Guild Wars 2

Waypoints being closed because they are contested should be changed.

I am lying on a branch, destroyed by a bunch of mordrem because my bf was able to port before you closed Faren’s wp as contested. I was alone and confronted by a virtual army of mordrem.

Many times the closing of a wp has been disasterous for me, and at the very least inconvenient. It is particularly annoying not to be able to rejoin my party in a fight I was already aware of because the wp was contested. In the new areas this is especially annoying. There arent that many wps…. there are long distances between wps and the terrain is impossible to cover before the end of the fight.

We are mostly adults here, certainly old enough to figure out the game. What would be wrong with just giving us a little freedom to decide if we want to port into a contested wp or not. Warn us, yes. That is very nice. But let us decide whether to port into an area where there is a fight.

I think the idea isn’t to protect you from finding yourself suddenly in a fight but to protect the fight from a zerg joining it, and to make it more serious if you die during the fight.

The problem is waypoints that are contested when there is nothing happening. You can go up to them and wipe every mob from the area but it stays contested because it is waiting some random event to enable it to be clear. Most of Orr waypoints are useless and may as well not even exist because of this terrible feature.

There are many waypoints in the game which are permanantly contested, even though no events happen near them.
I dont know whether this is a bug, or whether previously events used to happen and no longer do, but the waypoint thinks that they still do.

How about we just have them not show up on the map until they’re uncontested.

Contested waypoints are the only salvation the waypoint system has. Waypoints are used excessively in this game, to the point where many of the community requested that as much as half of them be removed during the Dragon’s Reach update, because they cheapen pretty much everything in the game.

If not for contested waypoints, it would be even cheaper. Bosses like Tequatl would become extremely easy because you could just waypoint zerg it over and over again. This is why most of the contested waypoints exist to begin with.

Hostile zones are meant to be hostile. You are in the dragon’s domain. There’s no point in taking away challenge, immersion and sense of danger for all other players so you can save a minute or so on a glider flight. Approaching these maps knowing that you can die and have to start all over again makes you think twice about everything you do, helping you play better, and increases surrealism.

I’m saddened by how easy everyone wants games to be these days. :/

It’s not about being easy. It’s about having to cover so much terrain just to get back to your team in case you die. And in Maguuma, you can die a lot.

In the core maps, you didn’t need to run TOO far if an event you needed to go back to had its nearest WP marked contested. Look at your example, which is Teq. Most of the time, the WP on the Asura research base is contested. But the next closest ones aren’t that far. It takes a bit of walk, and one of them through some Risen (while the other one has Krait), but it’s not that difficult OR long a run back.

This isn’t about the Meta. This isn’t about asking for an easy time. It’s just asking that we don’t have to spend so much time getting (back) to the places we need to be in.

Why is it when threads like this pop up the automatic response of some players is immediately to call out people on asking it be easy? Reading through the OP’s post, there wasn’t any indication that she wanted her hand held: she just didn’t want to cover so much territory just to get back to the fight.

In fact, if I get her post right, she’s even asking ANet to give us the option to port in via a contested WP into a fight. Right on top of that contested WP. Like Space Marines on a drop pod inbound to a hot zone filled with Tyranids and anticipating every moment of it to help save some Imperial Guardsmen and get some glory for the Emprah.

You know, I’d love that choice.

Hannelore.8153:

Contested waypoints are the only salvation the waypoint system has. Waypoints are used excessively in this game, to the point where many of the community requested that as much as half of them be removed during the Dragon’s Reach update, because they cheapen pretty much everything in the game.

If not for contested waypoints, it would be even cheaper. Bosses like Tequatl would become extremely easy because you could just waypoint zerg it over and over again. This is why most of the contested waypoints exist to begin with.

Hostile zones are meant to be hostile. You are in the dragon’s domain. There’s no point in taking away challenge, immersion and sense of danger for all other players so you can save a minute or so on a glider flight. Approaching these maps knowing that you can die and have to start all over again makes you think twice about everything you do, helping you play better, and increases surrealism.

I’m saddened by how easy everyone wants games to be these days. :/

I’m sad that people think “just add more wasted travel time” is in any way related to it being a challenge. Adding things that are there JUST to waste our time and add neither challenge nor fun to the fight is just bad design. See also: Fear spam that doesn’t serve any purpose in the fight but to draw it out. Looking at you Claw of Jormag.

Lakanna.2073:

Hannelore.8153:

Contested waypoints are the only salvation the waypoint system has. Waypoints are used excessively in this game, to the point where many of the community requested that as much as half of them be removed during the Dragon’s Reach update, because they cheapen pretty much everything in the game.

If not for contested waypoints, it would be even cheaper. Bosses like Tequatl would become extremely easy because you could just waypoint zerg it over and over again. This is why most of the contested waypoints exist to begin with.

Hostile zones are meant to be hostile. You are in the dragon’s domain. There’s no point in taking away challenge, immersion and sense of danger for all other players so you can save a minute or so on a glider flight. Approaching these maps knowing that you can die and have to start all over again makes you think twice about everything you do, helping you play better, and increases surrealism.

I’m saddened by how easy everyone wants games to be these days. :/

I’m sad that people think “just add more wasted travel time” is in any way related to it being a challenge. Adding things that are there JUST to waste our time and add neither challenge nor fun to the fight is just bad design. See also: Fear spam that doesn’t serve any purpose in the fight but to draw it out. Looking at you Claw of Jormag.

How about you try not to die? This way you don’t have to travel back? There has to be something to “punish” dying. It wouldn’t waste your time if you got better and didn’t die correct?

Thing is, it’s not really a punishment. You don’t lose anything but time. It’s annoying, and serves no real purpose. Teq, for instance: does it really add to the challenge of the fight to have people running back from the nearest uncontested waypoint, instead of the nearest? Does it really make a difference in the fight at all? If you agree that it doesn’t change the fight, then it’s pointless. Worse, though, it FEELS pointless. You can do all kinds of things to draw out fights, draw out content, whatever, but if the players NOTICE you wasting their time for no purpose other than to waste their time, you screwed up somewhere in the design.

Kampilan.3895:

It’s not about being easy. It’s about having to cover so much terrain just to get back to your team in case you die. And in Maguuma, you can die a lot.

In the core maps, you didn’t need to run TOO far if an event you needed to go back to had its nearest WP marked contested. Look at your example, which is Teq. Most of the time, the WP on the Asura research base is contested. But the next closest ones aren’t that far. It takes a bit of walk, and one of them through some Risen (while the other one has Krait), but it’s not that difficult OR long a run back.

This isn’t about the Meta. This isn’t about asking for an easy time. It’s just asking that we don’t have to spend so much time getting (back) to the places we need to be in.

Why is it when threads like this pop up the automatic response of some players is immediately to call out people on asking it be easy? Reading through the OP’s post, there wasn’t any indication that she wanted her hand held: she just didn’t want to cover so much territory just to get back to the fight.

In fact, if I get her post right, she’s even asking ANet to give us the option to port in via a contested WP into a fight. Right on top of that contested WP. Like Space Marines on a drop pod inbound to a hot zone filled with Tyranids and anticipating every moment of it to help save some Imperial Guardsmen and get some glory for the Emprah.

You know, I’d love that choice.

This is my biggest problem with the new zones. The WPs are few and far between, and the majority can be contested at any given time. Making me run vast distances isn’t challenging, it’s annoying since there can be “more to it” than simply running from point A to point B. There are always elevation gains or losses, meaning I’m running up a spiral or zig zagging my way between those 2 points. Irritating. Annoying. Poor design/mechanics.

“I think the idea isn’t to protect you from finding yourself suddenly in a fight but to protect the fight from a zerg joining it,”

What is the mega server but insurance for the game that a zerg is exactly what is fighting? The game was created from the beginning for crowds of people to fight together. They create bosses that can wipe out large numbers of the “zerg,” then make it impossible to get back to the fight before the zerg has failed. This argument also doesn’t consider the huge number of d/c that we are more and more experiencing.

As far as fearing that a horde of players will descend before the boss dies… I have to laugh. That is obviously what ANet wants because if the zerg diminishes they send you to a new map. Too many times I have struggled to get a hit in before the huge number of people in my map bring a boss down and that is the norm. Sometimes, I never even see the boss because of the huge crowd and their skill affects.

Kampilan I love you. Yes, you get perfectly what I’m saying. I do appreciate the warning. And I do just want to get back to the fight. In the new areas it is much more difficult to get back in time.

I like freedom. It’s possible I guess that I have reached the point of diminished returns in a game that seems more and more to be run by authoritarians. To force me to run with a zerg and then make it impossible to finesse a d/c or a death is mean.

And it’s true… sometimes the “contested” waypoint is a lie and not really contested at all. My favorite is when every wp on the map is contested at the same time. At least give me the option of going to another map then because they have obviously stacked my map with too large a zerg.

nEmM.3076:

How about you try not to die? This way you don’t have to travel back? There has to be something to “punish” dying. It wouldn’t waste your time if you got better and didn’t die correct?

Well, I tried but it’s hard to recover when you’re downed and Teq’s fingers hit you with five circles of poison simultaneously. I’m genuinely curious if you have some means of surviving that, to help me get better.

Yeah, I don’t see how having waypoints available all the time would be game-breaking.

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

nEmM.3076:

How about you try not to die? This way you don’t have to travel back? There has to be something to “punish” dying. It wouldn’t waste your time if you got better and didn’t die correct?

Well, I tried but it’s hard to recover when you’re downed and Teq’s fingers hit you with five circles of poison simultaneously. I’m genuinely curious if you have some means of surviving that, to help me get better.

Don’t be in the zerg, be in a defense team. You won’t die from defending the turrets, unless you really suck at playing.

SirDrygan.1823:

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

nEmM.3076:

How about you try not to die? This way you don’t have to travel back? There has to be something to “punish” dying. It wouldn’t waste your time if you got better and didn’t die correct?

Well, I tried but it’s hard to recover when you’re downed and Teq’s fingers hit you with five circles of poison simultaneously. I’m genuinely curious if you have some means of surviving that, to help me get better.

Don’t be in the zerg, be in a defense team. You won’t die from defending the turrets, unless you really suck at playing.

Look, I get that you’re trying to be helpful, and I appreciate it, but – like the poster I was replying to – you’re not really offering any solution. Everybody gets downed/defeated at some point, even the most experienced players. Even you guys, I suspect. All you and nEmM are offering is “don’t die” and “don’t be where death happens”. Good advice, but completely avoiding the issue of what you do when death happens, as it inevitably does. And how to make it less tedious so people are not discouraged from playing and learning to get better, which is what you’re advocating, right? That denial of reality seems odd to me. You can’t have everybody in the defense team. Battle is a fluid and unpredictable situation. Many are going to fall. What we’re discussing is what should happen when they do.

SirDrygan.1823:

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

nEmM.3076:

How about you try not to die? This way you don’t have to travel back? There has to be something to “punish” dying. It wouldn’t waste your time if you got better and didn’t die correct?

Well, I tried but it’s hard to recover when you’re downed and Teq’s fingers hit you with five circles of poison simultaneously. I’m genuinely curious if you have some means of surviving that, to help me get better.

Don’t be in the zerg, be in a defense team. You won’t die from defending the turrets, unless you really suck at playing.

If everybody followed your advise, would it be possible to defeat Teq ?

If not, then your advise isn’t helpful because someone needs to be at risk of instant death.

Lakanna.2073:

I’m sad that people think “just add more wasted travel time” is in any way related to it being a challenge.

People thinking that longer content is automatically harder than shorter content is just a sad fact in MMO communities.

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

SirDrygan.1823:

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

nEmM.3076:

How about you try not to die? This way you don’t have to travel back? There has to be something to “punish” dying. It wouldn’t waste your time if you got better and didn’t die correct?

Well, I tried but it’s hard to recover when you’re downed and Teq’s fingers hit you with five circles of poison simultaneously. I’m genuinely curious if you have some means of surviving that, to help me get better.

Don’t be in the zerg, be in a defense team. You won’t die from defending the turrets, unless you really suck at playing.

Look, I get that you’re trying to be helpful, and I appreciate it, but – like the poster I was replying to – you’re not really offering any solution. Everybody gets downed/defeated at some point, even the most experienced players. Even you guys, I suspect. All you and nEmM are offering is “don’t die” and “don’t be where death happens”. Good advice, but completely avoiding the issue of what you do when death happens, as it inevitably does. And how to make it less tedious so people are not discouraged from playing and learning to get better, which is what you’re advocating, right? That denial of reality seems odd to me. You can’t have everybody in the defense team. Battle is a fluid and unpredictable situation. Many are going to fall. What we’re discussing is what should happen when they do.

I fully agree with your view Zoltar!

How are ppl going to learn to handle any event or boss better over time only by getting killed without any abilities to get back into fight again? I have managed to gradually do Teq and even complete all achievement by using that WP north from where Teq spawns within a small Quaggan village. It is enough annoying to die as you even get “punished” by less loot or even miss out of the big Chest, if you are unlucky enough to not have enough hit points on the big boss, so I fail to see any of those arguments as really want ppl to learn to play better. Secondly there is also the basic part of helping out other downed player when ever it is possible which I found was a big deal for me the first time I started to play GW2 as my first MMORPG.

In Orr it can be really tricky even without getting killed to find the nearest WP to jump to when you want to do some event/gathering or whatever reason on that map as some WP seem to be very often contested. It is not only a problem with contested WP for ppl which want to re-join an event/fight, but also for those who want to get into a map where there is a lot of smaller and larger events going on in a very tight space around some WPs.

I think Anet might be better off considering “Rez Points” instead of waypoints. Rez points are in many games that are not places where folks can just portal in from outside. It is set to a specific task…that of rezzing defeated players.

Something like this would be a better option than more waypoints or even uncontested waypoints considering the possibilities folks are discussing here in this thread about zergs popping in and causing mayhem.

I wrote a post about this option in another thread …did not realize this one was available. Search functions on this forum do not work well most times I have used it.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Contested-HoT-waypoints-Rez-Issues/first#post5766394

The actual problem would be people not rezzing you. The actual combined time it takes to rezz someone is a lot lower than that one running back from a wp. It’s just that people don’t want to have their personal dps decreased because they do oh-so-much damage.

Remove all Waypoints → Add mounts

grabs popcorn :P

My personal gripe about contested Waypoints is when you portal in from another zone and are diverted elsewhere, the port should fail and you should be left where you are instead, it’s aggravating to find yourself at times a long roundabout route from where you expected to be because the Waypoint you selected only became contested after you started your trip.

Already way too many waypoints in the game. New areas (SW, Maguuma Falls) are a step in the right direction. There needs to be some penalty for getting killed and not having any friends to ress you. That penalty is time spent running back to the fight. Maybe instead of feeling kittened off you should think what you did wrong and maybe even tune your build when you’re running back?

If you reduce the number of waypoints then you’ll just see more instances of downed players refusing to wayport out. It’s already an issue in some fights leading to salty chat.

DoctorDing.5890:

If you reduce the number of waypoints then you’ll just see more instances of downed players refusing to wayport out. It’s already an issue in some fights leading to salty chat.

Force respawn in say… 2 minutes?

Tom Gore.4035:

Already way too many waypoints in the game. New areas (SW, Maguuma Falls) are a step in the right direction. There needs to be some penalty for getting killed and not having any friends to ress you. That penalty is time spent running back to the fight. Maybe instead of feeling kittened off you should think what you did wrong and maybe even tune your build when you’re running back?

Yep, think what you did wrong: hit by sniper cross fire whilst knocked down by a charging beastie into a red zone of death. Got a build tweak for that one?

How about one shot instant downed mechanic? Got a tweak for that?

Or just actually being involved in the fighting rather than standing spamming 1 from the back or running a tanky auro healing condi removing heavy armor toon?

I ran through an old area the other day where it put poison on me continuously which couldn’t be removed, and just running through it I was down to under 50% hp, which reminded me why I felt most of those things were designed around heavy armor auto condi removal auto healing warriors and guardians….

New areas are awful for contested WP’s, especially if the map is quiet, and missing that glide means running across the whole map again through piles of mobs that slow you, knock you down or swarm you whilst you try and check the map to see where you are heading to to attempt that glide or jump or whatever again.

This is so frustrating…I agree! Some are just contested almost always. If there were more around that were at least close you could get to, but there are not.

Notsoperky.2348:

Yep, think what you did wrong: hit by sniper cross fire whilst knocked down by a charging beastie into a red zone of death. Got a build tweak for that one?

Learn to dodge?

How about one shot instant downed mechanic? Got a tweak for that?

Learn to dodge?

Or just actually being involved in the fighting rather than standing spamming 1 from the back or running a tanky auro healing condi removing heavy armor toon?

These guys don’t get downed often, so doesn’t really apply to this thread. I don’t have a solution for braindead people though, except to stop playing open world content in MMOs. Sad, I know.

I ran through an old area the other day where it put poison on me continuously which couldn’t be removed, and just running through it I was down to under 50% hp, which reminded me why I felt most of those things were designed around heavy armor auto condi removal auto healing warriors and guardians….

New areas are awful for contested WP’s, especially if the map is quiet, and missing that glide means running across the whole map again through piles of mobs that slow you, knock you down or swarm you whilst you try and check the map to see where you are heading to to attempt that glide or jump or whatever again.

Missing a glide only results in death if you mess up big time with the landing, so it’s more like two misses in a row. You don’t think you should get penalized for that? Also, the Pocket Raptors and Rolling Devils are pretty much the first mobs in the whole game you cannot just run through and ignore. Is that a bad thing? Every single class in the game can either bypass them with fast movement skills or stealth, or alternatively decimate them quickly with AoE.

Everything else can still be ran through and ignored, with a dodge or two for their knockdowns and pulls.

Sorry but all this whine about waypoints sounds like a L2P issue and nothing else.

Tom Gore.4035:

Notsoperky.2348:

Yep, think what you did wrong: hit by sniper cross fire whilst knocked down by a charging beastie into a red zone of death. Got a build tweak for that one?

Learn to dodge?

How about one shot instant downed mechanic? Got a tweak for that?

Learn to dodge?

Or just actually being involved in the fighting rather than standing spamming 1 from the back or running a tanky auro healing condi removing heavy armor toon?

These guys don’t get downed often, so doesn’t really apply to this thread. I don’t have a solution for braindead people though, except to stop playing open world content in MMOs. Sad, I know.

I ran through an old area the other day where it put poison on me continuously which couldn’t be removed, and just running through it I was down to under 50% hp, which reminded me why I felt most of those things were designed around heavy armor auto condi removal auto healing warriors and guardians….

New areas are awful for contested WP’s, especially if the map is quiet, and missing that glide means running across the whole map again through piles of mobs that slow you, knock you down or swarm you whilst you try and check the map to see where you are heading to to attempt that glide or jump or whatever again.

Missing a glide only results in death if you mess up big time with the landing, so it’s more like two misses in a row. You don’t think you should get penalized for that? Also, the Pocket Raptors and Rolling Devils are pretty much the first mobs in the whole game you cannot just run through and ignore. Is that a bad thing? Every single class in the game can either bypass them with fast movement skills or stealth, or alternatively decimate them quickly with AoE.

Everything else can still be ran through and ignored, with a dodge or two for their knockdowns and pulls.

Sorry but all this whine about waypoints sounds like a L2P issue and nothing else.

Not every class has infinite dodges, nor is everyone able to play events on full graphics because the game crashes when you do. many times there is nowhere to dodge to, the field is full of pretty aoe death fields. Or you have been knocked down in to a field of death and can’t move whilst your HP bar disappears.

It’s not a L2P issue. If you are knocked down you can’t dodge. L2P? Wait, I should have dodged the charging guy that came from behind whilst my dodge was on cooldown just after I dodged the first sniper?

Dodge an instant death mechanic that you can’t see and don’t know when it hits, whilst endurance is on cooldown? L2P?

Missing a glide means you have to WP back and start the route over again in many cases- doesn’t matter if you die from landing or not. perhaps I didn’t make that sufficiently clear. One miss, long run. Clear now?

Many of the mobs you have to get through have cripple, pull back or immobilise whilst many skills have cooldowns. It is a lot easier to move around the map on certain classes than others. It’s also a lot easier if you know exactly where you are going so you don’t have to try and find a safe spot to check the map. It also gets tedious having to kill your way through the same mobs over and over again to try and reach that HP.

I’ve yet to find out how to dodge the big mushroom guy’s pull back/down.

The maps are a lot less fun if they are quiet as then you have full mob spawns rather than paths people have already cleared or pulled out of position. Try and find an empty map, roll a new toon so it’s all blacked out, try and forget you know where to go, then try and work out where that HP point is and how you get to it whilst moving around the map and finding places to stop (remember you don’t know the map at this stage, no cheating!).

At one stage on VB the only WPs uncontested were the entrance one and the one next to the entrance to AB (and I didn’t have that part of the map yet).

AB and TD can be even worse with the large numbers of veteran mobs you don’t want to waste time fighting to get back to where you needed to be.

Sandpit.3467:

The problem is waypoints that are contested when there is nothing happening. You can go up to them and wipe every mob from the area but it stays contested because it is waiting some random event to enable it to be clear. Most of Orr waypoints are useless and may as well not even exist because of this terrible feature.

There is one Waypoint in Frostgorge Sound that is always contested when a Event
spawns in the area behind .. even if the mobs never ever come to that WP since
there are Walls between it … i always “loved” that.

And Orr .. oh yeah .. was recently more often there for hunting Hero Points, and i
had totally forgotten how bad it is.

Notsoperky.2348:

Tom Gore.4035:

Notsoperky.2348:

Yep, think what you did wrong: hit by sniper cross fire whilst knocked down by a charging beastie into a red zone of death. Got a build tweak for that one?

Learn to dodge?

How about one shot instant downed mechanic? Got a tweak for that?

Learn to dodge?

Or just actually being involved in the fighting rather than standing spamming 1 from the back or running a tanky auro healing condi removing heavy armor toon?

These guys don’t get downed often, so doesn’t really apply to this thread. I don’t have a solution for braindead people though, except to stop playing open world content in MMOs. Sad, I know.

I ran through an old area the other day where it put poison on me continuously which couldn’t be removed, and just running through it I was down to under 50% hp, which reminded me why I felt most of those things were designed around heavy armor auto condi removal auto healing warriors and guardians….

New areas are awful for contested WP’s, especially if the map is quiet, and missing that glide means running across the whole map again through piles of mobs that slow you, knock you down or swarm you whilst you try and check the map to see where you are heading to to attempt that glide or jump or whatever again.

Missing a glide only results in death if you mess up big time with the landing, so it’s more like two misses in a row. You don’t think you should get penalized for that? Also, the Pocket Raptors and Rolling Devils are pretty much the first mobs in the whole game you cannot just run through and ignore. Is that a bad thing? Every single class in the game can either bypass them with fast movement skills or stealth, or alternatively decimate them quickly with AoE.

Everything else can still be ran through and ignored, with a dodge or two for their knockdowns and pulls.

Sorry but all this whine about waypoints sounds like a L2P issue and nothing else.

Not every class has infinite dodges, nor is everyone able to play events on full graphics because the game crashes when you do. many times there is nowhere to dodge to, the field is full of pretty aoe death fields. Or you have been knocked down in to a field of death and can’t move whilst your HP bar disappears.

It’s not a L2P issue. If you are knocked down you can’t dodge. L2P? Wait, I should have dodged the charging guy that came from behind whilst my dodge was on cooldown just after I dodged the first sniper?

Dodge an instant death mechanic that you can’t see and don’t know when it hits, whilst endurance is on cooldown? L2P?

Missing a glide means you have to WP back and start the route over again in many cases- doesn’t matter if you die from landing or not. perhaps I didn’t make that sufficiently clear. One miss, long run. Clear now?

Many of the mobs you have to get through have cripple, pull back or immobilise whilst many skills have cooldowns. It is a lot easier to move around the map on certain classes than others. It’s also a lot easier if you know exactly where you are going so you don’t have to try and find a safe spot to check the map. It also gets tedious having to kill your way through the same mobs over and over again to try and reach that HP.

I’ve yet to find out how to dodge the big mushroom guy’s pull back/down.

The maps are a lot less fun if they are quiet as then you have full mob spawns rather than paths people have already cleared or pulled out of position. Try and find an empty map, roll a new toon so it’s all blacked out, try and forget you know where to go, then try and work out where that HP point is and how you get to it whilst moving around the map and finding places to stop (remember you don’t know the map at this stage, no cheating!).

At one stage on VB the only WPs uncontested were the entrance one and the one next to the entrance to AB (and I didn’t have that part of the map yet).

AB and TD can be even worse with the large numbers of veteran mobs you don’t want to waste time fighting to get back to where you needed to be.

You don’t need infinite dodges unless you try to mow through a pack of pocket raptors (where the right choice of action is to kill them with cleave/AoE).

Ever heard of stunbreakers? Yeah, I know, novel concept for pure PvE players, but slotting them is not such a bad idea in HoT.

All one shot attacks have an animation you can watch for and save your dodge/invulnerabilities for. Granted the effect fireworks can sometimes obscure them, but that’s not really a difficulty issue, it’s a graphics issue and I believe Anet is working on it.

I’ve now played up and until to DS with warrior, thief, engineer, ranger and guardian (and further with some of them). None of them have had any trouble getting through the zones solo when set up to do so. All of them are full glass cannon builds, although the defense traitline on the warrior is just too good to pass.

Have I died a lot? Yes I have. Have I died because I didn’t have any tools to avoid the death (on the second or third try with a new mob/jump). No. Every time I’ve died it was either because I was still learning a new mob’s mechanics or exploring a new place, or was not paying attention. Not a single time did I think “boy this is too difficult, I can’t do this, too unfair”.

So as blunt as it might sound like, yes it is a L2P issue. End of story.