Guild Wars 2

I just did Arah storymode. I have to say that I was very excited upon entering the dungeon. I fought through some neat but not new stuff, and was satisfied, then came Zhaitan!

SPOILER DO NOT READ THE FOLLOWING IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO KNOW ABOUT ZHAITAN.
~Zhaitan The Disappoint-er~
Fighting zhaitan was easily the single most disappointing thing from a game or game developers since diablo 3.
You jam on 2.
Period.
Free Win.
What the hell is this? Who on earth OKAY’d this??? They should be on job probation for making incredibly stupid decisions.
And what reward do i get for jamming on 2? One completely on par with the effort I put in, THE EXACT SAME frigging power/precision/crit% hood that i got from EVERY single dungeon storymode.

Sadly, I have to agree. I only recently hit 80 and as a basically solo player had not run any of the dungeons before last night when I accepted a random invite to Arah

I wasn’t very impressed by Arah as a whole- waaay too many crowd control/knockdown/fearing mobs. It’s no fun at all to lose control of your character for 5+ seconds and watch it get beat down to death without any hope. The cannon sections didn’t work very well and we ended up resurrect-zerging much of the content.

Then the Zhaitan fight begins. Great visuals, followed by literally sitting at a cannon and spamming 2 for 5 minutes. The occasional dragon head adds were no threat at all- get off the cannon, beat them down in less than 10 seconds, go back to spamming 2. WTF? I commented halfway through the fight that a bobbing bird could have done it just as easily. Seriously, how on earth did this one get past QC?

Only one of us had run Arah before, and the sense of bewilderment at the end was total. Is the Explorable version any better?

It was disappointing, to say the least. Obviously we wouldn’t be hacking away at his toes with an axe or anything like that.. an airship was the logical way to do things. But the whole fight was rather boring and uneventful. I didn’t mind the rest of the dungeon, and the part where you’re shooting cannons at smaller dragon minions was actually pretty cool.

Explorable mode is better in the sense that you have at least one epic and difficult boss fight (who shows up in every path).

Grit.9061:

It was disappointing, to say the least. Obviously we wouldn’t be hacking away at his toes with an axe or anything like that.. an airship was the logical way to do things. But the whole fight was rather boring and uneventful. I didn’t mind the rest of the dungeon, and the part where you’re shooting cannons at smaller dragon minions was actually pretty cool.

Explorable mode is better in the sense that you have at least one epic and difficult boss fight (who shows up in every path).

I wasn’t expecting much in the way of difficulty since it was story mode, probably why I enjoyed the encounter. That said I’m certain Anet will analyse criticism of this encounter for future Elder Dragon fights.

To offer some of my own it should be a more engaging battle. Zhaitan is impressive to behold and the music combined with the visuals makes it a very epic encounter, but he feels more like a set piece than a boss. Next time you make a dungeon with an Elder Dragon as a boss try to make him feel like part of the fight, like he’s going to take advantage of his size and power and just sweep you off the field with no effort. Obviously the mechanics would make the fight winnable but a better demonstration of the dragon’s might would go a long way.

Well, if they made it too difficult, then the personal story is not so personal anymore lol. There are some parts of the story that you cant really do alone, and this is one of them.

I have a suspicious feeling that Zhaitan is far from dead, and he’ll return in the next expansion as an elder dragon, stronger than Jormag.

I do recall a dev stating on a thread that zhaitan not doing anything was a bug but that was i think around mid september so not sure what their plans are with it.

In addition to everything stated in the thread thus far, I would like to add that the fact that the Zhaitan fight was confined to a 5 man dungeon rather than being the culmination of an epic dynamic event chain was the single most disappointing thing about Guild Wars 2.

@Lavish: The fight has been patched and his last phase is working properly now.

the two dragons are far more of a fight than him. he just hangs on a post and dies. still it was by far the best story mission in the game and I had a good time running it with a whole party of first timers.

Even with the mechanics working right, it’s just a slog through worms while you mash 2 against a stupid amount of health.

GW2: KMMO.

If they would have made it into a shooter with free aim and Zhaitan flying around trying to mow you down with his breath/claws it would have been so much more awesomer.

I also recently started a thread about this. It was such a disappointing fight. If you could call it a fight.

Terazeal.1976:

In addition to everything stated in the thread thus far, I would like to add that the fact that the Zhaitan fight was confined to a 5 man dungeon rather than being the culmination of an epic dynamic event chain was the single most disappointing thing about Guild Wars 2.

they confirmed it was an instanced encounter about a year (or even longer) before release. i’m not saying you have to like it, but.. you know, it’s not really a surprise.

also, in a way, you do need to complete a meta event chain in order to open the gates of arah.