Guild Wars 2

Engage Reef Drakes at 1200 range and they become trivial, melee them and it’s a nightmare.

I hasten to add that I don’t find this zone fun, the mob density, mob difficulty and mob respawn rate are all tuned too high for my taste … but if there’s a way to make the place more bearable for others I’ll share it! The mobs aren’t hard to kill, nor are they particularly dangerous once you have the tactics down (and don’t end up with too many) but they are tedious.

I’ll add another voice saying that this area is actually pretty easy.

They should definitely add more patrols.

binidj.5734:

TL;DR
The zone isn’t fun but if you want to get karka shells you have to endure it.

FALSE.

If you want karka shells, you can just buy them. That still exists as an alternative, as expensive as it is.

I wish my mesmer had the confusion these reef drakes have.

These are my reasons:

1. Enemies are much harder than in other areas
2. Drops aren’t better than in other areas (at least I noticed no difference)
3. Amount of events is small, they are hard, and not farmable
4. It’s a hard level 80 zone so lower levels have no reason to be here even for levelling
5. Seriously aggravating/boring enemies
6. Ambience is lacking

I took my guardian there and while I can solo events like broodmother and a few others “non group” events I didn’t see much point considering I can go to Orr and farm events there easier. The reward (two blue items) were definitely not worth the time and effort. I can barely solo a veteran young karka and veteran normal karka is going to turn me into a bloody mush. Not so in Orr where I can easily solo most vets. I find young Karka to be okay though. They merely require you to learn a simple tactic (evade the initial barrage).

After that I took my ranger there and there’s no way he can solo the broodmother or any of the veteran enemies. If my ranger can’t then I’m pretty sure my elementalist can’t either.

I get that broodmother and reef drakes use sonic breath to apply confusion. Do they also need to be able to pull you in so you can’t even dodge it? My ranger using axes from maximum range (900) got constantly pulled in. I’m not even that annoyed by the pull itself. I’m annoyed because it activates without warning so it’s kitten hard to dodge it.

Reef riders follow the massively boring enemy design: low damage with huge amount of hp. It’s a battle with boredom because you have to guess if you can outlast their low but constant damage while you are hammering their hp away.

As for ambience. At least in other areas you sometimes end up following the NPC banter and NPCs would aid you. Here NPCs are everything the GW2 manifesto said the NPCs would not be: nothing feels dynamic or alive. NPCs are loitering around while enemies spawn in middle of them.

Simply put: the area has just one draw for me. Its fun jumping puzzle. Even that gets tired after a few runs.

Reef Drakes are way too strong (one normal monster should not be able to beat you 2-on-1. If you’re wondering, my ranger and her pet were the 2), Reef Riders are just flying bags of HP that are just time-consuming to kill rather than dangerous, and there are way too many karka around considering we were supposed to have claimed the island from them. I have no idea what the deal is with the packs of sharks, either.

Also, why is the main island so hard to get onto? There’s no waypoints on the entire western half, and no way up from water level on that side.

I also agree that there needs to be more of an incentive to go here. The difficulty is fine, but maybe you can include more special rewards or higher mat drops.

Young Karka are fine with the right class. Reef Riders (not young ones) are boring bags of lots of health. Drakes are fine 1 on 1 if you max range them. Vet Karka really did not need the second life to be challenging. Oh, and the exploding hatchlings? Yeah, that’s a survival trait. ;p

And the drops? Maybe it’s because RNG hates me, but I get better drops almost anywhere else.

Southsun cove did one thing for me. It gave me a renewed appreciation for Orr.