Guild Wars 2

It’s a singleplayer story mission. Why are there veterans with a billion health? Why is the open world full of mobs with three times as much health as they need to have? They don’t even have phases. I’m literally throwing and dodging the same attacks for the entire duration of these over-long fights. There’s a difference between challenge and tedium, you know.

Like, I don’t want to instakill everything, but I don’t want to have to whittle down an enemy for five minutes. That’s just bad design.

It’s a challenge to fight tricky mobs with attacks you have to counter and avoid. It’s not a challenge to fight some random grunts for ages because they have so much kitten health. It’s not a challenge to spam at a humanoid for half an hour and not even come close to dying.

It would be nice if you posted where you found these veterans with the billion health. Which story part? Which mob? Some more info would be very nice.

They probably seem like they have a lot of health, but against one of the higher damage builds, they don’t. There are a few gimmick enemies however, some of which you’re meant to avoid, like the patched abomination, and others with mechanics to cause increased damage.

Here is the deal with the game:

Gear can have various stats on it. Stats like power/precision/ferocity/condition damage are offensive, they increase your attack potential. Stats like toughness/vitality/healing power are defensive, they make you tankier.
By using gear that is offensive by its nature, you sacrifice your own survivability for the sake of doing more damage. Most people who are experienced use gear that only has offensive stats (like berserker, assassin, viper,…) which means they kill stuff reasonably fast but they’re squishy, so they have to pay a lot of attention to enemy attacks and dodge them.
If you have defensive gear, the game is obviously gonna feel easy to you because nothing can kill you, enemy attacks will be mitigated by your passive defense. But it comes with a cost – everything dies really slow because you don’t deal much damage either.
Additionaly, if you’re not level 80, you probably still have leveling gear, which is gonna be weak. Updating your equipment should do the trick. Wear armor that is close to your level, of best possible quality and as much offensive stats as possible.

Also, melee weapons usually deal more damage, since they force you to come close to an enemy. Range weapons are safe and easy to use, but they will obviously deal less dmg. Again, you’re choosing between your own safety and killing stuff fast. Risk vs. reward.

If you wanna go through story fast, you have the option. Just spec into offense, have offensive stats on your gear and use melee weapons. But it requires proactive and skillful gameplay, knowing your class well and using dodges. Not all players can handle that.
There’s no way you can be super tanky and deal extreme damage at the same time. From what you’ve said I can tell your spec is extremely tanky, so you can change it up. But you will notice the game becomes much more demanding if you spec for offense. No longer you can afford to mash skills randomly and ignore mechanics, you will have to execute rotations precisely and anticipate enemy attacks.

The only time where I really find this to be a problem is when a high damage normal enemy sudden spawns as a veteran+ (especially Elite/Champ) without any modification to their damage output. Mordrem Snipers/Stalkers are probably some of the worst offenders, and in large enough event groups, they spawn at level 83 and at veteran+.
The balancing point is supposed to be their relatively small HP pool, which doesn’t happen as their difficulty scales up.

Rauderi.8706:

The only time where I really find this to be a problem is when a high damage normal enemy sudden spawns as a veteran+ (especially Elite/Champ) without any modification to their damage output. Mordrem Snipers/Stalkers are probably some of the worst offenders, and in large enough event groups, they spawn at level 83 and at veteran+.
The balancing point is supposed to be their relatively small HP pool, which doesn’t happen as their difficulty scales up.

Ah, mordrem snipers. Nothing better than a bunch of them spawning as elite/champion in a DS zerg and randomly oneshotting people. Mob scaling in HoT is hilariously bad.

“Why is the open world full of mobs with three times as much health as they need to have? "

were you by any chance fighting a group event mob?

maddoctor.2738:

It would be nice if you posted where you found these veterans with the billion health. Which story part? Which mob? Some more info would be very nice.

Korritkir the Chucker comes to mind.

Neural.1824:

maddoctor.2738:

It would be nice if you posted where you found these veterans with the billion health. Which story part? Which mob? Some more info would be very nice.

Korritkir the Chucker comes to mind.

Is this the side with the skritt story step with the Destroyer ?