suggested that you should never do 33, and certainly I’ve found 36 and 38 easier; I would agree with that assessment. For the 39, I was the only heavy (I think we had two light and two medium) … it wasn’t easy, but it didn’t seem too bad — it seemed roughly appropriate in difficulty. OTOH, I would not want to do Dredge at 39.

Da Sonic.6521:

I agree that some instabilities seem a little unbalanced, but I disagree with the ones you mention. Outflanked simply encourages keeping in mind your positioning, while Last Laugh is one of the few instabilities that actually impacts how the dungeon is played. Examples of bad instabilities would be Bloodlust, Fleeting Precision, or Overextended, which are just straight up DPS throttles. Instabilities are intended to change the way you play encounters, and if you don’t like a particular one, you can just do a different level (as you have 10 choices per tier, and rewards differ very little in-tier).

Outflanked is good when there’s little mobs. As I said, devs went trigger happy with mob spawns (zergs) so naturally you will always get outflanked in some scenarios and as I stated above it makes your average mob an instagib machine (I’ve been hit 46k in the front because lag by a normal vet) I agree it was “fun” at first but when I had the grawl fractals twice for this, it’s definately not well designed. First off, the grawl fight is a “bring reflects or die” type of fight and it’s quite tough without the instability. With it, it turns into a nightmare. You have mobs all around you while there’s a “rush” on popping the shaman’s bubble which happens to only trigger once per ability use and on top of that mobs nuking you at all sides.

I actually finished it. 3 guardians 1 mesmer and me a thief. It took around….50 tries? I lsot count after the 2 hour count we were there. We were being hit around 6k spits on average and arrows were flat out deadly, not to mention the rest of the aoes. One of his spells actually hit 50k x2. Those numbers are just out of hand. And the only way we could make it through was coordinating reflection to have a close to 100% uptime on those and slow’d down dps to wait for cooldowns like quickness or the like.
In my experience it was a raid-like difficulty level but the difficulty came from bad mechanics. Let me explain.
Shaman has
- No/short telegraphs on ranged
- Low cooldowns
- Melee instagibs
- Condition spam
- Flies very high (camera issues for said short telegraphs)
-Burning spam
-Mass aoe
-Random rush that can be either too quick or too long
- Applies burning when standing still

Grubs have:
-Moderate high HP
- Immobilize for combowombo
- Attack that bypasses some reflections
- Massive numbers
- Near hitscan projectile

Benefits:
You can dodge an arrow by sidestepping (low chance).

I can tell you, it’s very possible. And if I gather another coordinated group it could be done in one go. But these are the consequences:
MUST have 3 guardians. It’s a HUGE difficulty curve. And the reward is total crap.

I’d rather just stick with 39’s and 49’s. Not because they’re easy, but because they’re worth it and fair.

Oh you can do it without a thief…if you look at how it works…
That is totally a type of gameplay that would get AWFUL reviews in the past since there is no tactic, reaction or anything..

Just try and fail until you memorized stuff with no hints…at that point its just boringly easy.