Guild Wars 2

Hi Folks,

After some weeks playing the game, which I really like BTW,
I have mixed feelings about game difficulty & balance approach.

Some experiences with the game :

-> Some bosses or mob situation feel like the difficulty is problematic.
As a Guardian, even with full vitality/toughness stuff, with Protection -33% and signet -10% damage, I can still be OS by some bosses.
I’m not talking about being invincible in dungeons, here, but just being able to withstand a bit more when well protected could be nice.

What is the strategy behind this ?
Yes you can and must dodge some moves, of course, and chain your skill correctly.
But sometimes I just carefully chain my skill, just to be OS. It’s a bit frustrating to have to use the rez system to go through some challenges.

-> In some parts of the game, it’s the contrary.
Like Malchor’s Leap map in PvE, where I took +10 levels just running around finishing quests with others, without never risking anything.

IMHO, the challenges design need some work to deliver the proper experience.

Please note I’m not whining about this. I can adapt, and will do.
But what do you think about it ?

Boss fights seem hard to balance, they have to hit quite hard in events, since otherwise you can just run out, heal, rinse and repeat. I think maybe bosses should spawn more dangerous minions than they typically do right now.

being downed by area effect “instagib” skills from bosses will happen, that’s when teams come into play and rallying

Are you sitting in melee for a long time? why are you using that signet instead of a party buff though?

10% damage is ok. But it’s hardly going to matter if you’re shot for 110% to 120% of your hp.

Vigor or things to increase your endurance quickly go a long way… Implemented some of this with my engineer and I hardly ever get downed (and yes, I wear all berserker though I do have some +vit thanks to the alchemy trait line).

What annoys me most is that some mobs or bosses in dungeons just have 10 million hit points.

There is no real challenge except not falling asleep. In TA for example you have a set of two wardens just before the end boss. One has a nasty knock down combo, so he is the primary target, but the other warden is easy to manage….it just takes 5 minutes to kill him because he’s incredible tough and/or has tons of hp.

This is just plain boring. The one shotting is annoying too but I fear that for the sake of ease of balancing skills they decided to make pve encounters rather simplistic so that pvp balancing has little effect on pve.

What I mean is that the pve difficulty is entirely dependent on how well you dodge and how quickly you ress team mates. Your actual skill bar only needs your auto attack and heal skill. The rest is just fluff that you could use but don’t really need.

With regards to difficulty in pve this means that boss difficulty is not about your skill bar but about your ability to dodge in time and kite around. Your traits and skills just determine the duration of the fight but not the outcome in any way. At least that’s how it feels to me.

Perhaps…

I can only speak as an engineer since it’s my only toon with dungeon experience. The tool kits give me a huge range of versatility and I’m constantly swapping for the team.

Rifle to immobilize and knockback enemies
Health kits to but down health packs and condition removals
Elixir gun to put down healing area and cripple (occassionally use as a jump back to escape dmg)
Grenade kit to dmg, bleed, keep up high stacks of vulnerability, slow, poison

Now not everyone has this flexibility in their professions… so there is some use of the skill bar in picking the right utilities and weapon skills for the task at hand. In terms of HP, i agree esp. when the fights only offer 1 phase. 3-5 minutes per phase should be sufficient.

The difficulty for most parts I think is ok. Some of the bosses though just have way to much health, and that combined with some of their abilities to 1-shot players it too much.

The tree boss in FA…too much health. You sit at the mouth of the cave and auto-attack and dodge when he shakes like a dog. Every now and then kill some spiders. Or kite some spirits. There is little to no actual threat and its just a time sink. Cut his health and give him phases. That fight can be shorter and more challenging.

Alpha in CoE is the opposite. He has a huge amount of health and can obliterate a party. In the case of the Alpha, I don’t have a particular problem per-say with the damage he can do. But that combined with his health pool is just too much. As a thief I can dodge his earth spikes consecutively upwards of 25 times. I would consider that impressive since its a delayed skill that does nothing for x seconds and instantly resolves. But if I miss that 26th time bam kitten dead. And factors beyond my control can sometimes effect that timing. So it may not even be my fault I miss the dodge every time. The Alpha is plenty dangerous enough as is, but really needs his health cut down. There is a difference between expecting players to do extremely well over a period of time, and expecting them to be completely flawless with a perfect internet connection for an extended period of time.

The Evolved Destroyer, also in CoE. Too much health. Not dynamic at all. Three players on the lasers, two on the steps, drop the shield, and aoe…lather-rinse-repeat. It takes forever and there is no challenge. Sure, you can have the people manning the laser jump down to the second platform and add some DPS, but by the time they get there, they might get 2-3 skills off, if they are lucky, before the shields go up. That only saves about three minutes over-all and risk > reward, so why do it? This boss can use the same treatment as the TA tree boss.

Fimbul in HoTw…why does he have 10 trillion health and become invulnerable for 15 seconds at a time for no reason? Ok, he traps himself in an ice-cube. It’s his gimmick. Every boss needs a gimmick. Cut his health down, make him spawn ads when he goes in to the cube and regen health until players kill the ads. Now this fight isn’t the most boring, miserable thing in the entire dungeon.

Mark I and Mark II end Golem bosses in SE…don’t change a thing. That fight is difficult, requires strategy, attention, constant communication, quick thinking and resource management. It’s longer, engaging enough to keep you from getting bored with it. One of the best explorable dungeon bosses in the game.

tl;dr – I don’t think bosses are too hard. Just imbalanced in either they do nothing and take forever, or they are balls hard and take forever. The ones that do nothing need to be spiced up, the ones that insta gib should have life taken down a notch.