Guild Wars 2

Since the last patch I have noticed veteran level mobs are able to spike damage that is too overpowered. In addition to that they auto-regenerate to full health even while actively being engaged in combat. For example:

In “The Anthill” there is a Veteran Chaos Creature that spawns for an event. It was one-shotting all of the guards and Skritt. I am de-leveled to level 15 (on my level 31 character) for the area. I have about 1,324 hp. It one-shotted me for 1,696 damage. Please see my attached screenshot.

A level 14 veteran mob shouldn’t be able to spike that much damage. Especially on a character who is level 31 (de-leveled to 15) and wearing as much in gear. I have seen similar happen during dynamic events that involve Veteran tier mobs. I’ve posted a screenshot but, it seems like something is very wrong here.

I think maybe this is a negative effect of the dynamic scaling system. In any case, it should be investigated. Thanks.

I think the chaos kind of creatures is supposed to be like that. Like Imps, is very easy to kill but deals a kitton of damage at the same time.

That is one example. I had some golemns do it yesterday too. Also the auto-regenerate I noticed other mobs doing it too whilst you stand right on top of them in combat (melee).

It has not been like this and I have been hardcore playing since Beta. I suspect the last patch broke something.

The last patch was an attempt to make the game more “interesting”. There were changes to Orr, dungeons, DE’s, various NPC races to make the game more challenging. This is, of course, a step in the wrong direction in terms of open world PvE in an MMO which is not about crushing challenge. Anet seems intent upon learning lessons the hard way and sadly the players are along for the ride.

I’ve been wondering if the addition of more “challenging” mobs is a way to try and get more players to upgrade their gear rather than be satisfied with “good enough.” If they think we’re not grinding gear enough, an easy way to get people to go for top-level gear would be to make the landscape much more difficult for someone using masterwork gear, so that they felt they couldn’t survive well without exotics or, someday when more is added, a full line of ascended.

Raine.1394:

The last patch was an attempt to make the game more “interesting”. There were changes to Orr, dungeons, DE’s, various NPC races to make the game more challenging. This is, of course, a step in the wrong direction in terms of open world PvE in an MMO which is not about crushing challenge. Anet seems intent upon learning lessons the hard way and sadly the players are along for the ride.

Indeed… I do not believe anything was broken with regard to “entertaining” mechanics in the last patch. I firmly believe these unreasonable difficulty spikes are “working as intended” and may signify a troubling change in audience focus for the game.

I cannot help but wonder if the devs are incorrectly assuming that most open world PvE players operate as part of large zergs/guilds. Witness the vaunted guild missions which were clearly aimed squarely at large organized groups.

My personal experience as a solo roamer/explorer has been that there seem to be many, many other players who have been enjoying the game in a manner similar to my own.

This is the first MMO I’ve found that has provided me with a niche which made me consider a long-time commitment. If changes such as these are harbingers of things to come, I fear that niche and my commitment may soon become a thing of the past.

I play solo 99% of the time and I’ve been having a BLAST with the more challenging creatures. At 80, I actually get decent fights in some lower level areas.

Of course, I’m not implying that you should enjoy it too. Just writing this to say that there are some of us out there who enjoy the upgraded challenge.

Harak.8397:

I play solo 99% of the time and I’ve been having a BLAST with the more challenging creatures. At 80, I actually get decent fights in some lower level areas.

Of course, I’m not implying that you should enjoy it too. Just writing this to say that there are some of us out there who enjoy the upgraded challenge.

Outstanding! — I have no doubts that there are folks who enjoy an increased challenge.

My concern is thus: that this “challenge” will be painted over all content with too broad a brush and begin to alienate those who only wish to explore and roam… not fight tooth and claw just to see what lies on the other side of that interesting looking hill.

From my perspective, the devs seem to mostly perceive “challenge” as being generated by ludicrous respawn rates, over-inflated NPC health pools, and “cheap shot” combat mechanics. All things that are, perhaps too easily, overcome by player numbers but strongly impact someone operating solo.

Don’t get me wrong, I do on occasion enjoy challenging myself by taking on vets/champs by myself and whatnot. However, I play mostly to relax as I find the real world provides me with all the challenge I care to stomach. In this context the “entertaining” new abilities granted to some hostile NPCs are a bit over-the-top as it were and a very unpleasant surprise.

Perhaps the worst offenders are the new veteran NPCs that “summon” swarms of reinforcements which might make an encounter more interesting to a group of players but can constitute a death sentence to a solo roamer particularly when coupled with the drastically reduced “combat” movement speed granted to the player and multiple repeated applications of “CC” abilities by said swarms rapidly exhausting dodge/stun break countermeasures.

Was this a group event? If so, the mob difficulty may have been intended. Also, what efforts did you make to avoid the attack or mitigate it? How often did the Vet use this particular attack? Was there a tell for the heavy hitting attack?

A friend of mine said earlier this week, “One of the things I like about GW2 is that if I play smart and well, I can come through a fight taking no damage.” With that kind of option built into the game’s combat mechanics, harder hitting creatures — especially for events — make sense. I won’t say this particular mob is balanced properly or not without knowing more than I know now.

Celtic Lady.3729:

I’ve been wondering if the addition of more “challenging” mobs is a way to try and get more players to upgrade their gear rather than be satisfied with “good enough.” If they think we’re not grinding gear enough, an easy way to get people to go for top-level gear would be to make the landscape much more difficult for someone using masterwork gear, so that they felt they couldn’t survive well without exotics or, someday when more is added, a full line of ascended.

I hope for the game’s sake that this is not the case. Judging by all the uproar over “vertical progression” being added to the game… This would be exceedingly unwise.

The irony here is that, using myself as an example, I’m a very easy player to keep happy. I don’t care about loot, progression, PvP, dungeons, WvWvW. Tried all of it and didn’t care for any of it except roaming about the open world aimlessly doing my own thing while using whatever equipment I can obtain without any major hassle. And I’m generous with my real-life money so long as I’m happy… I think I’ve spent more on this game then on any other game I’ve ever played before.

Thus far I’ve had no difficulty outfitting all 8 of my characters sufficiently well to do what I like by doing what I like. And I don’t care for large-scale “chest” events and whatnot so my income is quite likely on the extreme low-end of the scale…. So much so that I never waypoint unless I get killed. In point of fact, needless armor repair and waypoint fees sting quite a bit; hence my distaste for getting killed by “death by respawn” or “cheap shot” mechanics.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Was this a group event? If so, the mob difficulty may have been intended. Also, what efforts did you make to avoid the attack or mitigate it? How often did the Vet use this particular attack? Was there a tell for the heavy hitting attack?

A friend of mine said earlier this week, “One of the things I like about GW2 is that if I play smart and well, I can come through a fight taking no damage.” With that kind of option built into the game’s combat mechanics, harder hitting creatures — especially for events — make sense. I won’t say this particular mob is balanced properly or not without knowing more than I know now.

These mobs are unfortunately not appearing only in group events… They are appearing in the open world when I’m all by my lonesome and away from any event, they are even appearing in storyline missions and making them hellish experiences: swarm summoning veteran Risen Acolytes and certain Krait come to mind.

As I’ve said before, my concern is that these changes are being painted with a broad brush all over the place and may just be an initial “experimental” deployment of such changes. I never have posted in a game forum until recently because of these changes. I could not remain silent any longer.

Akhellan.4180:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Was this a group event? If so, the mob difficulty may have been intended. Also, what efforts did you make to avoid the attack or mitigate it? How often did the Vet use this particular attack? Was there a tell for the heavy hitting attack?

A friend of mine said earlier this week, “One of the things I like about GW2 is that if I play smart and well, I can come through a fight taking no damage.” With that kind of option built into the game’s combat mechanics, harder hitting creatures — especially for events — make sense. I won’t say this particular mob is balanced properly or not without knowing more than I know now.

These mobs are unfortunately not appearing only in group events… They are appearing in the open world when I’m all by my lonesome and away from any event, they are even appearing in storyline missions and making them hellish experiences: swarm summoning veteran Risen Acolytes and certain Krait come to mind.

As I’ve said before, my concern is that these changes are being painted with a broad brush all over the place and may just be an initial “experimental” deployment of such changes. I never have posted in a game forum until recently because of these changes. I could not remain silent any longer.

The new mobs (Veteran Risen and some of the krait) can be a bit of a problem in sufficient numbers, such as in some events and story missions. I doubt that the story missions were retro-tested to see the effects of the experiment. I’d bug report them if I thought they were too much, or if I though that scaling was broken. I bug-repped the appearance of 4 Veteran Risen Nobles, 2 Vet Acolytes and 2 Vet Abominations at the Song of Lyss as a scaling issue — we had 8 or 9 players. In 2 subsequent runs after one of the recent small patches, the up-scaling was reduced.

The announcement stated that the Risen and Krait have been adjusted in the current experiment. Ergo, there is no evidence this Chaos Creature has been touched recently. While I understand your concerns, it is an experiment, and quite possibly has nothing to do with this thread.

The 1 shot kills are more annoying than lag and getting dc’d. Even if you are with a group, if the mob fires off it’s super-power, someone is going to get a repair bill if their friends aren’t fast enough on the revive.

Personally I think it’s just one more tactic Anet uses to get people to spend coin and buy more gems for gold.

I’ve been highlighting 1 shot kills for ages and I often get shot down with “why do you want to ruin the game and make it too easy for the rest of us who like a challenge?” kind of response.

I have no problem with challenge if its fair (e.g. you can make an informed choice before you engage in combat), but 1 shot killed by things (including normal enemies) many, many levels below you?! If the game isn’t designed to be soloed in PvE then ANet should advise us that they intend group play only. Maybe this is what they do intend with the introduction of Guild Events, maybe they don’t like people who like soloing the world farming nodes? Who knows…

havent encountered such mobs – but they sure sound great! there are plenty of options to stay alive – its good training for higher fractals.

That veteran has always been hitting hard since BWEs, the “shade” kind of creatures have always has a unique “expand” move that hurts a lot if you don’t dodge. If you see them shrinking and pulling back their “face”, dodge, or they’ll expand and hit a large angle in front of them.

Akhellan.4180:

Calae.1738:

How is that even a challenge?

Are you people playing with one hand or something?

You keep using the word “challenge”. Hmm… I’m an older person, retired military veteran, retired due to disability. I’ve a feeling you’ve no idea what a real challenge is.

To answer your question directly… I’m pretty much playing the game with one hand. Any more condescending questions?

I’m an older retired soldier as well… :P

I remember having lots of fun playing ridiculously difficult games in the 80’s and 90’s, but they were consistent. I think consistency is the issue, I never know if the mob is going to be a cakewalk or if they are the 1 in 100 than massacre me in less than 1 second…

This is one of the reasons I play 95% of GW2 in WvW, because even though the skill levels of players vary there is never a 1 hit kill unless culling has you running into the middle of a zurg.

Of coarse, what was I thinking? Lets make this as easy as possible. No one needs to be challenged. Especially not in a video game. Of all places.

StormageddonBK.9842:

I’m an older retired soldier as well… :P

I remember having lots of fun playing ridiculously difficult games in the 80’s and 90’s, but they were consistent. I think consistency is the issue, I never know if the mob is going to be a cakewalk or if they are the 1 in 100 than massacre me in less than 1 second…

This is one of the reasons I play 95% of GW2 in WvW, because even though the skill levels of players vary there is never a 1 hit kill unless culling has you running into the middle of a zurg.

I really, really enjoyed WvW when the game was new but I found it far too fast paced for my difficulties with the game controls. It was much more interesting than bashing NPCs… But bashing NPCs to get them out of the way so I can explore seems to be the best I can manage with my messed up reflexes and the like.

I used to be pretty athletic and my idea of challenge was pretty physical: long hikes and the like. Roaming the pretty open-world is a poor substitute but when you’re home-bound, you take what you can get.

The fact I’m memory-impaired means that the world of Tyria is always somewhat new to me… By the time I’m done exploring one corner, I’ve forgotten the other corner so I get to enjoy the journey all over again. :P

Anyways, meh — Didn’t mean to snap at the other person… Missus says I’m a cantankerous old crab for a reason though. And I’m new to forums and what not. I should probably go back to lurking before I get in trouble.

Calae.1738:

Of coarse, what was I thinking? Lets make this as easy as possible. No one needs to be challenged. Especially not in a video game. Of all places.

I apologize for my earlier remarks. I was out of line. Clearly our perspectives are too different to see eye to eye. However, it is very clear to me that you haven’t read most of what I’ve written. I do not want there to be no challenge in the game. I just don’t want it slathered over the entire game like a coat of paint… please leave someplace in the game for folks like me. That is all I ask.

In the end though this is all completely academic: the devs will decide what they will do and players will choose how to respond. I will say no more.

Good luck in Arah then, where vets will Killshot you for unblockable 30k+ dmg.

But yeah, GW2 needs more constant difficulty rather than easy content and then sudden oneshots.

Akhellan.4180:

Calae.1738:

Of coarse, what was I thinking? Lets make this as easy as possible. No one needs to be challenged. Especially not in a video game. Of all places.

I apologize for my earlier remarks. I was out of line. Clearly our perspectives are too different to see eye to eye. However, it is very clear to me that you haven’t read most of what I’ve written. I do not want there to be no challenge in the game. I just don’t want it slathered over the entire game like a coat of paint… please leave someplace in the game for folks like me. That is all I ask.

In the end though this is all completely academic: the devs will decide what they will do and players will choose how to respond. I will say no more.

Save your breath Akhellan. He’s not going to understand that any more than he understands what respect is…

Consistency is key, and in the past seven months, consistency is the last thing we’ve had.

To the OP, that Veteran Chaos Monster you’re talking about has always hit extremely hard, dealing damage comparable to a Champion. He may warrant a look at by the devs, but it’s more likely that as a “Shade” enemy, he has lots of stats put into Power and Precision, but very little into Toughness or Vitality as he goes down quite quickly if you can snare him in AoE or just make use of the friendly Skritt nearby to tank him.

There are several other monster types in the world which hit extremely hard, but don’t have a lot of health. This includes Skelk, Wolves (god, I hate these guys, especially with their Summon ability) and Wasps. They’re probably all using “glass cannon” stat spreads.