Guild Wars 2

Hey, I’ve been playing the game for awhile now and i think many people including myself have a certain desire to have some World Bosses reworked. I personally would like for Shadow Behemoth to be reworked. It is no surprise to many that this boss can hardly be considered a world boss other than the fact that his body is huge. When you think of a World Boss, you expect something fun and challenging. And for many, spamming the key 1 is not fun and far from challenging. What’s worse is that you can hardly die from this boss. You can literally stand there and absorb all of his attacks and still be fine while tapping the key 1. It’s not to say that i want the Shadow Behemoth to be able to down players in a second like they were nothing because when a boss does so much damage that they can down players in 1 second, we players start using range weapons to counter certain melee bosses who are capable of downing players in 1 second. I simply wish for the Shadow Behemoth to have more thought to it rather than spamming 1. I wish the fight with the Shadow Behemoth could be more interactive and not be as tedious. So far, the fight with Shadow Behemoths is about destroying the portals that he spawns which allow us to damage him all while avoiding his attacks.
May i suggest a few ideas?
All of our attacks seem to be aimed at his head and after a brief moment its head moves closer to us. Instead, why not make us attack both of its arms. The destruction of its arms will force its head to fall down to allow us to attack it, similar to what its doing already.

The idea of him summoning portals is great, but i believe we can make it a bit more interesting than what its current purpose is. Instead of destroying the portals then attacking the boss, why not force us to destroy the portals while also destroying his arms. This situation creates us the need to coordinate with each other more. Making us create small teams, one for portals and one for his arms. The destruction of his portals and his arms will weaken him allowing us to attack its head.

With that said above, you might think that this implementation won’t add much to fighting Shadow Behemoth and i agree. If we look at the World Boss Tequatl, this boss require us to do certain things in order to defeat it. Otherwise, we risk taking longer to defeat it or worse, fail it. Similarly, i suggest that there should be a consequence if we fail to do certain things with Shadow Behemoth. This will also make more players participate in the process. In a less severe way than Tequatl, the failure to destroy some/all his portals before his arms HP are depleted would allow Shadow Behemoth to summon his hand from the ground to attack us from anywhere under his designated area with greater strength capable of wiping players. The strength of his hand summoning will depend on the number of portals left. The more portals he has up, the more it does damage, if not completely down players.

A quick recap of the above.
My suggestion of the fight with Shadow Behemoth includes the implementation of more mechanics.
For examples:
To kill Shadow Behemoth, destroy his arms and most/all his portals until both his arms Hp are depleted while the Shadow Behemoth attacks players similar to what he’s capable of doing at the moment. Also while his portals are summoning monsters.

Upon depleting all of Shadow Behemoth’s arms HP and destroying some/all of his portals, he will summon his hand from the ground affecting all players in his vicinity.

The damage of his summoning hand attack will be determine by the number of portals left. The more portals he has left upon the destruction of his arms, the more his summoning hand attack will inflict greater damage. For example, if none of his portals were destroyed when Shadow Behemoth’s arms HP were depleted then his summoning hand attack should be able to wipe out and down all players in his vicinity. If all portals were destroyed then his hand summoning attack will do some damage.

After his summoning hand attack, Shadow Behemoth weakened state will force its head at ground level allowing us to damage it.

The destruction of his portals and arms, should be repeated 3-4 times. Or apply said mechanics above only when Shadow Behemoth’s HP has 75% of his total Hp.

It is quite a lengthy post, but i would like to hear the community’s input and if some of the ideas interest you. Please leave a comment. What do you think of the current Shadow Behemoth Boss and what would you like to improve?

If I’m not mistaken when they released Teq they said they would increase the difficulty on all the dragon world bosses. But then they also said Stronghold would be similar to GW1 GvG.

I’m sort of on the borderline with this one. While I agree many world bosses need a revamp, I’m not sure adding difficulty to bosses in starter zones is necessarily the way to go. I don’t think there’s anything they can do in starter zones to make these bosses acceptable to long term players, and yet leave them beatable by new players.

Coupled with the fact that all other world bosses, including starting zones one, are capable of downing players and although i suggest the possibility of wipe outs, i’m fine if they just add more mechanics to world bosses and not retain the spam 1 tactic.

I don’t think this is a appropriate world boss to make harder. He’s a starter boss in a 2-15 level zone and making him harder would be to much for all the low level new players who only have one, maybe two utility skills, starter gear and no traits. They may not even have gotten a different set of weapons for weapon swap by the time they reach him.

He’s boring for level 80s but he’s not really designed for hordes of level 80s to be killing him.

You have to wait next living stories for Claw of Jormag or Shatterer revamps.

I’d agree, however he’s there as an “ooh aaah” spectacle for new players. He is pretty impressive for a first map boss to walk into. He did get a revamp, and it did make him last longer, but they said after the revamps starter bosses were something they didn’t want to make harder.

Shatterer and Karka Queen would be first in line for revamps in my opinion. I don’t think they paint the game in a good light, no matter how cool Shatterer looks.

Randulf.7614:

I’d agree, however he’s there as an “ooh aaah” spectacle for new players. He is pretty impressive for a first map boss to walk into. He did get a revamp, and it did make him last longer, but they said after the revamps starter bosses were something they didn’t want to make harder.

Shatterer and Karka Queen would be first in line for revamps in my opinion. I don’t think they paint the game in a good light, no matter how cool Shatterer looks.

Karka Queen revamp makes sense because the next Dragon is the Deep Sea one.

At the moment that is speculation. One I would be happy about, but that isn’t confirmed

Having commanded maps of newbies against SB, I think he’s designed the way he is intentionally. Having to split off to take out portals while avoiding the champions that spawn and then getting back to his head and DPSing him down with no traits or gear to back up your attacks makes him actually a rather challenging, epic fight for new players. Giving him a bunch of new mechanics would just make him a frustrating experience for them and detract from the “Wow!” factor.

Jormag and the Shatterer are far better candidates for a rework, IMO. Those are intended to be fought mostly by downscaled 80s so they really should have more interesting and difficult mechanics.

Imo, it’s a starter zone boss and I’d rather have them devote time to work on other things.

Swagger.1459:

Imo, it’s a starter zone boss and I’d rather have them devote time to work on other things.

This, but I would like to see them make attacking the portals, mandatory to get the chest or those that attack portals get better drops base or how many portals one attacks increase loot drop. Leechers would always get white.

I agree the boss could be more interesting. How about the portals not being needed, boss can be attacked at all times but the portals spawn enough to make it a priority?

But for me the main problem with Queensdale is the total overnerf of other event bosses to address the toxic train. There is nothing wrong with having a couple of champs in Queensdale, eg. Oakheart and Troll. Currently these are very sad events, make the champs again, two isn’t worth farming. The current vet oakheart is weaker than the standard ones!

Vayne.8563:

I’m sort of on the borderline with this one. While I agree many world bosses need a revamp, I’m not sure adding difficulty to bosses in starter zones is necessarily the way to go. I don’t think there’s anything they can do in starter zones to make these bosses acceptable to long term players, and yet leave them beatable by new players.

^^^ this. World bosses need a rework, but the ones in the starter zones need, by nature of their zone, to be newbie friendly.

SB has a decent amount of mechanics for the fight to not overwhelm the new players, yet still give them a challenge.

World bosses are nothing more than a glorified loot pinata. It’s intentional with the sole exception being TT.

I fought the Golem Mark 2 thingy couple of nights ago. That one was actually fun.

Fire elemental is the only started zone one that could use a rework. Mostly to either shorten the pre event or something to force more players out to do the pre event. The main event is ok.

It’s a world boss for a noob zone made for about level 16ish, It’s not suppose to be hard

Blaine Tog.8304:

Having commanded maps of newbies against SB, I think he’s designed the way he is intentionally. Having to split off to take out portals while avoiding the champions that spawn and then getting back to his head and DPSing him down with no traits or gear to back up your attacks makes him actually a rather challenging, epic fight for new players. Giving him a bunch of new mechanics would just make him a frustrating experience for them and detract from the “Wow!” factor.

Jormag and the Shatterer are far better candidates for a rework, IMO. Those are intended to be fought mostly by downscaled 80s so they really should have more interesting and difficult mechanics.

I can never understand why people use “epic” to refer to HP sponges. If that is really what people mean when they use that word I really worry about all the times ANet has used it to refer to stuff.

I prefer the devs to spend time on creating new maps and contents instead of updating the existing ones.

Khisanth.2948:

Blaine Tog.8304:

Having commanded maps of newbies against SB, I think he’s designed the way he is intentionally. Having to split off to take out portals while avoiding the champions that spawn and then getting back to his head and DPSing him down with no traits or gear to back up your attacks makes him actually a rather challenging, epic fight for new players. Giving him a bunch of new mechanics would just make him a frustrating experience for them and detract from the “Wow!” factor.

Jormag and the Shatterer are far better candidates for a rework, IMO. Those are intended to be fought mostly by downscaled 80s so they really should have more interesting and difficult mechanics.

I can never understand why people use “epic” to refer to HP sponges. If that is really what people mean when they use that word I really worry about all the times ANet has used it to refer to stuff.

Oh tish tosh, you know what I meant: it’s big and flashy and scary and puts on a good show and you need a bunch of people to take it down under ordinary circumstances, all of which looks really good to fresh-faced players who were expecting to have to fight nothing but womp rats for hours and hours before seeing anything cool.

It isn’t remotely as complicated a fight as the Vale Guardian or even Teq and yes, it’s basically just a big punching bag, but for new players, SB is amazing. It generates a great deal of enthusiasm for the game and gives them something to feel excited about after defeating it. I realize it’s rather blase’ for old grognards like us who see who easy it really is but if you peel away that cynicism, SB is absolutely perfect.

I think people are getting the terms “hard” and “challenging” mixed up.

These bosses are, yes, low level ones such as Shadow Behemoth shouldn’t be difficult or hard BUT I think they deserve more active play rather than just standing there and pressing 1.

There is not proper incentive to stray away from the face of SB – few will be killing portals and plenty camp contributing no skill or effort and I think this is the biggest “boring too easy” feeling people get.

As previously mentioned, I personally would like world bosses to be challenging but not difficult to the extent that it’s not fun. There needs to be a certain threshold of mechanics involved to pull it out of the “sit back and press 1” mood.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Khisanth.2948:

Blaine Tog.8304:

Having commanded maps of newbies against SB, I think he’s designed the way he is intentionally. Having to split off to take out portals while avoiding the champions that spawn and then getting back to his head and DPSing him down with no traits or gear to back up your attacks makes him actually a rather challenging, epic fight for new players. Giving him a bunch of new mechanics would just make him a frustrating experience for them and detract from the “Wow!” factor.

Jormag and the Shatterer are far better candidates for a rework, IMO. Those are intended to be fought mostly by downscaled 80s so they really should have more interesting and difficult mechanics.

I can never understand why people use “epic” to refer to HP sponges. If that is really what people mean when they use that word I really worry about all the times ANet has used it to refer to stuff.

Oh tish tosh, you know what I meant: it’s big and flashy and scary and puts on a good show and you need a bunch of people to take it down under ordinary circumstances, all of which looks really good to fresh-faced players who were expecting to have to fight nothing but womp rats for hours and hours before seeing anything cool.

It isn’t remotely as complicated a fight as the Vale Guardian or even Teq and yes, it’s basically just a big punching bag, but for new players, SB is amazing. It generates a great deal of enthusiasm for the game and gives them something to feel excited about after defeating it. I realize it’s rather blase’ for old grognards like us who see who easy it really is but if you peel away that cynicism, SB is absolutely perfect.

Nope. Never had that effect. On the other hand GW2 is not the first game I’ve ever played …

Mikazukijin.9862:

Hey, I’ve been playing the game for awhile now and i think many people including myself have a certain desire to have some World Bosses reworked. I personally would like for Shadow Behemoth to be reworked. It is no surprise to many that this boss can hardly be considered a world boss other than the fact that his body is huge. When you think of a World Boss, you expect something fun and challenging. And for many, spamming the key 1 is not fun and far from challenging. What’s worse is that you can hardly die from this boss. You can literally stand there and absorb all of his attacks and still be fine while tapping the key 1. It’s not to say that i want the Shadow Behemoth to be able to down players in a second like they were nothing because when a boss does so much damage that they can down players in 1 second, we players start using range weapons to counter certain melee bosses who are capable of downing players in 1 second. I simply wish for the Shadow Behemoth to have more thought to it rather than spamming 1. I wish the fight with the Shadow Behemoth could be more interactive and not be as tedious. So far, the fight with Shadow Behemoths is about destroying the portals that he spawns which allow us to damage him all while avoiding his attacks.
May i suggest a few ideas?
All of our attacks seem to be aimed at his head and after a brief moment its head moves closer to us. Instead, why not make us attack both of its arms. The destruction of its arms will force its head to fall down to allow us to attack it, similar to what its doing already.

The idea of him summoning portals is great, but i believe we can make it a bit more interesting than what its current purpose is. Instead of destroying the portals then attacking the boss, why not force us to destroy the portals while also destroying his arms. This situation creates us the need to coordinate with each other more. Making us create small teams, one for portals and one for his arms. The destruction of his portals and his arms will weaken him allowing us to attack its head.

With that said above, you might think that this implementation won’t add much to fighting Shadow Behemoth and i agree. If we look at the World Boss Tequatl, this boss require us to do certain things in order to defeat it. Otherwise, we risk taking longer to defeat it or worse, fail it. Similarly, i suggest that there should be a consequence if we fail to do certain things with Shadow Behemoth. This will also make more players participate in the process. In a less severe way than Tequatl, the failure to destroy some/all his portals before his arms HP are depleted would allow Shadow Behemoth to summon his hand from the ground to attack us from anywhere under his designated area with greater strength capable of wiping players. The strength of his hand summoning will depend on the number of portals left. The more portals he has up, the more it does damage, if not completely down players.

A quick recap of the above.
My suggestion of the fight with Shadow Behemoth includes the implementation of more mechanics.
For examples:
To kill Shadow Behemoth, destroy his arms and most/all his portals until both his arms Hp are depleted while the Shadow Behemoth attacks players similar to what he’s capable of doing at the moment. Also while his portals are summoning monsters.

Upon depleting all of Shadow Behemoth’s arms HP and destroying some/all of his portals, he will summon his hand from the ground affecting all players in his vicinity.

The damage of his summoning hand attack will be determine by the number of portals left. The more portals he has left upon the destruction of his arms, the more his summoning hand attack will inflict greater damage. For example, if none of his portals were destroyed when Shadow Behemoth’s arms HP were depleted then his summoning hand attack should be able to wipe out and down all players in his vicinity. If all portals were destroyed then his hand summoning attack will do some damage.

After his summoning hand attack, Shadow Behemoth weakened state will force its head at ground level allowing us to damage it.

The destruction of his portals and arms, should be repeated 3-4 times. Or apply said mechanics above only when Shadow Behemoth’s HP has 75% of his total Hp.

It is quite a lengthy post, but i would like to hear the community’s input and if some of the ideas interest you. Please leave a comment. What do you think of the current Shadow Behemoth Boss and what would you like to improve?

Did not read whole wall,instead i saw your suggestion,and decide to ask you something

Does Shadow Behe working as intended?If yes,why would they change something that works perfectly?If you don’t like it,its your problem.

This is a starting zone world boss.

If anything they should add one to plains of Ashford.

SB is fine. The problem is we all know how to beat the bosses now, so yes they are easy. Everything is when you know what you are doing. The best ANet can do is change how the fight works, that will “make” it hard till we figure out how the fight works, then it will be easy again. It’s how games work.

Honestly, when i first did Shadow Behemoth i was left disappointed. Making it seem like something it isn’t. In no way does pressing 1 and standing in one spot is epic and far from awe inspiring. I reckon some of the average monsters you fight have the same amount of effort if not more to defeat it. Just because you need more people, doesn’t mean it’s amazing. And no, to me, Shadow Behemoth fails at what it’s supposed to be doing. Sorry for expecting more of a game we payed for, but people need to be stopped being babied around. It’s like giving out a medal for participating.

I think SB should stay as it is still needs to be completable for new level 16-17 players.(who have limited access to abilities at that point)
theres plenty of other bosses that can be reworked (i rather see new stuff tho)

As has been said it is a starter zone boss, leave it.
I would love all the other bosses except teq and tri wurm outside of the starter zones to be re-done though.

What about if they add a one shot hit to him, to stop people just standing at his head and pressing 1? So you have to move about.

I agree SB difficulty should be raised. When I started playing GW2, there were a lot more threatening mobs in Queensdale. The wasp queen was quit hard and I died frequently on that, as was the troll event. The boars in that area were also a kittenallenging, especially if you agro’d more than one or the veteran. I don’t see why SB shouldn’t be adjusted as such. Nowadays, these world bosses are mostly farmed by lvl 80s just looking for something to do. Might as well make it a little less brain numbing.

Despite that however, I doubt Anet will focus resources on central Tyria since HoT (paywall) is the main focus right now. Teq and Tripple Trouble are the only 2 world bosses providing some level of challenge. To spend time reworking all the other bosses would be to much. At this point, I would simply say enjoy the easy loot.

The sad part of this, OP, is that the mob is already a 2.0 version. There was a time in GW2 when you had to really hurry to get a reward for hitting him. If you arrived at the waypoint and he was still at 3/4 health, you could as well stop and turn around.^^

Currently all of Anets money is going into esports, so no Shadow Behemoth will not be reworked.

i think all starter areas bosses can use minor tweeks but dont implement sweeeping new tactics to it. shatterer and boss in higher areas yes go ahead but leave the low level bosses pretty much alone

Pretty sure the devs admitted that all the world boss encounters are far too easy and need to be reworked.

That was maybe a half year ago? Not a peep about it since then. Priorities change I guess.

Xillllix.3485:

If I’m not mistaken when they released Teq they said they would increase the difficulty on all the dragon world bosses. But then they also said Stronghold would be similar to GW1 GvG.

They did say that they’d rework all world bosses. And Triple Trouble was the second one to it, though it was an addition rather than rework.

However, they scrapped that idea.

Like they scrapped the reworking dungeons after doing it to AC. Like they scrapped the biweekly updates. Like they scrapped SAB. Like they scrapped progressing the Halloween storyline. Like they scrapped Jewelry 500. Like they scrapped aquatic weapons, or aquatic combat in PvP/WvW. Like they scrapped new fractal levels after Fractured.

Like they scrapped a lot of things.

ArenaNet has a tendency to start a plan, then go with a new plan. Every four months they pretty much changed the game’s direction during Season 1. And all HoT was was just promises of more in the future.

And people believed them.

Waiting for the outcry when they never release raid wing 3…