Guild Wars 2

So whenever we have discussions about difficulty for open world bosses, everything either made out to be Tequatl difficult or starter zone boss difficult. Seeing as how I’ve defeated every type of open world raid including the three headed jungle wurm, I decided to tier all the bosses and have a discussion about if the difficultly of everything is in the right place.

I’ve also decided to rank previous living story bosses.

S-Rank
Reserved for the bosses that require the utmost coordination and skill in all participants. These bosses almost always require a hard-capped server and there is next to no room for lower skilled participants in the encounter. This boss has a mindblowning amount of mechanics and strategies. This boss is for the best players in the game
-Triple headed Jungle Wurm

A-Rank
Reserved for bosses that require much more coordination and skill in the majority of participates. However there is room for a number of first time or unskilled participates as long as they follow strategy. They will usually require a hard capped server however it is more then possible to beat it without a full server if participants are skilled enough. These bosses is for vertern players looking for a challenge.
A+
Tequatl The Sunless
A
None
A-
The Marionette (Debatable might be B+)

B Rank
Reserved for Bosses that become difficult to succeed unless the players are fairly knowledgeable of the game’s mechanics. They always have a number of mechanics that must dictate the players actions. These bosses do not always succeed and usually require a large number of participates however zerg rushing them with a full 150 man server can still cause the scaling to crack and may make some encounters trivial. This boss is designed for mid-skilled level groups of players who want a slightly more difficult encounter.

B+
The Temple of Grenth
The Temple of Balthazar
1200 Citizens saved in LA
B
The Three Colored Knights (LS event)
The Karka queen
B-
Scarlet’s Prime Hologram

C-Rank
Reserved for Bosses with some mechanics that disrupt traditional combat but usually aren’t particularly hard to deal with or learn during the boss encounter. They rarely fail unless there is a lack of players participating in the event. They’re usually designed to begin to teach newer players what to expect without punishing them greatly.

C+
Temple of Lyssa
Temple of Dwayna
Temple of Melandru
Risen High Wizard
C
Taidha Covington
Claw of Jormag
Mega-Destroyer
Inquest Golem Mark 2
C-
The Fire elemental

D-Rank

Reserved the Bosses that take next to no strategy or skill. They often can be completed by only a few players and almost never provide a meaningful challenge to the player. They will only fail if they’re completely ignored. These bosses are best for new players… or anyone just wants to mash 1 repeatly and get loot.

-Every other starter zone boss
-The Shatterer

Overall there’s a lot of C and D ranked bosses in the game which usually fall onto the various world boss trains. Usually these trains will avoid B ranked bosses unless they’re confident in their numbers.

There is a massive gap between Tequatl the Sunless and the most difficult B-Ranked boss which was sort of inhabited by the Marionette but now she’s sadly gone which is probably why a lot of player are calling for that boss to return in some form, it was in previously unoccupied difficulty niche.

If Anet creates any more content, I personally think they should focus on aiming for the A and B ranks since they don’t have many raids and Tequatl seems lonely up there. In my personal opinion there really only needs to be one S-ranked raid in the game, especially before the other ranks start filling up.

I agree, we need more encounters like Tequatl, but they need to be instanced. Tequatl, in its current state, is too much of a coordination hassle to be worth the rewards. Make it instanced with some kind of match making for solo players/small groups and about 40 players total

Perhaps but I hear he gets killed on Blackgate main pretty often for PuG who just want to guest somewhere for a kill. Putting he in an instance might make it harder for a random player to find a solid group.

i believe karka queen and hologram should be switched.
also, the golem mark2 can be duoed, arah temples cant be duoed. so golem mark 2 should drop rank

also, i think this kind of difficulty is fine.
if we take all C and D bosses ( shaman, behemot, low level wurm etc) and upgrade them to B rank, it will be more fun and still not very difficult so nobody will do them.

Moved a couple bosses around based on that feedback. I personally think Hologram was easier then karka queen as the only time I saw it fail was with a 7 man platform and that platform almost beat the 3 color phase.

Overall I think C and D level bosses have their place. D level bosses are all mostly in starter zones filled with newbies who are still learning the game’s mechanics, their purpose is to show them what to expect from these encounters later in the game without challenging them too much before they even learn what all their skills acutally do.

However the Shatterer should not be at this level, he’s a level 50 boss everyone fighting him will be reasonably skilled so upgrading him would be nice. The fire elemental should not be a harder boss then him.

Claw of Jormag also is hanging out in an odd spot, he’s in a level 80 area so you’d think he’d be tuned to be end-game content like Orr but he’s at best a C level boss, he really should be at least B level since only fully leveled verterns will be fighting him

Downfall.2671:

I agree, we need more encounters like Tequatl, but they need to be instanced. Tequatl, in its current state, is too much of a coordination hassle to be worth the rewards. Make it instanced with some kind of match making for solo players/small groups and about 40 players total

There was an interview that such problems with world events will be adressed in the last 3 blogposts Not necessarily instanced but I’m curious

Personally, i always thought it was more about the journey…not so much the destination.
Nobody begins at rank S – it’s a learning curve and, just because a player may perceive themselves to be at a given rank now, it just gives the whole ‘categorising’ thing an elitist ‘twang’.
Just taking from the examples provided, it’s like telling someone that they’ve no reason attending the Jungle worm fight because, as far as you’re concerned, they’re nothing more than Fire Elemental ‘button mashers’ when, once, you were that masher yourself.

I didn’t rank the bosses based on the players, I ranked them based on the bosses themselves.

Pretty good list OP and I agree we need more A quality events. Yes Blackgate does do it and sometimes the overflows do as well. Just read the guide and it isnt too hard. Wurms on the other hand I don’t think is pugged on any server.

Lalangamena.3694:

i believe karka queen and hologram should be switched.
also, the golem mark2 can be duoed, arah temples cant be duoed. so golem mark 2 should drop rank

also, i think this kind of difficulty is fine.
if we take all C and D bosses ( shaman, behemot, low level wurm etc) and upgrade them to B rank, it will be more fun and still not very difficult so nobody will do them.

Golem can be solo’ed.

The temples are a bit mixed. The statue of dwayna can probably be solo without much trouble but the pre-event seems to require at least 5 people.

Edit: Also actual challenging things is fine but simply requring X number of people doesn’t automatically make some thing challenging. That is just the laziest way to make something appear challenging.

I tried to use the average player doing these events as a baseline for their difficultly. A lot of difficult bosses can be soloed as long as you know how and you have the right traits. I heard of a case where someone soloed the priest of grenth by himself.