Guild Wars 2

First a disclaimer, I came from WoW. In WoW, the combat log makes it fairly easy to see exactly why a person died in combat. In GW2, I see that the combat log does not track condition damage, nor does it give a timestamp more granular than minutes.

On to my question. Are PVE mob combat mechanics different than WvW/PVP mechanics? When fighting another player, every combat ability is known, simply by knowing the class. I know that 100 Blades will hit 12 times, and show up 12 times in the combat log. I know when a 1 second plus hard hitting ability is being queued up, and know to avoid it.

In PvE however, I am regularly coming across abilities that seem to work oddly, like the image posted. The example shows an attack from a Champion Toxic Warlock in the Tower of Nightmares. I died instantly even before I was even in melee range of him.

His attack was Life Blast, a chain autoattack that cleaves up to 3 players and adds a bleed. It hit me 5 times instantly doing 23,000 damage. Autoattack abilities from players have cast time frames between them, so they are easy to judge, but not so with PvE mobs. I have had mobs do a large, slow, animated hammer swing from left to right that I would assume would hit once, but have hit up to 10 times instantly, delivering upwards of 100,000 damage.

So, is this normal?
Are there any in depth articles about combat mechanics other than what’s on the wiki?

There’s probably something buggy with how that cleave damage was coded, like not having a maximum hit cap on any single target. That or the devs are totally trolling us! I hear all developers in general love the taste of the sweet, sweet tears of their players :P

I also considered that I used (Warrior) Rush as a closer, and may have been in melee range long enough for the mob to actually attack me 5 times. I do notice that Rush will sometimes start moving then stall and then continue toward the target.

Twentytwo.3259:

I know that 100 Blades will hit 12 times, and show up 12 times in the combat log.

Curious that you would know that, since it only hits 9 times.

OP one of the problems with this game and other MMOs is that where you see yourself on your screen might not be exactly where you are on the server. That is to say your screen is updated by the server. So a moment of lag is all it takes for the two to get out of sink. That’s why sometimes people die and their corpses can’t be rezzed because there body isn’t where people are seeing it.

In your case, it’s possible you or the creature were closer than it looked on your screen but you died before your screen got updated information from the server.

Olba.5376:

Twentytwo.3259:

I know that 100 Blades will hit 12 times, and show up 12 times in the combat log.

Curious that you would know that, since it only hits 9 times.

Sorry, had been playing my Ranger, and just used a number I had seen lately.