Guild Wars 2

I don’t mind bosses that are difficult or hard to kill or even ones that are not on specific timers.. In fact, I like a challenging boss fight. Karka queen is frustrating for the opposite reason: she is too easy and dies too quickly. I never know where or when she will spawn, and by the time I get there, she is usually dead.

I decided to get there ten minutes early today and, after waiting for 8 minutes or so, she spawned near the one waypoint I didn’t have on the character I was on. So I went to the closest one I did have, and by the time I got there (literally 30 seconds later), she was dead.

This is probably the 5th or 6th time in a row I’ve gone to fight KQ and missed the event altogether. Anyone else extremely frustrated by this? I can’t think of another boss event where the boss dies this quickly.

Ways Anet could improve it to give more players a chance to participate:

-Give people a warning 2 minutes before she spawns, saying where KQ will be spawning.
-Increase her health, to keep up with the power creep currently in game.
-Add another phase to the fight.

Also, I know some people might say: well, then don’t try to do the event. And I usually don’t. But why even have a boss event in the game if it is this difficult to complete, and for all the wrong reasons?

I mean, I’ve never seen KQ downed in literally 30 seconds. In fact I’m pretty sure that’s not actually possible.

Regardless, next time make sure you have all the waypoints unlocked first. I mean, you said you get there 10~ minutes early, you should have taken that time to make sure you had all the waypoints.

Edit: There’s already 2 phases to the fight. There’s the initial phase where she’ll do her little melee-meat-grinder roll and then there’s a second burn phase where she resets to 50% health and stays still.

I recommend learning how to get to the boss like the other 50+ people that are killing it. Then you won’t have any problems.

@ hotcarl:

Seriously?

Stay at the camp in the middle (there is no waypoint), wait till the event goes to 4/4 secured camps and than (if its already spawntime) look at your minimap where the boss-symbol appears. If its at your place, go make damage. If its below or above your position, open the map and use a waypoint. Its takes not more than 10 seconds to reach the KQ. Also KQ isn’t dead after 30 seconds.

laokoko.7403:

You get there 10 minutes early but don’t get the way point. I’m not sure what to say.

Oh, I missed the part with the missing waypoint, because he wrote it happend five or six times. So again @ OP, seriously? I mean, seriously? You missed KQ once because of a missing waypoint and learned nothing from that? Thats a bit sad…

You get there 10 minutes early but don’t get the way point. I’m not sure what to say.

hotcarl.8621:

I don’t mind bosses that are difficult or hard to kill or even ones that are not on specific timers.. In fact, I like a challenging boss fight. Karka queen is frustrating for the opposite reason: she is too easy and dies too quickly. I never know where or when she will spawn, and by the time I get there, she is usually dead.

I decided to get there ten minutes early today and, after waiting for 8 minutes or so, she spawned near the one waypoint I didn’t have on the character I was on. So I went to the closest one I did have, and by the time I got there (literally 30 seconds later), she was dead.

This is probably the 5th or 6th time in a row I’ve gone to fight KQ and missed the event altogether. Anyone else extremely frustrated by this? I can’t think of another boss event where the boss dies this quickly.

Ways Anet could improve it to give more players a chance to participate:

-Give people a warning 2 minutes before she spawns, saying where KQ will be spawning.
-Increase her health, to keep up with the power creep currently in game.
-Add another phase to the fight.

You can see the boss spawn times at all kinds of timers around the net, for example this one:

http://guildwarstemple.com/dragontimer/events.php?serverKey=204&langKey=en

That should be enough early warning as you can follow the events many hours before they happen.

Then when it’s time for this boss to spawn, there will be 15 minute window to actually get her to appear. That happens when the camps are 4/4 in player control. That is also an early warning for you and helps you keep track when she appears.

The fight really should not be made to take longer only so you don’t have to unlock the waypoints.

As long as you’re on the map while the KQ spawns and dies you get the chest at the end (if you make it to it). Not sure if also the achievement.
I do agree though that she has gotten too easy with some patch – she used to be rather hard. I think the fastest we killed her with our 150 man night world boss train was with 8.30 or so left on the clock.

Karka Queen, the most frustrating boss ever? Have you ever played literally any other game?

• you got there 10 minutes early and did not act to acquire a waypoint where the boss could spawn.

This could have been avoided if you took the time to accordingly acquire the waypoint since you got there 10 minutes early and as stated, were waiting around for 8 minutes.

• you didn’t have the waypoint on that character.

This could have been avoided if you had the waypoint on another character, or simply have acquired all the waypoints on the map for when the boss even does eventually start.

• the boss “literally” died 30 seconds later after you get to it.

This could have been avoided if you were on a character that has relatively good mobility such as the following:

- near perma swiftness Engineer (traited)
- Thief equipped with teleports/shortbow
- sword/WH + GS Warrior
- Ranger with RaO elite skill + GS

These classes are generally fast, mobile and can get to places with ease.

• you never know when or where the boss will spawn.

This can be improved via situational awareness such as:

- being in the middle of the map/where a large portion of players are
- watching the minimap for the big, red icon that indicates the boss’ position on the map
- having all the waypoints unlocked so that you can use them if the boss spawns too far away from your position

• you can’t think of another boss event where the boss dies this quickly.

Fire Elemental (after pre event is over). doubt KQ dies in literally 30 seconds.

hotcarl.8621:

…she spawned near the one waypoint I didn’t have on the character I was on.

lol

The Boss is on the mini map, and if you out your mouse curser over the karka boss in the activates it normally shows you where it spawned

She dies pretty fast. Last time she was halfway dead when I waypointed in and my PC is not slow and I was on the map already. She really lasted longer before. A little more health would not hurt, but I agree, always take a char who has unlocked the waypoints, everything else can cost you the kill.

The Queen needs stages.

At 50% of her first health bar, after her armor breaks and after 25% of her second health bar, she should burrow and spawn adds, while slowly moving away in the underground towards a different camp. The sooner you take out the adds, the sooner she pops again.

And the camp events reset too soon, and while the queen is up, contesting the waypoints.

Those need to wait until her event is over.

Silly question. If you know that she can spawn anywhere and you don’t have a way point and you had 8 minutes, why not get the waypoint.

I never do the KQ on a character that doesn’t have the waypoints.

People have trouble getting to KQ in time? This is the first I’m hearing of this.

I’m thinking the word “ever” needs to file a ticket, because it’s being grief’d in this post.

Honestly hotcarl, get the way points. That is not an unreasonable request.

Also there is a warning. Once the dragon timer goes off you need to have a four pre-enents done she come up. And it posts the event on the map.

We do Karka queen most every day and I do not think I missed it in the past 700 + attempts.

Advice: Get the points, be aware of the timer and pre event, and kill the Karka Queen. Most of all have fun.

hotcarl.8621:

I decided to get there ten minutes early today and, after waiting for 8 minutes or so, she spawned near the one waypoint I didn’t have on the character I was on. So I went to the closest one I did have, and by the time I got there (literally 30 seconds later), she was dead.

This is probably the 5th or 6th time in a row I’ve gone to fight KQ and missed the event altogether. Anyone else extremely frustrated by this? I can’t think of another boss event where the boss dies this quickly.

Ways Anet could improve it to give more players a chance to participate:

1: open up all the wps for your character. Take some time to explore the maps with all your toons so that all wps are available.
2: Use one of the many many many apps and web sites that have timers for the game. You will never miss a boss (unless of course you can’t be bothered to explore and open up the wps).
3: I never ever thought I would say this, but in this case LTP.

I’d say that every vanilla world boss at the moment are too easy to kill and don’t use any kind of unique mechanics, allowing players to just use the Glass Cannon Berserker and get rewarded by simply spamming 1111 the whole battle, for most of them.

I have never failed to get this event, even if I tried. And no,the queen doesn’t go down that fast. If you never failed things like fire elemental or the frost shaman, why would you miss the queen? Don’t make up stuff to justify your inablity to read the timer and plan ahead.

hotcarl.8621:

I decided to get there ten minutes early today and, after waiting for 8 minutes or so, she spawned near the one waypoint I didn’t have on the character I was on. So I went to the closest one I did have, and by the time I got there (literally 30 seconds later), she was dead.

I’ve got to say this is your fault. Reason is that if you were waiting for 8 minutes, you could EASILY map complete Southsun, thus having all waypoints.

Secondly, Karka Queen has only four spawn points – one per outpost for the meta – and two of them are very close to each other. Most people wait at the outpost without a waypoint and use either Kiel’s Outpost Waypoint or Camp Karka Waypoint if she doesn’t spawn outside Steampipe Steading.

That said, I really, really want Anet to revamp Southsun.

More events, some vistas and hero challenges, and a better vendor system that borrows off of Dry Top with exchanging tiers for “camps controlled” with five vendor settings (no camps, 1 camp, 2 camps, 3 camps, and all camps under control).

And altering KQ’s mechanics a lot to put her on par to Tequatl – since she’s in the “hardcore world boss” category anyways.

Have each armor removing animation be its own health bar, and give each health bar different mechanics. Make use of the breakbar.

• First health bar: She’s a tank, requiring eggs to be thrown at her to reduce her toughness (using the 50 buff), and the environemtnal weapon spread across the island (add more at boss spawn points) are only weapons that affect her.
• Second health bar: Still high toughness, as only a little armor was removed, but now you can damage her. Her armor rating sets to a specific amount (at 25 stacks for the egg buff) with eggs to be tossed at her.
• Third health bar: She becomes stationary but succeptible to all attacks regularly now. Her breakbar becomes active as she spews eggs that spawn both hatchlings and bring in young karka (attempting to zerg the players).
• Fourth health bar: Switches between stationary and mobile modes, summoning elite adult karka to defend her (number of elites scaling with players).
• Final health bar: She becomes a glass canon – high damage output but very low toughness and health. Easiest to beat but if not beaten quickly she can easily wipe out the zerg of players.

Each health bar goes to full, and during transitions she gains determined for 3 seconds (so that conditions do not continue damaging through the evade).

Maybe they can scale her a bit better.. as people show up.

Temple timer. TEMPLE TIMER >>> http://guildwarstemple.com/dragontimer

There’s nothing tricky about how/when/where she spawns; what i don’t understand is, if you’re not using a timer then how on earth do you get to ANY of the bosses? I’m totally mystified.

Greyhound.2058:

Temple timer. TEMPLE TIMER >>> http://guildwarstemple.com/dragontimer

There’s nothing tricky about how/when/where she spawns; what i don’t understand is, if you’re not using a timer then how on earth do you get to ANY of the bosses? I’m totally mystified.

Yeah I use this method also and never had a problem getting to her in time.
For certain she is a challenge when there are few. However, with the mega servers and the big crowds now, I’d like to see her become a bit more challenging again as I almost never find few in this fight.

They should replace her with Ancient Karka.

Doggie.3184:

They should replace her with Ancient Karka.

You know I was pondering whether it would be a good idea to have different boss difficulties at different times of the day. For instance, back when they changed Tequatl’s HP in response to the condition changes and before they made it so you can apply conditions to him, many loved the new challenge. Of course many hated it as well.
So I wonder if it would be plausible to schedule a higher difficulty of the world bosses at certain times.

hotcarl.8621:

I don’t mind bosses that are difficult or hard to kill or even ones that are not on specific timers.. In fact, I like a challenging boss fight. Karka queen is frustrating for the opposite reason: she is too easy and dies too quickly. I never know where or when she will spawn, and by the time I get there, she is usually dead.

I decided to get there ten minutes early today and, after waiting for 8 minutes or so, she spawned near the one waypoint I didn’t have on the character I was on. So I went to the closest one I did have, and by the time I got there (literally 30 seconds later), she was dead.

This is probably the 5th or 6th time in a row I’ve gone to fight KQ and missed the event altogether. Anyone else extremely frustrated by this? I can’t think of another boss event where the boss dies this quickly.

Ways Anet could improve it to give more players a chance to participate:

-Give people a warning 2 minutes before she spawns, saying where KQ will be spawning.
-Increase her health, to keep up with the power creep currently in game.
-Add another phase to the fight.

Regardless of what others have said here, i agree that KQ dies way too fast for one of the the supposed toughest world bosses. I think partly the problem with this boss is that the respawn timer on it is way too long and so there’s always huge amount of people at this event. I’ve had the same issues with this boss despite having all the wp’s. I usually wait in the middle area and even if she spawns near one of the wp’s the lag is so bad and loading takes ages, not to mention running to her with gazillion other ppl is a slide show and i’ve missed her by the time i get to her. Or just as bad, i get dc’d just as i get there. She needs a huge buff imo.

MithranArkanere.8957:

The Queen needs stages.

At 50% of her first health bar, after her armor breaks and after 25% of her second health bar, she should burrow and spawn adds, while slowly moving away in the underground towards a different camp. The sooner you take out the adds, the sooner she pops again.

And the camp events reset too soon, and while the queen is up, contesting the waypoints.

Those need to wait until her event is over.

I agree with the sentiment (although not the details) — KQ shouldn’t be easier to defeat than the champ at Camp Karka.

However, one of the reasons veterans love the queen is she’s up & down so quickly people have time getting to other world bosses or timed events.
—————————

Regardless, in the current game, the mechanics are well-known even by the OP, so I’m not sure why they are getting frustrated, when they have chosen not to prepare for the event.

Jana.6831:

As long as you’re on the map while the KQ spawns and dies you get the chest at the end (if you make it to it). Not sure if also the achievement.
I do agree though that she has gotten too easy with some patch – she used to be rather hard. I think the fastest we killed her with our 150 man night world boss train was with 8.30 or so left on the clock.

KQ was never hard if you got the numbers. 15-20 should be enough to guarantee a successful kill. That has been true since release. That is also why it had people wondering why she got put on the long timer along with nerfed rewards when Megaserver was introduced.

The only time I’ve managed to miss KQ was because I got distracted reading the forums/wiki/reddit while waiting for the spawn.

So why didn’t you get the WP before doing KQ, i am sure you know about the multiple Spawn points she has

30 seconds seems quick. Plus she has that second life bar.

I always wait in the central spawn point, and then if she doesn’t spawn there, the other two spots are right next to waypoints. It’s a simple port and hit then. Haven’t not got credit in a long while using that method – unless it was to a crash.

Obviously most of the snarky replies are from folks whom don’t do KQ often. It does die extremely fast. Even with having all the WP’s and an SSD, I’ve barely made it before it dies too. It’s called power creep and KQ hasn’t been adjusted to keep up.

As a player who typically is guilty of being a bit of a white knight regarding GW2, I gotta jump off my horse for a moment to agree with OP. True, 30 seconds is almost certainly an exaggeration, and actually having all waypoints is of great help. Still, the fact is that for a world boss, KQ just doesn’t quite measure up. The egg tossing is really the only mechanic involved outside of straight DPS, and she does go down reeeally quickly. There have been times, especially when I’m on a different computer that not quite as fast or has a poorer connection, when I haven’t been able to make the dash for the queen before she died. Ultimately, she doesn’t feel nearly as epic as other world bosses and really needs either an upgrade or a demotion.

very obvious u dont even have HOT if u think karka queen is hard.

Taxidriver.2043:

very obvious u dont even have HOT if u think karka queen is hard.

She’s not hard. She’s so easy getting there is what is hard.

If you arrive right on time, she may be dead before you reach her from the second nearest waypoint if the nearest got contested.

I think she deserves more of a fight. Nowadays even throwing the eggs have become almost pointless – there was a time I saw the event fail because ppl were struggling with it.

I’d like to see her bumped up to a tequatl difficulty fight and with Southson revamped as per suggestions from ppl like Konig above. It has so much wasted or untapped potential.

I’ve yet to miss KQ (when I’ve opted to do it) and the fight doesn’t seem to be that much shorter than it has been for the last several months – but she definitely hasn’t been a challenge in a long time.

What might help:
- Get your waypoints in advance. You’re almost always going to miss a fight if you have to run across a map dodging mobs, etc. to get there.
- Participate in the Pre-events, stay with the group, and pay attention to map chat/tags.
- Pay attention to the 3-4 locations she usually spawns. I usually stay between the fort and the island (Camp Karka and Steampipe Steading), but the last several times I’ve done it, KQ has spawned by Kiel’s camp.
- When you’ve finished the pre-event, the game will tell you when she spawns. But watch the map anyway.
- When you see her icon, waypoint and run.
- Consider grouping, not only to ensure you get credit (if she dies too quickly) but also to help you get there in time.

More often than not people will call out the spawn in mapchat, but just being prepared will save you time and frustration, and you’ll manage to get your kill on a regular basis.

Zephyra.4709:

This could have been avoided if you were on a character that has relatively good mobility such as the following:

- near perma swiftness Engineer (traited)
- Thief equipped with teleports/shortbow
- sword/WH + GS Warrior
- Ranger with RaO elite skill + GS

These classes are generally fast, mobile and can get to places with ease.

Elementalist – Staff (Air 4 – Windborne Speed), Static field + Arcane Blast, Glyph of elemental harmony (in air), lightning flash.

Taxidriver.2043:

very obvious u dont even have HOT if u think karka queen is hard.

You didn’t read his post. :o

You know, people saying the Karka Queen dies to fast are probably right. However, that doesn’t make her, as the OP says, the most frustrating boss ever. His main complaint is that he missed her…by not having a waypoint, why being there 8 minutes early. Anyone defending this post is saying it’s okay to know about the random spawn, not get the waypoint and then complain that it died before he could get there. If he’d taken the time to get there, this post would have likely never happened.

Dying too fast because it should take longer because it’s not epic is not the argtument he’s using.

Also the Karka Queen is not likely dying this fast because of power creep as one person suggesting. She’s dying this fast due to mega server creep. When we had individual servres this wasn’t the same kind of problem. Sure ascended have some affect as do conditions ,but at the end of the day, this boss has been a joke since the megaserver appeared.

Now, because they’re essentially on farm anyway, I’m not sure that making them take longer would serve much of a purpose without a complete redo which obviously takes time and resources.

Vayne.8563:

Also the Karka Queen is not likely dying this fast because of power creep as one person suggesting. She’s dying this fast due to mega server creep. When we had individual servres this wasn’t the same kind of problem. Sure ascended have some affect as do conditions ,but at the end of the day, this boss has been a joke since the megaserver appeared.

You’re indirectly right: Megaservers: April 15th 2014 patch. Also with that patch: the previous trait system in which each trait had to be earned or bought inidvidually = it was very unlikely to meet someone who had all traits. As a result of this all PvE mobs have been nerfed and with that the Karka Queen who became pretty easy and even more easy after the June 23th patch.
I already said we had a 150 man zerg running all world bosses each night (2 years ago) – it took us at least three times as long to get her down. FYI: ~150 is the map cap.

Edit: It’s very likely that some numbers are off.

I wouldn’t say most frustrating, certainly a really weak boss. Considering her rewards, you’d think she’d take a bit longer, but she lasts less time than Shadow Behemoth, which is saying something. So I agree, they need to make the fight last longer than 30 secs, and have at least some pause in between securing the settlements and actually spawning. Sucks to be the guy securing the last settlement only to have the spawn be in the center of the map. Anet, throw that guy a bone and give him 30 seconds to run across the map.

why necro this?