Guild Wars 2

I keep wondering what the point of rallying is for, I’m currently banging my head against the wall battling the dragon boss in LS, and find that once I’m down I am dead. I don’t have the time to fully revive before the boss’ aoe attacks kill me. Why allow this at all if I can not find a spot to revive in peace. It just seems to add another aggravation to an already annoying fight.

My suggestion to this is one of three things:
1.) Allow me to revive through damage
2.) No rallying option, where down = death
3.) Rallying speed is increased

Another thing why am I the squishiest member of the team? I’m supposed to be the commander/hero of the story but it seems to me that I am just the member that drags everyone down, with constant downs and always getting focused by the horde of mobs arenanet seems to enjoy spawning at once.

The ranger #3 downed skill allows them to revive themselves from downed even if they’re still taking damage. But yes, for the most part, I agree that there should be something about the fight to ensure that it can finish downed players.

Given that the fight doesn’t reset on defeat anyway, they might as well send you straight back to the checkpoint on down.

You dont get the point of rallying because you arent doing that mission with a party.

Frebstyx.7058:

I keep wondering what the point of rallying is for, I’m currently banging my head against the wall battling the dragon boss in LS, and find that once I’m down I am dead. I don’t have the time to fully revive before the boss’ aoe attacks kill me. Why allow this at all if I can not find a spot to revive in peace. It just seems to add another aggravation to an already annoying fight.

My suggestion to this is one of three things:
1.) Allow me to revive through damage
2.) No rallying option, where down = death
3.) Rallying speed is increased

Another thing why am I the squishiest member of the team? I’m supposed to be the commander/hero of the story but it seems to me that I am just the member that drags everyone down, with constant downs and always getting focused by the horde of mobs arenanet seems to enjoy spawning at once.

Tell me if you are on EU or US and I will take you through the battle. I have about 1 1/2 hours to do it

Trying to rally while solo and under fire is pretty much a fruitless endeavor, unless your foe is within an inch of his life too and you manage to pull off last second kill.

I can relate. When I was trying to rally in that mission, with the boss constantly interrupting me, Rox yelled, “try using this…” and threw the Sacred Flame right on top of me. Meanwhile Braham yells “Boooooss!” and casts his protection bubble all the way on the other side of the area. Thanks guys, that really helped. :-P Get your behinds down here and rally me, you fools!

Wait till you fight the teragriff boss on challenge mote, lol.

Rallying is really pointless there.

Thanks all, managed to get through it finally! Hopefully Anet will possibly tweak things for the next LS update.

The fight is pretty easy but I can see how some classes would struggle. There seems to be nothing for example for Mesmers’ particular skills to bring to the fight.

End of the day, like most content, all you can do is swing your diamond sword… or staff… or dagger.

Wow…this thread seems very deja-vu-ish. I swear I’ve seen some of these posts before!

Maybe it’s just me.

I am thankful for the downed state, as I can usually recover from it. (But I’m a Ranger, so….)

Rallying was never meant to be a get out of jail free card, and I wouldn’t expect any changes to it.

The reason the 4th skill exists at all is because originally, that didn’t exist in the game. Sometimes you’d kill something at the same moment it killed you and you’d die anyway because there was no way to heal in the downed state. It was never meant to be used while you’re being attacked.

If you party there’s more value to it, because it gives others a chance to rez you (though in that fight, you probably should wait for an NPC to do it if they’re not dead).

But there’s no suggestion that you’re supposed to heal yourself through damage and I seriously doubt this will change.

tldr; don’t expect it to change because it’s working as intended

Seems odd that you would complain about rallying now when it has presumably seen you through at least a few fights on your way from level 1 (or whatever level rallying unlocks at now) to 80. It should have proven its worth to you several times over now, unless you leveled exclusively in EotM/PvP and always got stomped/spammed to death after being downed, thus never getting a chance to even try to rally.

Frebstyx.7058:

Another thing why am I the squishiest member of the team?

You could always try playing a full defensive warrior.

Are you tired of getting downed? Mad about it? Then try a full set of Nomad’s. By optimizing for defense, you will be able to easily outplay any encounter without having to worry about troublesome AoEs or other gimmicks.

Frebstyx.7058:

I keep wondering what the point of rallying is for, I’m currently banging my head against the wall battling the dragon boss in LS, and find that once I’m down I am dead. I don’t have the time to fully revive before the boss’ aoe attacks kill me. Why allow this at all if I can not find a spot to revive in peace. It just seems to add another aggravation to an already annoying fight.

Because it’s more effort to remove a core mechanic for only a single instance than it is to simple leave it in.

All the encounters seem to be designed around warriors or guards and they assume you have a constant heal tick or condi cleanse/heal/massive 20 second heal with massive dps and high armor, which is why other classes find some of these encounters hard.

This is one result of having no trinity- if they designed encounters around the squishies that have to retrait just to have any chance of getting through then warriors would all moan that the content is way too easy.

Simple solution is play guard or warrior and just blast through it.

Victory.2879:

All the encounters seem to be designed around warriors or guards and they assume you have a constant heal tick or condi cleanse/heal/massive 20 second heal with massive dps and high armor, which is why other classes find some of these encounters hard.

This is one result of having no trinity- if they designed encounters around the squishies that have to retrait just to have any chance of getting through then warriors would all moan that the content is way too easy.

Simple solution is play guard or warrior and just blast through it.

The warriors and guards do moan that the content is way too easy. lol

Vayne.8563:

Victory.2879:

All the encounters seem to be designed around warriors or guards and they assume you have a constant heal tick or condi cleanse/heal/massive 20 second heal with massive dps and high armor, which is why other classes find some of these encounters hard.

This is one result of having no trinity- if they designed encounters around the squishies that have to retrait just to have any chance of getting through then warriors would all moan that the content is way too easy.

Simple solution is play guard or warrior and just blast through it.

The warriors and guards do moan that the content is way too easy. lol

Well the later content I was struggling more with my zerker since doing more damage isn’t really beneficial. For example in the new Shadow of the Dragon fight it’s more about evading damage and following the tactics. The damage phase doesn’t seem to be a speed rush either.
However in the earlier content (Glint’s Lair) I had a lot easier time on my Zerker.
So I think it’s simply the changing mechanics. On launch the focus was simply on burning down the enemy as quickly as possible, with little need for tactics or positioning. With the move away from pure dps encounters we’re seeing that positioning and tactics is becoming more important and failure to correctly position or dodge carriers a heavier health loss meaning that glass cannons are less ideal.
Also I was able to do it all pretty easily on my Necro and Ranger, since both have a bit of vitality on them.

Victory.2879:

All the encounters seem to be designed around warriors or guards and they assume you have a constant heal tick or condi cleanse/heal/massive 20 second heal with massive dps and high armor, which is why other classes find some of these encounters hard.

I had no issue running the latest story missions on my zerker engi. I found them easy in fact, once I figured out the shortcuts for those that had them.

Maximus Delion.8719:

Trying to rally while solo and under fire is pretty much a fruitless endeavor, unless your foe is within an inch of his life too and you manage to pull off last second kill.

I can relate. When I was trying to rally in that mission, with the boss constantly interrupting me, Rox yelled, “try using this…” and threw the Sacred Flame right on top of me. Meanwhile Braham yells “Boooooss!” and casts his protection bubble all the way on the other side of the area. Thanks guys, that really helped. :-P Get your behinds down here and rally me, you fools!

Makes you wonder what the “I” in AI stands for, right? XD

Pandaman.4758:

Seems odd that you would complain about rallying now when it has presumably seen you through at least a few fights on your way from level 1 (or whatever level rallying unlocks at now) to 80. It should have proven its worth to you several times over now, unless you leveled exclusively in EotM/PvP and always got stomped/spammed to death after being downed, thus never getting a chance to even try to rally.

I’m not talking about rallying in general, I like the way it works in the non instanced world, I was more referring to rallying whilst running the LS solo.
I quite often got downed and then had to wait 10-15 sec whilst the downed took my health before dying. What I wanted was to be able to use one of the 3 options I suggested in my first post to apply whilst running an LS instance without the other npc nearby to rally me.

I was playing on my ele, in valk/zerk gear, while probably not a good setup for soloing things, it’s really only good gear I have.

I seem to remember being rezzed by NPCs in many of the Living Stories, so the downed state still has a purpose, from my point of view.

Frebstyx.7058:

I’m not talking about rallying in general, I like the way it works in the non instanced world, I was more referring to rallying whilst running the LS solo.
I quite often got downed and then had to wait 10-15 sec whilst the downed took my health before dying. What I wanted was to be able to use one of the 3 options I suggested in my first post to apply whilst running an LS instance without the other npc nearby to rally me.

I was playing on my ele, in valk/zerk gear, while probably not a good setup for soloing things, it’s really only good gear I have.

Ahh, in which case I doubt it will happen. There’s really only one case in the game where skills work differently and that’s when moving between PvE and PvP, so for ANet to make downed skills work differently in instances they would probably either have to turn it into a PvP instance or create a whole new game mode specifically for instances just to let certain skills work differently.

I’m afraid your only real options would either grit your teeth and claw your way through the fight or gather some help.

All of the LS bosses have been incredibly annoying to me. They were clearly not balanced for soloing, which is pretty stupid if you ask me, since our character is supposedly the hero of the story. Basically everyone in my guild had to get help from someone else for this new one, and most of them are in full ascended and have been SUPER MLG MTN DEW PROS since GW1. I might just be terrible, but there is no way they all are.

I just love running around dodging kittenloads of AoE trying to light those kittening fires to earn a whole half second of DPS just to rinse and repeat. Or dodging AoE from above while trying not to get grabbed by a vine that can kill me within seconds to then dodge charges so I could get half a second of DPS and repeat. Or killing burrowing vines that throw out kittenloads of AoE while dodging more AoE cones just to get a whole 3 seconds of DPS. No really. It was so much fun. And I really loved having to leave the story to repair my armor and doing it all over again.

Seriously. I’m not even being sarcastic. SO. MUCH. FUN.

Yes I am exaggerating, but not one of those fights left me feeling anything but frustrated and wanting to tear my hair out. Even if the mechanics were pretty well done (like the last shadow of the dragon encounter) the balance for non-heavy classes leaves an incredible amount to be desired.

The choice seems to be either A.) Zombie it repeatedly and hope your armor (or your mind) doesn’t break before you actually win or
B.) Run with protection stats and spend 8 years fighting the bosses.
C.) Rage quit and watch the cinematic on YouTube.

idk, I loved the new bosses and would love to see them beefed up and put into dungeons (omg a Glint’s Lair dungeon pls).

Most people in my circles found them too easy and the new mechanics were refreshing. It was a nice change from the “stand here, DPS, and dodge to win” bosses from the first generation of dungeons and the “stay with the group and spam 1 for loot” playstyle of open world.

As for rallying, I’m having trouble understanding — does OP really want them to remove it? O.o

You can rally from damaging, you just need something nearby to kill. Plus in (most, not all) of the LS instances, the NPCs will pick you up if you go down.

I don’t see the problem. Is it just that they don’t like waiting a few extra seconds to die if there’s nothing around to rally off of / rez them?

The OP isn’t complaining about rallying in general, the complaint was about the final instance boss for episode 8, where if you go down while soloing, you have essentially no chance of recovering unless you’re a ranger, but the boss can’t finish you, so you have to sit around watching your toon get beaten to a pulp for 30 seconds before you can finally respawn.

It’s an incredibly frustrating experience if you don’t clear that fight first try.

And as I said before, mesmers are actually amazing for the last Shadow of the Dragon fight — if you work at it, your healing throughput can be utterly crazy, possibly higher than any other profession in the game.

evilunderling.9265:

The OP isn’t complaining about rallying in general, the complaint was about the final instance boss for episode 8, where if you go down while soloing, you have essentially no chance of recovering unless you’re a ranger, but the boss can’t finish you, so you have to sit around watching your toon get beaten to a pulp for 30 seconds before you can finally respawn.

It’s an incredibly frustrating experience if you don’t clear that fight first try.

Ah, I see. Hours of Lupi practice, waiting for the sweet release of the next AoE barrage, has numbed me to that particular frustration :P

Maybe there should be a downed skill to die on the spot?

Although I think PvPers sometimes like to leave people downed off-point since it can keep them out of the equation for longer than finishing them would.

I have never liked the Rallying mechanism. It’s only useful in some situations, and in other situations, it’s just a waste of time, since it’s impossible to rally during some encounters. It’s only really useful in groups.