Guild Wars 2

Ok, I’ve only fought these guys a few times, but each time they were ridiculously tough. The first time was in NW Caledon, a small patch of these, and I was playing a level 30+ Thief that was downleveled to whatever the area was, 15 or so. The second time was this morning, same character, level 69 this time, in the southern border of Mt. Maelstrom. Today I was at least able to defeat one one-on-one, if I as lucky, but two or more would just annihilate me within seconds.

They basically have a charged attack where they throw a shadow bolt or something. This attack can be dodged, but if you can’t, or just fail to dodge it, it deals about 40-50% damage to me in that one shot. Since it has a fairly long range, and they tend to spawn in open terrain, the only way to deal with these attacks in any way is to burn dodges, and they can do this attack faster than dodge tends to regenerate (even on my Thief with Acro-spec). They can also cast some sort of poison cloud, and that poison ticks very powerfully too.

I just don’t get it, why do these guys hit so crazy hard? They hit like Champions, even though they aren’t even Vets, and there just aren’t enough tools to deal with them effectively.

You can avoid their charge attack if you move away from them the moment they head up into the air. The shadowbolt thing is basicly melee ranged. Even without roling you can get clear though it means moving out of melee range.

But they do hit crazy hard, right? I mean, I can usually take on a half-dozen assorted Risen easier than 1-2 Shadow Imps.

Imps hit hard compared to most normal enemies. Shadow creatures hit for a ton of damage too. A combination of the two results in a very dangerous enemy type that you should probably only tackle with multiple players. 1v1 is fine, but things can hit the fan quickly if you agro more than one at once.

theres a few of these 1 member of your party has to deal with in CoF 3rd path.

i find them easy to deal with on a guardian, but that’s due to reflecting their ranged attack and simply dodging their melee-spike attack.

Yeah, I mean, it’s not that they’re impossible or anything, but they just seem to be unbalanced, as in if you meet the qualifications to have a fair fight against almost any creature in the game at that level, these guys will be much more challenging, equivalent to at least a Veteran or two. I solo vets with adds all the time, but I’d much rather solo a vet Risen or Troll or something with adds than I would try to solo two or more Shadow Imps.

They are not unbalanced. Imps have always hit super hard in GW.
In GW1, 3 imps could easily defeat an unprepared party of 8 in a few seconds.

Haha, and this is before you wander into the mini-dungeon in the Windy Cave, with a bunch of Shadow Imps and 4 Veteran Shadow Imps in narrow corridors.

They are not unbalanced. Imps have always hit super hard in GW.
In GW1, 3 imps could easily defeat an unprepared party of 8 in a few seconds.

That does not indicate balance, that indicated persistent imbalance. If they are intended to be that difficult then they should be labeled as such, what are now title-less imps should be called “Veterans”, and the current Veterans should be called Champions, if that is what they are intended to be balanced as.

get use to it… higher level i’ve gotten more i notice even stacking toughness/vit on half my gear, still getting trashed as an ele in one or two hits… this game seems to think that insta gibbs are an ok design… which maybe some people like but i kinda hate that i love the game but cant stand pve choice in design.

Welcome to GW2 pve… where you die in an instant and it’s fun.

I don’t think there is any imbalance here. You’re getting hit hard by a mob that is tougher than other kinds of mobs. That doesn’t suggest imbalance that says that this mob is tougher and more difficult to deal with. Know how to counter!!

They should just have the tag ‘Hits hard’ like the shadows and some Skritt do, to warn you of their danger.

Get a feeling for when they are attacking. They have a small and a big attack I believe. The big attack has a long tell and executes in about 3 seconds. If you want to group farm them, try and aggro a few, then run around a corner so they loose line of sight and come to you. They blow their attacks on cooldown, which means that if you can manage to synch up their big attack cycles, you’re able to time your dodge to avoid all or almost all of their projectiles. If you just want to get past them quickly, you have to get a feeling how long after your initial aggro their attack will hit you, which includes projectile travel time after they finished casting their big attack.

I main a Mesmer and while I think they hit relatively hard(20-25% of your HP), they are by no means imba.

Yeah there’s a few mobs in this game that you remember more vividly.

I remember on my warrior doing an event in a cave with a whole bunch of these guys. I charge in doing pretty well – they don’t have many HP it seems and… what, what? I’m downed? I thought I was doing ok but maybe not checking my HP as closely as I should.

So go back and do the same thing again looking more closely at my HP – with the same result – 90% HP to 0 in maybe 2 seconds (fighting about 4 of them I think). Realized that the swoop attack was the reason and adjusted.

No worries though – tough lesson learned.

Ohoni.6057:

They are not unbalanced. Imps have always hit super hard in GW.
In GW1, 3 imps could easily defeat an unprepared party of 8 in a few seconds.

That does not indicate balance, that indicated persistent imbalance. If they are intended to be that difficult then they should be labeled as such, what are now title-less imps should be called “Veterans”, and the current Veterans should be called Champions, if that is what they are intended to be balanced as.

They don’t need to be labeled as such because any intelligent being who get hit by one find out instantly that they are strong. Proof of this is that you now know that imps hit very hard. Good thing is they are real glass cannon, they are VERY squishy.

This is not balance that you ask, you only want everything risk free.

If only Breeze/Wind Riders were as great and scary as they used to, too.
You’d be crying of frustration

Yeah, these things are a nasty bit o’work. But, IMO, it’s nice to have a mob now and then that sticks out from the Three Stooges act most of the mobs are. The ones that have the gimicks are the interesting ones. The ones that run all over the place doing whatever it is they do are the forgettable ones.

@WasAGuest, agreed.

I remember stumbling upon the pirates in Gendarren fields for the first time and getting rofl-stomped by one… I learned to fear the “Fights Dirty” informational text.

I think all imps hit incredibly hard compared to mobs of the same level, Ice Imps included.

GOSU.9574:

I think all imps hit incredibly hard compared to mobs of the same level, Ice Imps included.

Ice imps are a hell of alot harder to avoid since they snare you.

The lava mobs in the last Flame legion region too are insane.

But hey, imagine this: this 2 shotting is all training you need to learn to dodge and survive. You’ll really need it for when you’ll do some PvP and you’ll find out thieves and others are even worse to deal with than that.

I don’t have much trouble with imps, but then again my bear takes most of the damage. Just avoid their nukes (ice keep moving). They don’t have the hp/armor to be labelled as veteran/champion. You just need to kill them quickly before other mobs you might have agro’d and try not to get more than 2. If you’re having difficulty with them on a thief, try one of your pet utilities to absorb their initial attacks.

Another mob that hit much harder than equivalent level mobs are destroyers. There’s a cave in Metrica where the destroyer trolls are at least 2x harder than the event mobs that spawn in their place. I learned once the event is finished to exit the cave quickly as it’s a death trap otherwise.

CC Eva.6742:

Hi everyone.

I just changed the thread title for something more descriptive and less “kitten”.

I wish the community team had different forum tags than the developers.

I don’t mean anything disrespectful by this, and hope you understand where I’m coming from with that statement. It’s just that so often I see the Arenanet tag on a thread and go in thinking the topic is being addressed by an official statement that will clear up any questions. But, it just seems like a majority of the time the Arenanet post ends up being a moderation notification instead.

As a player you get excited for the snippet of game information you’re about to receive, only to end up reading about a thread title change or a warning for everyone to play nice. I have the same frustration with the dev tracker and wish it had more filters, because it’s difficult to find the informative posts amongst the much more abundant moderation activity.

Am I the only one with the complete opposite experience from the creator of this thread? I was exploring the southern part of Mount Maelstrom for the first time last night and enjoyed plowing through the shadow imps because they were by far the easiest enemies on the map. They have such low max health that they barely had time to react when I attacked them, even when I was fighting 4 at a time.

I don’t think there is any imbalance here. You’re getting hit hard by a mob that is tougher than other kinds of mobs. That doesn’t suggest imbalance that says that this mob is tougher and more difficult to deal with. Know how to counter!!

But the problem is that the game has feedback mechanisms to tell whether a mob is tougher than other mobs, the Vet/Champion tags, and Imps fail too use these properly. The only way to tell that a Shadow Imp will two-shot you within seconds is to get two-shotted by one within seconds.

They even have the sub-mechanism of telling you under their portraits that certain enemies “bleed, poison, slow, etc.”, but Shadow Imps do not say “hits like a mutha.”

I main a Mesmer and while I think they hit relatively hard(20-25% of your HP), they are by no means imba.

I don’t know why, but if your Mesmer in light armor only gets hit for 25% damage, and my Thief in Medium armor gets hit for 40%+. I’d like Thieves to be able to use Light armor (and not just because they have all the best hoods).

I main a Mesmer and while I think they hit relatively hard(20-25% of your HP), they are by no means imba.

Honestly, I like challenge, but I hate it when challenge begins with you dying. Like I hate those oldschool games where it’s actually impossible to get them right on the first try because if you aren’t reacting to something that hasn’t happened yet then it’s already too late, you should have remembered it from the last time you died. The game should give you the tools to get things right on the first try, it’s just up to you to figure out how to react to them.

Like I said, one Shadow Imp I can handle fairly well, if very risky, and the reward doesn’t really match the risk, but more than one and they’re just too much concentrated kitten for me to handle. Maybe if I had some massive Power-based ranged AoE thing I could take them out with massive alpha strikes, but as a Condition-based melee character I need to be able to fight them for at least 5-10 seconds without dieing.

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Another mob that hit much harder than equivalent level mobs are destroyers. There’s a cave in Metrica where the destroyer trolls are at least 2x harder than the event mobs that spawn in their place. I learned once the event is finished to exit the cave quickly as it’s a death trap otherwise.

I don’t have any trouble with Destroyers (except D.Harpies). Really I don’t mind melee enemies that can hit like a brick, I can tap-dance around Brutes all day, it’s when the attack homes after me at a distance and are non-directional that I have issues with it. I tend to think that enemies should either smack you to kitten in a single attack or be able to fire it at you no matter where you’re located relative to them, but not both at once.

Am I the only one with the complete opposite experience from the creator of this thread? I was exploring the southern part of Mount Maelstrom for the first time last night and enjoyed plowing through the shadow imps because they were by far the easiest enemies on the map. They have such low max health that they barely had time to react when I attacked them, even when I was fighting 4 at a time.

Entirely possible. Based on what people have been saying here, I’m thinking that my Ranger, or my Elementalist with a staff might have an easier time dropping them.

Ranged definitely helps in dealing with Shadow Imps. I used my rifle when I was combating them on Mount Maelstrom, and I took far less damage from them, plus found it easier in dropping them without them using their Helldive attack. If you get caught in melee for it, you can simply dodge when it uses that attack because of how noticeable it is.

But the problem is that the game has feedback mechanisms to tell whether a mob is tougher than other mobs, the Vet/Champion tags, and Imps fail too use these properly. The only way to tell that a Shadow Imp will two-shot you within seconds is to get two-shotted by one within seconds.

Champ/Vet tags have more to do with the armor/hp of mobs than the damage they do. I’ve run across many vet and a few champs that didn’t hit hard at all as well as ones that one shot you with specials if you don’t dodge(Ettins). Shadow Imps are definitely not veteran difficulty. Also, not all special attacks telegraph a red circle to dodge, often they use custom animations that aren’t always easily noticed, especially in a crowd. Unfortunately, the way you learn those animations is usually getting clobbered by one.

Champ/Vet tags have more to do with the armor/hp of mobs than the damage they do.

That may be the case, but if so it’s a flawed mechanic. Having more HP doesn’t automatically make an enemy harder, the tags should reflect relative difficulty, and a hard hitting but tissue thin enemy can be as hard or harder than a light but persistent and hearty enemy, the indicator should be on how difficult one can expect them to be in sum total, not whether they are a tank or a glass cannon.