Guild Wars 2

Nick.6972:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Do you guys think that there’s a middle ground between ultra hard and easy?

For example, I think we could clean up some of the issues with the Shatterer and just make it a more engaging experience. So rather than spending the entire fight hiding under his right paw he could, say, turn his head and attack that area? :] It doesn’t have to be hard, just a little more involved.

We tried to put in a few changes here and there when we added the new world boss timers. Reactions varied.

Add appropriate rewards first to Tequatl, then buff the other bosses.
If I have to endure huge zerging, lag spikes, low FPS and DCs I don’t want to be rewarded with few greens and occasional gold.

thissss is kind of a thing too, yes.

Tequatl requires half an hour of organizing, that should be rewarded aptly.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Do you guys think that there’s a middle ground between ultra hard and easy?

For example, I think we could clean up some of the issues with the Shatterer and just make it a more engaging experience. So rather than spending the entire fight hiding under his right paw he could, say, turn his head and attack that area? :] It doesn’t have to be hard, just a little more involved.

We tried to put in a few changes here and there when we added the new world boss timers. Reactions varied.

But…then I couldn’t afk to grab lunch when fighting him!

Seriously though, I think that’s a fair middle ground. I’m guessing a change like that would make it easier to get the achieve of breaking people out of the crystals since someone might actually get hit by one.

What Shatterer could use, is some stomp attack that it uses to scatter players in it’s feet.

Or simply removal of the blind spots.

Battle should take more place in the dragons face, rather than just there to give him manicure and leave…

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Do you guys think that there’s a middle ground between ultra hard and easy?

For example, I think we could clean up some of the issues with the Shatterer and just make it a more engaging experience. So rather than spending the entire fight hiding under his right paw he could, say, turn his head and attack that area? :] It doesn’t have to be hard, just a little more involved.

We tried to put in a few changes here and there when we added the new world boss timers. Reactions varied.

To use your example, just making him turn his head would not really be that effective or exciting.This boss needs a total makeover.
Have him take off and cluster-burn the valley, drop crystal “bombs” on us, actually have him attack the camp / if destroyed event fails.

In short, put pressure on the players. It does not have to be raid-quality hard, but something more that what we have today would be better.

I’ve hunted Shatterer since release. I still consider him my favourite mob in game, by far. But the mechanics are just too weak and boring.

When I can /dance under his right paw and feel no pressure whatsoever, there’s a problem.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Do you guys think that there’s a middle ground between ultra hard and easy?

For example, I think we could clean up some of the issues with the Shatterer and just make it a more engaging experience. So rather than spending the entire fight hiding under his right paw he could, say, turn his head and attack that area? :] It doesn’t have to be hard, just a little more involved.

We tried to put in a few changes here and there when we added the new world boss timers. Reactions varied.

Anthony,

Yalora Istairiea.6287:

Agreed, Shatter should be upgraded to include SOME KIND of variation of attack so that you can’t just stand that and spam attack his big toe.

Over a year ago I wrote a post pertaining to that exact thing. In my reference I proposed numerous different attacks that they could add to make things more interesting. Though my example was Tequatl ( pre Buff, when he was just another Big toe to be stubbed), it could apply to any Dragon.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Mega-Boss-scaling/page/2#post1901188

Now unlike the Tequatl post Buff, they could add some of these features without making it so overwhelming as the new Tequatl has become. A little… can go a long way.

Shatterer needs to be dangerous. Right now it feels like i’m hitting a log of wood, and that’s how most world bosses make me feel too. Just target dummies. And that’s really sad because most look very impressive.

Would like something that requires more player skill and less coordination. At present Triple Wurm isn’t very hard execution wise, but requires coordination not possible for pugs. Tequatl would be a good benchmark for Shatterer, except:

1. Without the turret gimmicks
2. Without the battery phase gimmicks

All that’s needed is to buff Shatterer’s offense up to Tequatl levels together with spawns (crystals?) that support its offense, AoEs the players can’t stand in for long, etc.

The worst possible benchmark is the Claw of Jormag. That failure of a world boss is a 100% gimmick based difficulty and a HP bag at the end.

Golem Mark II would be a very good boss if there wasn’t a ranged safespot and people were forced to melee it and dodge through.

World bosses are better when they don’t have very high health, but have extremely damaging attacks. More challenge, less boredom in waiting for HP to go down.

I really do like the idea of a phase where we must defend the mortars and cannons! Great way to at least make the players move off the hill, for a few moments at the very least. :P Perhaps tie the mortars/cannons more into the fight. Make them more valuable assets to keep up. They could weaken The Shatterer perhaps? Possibly add a special attack on the cannons that can interupt a certain attack of his. (like interupting his healing phase?)

Sorry can’t fight..
Created an overflow, filled it up and Dc-ed when Teq spawned.

Will try again when the worldbosses are able to be activated trough guildchallenge in a private overflow.

Cheers!

Nick.6972:

Add appropriate rewards first to Tequatl, then buff the other bosses. If I have to endure huge zerging, lag spikes, low FPS and DCs I don’t want to be rewarded with few greens and occasional gold.

I think Tequatl has pretty good rewards. You get 1g guaranteed for 10-15 mins of actual gameplay (not counting AFKing), and normal world bosses require the same amount of time from your side. You get pretty much karma, usually 2-4 rare items, maybe an exotic on every second week and still have a chance for ascended chest. When I do Tequatl, there is always a guy on the map who gets a pink container, so theoreticaly you can be the lucky one one day.

Yes, I would be happy for more loots too, who wouldn’t be, but let’s be fair, Tequatl is already in another league concernin the rewards than other world bosses (Karka Queen included).

Karka queen is overly easy atm, being summarised into:

1. Facetank melee.
2. Dodge when Stability procs on Queen.
3. Throw eggs when they appear.

That boss needs some sort of rework too.

CyClotroniC.4957:

Nick.6972:

Add appropriate rewards first to Tequatl, then buff the other bosses. If I have to endure huge zerging, lag spikes, low FPS and DCs I don’t want to be rewarded with few greens and occasional gold.

I think Tequatl has pretty good rewards. You get 1g guaranteed for 10-15 mins of actual gameplay (not counting AFKing), and normal world bosses require the same amount of time from your side. You get pretty much karma, usually 2-4 rare items, maybe an exotic on every second week and still have a chance for ascended chest. When I do Tequatl, there is always a guy on the map who gets a pink container, so theoreticaly you can be the lucky one one day.

Yes, I would be happy for more loots too, who wouldn’t be, but let’s be fair, Tequatl is already in another league concernin the rewards than other world bosses (Karka Queen included).

I agree. We should be getting the others onto Tequatl’s level instead of just putting all the loot in one event.

Hayashi, Fire Elemental too. Taidha too. Megadestroyer too. Ulgoth too. Others, too.

Even those of them who weren’t dumb punching bags before turned into such after the megaserver hit.

CyClotroniC.4957:

I personaly consider Tequatl / Scarlet (on the ship) fights the right direction. It needs a certain amount of people, not hard at all, once everyone gets to know the fight mechanics.

The problem with the Wurm is, that it needs syncing and while I can imagine something like that a Guild Challenge (branded one for example), it’s certainly not good for az open world megaboss, specialy with the megaservers. It’s pretty problematic to organize it.

I can consider the other world bosses less fun than Teq, specially the Claw of Jormag (somehow I really hate that). If I could chose from the fight mechanics I like at world bosses, Fire Ele (with more health) and Golem Mark II (with less health) would be my favourites, only just because avoiding AoE-s make it a bit more fun. Other then those, Teq is definitely my favourite of all bosses (although not a fan of AFKing half an hour for it).

Scarlet fight was well done, yes.

Nothing beats a good “You fail? Humiliating wipe” too.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Do you guys think that there’s a middle ground between ultra hard and easy?

For example, I think we could clean up some of the issues with the Shatterer and just make it a more engaging experience. So rather than spending the entire fight hiding under his right paw he could, say, turn his head and attack that area? :] It doesn’t have to be hard, just a little more involved.

Absolutely. The change to Golem Mark II is a good example of ways to do this. There should be no safe zones where the player can just plant and spam 1. Players should always be moving and engaged with the fight.

One idea: have Shatt turn patches of the ground into crystal fields. Like the poison AoEs at Teq and the electricity at Golem, standing in these fields means death. When a player dies in the field, a dangerous branded spawns (can trap other players in crystal perhaps?) Give the mortars a skill that removes the crystal field; this is the only way to remove it. Send more branded at the mortars. This way we need teams manning and defending the mortars, or the whole field gets turned to crystal.

Also, “ultra hard” is relative here. These days, Teq is pretty easy. I would be hesitant to acquiesce to the players that are vocal about these fights being “too difficult.” The level of coordination, esp. if you’ve got people that do it all the time and know their roles, is pretty minimal. It’s just that the amount of coordination required by 98% of PvE is zero, and players have become accustomed to that.

So you’re going to get some backlash anytime you make content more difficult. That’s okay. If you’re really dedicated to raising the skill level of your playerbase (like you said you were some months ago) you’ve got to push through that.

If possible, get a birds eye view of the Shatter fight, and eliminate all zones within attack distance where players would be safe from either direct or indirect damage from shatter himself. (champion branded are wildcards.)

Hayashi.3416:

Karka queen is overly easy atm, being summarised into:

1. Facetank melee.
2. Dodge when Stability procs on Queen.
3. Throw eggs when they appear.

That boss needs some sort of rework too.

She gets a lot harder when other karka appear nearby, if that became more of a thing, then that would fix that. Hard to facetank karka queen PLUS 5-6 other karka at the same time.

Fire Ele AoE telegraphing needs to be improved and its hp needs to be somewhat less low, though HP bagging is not the way to go either. The concept of that fight is good, but with high ping made worse by lag-assisted skill delay, rather than actually avoiding AoEs my main tack is to Stability through the whole thing. It’s quite a bit of missed potential that telegraphing the AoEs even half a second earlier would fix. Of course, moving the melee damage spot into the FE will prevent DD pierces and meleeing it outside melee range nonsense.

Really really like Mark II though. Except without the safespot.

Melandru was fun to solo once, interrupting exactly at the 25% marks to prevent the healphase made for interesting play. Nowadays it’s turned into another zergfest and place to farm revival xp with Battle Standard. And since interrupts no longer work, we’re pressed into the drake gimmick which isn’t frankly anywhere as fun as the main fight itself at all.

The idea behind the LS2 Shadow of the Dragon is great. Would be nice to see something like that for a world boss, if only the dragon would attack back rather than standing there as a HP bag during the weakened phase.

Frediosz.2718:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Do you guys think that there’s a middle ground between ultra hard and easy?

For example, I think we could clean up some of the issues with the Shatterer and just make it a more engaging experience. So rather than spending the entire fight hiding under his right paw he could, say, turn his head and attack that area? :] It doesn’t have to be hard, just a little more involved.

We tried to put in a few changes here and there when we added the new world boss timers. Reactions varied.

Well to be honest, Teqatl is medicore boss – organized runs kill him with ease and that’s a good thing, chaotic blob may or may not kill him and its also ok – they will learn cooperation or they will not do Taquatl anymore.

Fine by me, because i was in 100% random runs and still we were able to establish cooperation with random peeps that i saw for the first time without using TeamSpeak.

Also Teq is rather rewarding due to miniatures and taquatl boxes of equipment.

BUT

The Great Jungle Wurm…
I hate this one.
He is really hard, even with having people on TS it still can turn into gigantic fail AND its nearly impossible to kill without TS. Its rewards are not equal to the effort that is put into bringing him down – few greens and blue stuff…
This helped me to make up my mind and not doing it.

So shortly as a medicore player (not entirely ‘noob’ but not hardcore button-mashing player) i enjoy Tequatl and this kind of difficulty equal to its rewards and hate GJW and its imbalance between difficulty and GJW’s rewards. Teq is that ‘golden middle’ between hard and easy.

As for the rest of Elder’s spawns, both Claw and Shatner should be as tough as Tequatl BUT not as Jungle Wurm.

Now to person calling dungeons “elitist” content…

Seriously get of that champ-train, only hard dungeon as for me is Arah (which is simply long and this makes it hard) rest of them is simply a walk in the park but still they require something more then bashing your head against keyboard as trains teaches people… Try to think and they will become not-so-elite-content. (or try to go through GW1 dungeons – now that’s hard)

I Agree with everything you’re saying, teq should be considered the middle ground between hard and easy. It’s not hard at all to defeat him with random pugs and without using teamspeak aslong as you’re actually trying to defeat him. I would say the problem is the mentality some people seem to have, they just want to join the map just before the event starts get a few hits on teq, get their rares and go somewhere else. They don’t seem to bother asking people what to do or even look it up themselfs, the gw2 community is actually pretty kind and will often tell you what you need to do if you ask in map chat and there will almost always be commanders in the area that know the tactic and will stand where people should gather. I just enjoy the fact that you actually have to be a bit social and interact with the people you’re about do the boss fight with before and during the battle. Even though some bosses could be easier I think that atleast the champions of the elder dragons should be on the same level as teq.

I also agree with what you said about the great jungle worm, I have personally never defeated him but that’s mostly because Im not so active with the part of the community that are trying to do it. I do however like that there are really hard bosses like the great jungle worm in the game for those groups that want a challenge. What we need is an upgrade to guilds and extra functionality to the commander tag that would make communication and planning easier ingame. Maybe an ingame voice chat in squads?

I definitely don’t like ultra hard, but I don’t like ultra easy either. I think Claw i pretty good. I also like Teq in theory, but the timer kills it for me. I’d prefer a boss with all of Tequatl’s mechanics except a much more generous timer, so that if you take long to kill him the punishment would be that it takes longer rather than you getting nothing at all.

Specific to Shatterer, I don’t think it would be terrible if you just put a permanent “stand here and die” field in the traditional rally point and forced players to move elsewhere to fight him, at least to see what people would do. It might make it impossible, but I doubt that.

But in regards to the shatterer, I think a couple of things are in order. It really shouldn’t be possible to stand immediately off to the side and afk the fight, so attacking that area should be an essential part to improving him. Maybe making crystals fall all over the place similar to jormag. After that, the rest is optional, but attacking the crystals that heal him is an excellent boss mechanic unique to Shatterer, so I’d be fully on board with making that part essential to a win.

Ohoni.6057:

if you take long to kill him the punishment would be that it takes longer rather than you getting nothing at all

Can we make this happen?

You’ve done a great job with teq buffing him and add exclusive rewards…
Just make kitten and Jormag more difficult, with a system like teq that requires some organization and different roles to be made…
Oh and yes, we are tired of toxic weapons/armor, we have wurm and teq that gives green smoke aura, now we want more ascended weapon variety…
Branded/Glacial ascended weapon skins (same as teq but with color light and aura different)would be so epic and will give more alternative for looting ascended chests/skins…. And will give us “hardcore” world event lover more things to do

I am fully for buffing The Shatterer and Claw of Jormag as long as their rewards are buffed too. We need a reason to justify the organisation required to do them!

As OP and many others have stated, they’re dragons — they should not be trivial!

Doesn’t need an increase in difficulty. Needs an increase in mechanics. Encourage players to do different things to defeat him.

Do something with the siege equipment we got sitting in the back.

Maybe there’s a certain period of time where Shatterer takes like 50% less damage, and we have to rely on the siege equipment to cut off its wings to make up in the loss of dps.

Maybe have a moment where you have to attack him at certain spots on the ground because the rest is covered in crystal spikes that does DOT on characters, so the blob has to migrate around to certain spots to deal damage.

Maybe make certain body parts take more damage from Melee, and certain spots take more damage from Range, so the blob has to split into melee groups and ranged groups to efficiently kill him fast.

And then lastly maybe throw in something to do with the NPCs. Make them not useless, have them engage in the fight. Have small events where the npcs have to drop some sort of anti-crystal agent on the dragon to make him extra vulnerable.

It’ll encourage players to not just zerg, and approach different methods of killing him.

And also please buff rewards. I honestly don’t even do world bosses anymore because it’s just not worth the effort. I’d rather run around in WVW with a zerg to get my Dragonite ores.

Give us an incentive to do world bosses. Make them truly massive and with rewards that truly make them worth killing. They don’t even have to be exotics/ascendeds. They could be asthetics! Allow us to craft asthetics that require certain mats from a specific world boss. Multi colored crystal wings from shatterer. jormag specific skins, and teq specific wings/backs.

As it is right now, Dragon boss fights are not dynamic. We’re no longer enamored by the fact it’s a Giant fraking monster, we need more. There’s no meat to each fight. WOW has continually succeeded with it’s outdated quest system because their fights are dynamic. I mean, how cool would it be to see a large organized zerg with 15 on Catapults, 10 on Arrow Carts, 10 on Trebs and 10 on Balistas, while the rest are defending those users from hordes of monsters. Even an unorganized pug group in WVW knows that they gotta build siege or they’ll lose a keep. PUG groups in PVE don’t think that because they’re more concerned with min/maxing the boss.

Hayashi.3416:

Ohoni.6057:

if you take long to kill him the punishment would be that it takes longer rather than you getting nothing at all

Can we make this happen?

It has happened, it was the normal way of things a while ago. That’s why the timers were enacted – it was a case of “when we kill it” rather than “if we can kill it”. Every world boss was possible for five people (or one really determined solo person) to just res-rush until dead.

I know. I had to do Claw of Jormag that way a couple early mornings.

I find it less desirable to guarantee a reward and take the punishment out of failure.

The problem with Tequatl and the Wurm, for a player like me, is that they are heavily reliant on massive guild organization, which I don’t have a preference on, so I would simply ignore that this kind of content exists. Me, and many others, which can be bad when some bosses are heavily hyped in trailers, like Shatterer was.

“Oh, I can’t wait to play this game and fight this guy!”

“Nevermind, it’s all about guild coordenation, not to my tastes.”

Of course, the current version is not any better.

“Here I am, standing in a spot auto-attacking. Yay, I won. Here’s generic rare loot for me. Savage fodder! When will I be able to farm this guy again?”

I would like to see this battle expanded, but not into the direction that the two newest world bosses went to. I would like to see more mechanics for this boss, some fun stuff like what we’ve had with Marionnette and others, with creative and interesting movement and position tactics, and zerg-spreading content, etc, but done in a way where even the casual player could engage in and – even if said casual player would lose and find the content to be (too) hard at the beginning – with enough dedication they would eventually be able to overcome it – and perhaps even beat the guy in times of the day where the map would have fewer people.

And that’s why I don’t like the new Tequalt or the Wurm. No matter how much you “learn”, how much you improve upon, you either have the entire map coordenated, or you lose. It’s an interesting challenge to guilds, certainly. It is NOT, however, an interesting challenge to me, as an individual player.

Oh, and unique rewards! You can’t make one thousand marketing trailers hyping this big guy, and then have new players come in and not get a single unique reward out of him. This game is a RPG, and one of the strenghts and main appeals of the RPG genre is (among others) rewards and sense of progression. Especially for content that is (wants to be) challenging in nature and must be overcomed. (“Challenging” does not means ultra-hard content).

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Do you guys think that there’s a middle ground between ultra hard and easy?

For example, I think we could clean up some of the issues with the Shatterer and just make it a more engaging experience. So rather than spending the entire fight hiding under his right paw he could, say, turn his head and attack that area? :] It doesn’t have to be hard, just a little more involved.

We tried to put in a few changes here and there when we added the new world boss timers. Reactions varied.

People will always react in different ways anytime you change anything. That is just human nature – and it is multiplied expontentially in the toxic environment of the modern Internet. Most times, the best course of action is to go with your instincts.

Please dont ever stop trying to make the world bosses more engaging and interesting.

I think trying to find a middle ground between the heavy organization of something like evolved worm and the faceroll easy of the current shatterer is the right way to approach it.

the punishment for taking a long time to defeat a world boss for a reward would be missing out on the OTHER world bosses

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Do you guys think that there’s a middle ground between ultra hard and easy?

For example, I think we could clean up some of the issues with the Shatterer and just make it a more engaging experience. So rather than spending the entire fight hiding under his right paw he could, say, turn his head and attack that area? :] It doesn’t have to be hard, just a little more involved.

We tried to put in a few changes here and there when we added the new world boss timers. Reactions varied.

I think that destroying the metal scrap that everybody stands on during the fight. Have it hover out of range when the mobs come in. Have the people spread out to fight the mobs. If they are allowed to combine they buff each other and heal the Shatterer along with the crystals. Now you will not just be standing there spanning skills you will have to split forces to contain mobs, prevent healing and still damage him. What do other people think.

Revamping shatterer to teq 2.0 would be amazing. I love how everytime I face tequatl it’s a gamble. I mean there is very real chance to lose and that’s amazing.

If anything the only problem is that after a lose streak, when you finally beat it the reward doesn’t pays off.

It’s not about getting a precursor or named exotic, every time you beat him. Chest means that you are basically gambling(teq fight) for a chance to gamble(chest)?. At least tokens in dungeons or fractals feel like you are working into something little by little.

Balgus.3468:

As it is right now, Dragon boss fights are not dynamic. We’re no longer enamored by the fact it’s a Giant fraking monster, we need more. There’s no meat to each fight. WOW has continually succeeded with it’s outdated quest system because their fights are dynamic. I mean, how cool would it be to see a large organized zerg with 15 on Catapults, 10 on Arrow Carts, 10 on Trebs and 10 on Balistas, while the rest are defending those users from hordes of monsters. Even an unorganized pug group in WVW knows that they gotta build siege or they’ll lose a keep. PUG groups in PVE don’t think that because they’re more concerned with min/maxing the boss.

We really need a world boss like this, maybe instead of taking the fight to the boss the boss attacks some big camp/city and we have to use the camp/citys equipment to defend it until we can kill the boss or all npcs there dies and the city will be filled with mobs.

Anet, now you know what to do with one of Mordremoths champions so get to it.

Please make so that if there’s more then 20 people standing at his side under his paw he just one shots them all and spawns equal number of humanoid/charr branded creatures.

CyClotroniC.4957:

Nick.6972:

Add appropriate rewards first to Tequatl, then buff the other bosses. If I have to endure huge zerging, lag spikes, low FPS and DCs I don’t want to be rewarded with few greens and occasional gold.

I think Tequatl has pretty good rewards. You get 1g guaranteed for 10-15 mins of actual gameplay (not counting AFKing), and normal world bosses require the same amount of time from your side. You get pretty much karma, usually 2-4 rare items, maybe an exotic on every second week and still have a chance for ascended chest. When I do Tequatl, there is always a guy on the map who gets a pink container, so theoreticaly you can be the lucky one one day.

Yes, I would be happy for more loots too, who wouldn’t be, but let’s be fair, Tequatl is already in another league concernin the rewards than other world bosses (Karka Queen included).

Option A – Run AC p1 in less than 15 mins to get ~2 Gold at any time I want.
Option B – Dedicate specific time of my day to organize server to do Tequattl, get people in TS, explain newcomers mechanics and wait for about an hour in advance – all that for ~1 Gold.

And then you get randomly DCed for whatever reason and you can no longer get in.
No thanks.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Do you guys think that there’s a middle ground between ultra hard and easy?

For example, I think we could clean up some of the issues with the Shatterer and just make it a more engaging experience. So rather than spending the entire fight hiding under his right paw he could, say, turn his head and attack that area? :] It doesn’t have to be hard, just a little more involved.

We tried to put in a few changes here and there when we added the new world boss timers. Reactions varied.

Anything beyond cheesy 1 hit down mechanics and I am all for it.

Seriously, how hard is it to repeatedly use cheesy mechanics over and over and over? How many times does Claw of Jormag need to spam fear? Really……

Kalarchis.8635:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Do you guys think that there’s a middle ground between ultra hard and easy?

For example, I think we could clean up some of the issues with the Shatterer and just make it a more engaging experience. So rather than spending the entire fight hiding under his right paw he could, say, turn his head and attack that area? :] It doesn’t have to be hard, just a little more involved.

Absolutely. The change to Golem Mark II is a good example of ways to do this. There should be no safe zones where the player can just plant and spam 1. Players should always be moving and engaged with the fight.

Agreed, Golem Mark II is my favo fight because you can die really quick if you aren’t paying attention when you melee.

I personally don’t like the phases where you gotta destroy the crystals, because 75% of the ppl just stay on their spot anyway. How about you get a debuff and if you don’t meet a condition within 20seconds you turn into a crystal and die?

Beldin.5498:

waiting for spdaman.4758:

Tequatl’s only a ghost town if you arrive five minutes before the show. Show up around 40 minutes to an hour before and you’ll land in a map that’s organizing.

There are a lot of people that simply don’t want to camp mobs forever. Had that
long enough in Everquest 2 .. no thanks to Waitwars 2.

So I guess you don’t know what we do while waiting for spawn? We farm champs just so you know and our time is not really wasted…..

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Do you guys think that there’s a middle ground between ultra hard and easy?

For example, I think we could clean up some of the issues with the Shatterer and just make it a more engaging experience. So rather than spending the entire fight hiding under his right paw he could, say, turn his head and attack that area? :] It doesn’t have to be hard, just a little more involved.

We tried to put in a few changes here and there when we added the new world boss timers. Reactions varied.

There is definitely a middle ground. Throwing down an AOE to break up the zerg stack or force it to move around would be great, and introducing an active mechanic for players to engage with would help a lot. I would suggest a defensive mechanic to overcome rather than an offensive one to avoid. If you look at events like Claw of Jormag, the constant knockback/fear spam that takes control away from players and forces them to watch their toon get flung all over creation just makes them frustrated. Something like Teq’s scales is a great mechanic, though perhaps a lesser form would keep the difficulty lower.

For those who are saying that Teq is a boring, run-of-the-mill encounter, try to remember that at least two mass guild consortia were established in the wake of that revamp; that suggests it is not actually easy unless you do the one, specific, identified method of running the encounter. Deviation from the norm means complete and total failure for everyone involved. Right now, 100 familiar players will show up to Teq and carry the 20 people who don’t know the fight. I, and everyone I regularly play with, don’t want another event like that.

Nick.6972:

Option B – Dedicate specific time of my day to organize server to do Tequattl, get people in TS, explain newcomers mechanics and wait for about an hour in advance – all that for ~1 Gold.

And then you get randomly DCed for whatever reason and you can no longer get in.
No thanks.

Maybe we had different experiences, but when I do it (EU server @ day change), there isn’t any organization going on, we just have 4 people badged up, everyone finds their spot and we just do it. We almost always have the DPS to chain the battery defenses from 75% on, and most of the time have 9 mins remaining on the clock when the reward chest spawns. The only downside is, that you do have to AFK 20-40 mins to get into a good zone with dedicated players, I will admit that, but other than that, the only organization in map chat is giving info about bonfires and banners to each other (mostly everyone is AFKing until spawn time).

I’m not arguing that it’s better than dungeons, I’m just saying that you can do a dungeon path and Teq once a day, so they are really not competing with each other and the only two world bosses I make sure to visit each day is the Karka Queen and Tequatl.

DiogoSilva.7089:

The problem with Tequatl and the Wurm, for a player like me, is that they are heavily reliant on massive guild organization, which I don’t have a preference on, so I would simply ignore that this kind of content exists. Me, and many others, which can be bad when some bosses are heavily hyped in trailers, like Shatterer was.

“Oh, I can’t wait to play this game and fight this guy!”

“Nevermind, it’s all about guild coordenation, not to my tastes.”

Of course, the current version is not any better.

“Here I am, standing in a spot auto-attacking. Yay, I won. Here’s generic rare loot for me. Savage fodder! When will I be able to farm this guy again?”

I would like to see this battle expanded, but not into the direction that the two newest world bosses went to. I would like to see more mechanics for this boss, some fun stuff like what we’ve had with Marionnette and others, with creative and interesting movement and position tactics, and zerg-spreading content, etc, but done in a way where even the casual player could engage in and – even if said casual player would lose and find the content to be (too) hard at the beginning – with enough dedication they would eventually be able to overcome it – and perhaps even beat the guy in times of the day where the map would have fewer people.

And that’s why I don’t like the new Tequalt or the Wurm. No matter how much you “learn”, how much you improve upon, you either have the entire map coordenated, or you lose. It’s an interesting challenge to guilds, certainly. It is NOT, however, an interesting challenge to me, as an individual player.

Oh, and unique rewards! You can’t make one thousand marketing trailers hyping this big guy, and then have new players come in and not get a single unique reward out of him. This game is a RPG, and one of the strenghts and main appeals of the RPG genre is (among others) rewards and sense of progression. Especially for content that is (wants to be) challenging in nature and must be overcomed. (“Challenging” does not means ultra-hard content).

The problem with your comment is that you seem self-entitled. First off all, teq is puggable nowadays for the most part. The wurm is not, and thats fine. Anet didnt intend for it to be. Let the hardcore community have pieces of content in this game. If Anet goes forth with megabosses, then you will see only more guild coordination is required. There is lots to do in this game, especially in PVE, that doesn’t require you to coordinate at all, so maybe thats more for you.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Do you guys think that there’s a middle ground between ultra hard and easy?

For example, I think we could clean up some of the issues with the Shatterer and just make it a more engaging experience. So rather than spending the entire fight hiding under his right paw he could, say, turn his head and attack that area? :] It doesn’t have to be hard, just a little more involved.

We tried to put in a few changes here and there when we added the new world boss timers. Reactions varied.

Honestly? The dust champ in dry top is much harder to kill than shatter. Increase attack make it zerg proof that we have to constantly move like new bosses/veterans you’ve added in dry top.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Do you guys think that there’s a middle ground between ultra hard and easy?

For example, I think we could clean up some of the issues with the Shatterer and just make it a more engaging experience. So rather than spending the entire fight hiding under his right paw he could, say, turn his head and attack that area? :] It doesn’t have to be hard, just a little more involved.

We tried to put in a few changes here and there when we added the new world boss timers. Reactions varied.

Difficulty isn’t even the problem.

No matter how difficult or easy you make an encounter, if the plays exactly the same each time, people will figure out the easiest method, write a guide, everyone will follow it, and it will no longer be difficult. It may require more people, higher stats, better organization, but once someone figures out the rote of the mechanics it still will not be difficult.

Tequatl requires twice the mechanical rote of any other dragon and significantly more people, yet if you have enough people that will follow the standard guide for killing it, it is no more difficult than any of the other dragons. The wurm requires more than twice the mechanical rote of Tequatl, but if you have enough people willing to follow the standard guide for killing it, you will take it down just as easily as tequatl.

There is no point in touching difficulty until the lack of variation is addressed.

I feel like if you’re going to tweak, the emphasis should be on “engaging.” And not just in the, “You better move from this spot because he’s going to wipe the whole zerg in one swipe” kind of engaging.

Here’s the kind of thing I’m imagining. Maybe it’ll spark some ideas:

Thought #1: Temporary platforms spawn at certain parts of the fights (4-5 of them, not unlike a jump puzzle) that lead you up to a temporary buff (something like.. 50% increased damage against Shatterer for 5-10 seconds).

Thought #2: The Shatterer flies up into the air, spewing purple death crystals at random. After a few seconds, a spawned crystal blows up (like the Ele skill) and then it drops shards on the ground that players can pick up. They then take the shards and run them over to a cannon, to charge it up. Once the cannon has enough power (something like 10-20 shards worth) it automatically fires at Shatterer and knocks him to the ground.

In essence, mechanics that encourage people to pay attention, but aren’t super unforgiving if they’re a bit slow on reaction time – at least, not super unforgiving to the whole zerg.

Good luck!

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Do you guys think that there’s a middle ground between ultra hard and easy?
We tried to put in a few changes here and there when we added the new world boss timers. Reactions varied.

Answer – completely redesign the Shatterer Battle
Change it into a Multi-Phase Battle:

Phases 1 and 2

1) Dragon Shard Phase
The Shatterer will start in this phase.
While in this form, he will transform players into damaging crystal coffins that will kill players, if other players won’t rescue them quickly. His Roars will create everywhere on a large range at random spots Chaos Storms with various sizes and patterns of how they deal and affect players. Some of them turn into Black Holes, that suck in players and move them to a random spot away.
Attacking the Dragon in this form will lead to the point, that he will “shatter” more and more and so more he will get attacked, so more spawns of his corrupted shatters will turn into Adds of various forms, sizes and shapes to attack nearby players.
The Scaling of these Creatures will get improved and the AI changed with improved monster skills to stop the zerg from lamely spamming the Shatterer just to death.

2) Twin Shatter Phase
The Shatterer will split up itself and become 2 little Chaos Wyverns, where each one will receive from now on only damage from specific damage sources. 1 Chaos Wyvern will stay at the place, where the original Shatterer was, which will receive damage only from the Cannons, Mortars and ranged attacks.

The other Chaos Wyvern will fly chaotically around the place, trying to destroy all the Mortars and Cannons, which can be damaged only, when its on the ground by melee attacks, so players will have to find ways to force the second Chaos Wyvern down to crush onto the ground. It’s immune to normal ranged attacks from players, conditions and CC effects. The only way to stop it from flying is to use a new siege weapon in this combat – the Spear of Archemorus. A mighty siege weapon from the humans, a new prototype under the help of the unified pact technology, which is in this combat the only weapon, that can bind the flying Chaos Wyvern onto the ground.
However, the Spear needs a long preparation, so in the meantime those players have to defend the Mortars and Cannons so that the other side can progress on defeating the othe Wyvern

@felessan let’s be real, anything good deserves good organization. Instead of trying to find a mistical middle ground. Anet should give better tools for people to get organized.

Phases 3, 4 and the final 5th Phase

3) Branded Phantom Snake Phase
The Shatterer will will change his form into a more branded like illusionary Phantom Snake Dragon that is smaller that his normal form, but very agile and fast, creation a path of branded corruption where ever it moves around like a trail.
It will move underground like a wurm just to pop up seconds later at a random spot again to dash at a targeted player very fast to try to eat that player, what will be an instant kill if that phantom snake will fly through your body and eats your soul.
(Inspiration, are here those phantom creatures from the Final Fantasy Movie The Spirits Within), what iwll be litterally just a bit more relaxing phase, but requiring alot of concentration and position play to not get eaten by its Soul Rush.
In this phase, physical attacks are just useless, only conditions will deal damage.
Players will find some helpful environmental weapons around in this phase, that let them deal condition damage. So grab these, if you are running a melee/ranged power build

4) Crystal Dust Phase
The Shatterer returns into his original form and lets rain down many Crystal Towers, which will cause periodically lightning AoE damage, that cause high vulnerability, stuns, weakness and confusions. Players will have to destroy them quickly all, because so more of those Crstal Towers are there, so bigger becomes the AoE damage until theres no space left where you don’t get damage somehow, plus the Shatterer gains more boons and health regeneration so more of these Towers are they.
Every destroyed Crystal Tower will spawn some new strong CC using Crystal Minions that are trying to hold off players from effectively destroying the towers quickly and by sacrificing themself, thy might heal up also damaged Crystal Towers.
Every now and then the Shatter will use a new breath Attack, the Crystal Dust, which will crystalizes alot more dangerously players, if they aren’t cautious, than his normal crystalize attack, that mostly affects only a small sum of players. Crystal Dust can hit alot more players at the same time, what will naturally hurt the DPS of the players for a while

5) Furious Chaos Form Phase
The Shatterer has reached under 20% Health, it will change for the rest of the battle into his real form, which will be accompanied by the environment changing drastically its looks, so that also players from far away could see, that the battle is in its final phase. In this final Form, the Shatterer will make usage of a complete mixture of all his previous battle tactics in a changed pattern and design.
He will randomly spawn adds, that are mini versions of his snake dragon phantom form which are creatures that will kill players withtheir Soul Rushes and are like previously only damage through conditions.
His Breath Attack is now a mixture of Crystal Dust together with creating randomly Chaos Storms and Black Holes.
At 10% he will split itself one last time into two Twin Chaos Wyverns, which then need to be killed together at the same time with the help of the Spear of Archemorus by having to lure both at a spot, where the Spear of Archemorus will hith both Twin Chaos Wyverns at the same time to kill them with 1 shot.

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

Sorry can’t fight..
Created an overflow, filled it up and Dc-ed when Teq spawned.

Will try again when the worldbosses are able to be activated trough guildchallenge in a private overflow.

Cheers!

This! My guild kills Teq nightly. We used to get in the map an hour early so everyone could get in till all the PUGs picked up on it and eventually I’d get home from work log in and the map was hard capped already. We moved to a new set up spot and still can’t get in the map most of the time.

I like these hard boss fights but something has to be done about coordinated groups getting into maps together. PUG’s work occasionally but by and large they just want to zerg rush and end up failing the events.

I’ve gotten to the point I don’t even try to get in the wurm event anymore and Teq only sometimes which I try once and then bail when I end up in an overflow without my guildies.

I’d love to see the Shatterer made into a real event but with the current system it would mean I’d be sitting in an overflow most of the time which means I’d quit doing the event like I have the wurm event and soon teq as well if it doesn’t get any better.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Do you guys think that there’s a middle ground between ultra hard and easy?

For example, I think we could clean up some of the issues with the Shatterer and just make it a more engaging experience. So rather than spending the entire fight hiding under his right paw he could, say, turn his head and attack that area? :] It doesn’t have to be hard, just a little more involved.

We tried to put in a few changes here and there when we added the new world boss timers. Reactions varied.

Something around the difficulty of the Inquest Golem Mk II would be good. It’s difficult in that you have to be paying attention and active or you could easily die (much like Tequatl) but unlike Tequatl you aren’t hamstrung to the limited number of turrets. I do like mixing in events like defending the batteries in Tequatl and the crystals with Shatterer as well. I think one thing everyone hates though is control spam. Claw of Jormag is probably the least fun boss to fight because you spend about as much time in the first phase in control of your character as you do not in control. It’s really annoying and should be looked at.

CyClotroniC.4957:

Maybe we had different experiences, but when I do it (EU server @ day change), there isn’t any organization going on, we just have 4 people badged up, everyone finds their spot and we just do it.

And that right there is the issue at hand. People already know the fight so it requires less communication beforehand, but you are still organized into your specific tasks (zerg, turret, north boat/hills, south boat/hills, ERT?) Try doing it without those “spots” and you’ll see what it means to be unorganized.

The best middle ground for world bosses would be mechanics that may require cooperation but not as much organization as in Tequatl or Triple Headed Wurm.

Some interesting mechanics that may enhance The Shatterer but not force organization like on Teq/Wurm:

• You could make The Shatterer’s breath weapon spew a crystal powder AoE as an aftermath result for 5 seconds which could work similar to the electric field AoE Golem Mk 2 uses (and of course as deadly!).
• You could ocassionally let The Shatterer harden it’s scales which requires crystal shards to be picked up (perhaps from the healing pillars!) and thrown at him (like on Karka Queen) to continue damaging him. If there are insufficient shards or none at all, the mortars have to break his scales.
• Let The Shatterer turn around and spew it’s breath to the direction where most players are standing, forcing the blob to disperse and move around him over time or get wiped by the breath and/or the crystal powder field.
• Make The Shatterer’s bombard attack more deadly. Let it spawn exploding mobs which could not only put you near death if they explode, but also deal vulnerability for 5 seconds so that you have to put them out from range.
• Occassionally, mobs that were spawned by bombardment could wander to the mortars in order to damage/destroy them. Without the mortars you can’t prevent The Shatterer from hardening it’s scales. They are of course reparable.
• [OPTIONAL – Remove that idea if it is too much “organized”] Mortar ammunition could have to be brought by players to the mortars. Without someone carrying and placing the ammo, the mortars can’t be fired. This way players can either take turns to fire or if the mortars are safe carry ammo to them.

These mechanics would make The Shatterer a Tequatl Lite and require only 2 groups to be built: Those who defend and use the mortars and those who attack The Shatterer directly.