Guild Wars 2

I dunno why everyone is complaining about the storyline being too hard in HoT or in the demo. I soloed all the stories on my Warrior, and did the PoF demo on my Revenant and it didn’t feel difficult at all. Not to mention the build was completely different on the revenant they gave me, and I didn’t die once. That’s how easy the demo felt.

I personally love fighting against outnumbered odds, get a good AoE in and seeing all the numbers fly is so satisfying.

Maybe it is a “git gud” issue, maybe it’s not, regardless you can always find people to help you when the launch happens if you need help with the content.

Djinn.9245:

And I agree that most responses are not helpful.

He did not ask for help. He said that story is hard and that he runs high level fractals so his skill should not be questioned.

Pino.5209:

Read every words of this 1st post. He isn’t exactly seriously asking for help. The main theme is asking for NERF. The bolded part was actually rather rhetoric with a hint of sarcasm. That line was the closest to a request for help. Do yourself a favor and read for once.

When i read it i see someone in need of advise. It peaks my interest because i also struggled with it.

When you read it you see an attack on your precious game… (and even then your response is over the top and rude)

The sad thing here is that all you seem to have to fall back on is screaming “White Knight.. White Knight” (like it is a bad thing), while all i do is ask for some common decency… extremely common i might add. If you would be treated like poop by someone standing next to you, i wonder what your reaction would be like.

I know its commonly accepted that the internet is like this… but it IS like this BECAUSE it is commonly accepted.

Its not about what the OP asked or not asked … its about your failure to see you were rude and are convinced it’s okay to be like that.

I bet that doing T2 is high level fractal for OP lol, or had done a T3 once. Everyone of my friends created a class that they never play at the demo ( just to play with something fresh) and they just steam rolling the instance without even knowing how to play the class. I really hope that this instance show the lowest difficulty we will get in the story. Because easier than this just make the story instance a drag.

1v20? What did you do, dive right into the bulk of the army?

I might be willing to do that with Risen, but Forged are new enemy types. ANY new enemies should be approached with caution to learn their capabilities. They’re still trash mobs, so taking on 3 shouldn’t be a problem and it’s not like they’re all grouped up in one mob.

I did the demo mission on a base guardian in marauder gear, seemed ok. Just a meditation guard with sword/focus, scepter/torch trying radiance in the 3rd trait slot along with my usual valor and honor lines.

Funny thing is, once I did the fights and the raptor part I strayed out-of-bounds on my mount and got kicked from the instance… RIP.

But I got put in amnoon so it was ok. I mean putting out fires with an extinguisher… yawn. Not like I want to do that again.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I opened up the boxes, got a ranged weapon for my second weapon set and used the food given to us. No problem. Whenever I got low on health I dodged out and switched to range. The non boss mobs died easy. It was only the boss that gave some trouble.

If you didn’t get a ranged weapon or food from the boxes given to you, do that next time. Makes a difference.

However, if OP didn’t find a DH bow in the boxes, then that could be something that needs tweaked for future updates. Being nice and all benefit-of-the-doubt and such.

Other than that, everything you say is spot on.

My own take was it felt like I had to rush on the with the story before having chance to look at my inventory. Y’know, people being burninated and so forth seems to be a pressing matter. I then saw my character had a staff equipped (I do not mesmer with staff), and I couldn’t let it go on. Then, of course, I had to fix my wardrobe to be all pretty and the right colours, then I found boxes and had to open the boxes, and then my inventory was a mess, and to cut a long story short, if it truly was an urgent situation, someone other than Tests-with-Cake should’ve received the call.

If I’m being all nice again, I could suppose this: if anyone else happened to feel a sense of urgency in getting stuff done just like I did until I saw what a fashion faux pas it would’ve been, they may inadvertently forget to check what they have in their inventory, and thereby fail terribly at being equipped adequately for the mission.

Don’t do Leeroy Jenkins strategy and you’ll be fine. Usng brain and dodging helps a lot. People solo fractal 100 CM and raid bosses and here you’re complaining that you had to plow through 20 trash mobs.

Must be a troll thread. I pretty much facetanked as thief. Op is probably having kicks out of reading this thread.

TheRandomGuy.7246:

Djinn.9245:

And I agree that most responses are not helpful.

He did not ask for help. He said that story is hard and that he runs high level fractals so his skill should not be questioned.

So you believe that “I find this difficult” means people should berate that person? That’s the acceptable answer? Sorry but I disagree.

Abakk.9176:

Pino.5209:

Read every words of this 1st post. He isn’t exactly seriously asking for help. The main theme is asking for NERF. The bolded part was actually rather rhetoric with a hint of sarcasm. That line was the closest to a request for help. Do yourself a favor and read for once.

When i read it i see someone in need of advise. It peaks my interest because i also struggled with it.

When you read it you see an attack on your precious game… (and even then your response is over the top and rude)

The sad thing here is that all you seem to have to fall back on is screaming “White Knight.. White Knight” (like it is a bad thing), while all i do is ask for some common decency… extremely common i might add. If you would be treated like poop by someone standing next to you, i wonder what your reaction would be like.

I know its commonly accepted that the internet is like this… but it IS like this BECAUSE it is commonly accepted.

Its not about what the OP asked or not asked … its about your failure to see you were rude and are convinced it’s okay to be like that.

I’m not a millennial with edgy personality that sees everything as sunshine and flower like you.
How one communicate described one intent. OP intent was not requesting help per se, rather criticism and request for Nerf. The guy is literally those gamer who “if I can’t beat it, whine at forum for Nerf”. It’s cancerous behavior in gaming community.
You seeing OP’s whine as sunshine and flower defending it, is literally enabling this kind of behavior. A line has to be drawn on what is an acceptable manner, even in online forum.
Yes, there is absolutely nothing wrong with white knighting on an appropriate subject, for that I agree with you. Not this time around regarding OP’s request though.

Ceridwen.6703:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I opened up the boxes, got a ranged weapon for my second weapon set and used the food given to us. No problem. Whenever I got low on health I dodged out and switched to range. The non boss mobs died easy. It was only the boss that gave some trouble.

If you didn’t get a ranged weapon or food from the boxes given to you, do that next time. Makes a difference.

However, if OP didn’t find a DH bow in the boxes, then that could be something that needs tweaked for future updates. Being nice and all benefit-of-the-doubt and such.

Other than that, everything you say is spot on.

My own take was it felt like I had to rush on the with the story before having chance to look at my inventory. Y’know, people being burninated and so forth seems to be a pressing matter. I then saw my character had a staff equipped (I do not mesmer with staff), and I couldn’t let it go on. Then, of course, I had to fix my wardrobe to be all pretty and the right colours, then I found boxes and had to open the boxes, and then my inventory was a mess, and to cut a long story short, if it truly was an urgent situation, someone other than Tests-with-Cake should’ve received the call.

If I’m being all nice again, I could suppose this: if anyone else happened to feel a sense of urgency in getting stuff done just like I did until I saw what a fashion faux pas it would’ve been, they may inadvertently forget to check what they have in their inventory, and thereby fail terribly at being equipped adequately for the mission.

LOL, nice post. I completely agree. I unfortunately have learned to ignore any feelings of urgency I have during the story because I am one of those casual players that have been playing GW2 since beta but still have trouble in the story instances. I know that if I rush in like the hero I am told (constantly) I am, I will soon be dead. So I have to ignore cries of anguish and go slowly, pulling smaller amounts of mobs and using slow tactics against bosses.

It is unfortunate for me that Anet decided to put this level (I understand it is no level to many) of difficulty into the Stories. It means that I (and many people I have read) avoid the stories as I don’t enjoy being a floormop. I do enough of the story to get to the new map and then don’t finish it unless I feel I have to. Then I have to beg some friends to help me.

Djinn.9245:

Tere.4759:

How the bloody 4377 do you think one solo character with exotic armor only can defeat a boss and 20 adds? Are you kidding me. That’s the same problem I had with HOT. I solo this game. None of my friends play anymore. So I’m supposed to go into story mode with NPCs that die instantly and fight my way through and then go further in with no NPC helpers at all? Tune it down and up the rewards or most will never do the story modes at all. And where’s the dragon hunter’s bow.

I bought Path of Fire because of the open world. I doubt very much based on this that I will do the story mode at all.

And before you all criticize, I have a high level dragon hunter that does high level fractals. In fact, every one of my characters is level 80, medium to high level fractals. Solo story mode in these expansions is a pain in the kitten terrible rewards and dying every 2 minutes because you are one again 20 adds and a boss is ridiculous.

So I’m asking the devs to tune it down on the story mode content. Some of us don’t have a merry band of four/five that we can take into story mode.

I have learned over the years of doing the stories to be very cautious and slow and have a ranged option. When I hit that portion of the story, I followed the boss hanging quite a bit back. I did not rush into the town. I waited for only 3-4 mobs to be separated from the others and dealt with them. Then I tried pulling one with the bow but got 3 more. That was fine. Etc.

It is unfortunate that if you are just an average player you can’t feel like a hero and go in distracting the boss and mobs from the villagers. Instead I had to let the boss and mobs kill the villagers so I could pull them in smaller groups. I guess that’s the way Anet wants you to feel in their stories.

I had heard WP mention this about beta too, but with my DH I was able to cc and use my aegis and shield to protect all but 2 villagers. It was such a nice feeling that they made it so you can save them. I bet there will be an achieve for only letting X die. With the right set-up (which I happened to have on my DH) I was rounding them up before they could do any damage.

Skills of note: GS5, LB5, LB3, GS3, Traps, Meditations, F3, F2, and F1. With these alone (and a spirit weapon actually) I only saw one villager die, but there may have been 1 more. It was glorious. So I’m grateful A-Net was able to make it challenging, but doable to save lives. Although, I wish the npcs had names and would show up in the camp afterwards. So if you saved a bunch you could see them, and not just have them run past you while you herd the Forged into an aoe field.

Edit: On the topic off this thread. This was clearly fairly easy for some classes, but the key to gw2 combat has always been movement. You can even evade skills by simply moving. So when players have trouble with movement and skill use, they will always have trouble against npcs that force you to move with powerful, but avoidable attacks. The developers added in the dodge mechanic (on top of each professions defense mechanics) so that players could avoid even more damage without needing to fully master movement. But if you want to only rely on dodge and skills and stand still you can’t waste any dodges.

Ergo, I don’t think there is a problem with the difficulty. It’s the easiest content in a long time, and the open world feels fresh and fun. Roaming it reminds me lot of the old maps, and that is a good thing. (Although, it still feels a little more empty of little snipets that they put into the original game)

If you want to beat these story missions you have two options, optimize your build into one that doesn’t need to move. (This can be done with DH, Necro, Thief, Ranger, Mesmer, Engineer) whisper me if you want a build for any of these classes that can do the mission without moving during combat (outside of what the skills do to move you). Or you can master movement, and then any build can beat these missions. The npcs attacks can mostly be sidestepped, and when you can’t, you can evade or block or cc, etc. Don’t give up, since as I mentioned, there is a path for those with physical limitations blocking them from executing the full scope of the professions. PM me if anyone wants a workable build for these missions.

Edit 2: Haha, I just redid the mission on necro, and I only just realized all the civilians you save from the npcs get killed when the boss shows up… So much for my epic moment… xD I guess I didn’t realize when I did it last night.

To the OP, if you open one of the gear crates in your starting inventory you get a full set of armor and weapons where you can select the stats and you can also change the traits. Set your character up to something that you are comfortable with and then run the instance. Also, I’ve found that not all fractal builds are optimal for solo PvE and that some need to be tweaked for solo play.

I’ve run through it twice on a guardian. I agree that the starting configuration of the character isn’t ideal for my play style, so I just mirrored what I usually run outside of the beta for general solo PvE – typical melee hammer/scepter+torch. I stayed on hammer the entire time. I have to say, I didn’t find the instance to be over tuned, or actually very difficult – more tedious than anything else. While there are a number of adds, they seemed to be in groups of 3-4 that dropped in a few hammer swings + spirit sword/PoB swings. I don’t remember having 20 on me at once, not even 10. Most of the adds seemed to be more interested in attacking the NPC than they were me actually. The dogs seemed to be slightly more like HP sponges than anything really dangerous as long as you didn’t stand in their AOE and dodge the projectile attack. The herald was definitely a HP sponge with a very slow telegraphed big attack that seemed fairly easy to walk out of in melee range. Again just stay out of the attack and avoid the burning AOE.

I might run through it again with an FA ele or a condi DD thief to see if it more difficult with them.

What follows with the fire extinguisher/heart quest was a bigger problem, in my opinion and not very inspiring design for making me want to play the new content.

Good luck and keep trying!

Djinn.9245:

It is unfortunate for me that Anet decided to put this level (I understand it is no level to many) of difficulty into the Stories. It means that I (and many people I have read) avoid the stories as I don’t enjoy being a floormop. I do enough of the story to get to the new map and then don’t finish it unless I feel I have to. Then I have to beg some friends to help me.

Welp, if you’re EU, and I happen to still be playing, I’m happy to help out with anything. I can be a professional mop if the occasion arises, and look fab whilst doing it. I just can’t do it for hours on end anymore.

Tere.4759:

So I’m asking the devs to tune it down on the story mode content. Some of us don’t have a merry band of four/five that we can take into story mode.

IF you are talking about the PoF story instance the mobs attack anyone they see and ignore the player. When I first entered the large room with the many mobs they were already busy attacking other allies, you either encountered a bug that made all mobs attack you or you pulled them. Let your npc allies deal with the adds.

Even the boss breaks attack and starts attacking random allies at times, never focused on the player once, outside the last part, but in the last part there were no adds. So I’m not exactly sure what your problem was and what needs to be toned down.

I too found this story instance very easy first time around, so I decided to go back there and do a test.

First time I went through was with a celestial reaper – a build others (but not me) have trashed on this forum as being one of the worst. That build had a balance of offensive and defensive traits+skills and effortlessly breezed through the content with no deaths or problems. I only fought a handful of enemies at a time.
The second time I went through I used a purely defence/support build: a minstrel guardian (not DH) with shouts and the spirit longbow, virtues/honour/valour traitlines. This time it was significantly harder as I was fighting lots of enemies at once.

The reason for this discrepency was as follows: in the first (helping the lionguard and meeting the herald) and second (protecting the village) encounters of the instance multiple small groups of enemies are fighting multiple small groups of allies. If you have a very slow damage output the small enemy groups will have enough time to kill the allies they are fighting – after doing so they will all gather together and go after you.

Does this mean that I would support nerfing the instance? Not really. I think if we adopted the principle that every build should have an easy time in every instance, even a purely support-based one with no allies to support, then the difficulty threshold would end up being so low as to trivialise the content in most cases.

@OP my advice is to bump up your damage output: if you can kill each small group of enemies quickly you can prevent them from swarming up into a big group.

I had the same problem with my Ranger until I used my Druid build. I think Anet should provide the demo-ranger with 2 pets instead of 1. Not being able to switch pets and revive them quickly makes it very hard to play.

as a reaper necro it’s hella easy but when i tried the hammer/dual sword rev i got downed at least 5 times, it’s more the class then the difficulty.

Tere.4759:

How the bloody 4377 do you think one solo character with exotic armor only can defeat a boss and 20 adds? Are you kidding me. That’s the same problem I had with HOT. I solo this game. None of my friends play anymore. So I’m supposed to go into story mode with NPCs that die instantly and fight my way through and then go further in with no NPC helpers at all? Tune it down and up the rewards or most will never do the story modes at all. And where’s the dragon hunter’s bow.

I bought Path of Fire because of the open world. I doubt very much based on this that I will do the story mode at all.

And before you all criticize, I have a high level dragon hunter that does high level fractals. In fact, every one of my characters is level 80, medium to high level fractals. Solo story mode in these expansions is a pain in the kitten terrible rewards and dying every 2 minutes because you are one again 20 adds and a boss is ridiculous.

So I’m asking the devs to tune it down on the story mode content. Some of us don’t have a merry band of four/five that we can take into story mode.

Ignore the boss until the adds are dead. The boss is slow and has very slow attacks that are fairly easy to dodge out of. Just focus on pulling 1 or 2 adds away and killing them, then find a few more and kill them. When the adds are dead, focus on the boss.

Its not hard if you do it that way. But if you try to tackle the boss first then it becomes significantly more difficult. Hopefully this helps, if you even read the response

Abakk.9176:

Pino.5209:

Tere.4759:

Never mind, should have figured you’d all spread that Git Gud crap. A solo player can’t kill a dragon even in exotic armor with pitiful weapons. I’ve tried a warrior, a guardian, a necromancer and all couldn’t get through the second part of story mode with I counted 10 after me and the boss and something shooting fireballs.

Plus I was talking to the devs, not you.

Hilarious, a veteran player that got killed in that scenario with a necromancer. You are obviously lying to the teeth.

So far you have insulted OP twice for posting a problem he/she has with an encounter.

Don’t you think it would be more constructive to analyse the problem and come up with a good advise instead of “git gud” and flat out calling liar?

People that also struggle with content like that could also benefit from that, because im sure there are a lot more.

We weren’t all born with ‘mad skillz’ and some of us even have IRL nasties holding them back.

Maybe a tad more empathy? …. please?

It doesn’t even have to be anything nasty getting in the way, sometimes it’s just internet quality or machine age.
People with “skills” often conveniently overlook the fact that their successes are propped up by hardware and infrastructure that not everyone might have access to.

But I honestly believe that it’s just the case that empathy is a “skill” some people never bother developing.

Tere.4759:

nacario.9417:

No encounter has 20 adds. Please dont exaggerate in order to bolster your point. Every boss more or less has the M3 mechanic where you are rewarded if you are quick to press it, and then the encounter get easier. Every classbuild are not able to defeat the bosses, you need to change it around based on the encounter. I do agree that these fights do require you as a player to understand whats happening in the fight and know your class well, but personall I enjoy that. You could always do them in group though yes?

I counted 10 adds, do I have to be completely accurate for you to understand my point. And after the reponse this has gotten, there is no way in hell that I will ever group with anyone in this game. I’ve played SWTOR, and I have to say most of the responses here are worse than there. And for the jack**s who called me a liar, I’ve got words for you but I’ll not say them here and get banned from a game that I just paid a lot for.

I would say try not to let the biases and verbal diarrhoea of some individuals get in the way of your enjoyment of the game, but I know it’s not as easy as it might sound.

Edit
Though if you can get past the posts of those certain individuals then there does seem to be some good advice in here.

I went down a few times, but rallied. I will admit, I didn’t look in my inventory and ran what I got (longbow/GS ranger). Although I did slot a second pet. That probably made it more difficult, as I simply played as I usually play on my ranger. I opened the boxes after the fights were over and then sort of got my toon adjusted to what my main is.

There is always a noob player that for solo play thinks that PVE should be easy enough to push all the buttons without dodging and killing all enemies without losing hp. ArenaNet should not even listen to these people and should keep the game as difficult as raids, since what holds a person to the game is exactly the challenges, whether PVP, WVW, PVE, DUNGEON, RAID, FRACTAL and those who claim it Are the types of players who want everything in their hands without fighting.

Another thing that plays of ranger, can use the form of druid and also the pets since the pets hots like the normal, then without that of which the mobs are strong in this new map, it arrives of nerf the mobs and boss to the ground, the That holds me in the game, one of the reasons is the difficulty.

You are kidding, right? I 1 shot it with the default mesmer build/weps. I was totally blind sided when the mesmer had a staff. I thought it was terribly easy, sorry bro but Git Better at least.

Here are some tips from when I started first playing the game and was terrible at pve.

(1) If you are at around 1/4 health, just run away and gain some health back. If the bad guy follows, keep running and don’t run into the fire. If playing necromancer, use staff and set wells down as you run, it will apply conditions and drain their health (slowly but it will). The one main lionguard charr doesn’t go down so he will keep attacking which should take the bad guys off of you (until the village but even then they are attacking the villagers).

(2) Take your time if your having trouble. Don’t try to rush through the instance and hang back if you need to.

(3) Don’t get angry or annoyed if you die, just get up, breathe, and go back into the fight. Chances are you took down some of those 20 before you died and now the numbers are reduced so just keep chipping away.

(4) Also you can get out of the instance and grab a person or 2 to help you. You should have at least four people you’re used to working with from medium to high fractals. If your in a guild, you can ask them for help as well.

I have run this a couple times. The first time literally all of the mobs swarmed me at the same time. It was not easy. The next two times they came in waves and it was fine.

It was an ai issue. 20 at once was too many.

I see a lot of things in this thread, ppl bashing OP, and ppl defending OP. This thread reminds me so much of the Confessor’s End thread a few months ago were the OP did NOT ask for tips from the community, but instead bashed the devs for the worst encounter ever, and how they were not able to complete it, not because of their own lack of skill but because of how terrible the encounter was.

That time, the poster claimed to be one of the top 10% skill-wise of the community, this time, the OP wants us to believe (s)he is a very skilled player because they run high level fractals.

No wonder threads like these makes people laugh. You have a problem with an encounter, you don’t ask for help/suggestions, but you rather bash the devs for your lack of skill, since you can’t handle things, the game must change for everyone.

Considering the self proclaimed “I’m good” mentality, were does that leave the rest of us that have no issues what so ever with these encounters? I mean, I must surely belong to the top 0.1% in this game since I never even went down, not in the Confessor’s End encounter and for sure not even close in this one. Feels nice, to know you’re one of the best players around!

*

Next time folks, don’t bash the content you can’t beat – try again and again and again, and if you still manage to fail – ask for help, don’t call for nerfs since it’s YOU who are lacking the skills needed!

I lost 0 HP as Staff Daredevil during the story part of PoF Demo.

Albadaran.1283:

I had the same problem with my Ranger until I used my Druid build. I think Anet should provide the demo-ranger with 2 pets instead of 1. Not being able to switch pets and revive them quickly makes it very hard to play.

You can always click on the pet icon and select your second one.

Are you talking about the very first encounter?

I must have had a bugged instance because most of the mobs ignored me until I personally attacked them. They were all focused on villagers. It made killing them very easy.

The boss was also hyper-focused on killing villagers. I don’t think I ever took a single point of damage from the boss. She came towards me a couple of times and charged up her big attack but there was more than enough time to stroll out of the way. 90% of the time she completely ignored me as I was attacking her. She was obsessed with killing NPCs and other NPCs kept rezzing them so it was an endless cycle of her fighting NPCs.

I’ve seen some good and helpful advice in this thread. I would say the main thing is something not made obvious in game, something I knew only due to having done the HoT betas: as per the fashion-minded poster above, take time to set up your character to your taste. This is counter-intuitive in this release since you’ve got a path waiting for you; in HoT you were inside a fort with an NPC talking at length and it felt more natural to bolster your defenses before heading out into the enemy area.

And only open one of the Gear boxes — they are three identical things, the other two are there in case you don’t like the stats you picked after all.

I probably should have made a Thief/Daredevil to test since my DD will be my first in on live release and he always suffers on first story run-throughs … but since I love Reaper, I made my test character into one of those in full Viper, used my main Reaper’s build, and plowed merrily through the mobs while stepping out of the big orange Herald telegraph at need. Profession and build probably has a high impact on the instance’s survivability.

I can see how new players might find it baffling, but that’s more a concern with tossing brand new people into the level 80 deep end. To this day, despite having well over a stack of Tomes, I prefer to spend some time at lower levels testing out various weapons before I get a less familiar profession to 80.

I’m curious, any truly new players here? How easy/hard was it for you to figure out gearing your character, dealing with the mechanics, etc?

One against a Page 2 forum bug

I personally didn´t had any problem with the instance to be honest. Sure couple of times my life was critical low and needed to retreat, but other than that, was really fun for me.

Regards

Seed

The real question is why start a promo demo for an expansion sold on the promise of open maps and mounts with a solo instance in the first place? Yes, current players who are up to speed on the LS will have no issues but they are going to buy the expansion already! That’s not who the thing is being marketed to, is it?

I know two people who are not huge GW2 fans but who used to play and who were thinking of buying the expansion. They both tried the demo with tat thought in mind and they both loathed the instanced introduction. One didn’t even try to finish it and the other logged out as soon as she got to the Crystal Oasis.

Just start people in the main map! What’s more, just start people in the main map in the actual expansion when it comes. The Personal Story in the original game was 100% optional (after the tutorial) and five years and 20 level 80s later I have still never finished it! Keep the story separate from the rest of the game and everyone will be happy. (Well, no-one is ever happy but you know what I mean…)

I died a few times, but not anymore than average on an elementalist. And that was before adjusting my traits to where I thought I had them on my main, and I don’t think I got it right or unbiased some changes that affected me in the last patch.

I later did it with a Mesmer to test something out (portals and mounts to help those who can’t use mounts due to motion sickness), and adjusted my traits right away and had no real issues. And that was even using a different weapon set up than usual.

And I’m not great at this game. Low level fractals give me challenges.

I think there seems to be a bit of a disconnect going on. I’m going to go on a limb here and say that maybe the OP got unlucky or perhaps they grossly underestimated how much the mobs hit for, if they tried to pull them all at once. Personally I didn’t experience this as I went to each group of villagers and killed a pack here, some add would come by and I would engage them as well. I have to assume that the mobs provide a decent challenge or have a set of skills that I need to adjust for at first in order to avoid being caught by surprise.

I will NOT agree with the content being tuned down, as many have pointed out their experiences from both veteran and new parties alike had easier progress.

I’m pretty casual (I don’t raid, am only up to the start of T3 Fractals, and spend most of my time doing open world content). I decided to play core power warrior in this demo.

I thought it was easy tbh and going off your metric, you should be better than me. Maybe you brought a class that wasn’t very solo friendly? I know warrior has always been great for that stuff, so it’s possible I would have found it much harder with a different class.

New players most likely should NOT start out their GW2 experience in any of the expansions, but run the core game first. This is a valid point, and something the devs really ought to inform their player base about to make it perfectly clear.

To be honest, I did it first with Thief (my main class) and died once at the end vs the two vets.

I did go down a couple times during the village fight.

I tried it again on a Reaper(dont have one yet) and I never went down to half health. It was like night and day lol

EDIT: Just did on Thief again with my actual build and had no problems. Didn’t go down once or go down to half health.

Dunno what to tell you. Maybe you focused on the Herald too much? I think I made that mistake the first time during the village part.

Well… Hate to break it to you, but… Stats are simply not going to carry you in this game. You’re gonna have to actually use the tools you’re given.

Watch your pulls. You shouldn’t be fighting 20 at once. They are in smaller groups that you can pull. Get in ahead of the NPC’s going with you and pull the first group back, that will keep the NPC’s from over-extending.

I am not a great player, I don’t even think I am a good player but I got through the story slowly but surely. I was downed once but restarted at check point and went at it again being even more careful with my pulls after that. I am a ranger in exotic gear and a haphazard build which I enjoy. I found it very hard but doable.

Tere.4759:

How the bloody 4377 do you think one solo character with exotic armor only can defeat a boss and 20 adds? Are you kidding me. That’s the same problem I had with HOT. I solo this game. None of my friends play anymore. So I’m supposed to go into story mode with NPCs that die instantly and fight my way through and then go further in with no NPC helpers at all? Tune it down and up the rewards or most will never do the story modes at all. And where’s the dragon hunter’s bow.

I bought Path of Fire because of the open world. I doubt very much based on this that I will do the story mode at all.

And before you all criticize, I have a high level dragon hunter that does high level fractals. In fact, every one of my characters is level 80, medium to high level fractals. Solo story mode in these expansions is a pain in the kitten terrible rewards and dying every 2 minutes because you are one again 20 adds and a boss is ridiculous.

So I’m asking the devs to tune it down on the story mode content. Some of us don’t have a merry band of four/five that we can take into story mode.

I’m a VERY casual player, haven’t even finished HoT story yet, don’t do fractals or dungeons and had no problem with both Chronomancer and Dragonhunter.

Baldrick.8967:

I went in with the given set up, didn’t bother to change a thing about the build, the necro. It’s a terrible build, but I made it through without dying. It was a very tedious story and having to put out all the fires just dragged it along.

At least there wasn’t quite so much NPC talking this time, so that’s a plus.

Fights felt OK, as long as you tackle one group at a time.

This. I went in with the default spec, armor, and weapons and had no trouble.

use toughness,vit and healing gear. survival skills, stone signet, endure pain etc. reflects. bring pets.

I don’t understand questions like these… if anet made us solo jormag or vg, then i would understand the complaint. but 20 easy adds…???

do ppl expect like… easy bosses for everything?
some ppl play a game for challenges, not to be spoonfed, it doesn’t mean they’re not casual. Casual is not excuse for getting everything handed to you :/ and it does not mean that they want easy content either. i thought casual only meant they had less time to play the game.

It depends on the class. Some classes I have no problems with and maybe one or two just can’t do it. I can see how it would be frustrating especially with you team standing by basically doing nothing.

If you are talking about the demo, I think I have had tougher encounters in other story instances. The demo was pretty easy tbh… and I don’t even do fractals. The replies aren’t that harsh dude. You even made it after all so where is the difficulty? I can though imagine people who just bought the game and tried out PoF find it difficult.

Tere.4759:

nacario.9417:

No encounter has 20 adds. Please dont exaggerate in order to bolster your point. Every boss more or less has the M3 mechanic where you are rewarded if you are quick to press it, and then the encounter get easier. Every classbuild are not able to defeat the bosses, you need to change it around based on the encounter. I do agree that these fights do require you as a player to understand whats happening in the fight and know your class well, but personall I enjoy that. You could always do them in group though yes?

I counted 10 adds, do I have to be completely accurate for you to understand my point. And after the reponse this has gotten, there is no way in hell that I will ever group with anyone in this game. I’ve played SWTOR, and I have to say most of the responses here are worse than there. And for the jack**s who called me a liar, I’ve got words for you but I’ll not say them here and get banned from a game that I just paid a lot for.

Go play your SWTOR , dude. Hope it’s easy enough for ya. Best wishes.