Guild Wars 2

The Prime Hologram fight with Scarlet is an example of an engaging level of difficulty that is also not overly difficult like Triple Trouble or Tequatl. I’m excluding the Assault Knights by the way since their tuning never seemed to hit a sweet spot.

Shen Slayer.3058:

No to OP…I have only kill Tequatl once, and that’s cause I was lucky a few TTS guys were there. No more elitist gameplay, we have dungeons for that.

Made my day. Dungeons aren’t really hard. In Fact most are really easy even with PUGs

Right now the Shatterer is no more than a Loot Pinata, who can be killed really easy.

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.

The dragon fights are underwhelming due to the dragons being nothing more than loot pinata’s. If they truly lived up to being lieutenants and were more active in battle i doubt you’d see much complaints. As is the big bad dragon is too dumb to even swipe left / right. Let alone change his fight mechanics varying on where the cluster is / isn’t.

On that note, making siege important is a good thing, but making siege all-important is a bad thing.

At the moment Tequatl can be failed regardless of the skill of all other players involved if the 6 turret users are bad.

They can represent a great DPS increase when used properly, but the ‘scales’ mechanic is still something I don’t like after clearing Tequatl possibly a hundred times by now. The Shatterer mortars are in a good place, please don’t drop another invuln nonsense that compromises a hundred people from the incompetence of a few, particularly if it’s impossible to bump them off. Teaching is one thing, but some appear to not be able to use English, or are stubborn, or are griefing.

Make the fight random with 3 possible levels of difficulty. This would add some spice just because nobody would know what was coming. Increase the rewards with the level of the fight.

Level 1 – Like it is now, with some movement to make the fight more interesting such as the Shatterer moving around, tailwhip, etc. Reward – 1 screen chest and the ground chest. 100% success rate to complete.

Level 2 – Shatterer gets a nice damage buff, stomp and tailwhip knocks everyone back. Reward – 2 screen chests and the ground chest, 90 % success rate.

Level 3 – Now the stomp and tailwhip does 1/2 health damage if not dodged. Also there are large groups of adds, elites and champs that attack during the fight. Yeah, the fight is a lot harder, 60 % success rate. 3 screen chests and ground chest has a chance for a really nice reward.

I would make the Shatterer a slightly different color, to reflect the level of the fight. Also he should shoot lasers from his eyes at level 3 (ok, maybe not).

Orpheal.8263:

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.

This could be very worthwhile. It could also be changed so that a stomp or headshake would have to be avoided. Another achievements could be Crowd Controller. Prevent Crystal Creatures from reaching the dragon to prevent healing.
The sparks in the area could heal it if they fire the spark field near Shatter. The group would have to dissolve into small groups at different times during the fight. So no more standing in one spot spamming attack buttons.

Hayashi.3416:

On that note, making siege important is a good thing, but making siege all-important is a bad thing.

At the moment Tequatl can be failed regardless of the skill of all other players involved if the 6 turret users are bad.

They can represent a great DPS increase when used properly, but the ‘scales’ mechanic is still something I don’t like after clearing Tequatl possibly a hundred times by now. The Shatterer mortars are in a good place, please don’t drop another invuln nonsense that compromises a hundred people from the incompetence of a few, particularly if it’s impossible to bump them off. Teaching is one thing, but some appear to not be able to use English, or are stubborn, or are griefing.

Seconded. One of this mechanic is plenty, if not too much.

Make all the dragon fights epic. There is plenty of other open world content for more casual players.

It would make the night vastly more interesting if Shattered lived up tp his name and was actually a horde of smaller dragons and the fight featured stages mucdh as the other dragon fights do.

So rather than have just one dragon, there would be 6 ‘shard’ dragons which arrive all over Iron Marches. This would be phase 1. Players have to ‘shatter’ the shard dragons within a certain time frame that is a sub total of the main dragon fight timer. If the shards are defeated they reform into 3 bigger shard dragons. This time they are powerful enough to summon strong mobs of minions to join the fight increasing the intensity. Again the v objective is to defeat the shards but to make things interesting, vigil forces arrive to deploy anti personnel siege which are used to stave off the mobs, a bit like battle of claw island. Other vigil troops arrive to deploy heavy mortars to attack the shard dragons. Although not crucial, the mortars can make the fight a little bit easier until the three shard dragons are defeated. Once defeated the three shard dragons become the final form Shatterer in phase 3. The final form will be in the middle of the fire zones of the three batteries of mortars from phase 2 and will force the players to defend the three batteries which will provide not only offensive fire but defensive fire as well. If players didn’t defend the batteries in phase 2, then they have to defend the vigil forces that deploy them. Of course Shatterer isn’t going to stand there while you do all this.
He’ll have revamped offensive abilities including a type of crystal air burst artillery fire that he launches which sprays the area with condition causing effects. He’ll summon veterans and champions to swarm the batteries. He’ll fire large crystals that land in the ground and cause a huge explosion with knock back and bleeding. Players hit by the crystal are instantly downed. To defend against these the mortars can fire a dispersive shell that reduces the damage and conditions from the crystals. The shell also breaks up the big crystals so they only cause bleeding but not explosive damage or knock back. Think of it as a rain of shrapnel.

At least that’s my idea for an epic Shatterer fight

Azrael.4960:

It would make the night vastly more interesting if Shattered lived up tp his name and was actually a horde of smaller dragons and the fight featured stages mucdh as the other dragon fights do.

So rather than have just one dragon, there would be 6 ‘shard’ dragons which arrive all over Iron Marches. This would be phase 1. Players have to ‘shatter’ the shard dragons within a certain time frame that is a sub total of the main dragon fight timer. If the shards are defeated they reform into 3 bigger shard dragons. This time they are powerful enough to summon strong mobs of minions to join the fight increasing the intensity. Again the v objective is to defeat the shards but to make things interesting, vigil forces arrive to deploy anti personnel siege which are used to stave off the mobs, a bit like battle of claw island. Other vigil troops arrive to deploy heavy mortars to attack the shard dragons. Although not crucial, the mortars can make the fight a little bit easier until the three shard dragons are defeated. Once defeated the three shard dragons become the final form Shatterer in phase 3. The final form will be in the middle of the fire zones of the three batteries of mortars from phase 2 and will force the players to defend the three batteries which will provide not only offensive fire but defensive fire as well. If players didn’t defend the batteries in phase 2, then they have to defend the vigil forces that deploy them. Of course Shatterer isn’t going to stand there while you do all this.
He’ll have revamped offensive abilities including a type of crystal air burst artillery fire that he launches which sprays the area with condition causing effects. He’ll summon veterans and champions to swarm the batteries. He’ll fire large crystals that land in the ground and cause a huge explosion with knock back and bleeding. Players hit by the crystal are instantly downed. To defend against these the mortars can fire a dispersive shell that reduces the damage and conditions from the crystals. The shell also breaks up the big crystals so they only cause bleeding but not explosive damage or knock back. Think of it as a rain of shrapnel.

At least that’s my idea for an epic Shatterer fight

how about the “hydra concept” ???

Stage 1 – 1 small champ with several veteran guards applying slow but devastating attacks
Stage 2 – 2 medium champs with a bit few veteran guards + a special mechanic like “keep em apart” or “vulnerable to fire” or something like that. Veteran guards apply large (10-15) stacks of heavy bleeding (equal to 1500 condition damage) and also poison. condi cleanses and heals are adviced.
Stage 3 – 3 large, tough champs, no guards, permanent protection, vulnerable to poison, fire and confusion. They attack very rapidly, but deal moderate to little damage (imagine it like a wet noodle frenzy….)

Stage 2 would require to focus guards unless the zerg/group got enough AOE cleanses. A few healers wouldnt hurt.
Stage 3 would require a healers/water field droppers and a slightly more defensive setup. While not dealing “one shot” damage, it should do around 3-4k against a medium armor target (2400) every 3-5 seconds.

AOE cap of attacks should be around 20. If map blob limit is 120-140 then we divide that by 3 dragon champs, we get 40-53 people pr dragon champ. That means around half the “groups” around each champ gets damaged. Leaving a more organized group/blob to form rotations between ranged, healers and melee to ensure as few as possible goes down.

My main problem with the shatterer is that it’s horribly boring.

Tequatl’s is too hard when people is not coordinated enough, but when coordinated, it’s not too hard, perfectly doable, and since you are not stuck in one spot all the time, there’s no time to get bored.

The triple wurm is very hard even for those experiences. And it’s fine like that. Just a bit unrewarding, that’s all. I’d rather have a weekly cooldown in the rewards but getting them improved than crappy rewards and being able to repeat it more often.

Jormag’s Claw is kind of boring specially in the charzooka phase. But not too easy. And doable well within its time limit. It could us some tweaks to make it less boring regardless of difficulty, like having to swift attention to other things in the first phase, like defending the turrets at the back at certain moments or having some orangle circle line effects that force people to constantly “switch lanes” between 3 rows in front of the dragon.

The golem Mark II is very boring. Yeah, you have to dodge, but it’s the same all the time. It’ll be more interesting if it got more phases. For example, one in which it gets legs and roams around the area, or having to switch the attention to the nearby tower, or inquest so they do not buff or repair the golem, or go invulnerable and summon different dragon minions champions at random, much like how the megadestroyer does.

The megadestroyer is easy. And you have to spread and switch targets and deal with other things, so it doesn’t get too boring.

The Karka Queen event would be more fun it the map was more like Dry Top, but not as hard, with 4 tiers of Settler support for vendors instead the current four fixed events (with karka shells working a bit more like geodes in vendors). Having two meta events, one dealing with settlers vs consortium and local fauna, and a second meta-event in which the karka go crazy, that includes the karka queen popping if the tier IV was reached. The Karka Queen would be then equivalent to the Sand Giant in Dry Top, just a bit less hard. So you first deal with settlers, consortium and local fauna, then you deal with karka popping all over the place and going bananas, and the karka queen would appear if you did well in the first meta event.

The Shatterer is horribly easy and boring for an epic dragon champion. He needs to turn around and do stuff in other directions, and players must have reasons to rund all over the place and spread and attack him from all directions, and there has to be special mechanics involved.
For example, when the shaterer flies up, it’ll start healing, and the vigil cannons would be the only thing that can bring it down. Branded would then swarm the cannons, and try to break them, and take away their pieces, and if any cannon breaks, players would have to defeat the branded and bring back the scraps to quickly rebuild the cannons. If they do not, the dragon may recover up to 1/4 of its health before going down. Or he could surround himself with crystal shields that can only be attacked from one direction.

Prysin.8542:

how about the “hydra concept” ???

Stage 1 – 1 small champ with several veteran guards applying slow but devastating attacks
Stage 2 – 2 medium champs with a bit few veteran guards + a special mechanic like “keep em apart” or “vulnerable to fire” or something like that. Veteran guards apply large (10-15) stacks of heavy bleeding (equal to 1500 condition damage) and also poison. condi cleanses and heals are adviced.
Stage 3 – 3 large, tough champs, no guards, permanent protection, vulnerable to poison, fire and confusion. They attack very rapidly, but deal moderate to little damage (imagine it like a wet noodle frenzy….)

Stage 2 would require to focus guards unless the zerg/group got enough AOE cleanses. A few healers wouldnt hurt.
Stage 3 would require a healers/water field droppers and a slightly more defensive setup. While not dealing “one shot” damage, it should do around 3-4k against a medium armor target (2400) every 3-5 seconds.

AOE cap of attacks should be around 20. If map blob limit is 120-140 then we divide that by 3 dragon champs, we get 40-53 people pr dragon champ. That means around half the “groups” around each champ gets damaged. Leaving a more organized group/blob to form rotations between ranged, healers and melee to ensure as few as possible goes down.

I’d certainly agree that the variety of attacks should make players spread their builds more. There’s a great deal of scope for an awesome fight, I truly hope that anet has a think about more multilayered fights for certain bosses.

Personally I feel that a Kralkatorrik champion should have an emphasis on the crystals kitten attacks. The fight should build to a climactic encounter with the reveal of the final form. We as adventurers should be shocked an awed by the agent of an elder dragon not just run up to him and stab them in the feet.

Just had another flash of an idea. Shatterer could deploy a crystal shield that blocks the mortar attacks from two sides meaning the third one is where he is vulnerable but at that point a legendary crystal golem spawns at the remaining mortar battery where the shield is weakest. The players have to damage the golem to knock crystal chunks off which they load into the batteries. The batteries then fire those crystals at Shatterer’s shields to break them down. When the shields come down the magical backlash stuns him briefly allowing the players a moment to do more damage to him, a burn phase much like Claw and Tequatl. Failure of this meta event fails the whole event and results in the area being inundated in Branded and explosive crystals.

Some people, no doubt, would complain at start about loosing one of their easy events where they could autopilot, but eventually they will get over it just same as it happened with Teq, no one whines about it anymore

No one whines about it much anymore because we’ve moved on to “acceptance.” I still don’t like the new Teq as much as the old, but since I don’t bother running it much anymore, it isn’t a big enough part of my life that I feel like talking about it much.

Let’s be clear though, I don’t dislike nuTeq because it’s “too hard for me,” I can do my part in Teq just fine. I dislike it because of the hassles involved in just getting started. With most events, if they are scheduled to start at XX:00 or XX:15, then I can show up at XX:00 or XX:15, plus or minus a few minutes depending on the event, and be almost certain to end up with a map that is capable of clearing the event. If I show up at T-15 minutes or less to a Teq map or a Wurm map, I will stand very little chance of any sort of success at it, no matter how engaged I am in the content. I see this as a problem.

I do not have a problem with them upping the mechanics of the fight as they see fit, so long as they can guarantee that if I zone in right before the event begins, I’ll stand as good a chance of being fully rewarded for my efforts as if I had been waiting around on a map for an hour beforehand, because waiting around on a map for an hour is NOT a fun gameplay experience for me, no matter how engaging the boss fight may be once it starts.

Sorry but no.Hard mode and nomal mode are everythink else but not equals.If anyone decides to do hard mode then he must receive appropriate spoils of the war.Hard mode must have better rewards.

Ok, then there shouldn’t be hard mode content at all. This is why we can’t have nice things.

The golem Mark II is very boring. Yeah, you have to dodge, but it’s the same all the time. It’ll be more interesting if it got more phases. For example, one in which it gets legs and roams around the area, or having to switch the attention to the nearby tower, or inquest so they do not buff or repair the golem, or go invulnerable and summon different dragon minions champions at random, much like how the megadestroyer does.

Golem was actually better before the update, because his fist-slam hit boxes were smaller. You could actually avoid the first two by sidestepping them slightly, which was fun, but now you have to either dodge each one or be nowhere near them.

The Karka Queen event would be more fun it the map was more like Dry Top, but not as hard, with 4 tiers of Settler support for vendors instead the current four fixed events (with karka shells working a bit more like geodes in vendors).

No, the “summoning Karka Queen” events take the perfect amount of time right now, it’s the best of the “big” events available. Anything more and it would fall into the same trap as Teq and Wurm of having to spend an hour or so on the map before she spawns, which is way too much hassle.

The biggest problem I have with the dragons is they just stand there. The dragons are the champions of the elder dragons and all they can do is just stand there and glare at me? I feel less like a participant in an epic battle and more like I’m giving a pedicure to an unruly dog.

Some of the more fun fights for me have been in Frozen Maw and Megadestroyer when everyone isn’t CCing it to death. When they actually get a chance to move it forces players to react and it eliminates safe spots. You can’t just afk 1 for the fight or you’ll die. The Tequatl overhaul was a step in the right direction but he still just stands there.

Why can’t the dragons move? I’d love to see the shatterer or jormag pounce on the battery stations to damage them. I’d love to have the fight roam over a section of the map flattening everything in it’s path. I could see Jormag charge over a group of grawl, killing them in the process, to get at the players; or swallow whole that champ troll near by because it annoyed him.

Why are the dragons limited in how they can attack? They can slam the ground or roar? Where’s the sweeping tail smack of doom? Why can’t they bite someone in half? Why not use their wings to send us flying?

To me the dragons aren’t epic fights. They’re just boring. At least make them turn and attack their sides once in a while. I want something at least a little dynamic. I think there should be more than a vague suggestion of death at facing a dragon.

I actually enjoy Teq minus the horrendous lag and hour long wait to make sure you get into a decent server. It really blows to wait around. I’d rather just arrive a couple of minutes before the fight and get it done.

If they buff the shatterer and he turns into another Teq I’m just not interested.

I’d rather see world boss events use individual rewards to encourage people to pull their weight than allow the lazy to deny rewards from everyone else. The main thing I learned from Teq and Marionette is that in ‘challenging’ open world content, my real enemies are the other players on my team.

The way I would rather see events handled is that all rewards other than the basic event completion reward be moved to repeatable achievements for the specific boss. This way, the punishment for being lazy only applies to the lazy people themselves, as the boss itself cannot be failed, but the lazy will get almost no rewards. This will mean the boss will take longer to complete than if everyone pulled their weight, but the achievements being repeatable means that the ones that are trying are still getting rewarded proportionally to their time investment. Add in some afk check attacks to give the lazy a waypoint bill and all of a sudden trying to autoattack the boss now loses you money instead of gaining you anything.

The only particularly tricky issue would be making sure it’s not more profitable to simply stall the boss and farm the repeatable achievements rather than kill it and move on to the next. Perhaps limiting the most lucrative bonuses to once per day would help.

Do whatever with it, just make sure to up the rewards for completing it.
New unique skins is always a good idea, but don’t make it rare like precursors.
I know a few people who were doing tequatl for like 2 months in a row, every day, got like 2-3 ascended chests. Cmon, really?
I like how challenging and interesting world events are, especially tri wurm, but rewards will put off even the hardest of tryhards.

Oh and please, do something about 1 hour long queues for events because ain’t nobody got time for that.

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?

That’s what a red post does, people love them some attention (I know that sounds negative, but it is what it is, so just calling it out; use it for your benefit I would say ) …

And tnx for asking sensible questions, and giving sensible feedback in regards to your concerns as a game developer. Insight in why things were made the way they are, is halve the battle in reaching mutual understanding in what is possible, and what to strive for.

Once again, Anet going into the wrong direction in this game. Shatterer needs the Teq treatment. Make it difficult content, this game lacks it greatly. Dungeons are a joke because of bad design, and when asked if they will add a Hard Mode version of these, we are told NO, but look at the “challenges” in the living story. Guess what, those are more of a joke. But I guess that is what they want. They want a AAA MMO that plays like a facebook game. Meaningless content that you can just spam 1 your way through with skinner box rewards on a 2 week release timer so they can maximize gemstore sells.
Look at all the challenging content NOT being worked on. Dungeons, SAB, and now World Bosses are not being worked on because they are too difficult for the general masses. Everything now is superficial, Anet walking people through a veil of false accomplishments straight into the gift shop (gemstore).
Those who think triple trouble or tequalt are too difficult, may i suggest playing one of the facebook games, they reward monotonous activity (like spamming 1) and are perfectly willing to take your money for cosmetic changes. The reason they take an hour to set up is because the general population can’t learn how to do the content, so those who want to do the content has to go to extreme measures to stack the odds in their favor. And having no control on those who “help” you in your mega server (they most of the time hurt you) makes the problem worse.

John.8620:

The Shatterer does deserve a buff and so does the Claw of Jormag

No. Just. No. ._.

If anyone is giving anything remotely related to a buff Claw of Jormag, the fear needs to go first lol. I agree that the fight itself could be more engaging, but making a lv80 world boss harder just spells faceroll’d disaster XD

I would like to be a bit more engaged with CoJ and actually fight it. Most of the time, I spend 50% of the fight running in ‘fear’, 10% spamming ranged AA, 30% in my downed state, and 10% laughing too hard at the people who have never fought the dragon before and were just crushed because they didn’t move when it landed.

It would be cool if all world bosses were more engaging. I just feel like I’m spamming AA for almost all of them until they die.

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?

The siege weapons such as the mortars are a great addition to the Shatterer fight since it is the only way to do damage to it while it is up in the air, from what I’ve seen. However, if you are going to make the mortars and turret cannons useable in the fight, could you do something about the bug where firing the turret cannons immediately causes a player to stop interacting with it? When that happens, the shot fired deals no damage.

You could joke around and say that the cannon’s recoil is so powerful that it kicks you off it, but from a game play mechanic standpoint, it’s just bad.

It might be nice to see the Shatterer get a few tweaks so his fight is more engaging than just “stand in the zerg and auto-attack”. My suggestions:

a) Player attacks do minimal damage to the Shatterer (but see below). Attacking him directly should be a last resort.

b) Mortars and do their normal damage to the Shatterer. In addition, they can now be loaded with ammo that grants a special buff to players in the area of impact. This buff allows players to deal double damage to the Shatterer (but it still translates to only about 25% of their normal damage).

c) Turrets deal greatly increased damage against the Shatterer, making them the primary source of damage against the Dragon Champion. This makes defending them and the mortars a top priority.

d) The Shatterer’s ground stomp damages and knocks down players and mortars. Turrets are unaffected.

e) The Shatterer’s breath targets primarily turrets and deals a lot of damage to them.

f) Vigil Engineers will repair both turrets and mortars, but are frequently targeted by Branded spawns.

Basically, when I think of the Dragons as World Bosses, I want their fights to have complex, engaging mechanics that require skill and knowledge to beat, but isn’t necessarily dependent on having 60+ players show up. Teq, for example, has multiple mechanics that require different groups of players to have different roles, but his base health is scaled up so far that you need a critical mass of players to be successful. I’d like his fight mechanics to be the same, but he just scales better so that as few as 20 people can defeat him.

Everyone complains about The Shatterer being easy, but what about The MegaDestroyer ? Stand on a rock and spam 1 ( also because due to the nature of the fight you cant do much else due to LAVA) ..

Hmmmmmm I just wanted to point out one thing …… Teq and Shatterer and others that people want harder … are ALL in level zones way lower than 80.

So newer players / Players leveling up are NOT going to want some super leveled boss there ..

Why not make the harder, bigger, badder bosses in Lvl 80 zones ?

Where you would expect the hard stuff to be !!!

I agree Tequatl isn’t hard when in an organised group, but shatterer should still be less trouble that doesn’t need a full’ish and highly organised map to complete it.

I think it should be similarly rewarded in percentages/stages, like tequatl. For example.

Dragons should take more than players hacking at its legs to defeat it. So would require some siege in order to lower it’s HP.

I think some simple little mechanics to avoid ppl from afking and making them think and move more whilst not making it as difficult for some as other organised boss fights.

The aim is to build a Giant Crystal which which is made up of 4 smaller crystals, to build each of these smaller crystals players must collect crystals that drop from the dragon through different intervals through the fight (like eggs on the Queen Karka event), and take them back to where the siege is now, to complete this crystal to powers an Asuran Mega Lazer.

When The Shatterer spreads his wings and fly’s up those not having stability would get knock over and stuck to the floor for 5 seconds due to the back draft. And those who are not moving and stood still gets 1 shotted by lighting bolts from under his wings.

• Shatterer HP 75% Dragon Fly’s up in the air doing is AoE attacks and Drops Crystals Players collect as many crystals needed to make up 1 small crystal shard.*

• Shatterer HP 50% Dragon Fly’s up in the air doing is AoE attacks and Drops Crystals Players collect as many crystals needed to make up 2nd small crystal shard.*

• Shatterer HP 25% Dragon Fly’s up in the air doing is AoE attacks and Drops Crystals Players collect as many crystals needed to make up 3rd small crystal shard.*

• Shatterer HP 10% Dragon Fly’s up in the air doing is AoE attacks and Drops Crystals Players collect as many crystals needed to make up 4th small crystal shard.*

All 4 pieces needed to complete the crystal, Crystal complete.

Dragon now realizes that the players are getting the better of him and Fly’s up one last time and gets rdy for a super AoE Breath of Crystal Dust attack and it catches the crystal which auto powers and shoots the mega lazer instantly defeating the Shatterer with his own breath.

Between these stages players are bombarded with adds/chaos storms/crystal showers and frequent random AoE attacks from his feet and Tail.

^^Not too tough and don’t really need much organising, but stops people afk attacking and makes u move about in fight while still giving the chance to get loot per event stage

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?

Anthony please tell me how you find the middle-ground between Teq organisation and skill, and press 1 to autoattack and afk most of the event, only to collect loot later.

Using the mortars and siege weapons at Shatterer is one effective way of doing just that, finding a middle-ground. But as you pointed out, it’s mashing one button akin to standing somewhere safe and attacking. In the old days when Shatterer used to not get that many people, the people attacking from the mortars were often hit with crystals (and I’m talking about people standing on the mortars off to the right side now as well) because Shatterer would attack those that were (seemingly) doing the most damage to it, and those few people that were at it’s feet that weren’t doing as much damage as the hordes these days, were plain ignored or not hit at all and the people at the mortars were targeted instead.

But again, you only have so many siege weapons at that site. That means potentially ~10 people using mortars and turrets while the rest can autoattack whatever they want. Having the target fly off intermittently does help to a degree, but when it comes back people just hit 1 again and that’s all. The amount of people I see standing around armed only with a bow is ridiculous. Me personally as an ele-main I quite often scroll through my attunements and use whatever can hit the hardest or prove useful to the crowd of nail-polishers at Shatterer’s feet.

I believe this event should have a tactical revamp, but not only from the player’s standpoint – I also believe the loot base should be reworked according to the player’s level and contribution to the event for all dragons not just this one. It’s utterly criminal what we have to put up with during the first phase of Claw of Jormag (so many people going after champs regardless of loot chance, and not even bothering with the wall), and then we get a chest at the end of the second phase with little better than greens and blues on most occasions. This has been suggested hundreds of times before, I think this advice is worth listening to and a rework of the rewards taken into account as well.

Whatever you change, please make sure that it is the fight against the boss, that is harder to do, not the fight against the game, like with triple wurm. IMO it is totally out of anything to be forced to externally organize a complete map full of players using /ip and taxi calls in TS chat. “Open world” raids in instanced maps with a limited capacity of players simply do not work out that well. Yes, players have learned to fight the technical limitations of GW2, but a game should be satisfying because of its mechanics rather than despite of them.

First off: I like the Tequatl fight, it is one of the best experiences for a huge world event and is beautifully designed. But there are a feq teweaks such events should be managed: first of all make it instanced, so there are no issues with grouping, it really sucks if you have almost no chance to land on a good map with organized groups, instead we arrive 30mins ahead and have to be either lucky or find another player (in guild, friendlist etc.) to join this map and constantly clicking join to eventually switch the map. Another thing to solve this problem: raise the capacity of players on a map.

Other than that: yes of course, make the remaining world bosses a tad harder and engaging. All the events consist on waiting and melt the HP. People only do it be cause of the rewards.

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?

Yes, I generally disliked siege on world bosses for two reasons:
1. Your safespot argument.
2. When there is a limited number of siege (hi tequatl turrets) and some boss core mechanic centers on the correct use of the siege it is far too easy for few people to ruin the fight for everybody, may it be because they don’t know better or do it on purpose.

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 the key word is “reactions varied”.

I remember the QQ when the bosses were updated and forums were filled with “Anet wants to nerf our farming” posts.

Honestly, I think any tweaking to boss mechanics will be trivialised by sheer numbers.

Similarly, a lot of the bosses in their current state would be challenging if done by a smaller group of 10-20 players.

I once didTaidha with only 20+ players. The main map was probably capped. It was challenging enough without any tweaks. (We failed the event by a sliver).

cephiroth.6182:

2. When there is a limited number of siege (hi tequatl turrets) and some boss core mechanic centers on the correct use of the siege it is far too easy for few people to ruin the fight for everybody, may it be because they don’t know better or do it on purpose.

I see this problem as a real problem with the way Jormag’s claw is currently implemented. Failing this event means 30 full minutes of free champion respawns, so it will be done. Champs spawning there must not drop loot boxes, or this event will be toxic if it can be failed by a few players.

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.

You guys could add more mechanics that force players to split up and multi task to defeat him. Imo, the main problem that makes it so easy now that there is little reason to leave his foot area.

Maybe the crystals could explode and leave deadly residue on the ground, which instantly kills who ever stands in it. Just a example!

Concept behind Jormag is quite good but safe spots are ruining it. I really like both phases and I intentionally don’t use safe spots to make it more fun for me. Attacks are telegraphed so if you pay attention you can quite easily avoid them with skill no 5 on both flametower and charzooka. If you would remove those safe spots, do something with cannons (for example – need to defend them) and more threat from the ledges I think it would be enough.

Teq was really hard for most people because there wasn’t megaserver back then so it was hard to have enough people then. Now it’s great in terms of difficultly.

And The Shatterer…yeah..it’s boring. Really boring. I didn’t do it for some time because of this. First thing would be to remove safe spot. The make mortars more important with need for defend (more branded on them). I think even those little changes would make it harder.

Same thing goes for Golem – safe spots. Don’t think there should be more changes – it is medium-level boss after all. Not every one can be strong – there has to be some progression with boss level.

Karka was hard…at beginning. I didn’t do it for some time and then for some reason it was easy…much too easy. Don’t know why. Probably because of fixed timer there are much more people there. I think more Karkas around would make it harder enough.

Centaurs are broken right now. It was my favorite chain of events. Yo could exactly progression of each step with dialogs and impact on map. And now it’s just race for chest. Last fight has even phases…but each of it is so easy…the only challenge is to put enough damage so his three minions would drop loot. (Power Gameplay FTW )

Behemor changes mad him a little bit harder. It’s still really easy but at least some people have to do more then spam #1 at his face.

BTW Remember that adding immunity for some attacks are not the way to improve fights (like making Basilisk Venom completely useless on big bosses…)

I think there is one problem with all the events around Tyria – scaling. Most events are hard enough when there is small group of people. It would mean that they were designed this way. And scaling doesn’t work on them good enough – increasing HP is not the answer – it only makes fight boring (see Svarnir Shaman).

Just for reference reasons, I had created a similar topic a few days ago, that contained some feedback as well:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Feedback-World-bosses-these-days/first#post4342104

I would like the following buffs to the Shatterer:

For the fight to be a 360 degree battle, in which he moves and changes direction. Possibly give players a slight damage boost if they attack him from a particular direction. This would encourage the group to remain on the move as he moves.

I bet the dragon moving around would only exacerbate the decrease in frames for that fight, though.

To deter everyone from standing in one place and auto-attacking, I would like it if the Shatterer did a massive attack whenever there was a large concentration of people in a specific spot. Either a large AoE or a smaller AoE for each individual.

I just think it’s boring how people stand in that one spot and mindlessly attack him.

I do, however, believe the implementation of the regeneration crystals at a farther distance from him was a step in the right direction; as well as when they were made larger. If the fight became a 360 degree battle, perhaps they could be moved to different spots all around the dragon in a circular pattern.

Some great suggestions , i am still unable to get the achievement as i never ever seen him crystallize anyone , because he dies to fast/easy , i hope they fix it soon tho

I have a bit of an idea, not fully formed, for how to encourage people to “participate” rather than just spam attacks. It would involve lots of tiny rewards instead of big completion rewards. Dustmite sand would be a similar element. Basically, you would fight the boss, and it would have all the traditional elements of the Teq fight or whatever, but in the phases where you’re just DPSing down the boss, you would need to target specific locations, perhaps moving targets (but well spotlighted by the UI), and these targets would “bleed” in some way, showering out loot to those that hit them successfully. This loot would be inherently useless, like dozens of “Flecks of Crystal” or something and would stack up, but then once the event is over you could either turn them in at a vendor or MF them or something to get cool unique rewards.

Not only is this an advantage over the Teq/Wurm fights where RNG could have you doing them once and get an Ascended chest or dozens of times and get nothing fun, but it also forces participation, since if you just spam 1 you will probably only get a fraction as much crystal as someone who actively participates.

One problem that would need overcoming though, is that in lots of zerg content, the characters that can deal the most burst damage and AoE the fastest tend to get reward priority over those who can’t, in some cases characters will get zero loot in a situation like the mite farm because they can’t tag things fast enough. These “targets” would need to break that cycle, perhaps being phased to each character, or just designed in such a way that it always lasts long enough for active players to get their hits in, and everyone who engages it get their reward.

It’s also important to make this process a necessary part of completing the event, not a sideshow to it, otherwise players will get distracted doing this stuff while allowing the event as a whole to fail (like when an event spawns a bunch of bag-dropping champ adds).

Kohlteth.3715:

Hmmmmmm I just wanted to point out one thing …… Teq and Shatterer and others that people want harder … are ALL in level zones way lower than 80.

So newer players / Players leveling up are NOT going to want some super leveled boss there ..

Why not make the harder, bigger, badder bosses in Lvl 80 zones ?

Where you would expect the hard stuff to be !!!

I love how everyone glossed over what I thought was a valid point about WHERE the bosses y’all want harder are placed !!

Kohlteth.3715:

Kohlteth.3715:

Hmmmmmm I just wanted to point out one thing …… Teq and Shatterer and others that people want harder … are ALL in level zones way lower than 80.

So newer players / Players leveling up are NOT going to want some super leveled boss there ..

Why not make the harder, bigger, badder bosses in Lvl 80 zones ?

Where you would expect the hard stuff to be !!!

I love how everyone glossed over what I thought was a valid point about WHERE the bosses y’all want harder are placed !!

Tha Shatterer is a Dragon Champion. He’s one of the 3 strongest bosses lore-wise. He should live up to that from a gameplay perspective.

Tha Shatterer is a Dragon Champion. He’s one of the 3 strongest bosses lore-wise. He should live up to that from a gameplay perspective.

But he is in a level 50-60 zone. He should be level 50-60. If you want to explain it lore-wise, then just say that he’s weakened from being so far away from Kral. If an when they start adding Crystal Desert zones, they can have a second Shatterer fight that takes place there in which he’s much stronger.

Keep in mind, there was just a living story update in which we SOLO a dragon champion, so it’s not like they’re universally uber.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Kohlteth.3715:

Kohlteth.3715:

Hmmmmmm I just wanted to point out one thing …… Teq and Shatterer and others that people want harder … are ALL in level zones way lower than 80.

So newer players / Players leveling up are NOT going to want some super leveled boss there ..

Why not make the harder, bigger, badder bosses in Lvl 80 zones ?

Where you would expect the hard stuff to be !!!

I love how everyone glossed over what I thought was a valid point about WHERE the bosses y’all want harder are placed !!

Tha Shatterer is a Dragon Champion. He’s one of the 3 strongest bosses lore-wise. He should live up to that from a gameplay perspective.

Then if He is going to be that hard, He needs moving into a lvl 80 zone, not a lvl 50 zone !!

Kohlteth.3715:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Kohlteth.3715:

Kohlteth.3715:

Hmmmmmm I just wanted to point out one thing …… Teq and Shatterer and others that people want harder … are ALL in level zones way lower than 80.

So newer players / Players leveling up are NOT going to want some super leveled boss there ..

Why not make the harder, bigger, badder bosses in Lvl 80 zones ?

Where you would expect the hard stuff to be !!!

I love how everyone glossed over what I thought was a valid point about WHERE the bosses y’all want harder are placed !!

Tha Shatterer is a Dragon Champion. He’s one of the 3 strongest bosses lore-wise. He should live up to that from a gameplay perspective.

Then if He is going to be that hard, He needs moving into a lvl 80 zone, not a lvl 50 zone !!

Evolved Jungle Wurm is the hardest open world fight in the game, and it’s in a level 50 zone.

Tequatl is harder than Karka Queen and he’s a lower-level boss.

I think it’s pretty clear that zone level shouldn’t matter when it comes to boss difficulty.

Things world bosses lack (Not just the shatterer, but most of them)

Stack Breakers

If it’s possible in any sense of the word to stand in one place for an entire fight with a boss and not die, that fight is broken. This doesn’t mean you need to one shot people, but the pre-nerf fire elemental felt like just the right amount of difficulty for a mid level boss. His flame pools hit hard, but were small and easy to avoid as long as one paid attention. Golem MK2 is a great example of easy-yet-gratifying boss design due to the mechanics of the static field. The simple act of seeing the tell for the field and moving out of the way, only so see John sleepypants next you you bite it because he didn’t is really gratifying, but not at all complex due to the otherwise completely ignorable other abilities.

Movement/Purpose/Grand Strategy

World bosses have no objectives. They show up and then stand around waiting to be killed until the timer runs out. Sure that shaman might be theoretically summoning a giant elemental, but in reality he’s just standing around waiting to get killed. The Ancient Karka was a great example of what a world boss should be, despite the massive lag and such due to problems with server tech at the time. That thing went on a RAMPAGE through the zone, and we busted up a fair amount of the environment and had a lot of different experiences throughout the fight. Chased it through trees, threw rocks at it, hit it with an avalanche, weathered a spiral of endless hatchling zergs, and finally stomped it through a hole in the floor. It was easily the best designed boss encounter the game has yet had (the recent pale tree boss is a pretty close second.) Sure some bosses have “phases” but they don’t feel like a meaningful and epic power struggle. They’re just minor abilities that even the boss doesn’t seem too interested in. Zone bosses, even the easy ones should be map-wide events with big set pieces of destruction and interesting mechanics related to the path the battle follows. Bonus points for branching paths based on player action or random number generation! A dragon rampaging through a zone destroying stuff is still a timer, it’s just a much more FUN timer than having a bar on the screen while it sits still. The fire elemental could tear through the lab, destroying equipment. The shaman could command his ice elemental through the zone, freezing monsters and ambient critters in his wake, add spawns could appear from logical places like huts and caves along the battle path rather then out of nowhere. It would still be the same fight mechanically, but it would be a lot more fun to take them all “on tour”.

Unique Rewards

The “hard” bosses have these, But the easier bosses should have them too. What harm would it be to make all of the rares from each boss bonus chest contain a unique skin set for the boss they come from? It would increase the reward factor for fighting them even if they didn’t technically hand out better loot. Nobody said all the skins added to the game had to be super-rare. Heck, maybe put a handful gem consumables on their loot tables as well. Surely you won’t automatically see a huge dip in gem sales if boss chests dropped the occasional booster or black lion key as people determined to get these for free already use rerolling key farm to do so more reliably and in a non-gated fashion.

Deathblows

World bosses are one-note fights without a lot of personal interaction with the players. Sure, they target you, but what if they had unique ways of finishing off players that died within their zone of attack? This would be another way to increase the epic feel while not making the fights much more difficult. Let’s say they randomly target players that have been dead for over 15 seconds and do nasty things to them. Maybe shatterer picks a guy up and eats him, of the shaman/elemental sucks them up in to the vortex to spin around for a while before being flung over a nearby ridge, etc. This would make the fights far more thrilling. “Oh crap, look what it did to fred! I’ll avenge you fred!” In addition, having a “corpse clear” mechanic for them would add a low impact way to make them feel nastier that normal mobs while only slightly increasing difficulty. Conversely what if random players were selected to land the final blow with an amazing and heroic animation similar to the ones we see in games like skyrim or dragon age? Don’t tie any achievements and rewards to it, just have it be a cool visual thing that players get to see themselves do on a rare occasion. Bonus points if player deathblows come with a (skippable) cinematic camera angle that showcases the person delivering the deathblow, or showcases your own grisly demise if the boss deathblows you.

Suggestions;

Rather than make him hard, why not make him more interesting?

• Take him down more quickly for bonus rewards (Bronze/Silver/Gold as usual),

• Make him slow down his health-loss by doing knockdowns and dropping destructible healing crystals (which players can use mortars on or just kitten ),

• Make him occasionally single out a player for special attack such as a big punt or chew.

I tried to come up with ideas that weren’t much different than the current event, to minimise effort on Anet’s part.

PopeUrban.2578:

Things world bosses lack (Not just the shatterer, but most of them)

Stack Breakers

If it’s possible in any sense of the word to stand in one place for an entire fight with a boss and not die, that fight is broken. This doesn’t mean you need to one shot people, but the pre-nerf fire elemental felt like just the right amount of difficulty for a mid level boss. His flame pools hit hard, but were small and easy to avoid as long as one paid attention. Golem MK2 is a great example of easy-yet-gratifying boss design due to the mechanics of the static field. The simple act of seeing the tell for the field and moving out of the way, only so see John sleepypants next you you bite it because he didn’t is really gratifying, but not at all complex due to the otherwise completely ignorable other abilities.

Movement/Purpose/Grand Strategy

World bosses have no objectives. They show up and then stand around waiting to be killed until the timer runs out. Sure that shaman might be theoretically summoning a giant elemental, but in reality he’s just standing around waiting to get killed. The Ancient Karka was a great example of what a world boss should be, despite the massive lag and such due to problems with server tech at the time. That thing went on a RAMPAGE through the zone, and we busted up a fair amount of the environment and had a lot of different experiences throughout the fight. Chased it through trees, threw rocks at it, hit it with an avalanche, weathered a spiral of endless hatchling zergs, and finally stomped it through a hole in the floor. It was easily the best designed boss encounter the game has yet had (the recent pale tree boss is a pretty close second.) Sure some bosses have “phases” but they don’t feel like a meaningful and epic power struggle. They’re just minor abilities that even the boss doesn’t seem too interested in. Zone bosses, even the easy ones should be map-wide events with big set pieces of destruction and interesting mechanics related to the path the battle follows. Bonus points for branching paths based on player action or random number generation! A dragon rampaging through a zone destroying stuff is still a timer, it’s just a much more FUN timer than having a bar on the screen while it sits still. The fire elemental could tear through the lab, destroying equipment. The shaman could command his ice elemental through the zone, freezing monsters and ambient critters in his wake, add spawns could appear from logical places like huts and caves along the battle path rather then out of nowhere. It would still be the same fight mechanically, but it would be a lot more fun to take them all “on tour”.

Unique Rewards

The “hard” bosses have these, But the easier bosses should have them too. What harm would it be to make all of the rares from each boss bonus chest contain a unique skin set for the boss they come from? It would increase the reward factor for fighting them even if they didn’t technically hand out better loot. Nobody said all the skins added to the game had to be super-rare. Heck, maybe put a handful gem consumables on their loot tables as well. Surely you won’t automatically see a huge dip in gem sales if boss chests dropped the occasional booster or black lion key as people determined to get these for free already use rerolling key farm to do so more reliably and in a non-gated fashion.

Deathblows

World bosses are one-note fights without a lot of personal interaction with the players. Sure, they target you, but what if they had unique ways of finishing off players that died within their zone of attack? This would be another way to increase the epic feel while not making the fights much more difficult. Let’s say they randomly target players that have been dead for over 15 seconds and do nasty things to them. Maybe shatterer picks a guy up and eats him, of the shaman/elemental sucks them up in to the vortex to spin around for a while before being flung over a nearby ridge, etc. This would make the fights far more thrilling. “Oh crap, look what it did to fred! I’ll avenge you fred!” In addition, having a “corpse clear” mechanic for them would add a low impact way to make them feel nastier that normal mobs while only slightly increasing difficulty. Conversely what if random players were selected to land the final blow with an amazing and heroic animation similar to the ones we see in games like skyrim or dragon age? Don’t tie any achievements and rewards to it, just have it be a cool visual thing that players get to see themselves do on a rare occasion.

I like all of these ideas a LOT !!

Evolved Jungle Wurm is the hardest open world fight in the game, and it’s in a level 50 zone.

Yes, which is kind of a problem that should be fixed at some point, because ti really messes up the natural flow of the zone.

Kohlteth.3715:

PopeUrban.2578:

Things world bosses lack (Not just the shatterer, but most of them)
-snip-

I like all of these ideas a LOT !!

I edited in a few more “bonus points” before you posted too, thanks!

PopeUrban.2578:

Kohlteth.3715:

PopeUrban.2578:

Things world bosses lack (Not just the shatterer, but most of them)
-snip-

I like all of these ideas a LOT !!

I edited in a few more “bonus points” before you posted too, thanks!

Although I still think that the harder bosses should be in more level appropriate zones …..

Like where are all the lvl 70-80 ( 85 +) World bosses that should have been put in Orr ?

Or maybe one in Dry Top ?

Why are the biggest and best which most lvl 80’s fight, all in lvl 50 – 70 zones ?

oh wait, then again, why are many of them in STARTER zones ??

Something needs doing to let the lower levels fight the lower level bosses and the higher 70-80’s fight level appropriate bosses as the Downscale does not work, we all know that and lower levels hardly get to “tag” the bosses and certainly dont have the raw dps output needed to get anything worthwhile from bosses in their zone range !!

PopeUrban.2578:

Things world bosses lack (Not just the shatterer, but most of them)

Stack Breakers

If it’s possible in any sense of the word to stand in one place for an entire fight with a boss and not die, that fight is broken. This doesn’t mean you need to one shot people, but the pre-nerf fire elemental felt like just the right amount of difficulty for a mid level boss. His flame pools hit hard, but were small and easy to avoid as long as one paid attention. Golem MK2 is a great example of easy-yet-gratifying boss design due to the mechanics of the static field. The simple act of seeing the tell for the field and moving out of the way, only so see John sleepypants next you you bite it because he didn’t is really gratifying, but not at all complex due to the otherwise completely ignorable other abilities.

Movement/Purpose/Grand Strategy

World bosses have no objectives. They show up and then stand around waiting to be killed until the timer runs out. Sure that shaman might be theoretically summoning a giant elemental, but in reality he’s just standing around waiting to get killed. The Ancient Karka was a great example of what a world boss should be, despite the massive lag and such due to problems with server tech at the time. That thing went on a RAMPAGE through the zone, and we busted up a fair amount of the environment and had a lot of different experiences throughout the fight. Chased it through trees, threw rocks at it, hit it with an avalanche, weathered a spiral of endless hatchling zergs, and finally stomped it through a hole in the floor. It was easily the best designed boss encounter the game has yet had (the recent pale tree boss is a pretty close second.) Sure some bosses have “phases” but they don’t feel like a meaningful and epic power struggle. They’re just minor abilities that even the boss doesn’t seem too interested in. Zone bosses, even the easy ones should be map-wide events with big set pieces of destruction and interesting mechanics related to the path the battle follows. Bonus points for branching paths based on player action or random number generation! A dragon rampaging through a zone destroying stuff is still a timer, it’s just a much more FUN timer than having a bar on the screen while it sits still. The fire elemental could tear through the lab, destroying equipment. The shaman could command his ice elemental through the zone, freezing monsters and ambient critters in his wake, add spawns could appear from logical places like huts and caves along the battle path rather then out of nowhere. It would still be the same fight mechanically, but it would be a lot more fun to take them all “on tour”.

Unique Rewards

The “hard” bosses have these, But the easier bosses should have them too. What harm would it be to make all of the rares from each boss bonus chest contain a unique skin set for the boss they come from? It would increase the reward factor for fighting them even if they didn’t technically hand out better loot. Nobody said all the skins added to the game had to be super-rare. Heck, maybe put a handful gem consumables on their loot tables as well. Surely you won’t automatically see a huge dip in gem sales if boss chests dropped the occasional booster or black lion key as people determined to get these for free already use rerolling key farm to do so more reliably and in a non-gated fashion.

Deathblows

World bosses are one-note fights without a lot of personal interaction with the players. Sure, they target you, but what if they had unique ways of finishing off players that died within their zone of attack? This would be another way to increase the epic feel while not making the fights much more difficult. Let’s say they randomly target players that have been dead for over 15 seconds and do nasty things to them. Maybe shatterer picks a guy up and eats him, of the shaman/elemental sucks them up in to the vortex to spin around for a while before being flung over a nearby ridge, etc. This would make the fights far more thrilling. “Oh crap, look what it did to fred! I’ll avenge you fred!” In addition, having a “corpse clear” mechanic for them would add a low impact way to make them feel nastier that normal mobs while only slightly increasing difficulty. Conversely what if random players were selected to land the final blow with an amazing and heroic animation similar to the ones we see in games like skyrim or dragon age? Don’t tie any achievements and rewards to it, just have it be a cool visual thing that players get to see themselves do on a rare occasion. Bonus points if player deathblows come with a (skippable) cinematic camera angle that showcases the person delivering the deathblow, or showcases your own grisly demise if the boss deathblows you.

This NEEDS to be seen, well laid out and some fantastic points here. All things good from this post summed up.

PopeUrban.2578:

Deathblows

. Maybe shatterer picks a guy up and eats him, of the shaman/elemental sucks them up in to the vortex to spin around for a while before being flung over a nearby ridge, etc. This would make the fights far more thrilling. “Oh crap, look what it did to fred! I’ll avenge you fred!” In addition, having a “corpse clear” mechanic…

“Huh huh huh, the dragon ate Fred. Noob. " (/jk!)

Really like this idea.

If there’s just one thing that can be done at any of the world bosses, make it so the dead are ported to the nearest waypoint available. If this is done by them being eaten, excellent – just allow us to kill particle effects so we can see the spectacle!

Conversely what if random players were selected to land the final blow with an amazing and heroic animation similar to the ones we see in games like skyrim or dragon age?

Yeah, that would be epic too. A nice touch to bring some smiles, perhaps. Again, however, let’s have the ability to kill (or at least partially deaden) particle effects so we can actually see this stuff.