Guild Wars 2

The other day I found out that I spent quite some time in this game killing world bosses, as it is a somewhat easy way to get rares which I salvage for ectos while at the same time doing my daily. So then I thought that maybe it is not the worst idea to give some personal feedback on how it feels to kill world bosses these days. So here it is, my personal world-boss-feedback list.

Please feel free to add your own experiences. After all it is information like this which may give ANet a hint on what works and where to enhance.

Claw of Jormag
The most annoying world boss. Even if I go there with my warrior (which has quite a few stunbreakers) it makes me bite into my keyboard considering how there is always still another fear that sends me almost off the map. Additionally the fact that champions which spawn during this fight now drop champion boxes has turned this event into a toxic community fight about participating vs. delaying as long as possible to make more champs spawn. Personally I don’t like this boss fight.

Taidha Covington
The boss fight which is most likely to fail in my experience. If the boss that you did before Taidha takes a bit longer you may be sent to an instance where the galleon is already so much damaged that no matter how engaged players attempt to fight it is a lost race. But even if it is not that way, this fight is rather dull. Taidha doesn’t do very much once spawned and the road towards her spawn (destroying the gate quicker than the galleon sinks) is extremely repetitious. There are some areas in which this fight should be enhanced.

Megadestroyer
Pre-events are quite spread-out and often it is not clear whether they are done or not – most players simple wait semi-afk near the waypoint. The boss fight itself is ok, it favors ranged players a bit more since they can stay out of the lava, but its alright that way.

The Shatterer
Ah, fighting the paw of a dragon… Pre-event is rather abroad and scales up way too much so it is best if someone does it alone, which is not easy to communicate. Shatterer itself is … not doing a lot to make this fight interesting, most players are not even aware of the crystals that heal it up again when around 50% health. Underwhelming for a dragon fight.

Modniir Ulgoth
This one i somehow like. Pre-events are nice for farming mid-level mats, there is a nice event chain at the final destination (although it is tough to get champion loot of the three champion beasts when not grouped, but that can be easily avoided), Modniir itself doesn’t have a lot of tricks up its sleeve, but it also is not a huge meatshield so the final fight at least is not too long.

Golem Mk II
One of my more favorite bosses. Yes, ranged chars have benefits in this fight and the boss itself has a bit too much hp, so the fight takes quite long, but players with some sort of positional awareness are honored here (daily trickster…).

Fire Elemental
5 Minute pre-event is too long IMO (and there are way not enough enemies to fight), boss fight too short. I know it is in a starter area, but it could make use of a little push.

Jungle Wurm
Pre-event with 3 champ avatars is bugged in terms of event success rating, I get loot right for all three champs exotic chest, but not event reward. Worm itself is ok, most of the time I zoom out as much as I can and position the camera hovering over the wurm so I can see the wurm telegraphing its next attack. Please add achievements for successfully dodging every knockback, would be fun.

Shadow Behemoth
I like the way it has been changed with the intermediate portals. Boss itself could use more tricks, but it is ok. One of the few world bosses of which I know that they drop unique loot (the staff with a gargoyle on top, don’t know the name currently). I personally find this motivating, although I have dropped this staff already several times.

Svanir Shaman
Pre-events need way more aggressive scaling towards larger player numbers. Boss itself is quite boring with too many HP.

Karka Queen
Before mega server this was a really fun boss. Especially with smaller groups (< 20 players) it was interesting to see, whether you’d remove her shield quickly enough to kill her in time. Now with 140+ players, nobody even attempts to remove her shield at all, damage is already sufficient. This is only an easy source for reward chests. Please pimp this event in order to account for the changes mega server brought with it.

Tequatl the Sunless
If you make the little effort to get into an organized attempt, Tequatl is quite easy nowadays (and way less annoying than Jormag’s claw). The problem I have with this is that I find it difficult to accept the amount of out-of-game organization that this type of open-world raid requires. Personally I think, a technical function like /ip should not be necessary at all as a method to organize. The most attempting fight you have to do is fighting the game rather than fighting the boss.

Evolved Jungle Wurm
The same thing holds true for three-headed wurm as for Tequatl. I really learned about myself that I do not like open-world raids where my personal success depends on total strangers and out-of-game coordination very much. Apart from that, I have never felt inclined a lot to win this fight, participated in 3 organized attempts which all failed very close, but I did not find that motivating enough to finally succeed. For me personally it is a bit over the top.

That is all. Again, this is my personaly view and I think that it is the sum of all personal views that determine the reception of this game.
If I used some words in the wrong context, I’m sorry, I am not a native speaker but I hope at least it is clear what I wished to express.

Halvorn.9831:

Golem Mk II
One of my more favorite bosses. Yes, ranged chars have benefits in this fight and the boss itself has a bit too much hp, so the fight takes quite long, but players with some sort of positional awareness are honored here (daily trickster…).

It doesn’t have too much HP. It’s just that people like to sit on boxes and range it instead of cleaving it’s 2 (or 3) hitboxes.

I rarely follow the train, but every time I end up at Golem I’m always surprised by how few people melee it.

Worldbosses? I thought they were removed from the game and replaced with a farming factory. Since the megaserver worldbosses aren’t any fun anymore, it’s just 50 people spamming the same spot with no. 1 attacks for 5 minutes and watching a healthbar slowly disappear. With the smaller bosses you don’t even see what you’re shooting at anymore. The worldbosses have just become giant piñatas for loot farmers.

I hate how they’re made to appear in a set order. Make them appear at random so that people can’t make a system out of farming them. Maybe that’ll make them actually play the game instead of just systematically teleport from one piñata to the next.

OmaiGodman.2098:

Worldbosses? I thought they were removed from the game and replaced with a farming factory. Since the megaserver worldbosses aren’t any fun anymore, it’s just 50 people spamming the same spot with no. 1 attacks for 5 minutes and watching a healthbar slowly disappear. With the smaller bosses you don’t even see what you’re shooting at anymore. The worldbosses have just become giant piñatas for loot farmers.

I hate how they’re made to appear in a set order. Make them appear at random so that people can’t make a system out of farming them. Maybe that’ll make them actually play the game instead of just systematically teleport from one piñata to the next.

Oi.

I use all my 5 GS skills on boss.. Especially Hundred Blades…

O_O

knives.6132:

OmaiGodman.2098:

Worldbosses? I thought they were removed from the game and replaced with a farming factory. Since the megaserver worldbosses aren’t any fun anymore, it’s just 50 people spamming the same spot with no. 1 attacks for 5 minutes and watching a healthbar slowly disappear. With the smaller bosses you don’t even see what you’re shooting at anymore. The worldbosses have just become giant piñatas for loot farmers.

I hate how they’re made to appear in a set order. Make them appear at random so that people can’t make a system out of farming them. Maybe that’ll make them actually play the game instead of just systematically teleport from one piñata to the next.

Oi.

I use all my 5 GS skills on boss.. Especially Hundred Blades…

O_O

i turn auto-attack and go afk or check fb

I mostlt stay away since mega-server. I liked doing them with a handful people before MS, but now you hardly meet a boss without 100+ people, and that reduce them to a few minutes autoattack and loot collection. Boring.

World Bosses have been my favourite pastime before megaservers – they were challenging and fun when not many people were in, and you could track them and jump from one to another and feel like a small hero routinely saving the world.

Currently, I rarely do them at all – maybe sometimes Svanir Shaman, Ulgoth, or Caledon Wurm; everything else upscales to a boring lagging annoying experience I don’t want to see. Tequatl is another story, though – but my guild likes doing it on a daily basis.

I mostly agree to your statements, Halvorn.

From me, some statements about why and how I fight some bosses and others not:

Claw of Jormag
Once or twice a week, because of the promise of loot. Very annoying boss. The greed is what drives me there.

Taidha Covington
Never. Either the event fails or I don’t find the path to the boss or I lay around dead and the boss is defeated before I find my way back to him.

Megadestroyer
Once or twice a week. Actually a good boss, and I don’t know why I don’t fight him more often.

The Shatterer
Three times a week. A good boss and fun to fight, especially if you made the “Asuralations” event right before and spread the pheromones within the zerg.

Modniir Ulgoth
Three to four times a week. Nice event with good pre-events.

Golem Mk II
Daily. Right up to the point, and you have a bunch of materials to harvest while you wait for his appearence.

Fire Elemental
Two times a week. The boring 6 minutes pre-wait-event is too long, and because of that I usually skip him.

Jungle Wurm
Daily. It’s a challenge to hit as much pre-events as possible as well as the nearby event where the nightmare cult overruns the outpost.

Shadow Behemoth
Almost daily. Easy to fight, yet entertaining mechanics. A chance to additionally fight the corrupted oakenheart champion if you get a few minutes early.

Svanir Shaman
Daily. Gives almost all of your daily events and happens right before my guild starts group actions.

Karka Queen
Daily. Easy, good material harvesting during wait, an additional champion, and good loot. Happens right away when I usually log on and before my guild starts doing group actions.

Tequatl the Sunless
Never. Did him about four times, but getting into a sufficiently organized instance is awful and time consuming. If you don’t, the possibility for failure is too high. It also spawns earlier than I usually log on into the game (too soon), or when I am already engaged in some guild activity (too late). I want to spend my time fighting the boss, not looking for an instance, so he is out of my rotation.

Evolved Jungle Wurm
Never. Never even tried it, since I heard the need for organization is even higher than Tequatl. It also spawns when I am usually not online.

Edit: Before the megaserver, I also did the temple events in Orr on a regular basis, because you had timers where you saw the events and were able to join, if you had nothing else to do. Now with the megaserver I almost never to these events any more. Only if I am in one of the Orr areas, which is 2-3 days per month, but usually I am not in Orr, so no temple events any more for me.

fyi, shatterer pre-event was fixed to no longer up scale, you have to collect the same amount regardless of how many players are there.

There’s a post about that somewhere
__
btw, I find behe WAY too boring, it’s now too long, and you can still afk it.

The unique drop is good, and other bosses should all have their own unique drops.
However the schedule would need to rotate weekly or monthly so that players that can only get on, on the same time every day, aren’t stuck to the same boss daily.

Right now my favorite fights are Tequatl, Golem Mark II, and Evolved Jungle Wurm.

I don’t really understand anyone who says Tequatl is too hard. I think his difficulty is balanced pretty well. He’s hard to beat on a map that isn’t organized, but the truth is that most are. I show up around 30 minutes before his afternoon spawn. There will always be 1-2 commanders who explain the basics to new people. People sort of naturally fall into place. It’s gotten to the point where we regularly beat Teq with 9-10 minutes left on the clock. This is all total random strangers mind you. I’ve failed a few times in the last month, but not often.

What’s great about the Teq encounter is that it requires you to think. It’s not a total mindless exercise like fighting The Shatterer for instance. It’s sufficiently epic in scope and there are specific roles for people.

Evolved Jungle Worm is another great fight, but it’s best left to organized guilds. I’ve never successfully done this with strangers – only when I get taxi’d into an organized map. I understand some people don’t want this experience, but I think it’s good to have challenging fights for guilds and winnable fights for random people like Tequatl.

Golem Mark II is the best non-Hardcore boss because his move-set requires you to actually dodge. Only change I would make is have some way for him to kill the people standing on the box at range. Everyone should be forced to contend with his lightning attacks.

The rest are pretty boring in my opinion. The first one I would re-do is The Shatterer because he’s meant to be this epic encounter, but instead you just sit there and wail on his toe for 10 minutes. If you die to him, you’re bad at this game. He’s a total pushover. This whole fight needs a redesign so that he’s actually deadly against zergs and so that it’s possible to fail. A fight will always become tedious if you win it 100% of the time. It drains all the tension otherwise. So there needs to be a real fail condition, he needs more attacks, and there needs to be a role outside of the zerg. Not saying he needs to be as hard as Tequatl, but it should be 75 or 80% as hard.

Claw of Jormag also needs a redesign. This fight is like ramming your head into a wall. I don’t care about the length of it. It’s just boring to play. Again, it needs more roles outside the zerg. Make it failable.

Modniir Ulgoth and Taida Covington both have really fun pre-events, but the actual boss fights are boring. They are like Svanir Shaman in that you just wail on a tiny dude for five minutes. The Earth Elemental bit of Ulgoth is particularly disappointing. It’s over in ten seconds and it does nothing. Make that the fight and have it be real scary.

Megadestroyer and Karka Queen are the same deal as The Shatterer really.

I understand why the starting zone bosses are simplistic. I think the Jungle Wurm is the best of the three though. Fire Elemental dies instantly and the Shadow Behemoth does nothing threatening. The Jungle Wurm will at least knock you back if you don’t dodge. SB just drools on you while you stab him.

A tip for Jormag; your bazooka will have a fire shield will will block the fear attack. As a warrior you also have access to a very wide number of stun breakers. In theory, you should almost never need to worry about the fear on a warrior – he has a tell tale animation prior to his fear attack.

Also, when did the champs start dropping boxes there? I thought that was removed?

I agree about Tequatl. This seems to have settled nicely now. I have yet to see a successful or decent attempt vs Wurm though. That could be bad luck, but the attempt ratio is def down right now.

I almots feel sorry for the poor Karka Queen these days….

I’m just going to drop a 5000 ft comment, and that’s that I don’t want to see any existing world boss get the Teq treatment again. Anything on that level should be something ‘new’ added for raider types that enjoy that sort of thing. Many of us don’t, and enjoy the world bosses that ‘the every man’ can do.

Not to say that some shouldn’t be give the ‘SB’ treatment (where the boss killing is broken up with some mini-events that drop mobs that can actually be kinda nasty, and standing around not doing the mini events can be hazardous), I know kitten could use a mini-upgrade like this.

I just know that the phrase, “Change them all and make them like Teq” will come up, and that takes away content from people, it really does. Do like Evolved and ‘add’ more content for people that want that level of difficulty.

That’s my general 2 cents.

There’s no way they will change many more if any to Teq again. Maybe Jormag or Shatterer when we get to their Elder Dragon stories, bt that’s it. The devs have stated before that bosses need to be diff difficulties to cater for different skills and also be relevant to the areas they are in (ie no point over doing Maw when it’s a starter area).

WIll more new bosses like Teq and Wurm be added? Probably – Marionette showed how well they can work when done right.

Shatterer- AFK fest with little to no chance of taking damage – the loot is terrible

Jormag- I like the champ spawns and overall event, though the initial shield phase is repetitive. If the champ spawns were a gated part of the fight, such as the battery phases of Teq, then everyone could both fight Jormag and the champs.

Teq – great fight and loot possibilities. Only downside is the 45min-1hr downtime just standing around because you have to go there so early to get a good map. Would be great to have pre-events “preparing the shores for Teq’s arrival,” besides the general champ train around the map that some groups do.

Since returning dragons are THE major story of the game, they should be tough fights and all give dragon chests and epic loot IMO.

Randulf.7614:

A tip for Jormag; your bazooka will have a fire shield will will block the fear attack. As a warrior you also have access to a very wide number of stun breakers. In theory, you should almost never need to worry about the fear on a warrior – he has a tell tale animation prior to his fear attack.

There is a cooldown on the stunbreakers and I have seen Jormag’s claw fear four of five times in a row, so there is no stunbreaker left for me. Pact-gun also has a cd on its shield and rolling out of the animation to break the cd feels like an exploit to me, so I don’t do it.

And a lot of my fellow warriors do not even seem to be aware of the effects of Shake it off.

The wurm in Caledon forest can also fear, but it is just once in a while, so it’s ok. With Jormags’s claw, it is overused in the first phase of the fight and nobody in my guild likes this fight for that reason.

Randulf.7614:

Also, when did the champs start dropping boxes there? I thought that was removed?

Was readded again some time ago. I really dislike this, it is not on par with other world boss events, where champs to not drop loot (like fire elemental etc.)

I used to do the Temples on a regular basis before Megaservers. There would be days that I would get in with a commander and do all 5 Temples, one after another. I’ve done them a handful of times since then. It’s a real loss.

Jormag, I don’t do very often. Takes a long time and people squabbling over the champs gets on my nerves now.

Ulgroth. The crowds there can cause my computer to crash. Only do it occasionally.

Fire ele. Pre-event takes too long. Boring. An occasional mob spawns and maybe you get a chance you hit it before it dies. Then the fire ele spawns. The last few times it melted in seconds.

Teq and 3 headed wurm. I’m lucky enough to be in a guild that does Teq daily and is trying now to lean wurm

The others, most have been so trivialized by the massive numbers of people that going there is just to get loot. It’s certainly not for the fight.

Teq and 3 headed wurm deserve their solo spot on the timer, but the others really need to have 2 or 3 starting simultaneously. They would really benefit from splitting up the zerg.

Spawning different bosses simultanously would not split the zergs, because there are always multiple map instances for each boss. You would only halve the numbers of instances, not the number of players in the zerg in each instance.

Halvorn.9831:

Randulf.7614:

A tip for Jormag; your bazooka will have a fire shield will will block the fear attack. As a warrior you also have access to a very wide number of stun breakers. In theory, you should almost never need to worry about the fear on a warrior – he has a tell tale animation prior to his fear attack.

There is a cooldown on the stunbreakers and I have seen Jormag’s claw fear four of five times in a row, so there is no stunbreaker left for me. Pact-gun also has a cd on its shield and rolling out of the animation to break the cd feels like an exploit to me, so I don’t do it.

And a lot of my fellow warriors do not even seem to be aware of the effects of Shake it off.

The wurm in Caledon forest can also fear, but it is just once in a while, so it’s ok. With Jormags’s claw, it is overused in the first phase of the fight and nobody in my guild likes this fight for that reason.

Randulf.7614:

Also, when did the champs start dropping boxes there? I thought that was removed?

Was readded again some time ago. I really dislike this, it is not on par with other world boss events, where champs to not drop loot (like fire elemental etc.)

Your stability skills will hold off at least 2 fears if you time it right, combined wih shake it off (manual and auto) and the bazooka, phase 1 should be straight forward for you..ish.

Interesting about the champ change though, wonder why they did that

But it should be easy to do more and less capacity instances at boss time to split the Zerg

Halvorn.9831:

There is a cooldown on the stunbreakers and I have seen Jormag’s claw fear four of five times in a row, so there is no stunbreaker left for me. Pact-gun also has a cd on its shield and rolling out of the animation to break the cd feels like an exploit to me, so I don’t do it.

Not sure why you think why that’s an exploit. All skills have a 3 sec recharge if they are cancelled too early. The shield is made to protect against all of Claw’s phase one attacks. Use it to its full potential, and spend less time getting feared/killed by ice spikes and more time taking down the wall.

I sort of want to see world bosses to have map wide pre-event chain like Modniir. Imagine chasing Shatterer across Blazeridge, with each stop having different objectives like defending, escort or something more creative idk, then finally concluding the event in one epic final fight. It gets the zerg moving rather than standing afk in one spot. Of course, the rewards need to scale with the time and effort spent.