[MYTH] The Mythical Dragons -PvX http://mythdragons.enjin.com
World Bosses Difficulty - Discuss
Please please ANet .. leave the world bosses alone .. don’t give us more content that can only be played on Overflow Servers and with 1 hour of waiting.
The World Bosses are fine .. masses of Players always are always there when Shatterer or Claw of Jormag spawns .. only Sparkly Fens is always a Desert.
And NO .. i will not join TTS .. and JTS and STS .. or whatever.
EVERY MMO is awesome until it is released then its unfinished. A month after release it just sucks.
Best MMOs are the ones that never make it. Therefore Stargate Online wins.
Best MMOs are the ones that never make it. Therefore Stargate Online wins.
It means Ogre Wars is broken AGAIN on your server(just like it tends to do on every other server). >_<
That particular chain can be started in two ways. Either from the Charr side or the Ebon Vanguard side.
gw2stuff is also missing a bunch of the pre-events.
Tequatl doesn’t need a highly coordinated anything. It does need to have enough people around. People on the turrets who knows what to do on the turrets. People to protect those on the turrets. Everyone else stands at the right spot so they can be supported by the turrets. You also need to have all the set up before it spawns.
(edited by Moderator)
Fix scaling <—-that is a must before revamping any other events. If they do that and allow scaling on bosses (like teq or others to be revamped) then sure rework them. If they simply do what they did to Teq then a big NO TY…leave them alone.
Serenity now~Insanity later
How would you propose scaling would work better for an event where a large Zerg rolls In when the event was started with a much smaller team?
Let’s use shatterer as an example here.
Currently:
There is no point in defending the mortars by the NPCs and everyone just stands in one spot and pretty much auto fires skill 1. There does not seem to be any scaling dependant on the number of people in the map.
It doesn’t require any organisation or real team work.
Question:
How would the event initially scale with 20 people in the map and scale-up when an additional 40 people arrive in the map?
New mechanics:
With 20 in the map?
- it is necessary to protect one mortar and some of the NPCs must be kept alive whilst other people go and directly DPS on shatterer? (Requires a small team of 5?)
When 60 additional people arrive in the map near the boss area?
- Multiple mortars need to be defended and the mortars are required to keep the DPS Zerg on the dragon alive and use the mortar skill on the dragon. The health pool of the dragon scales up in-line with the additional people that have just ported in (after a minor delay so they have time to get into position).
Possibly add a skill on the mortar which stops the dragon from gaining an invincibility buff (or flying away requiring the mortars to be used exclusively with Max power to get the dragon back on the ground). This would make the fight seem more alive and ensure the mortars are used during the battle and those using them are kept alive.
Credit would also be given if you were defending the mortars or using them during the event (heal or dmg).
Does something like this sound workable or would something much tougher be required to promote team-work and different groups to co-ordinate to achieve the kill?
I have used Shatterer as an example – but the same ideas could apply to things like Karak Queen, Wurm, Golem etc – requiring something more than just Zerg rush the boss or spam a single skill.
I do understand the difficulty of Tequatl – could do with some better scaling (hence the exclusion of this bosses mechanics which take some degree of planning before he arrives – There is a good thread in this dynamic events called “Tequatl Fix” which discusses how this boss could better scale).
I don’t think it’s easy to find the right balance on how to scale up bosses so they can be completed given a certain number of people. I am interested in this so both low population servers have a realistic chance of being able to kill world bosses if they can understand the mechanics without it being a pure number count of people in a map.
If we can give any positive ideas back to ANET before they buff everything on how scaling could work better and improve some of the world bosses so they are not a mindless Zerg-fest would probably be appreciated.
This way we would also have some input into the ideas that may be currently working on.
[MYTH] The Mythical Dragons -PvX http://mythdragons.enjin.com
Teq is far from the only exception. Let’s go down the list:
Fire Elemental – This boss is in a good place. There are embers and fire fields all over the place, plenty of danger to keep the fight active. It’s easy to go down if you’re not careful, but the preevents are relaxing and the fight always goes off without a hitch. A great starter zone boss finally.
Shadow Behemoth – This guy seriously needs new mechanics. He falls too easily and is zero threat. Visually impressive but disappointing.
Frozen Maw – Lasts a little longer these days, but also not much threat.
Jungle Wurm – Too much HP, also no threat. That wurm halfway up the Tower of Nightmares was a much better challenge than this thing.
Fire Shaman – Repetitive. Mechanics are fine but by phase 3 I’m tired of it.
Golem Mark II – Another boss in a good place. The shock fields are great. Golem could attack a little more often, but otherwise this one works.
Shatterer – Most challenge I’ve had out of this fight is the achievement for breaking people out of crystals. This is your new champ, Kral? Glint would have kicked this guy’s kitten . He’s all spark and no bite.
Jormag – First stage is repetitive and second stage is boring. I feel like the deathly chill aura he’s got is just a placeholder for real mechanics. Same with that chain fear. Still, plenty going on, plenty to kill you. Definitely in a better place than Shatt.
Karka Queen – Fantastic, only needs some tweaks: see Zaxares about ten posts down.
Balthazar – Just make the pact and their morale bubble more visible and we’ll be fine.
Lyssa – One of my favorite bosses. Keeps you active (the defense points will troll you if you’re not careful) and the fight mechanics are very fitting of the boss. Would be nice if that gorilla despawned on victory but otherwise this one is great.
Dwayna – Far and away my favorite. Plenty of great lore. The escort and priestess recently got buffed, which is great. Prodding Malchor is relaxing and the statue battle is tough without being overwhelming. Could use some unique mechanics but otherwise wonderful.
Melandru – Too easy. Priest is a pushover and defense event is no challenge. His second phase is more of an annoyance than anything else. Fortunately it’s bugged so you don’t see it very often. Buff that priest up up.
Grenth – Right where it should be. Scales well and plenty of challenge.
There are others but no comment on those. Overall I’d say we’re getting there.
(edited by Kalarchis.8635)
Golem Mark II – Another boss in a good place. The shock fields are great. Golem could attack a little more often, but otherwise this one works.
Good place as in tens of zerglings afk autoattacking him from the distance getting fully rewarded? You know you can use summons/pets because they don’t get hit by shock field and then go afk to get a gold medal?
Shatterer – Most challenge I’ve had out of this fight is the achievement for breaking people out of crystals. This is your new champ, Kral? Glint would have kicked this guy’s kitten . He’s all spark and no bite.
You stand in the safespot and complain about the lack of challenge? Come closer to him to melee him (for about 3x more damage) from time to time.
Lyssa – One of my favorite bosses. Keeps you active (the defense points will troll you if you’re not careful) and the fight mechanics are very fitting of the boss. Would be nice if that gorilla despawned on victory but otherwise this one is great.
Her main mechanics, corrupted gaze, makes completely no sense – turn around for ~45 seconds. I guess you could go destroy risen catapults but who does that? Her mimic attack and zerglings mindlessly using ranged attacks just makes this fight longer because of her constant blocking.
Dwayna – Far and away my favorite. Plenty of great lore. The escort and priestess recently got buffed, which is great. Prodding Malchor is relaxing and the statue battle is tough without being overwhelming. Could use some unique mechanics but otherwise wonderful.
Final boss is a pushover for a zerg because of aoe limitation. On top of that, with enough people, the delay between her attacks is unnatural, which causes her doing nothing for a vast amount of the fight.
Melandru – Too easy. Priest is a pushover and defense event is no challenge. His second phase is more of an annoyance than anything else. Fortunately it’s bugged so you don’t see it very often. Buff that priest up up.
It’s too easy because of the same reasons as dwayna – aoe limitations and delays between attacks. Similarly to dwayna, with enough zerglings, this boss doesn’t do anything for a long time, in-between attacks, he just stands around watching autoattacks. His second phase might be an annoyance but so is the corrupted gaze of lyssa.
Grenth – Right where it should be. Scales well and plenty of challenge.
The defense event doesn’t scale well at all. Two champions that spawn there never scale up, even with 100 zerglings they still have 3 defiance stack and level 80 which makes them dead faster then scaled up level 84 veterans. To add even more, those two champions spawn always, regardless if there are enough people to trigger champion spawning. On top of that, there are no champions beside those two, even with the biggest zergs (100+ zerglings).
To sum it up, if you want to really know what’s wrong with the world bosses, go do them with 2-5 people, by guesting on empty servers. Try to melee them, instead of ranging to add some difficulty. Then do them with zergs on populous servers and compare. My conclusions are that the bosses aren’t the fault, it’s the game mechanics like 5-persons-limit aoe and lack of punishment for ranged players that makes them too easy with zergs.
Edit: One final thing. Scaling of all of the world bosses improves just their hitpoints, not damage and mechanics. They deal the same amount of damage to solo-er and to one of the 100 zerglings. That’s also another reason for lack of difficulty.
(edited by haviz.1340)
@TPMN…..Idk in what was they should fix it. I only know it should be fixed. Tbh I’m not going to spend any real time thinking about how it should be fixed. People working there should be getting paid for this type of thing, not relying on our fanatical nature.
@Kalarchis…Lyssa’s scaling is bad. Once enough players join in that encounter her health becomes massive and it takes forever. I can easily go do 3 other events when she reaches 50% and have no worries about her dying b4 I can get back.
Serenity now~Insanity later
World Bosses are in a good position now.
They reward 1 guaranteed rare and a chest. That’s not a lot of loot for not a lot of effort.
You start making these bosses hard, a lot of people will not do them unless rewards are significantly buffed.
I think there are things in game that should be zerged and killed mindlessly, while also having other things in game for those seeking coordination and a challenge.
Golem Mark II – Another boss in a good place. The shock fields are great. Golem could attack a little more often, but otherwise this one works.
Good place as in tens of zerglings afk autoattacking him from the distance getting fully rewarded? You know you can use summons/pets because they don’t get hit by shock field and then go afk to get a gold medal?
The scaling on golem is still a mess in my opinion. It goes down much faster with < 5 people than with > 5 people.
I think it also has a bug. It makes no sense for it to spawn extra turrets when there are fewer people. At least I’ve never seen those extra turrets spawn except there are only a couple of people around.
Shatterer – Most challenge I’ve had out of this fight is the achievement for breaking people out of crystals. This is your new champ, Kral? Glint would have kicked this guy’s kitten . He’s all spark and no bite.
You stand in the safespot and complain about the lack of challenge? Come closer to him to melee him (for about 3x more damage) from time to time.
No I use the mortars. :P
Extremely boring but it’s about 8k damage every 4s or so? That is hitting two spots at once so less when it is in the air.
Lyssa – One of my favorite bosses. Keeps you active (the defense points will troll you if you’re not careful) and the fight mechanics are very fitting of the boss. Would be nice if that gorilla despawned on victory but otherwise this one is great.
Her main mechanics, corrupted gaze, makes completely no sense – turn around for ~45 seconds. I guess you could go destroy risen catapults but who does that? Her mimic attack and zerglings mindlessly using ranged attacks just makes this fight longer because of her constant blocking.
Destroying the catapults is a waste of time. Tried doing that once. They respawn way too quickly to contribute anything to the fight.
Oh and it would be nice if the canon event didn’t break every couple of days, sometimes every other day.
Edit: One final thing. Scaling of all of the world bosses improves just their hitpoints, not damage and mechanics. They deal the same amount of damage to solo-er and to one of the 100 zerglings. That’s also another reason for lack of difficulty.
Maybe not the boss but spawns seem to scale their damage. At lease those exploding risen. Scaled up they seem to be able to do 10k per pop(:P) otherwise it is around 6k. Maybe those 10k hits were crits.
Good place as in tens of zerglings afk autoattacking him from the distance getting fully rewarded? You know you can use summons/pets because they don’t get hit by shock field and then go afk to get a gold medal?
Honestly I didn’t realize that there was a safe spot. I always choose to be on the platform with the field so I’ve never noticed. Everyone that plays with me does the same. If this is true then it definitely needs to be fixed, but it’s hardly reason to shrug off the positive changes they have made to this boss. That said, he does get way too much HP when scaled up.
You stand in the safespot and complain about the lack of challenge? Come closer to him to melee him (for about 3x more damage) from time to time.
Oh I have. I’ve stood on his feet, under his tail, and right in front of his mouth and I’m still complaining about the lack of challenge. Sometimes he’ll put his hand down on you and that’ll do some damage, but it’s not even a real attack, any more than me putting my foot down is an attack on my carpet. This is a giant dragon; there shouldn’t be a safe spot. One swipe of that hand should send the whole afk zerg flying.
Her main mechanics, corrupted gaze, makes completely no sense – turn around for ~45 seconds. I guess you could go destroy risen catapults but who does that? Her mimic attack and zerglings mindlessly using ranged attacks just makes this fight longer because of her constant blocking.
They make perfect sense. It stops all the players from hurting her while her minions tear them apart; works great for her when that champ gorilla is around. Come on now this is Lyssa, patron goddess of illusion and mesmers. Her mechanics are supposed to be about dragging the fight out, summoning annoying illusions, and all kinds of random boons/conditions. Yes, it can be a long and troublesome fight but that’s what makes it rewarding to finish. Essence Snow, she does get a lot of HP but three bosses worth of time is an exaggeration.
Agreed on the Dwayna and Melandru bosses and the Grenth defense event. Perhaps I should say “the rest of Grenth scales well.” “Well” being subjective. Agreed with you and others that scaling on bosses needs a major tune-up.
Good place as in tens of zerglings afk autoattacking him from the distance getting fully rewarded? You know you can use summons/pets because they don’t get hit by shock field and then go afk to get a gold medal?
Honestly I didn’t realize that there was a safe spot. I always choose to be on the platform with the field so I’ve never noticed. Everyone that plays with me does the same. If this is true then it definitely needs to be fixed, but it’s hardly reason to shrug off the positive changes they have made to this boss. That said, he does get way too much HP when scaled up.
There isn’t a safe spot for the golem. There are many safe spots for the golem as long as you have the range for it. Just the obvious ones would be all the stairs. The idea for the new fight is fine but the execution needs polish. For example having the hands obstruct everything when they are down.
Her main mechanics, corrupted gaze, makes completely no sense – turn around for ~45 seconds. I guess you could go destroy risen catapults but who does that? Her mimic attack and zerglings mindlessly using ranged attacks just makes this fight longer because of her constant blocking.
They make perfect sense. It stops all the players from hurting her while her minions tear them apart; works great for her when that champ gorilla is around. Come on now this is Lyssa, patron goddess of illusion and mesmers. Her mechanics are supposed to be about dragging the fight out, summoning annoying illusions, and all kinds of random boons/conditions. Yes, it can be a long and troublesome fight but that’s what makes it rewarding to finish. Essence Snow, she does get a lot of HP but three bosses worth of time is an exaggeration.
That is not Lyssa. That is a possibly delusional priestess of Lyssa.
Annoying enemies never really feel rewarding. More like ‘meh … whatever glad that is over with’.
If we are going to use “Priestess of Lyssa” as a justification then please explain the fight with Zhaitan. :p
I understand that it’s not Lyssa herself (give me a little credit.) However she is using Lyssa’s power, if only a corrupted form of it. You may not find it rewarding, but I sure do, and apparently so do the players that choose to do the event with me. I’m not using Lyssa as a “justification” for annoying event mechanics, we simply disagree on how annoying/rewarding this event this.
Zhaitan fight is not annoying; it’s pathetic. One of the worst and most disappointing parts of the game.
I understand that it’s not Lyssa herself (give me a little credit.) However she is using Lyssa’s power, if only a corrupted form of it. You may not find it rewarding, but I sure do, and apparently so do the players that choose to do the event with me. I’m not using Lyssa as a “justification” for annoying event mechanics, we simply disagree on how annoying/rewarding this event this.
Zhaitan fight is not annoying; it’s pathetic. One of the worst and most disappointing parts of the game.
The part about Zhaitan isn’t about being annoying, it’s about using a god as a justification for a fight.
I’ve only fought some of the World Bosses so far, but I’ll add my thoughts to Kalarchis’s list:
Fire Elemental – Agreed that the Fire Elemental is more or less perfect. Embers and fire fields mean that players can’t just sit in one spot and auto-attack, but it’s not impossible to recover from a hit like the old FE. Pre-events are almost bug-free, and unless people REALLY screw up, it’s possible to kill him with as few kitten people. (Possibly even less!) Perfectly balanced.
Shadow Behemoth – The Shadow Behemoth needs more health and more dangerous attacks. Currently he can be damaged in his scream phase which more or less trivialises this encounter, since he just stands there taking damage without retaliating. I would change it so that:
a) the SB’s droplet attacks deal a large amount of damage and leave a 5 second lingering field that inflicts both Poison and 3 stacks of Torment to players standing in it.
b) during his scream phase, the SB inflicts rapid stacks of Confusion. So players can opt to keep attacking, but within 3 seconds they’ll have built up 25 stacks of Confusion and will self-destruct if they try to attack. The Confusion fades within 5 seconds after the portal spawns, forcing players to dodge attacks from Shades/Aatxes while not being able to fight back if they don’t have condition cleanses.
The Shades/Aatxes, which can include Elites or Champs if scaled up, also stick around permanently until killed; if players don’t stop to kill these, they will likely get overwhelmed as the fight wears on.
c) increase the SB’s health scaling so it’s about 75% of the Wurm’s.
Frozen Maw – ANet moved in the right duration with beefing up his health, but he’s still not much of a challenge. I’d make the following changes:
a) Reduce his health to 75% of what it is now.
b) No change to his first phase. He summons ice tornadoes that move around him and inflict damage + Chill to players standing in them.
The number of tornadoes summoned scales up according to the number of players in the fight. Multiple tornadoes whirling around players stacked on the Shaman (or on nearby hills) will rapidly kill them, and the Chill can make it harder to escape.
c) In Phase 2 (when he changes to his goliath form), corrupted ice shards start falling from the sky. These ice shards remain as destroyable objects that inflict Frostbite + damage in a large radius around them. Players need to destroy these shards before they run out of safe places to stand and Frostbite stacks (which aren’t conditions and thus can’t be cleansed) get to lethal levels.
Jungle Wurm – Similar problem to the Shaman in that he’s just a gigantic HP punching bag. My changes:
a) Reduce Wurm’s HP to 75% of current levels.
b) More Husks spawn, but have reduced health (scales up from normal to Veterans to Elites). The Husks target Seed Mortars as a priority (see below).
c) If the Wurm eats a husk, it gains 25 stacks of “Corrupted Armor” which makes it immune to damage, similar to Mai’s Shielding. To remove the stacks, players must get a Seed Mortar from Gamarian (he drops one every 10 seconds, to a maximum of 5) and plant it. This spawns a Seed Mortar that fires special shots that remove the Corrupted Armor. Like Mai, the Wurm is immune at 25 stacks, but as the stacks drop players can start dealing damage to it at reduced ratios until the stacks are gone.
Foulbear Chieftain – I feel this world boss is in a good place. The “siege” approach and fighting off large numbers of ogres is quite satisfying. It just needs fixing so the pre-events don’t bug so often.
Ulgoth the Modniir – Another world boss that is just about perfect. Nice pre-event chain, interesting and varied boss fight, and a lone player can get the ball rolling. His rewards may need to be buffed a little though; killing the “supreme leader” of the centaur army only to get a single Rare seems a bit of a letdown.
The Dredge Commissar – Much too easy for a world boss. He has a standard Champion’s health and tends to die within 2 minutes once players show up in earnest. The pre-events also tend to bug very often and prevent the boss from spawning. Some ideas to make it more interesting:
a) The Commissar only spawns if the dredge have been completely pushed back to Tribulation Rift (i.e. the Granite Citadel must not be contested). Furthermore, Oliver must have been given his plans to build the digging tank. Once all of the locations are secure and Oliver has his tank, the tank is the trigger to make the Commissar spawn.
b) Increase the Commissar’s health to 75% that of the Wurm/Shaman.
c) Instead of spawning up the back, the Commissar instead spawns right in the middle of the snowfield getting barraged by mortars. Players must contend with the AoE barrages while fending off dredge reinforcements from APCs as they kill the Commissar. Players can help reduce the barrage intensity by using the shields taken from the Priory camp nearby to reflect the shots back and create safe zones for players to fight in. Other players will also need to focus on destroying dredge APCs to reduce mob numbers before they’re overwhelmed. The number of APCs that spawn scale up with the number of players.
Shatterer – I feel the Shatterer fight is in a good place, but more encouragement is needed to have players use the mortars and turrets more. My changes:
a) Player attacks do minimal damage to the Shatterer (but see below). Attacking him directly should be a last resort.
b) Mortars and do their normal damage to the Shatterer. In addition, they can now be loaded with ammo that grants a special buff to players in the area of impact. This buff allows players to deal double damage to the Shatterer (but it still translates to only about 25% of their normal damage).
c) Turrets deal greatly increased damage against the Shatterer, making them the primary source of damage against the Dragon Champion. This makes defending them and the mortars a top priority.
d) The Shatterer’s ground stomp damages and knocks down players and mortars. Turrets are unaffected.
e) The Shatterer’s breath targets primarily turrets and deals a lot of damage to them.
f) Vigil Engineers will repair both turrets and mortars, but are frequently targeted by Branded spawns.
Karka Queen – The Karka Queen is in a very nice spot at the moment with regards to difficulty and rewards. However, a few tweaks I would make:
a) Make the Karka Queen’s reinforcements scale better to the number of people showing up. I’ve been in fights where the Karka Queen would spawn large numbers of Young Karka and Veteran Karka to assist, yet in maps with the same or higher numbers of people, she doesn’t spawn any allies at all. (This may be a bug linked to people DPS’ing her too fast and skipping some phases.)
b) Scale the pre-events better for smaller groups. The event at Point Pride and Camp Kiel should be made normal events, so that they can be completed by one or two people and thus get momentum going for the other two camps. (Similar to how one lone person can get the pre-events for Ulgoth, the Commissar and the Foulbear Chieftain going, and that encourages more players to show up.)
c) The pre-events at Steampipe and Camp Karka can remain group events, but need some tweaking. The Steampipe event restarts WAY too quickly, and it’s next to impossible to win the defense variant. (It’s common to have it start, several Crazed Poppers spawn right next to the storage facility, and destroy it within 2 seconds.) It should be put onto a 15 – 20 minute cooldown like the other pre-events.
The Champion Karka at Camp Karka seems abnormally tough for a Champion, almost world boss status. His health needs some adjusting to bring it more in line with standard Champs, especially considering that, like all adult Karkas, he has two health bars.
d) After the Karka Queen is slain, all the camps should remain safe for at least half an hour. This gives players time to visit the Southsun Economists and bask in the glory of victory. Too often we kill the Queen only to look at the meta-event and see that all 4 camps are contested again!
Tequatl – I like the idea behind the Tequatl re-vamp, but I feel it relies too much on having high numbers of players (and extremely high DPS) for victory. I’d like to keep the idea of having different players perform different roles in the combat, but still make it possible for smaller groups to achieve victory. Here’s my ideas:
a) Reduce Tequatl’s insane amount of health to about what the Shatterer has. Furthermore, Tequatl’s Hardened Scales tick up at a rate based on the number of players.
b) Like the Shatterer, player attacks against Tequatl do minimal damage (10%). Attacking him directly should be a last resort only if all other roles are filled.
c) The Hylek turrets do their regular damage to Tequatl. While they can still buff and cleanse the zerg, their primary role is to damage Tequatl and keep his Hardened Scale stacks down.
d) The main source of damage against Tequatl now comes from the Megalaser itself. The Megalaser fires once every 3 minutes, and deals a base 5% of Tequatl’s health, plus an additional 5% for each battery that is still active. (So a fully charged Megalaser would knock off 20% of Tequatl’s health every 3 minutes.)
Tequatl also does his tidal wave attack every time he is struck by the Megalaser. Players who are far enough inland (i.e. at the batteries) are safe, but others will have to use the launch pads to escape it.
e) Players need to guard the batteries and the Megalaser as their top priority, as Risen will constantly spawn and attack them. This scales to the number of players; with 10 players or less, each battery only gets attacked by 3 – 4 normal Risen, allowing even a lone player to defend a battery by themselves, with some help from the NPCs. With progressively higher player numbers, Veterans, Elite and eventually Champions start spawning.
f) Tequatl’s primary attacks against the turrets are his Fingers and his breath, along with Bloated Creepers that constantly spawn from the sea and walk inland (a major role of the zerg is to stop these Creepers from reaching the turrets). Damaged/destroyed turrets can be repaired the same way as now.
Foulbear Chieftain – I feel this world boss is in a good place. The “siege” approach and fighting off large numbers of ogres is quite satisfying. It just needs fixing so the pre-events don’t bug so often.
Eh? Different rules for different bosses? This one isn’t really much different from the Maw except it is weaker despite being in a higher level zone.
The rewards for the Foulbear Chieftain are also much lower than Maw though. Plus, she doesn’t really seem to be a “special” foe, more like just a chief of a particularly large ogre tribe. The feeling I got was that the “world boss” was more the assault on Foulbear Kraal itself rather than an attempt to kill a single powerful leader, given the length and complexity of the pre-events.
The Dredge Commissar – Much too easy for a world boss. He has a standard Champion’s health and tends to die within 2 minutes once players show up in earnest. The pre-events also tend to bug very often and prevent the boss from spawning. Some ideas to make it more interesting:
a) The Commissar only spawns if the dredge have been completely pushed back to Tribulation Rift (i.e. the Granite Citadel must not be contested). Furthermore, Oliver must have been given his plans to build the digging tank. Once all of the locations are secure and Oliver has his tank, the tank is the trigger to make the Commissar spawn.
b) Increase the Commissar’s health to 75% that of the Wurm/Shaman.
c) Instead of spawning up the back, the Commissar instead spawns right in the middle of the snowfield getting barraged by mortars. Players must contend with the AoE barrages while fending off dredge reinforcements from APCs as they kill the Commissar. Players can help reduce the barrage intensity by using the shields taken from the Priory camp nearby to reflect the shots back and create safe zones for players to fight in. Other players will also need to focus on destroying dredge APCs to reduce mob numbers before they’re overwhelmed. The number of APCs that spawn scale up with the number of players.
I guess this is okay but good luck trying to convince people to do it considering effort vs reward. I haven’t been keeping records but it certainly feels like it has one of the worse loot tables out of all the bosses.
They had to buff the karka queen’s chest at least once and then still had to remove the 1/day restriction.
Shatterer – I feel the Shatterer fight is in a good place, but more encouragement is needed to have players use the mortars and turrets more. My changes:
a) Player attacks do minimal damage to the Shatterer (but see below). Attacking him directly should be a last resort.
b) Mortars and do their normal damage to the Shatterer. In addition, they can now be loaded with ammo that grants a special buff to players in the area of impact. This buff allows players to deal double damage to the Shatterer (but it still translates to only about 25% of their normal damage).
c) Turrets deal greatly increased damage against the Shatterer, making them the primary source of damage against the Dragon Champion. This makes defending them and the mortars a top priority.
Better make sure the turrets actually work first. Those things are just completely broken for some people. The main problem is that heavy reliance on the mortars and turrets turn this in to a 7 player event while everyone else mostly takes a nap or something. They become spectators watching someone else slay the dragon.
Focusing on the turrets and mortars also means many of a player’s choices is made irrelevant (class,build,etc. none of that matters on the sieges). I don’t think that is a good thing. You could replace someone on the siege with a naked lv1 and the result will be mostly the same.
d) The Shatterer’s ground stomp damages and knocks down players and mortars. Turrets are unaffected.
e) The Shatterer’s breath targets primarily turrets and deals a lot of damage to them.
The breath attack can already one shot the mortars or come very close, same with the ground attack.
f) Vigil Engineers will repair both turrets and mortars, but are frequently targeted by Branded spawns.
It’s already like this.
Karka Queen – The Karka Queen is in a very nice spot at the moment with regards to difficulty and rewards. However, a few tweaks I would make:
a) Make the Karka Queen’s reinforcements scale better to the number of people showing up. I’ve been in fights where the Karka Queen would spawn large numbers of Young Karka and Veteran Karka to assist, yet in maps with the same or higher numbers of people, she doesn’t spawn any allies at all. (This may be a bug linked to people DPS’ing her too fast and skipping some phases.)
b) Scale the pre-events better for smaller groups. The event at Point Pride and Camp Kiel should be made normal events, so that they can be completed by one or two people and thus get momentum going for the other two camps. (Similar to how one lone person can get the pre-events for Ulgoth, the Commissar and the Foulbear Chieftain going, and that encourages more players to show up.)
Heh I guess they can do that while fixing Camp Kiel. It’s been broken for as long as I can remember. Note that the ‘encourages more players’ to show up thing only works if sites like gw2stuff update to reflect that change. Evidence of this is most easily seen in the Megadestroyer event where it sits a “Protect the asura and their technology while they quell the unstable volcano” for hours on end. A couple of days ago I saw it sit there for 7+hours until the map itself finally emptied out and the whole map despawned.
The fire elemental needs a few tweaks:
1. embers should spawn inside it instead of on top of players. That’s just dumb and makes reviving people more difficult than it has to be.
2. Embers should only be able to hurt you if you’re touching them, right now it seems like their hitbox is at least twice the size of their model.
3. The launching fireball attack seems to hit instantaneously when the red circle appears, giving you much less time to react than usual. There should be a delay between the two, like with most aoe attacks in the game.
Also, cut the Megadestroyers health in, like, half, that fight goes on forever.
Shatterer – Most challenge I’ve had out of this fight is the achievement for breaking people out of crystals. This is your new champ, Kral? Glint would have kicked this guy’s kitten . He’s all spark and no bite.
Force people to fight the Shatterer head-on (where most of its attacks are aimed), and it’d be in a pretty good place. Just have it lay down a damage field to the sides of it or something, I don’t know. Maybe make the turrets actually work and not kick you out when you try to use them.
Karka Queen -snip-
Completely agree with all these changes. I retract my earlier assessment.
The fire elemental needs a few tweaks:
-snip-Force people to fight the Shatterer head-on (where most of its attacks are aimed), and it’d be in a pretty good place. Just have it lay down a damage field to the sides of it or something, I don’t know. Maybe make the turrets actually work and not kick you out when you try to use them.
Thing is it’s a giant fire elemental. If my character can create fire way across the room, surely a giant fire elemenal can too. And I’d expect a swirling fire tornado to be so hot that it’d burn you even by getting close to it. Fireball could be a few milliseconds slower.
Shatt could easily have a lightning field around him like golem does that forces players to take high defensive positions with artillery. It should be like Jormag in that melee is out of the question until some form of stun is delivered. Should have shockwaves like Teq (seriously why don’t most bosses have these?)