Guild Wars 2

Ignoring the fact that it’s plagued with bugs, here’s what I feel should be done to better balance this boss encounter.

1. Berzerker melee damage should be doubled. Far too easy to just sit inside the boss and tank his hits if you have any defensive skills at all. Even on thief I was able to pistol whip away until all of my initiative was gone b.c the guy just isn’t a threat. Would have kept doing that but the firestorm sometimes puts down just too many aoes to do that safely. I’m 100% certain that a guardian with healing symbols and a team of 4 warriors could sit inside the zerker and 100%-0% it without ever having to dodge. Might be even easier than that, idk.

2. Firestorm aoe damage should still deal that 3k IF you actually get hit when the aoe lands. Any other time the damage per tick from walking into a lingering aoe should be 1k but only 1 tick of 1k at a time. Remove the instant double or triple hits of 3k+. Each tick being 1/2s apart.

3. Have the firestorm get better target player detection. I don’t mean shoot the player 100% of the time, I mean make it so the player actually needs to move more than 10% of the time.

4. Make it more likely to jump over the shockwaves on the “up” part of the jump instead of on the “down” part of the jump.

5. The player should have better access to information of what the “enraged” bonus abilities are. I know when the zerker is enraged he gets a crazy amount of cc on his autos. If you don’t have a stun breaker you’re eating all the hits. With that said, I have no idea at all what the firestorm does when enraged. I think he might shoot more and might do more dmg but I’m honestly not sure.

6. Would have asked you to stop forcibly porting the players to the arena but you already did that one, thanks!

7. Until you fix all the bugs that have to deal with the aoe knockbacks, either reduce the distance of the knockbacks, or put a border on certain sections of the arena. My idea for the best places for borders would be at both sides where the bridge drops. Easiest way to implement this would be to have the bridge raised instead of lowered.

3. Have the firestorm get better target player detection. I don’t mean shoot the player 100% of the time, I mean make it so the player actually needs to move more than 10% of the time.

Your experience was very different from mine. I was constantly running from the AoE rings that appeared on top of and all around me. Maybe no one else was drawing that kind of aggro, but I was downed a lot because sometimes I just dodged from one AoE into another (no safe spots within dodging range).

I soloed the dungeon including the boss with having firestorm as the last boss. Sometimes he’s highly accurate but most of the time he’s just shooting in your general direction but never at you.

I don’t think that it’s a matter of not having good player detection and targeting. When the ring appears, often it is on top of you and surrounding you, but it’s just so slow that it’s easy to move. I did, however, have several times where the ring would appear and instantly the fireball would be on you with no real time to dodge. So, basically, extremely easy to dodge or no time at all. I think it’s just that there is a lot of room to kite and dodge the boss and his attacks. I guess the real way to make it difficult is to be in a group like I was last night where 3 of the guys were seemingly down every 15 seconds (that is not an exaggeration btw). Try kiting/dodging, attacking and rezing players at a nonstop pace, that will add some challenge for you!

Would be nice to limit the aoe stacking.

Currently there can be a situation where you get 3+ fire rings from molten shamans under yourself and instadie. This is really stupid.

There is the same problem in arah with mages.

The idea itself is pretty good i think, it just need some polish. But this is a 1-time event, so i think this is as good as it gets.

My only real beef is the teleporting, my pc loads a bit slow, sometimes i am already dead after tp-ing into the arena.

Glad the jumping part isn’t just me, I thought I was lagging or something, you pretty much have to try and land on the wave in order to jump over them.