Guild Wars 2

Hi,

I’m here to talk about Twilight Arbor update. You made things harder. According to many players, it was one of the hardest dungeons in GW2, and according to myself it wasn’t that hard, but was fairly hard, just cool.
I really don’t understand WHY you decided to make it harder.

- increase the range of the up path end boss —> I’m completely OK with that. I have done that path once (as I have done each path once before update), and I agree that being able to stay at entrance of the room and hit the boss without being hit was not a good thing for an end-boss.

but

- adding very long grasps during the forward->forward path end boss fight ?! Ok it may have been a little too easy to keep running around the boss and dodging his minions, but now the difficulty is much higher. Too high. As a ranger I could dodge a lot and survive, but my teammates (who are pretty good compared to the medium level of GW2 players) would end up dead. Since the waypoint is very far and they had to kill those horrible little things on the way, I was dead before they could come back.
To my mind, the idea of grasping is OK. But something needs to be done to make it doable by a random team (random = not a fixed team of 5 precise professions just like in gw1’s SC).
Examples : (1) make graps shorter, (2) add a waypoint closer to the end boss (note : another waypoint in the dungeon would be cool too), (3) lower the number of those poison things and their respawn rate (note that some people can’t kill them, some bug will say “not in sight” even if they are nearly in melee range), (4) change the boss so that it doesn’t regain his life when players are dead.
Note to players reading this : I KNOW that the boss is killable in its current state, I’m just giving an opinion and ideas to make it more balanced.
Note2 : we were able to kill it … after killing 2 veteran things. For some reason, 3 other didn’t agro again while we were hitting the boss from the entrance of the room, and the 2 that we killed didn’t respawn. It was probably a bug, we were lucky (as long a we can call luck the fact of killing that boss after that many deaths)

- Spiders : the update text isn’t very clear, I assume that ‘nightmare tree spider path’ is the forward->up path. I have done that path once before update, and I think that the boss was well balanced. I may have misunderstood the update (didn’t go through that path today), but if it’s another difficulty increase, it’s a bad idea

And last : I just read a thread of a player bragging about finishing this dungeon alone with an elementalist, most obviously after using some exploits. I sincerely hope that this isn’t the reason why you made this dungeon harder. On the one hand because exploits have to be closed and exploiters banned (as long as exploit is dangerous: I don’t think that this player doing a dungeon in 3 hours should be banned …), on the other hand because there will always be skilled players able to do things with a reduced team (1-4 instead of 5) and this is not a reason to make them harder for everyone else.

Until today I loved everything about gw2, and now I’ve never felt that bad in a dungeon (even when encountering the giganticus lupicus bug). I really hope that something will be changed, because I really liked that dungeon and now I had to decide not to go in it anymore (and I need its token badly ^^)

Thank you for reading this, I hope I didn’t seem too mean, cause I’m not.

Regards,

Eowyn

OK so I just finished my TA armour set yesterday (I didn’t want the runes or the skins on the shoulders or helmet so I used AC tokens I had no other use for to finish my first full exotic gear) and I read the patch notes and really wanted to see how these changes worked, I fully support the need to make the end boss harder on Up path (the one where you fight Fyonna and flower mortar’s spawn at the tree) and on Forward/Up (the one where you fight Vevina and spider spawn at the tree) but Forward/Forward (the one where you fight Leurent and the tree spawns veteran oak hearts) was not an AFK encounter like the others and seemed challenging enough, although I haven’t noticed it’s much harder than before. Note that when I say fight the different courtier’s I mean you fight them in the normal form, not after they’ve been absorbed into the tree.

I’ll start with Up path. The tree spawns mortars and the bug has been removed from the AoE root skill so that it hits people at maximum ranger. This fight hasn’t changed much from before, you just have to dodge now and kill some of the mortars depending on your team. This was a good change although the encounter isn’t that hard when you don’t have crazy team members running around the tree in circles doing bizarre strategies (or people who can’t dodge AoE). If your party did fine during the Malrona encounter (big spider boss right after the wurm) they should be mostly prepared for this fight, although there are a couple more things to worry about. All in all, this was a good change.

The Forward/Up path boss encounter has become much harder (obviously compared to AFK auto-attack) and I probably just didn’t notice it before because the boss was done mostly with auto attacks, but the tree has way too much health. I was seriously bored during this fight. Aside from a couple stupid strategies suggested by my PuG (I hadn’t done it since the buff so I gave them the benefit of the doubt despite realising later they thought this was the F/F boss when giving the strategy) this fight is managable. I’m not sure if it’s supposed to work this way but I found if you still stay at max range and kill the spiders while healing the damage done by the dropping spider sacks, the encounter isn’t too bad. The spiders don’t respawn like the oak hearts in F/F so killing them before going back to the boss seems like a solid strategy. I still didn’t go into the room because aggroing all the spiders seems unnecessary. All in all this encounter isn’t too bad, but the boss has way too much health (it’s possible I noticed this more because two people weren’t attacking it for whatever reason, or I am just used to hitting the tree more often). I feel like the boss doesn’t need as much health as it has and the time it takes to finish this fight is too excessive. It doesn’t add challenge, it just feels like a sponge for my time. Mostly good changes, still manageable, no longer an AFK fight like before but the tree has too much health. I did find one infuriating problem, and that’s the tree reset in the middle of the encounter despite us being in range of his AoE kill skill. If he can hit me he shouldn’t be able to reset. It was annoying strafing backwards with the spiders chasing us and now I have to worry about the tree resetting. I need more experience with this to judge how it affects me but it was kitten when it happened (especially given how long he takes to kill – it didn’t help we had the Vevina crash bug when we had her at around 15% in the same run). It feels like a bug if I can still be hit by the boss but he can reset. I also feel like his spider mobs should be considered part of him and resetting shouldn’t happen as long as they are in combat with the party. I can see it being part of the challenge to fight them in the room so I need to do this more, but I wasn’t impressed by that at all.

For F/F I found the tree to be the same as before (I guess my play style wasn’t hit as hard as others were, although this has always been the hardest encounter). I’ve never liked the strafing around the room fights. They are very unforgivable, feel gimmicky and there’s always one or two in the PuG who will suck at it. I don’t feel like there is a lot of team work and it feels lame that killing the oak hearts is very unrewarding because they respawn so quickly. I honestly don’t notice what changed if anything at all. All in all, this is the hardest of the three encounters to PuG (not just because the others are easy, but because the strategies used and their success varies greatly based on player skill).

From the patch notes:

Twilight Arbor

Upper Spider Path: Increased the attack range of the Nightmare Tree. The area attack and its effect now take place at the same location.
Nightmare Tree Spider Path: The area attack now correctly does damage at the point of the effect.
Forward Upper Husk Path: Added damage to the Nightmare Tree’s immobilize skill. Also added damage to the Nightmare Tree egg launch skill.

The first two sound like the same path. There is no mention of increasing the tree health in F/U so I’m guessing it’s just me noticing it now, but I didn’t like it.

I’m not going to talk about the dungeon in general because this topic is specifically about the update which only reworked the boss fights, but I will generally say the changes were good. The encounters were too easy and even boring before. The boss fights could still do with more improvements because in general I think the tree itself is a pretty boring boss, the tricks around it (which I assume are supposed to represent the courtier who was absorbed) are the only real interesting parts and even they don’t feel special or interesting enough to be a final boss fight. I personally would like to see some more work done on the boss, not just on the things summoned by the tree, but the tree itself. It really doesn’t feel like I’m fighting the tree.

As a side note, it’d be great if the tree wasn’t invulnerable to critical hits. They are a huge part of many builds and are often the goal of some people’s gear set ups. It’s really lame to have people build an entire trait, sigil, rune and exotic gear set up to favour precision and have that stat completely useless for this encounter. If it’s intended to represent some kind of bark skin immunity to crits effect, it’d be more interesting (and engaging) to give players a way to remove it (even if only temporarily) and allow crits. It just really sucks to make sacrifices with gear choices and have an encounter where they are for naught.

It’s fine, still really easy and extremely PuGable. Did all three paths with some random PuG after the patch and didn’t really notice a huge difference to say the least..

Did all three paths yesterday and these are the changes:

the fw up boss will now spawn 3 elite spiders on you at start off fight, kill those and continue like you used to do the boss.
the up up boss you just have to be spread out, maybe im messing up the two but basically imo nothing has changed that made it harder…

Overall I approve of the changes. The Twilight Trees needed some adjusting (and still need to be refined IMO).

*Forward/Forward: *
adding very long grasps during the forward->forward path end boss fight ?! Ok it may have been a little too easy to keep running around the boss and dodging his minions, but now the difficulty is much higher. Too high.

What were you and your party doing exactly? Its basically the same strategy as before. The Oakhearts are not intended to be killed, they are clones. They are to be managed. It’s up to the party to pay attention to each other if someone is having issues being bound by the roots. When you attack/destroy your own binds it will free you.. if you are wasting condition removals on them then you are doing something wrong. The roots are ment to be destroyed, not dispelled by a condition removal. Death during this fight really should not be an issue. Try what I suggested.

Up Path:
Fyonna is still bugged. (or is it a viable option, I’m not sure, care to comment ANET?) Groups are pulling her outside her room (into he hall just before it) simply to avoid her sac’s from bursting. Totally skipping a portion of the fight entirely. If this is indeed an “OK” method of fighting her, then why even design the Sacs to begin with, if they can be avoided entirely.

Twilight Tree:
The Morter’s still don’t pose any threat. Every once and a wile one will launch itself towards the group if they stand 1200 away from the boss near the entrance. That’s a simple dodge to avoid. And the root turrets are an easy telegraph to dodge, once and a wile he will single target this skill and it will 1 shot someone with no warning (kinda cheap not to have a telegraph) Still too easy IMO.

Forward/Up:

Twilight Tree:
They nailed this one right on the head. From the poison leaf bombs he casts (pay attention to his animation, right before he launches them you notice his head shake back and forth, this is his “tell” informing you that he’s about the bombard he area with a 1 shot move. You’ll need o save your stamina to dodge. Clear a nice little nook of spiders (slivers and none) for you and your party to fight before starting on the tree and you wont have much trouble. Just keep your eyes on his animations. We noticed that silvers didn’t re-spawn (could be a glitch) but the most we had to clear were lesser spiders that he himself would spawn on us. I love this fight now. Easily my Fav.