Guild Wars 2

Grab your beta hats everyone, because beta weekend event #2 is the basis for this suggested update to the severely lacking Shatterer fight!

*If you see “kitten” anywhere, that means I spelled “Shatt” with only one ‘t’. I think I went back and changed them all, but I may have missed one or two.

So here’s my suggestion. I would like to see this branding of players in some form during the Shatterer fight to give it more flavor and make it a challenge. Doing this without pitting the playerbase against each other at a time when they should work together is a challenge, though, and coming up with a solution has proven difficult but doable. So here are the details about the “updated” fight!

The Shatterer’s Abilities

-Encases players in shells which must be destroyed
-Summons healing crystals in random locations, no one location is safe; prefers large groups
>>Players hit by the crystals’ AoE when they land are turned Branded; AoE cannot be dodged
>>Boss may still be attacked, but the crystals will continue to heal until destroyed
>>Crystals provide a rez location for any players that are defeated
>>Players that are defeated during the fight rez as Branded creatures
-Empowered Buff, immune to damage
>>Removed when Shared Power debuff is applied
-Shared Power
>>Applied when Shatterer adds a stack of Branded Essence to players
>>Each stack of Branded Essence applied to each player gives an internal stack of Shared Power for 15 seconds
>>Each stack of Shared Power allows .1% of damage through
-Branded Essence
>>Maximun of 40 stacks on each player
>>40 stacks applied to each player when they are turned Branded
>>Stacks are removed by hitting non branded players, each ability has a cd and exhausts between 1-3 stacks
>>Shatterer reapplies 1 stack to each Branded player every 3 seconds
-Stomp*
-Tailswipe*
-Breathes Something*

*These are actually threatening abilities that do a good amount of damage

Fight Notes

-If a Branded player is at 40 stacks of Essence, they are no longer receiving a stack from the Shatterer which means the Shatterer is not receiving an internal stack of the Shared Power debuff

-There are three large cleansing stations at the site which can only be attacked by Branded players. These cleansing stations take a lot of damage and precious time to destroy, and once destroyed, all Branded players in the region are cleansed of their Essences.

-If a player is killed by a branded player, the branded player is released of their Branded Essences and can fight Shatterer. The player killed will rez at a healing crystal as a Branded Creature.

-Crystals will be summoned often, so players will not have to wait long to rez as a Branded Creature. Because they are summoned often and in random locations, it is important the the stacks of Essences are removed so that the raid is not overrun by Branded players. For this reason, it is also good to not stand in large groups, as there are only 3 cleansing stations and they take time away from fighting the Shatterer.

-Branded players are tough but don’t do a lot of damage. The abilities that get rid of more stacks of Essence have cc abilities attached, such as a knockback or blind.

The Challenge

The challenge with this fight is balancing people that are branded with those that aren’t. It is important that you get rid of the stacks of essences so that the raid isn’t overrun with branded creatures, but at the same time you need the Shatterer to Share Power to do damage to him. Using a calculator, I just checked and it looks like a 50/50 split would do the most damage, so branded players would need to be balanced on ANet’s side to make that challenging.

Explaining the Stacks

One player, when branded, will have 40 stacks of Branded Essence immediately applied, and the Shatterer will have 40 stacks of Shared Power applied for 15 seconds. This means, since 1 stack = .1% damage allowed, that 4% of damage (40 * .1) that players deal will be allowed. Say on a raid of 100 people, 1 person gets hit by a crystal. 99 people each averaging 1k damage a second (for easy calculating) will be hitting Shatt for 40 each second. 40 * 99=3960 per second to Shatt. If 50 people get turned by the crystals, then .1 * 40=4% per person 4% * 50 people=200% damage allowed. The other 50 people, still averaging 1k per second will be hitting Shatt for 2k per second, and 2k * 50=100,000 per second. If 99 people get branded, then 4% per person * 99 people = 396% * 1k damage from that one person = 3960 per second. So you see how it spikes at an even split. The players can even make that spike higher by the branded attacking nonbranded players during the 15 second spike and get a few more stacks of Essence applied, and after that initial 15 seconds after being turned, each Branded player would be able to sustain 5 stacks of Shared Power on Shatt (Shatt applies the Essence once every 3 seconds, his Shared Power buff lasts 15 seconds, so it would stack up to 5 for each player) so that some decent damage can still be done. 50 people * .1 * 5 = 25% damage allowed = 250 per second from each player = 12,500 per second from 50 people. Of course his health would vary depending on raid size.

Sorry for the bad formatting. It’s a lot of information running through my head and just wanted to get down. Hope it’s moderately easy to grasp though!

Edit** It is okay for me to say something about the Beta weekend events now, right? Seeing as how it was almost 2 years ago. I know there was the nondisclosure agreement and all, don’t want to get banned now for saying something. >.<

Please no more old world bosses that get updated, which then require coordination that goes beyond ‘all press 1 and F to revive downed zerglings’.

Use those mechanics on a new boss – fine. But don’t change old ones any more. And stop trying to make open world PvE content into raids, it doesn’t work.

That being said, I think it would be fine to just remove the blind spots from the Shatterer fight, that being his right foot (and from the Claw of Jormag fight Phase 1, for that matter), where people can simply afk in a blob. Some basic combat movement should be allowed, and it breaks what little mechanics those fights have.

So, thanks for the effort, but I disagree it being a useful addition to the Shatterer fight. It would become another boss that starts failing because people can’t into mechanics and don’t bother. Open PvE just doesn’t work well with such things. Otherwise it could be an interesting mechanic for a new boss.

P.S.: It’s ‘res’, from ‘resurrect’. A ‘rez’(zle frazzle) sounds like Snoop Dogg is talking about GW2. :P

Why would you want something that you can autoattack to win? That’s not a very epic fight at all, and the world boss fights supposed to be epic. The best part about that fight is the way he comes crashing in, after that it’kitten 1 and sit back and have a sandwich.

Sure making it to where people can’t stand in one spot would change it up a little, but this is a dragon boss! It’s better than that. Even the Claw of Jormag, after the update, people still stand in that spot even though it’s not a safe spot anymore. It’s funny how only about 10% of the people at the fight actually know how to avoid getting feared and pushed back, and it’s funny seeing how much they complain about getting feared 3-4 times in a row only to be pushed back twice. (shield skill! learn to use it! and dodge for the pushback)

Maybe the technical portion of it could be carried to a new boss, but they couldn’t be “Branded” in nature as that is purely the Shatterer’s doing. I’m not saying make it as tough as Tequatl but having more variety and somewhat of a challenge would be nice. There should be some threat of losing the big boss fights, not having a 100% kill rate.

About your “raid” comment, large groups of people fighting a common enemy are called raids. I don’t understand why you wouldn’t want world bosses that Anet designed to be fought by 10s or 100s of people to not be “raid” content. There are plenty of common enemies, veterans, and even some champions, that do not require more than one person.

P.S.: When I think of “res” I think of resolution. I may have carried over “rez” from previous games. XP

ArchieD.6972:

Why would you want something that you can autoattack to win?

because people arnt’ trying to do excited boss fight. People are farming. And qutie honestly it get harder and harder to farm dragonite ore every patch.

laokoko.7403:

ArchieD.6972:

Why would you want something that you can autoattack to win?

because people arnt’ trying to do excited boss fight. People are farming. And qutie honestly it get harder and harder to farm dragonite ore every patch.

Let me quote Anet’s Manifesto:

“I swung a sword, I swung a sword again, he-eey! I swung it again, that’s great. We just don’t want players to grind in Guild Wars 2. No one enjoys that, no one finds it fun. We want to change the way that people view combat.”

So that right there attacks two major points: grind and combat. They don’t want people to just stand there swinging the sword, and that’s why I’m suggesting this change to the fight. It’s not fun. This is a game, which supposed to be fun.

As for farming dragonite ore, that’s a completely different subject to be discussed, which is the grind part. Should it be easy to obtain? Should large amounts of it be required? Should there be other ways to obtain it? It certainly isn’t required to have fun in the game, only to craft ascended gear. Again, different subject for a different thread.