Guild Wars 2

Are there any plans concerning the last story mission of Heart of Thorns?

At the moment, that story step is still plagued by bugs.
Also, the mechanics of the last fight are punishing to the point of being frustrating.

I was wandering if the dev team had plans in either direction, and/or if they are aware of the issues many players had/are having…

The first two bullet items you listed are bugs. You interact with the currents to launch up where you then pull out the glider.

The first two bugs have prevented me from being able to complete this 3 times now. I hope they get addressed soon. What is worse … there is no way to exit the storymode, not that I have found at least.

Ayrilana.1396:

The first two bullet items you listed are bugs. You interact with the currents to launch up where you then pull out the glider.

This is strange, sometimes jumping worked… Thank you, I will try to interact with the currents, when I muster the will to retry yet again that story step.

Still, having an “instant failure” condition (falling during the forced flight sections) in the personal story is not something I’m a fan of…
It’s in sharp contrast with how chill all the other story missions are.

My favorite part was the boss that stands in the middle and shoots a beam of light at you that interrupts and knocks back…. over and over and over and does literally nothing else. Luckily i had a pet to do dmg for me while i ran around trying to get my heal off. That’s not a bug, just terrible design.

As for the updrafts… yeah those things are buggy as hell. Got downed twice because my glider never activated. luckily i had my pet to res me.

who says ranger pets aren’t useful?

Maxwell.7843:

Ayrilana.1396:

The first two bullet items you listed are bugs. You interact with the currents to launch up where you then pull out the glider.

This is strange, sometimes jumping worked… Thank you, I will try to interact with the currents, when I muster the will to retry yet again that story step.

Still, having an “instant failure” condition (falling during the forced flight sections) in the personal story is not something I’m a fan of…
It’s in sharp contrast with how chill all the other story missions are.

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I also don’t like the wind wall that CCs you constantly but at last that can be countered…

That’s likely because you got hit from a rock. I think you should still be able to recover and re-open the glider before you hit the ground. You can also take the updraft in front of the fine that reaches over the arena to the north. This one gives you enough lift when you first interact with it so you’ll land on the vine. If you don’t want to do that, you can use lean techniques to slow down which is enough to completely avoid the rocks.

I saw a video that showed a successful kill, and in the video the rocks were thrown in what seemed like regular intervals.

In my game, I got two boulders thrown at me in the span of a few seconds: impossible to survive…
I really don’t want to sound disrespectful towards whoever worked on this encounter, but it’s such a mess that I’m having a hard time distinguishing bugs and intended mechanics of the battle :-s

I get it, this was supposed to be harder than Zhaitan, and I appreciate there being a greater depth and complexity (and difficulty) to it, but I get the feeling that this much complexity means so much more can go wrong and malfunction.

Example:
Big Canach that stays invulnerable: this wouldn't happen if there weren't moments in the fight where Good Canach and the Commander talk with each other. Again, I get it, this adds depth and complexity and on paper it's very cool: I'm just pointing out that it also adds more things that can break.

The updraft thing is asinine and poorly communicated to the player. Why didn’t they just do it like the Wyvern fight where you have to jump off the platform and catch an updraft. After trying this fight multiple times, I still don’t know what the player is supposed to do to get thrown into the air. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn’t. Dying because I knew what was needed but didn’t pull it off is ok, dying because I don’t have a clue what the game wants from me is not. I’ve quit bothering with it until the rifts over empty space issue is resolved.

Just completed the story line yesterday, 11/17/2015, without issue. If your only bug issue is the last fight where you have to be in the air and gliding or pretty much die if you stay on the ground, I had no issue getting into the air by just running through the updraft AFTER the initial couple of tics of damage.

Had super issues with the up jump. It bugged 5 times in a row, after that it worked 1 time but the updrafts bugged instead, nothing happen at all. Last try i finally had both updraft and jumps working, but then the rift was placed out in the air and i could not interact with it and i ragequitted the story. After refusing to doing it for 2 weeks my friend said i have to finish it, so we tried and it bugged out again for me on the first try, second try both jump and updraft worked, but then i got one shotted by boss. Next try jump did not work, but my friend went on and finished it for me, because the jump worked for him and he managed to keep alive when updrafts did not. If he had not finished it for me, i would never have gone back. I tell you my nervs was close to throwing the pc out the window.

Point three kittens me to tears. I get to the last round of that action with few problems but that last one won’t work for me.

The main issue I had with the last fight was catching updrafts. It’s extremely unclear how you’re supposed to get airborn, and avoiding rocks thrown at you while trying to fly perpendicular to their trajectories is a ridiculous crapshoot, particularly since their hitboxes seem to be bigger than their visuals. If this game were played in 3D it might be possible but as it stands, you really can’t dodge them until you fail a bunch of times and memorize what works and what kills you and restarts the entire fight.

Everyone also has entirely too many hitpoints. Seriously, the updrafts section is the only damage even remotely threatening. My Celestial Ele was able to pretty easily facetank just about everything any of the illusions could throw at me, so most of the fight was a snorefest as I slowly whittled down giant punching bags. I really liked the story and the idea of what was going on and there were some neat mechanics involved in taking out the illusions and gaining their buffs for my own, but I would’ve drastically preferred for them to be more dangerous but take less time to kill.

This sounds like a colossal mess. I haven’t done it yet, but I’m getting close to it.

Not looking forward to this at all.

I finished this on chrono with wiping on the last boss. We had a lot of bugs and half the party including the instance owner died during the part where you’re supposed to glide due bugs. Anyway everyone wiped and started over. It bugged again and skipped through all the conversation you’re supposed to have when the owner is a slyvari.

Anyway we chained CC’d him with gravity well and lots of hard CC and it worked. Worth a shot if you’re not getting anywhere.

Other than the obvious bugs, I think the last mission is mostly fine. I mean, it IS the big end battle, so it shouldn’t be too easy. The only problem I see is the boss vespers mentioned earlier, that is a really troublesome fellow when going in solo and with no possible stability.
For the updrafts I’d say it just needs practise (I completely destroyed my armor twice while going through this mission before I had enough experience to maneuver safely), but maybe it could be changed so the ground dmg starts a few secs after the updrafts spawn? That way you have time to locate them, head over and get into the air. As it is now, I always immediately run to the NPCs cuz I know by now there’s one spawning there.

Well. I managed to finish it just then. I had to really slap down on my space bar to get the glider to work. lol I don’t really recommend that as a fix but since my keyboard is so old (and abused) it might have been that that held me up. The half bottle of wine I had might have helped a tad as well.

Besides that issue, I really liked that final mission, and the half bottle didn’t help with after.

Yamialexa.5103:

Other than the obvious bugs, I think the last mission is mostly fine. I mean, it IS the big end battle, so it shouldn’t be too easy. The only problem I see is the boss vespers mentioned earlier, that is a really troublesome fellow when going in solo and with no possible stability.
For the updrafts I’d say it just needs practise (I completely destroyed my armor twice while going through this mission before I had enough experience to maneuver safely), but maybe it could be changed so the ground dmg starts a few secs after the updrafts spawn? That way you have time to locate them, head over and get into the air. As it is now, I always immediately run to the NPCs cuz I know by now there’s one spawning there.

I don’t think anyone here mind that it can be a hard fight to deal with, i certainly don’t. What i do mind is having wipes because the game is not functioning as it is suppose to do. No jump, no updrafts, the rift out on the plain air not being able to interacti with it. Being one shotted in the air when you finally get both jump and updraft to work one time, it is just nerv breaking, and i am mostly a decent person that don’t swear much. But again, i was ready to throw the pc out the window. And i will for sure never ever replay it unless i get a clear message saying that i will only have to deal with the story and not the bugs.

The idea is that this will be the last story mission you ever want to do.

I too experienced OP’s two bugs and then some.

For example, resetting the final fight is very glitchy sometimes your allies always reset for the fight but the actual state for the fight does not. ie. I died just after triggering the last final stun and burn phase of the fight. The boss and allies did reset, including Rytlocks “spawn mechanic”, but the fight/map and the rifts remained in the burn phase (made for an easy kill during the retry though).

Personally I believe the Canach fight could use bit better messaging and user feedback for the last phase, since the tooltip at least is completely useless.

That said these last fights were fun, despite the issues, if anything the mechanics were the best part of it in my opinion, granted towards the end the last fight got bit too busy.

Misguided.5139:

The updraft thing is asinine and poorly communicated to the player. Why didn’t they just do it like the Wyvern fight where you have to jump off the platform and catch an updraft. After trying this fight multiple times, I still don’t know what the player is supposed to do to get thrown into the air. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn’t. Dying because I knew what was needed but didn’t pull it off is ok, dying because I don’t have a clue what the game wants from me is not. I’ve quit bothering with it until the rifts over empty space issue is resolved.

I did this in my first attempt on the boss. “Oh, the floor is lava. Clearly I’m meant to jump off, find an updraft and survive like that.” And then I just died. I didn’t even see the updrafts initially because of all the visual noise. Same for the protective bubbles, I didn’t realise they were there until I checked the achievements for the fight. A lot could be done to better telegraph what you need to do and make the appropriate elements much easier to see.

I agree with you 100%. If I mess up in a fight, mea culpa, but it’s kind of a terrible move to put players in a position where you don’t adequately demonstrate what they’re meant to do, make what they’re meant to do visually difficult to find and then give them a very small window of time to figure it out and find what they’re looking for or else they die and have to start from the top.

Leaa.2943:

I don’t think anyone here mind that it can be a hard fight to deal with, i certainly don’t. What i do mind is having wipes because the game is not functioning as it is suppose to do. No jump, no updrafts, the rift out on the plain air not being able to interacti with it. Being one shotted in the air when you finally get both jump and updraft to work one time, it is just nerv breaking, and i am mostly a decent person that don’t swear much. But again, i was ready to throw the pc out the window. And i will for sure never ever replay it unless i get a clear message saying that i will only have to deal with the story and not the bugs.

Did you really get one shot in the air or did you get shot, drop down and then die immediately in the ground aoe? In the former case that would certainly be frustrating and you’re right, I can’t imagine that to be intended (though one could argue that to be part of the last boss challenge).
If it’s the second case however, I see that as working as planned, as hard content. I did the mission twice, first with my assassin-geared thief. Low hp led to me dying pretty much every time I got hit with a rock, b/c I couldn’t survive on the ground long enough to get to the next updraft (that was the chara I kept on destroying the armor on in all my attempts to get through the mission). After that I also took my revenant in pvt gear through the fight and I did not have any problems (other than taking longer due to lower dmg). Even if I was hit by a rock and got sent down to ground, my hp and armor allowed me to simply run up to the next updraft and get airborne again without getting killed. So in order to get through this, there’s being good/getting practise at dodging the rocks (or using a vine above to land as I’ve seen in a vid) or gearing up for survival. And that’s fine imho.

So yeah, I see the flying/rock section as part of the hard challenge which doesn’t really need to be changed, except of course all the bugs. I really do get the frustration you talk about though, I had to take breaks between all my attempts b/c I got riled up as well. It also helped that I had a guild mate I could cry to in between the attempts to vent a bit

While the bugs obviously need to be fixed, I think the last fight is in a good place mechanically. It could maybe use an anvil on the overlook platform so you could repair without fighting the first two bosses again, but it’s not really necessary (especially if you eliminate all the armor damage caused by those bugged deaths). The flight segments could probably have been addressed a little better, but it’s by no means a critical issue.

I managed to solo this on my Necro Minion Master and the only issue I had was being unable to see the updrafts due to the visual noise. Oh and the rewards were stupid.
I received a one handed exotic sword and a rifle. The particular sword that is given is actually a 2handed, not a 1 handed variety. It’s seen being welded this way through the Personal Story so why change it at the end?
Shouldn’t rewards be something your profession could actually use?
Not everyone has alts.
I would figure that the conclusion of a long Personal Story should have epic rewards and not vendor trash. I wonder what person comes up with this. Perhaps the next time they’re due for a raise they get something similar? Instead of a cash raise, they get a gift card to somewhere they would never shop. It would be about the same thing.
Maybe then they would get the hint?

I think the fight itself seems fine.. but the bugs just make it too frustrating to even bother with it. People have been reporting it for weeks but I haven’t even seen a response if they are working on some solution to this.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Heart-and-Minds-Final-Story-Step-Bugs/first#post5763616

Worked fine for me, completed on first attempt two days ago. Got hit by a rock too. I admit the updrafts were hard to see but when I got hit by the Rock and was on the ground they were quite visible.

I encountered an annoying bug during the phase where you can commune with fissures to drag enemies. The enemies were disappearing before the channeling finishes and last boss becomes invulnerable.

After several tries I think using a condi build was at fault lol. The illusions were getting killed by ticks so they simply disappear while I was trying to pull them to the fissures.

Had to switch to a power build and made sure I stopped hitting those adds as soon as fissures were ready.

Misguided.5139:

After trying this fight multiple times, I still don’t know what the player is supposed to do to get thrown into the air. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn’t. Dying because I knew what was needed but didn’t pull it off is ok, dying because I don’t have a clue what the game wants from me is not. I’ve quit bothering with it until the rifts over empty space issue is resolved.

I didn’t understand these kinds of statements for my first 3 characters I ran through
the final story mission. Engineer, guardian, and ranger. All had no problems.
I made sure my character was standing still prior to the “massive attack”, and each
of those characters was launched up. This was solo, with Canach and Caith
selected.

Then I tried with my mesmer. Now that character, just could not get reliably
launched. Just impossible to solo due to never actually getting up into the
air. So maybe, this bug only manifests with certain skills.

As for the open air rift, you can avoid that situation by giving mordre a few minutes
to “reset” before starting the retry. Press ‘retry’ too early, and he seems to be stuck
in a mode associated with the latter portions of the fight, and he ends up blasting
the area surrounding the rift. Wait a bit, and he will fully reset. You also might try
a ranged attack on the rift if you have that option.

Yamialexa.5103:

Leaa.2943:

I don’t think anyone here mind that it can be a hard fight to deal with, i certainly don’t. What i do mind is having wipes because the game is not functioning as it is suppose to do. No jump, no updrafts, the rift out on the plain air not being able to interacti with it. Being one shotted in the air when you finally get both jump and updraft to work one time, it is just nerv breaking, and i am mostly a decent person that don’t swear much. But again, i was ready to throw the pc out the window. And i will for sure never ever replay it unless i get a clear message saying that i will only have to deal with the story and not the bugs.

Did you really get one shot in the air or did you get shot, drop down and then die immediately in the ground aoe? In the former case that would certainly be frustrating and you’re right, I can’t imagine that to be intended (though one could argue that to be part of the last boss challenge).
If it’s the second case however, I see that as working as planned, as hard content. I did the mission twice, first with my assassin-geared thief. Low hp led to me dying pretty much every time I got hit with a rock, b/c I couldn’t survive on the ground long enough to get to the next updraft (that was the chara I kept on destroying the armor on in all my attempts to get through the mission). After that I also took my revenant in pvt gear through the fight and I did not have any problems (other than taking longer due to lower dmg). Even if I was hit by a rock and got sent down to ground, my hp and armor allowed me to simply run up to the next updraft and get airborne again without getting killed. So in order to get through this, there’s being good/getting practise at dodging the rocks (or using a vine above to land as I’ve seen in a vid) or gearing up for survival. And that’s fine imho.

So yeah, I see the flying/rock section as part of the hard challenge which doesn’t really need to be changed, except of course all the bugs. I really do get the frustration you talk about though, I had to take breaks between all my attempts b/c I got riled up as well. It also helped that I had a guild mate I could cry to in between the attempts to vent a bit

No one shotted, felld down with a pleff and was ported directly up to the top, were i then watched my friend finish it for me. If he hadn’t i would never come back.
Fun thing was that he finished his story several days before me and when i told about my bugs and said i will not go back!! he was like are you sure? Maybe you didn’t do it right? I come with you and show you. And then it was a looong big wtf session with him were he said over and over this never happen to me before.

This is, by far, my worst experience in Guild Wars 2. I recommend no one do it until these bugs are fixed. Unless you’re absolutely dying to see how it all ends, again I recommend no one attempt it unless you have the patience of a saint.

Otherwise, prepare for a lot of frustration due to all the items mentioned in this thread.