Guild Wars 2

as i try to level up a couple alts through the asura areas i’m finding them to be severely overtuned compared to the others – especially easy-mode human

in metrica province, there is a lab that spawns 5 inquest packs at a time. it’s a non-event. they spawn every 78 seconds (timed). two to three of them are grenadiers that just instantly pop you. mind you, this is a level TEN area

there is an escort quest after you get a crystal from a previous event chain. being all alone on this, the 2nd stage spawned 3 turrets, 4 mini golems and a large golem. all were spamming some sort of negative energy beam that hit for 140 each. it’s a quest and you have to keep the guy alive. you can’t revive him, he dies it fails. he is popped near-instantly and then you are afterwords. you see 8×139 damage on the combat log at once. this is level 11. mid hp players have about 900 health. due note the refire rate is about 1.5s on this so you can not infinitely dodge it unless you are some perma-vigor down-ranked level 80.

in brisban, bandits routinely hit for 1-1.2k when players have 1.8k health on average. oftentimes this comes from a ranged mob you don’t see and can’t avoid because the bandit packs are tight and spawn about as fast as they do in orr. problem with this is there are not enough players in the asura lands to justify this respawn rate or anyone to res you when you get instantly popped by a rifle out of your field of view (yes scrolled all the way out, trolls).

my downlevelled 80’s have a little harder time here than others, but they are geared in exotics. my legit-level asura i take to human lands now and prob will never do their personal stories. yes i know others made it through, but don’t feed me lines of bull that it was a cake-walk. i’ve seen first hand. even sent a buddy who was saying how easy the game was in the norn starting areas over to metrica. he got frustrated very quickly with the condition-stacking inquest (hint: not only do a few classes have little to no spammable condition removal, but some don’t get access to it until 20. this is a 10-15 zone)

please take a pass at the asura areas and readjust them to be more in line with content that players that level with single stat gear should be facing.

And there’s that fire elemental boss.

Oh wow, I totally thought this problem was just mine! I haven’t leveled my Asura past like level 5 or something, but I went through the Asura area on my level 20 thief and I hit the mud so hard I broke a branch off my head!

I thought I was just freakin’ super squishy! lol

Sorry, but I have to disagree with you.

I thought that the Asura area wasn’t really that much more difficult than other areas. Each area has its enemies that are downright annoying or deadly or both. Each starter area is supposed to be difficult in a different way, but in a way that teaches you how to play the game.

In the Plains of Ashford (Charr) the most annoying/difficult enemies come in the form of the melee & mage ghosts, as well as the Embers scattered throughout. The melee ghosts have a blocking move that inflicts burning on their attacker. The player must learn to avoid attacking them during that time. The mage ghosts and the embers create AoE DoTs that can inflict large amounts of damage if you let yourself stay within them.

In Queensdale, (Human) the two main enemies are the Centaurs and Bandits. The deadliest bandit is the Cutpurse from about levels 8+, which has a whirl finisher that deals tons of damage if you stay next to them, and all of the centaurs have knockdowns. The player must constantly be alert for these threats, and must learn to dodge them in order to succeed.

I will agree that Wayfarer Foothills (Norn) seems to be the easiest starter area. The enemies that require the most tactics are the Wurms (Particularly in that cave with the skill challenge) which have a cripple and bleed that hit you if you are near them when they finish burrowing, which can get an inattentive player killed very easily.

In Caledon Forest (Sylvari) the Krait/Risen and Nightmare Court are of greatest danger. The Krait in CF don’t have anywhere near the number of tricks of their sleeves as they do in later areas, but they do have conditions that must be avoided in underwater combat. Similarly, the main threat of the Risen is their numbers, and the damage buff they give themselves. Because of the clear tooltip on their buff, players can quickly learn to avoid those undead. The Nightmare Court, however, are tricky. Their rangers must be interrupted while they are channeling, their higher-level melee combatants can dodge and poison, and they sometimes have turrets. Players must always be on their toes against the NC.

In Metrica Province, however, the main threat is the Inquest, bar none. Even though there is a great number of Hylek, they do not require enough tactics to defeat to make them a serious threat. The inquest’s tools of destruction come in delayed AoE, tank/AoE golems, frustrating melee Asura; and they have others that can chill or buff their allies. It would take too long to explain how Players learn to cope with the Inquest, so I’ll just leave it there.

Yes, Metrica Province may be the most difficult starter area, but I don’t think it is really as hard as you make it seem.

I also highly doubt that ranged bandits in Brisban Wildlands one-shot players for more than half their health. I’ve gone through Brisban Wildlands on a mesmer who was constantly 3-4 levels below the renown hearts I was doing, and I was never, ever hit for more than half of my health on any attack that was not extremely obvious. Brisban Wildlands (excepting Vandal’s Claim that has a very simple renown heart and the skillpoint just south of it) was a pretty easy area for the four characters I have sent through there.

Also, it might help to build/trait additional toughness or vitality. If you’re building nothing but power or precision and are not actively watching for dodging opportunities, yeah, you’re probably going to die more than players who build/trait at least some toughness.

I didn’t find them hard but since my Asura is a Necromancer I have a ton of Health.
Maybe those areas are just difficult for certain Professions for some reason?

I dunno.

lol i was going insane while i was trying to level through the asura 15-25 zone, for just a few random reasons. i went and did the entire 15-25 charr zone (effortlessly btw) to get a few levels, thinking itd make things easier, but then went back to asura and continued to get owned >.> im not particularly good with the class i was using (engineer), so it was annoying to, for example, have hyenas packed into a really narrow canyon, that would jump and cripple from like way too far away (like, they didnt appear to physically hit my toon cause they were so far away but the cripple landed regardless) then they’d own my poor gnome in like 3 seconds if i had more than one on me. then in that same small area i’d kick some garbage around or something for the quest and it appeared to have a chance at spawning a veteran ranged mob which is like wtf. then it was somewhat annoying to have to deal with so many stealthing mobs all over the place, mainly cause some seemed to bug and would stealth, attack, and stay stealthed for a good while. then i tried to get away from the stealthing mobs just to find more stealthing mobs plus some basilisks (which immobilize, obviously) all packed together sort of tightly. then past those theres a skill challenge you just need to commune with, being camped by one of those veteran tree animal things that perma root you until it attacks, and oddly enough, while attempting to escape from that thing there seemed to be spikes randomly shooting up from the ground right there too.

and altogether its been the only zone so far in the whole game where ive looked at a place i want to go to/explore and just have trouble getting there cause the mobs are just too packed and too many of them aggro. the zone was kind of empty of players too though, which may have been why it felt different.

was mildly frustrating but also somewhat fun i guess

Eh i did find the fire elemental event to be a challenge when theres a lot of ppl luring the aoe to you.

Other than that im glad the asura low levels were a good challenge, easy things can suck the fun outta the game quickly.

fingis.2867:

And there’s that fire elemental boss.

That was fun.

RE topic: There was one point in Metrica that I found a pain; I think it was the inquest facility in the north east. The short respawn timer was the most frustrating part about it.