Guild Wars 2

The fact that the risen respawn very fast, are so densely packed together, and have a seemingly large aggro range makes it difficult for me to engage in a prolonged fight and succeed.

For the record, I play an elementalist and yes, my toughness is above 1400, yes, I do use glyph of (sand)storms via earth attunement, yes, all my equipment are level 80 (some of which are exotic), and yes, I do have condition removal.

I also kite really well and am capable of letting loose 3 blast finishers at the same time (if that matters to anyone who wants to respond with “play better,” “DPS better/more*” or “lrn2kite”).

The Orrian area, at least to me, isn’t fun. What was fun (to me) was completing all the renown hearts, finding PoI, and just exploring an area in general.

Fighting hordes of undead who can pull you, inflict bleeding, poison, cripple, steal your health, and teleport to you (or a combination of three out of the six things mentioned per enemy) just isn’t fun.

If anyone has advice that doesn’t involve zerging (aka: mob rushing) or exploring with guildies (most of my guildies are underleveled or don’t have the time), I’d like to hear it.

• Someone actually said that to me in a dungeon run before. That, without a doubt, was one of the stupidest comments I had ever heard from someone. You can’t really “DPS more” if you’re skills are spammed on cooldown already, can you?

I have to agree, and I play a Guardian. I can take 5-6 normal risen pretty easily, but it’s still annoying, especially when those 5-6 mobs are chain pulling you one after another. The respawn rate, chain pulls, and long aggro range have actually gotten me locked into 10-minute fights to clear out a commune-type skillpoint a few times.

There’s another related situation I’ve had involving the pulling ones. I come within aggro range of it, it pulls me, which brings me into aggro range of another one, which pulls me, which brings me into aggro range of ANOTHER one, etc. Basically it’s Guardian football and the game keeps getting bigger =p

Vaerah.4907:

" I play an elementalist".

You really did not need to say more.

+1
OP, you had all the sympathy you needed after saying that. The elementalist just can’t handle Orr very easily and it ends up costing far more than you will ever earn.

The orr areas aren’t balanced in the slightest. There are large numbers of fast respawning veterans, and every single risen has extremely annoying abilities (cripple city, extremely fast, insane fast respawns etc).

Completely agree. I have a 80 Engineer and 80 Guardian, properly geared in endgame gear and there’s very little fun to be had playing either of them in Orr. They can survive, sure, but the combat and moving around the map just isn’t fun. Once my personal quests are done there I doubt I’ll go back.

I totally get that the devs wanted to make Orr feel epic and dangerous. But they seem to have achieved this by dubious means – by giving the mobs superpowers rather than obeying the normal game mechanics. Nearly all the mobs seem capable of teleporting, warping or super sprinting to their targets, all have insane crowd control and all do silly amounts of damage and dump a heap of conditions on you so frequently it’s not even worth trying to clear them.

Orr feels like they turned the dials up to 11, gave every mob every trick in the book (regardless of whether it suits or not), ramped up the respawn and aggro ranges to max – then sat back and laughed to themselves “hah, that’ll give the players something to deal with”. Trouble is, it’s not fun. And if it’s not fun, people won’t go there. The less people that go there, the less events can be completed and the harder it is to move around the map and so it spirals downward.

I’m fully up for a challenge, but only when it is a credible challenge and doesn’t feel like the difficulty is achieved through simply overtuning everything.

I can’t add much to this topic really. I hate Orr with a passion and IMO, the Orrian areas are the worst designed zones I’ve ever seen in an MMO – thanks almost entirely to the Risen and how they were designed.
I would have near eternal respect towards Anet if they were to say at any time “We’ve seen a lot of negative feedback on Risen mobs, so we’ve redesigned them towards something more fitting to the game world” (vs the current pop culture Zombies on speed).

What I can throw in though, that may help enjoying the game more – avoid Orr till you do have others to go there with. Frostgorge Sound is a 75-80 zone and is probably one of my personal favorite zones.

Events are more scattered out helping to avoid that buggy DR system (though, beware the Claw of Jormag event – I did hit the DR with it once – it’s buggy though, so not every time). A few (fewer than Orr) top tier crafting mat nodes as well.

I simply have a lot more fun avoiding Orr in general and it may be something to consider till new 80 levels are added or Orr is… well, something done with it.

I have to agree. Ele is one hard mofo to do anything on the 70+ maps. The CC is way too long for softy to live.

Good thing I still have my warrior and Engineer(s.. making a 2nd one for money making.)

Orr is our only real endgame area right now. Frostgorge being purposed as a map for levelers evidenced by the lack of Orrian scale DEs and the continuation of the old leveling map style (ie hearts.)

So of course it’s going to have its challenges. But if you’re having insurmountable problems there then you’re either A) playing a class that needs rebalancing or B) wait for it… need to learn how to play better. Considering that I’ve seen people of every class soloing out there just fine, guess which one I’m leaning towards?

And no, just because your damage skills are on cooldown doesn’t mean you’re dps’ing as hard as you can, it just means you scrubbed your face across your keyboard. If you had mentioned that you were buffing yourself up with might and stacking vulnerability on the enemy before unleashing your hardest hitting spells, then I’d believe that you know how to dps with your class.

As for not having hearts, if that’s your thing w/e. But hearts were never meant to be the purpose of the world. It’s events that are the bread and butter of this new Tyria, and Orr has the biggest and the baddest of them.

Cernow.3974:

I totally get that the devs wanted to make Orr feel epic and dangerous. But they seem to have achieved this by dubious means – by giving the mobs superpowers rather than obeying the normal game mechanics. Nearly all the mobs seem capable of teleporting, warping or super sprinting to their targets, all have insane crowd control and all do silly amounts of damage and dump a heap of conditions on you so frequently it’s not even worth trying to clear them.

These do not break the game’s mechanics at all, players are capable of doing everything the Orrian mobs can do and more. GW has always built mob bars primarily from player skills and I don’t see why it’s any sort of problem. In every case these abilities are far far less dangerous than if it were a PC using their versions on you.

Hell some of the monster skill upgrades even work in your favor. Rather than just dodging a scorpion wire, if you dodge that zombie’s hammer pull at the right time (after it first impacts you, before it returns and pulls you) he knocks himself down. Free knockdown for you doing something you should have been doing anyway!

The game’s challenge mechanics have been slowly building to this the whole way. First you get to see big windups and audio cues from mobs, then they start doing things to you that make you want to learn how to dodge them. Enemies started coming in mixed melee/ranged packs before you could even do dungeons. Aggro started getting so tight most pulls ended up getting botched before you could even get to Orr. The whole game has been practice for Orr but it seems like some people refuse to learn and expect things to be simplified so far that even someone who’s never played can be given an 80 and lay waste to the final areas of the game.

I for one relish the challenges provided there. Nowhere else in the pve world can I push myself as far as in Orr. I can’t go to frostgorge and challenge a giant with his endless ranged grubs while dealing with the constant zombie aggro. And I certainly can’t get the kind of satisfaction in frostgorge as when I succeed at dodging every disable from the zombies that jump in, keeping poison damage from the grubs to a minimum, slaying the giant before he can overwhelm me with grubs and I run out of resources to keep the other challenges at bay, and then cleaning up the rest of the mooks like the most composed action movie hero. I hope to god anet doesn’t dumb down the only challenging area in the world for you guys. And I look forward to seeing what you all have to say about our first Tombs or UW equivalent update :P

But I do hate Orr, I wish Anet would for once in their history make an endgame area that wasn’t so visually dull and tedious. There’s alot of awesome art hidden behind the low sat palette :(

+1
OP, you had all the sympathy you needed after saying that. The elementalist just can’t handle Orr very easily and it ends up costing far more than you will ever earn.

Uhm, what?

I’m an ele and I don’t really have any issues in Orr. That is, no more than everyone else.

I’ve gone through pretty much every area solo without issues. Except the maze. kitten that maze.

im annoyed about the whole orr zone. This game badly needs more 80 zones. im only in Orr to collect oric/ancient. Then i go to Frostgorge som much better than Orr

While I can solo Orr, I don’t like it. It’s ugly, it’s irritating, and there is no reason why everything should have stun, knockdown, bleed, knock back, cripple AND poison. I understand they wanted to make a group area, but isn’t that what the solid 80 areas are for?

I used to hate Orr because of the thick waves of mobs that you simply couldn’t just get thru without fighting, not to mention you can’t really kite there because you’ll attract about fourty other mobs in the process.

Now I hate Orr because of that as well as the goofy aggro rules. Last night I was moving thru an area, there were about 6 risen. The 3 closest ignored me entirely, the fourth one out ran right thru his buddies and was WELL out of range of any of my attacks and literally hauled kitten to come to me and start attacking. I stood there dumbfounded, just letting him hit me since he clearly wanted to so badly.

Seriously, Orr is blah. I’m all for a challenging map but there’s a difference between challenge and tedium.

Couldn’t disagree more Vox… at least on my personal reasons for hating Orr. I don’t find the Risen to be a challenge at all. Only annoying beyond words. Respawns are so fast there’s no forward movement; only a stalemate of them slamming into me as I tear them apart 2 at a time.
Eventually, I get bored and simply kite them away; with a train behind me as I zig and zag bored through the zone.

I find the coral areas on Orr to be really cool looking actually. I just can’t really soak it in nor enjoy it when the non-stop Risen just wont… well, stop.

The Risen just make the entire Orrian areas a slog of utter boredom and samey-ness. It’s terribly designed and thought out IMO.

The core problem is there is really no ebb and flow to Orr. It’s non-stop all the time. And that gets old. In a two hour dungeon or so, that’s fine. But for an entire end zone area(s) – boring.
And that’s why I like Frostgorge far better. There’s a feeling of small conflicts, then large ones. There’s skirmishes then there’s all out battles. It’s far more interesting there.

Anyway, will have to agree to disagree I think on this one.

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

+1
OP, you had all the sympathy you needed after saying that. The elementalist just can’t handle Orr very easily and it ends up costing far more than you will ever earn.

Uhm, what?

I’m an ele and I don’t really have any issues in Orr. That is, no more than everyone else.

I’ve gone through pretty much every area solo without issues. Except the maze. kitten that maze.

kitten that maze indeed. I ended up getting 10 people on map chat and we burned to the heart of that maze like a wildfire. Kitten that maze. It’s not even soloable by most players.

Its a high level area, theyre not meant to be a walk in the park, it fustrated me too doing them areas but what else would one expect? like one every 100 meters you walk?

I grew very tired of Orr very quickly. The mobs are just not fun or interesting to trudge through and when I’d kill 3 or so, I’d be stuck having to fight newly spawned mobs. As others have stated, veterans are just a pain. Hell, even simple ravagers are annoying due to the crazy damage their wands do.

Just because the acolytes agro from 3 zones away and other times are completely invisible until you are on top of them is no reason to complain is it?

At least they die quick on my guardian.

If it wasn’t for orichalcum, I’d rarely set foot in the risen areas. Like WasAGuest stated above, the enemies aren’t difficult in the sense that it’s an honest to god challenge. Having mobs that spawn at a ridiculous rate (often times right next to you as you’re running), are faster than you, can pull, stun and bleed is more annoying than anything else.

They’ll nip at my ankle and I’ll just turn around and go, “Do you really want to start this? Really? I’m just trying to mine some ore!” Smash. It’s only a challenge when it’s like, 12v1 and you’re constantly stunned/confused. No kitten. It’s difficult to enjoy a zone that has almost zero down time and repetitive enemies.

I can certainly understand your position although I would have to disagree. I also play an Elementalist, although I don’t have many issues with their performance. I would dislike seeing Orr changed in terms of the aggression of the mobs and their respawn rate.
I think that the way Orr is set up, forces you to play in a world where relentless destruction is truly that, relentless. It is the least safe place to be in the world, even the towns are not safe havens.
I don’t know if you are trying to skip mobs, and if your issue lies there, but I would suggesst killing everything as you go. If you are there to farm, this is productive anyway, and keeps you from finding yourself in a position where 6 mobs with cc are all on top of you.

I don’t think I’ve had forward progress slowed to respawns since I stopped being underleveled for whichever Orr zone I was in. It stops me from standing around sure. But primarily it makes me play more aggressively and more intelligently about where I fought mobs so any spawns or pats don’t chain more aggro to me than I want. Which is no more than I expect from an endgame area.

As for that maze… kitten. I sure felt like I earned that SP. But hell, if I’m not gonna be rewarded with worthwhile loot at least give me more satisfying challenges like that pls.

I do reasonably well in Orr on my ele, able to handle most of the map without needing someone else, but that doesn’t mean it’s in any way enjoyable.

When solo, I avoid densely packed areas (especially those with lots of anchor wielding Putrefiers and shovel wielding farmers), stay away from the water, and make ample use of my Snow Leopard stealth “emergency button”.

Even one other person with me to work on clearing the way makes a huge difference, and a group of 3-5 can breeze through anything except for a few of the champions or taking the temples.

My biggest personal issues with the Orr area are:
1) Huge but incredibly random aggro range. Sometimes you will get aggro from mobs in the next county over (all spamming their near-infinite range CC), while other times you can breeze through an area with minimal impact.
2) Sheer number of CC effects, which combined with the large numbers and large aggro range, makes getting anywhere feel like a real drag.
3) The lack of any sort of “downtime”, as mentioned above. It becomes stressful to constantly be under assault.
4) The pulls are incredibly jarring. I don’t get motion sickness, but I’m sure the amount of pulls would trigger it in a lot of people.
5) The behaviours of some players and some chat is much more negative than most other areas of the game. Part of it is probably the “endgame” mentality, part of it is probably the frustration level of the whole place.