Guild Wars 2

It feels like higher level enemies (as in vet/champ/boss, not 80 vs. 70) have a rather inane way of ratcheting up the difficulty. They introduce no new combat mechanics and exhibit no more skill or judgement than regular mobs; instead they rely solely on having a massive amount of life. Especially prevalent in dungeons, these enemies can take 5-10 minutes or more to kill, even for dedicated groups. There is nothing special about engaging them aside from the inordinate amount of time required to finish the fight, especially considering the rewards are typically on par with or worse than simply farming tons of standard mobs. Yes, there are some exceptions such as getting legendary precursors from chests after fighting the corrupted Orrian priests, but the (very low-chance) rewards bring no excitement to the fights themselves.

So here are the questions:
1) Would you prefer that veteran/champion/boss enemies have traits that make them unique in comparison to standard mobs instead of resorting to simple hp infusions?
2) If so, what would you do to set them apart in such a manner?

I don’t know the best way to address this issue, however I’d enjoy hearing everyone’s suggestions.

Usually they have more abilities then normal mobs, though they’re usually just larger versions. Killing champs should be worth the effort though.

Yeah, the PvE designers at ANet didn’t get the memo that 1000% base HP doesn’t make something 10 times harder. It just makes it take a lot longer.

HP scaling is a general problem in GW2. On one end of the spectrum you have normal mobs that die instantly as soon as they spawn during populated Dynamic Events and on the other end of the spectrum you have Champions and Bosses that take 5-10min of non-stop auto-shotting to kill.

We can just hope that ANet will iron out these issues over time. I wouldn’t expect too much for old content but the new stuff will probably improve in this regard.

Yeah i agree, champs should have more diverse and challenging abilities instead of huge hp but predictable movement. It just makes it boring not hard

Yeah, I would deeply enjoy seeing them improve bosses as they move forward. I don’t reminisce fondly about WoW often, but when I do it’s all about Karazhan. And my Dreadsteed quest chain.

Kill graveyard zerging while you’re at it, it cheapens the fights we already have.

i dont think they will address that, they ade everything that was possible to make GW2 a simple game, I just dont see them making any changes to make something more complex. the item system is the simplest possible, the skill system is simpler than offline games, the foes have no more then 2 or 3 abilities and so on. but I would really like to see more chalenging battles, as in TSW.

This is a no-brainer.

1) Make veteran/champion AI unique!—have them literally behave quite differently—and for the love of kittens, reduce HP!

2) Behave differently, interestingly; Attack one player, then quickly switch to another, have them run away from the players then leap back at the player farthest away. Have them stop mid-fight, jump to a high ledge, taunt the player, then jump attack back down on a random player…. The possibilities are endless.