Guild Wars 2

Tarnsman.8092:

PUG’s work occasionally but by and large they just want to zerg rush and end up failing the events.

I have failed all of one PUG Tequatl in the last month. I had gotten DC’d and ended up in an underpopulated “last minute” shard that simply didn’t have enough dps to do it. Every other time I’ve done it (even showing up as late as 10 minutes to go) has been a success with only one time I can think of beating Tequatl with less than 5 minutes to go. Nowadays he isn’t hard, it’s just about getting onto a server shard with enough people committed to doing the event.

The reason I don’t do either the Wurm or Tequatl fight is the same reason I didn’t PUG raid after a while in LOTRO: Waiting time. I don’t want to sit in a map for longer time than it takes to complete said content. That’s a design flaw.

felessan.9587:

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.

THat’s not “organized”. That’s like Taida is “organized” because everyone already knows to take the explosive barrels to the gate to start the event.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

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.

I on the other hand liked the “epicness” of taking down a world boss on your own or with just very few others. I don’t like the zerg-rush + checklist mentality of the new system at all.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Thread explosion! Thanks for all the (rapid) responses. There seems to be a fairly consistent feeling that yes, these fights can be more engaging without becoming as difficult as the jungle wurm.

I like some of the ideas being presented, feel free to keep the discussion going. It’s also helpful to hear not only what’s working but why it’s working for you.

On the topic of using siege weapons as a role mechanic in these fights, is that something we want to see more of? I often worry that siege weapons can be just as boring as standing in the safe corner pressing the same attack. Do you feel that they can also cause some contention between players?

Building enough siege weapon could be epic and would be more logical. I don’t think that arrows fired at a crystal dragon would scare the dragon.
Ofcourse, the fight has to be engaging, but the implementation of huge siege batteries would be an awesome thing imo.

The dragon boss fights would be more engaging if they had some mobility during the encounter. For the most part they just stand in the same place during combat, I find this becomes very predictable and boring. If any of these bosses moved around during the fight it would be more interesting and not succumb to the repetitious paint by numbers strategy currently employed by the community. I wonder what would happen if the Tequatl encounter was changed suddenly so he went rampaging thru the zerg, into the turrets and directly at the megalaser within the first minute of the fight. The reaction would be priceless….

Let’s keep two things in mind for these dragons.
1. Shatterer is a lower level boss than the other two dragons, I don’t think his difficulty should be as high as Teq. He definitely should be harder than standing on the rock to his right and afk attacking him.
2. If you are going to make something harder make sure you reward it properly, I personally won’t spend an hour prepping for a fight so I can get a couple greens and a rare. I can just as well spend that hour at 5 other world bosses and get like 8-10 rares.

I don’t agree with Teq being as hard as he is currently either, without it being in a closed and organized environment like normal raids would be. Too many variables to mess up the fight and it’s the reason why TTS has to spend an hour before trying to organize the fight, including hopping maps to make sure all their people in TS are in the instance.

Now the difference for me between these gw2 open world bosses as opposed to the closed raid bosses of a game like wow is, in wow if I or a guild mate gets something off the raids I or the guild would be happy, in gw2 if someone I don’t know gets rewarded for my contribution over and over again I’m not going to be happy nor care to continue doing that encounter in the long run. (yes I know loot tables are tied to everyone)

To this day I don’t think I’ve run into anyone with a Teq weapon.

P.S how many have figured out to use the shield on the charzookas to avoid the fear from Coj? Next to none as I saw on my last encounter with him.

Good lord, please don’t kill more content. Increasing the difficulty is fine, but if it gets dragged up to Tequatl levels, you’ve just told 80% of the playerbase to go kitten themselves, because this is more content that’s just not doable for someone who can’t dedicate 40 minutes to simply preparing for the fight.

That’s not cool.

What would be awesome would be if Shatterer actually had a full 360 AoE attack – Tailswipe or some such – that cleared out all the people standing under its paw or on the hill.

Make it more engaging and risky – sure. Make it Tequatl? Please, NO.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Thread explosion! Thanks for all the (rapid) responses. There seems to be a fairly consistent feeling that yes, these fights can be more engaging without becoming as difficult as the jungle wurm.

I like some of the ideas being presented, feel free to keep the discussion going. It’s also helpful to hear not only what’s working but why it’s working for you.

On the topic of using siege weapons as a role mechanic in these fights, is that something we want to see more of? I often worry that siege weapons can be just as boring as standing in the safe corner pressing the same attack. Do you feel that they can also cause some contention between players?

Nah, Siege Weapons being key for Tequatl only brings bashing in chat, I like that they make the fight easier for the zerg though (skill 3 through 5), but the “OMG USE SKILL 2” spam in chat is not pleasant. Although, that’s partly because people don’t understand you need to defend the turrets. They blame turrets only.

Going back to my idea, I think teaching people to split up would be the first step, then introducing other things at Teq, and at Jormag I don’t know what you could implement, but fear spam and ignoring most enemies in the first phase isn’t that impressive..

The thing is if you make Shatterer to be a starter Dragon, you will have to improve Claw of Jormag somehow to make it more impressive than Tequatl.

I think something as simple as having a decent size mob spawn of veterans, elites, and champions attacking the players while the event is going on. In my mind you wouldn’t see a “leader” of sorts showing up without his army. The battle of claw island comes to mind.

Have new ways for mobs to attack like poison catapults, things that could do area damage to large numbers in a zerg, Maybe a event within an event like have a battle wagon full of bombs trying to head lets say to that right foot and if it gets there it kills everyone within a specified blast radius.

This way you would have to split off and take down different aspects so that you could keep killing the “boss” just a thought.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

On the topic of using siege weapons as a role mechanic in these fights, is that something we want to see more of? I often worry that siege weapons can be just as boring as standing in the safe corner pressing the same attack. Do you feel that they can also cause some contention between players?

My instinct is that player-controlled siege weapons are kind of an iffy choice. Reason being that you end up with the scenario where people “troll” by controlling a weapon and doing nothing, or people just refuse to man them because they don’t enjoy that kind of mechanic.

Personally, I am of the latter group; I prefer to control my own toons and their abilities, than try to work out the controls of a siege weapon in mid battle.

But automated weapons get around this, I think (at least in the imagined scenarios in my head). If you keep the player activity to things like charging them (not unlike the “gather” events out in the open world) then it becomes a matter where you only need a small portion of the people to participate, which means: 1) no trolling and 2) people who want to opt out of the mechanic can do so shamelessly.

Hope that helps.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Thread explosion! Thanks for all the (rapid) responses. There seems to be a fairly consistent feeling that yes, these fights can be more engaging without becoming as difficult as the jungle wurm.

I like some of the ideas being presented, feel free to keep the discussion going. It’s also helpful to hear not only what’s working but why it’s working for you.

On the topic of using siege weapons as a role mechanic in these fights, is that something we want to see more of? I often worry that siege weapons can be just as boring as standing in the safe corner pressing the same attack. Do you feel that they can also cause some contention between players?

Siege would be cool but watch out for two things.

1. Dont make siege overwhelm the combat system you have in place. Make a characters class and skills feel/do something for the fight.

2. Don’t fall into the turret problem with tequatl. An entire event could potentially fail because 6 people did something wrong. Should make siege have some sort of emphasis on this fight, but in a balanced way.

SkylightMoon.1980:

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.

Hi, SkylightMoon.

I acknowledge that my post fits specifically my tastes, and that not everyone would agree with me. As I’ve said there, I think that content like the Wurm is fine, but because it doesn’t appeals to everyone, there should exist different kinds of world bosses for different tastes. I believe that’s a perfectly fair request. :P

There’s a lot of PvE content that is not challenging. I would like to see more challenging content, especially for some epic encounters, that can be acchievable by other means other than mass guild organization. Something more (or equally) demanding of personal skill, for example, but that is less punishing to pugs and random Tyrian travelers.

New Achievements based on my Shatterer Redesign including the Existing Boss achievement for the Boss Achievement Tab together with Rewards:

The Shatterer – 50AP
Complete 10 Shatterer Achievements – Title – The Chaos Breaker

Shattered – 10AP
Break 5 Players out of the Crystal Coffin while Phase 1 of the Shatterer is active

I love Chaos – 1 AP/9AP
Stand longer than 1/10 Minutes in total in the Chaos Storms of the Shatterer without getting downed.

Phantom Bane – 10 AP
Survive the Phantom Snake Form Phase of the Shatterer without dieing to one of its Soul Rush Attacks
Crystal Slayer – 5/5/5/5/5 AP
Kill more than 100,250,500,750,1000 Branded Shard/Crystal Mininos of the Shatterer while the Event is active

Catch me If You Can – 15 AP
Defeat the Shatterer without getting ever once crystalized by the Shatterer’s Crystalizer or Crystal Dust Attack

Chaos Binder – 5 AP
Fire off the Spear of Archemorus to finish the Battle either or to bind the Chaos Wyvern to the ground with it.

Fourth Dimension – 5 AP
Get sucked into a Black Hole grab a Treasure Chest, while you are falling and survive the fall by collecting also enough Chaos Energy to let another Black Hole appear before you crash into the ground and die.

Shocking Good Jumper – 10AP
Avoid 10x Damage from the Crystal Towers through Jumping over the Shock Waves form their Lightning Area of Effect Attacks

Slaughter in the Dragon Brand – 15AP
Defeat the Shatterer

Shining Resonance – 5AP
Let the Shatterer reach in his Crystal Dust Phase the maximum amount of Buff Stacks he can get. He will use then his his special Breath Attack – Shining Resonance
Dodge this Attack and get this Achievement.

having done and succeeded/failed tequatl and three headed enough times to earn proper drops I can say YES! up the stakes for Shaterrer, awesome looking boss but the fact that he just stands there for us to beat the smoke out of him makes it unappealing. harder yes but not teq level and certainly not three headed wurm level…

but also please when the challenge goes up please up the rewards aswell.

the siege weapons could add the megalaser/batteries dynamic to shatterer.

make the pre-event mean something aswell. have participation in the pre-event mean something, a bonus reward of karma, empyral fragments around 50 odd (as for me atleast they do not drop enough) and assorted rares and a possibility of exotics.

keep the fight balanced, fun and challenging without ruining the experience for newer folks.

as for anything, make it so the players can atleast still do the boss sans over use of siege or something like that. siege makes it easier but not the alpha/omega of the fight like the laser/batteries at teq.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Thread explosion! Thanks for all the (rapid) responses. There seems to be a fairly consistent feeling that yes, these fights can be more engaging without becoming as difficult as the jungle wurm.

I like some of the ideas being presented, feel free to keep the discussion going. It’s also helpful to hear not only what’s working but why it’s working for you.

On the topic of using siege weapons as a role mechanic in these fights, is that something we want to see more of? I often worry that siege weapons can be just as boring as standing in the safe corner pressing the same attack. Do you feel that they can also cause some contention between players?

Yeah the Shatterer issue is one issue you will generally get a consensus on from the community. It has been discussed hundreds of times and overwhelmingly the ask has been for “more than button bashing the foot”.

It doesn’t have to be Teq style – altho I’m of the mind dragons themselves should always be challenging. Golem is an example of a fun fight which isn’t really hard (but punishing if you don’t pay attention). Jormag is probably closer to what you should be aiming for – a longish fight, with punishing mechanics, where realistically it wont fail.

Right now, Shatterer might as well be a brick wall for all the fight it gives back. Which is a shame, because it is a visually stunning boss. Probably the best of the three

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Thread explosion! Thanks for all the (rapid) responses. There seems to be a fairly consistent feeling that yes, these fights can be more engaging without becoming as difficult as the jungle wurm.

I like some of the ideas being presented, feel free to keep the discussion going. It’s also helpful to hear not only what’s working but why it’s working for you.

On the topic of using siege weapons as a role mechanic in these fights, is that something we want to see more of? I often worry that siege weapons can be just as boring as standing in the safe corner pressing the same attack. Do you feel that they can also cause some contention between players?

I think there is a good compromise on that as well – environmental weapons. Instead of requiring the use of stationary guns, give us a barrel of weapons we can move around with that have a positive impact on the fight (but arent the sole mechanic).

For example, on the shatterer, place a barrel of “grappling guns” near the boss. When it is about to fly up for its immunity phase, if enough players (depending on scale) chain it down, it doesnt fly up and takes extra damage. To compensate, cause it to encase every player in a 1500 radius in crystal prisons if it is allowed to fly up.

Just an example.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Telemin.7380:

As much as I want harder content, I do not want it at the expense of other content. If I had a say, id say for a new hard boss and leave this one as is.

This. We do not want Shatterer to become a ghost town like what happened with Tequatl.

Tequatl isn’t a ghost town. I kill him every night at reset.

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’m pretty late to Tequatl’s party, because I started doing it just about two weeks ago, but every time I can get into an organized world, so as of right now, it’s really easier than harder. Can’t comment on Triple Wurm, as I’ve never done it.

About The Shatterer:
I’d like to see more artillery in this battle, but not just mortars. Trebuchets, cannons, arrow carts.

I often worry that siege weapons can be just as boring as standing in the safe corner pressing the same attack.

It’s all a matter of implementation, I think.

Now, I don’t play WvW, so I’m not sure about the attack ranges of certain siege weapons, but here’s how they could be placed:
Depending on whether or not the Vigil would like to place their artillery on the Branded area, we could get some trebutchets on The Northern Wall or on the sides.
My WvW experience was very minimal, but it was long enough to know how awesome those trebuchets look when they fire. Anyway, those should be very important in terms of damage dealt to The Shatterer.

Cannons and arrow carts could serve as a defence for trebuchets, so not that many players have to be around them.

Ballistas could be used for destroying some kind of unique monsters than can be only damaged by ballistas’ projectiles, because, I don’t know, only those can penetrate their Heroic Armor +5 or something. These monsters would have to be destroyed before they reach the target (what target, I don’t know). Many mobs could be around those special monsters, so 5 or 10 player squads would be needed here.

Catapults, don’t know, maybe they could serve as a damage bonus to The Shatterer by shooting some kind of a special projectile that makes The Shatterer more vulnerable for a few seconds.

Siege Golems could be the main melee force against The Shatterer. This make more sense than a hundred players sitting next to the dragon’s leg. The cool thing about The Shatterer’s visuals is that he shoots lightning everywhere, but I don’t think it currently does any damage. Well in this case it would, and only the siege golems would be resistant to it.

There could be some events involving preparing all those weapons, of course.

Please don’t jump on me, these are just ten minutes thoughts.

I’d like to see you, Anthony, making a new thread for The Shatterer redesign, in which you clearly state how much work ArenaNet is able to put into it, so people can adjust their ideas and make them possible to create.

One final thing: please don’t force yourself into putting a Living Story context into redesigning the fight. You want to make your game better, that’s the only reason you need.

Blaeys.3102:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Thread explosion! Thanks for all the (rapid) responses. There seems to be a fairly consistent feeling that yes, these fights can be more engaging without becoming as difficult as the jungle wurm.

I like some of the ideas being presented, feel free to keep the discussion going. It’s also helpful to hear not only what’s working but why it’s working for you.

On the topic of using siege weapons as a role mechanic in these fights, is that something we want to see more of? I often worry that siege weapons can be just as boring as standing in the safe corner pressing the same attack. Do you feel that they can also cause some contention between players?

I think there is a good compromise on that as well – environmental weapons. Instead of requiring the use of stationary guns, give us a barrel of weapons we can move around with that have a positive impact on the fight (but arent the sole mechanic).

For example, on the shatterer, place a barrel of “grappling guns” near the boss. When it is about to fly up for its immunity phase, if enough players (depending on scale) chain it down, it doesnt fly up and takes extra damage. To compensate, cause it to encase every player in a 1500 radius in crystal prisons if it is allowed to fly up.

Just an example.

Or set up traps when it does come down again so it receives extra damage (damage amplified the more the traps are spread out). The biggest issue with any of the “easy” boss fights is the safe-zone auto attack where movement should be required.

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’m not surprised that reactions varied. Players don’t speak with one voice. Speaking only for myself, I’d like to see minor changes, maybe into that middle ground. As I’ve said before, I think it’s a mistake to take content away from players who’ve been doing and enjoying it, so I don’t believe that turning Shatt into another Teq is a good idea.

By all means make other ultra hard events from time to time, but do them as new content. Those who want ultra hard content are not representative of everyone. You doubtless have demographic data on how often Teq/Wurms get done versus how many do the other metas.

Just anecdotally, I sometimes run through Gendarren Fields, and see the toxic event in the east near the cave that leads through the hills. There’s almost never anyone doing this in any mega server I’ve been in. This event is harder than any other event in that zone.

Finally, consumption of very hard content in MMO’s is often driven by two factors. One is challenge. Challenge in MMO PvE is susceptible to a practice effect. Challenge falls off over time. Once people beat hard content, the urge to repeat it is less. The other is exclusive reward. Once the challenge has been beaten, and the reward obtained, a portion of the demographic that wanted the challenge will move on, leaving the content under-utilized at best, and abandoned at worst.

Tip for everyone who only killed Tequatl once or so: Show up like 1 hour before he actually spawns before the server (daily) reset,I’m killing him daily with this tactic now.
If you show up when he is about to spawn you will end up on a overflow with a random zerg which isn’t enough to take him down.

Try it,and you will be able to kill him daily.
Yes,I know it is boring to wait 60~ minutes for a boss to spawn,but it is worth it…You can get ascended weapons etc. (Also guaranteed 2gold)

If you have a friend there I think you can ask for a invite (Party > Join friend) before he spawns if the server isn’t full.

@Topic

I think Dragons should run around like normal mobs.
I don’t like how world bosses are just 10% of their bodies,the rest is just useless…
Lets face it,we fight Heads and Claws and not the whole dragon,I think the fight should be more dynamic,I think all dragons should have a walking animation and actually run around the map and not being stationary.

I really like the basic mechanics of the Tequatl fight; it’s probably one of my favorite events in the game. I disagree that it’s an “elitist” fight open only to hardcore guilds all running teamspeak; almost every Teq run I’ve done has been a PuG and I’ve only failed it once. It’s a hard fight but not in the traditional sense of, “only min/maxers with high skill who’ve done this a hundred times could ever hope to finish it”. If everyone pays attention, it will succeed. If too many people don’t pay attention/AFK, it will fail.

The main problem with Teq is that there are too many points at which it CAN fail. Almost everyone can know what they need to do, but if the turret operators don’t use the best skill rotations, you get the dreaded bone wall. Lose a single battery on the defense phase, and you fail. Don’t kill the champ that spawns atop the Megalaser in time, and you fail. Run out of time on the burn phases due to lack of DPS, and you fail. I feel like some of these steps could be scaled back from “auto-fail” to “you can still complete the fight but won’t get as many rewards”. For example, a misstep on one of the defense phases could mean just one less bonus chest at the end, instead of sinking the whole fight. Also, perhaps tweak Teq’s mechanics so that it’s not the end of the world if one or two of the turret operators has a brain fart.

My advice for the Shatterer or other world bosses is to make them challenging but balance them so that smaller groups can hope to run them successfully, and so that there are less points at which the whole fight can go down the drain.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Telemin.7380:

As much as I want harder content, I do not want it at the expense of other content. If I had a say, id say for a new hard boss and leave this one as is.

This. We do not want Shatterer to become a ghost town like what happened with Tequatl.

Ghost town? Huh? So many people want to do Tequatl you have to get into the map 45min early just to get it done…

Draknar.5748:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Telemin.7380:

As much as I want harder content, I do not want it at the expense of other content. If I had a say, id say for a new hard boss and leave this one as is.

This. We do not want Shatterer to become a ghost town like what happened with Tequatl.

Ghost town? Huh? So many people want to do Tequatl you have to get into the map 45min early just to get it done…

I get into an organized Tequatl world 15mins before the start using LFG tool. Lots of people taxi others to fill the available slots.

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 a while ago I made a post ranking the difficultly of all the open world bosses based upon by experience as a leader in TTS.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Open-World-Boss-Difficulty-ranking-discussion/first#post3841062

I’ll quote it:

guardian.6489:

So whenever we have discussions about difficulty for open world bosses, everything either made out to be Tequatl difficult or starter zone boss difficult. Seeing as how I’ve defeated every type of open world raid including the three headed jungle wurm, I decided to tier all the bosses and have a discussion about if the difficultly of everything is in the right place.

I’ve also decided to rank previous living story bosses.

S-Rank
Reserved for the bosses that require the utmost coordination and skill in all participants. These bosses almost always require a hard-capped server and there is next to no room for lower skilled participants in the encounter. This boss has a mindblowning amount of mechanics and strategies. This boss is for the best players in the game
-Triple headed Jungle Wurm

A-Rank
Reserved for bosses that require much more coordination and skill in the majority of participates. However there is room for a number of first time or unskilled participates as long as they follow strategy. They will usually require a hard capped server however it is more then possible to beat it without a full server if participants are skilled enough. These bosses is for vertern players looking for a challenge.
A+
Tequatl The Sunless
A
None
A-
The Marionette (Debatable might be B+)

B Rank
Reserved for Bosses that become difficult to succeed unless the players are fairly knowledgeable of the game’s mechanics. They always have a number of mechanics that must dictate the players actions. These bosses do not always succeed and usually require a large number of participates however zerg rushing them with a full 150 man server can still cause the scaling to crack and may make some encounters trivial. This boss is designed for mid-skilled level groups of players who want a slightly more difficult encounter.

B+
The Temple of Grenth
The Temple of Balthazar
1200 Citizens saved in LA
B
The Three Colored Knights (LS event)
The Karka queen
B-
Scarlet’s Prime Hologram

C-Rank
Reserved for Bosses with some mechanics that disrupt traditional combat but usually aren’t particularly hard to deal with or learn during the boss encounter. They rarely fail unless there is a lack of players participating in the event. They’re usually designed to begin to teach newer players what to expect without punishing them greatly.

C+
Temple of Lyssa
Temple of Dwayna
Temple of Melandru
Risen High Wizard
C
Taidha Covington
Claw of Jormag
Mega-Destroyer
Inquest Golem Mark 2
C-
The Fire elemental

D-Rank

Reserved the Bosses that take next to no strategy or skill. They often can be completed by only a few players and almost never provide a meaningful challenge to the player. They will only fail if they’re completely ignored. These bosses are best for new players… or anyone just wants to mash 1 repeatly and get loot.

-Every other starter zone boss
-The Shatterer

Overall there’s a lot of C and D ranked bosses in the game which usually fall onto the various world boss trains. Usually these trains will avoid B ranked bosses unless they’re confident in their numbers.

There is a massive gap between Tequatl the Sunless and the most difficult B-Ranked boss which was sort of inhabited by the Marionette but now she’s sadly gone which is probably why a lot of player are calling for that boss to return in some form, it was in previously unoccupied difficulty niche.

If Anet creates any more content, I personally think they should focus on aiming for the A and B ranks since they don’t have many raids and Tequatl seems lonely up there. In my personal opinion there really only needs to be one S-ranked raid in the game, especially before the other ranks start filling up.

I’d say pushing Shatterer to a B+ ranked encounter would be best based upon the responses to this thread and that fact that I think it has a difficultly niche that seems to be relatively unfilled.

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.

And see, to me, having to WP, run back, die, and repeat over and over, presumably taking 45+ minutes to complete it would be plenty of punishment for what reward you get, but at least you get something. Better than fighting Teq with a slightly disorganized group, dying and running back several times, only to miss it by thirty seconds or so and not getting the core rewards.

I do think that every time you show up for a boss fight you should be able to complete it for full reward, the only difference is do you complete it in 5-10 minutes like a peak guild, or does it take you 20-30 minutes to complete like a slacker? If you’re really good you can clear the boss and move on to the next thing, while if you kinda suck, you’ll still get your reward for this content, but might miss one or two later things.

The current Claw meta works will like this, it has a thirty minute timer, which is usually plenty of time, but if you can clear it relatively fast, you can manage to log into a late Fire Elemental run, allowing you to do both. If you end up running behind, then you won’t be able to make Fire Elemental, but at least you have a solid chance at the Claw rewards themselves.

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.

Agreed. The mechanics of a boss fight should organize themselves. You shouldn’t need people telling other people where to go, the indicators on the screen should make it clear where not to be, and anywhere that the screen is not telling you to avoid should be a perfectly fine place to be.

On the topic of using siege weapons as a role mechanic in these fights, is that something we want to see more of? I often worry that siege weapons can be just as boring as standing in the safe corner pressing the same attack. Do you feel that they can also cause some contention between players?

I don’t like Siege weapons the way Teq does it, where there are six weapons that have a massive impact on the battle. It’s too much responsibility in too few hands on a 150 player event. I suggested this way back when Teq was first overhauled, but I would prefer to have NPCs on the turrets. Make the player challenge be that they have to keep those turrets repaired and the NPCs alive, but so long as the NPCs are alive they will get the job done. This makes it a more fluid defense mission, in which you have to assign players to defend it, but more or less of them can show up as needed and they all get to play a role, rather than having six players locked into a very vital role.

I also like the rocket launchers for Claw, I think the technique of using channel-cancelling to reduce the cooldown on the heat shields is a great way to keep players engaged, and the rockets allow even melee characters to participate. If they add “more siege” to an encounter, put it in the form of portable hand weapons that everyone can use, rather than in the form of stationary mortars that only a handful of players can use.

Also, others have raised a good point, “prep time.” One of the huge problems with Wurm and Teq is that it’s prety much impossible to just log in five minutes or less before the event and still stand a chance of success. To win you need to log in an hour earlier, soft cap the map with good players, then taxi people in to hard cap it, etc. That’s terrible. When designing these big encounters, design them in such a way that you can log in right before the event and stand a solid chance of having the players needed to finish it, keep that in mind as an essential goal.

Draknar.5748:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Telemin.7380:

As much as I want harder content, I do not want it at the expense of other content. If I had a say, id say for a new hard boss and leave this one as is.

This. We do not want Shatterer to become a ghost town like what happened with Tequatl.

Ghost town? Huh? So many people want to do Tequatl you have to get into the map 45min early just to get it done…

That in itself is a problem.
Why do people have to waste time to play content? And 45mins? Do you really think everyone has so much free time on their hand?

Making the Shatter and Jormag more interesting to fight is a good thing BUT making us racing against time to kill them is bad and when people keep failing at them they would avoid the content all together. The best example of most interesting World Boss would be the Golem with the exclusion of the safe-spot.

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.

That sounds like a good idea. But if you guys do beef him up. How about making the reward worth the effort. Doing bosses for blues and greens is not fun.

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.

this is a change id approve i dont think he has to be as hard as teq and i enjoy doing teq once a day. to the op im hoping if they put in hard content im hoping its new content not a rehash of the old. maybe in the a new area they open up eventually

Shatterer should be an A by that logic if at all, following that list as that category just yet has no boss, that fills up that niche.
Every of the Dragon Champions definetely should be more challenging than the Karka Queen as they are the representives of the most powerful World Bosses in the whole game.

I also think this are way too many categories. ANet has still alot to do with redesigning alot of the World Bosses, not just only the dragon champions.

If we go now so far to differentiate between the difficulty levels of world bosses, to decide over it, how a not well designed world buff should get redesigned to receive a higher difficulty level based on a category scheme, then this schem should exceed the scheme of just simply ony

S = Tripple Jungle Wurm
A= All of the Dragon Champions
B = All of the Temple World Bosses, Karka Queen
C = Taidtha, Golem MK2, Mega Destroyer
D = Fire Elemental, Shaman, Giant Jungle Wurm ect.

There shouldn’t be any more ranks than these 5. Any + and – niches between them make no sense and makes the system only too overcomplicated.
Also temporary LS story content bosses shouldn’t get listed up at all. Only real permanent World Bosses should get compared and listed.

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.

What if after some beating on his right foot, he shattered into 8 facets that are smaller, more mobile version of himself with mechanics similar to each of the 8 classes. Like the facets in The Dragon’s Lair mission in GW1.

It’s probably more complicated to do than just turning his head toward the 1 place everyone stand but it sounds much more like a game mechanic than a bandaid.

Orpheal.8263:

Shatterer should be an A by that logic if at all, following that list as that category just yet has no boss, that fills up that niche.
Every of the Dragon Champions definetely should be more challenging than the Karka Queen as they are the representives of the most powerful World Bosses in the whole game.

I also think this are way too many categories. ANet has still alot to do with redesigning alot of the World Bosses, not just only the dragon champions.

If we go now so far to differentiate between the difficulty levels of world bosses, to decide over it, how a not well designed world buff should get redesigned to receive a higher difficulty level based on a category scheme, then this schem should exceed the scheme of just simply ony

S
A
B
C
D

There shouldn’t be any more ranks than these 5. Any + and – niches between them make no sense and makes the system only too overcomplicated.
Also temporary LS story content bosses shouldn’t get listed up at all. Only real permanent World Bosses should get compared and listed.

It was my own personal list I made a while ago, it wasn’t meant to be anything official. I just thought it communicated my thoughts on difficultly of world bosses well. That’s why there are + and – categories because I was directly comparing every boss.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Thread explosion! Thanks for all the (rapid) responses. There seems to be a fairly consistent feeling that yes, these fights can be more engaging without becoming as difficult as the jungle wurm.

I like some of the ideas being presented, feel free to keep the discussion going. It’s also helpful to hear not only what’s working but why it’s working for you.

On the topic of using siege weapons as a role mechanic in these fights, is that something we want to see more of? I often worry that siege weapons can be just as boring as standing in the safe corner pressing the same attack. Do you feel that they can also cause some contention between players?

Make them tougher! But, now you have to fit it in the lore. Why are these guys so much harder now?

I think mobile siege would be pretty awesome. Have Shatterer start running around the map at %50 health and we all chase him down with those pact tanks.

Seriously though, i think siege is fine for these bosses as long as they aren’t totally pass/fail type things or alternatively, trivialize the fight when used.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Thread explosion! Thanks for all the (rapid) responses. There seems to be a fairly consistent feeling that yes, these fights can be more engaging without becoming as difficult as the jungle wurm.

I like some of the ideas being presented, feel free to keep the discussion going. It’s also helpful to hear not only what’s working but why it’s working for you.

On the topic of using siege weapons as a role mechanic in these fights, is that something we want to see more of? I often worry that siege weapons can be just as boring as standing in the safe corner pressing the same attack. Do you feel that they can also cause some contention between players?

I think it may be good to use the siege weapons as spectacle rather than a player-controlled game mechanic, similarly to how the megalaser operates in the Tequatl fight. That is to say, have the players collectively do something in order to enable the siege weapon to auto-fire (or be fired by an NPC). For the Shatterer event (for example), what if ammunition stockpiles appeared in different locations at certain points throughout the fight, and once the ammo has all been brought to <insert siege weapon here> it fired a huge blast at the Shatterer, perhaps to bring him down from his flying phase and deal extremely heavy damage?

That kind of thing I think is the best use of siege weapons in these kinds of open world fights, at least until there is some sort of system in place to prevent griefing them and the frustration that ensues.

I am agree with making harder these world bosses,all of them but increase the rewards too.Then everybody will be happy.

Sorean.5379:

Tip for everyone who only killed Tequatl once or so: Show up like 1 hour before he actually spawns before the server (daily) reset,I’m killing him daily with this tactic now.
If you show up when he is about to spawn you will end up on a overflow with a random zerg which isn’t enough to take him down.

At this point, I’ve pug killed Tequatl 4 times in a day showing up between 15 and 45 minutes early. He’s easy as long as you end up on a shard that has enough people who aren’t afk.

Also, for the people complaining about the “ungodly” waiting of 15min to hour. Use that time to take some down time from the game. Take a break, read some web pages, stretch and make some food…heck you don’t even need to stop the farming you can run around and gather resources while waiting. It’s really not that big a deal if you know how to schedule your time. Also, before people start whining about “but I work unlike you kids!”, I work 11 hour days, sod off and learn to manage your schedule.

One thing to be careful of is having all the dragon fights the same. Teq and Claw are sadly the exact same and it’s really sad. Both put up walls, bring in adds, fear, do a shockwave attack that knocks you away and you have cannons that bring them out of the sky.

If you want to do something inventive with Shatterer, then do something different. Take a look at what all dragons can do from mythology to table top games like D&D and borrow from those. A dragon flying into the air and using it’s breath weapon on people below is pretty much standard. So have Shatterer fly up into the air and bombard the ground with it’s breath weapon that puts a debuff on the party if they’re not in a safe zone (under some sheet metal or something) instead of knocking people away. It can flap it’s wings and stir up a dust storm composed of crystal shards that puts a debuff on the party.

Blind – Crystal dust in your eyes.
Cripple – Crystal shards in your legs
Bleeding – Being cut from shards flying at you.

I think the middle ground is in requiring players to use their individual skill, but not mass organization. I remember back when the game was new, the first times I fought the Shatterer it actually felt like a threat…and as I recall it’s actually been buffed since then. I didn’t know its mechanics, and more importantly, had not yet learned about foot-stacking.

Without that knowledge I was running around in what seemed like the appropriate place to be; in -front- of the dragon, shooting at it, dealing with enemies and purple fire breath. Other people could help of course, but my survival relied most on my own actions, dodging projectiles and not getting overwhelmed by branded minions. There were no more “mechanics” to the fight than there are now, but not surprisingly, this was also the most fun I had fighting the boss.

Removing the security blankets of safe spots and stacking would do wonders for a lot of bosses like the Shatterer, without the need for adding mechanics that require mass organization. A powerful area attack, like a foot stomp, which prioritizes high player density for targeting would help. Perhaps a form of scaling resistance, which makes a spot take less damage the more people that are targeting it, encouraging them to spread out and attack all the weak spots at once. As it is, the ability to mass-apply healing and boons to each other makes stacking in one spot a nearly unbeatable tactic for bosses, yet in any kind of real combat situation, “never spread out” is only going to last until your enemy finds a single grenade. If stacking is made more of a liability, people will have to actually fight to survive, using their own dodging and healing (which incidentally will probably make support characters more noticed and appreciated) instead of just taking advantage of a fountain of help by standing near each other.

The ice spikes at the Claw of Jormag’s second phase are a good mechanic, requiring people to spread out in an obvious fashion without any need for organization or directions. The role of siege could maybe be made similar to this, rather than the more boring option of sitting in one spot at the edge of combat firing a gun at the same spot over and over. Perhaps the mortars are less effective at direct damage, but the dragon periodically shields itself with crystals that the mortar can destroy more easily than players. In addition to the healing phase, individual healing crystals might occasionally pop up and cause problems (or instead of healing, spawning crystals that release a flood of minions). Attacking them on foot is difficult and dangerous, but cannons can do damage and clear out large groups of enemies. Mechanics like this would make siege something valuable that players will run to when needed, without pinning them to the spot or needing pre-made teams.

Blaeys.3102:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Thread explosion! Thanks for all the (rapid) responses. There seems to be a fairly consistent feeling that yes, these fights can be more engaging without becoming as difficult as the jungle wurm.

I like some of the ideas being presented, feel free to keep the discussion going. It’s also helpful to hear not only what’s working but why it’s working for you.

On the topic of using siege weapons as a role mechanic in these fights, is that something we want to see more of? I often worry that siege weapons can be just as boring as standing in the safe corner pressing the same attack. Do you feel that they can also cause some contention between players?

I think there is a good compromise on that as well – environmental weapons. Instead of requiring the use of stationary guns, give us a barrel of weapons we can move around with that have a positive impact on the fight (but arent the sole mechanic).

This. In my suggestion earlier of crystal fields that need to be cleansed, that cleansing could be done with a magical rifle instead of a turret. The problem with siege is that sitting in one spot is boring (and frustrating when you have to wait for repair b/c the siege was destroyed by something you couldn’t avoid.)

The key to making these fights interesting is creating roles that need to be filled. Teq requires a zerg, turret operators, and turret defenders. Wurm requires zergs, condi teams, power teams, and reflect teams. During Teq defense, each point has slightly different mechanics. For Marionette, lane defense required barricade repair and focused CC/damage, while each warden had different mechanics. All these fights have more going on than “stand here and zerk” and players with different builds and playstyles can spread into different roles and positions.

I love specialization. The major failing of PvE in this game is that it’s not required; “stand and zerk” is all you need most of the time. I’m a Teq zerg commander, and I’ve got a big word document typed up with specific build/role/gear suggestions for every class. It’s so satisfying and refreshing to advise people on particular builds and roles they can utilize to be useful – in a way that other classes aren’t! – during the fight. From the responses I get every week, it’s satisfying and refreshing to my zergies too. I loved doing this during Mari as well. More need for specialization please!

Just a little throwout, the lieutenants have 3 spots to attack. Why not make each spot immune(or resistant) to a specific type of damage and vulnerable to another?
Like one of the foots can be CC’d, holding him in place or atleast slowing his movement while the head for instance can only be struck by siege and ranged weapons but is trashing about(hard to hit, lower defense?) and the last foot is immune to CC but without being held down the dragon can jump around, essentially making it impossible to maintain any worthwile DPS.

I am agree with making harder these world bosses,all of them but increase the rewards too.Then everybody will be happy.

I agree, but only to a point. People have been saying that they need to make the Wurm’s rewards better because people don’t want to do it and they need to be bribed into it. I think that’s a bad idea. People should want to do events because they are fun, not because of the prize at the end. If the events are not fun, then you’re just bribing them to not have fun, and that’s a chore, not a game.

That said, the rewards for events should be good relative to the time and effort put into them, and something that you have to stay on your toes and work hard for 15-20 minutes should offer more rewards (not necessarily unique rewards) than something where you can stand around and hit “1” for ten minutes.

Basically, you should get enough reward that if you enjoy the content then you’ll do it and at the end feel “I did not waste my time, I advanced enough as a result of this that I feel it was time well spent,” but it should NEVER be something major enough that anyone would ever think “well, I really hate that encounter, it’s a huge pain in the kitten, but I really want that [MacGuffin], so I guess I’ll do it over and over until I get it.”

Also, for the people complaining about the “ungodly” waiting of 15min to hour. Use that time to take some down time from the game. Take a break, read some web pages, stretch and make some food…heck you don’t even need to stop the farming you can run around and gather resources while waiting. It’s really not that big a deal if you know how to schedule your time. Also, before people start whining about “but I work unlike you kids!”, I work 11 hour days, sod off and learn to manage your schedule.

No to all of this.

I think the dragons and other large bosses should have more freedom if movement and maybe even respond to aggro. Siege imo is a kitten bad idea and it results in pressing the same darn button over and over.

Just a sudden out of the blue idea: I can imagine a mechanism, where we have to kill branded adds to use their branded shards to protect ourselves from a special dragon attack and while reflecting that attack, damage the Shatterer too. It can be a special phase at each 25% maybe.

In general: everything that makes us move around is helpful, really.

ExtraCosmic.9082:

I think the middle ground is in requiring players to use their individual skill, but not mass organization. I remember back when the game was new, the first times I fought the Shatterer it actually felt like a threat…and as I recall it’s actually been buffed since then.

It’s interesting but dangerous.

The last megaboss who required active use of individual skill was the giant marionette. IMO that megaboss was awesome, requiring little organization and lots of individual skill.

It featured a HUGE drawback however : the boss could miserably fail because 5 weak players can get grouped on the same platform and make an entire lane fail their platform phase. And trust me failing an entire megaboss/your lane because of 5-10 weak players and bad luck is an infuriating experience.

This is why I am in favor of bosses that require organization rather than skill : if you fail the boss, it’s also your fault for you could have done more to set up the teams.

Seeing hordes of players afking at tequatl on the bumper is stressing and infuriating because your are basically forcing others to do the lower work of getting teams ready.

The two things that make Teq hard are the toughness of the spawns and the fingers that throw extremely powerful AOE poison. Dropping the poison AOE would make an almost perfectly scaled encounter for the Shatterer. Force players to break up by having a group build siege (isn’t that one of the pre events anyway?) and then defend it from moderately strong mobs, while others have to be mobile and deal damage. If the siege isn’t active, then the Shatterer gets a shield that prevents damage. To prevent stacking, throw down crystal prisons in point-blank AOE. Frequently.

Players ideally should be able to drop in, take a quick look around, see what needs to be done, select a position to their liking, and get to it. They shouldn’t need to show up 30 minutes early, taxi in an entire guild to fill the map to capacity, assign roles, and hope AFKers don’t ruin the fight.

Ohoni.6057:

I don’t like Siege weapons the way Teq does it, where there are six weapons that have a massive impact on the battle. It’s too much responsibility in too few hands on a 150 player event. I suggested this way back when Teq was first overhauled, but I would prefer to have NPCs on the turrets.

Same opinion here.

Ideas for shatterer revamp:
1) Remove mortars. Make sure the large charr turrets can only be manned and repaired by NPCs.

2) The charr turrets should spawn one minute before the start of the shatterer (THEY are the so called “vigil siege weapons”). These turrets remove invulnerability buff (same as tequatl except that players aren’t manning turrets).

3) Have bigger waves of mobs attacking the charr turrets and the NPC that repair them => this forces us to have defence teams.

4) During the current “crital phase”, have cristals heal the shatterer quickly, forcing the players to rapidly destroy them (timer related challenge). Each destroyed cristal gives the remaining ones a 25% damage reduction buff (i.e, you have to kill the cristals at the same time).

5) Add a breath attack to the dragon to eliminate the safe spots.

And that’s it. These 5 changes are enough to make this dragon more interesting. You teach players to :
- coordinate kills (cristals)
- split up (defending turrets)
- protect and revive key NPCs (defence teams)

VodCom.6924:

Ohoni.6057:

I don’t like Siege weapons the way Teq does it, where there are six weapons that have a massive impact on the battle. It’s too much responsibility in too few hands on a 150 player event. I suggested this way back when Teq was first overhauled, but I would prefer to have NPCs on the turrets.

Same opinion here.

Ideas for shatterer revamp:
1) Remove mortars. Make sure the large charr turrets can only be manned and repaired by NPCs.

2) The charr turrets should spawn one minute before the start of the shatterer (THEY are the so called “vigil siege weapons”). These turrets remove invulnerability buff (same as tequatl except that players aren’t manning turrets).

3) Have bigger waves of mobs attacking the charr turrets and the NPC that repair them => this forces us to have defence teams.

4) During the current “crital phase”, have cristals heal the shatterer quickly, forcing the players to rapidly destroy them (timer related challenge). Each destroyed cristal gives the remaining ones a 25% damage reduction buff (i.e, you have to kill the cristals at the same time).

5) Add a breath attack to the dragon to eliminate the safe spots.

And that’s it. These 5 changes are enough to make this dragon more interesting. You teach players to :
- coordinate kills (cristals)
- split up (defending turrets)
- protect and revive key NPCs (defence teams)

You have to be careful with making coordination changes in world boss fights. Zerging a boss is common and a LOT of players are used to doing it. The Crown Pavilion changes tore up the community because they couldn’t just zerg around and win, and all they really did was eliminate the farming of trash mobs and make sure all the bosses had to be downed at the same time.

Imagine what would happen if some of the changes suggested in this thread were implemented?

I think ranked rewards where best way to make events with gradients of difficulty with reward. Or having bosses with guild start settings with difficulties bosses. But people will always complain when they are not able to get best rewards.

Id like to see instead of time to failure events have sub events which if they fail the event fails.