Guild Wars 2

Consider all the other content in the game that is “melee friendly” and all the times you stack and melt stuff, making encounters faceroll.

Also consider that every profession has, as a game mechanic, the option to use melee or ranged weapons, often times in conjunction.

With all that considered, I think it’s preposterous top be asking for content that can be conquered with pure melee without difficulties cropping up. Meaning you can melee the new HoT mobs now it’s just not always easy as older mobs.

Hexinx.1872:

The smokescales, those kitten smokescales… especially the vets and up. I don’t mind the little ones as i will move or run once they start there attack rotation, but I wouldn’t stand a chance against any of the bigger meaner versions.

<— plays melee

Many of these mobs attack in a pattern. I use to have issues with vet smokescales, but once you learn their attack pattern they are manageable. They will always use their teleport first, whack them a couple of times. Then they immediately cast their smoke screen. back out of the smoke and stay on the edge, the idiot smokescales will follow you out of the smoke and you have a good many seconds to unload on them. usually this is enough, but if they go back into their rotation, rinse and repeat.

dekou.6012:

The only mobs that annoy me in HoT melee wise are the Mushroom King near the entry to TD and the bigger Arrowheads. The former has an annoying AoE damage ability that lasts through most of his fight and the latter roll around too much for your endurance to keep up. It leads to boring encounters, especially on my Daredevil, whose ranged options are crappy. It feels like they promote boring “11111111” gameplay instead of dynamic combat. Strangely enough, the shroom king spawned by the HP is much better than the one in TD.

While we’re discussing HoT mobs, how do people deal with Veteran Bristlebacks? They’re uncommon outside of Bristleback Chasm, but I find them really annoying to fight, since they just spam you to death with their ranged volley attack and have a ton of HP. You can reflect their attacks, but is there a way to deal with them without that? Their design seems to be lackluster.

Meh that description is also fit for smokescales, the frogs, most chak, rolling devils, champion rolling devils, anything that uses a rushing knockback as their default attack. Overall HoT mobs are not especially difficult but their design and implementation feel sloppy. They just hit harder and occasionally have a usable break bar. The Veteran Bristlebacks would be an example of occasionally usable break bar. You could unload every CC you have on it and the bar would still be there but it is not like it matters much since it will regen in a few seconds anyway. Having the attack is fine, having that as its only attack is bad design.

Zodiark.4985:

Hex.8341:

Ok, I guess there’s too many posts now that no one bothers read any replies so just ignore this thread. I know I’m not going to repeat myself over and over again when you can’t be bothered to read.

I do map completion on every class. People been complaing about thief forever.

The reality is if mob is easy, just pistol whip them. If mob is hard just stealth through them. Hero point and big events don’t really matter because you can’t solo them anyway. And weather you hit hit for low damage or high don’t matter anyway because you get credit either way.

Here’s the issue with your suggestion: Even if someone is playing a Thief, maybe they don’t prefer the pistol nor stealth. I for one find the pistol in any combination to be clunky and I’ve never used it. I also tend to dislike using stealth, as I am really bored with that thief cliche. I use the weapons and skills that I like, and would rather not be told “no, you must have these specific weapon combos and these specific skills in order to simply survive this map”. That then defeats the purpose of the “play how you want” mantra of GW2. And this is me speaking as a pure PvE’r, no experience in PvP or WvW at all (no interest in them).

AliamRationem.5172:

Boogiepop Void.6473:

My problem in HOT is the unavoidable attacks. For example when you engage onto a smokescale, it goes untargetable and teles to you, taking off half your health. Nothing you can do, be you melee or ranged, to avoid this. The Ogotl are similar in that they can go invis and hit you for large chunks of health while still invis and thus you can’t really avoid it. Your only hope against them is blocks or reflects, which makes it required to have at least one of those slotted in HOT maps even if they aren’t normally a part of your rotation.

Your difficulties are due to misunderstanding the way the mechanics work.

The smokescale teleport attack doesn’t work the way you think it does. It is not instant damage, but a series of rapid hits that occur only at very close range. The proper response to anticipate the move and block/evade most of the damage. The moment the smokescale teleports to you, dodge away. It will teleport again. Dodge away. After a few seconds the assault will end.

The smokescale’s next move is to drop a red circle on the ground. Attacks will miss while the smokescale is inside the circle (Note: Attacks will also miss when the smokescale is just outside the circle, too!). The move is to get out of the circle and force the smokescale to follow.

Smokescales have very low health. Once you’ve countered their moves you can take them down almost instantly (in fact, if you have a move that reliably hits for 10K plus you can just 1-shot them right off the bat).

For the stealth frogs, until you have the mastery unlocked you can’t see them. However, you can observe what they do when they reveal themselves.

One attack is an arrow volley, which you’ve seen unstealthed frogs and mordrem snipers use. They remain stationary and slowly rotate toward their target. Once they lock on, they fire in that direction a moment later. If you continuously move, the arrows will either miss or you may take one or two hits on the edge of the cone if you happen to be fairly close by.

The other attack is the close range stun, followed by insta-jib. They have to get into melee range to hit you with this attack, but their movement speed is slower in stealth. Stay moving and they won’t be able to catch you.

Once they reveal themselves, the frogs are much like the smokescales. They have low health and you should be able to take them down quickly.

Many enemies in the jungle work this way. You need to understand the mechanics, the timing, the animations. Once you get that down these guys are fodder.

Smokescales fall into the general issue with HOT which is that yes, you can dodge a bit, but the number of dodges needed to actually negate the incoming damage/status effects is greater than even the daredevil has available. If the attacks are dodgeable but you need 5 dodges to actually avoid the attack cycle, then the attacks are effectively undodgeable and all you are doing is a bit of mitigation. Even throwing in extra dodges from weapons and skills, it’s too much. And that’s ignoring the tendency of some of the enemies to which this applies to come in packs or to be near enough to each other that you tend to accidentally aggro the next one while dodging the attacks of the first or to take so long to deal with one that the one you already killed respawns behind you and instantly aggros (looking at you again Ogotl).

Boogiepop Void.6473:

AliamRationem.5172:

Boogiepop Void.6473:

My problem in HOT is the unavoidable attacks. For example when you engage onto a smokescale, it goes untargetable and teles to you, taking off half your health. Nothing you can do, be you melee or ranged, to avoid this. The Ogotl are similar in that they can go invis and hit you for large chunks of health while still invis and thus you can’t really avoid it. Your only hope against them is blocks or reflects, which makes it required to have at least one of those slotted in HOT maps even if they aren’t normally a part of your rotation.

Your difficulties are due to misunderstanding the way the mechanics work.

The smokescale teleport attack doesn’t work the way you think it does. It is not instant damage, but a series of rapid hits that occur only at very close range. The proper response to anticipate the move and block/evade most of the damage. The moment the smokescale teleports to you, dodge away. It will teleport again. Dodge away. After a few seconds the assault will end.

The smokescale’s next move is to drop a red circle on the ground. Attacks will miss while the smokescale is inside the circle (Note: Attacks will also miss when the smokescale is just outside the circle, too!). The move is to get out of the circle and force the smokescale to follow.

Smokescales have very low health. Once you’ve countered their moves you can take them down almost instantly (in fact, if you have a move that reliably hits for 10K plus you can just 1-shot them right off the bat).

For the stealth frogs, until you have the mastery unlocked you can’t see them. However, you can observe what they do when they reveal themselves.

One attack is an arrow volley, which you’ve seen unstealthed frogs and mordrem snipers use. They remain stationary and slowly rotate toward their target. Once they lock on, they fire in that direction a moment later. If you continuously move, the arrows will either miss or you may take one or two hits on the edge of the cone if you happen to be fairly close by.

The other attack is the close range stun, followed by insta-jib. They have to get into melee range to hit you with this attack, but their movement speed is slower in stealth. Stay moving and they won’t be able to catch you.

Once they reveal themselves, the frogs are much like the smokescales. They have low health and you should be able to take them down quickly.

Many enemies in the jungle work this way. You need to understand the mechanics, the timing, the animations. Once you get that down these guys are fodder.

Smokescales fall into the general issue with HOT which is that yes, you can dodge a bit, but the number of dodges needed to actually negate the incoming damage/status effects is greater than even the daredevil has available. If the attacks are dodgeable but you need 5 dodges to actually avoid the attack cycle, then the attacks are effectively undodgeable and all you are doing is a bit of mitigation. Even throwing in extra dodges from weapons and skills, it’s too much. And that’s ignoring the tendency of some of the enemies to which this applies to come in packs or to be near enough to each other that you tend to accidentally aggro the next one while dodging the attacks of the first or to take so long to deal with one that the one you already killed respawns behind you and instantly aggros (looking at you again Ogotl).

I agree. I really wish that dodging could be tweaked, because only two dodges until stamina replenishes is completely unrealistic in a lot of situations, especially for classes that don’t have as many dodging skills as others. It makes me laugh a bit when people suggest “Hey, just dodge, noob”, when it boils down to the question of “Yeah, but how am I supposed to dodge that often?”.

Moyayuki.3619:

Zodiark.4985:

Hex.8341:

Ok, I guess there’s too many posts now that no one bothers read any replies so just ignore this thread. I know I’m not going to repeat myself over and over again when you can’t be bothered to read.

I do map completion on every class. People been complaing about thief forever.

The reality is if mob is easy, just pistol whip them. If mob is hard just stealth through them. Hero point and big events don’t really matter because you can’t solo them anyway. And weather you hit hit for low damage or high don’t matter anyway because you get credit either way.

Here’s the issue with your suggestion: Even if someone is playing a Thief, maybe they don’t prefer the pistol nor stealth. I for one find the pistol in any combination to be clunky and I’ve never used it. I also tend to dislike using stealth, as I am really bored with that thief cliche. I use the weapons and skills that I like, and would rather not be told “no, you must have these specific weapon combos and these specific skills in order to simply survive this map”. That then defeats the purpose of the “play how you want” mantra of GW2. And this is me speaking as a pure PvE’r, no experience in PvP or WvW at all (no interest in them).

Except that isn’t true. Having access to only a melee weapon set is an unnecessary handicap, but it isn’t impossible. You’ll likely die to things that a more versatile playstyle can roll over without issue. That’s all.

Nobody is saying you must use a specific weapon set. I’ve done well on my daredevil with d/p, p/p, and staff. I know most thieves prefer to run shortbow, and s/p is about as similar to d/p as a weapon set can get, so I’m sure that works, too. I’ve even heard of d/d condi builds doing well in open world HoT. So I think everything works.

Traits are the same way. I personally find it difficult to give up daredevil, but I could certainly adjust my other trait lines. I typically run DD/CS/DA, but DD/Tr/DA is good, too. And I know some thieves that run open world using DD with acro.

So do it your way. Like everyone else, you will probably have to make some adjustments you wouldn’t have had to make outside of HoT. So what? That doesn’t mean you’re locked into a specific build.

AliamRationem.5172:

Moyayuki.3619:

Zodiark.4985:

Hex.8341:

Ok, I guess there’s too many posts now that no one bothers read any replies so just ignore this thread. I know I’m not going to repeat myself over and over again when you can’t be bothered to read.

I do map completion on every class. People been complaing about thief forever.

The reality is if mob is easy, just pistol whip them. If mob is hard just stealth through them. Hero point and big events don’t really matter because you can’t solo them anyway. And weather you hit hit for low damage or high don’t matter anyway because you get credit either way.

Here’s the issue with your suggestion: Even if someone is playing a Thief, maybe they don’t prefer the pistol nor stealth. I for one find the pistol in any combination to be clunky and I’ve never used it. I also tend to dislike using stealth, as I am really bored with that thief cliche. I use the weapons and skills that I like, and would rather not be told “no, you must have these specific weapon combos and these specific skills in order to simply survive this map”. That then defeats the purpose of the “play how you want” mantra of GW2. And this is me speaking as a pure PvE’r, no experience in PvP or WvW at all (no interest in them).

Except that isn’t true. Having access to only a melee weapon set is an unnecessary handicap, but it isn’t impossible. You’ll likely die to things that a more versatile playstyle can roll over without issue. That’s all.

Nobody is saying you must use a specific weapon set. I’ve done well on my daredevil with d/p, p/p, and staff. I know most thieves prefer to run shortbow, and s/p is about as similar to d/p as a weapon set can get, so I’m sure that works, too. I’ve even heard of d/d condi builds doing well in open world HoT. So I think everything works.

Traits are the same way. I personally find it difficult to give up daredevil, but I could certainly adjust my other trait lines. I typically run DD/CS/DA, but DD/Tr/DA is good, too. And I know some thieves that run open world using DD with acro.

So do it your way. Like everyone else, you will probably have to make some adjustments you wouldn’t have had to make outside of HoT. So what? That doesn’t mean you’re locked into a specific build.

I think when my Thief does eventually hit 80, I may use Staff and Shortbow. Hopefully it will be viable for HoT. Don’t know much about Daredevil Staff, but it sure is an interesting idea for my toon. Using D/D for PvE so far, though, since it works well enough for exploration and Personal Story stuff.

Moyayuki.3619:

Boogiepop Void.6473:

AliamRationem.5172:

Boogiepop Void.6473:

My problem in HOT is the unavoidable attacks. For example when you engage onto a smokescale, it goes untargetable and teles to you, taking off half your health. Nothing you can do, be you melee or ranged, to avoid this. The Ogotl are similar in that they can go invis and hit you for large chunks of health while still invis and thus you can’t really avoid it. Your only hope against them is blocks or reflects, which makes it required to have at least one of those slotted in HOT maps even if they aren’t normally a part of your rotation.

Your difficulties are due to misunderstanding the way the mechanics work.

The smokescale teleport attack doesn’t work the way you think it does. It is not instant damage, but a series of rapid hits that occur only at very close range. The proper response to anticipate the move and block/evade most of the damage. The moment the smokescale teleports to you, dodge away. It will teleport again. Dodge away. After a few seconds the assault will end.

The smokescale’s next move is to drop a red circle on the ground. Attacks will miss while the smokescale is inside the circle (Note: Attacks will also miss when the smokescale is just outside the circle, too!). The move is to get out of the circle and force the smokescale to follow.

Smokescales have very low health. Once you’ve countered their moves you can take them down almost instantly (in fact, if you have a move that reliably hits for 10K plus you can just 1-shot them right off the bat).

For the stealth frogs, until you have the mastery unlocked you can’t see them. However, you can observe what they do when they reveal themselves.

One attack is an arrow volley, which you’ve seen unstealthed frogs and mordrem snipers use. They remain stationary and slowly rotate toward their target. Once they lock on, they fire in that direction a moment later. If you continuously move, the arrows will either miss or you may take one or two hits on the edge of the cone if you happen to be fairly close by.

The other attack is the close range stun, followed by insta-jib. They have to get into melee range to hit you with this attack, but their movement speed is slower in stealth. Stay moving and they won’t be able to catch you.

Once they reveal themselves, the frogs are much like the smokescales. They have low health and you should be able to take them down quickly.

Many enemies in the jungle work this way. You need to understand the mechanics, the timing, the animations. Once you get that down these guys are fodder.

Smokescales fall into the general issue with HOT which is that yes, you can dodge a bit, but the number of dodges needed to actually negate the incoming damage/status effects is greater than even the daredevil has available. If the attacks are dodgeable but you need 5 dodges to actually avoid the attack cycle, then the attacks are effectively undodgeable and all you are doing is a bit of mitigation. Even throwing in extra dodges from weapons and skills, it’s too much. And that’s ignoring the tendency of some of the enemies to which this applies to come in packs or to be near enough to each other that you tend to accidentally aggro the next one while dodging the attacks of the first or to take so long to deal with one that the one you already killed respawns behind you and instantly aggros (looking at you again Ogotl).

I agree. I really wish that dodging could be tweaked, because only two dodges until stamina replenishes is completely unrealistic in a lot of situations, especially for classes that don’t have as many dodging skills as others. It makes me laugh a bit when people suggest “Hey, just dodge, noob”, when it boils down to the question of “Yeah, but how am I supposed to dodge that often?”.

You have other abilities besides dodge. Take a look at your available utilities. I play a daredevil, so dodging comes easy. But even with endless dodging, adding bandit’s defense (stun break + block) to my bar was a real life-saver for me. All classes have multiple ways to avoid damage as well as replenish health. Dig through your toolkit. The answer is there.

Moyayuki.3619:

AliamRationem.5172:

Moyayuki.3619:

Zodiark.4985:

Hex.8341:

Ok, I guess there’s too many posts now that no one bothers read any replies so just ignore this thread. I know I’m not going to repeat myself over and over again when you can’t be bothered to read.

I do map completion on every class. People been complaing about thief forever.

The reality is if mob is easy, just pistol whip them. If mob is hard just stealth through them. Hero point and big events don’t really matter because you can’t solo them anyway. And weather you hit hit for low damage or high don’t matter anyway because you get credit either way.

Here’s the issue with your suggestion: Even if someone is playing a Thief, maybe they don’t prefer the pistol nor stealth. I for one find the pistol in any combination to be clunky and I’ve never used it. I also tend to dislike using stealth, as I am really bored with that thief cliche. I use the weapons and skills that I like, and would rather not be told “no, you must have these specific weapon combos and these specific skills in order to simply survive this map”. That then defeats the purpose of the “play how you want” mantra of GW2. And this is me speaking as a pure PvE’r, no experience in PvP or WvW at all (no interest in them).

Except that isn’t true. Having access to only a melee weapon set is an unnecessary handicap, but it isn’t impossible. You’ll likely die to things that a more versatile playstyle can roll over without issue. That’s all.

Nobody is saying you must use a specific weapon set. I’ve done well on my daredevil with d/p, p/p, and staff. I know most thieves prefer to run shortbow, and s/p is about as similar to d/p as a weapon set can get, so I’m sure that works, too. I’ve even heard of d/d condi builds doing well in open world HoT. So I think everything works.

Traits are the same way. I personally find it difficult to give up daredevil, but I could certainly adjust my other trait lines. I typically run DD/CS/DA, but DD/Tr/DA is good, too. And I know some thieves that run open world using DD with acro.

So do it your way. Like everyone else, you will probably have to make some adjustments you wouldn’t have had to make outside of HoT. So what? That doesn’t mean you’re locked into a specific build.

I think when my Thief does eventually hit 80, I may use Staff and Shortbow. Hopefully it will be viable for HoT. Don’t know much about Daredevil Staff, but it sure is an interesting idea for my toon. Using D/D for PvE so far, though, since it works well enough for exploration and Personal Story stuff.

Oh don’t worry. Staff is more than viable. All of your attacks hit 3-5 targets and hit HARD! You have access to weakness, blind, limited projectile reflect, as well as a 600 range gap closer with partial evade coverage that also hits like a truck against 5 targets. Pair it with a ranged weapon (I use p/p) and you’ll be a killing machine in open world HoT!

Hex.8341:

I just came back to the game, jumped into HoT content on my thief and every single mob in every zone is spamming aoe crap, running around and over you etc.

Who the hell thought it was a great idea to make the game 20x harder for melee characters while every single ranged can just run around in circles without any danger at all?

This is just garbage and no, it’s not a “l2p” issue, I’m not dying constantly or anything, it’s just unnecessarily harder to play melee, especially a squishy one like Thief. No wonder no one wants Thiefs in groups because playing one well is easily 10x harder than an Ele or Engi just standing there without a care in the world while doing the occasional dodge.

Stupid game design is stupid.

OP, Know your enemies cause not knowing them it’s actually the one that makes you look stupid not the design.

Boogiepop Void.6473:

My problem in HOT is the unavoidable attacks. For example when you engage onto a smokescale, it goes untargetable and teles to you, taking off half your health. Nothing you can do, be you melee or ranged, to avoid this. The Ogotl are similar in that they can go invis and hit you for large chunks of health while still invis and thus you can’t really avoid it. Your only hope against them is blocks or reflects, which makes it required to have at least one of those slotted in HOT maps even if they aren’t normally a part of your rotation.

Or, you know, dodge. Which is a defensive tool everyone has access to, and is exactly why they gave those abilities to the HoT maps cooldows which roughly align with the amount of time required to recharge enough endurance to dodge again.

If you’re taking half of your Hp from a smokescale, you either weren’t paying attention and aggro’d it while fighting something else, you are just plain wasting your best defensive tool for non-defensive reasons, or you’re deliberately pulling more mobs than your build is designed to handle solo.

PopeUrban.2578:

Boogiepop Void.6473:

My problem in HOT is the unavoidable attacks. For example when you engage onto a smokescale, it goes untargetable and teles to you, taking off half your health. Nothing you can do, be you melee or ranged, to avoid this. The Ogotl are similar in that they can go invis and hit you for large chunks of health while still invis and thus you can’t really avoid it. Your only hope against them is blocks or reflects, which makes it required to have at least one of those slotted in HOT maps even if they aren’t normally a part of your rotation.

Or, you know, dodge. Which is a defensive tool everyone has access to, and is exactly why they gave those abilities to the HoT maps cooldows which roughly align with the amount of time required to recharge enough endurance to dodge again.

If you’re taking half of your Hp from a smokescale, you either weren’t paying attention and aggro’d it while fighting something else, you are just plain wasting your best defensive tool for non-defensive reasons, or you’re deliberately pulling more mobs than your build is designed to handle solo.

To be fair, there are events where multiple smokescales appear, and they can aggro onto the same target courtesy of ANet aggro mechanics, which seem to be either not or at least poorly understood by most players. The proper thing to do as a player when that happens is to ask what one did to get so much hate.

What I believe to be the source of so much HoT hate from players results from a perfect storm which seems to happen way too often.

• Most of the events seem to be designed for multiple players. There’s nothing wrong with this, as long as there are multiple players.
• Megaserver was designed with the intent that there would be a much greater likelihood there would be multiple players.
• Players following the path of least resistance tend to stack certain maps, leaving other copies short on players, essentially subverting the intent of megaserver design.
• A lot of players just engage with content when they see it. They have the expectation, fostered by core, that this is a viable approach. In HoT, the skill threshold to get away with this is higher (much higher if mob numbers are great enough).

All of which results in situations where players can get overwhelmed by mob numbers. I see it every time I go into HoT unless I take advantage of the taxi workaround.

Moyayuki.3619:

Zodiark.4985:

Hex.8341:

Ok, I guess there’s too many posts now that no one bothers read any replies so just ignore this thread. I know I’m not going to repeat myself over and over again when you can’t be bothered to read.

I do map completion on every class. People been complaing about thief forever.

The reality is if mob is easy, just pistol whip them. If mob is hard just stealth through them. Hero point and big events don’t really matter because you can’t solo them anyway. And weather you hit hit for low damage or high don’t matter anyway because you get credit either way.

Here’s the issue with your suggestion: Even if someone is playing a Thief, maybe they don’t prefer the pistol nor stealth. I for one find the pistol in any combination to be clunky and I’ve never used it. I also tend to dislike using stealth, as I am really bored with that thief cliche. I use the weapons and skills that I like, and would rather not be told “no, you must have these specific weapon combos and these specific skills in order to simply survive this map”. That then defeats the purpose of the “play how you want” mantra of GW2. And this is me speaking as a pure PvE’r, no experience in PvP or WvW at all (no interest in them).

I think that’s the reality of the game. Some build are just better in certain situation.

For me personally I just switch builds and weapon when needed. I think the OP are complaining about killing too slow with short bow on thief. I personally use pistol pistol.

And for stealth, I dont’ have it most of the time, I just switch to it when I need it and switch back.

And actually most of the time I actually do have range weapon as my 2nd set no matter what I’m playing in open world pve. I have pistol pistol on thief, and rifle on warrior.

I just wanna say that i remember this exact conversation in regards to vanilla and wotlk raids. The answer: Well, you learn how to play your class and you learn the encounter well enough to avoid getting downed from being in melee range.

The same applies to most MMO games now. You pick a role, master the role, then you do encounters, and learn to master those encounters.

“It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.” – Sun Tzu, Art of War, Chapter 3 (Strategic Attack)

While melee is certainly doable, the mechanics of HoT definitely promote range. I soloed the champions HP’s (before they got nerfed due to the monstrous difficulty) in HoT on a poorly-geared alternate thief (core thief, mind you) using P/P with almost no issues. D/D made things a lot more difficult for next to no reason.

I actually AFK’ed some of the fights on my ranger, though that’s more or a pet issue than anything, as the pet could go a solid few minutes of facetanking hits without dying.

HoT isn’t friendly to melee at all, but it isn’t impossible. This is more along the lines of the design of the monsters just being poor (big surprise here /s) than anything, though.

Risk vs reward.

Melee does significantly more DPS than just about every ranged option.

It’s not stupid game design, that’s how it should be. Certain fights I switch to range because I’m not comfortable getting up close and personal.

Its not necessarily melee unfriendly, its unfriendly to some classes due to game play design. I play melee rev, sword and staff. I have little to no problems and can solo majority of hero points. GL doing the same with thief. Its even easier on ranger, and not due to range, but due to having a large pool punching bag that mobs keep attacking and you can switch every 15 secs.

Generally classes with high sustain ability do well in HoT. Classes that do not, do not do well in HoT.

IndigoSundown.5419:

PopeUrban.2578:

Boogiepop Void.6473:

My problem in HOT is the unavoidable attacks. For example when you engage onto a smokescale, it goes untargetable and teles to you, taking off half your health. Nothing you can do, be you melee or ranged, to avoid this. The Ogotl are similar in that they can go invis and hit you for large chunks of health while still invis and thus you can’t really avoid it. Your only hope against them is blocks or reflects, which makes it required to have at least one of those slotted in HOT maps even if they aren’t normally a part of your rotation.

Or, you know, dodge. Which is a defensive tool everyone has access to, and is exactly why they gave those abilities to the HoT maps cooldows which roughly align with the amount of time required to recharge enough endurance to dodge again.

If you’re taking half of your Hp from a smokescale, you either weren’t paying attention and aggro’d it while fighting something else, you are just plain wasting your best defensive tool for non-defensive reasons, or you’re deliberately pulling more mobs than your build is designed to handle solo.

To be fair, there are events where multiple smokescales appear, and they can aggro onto the same target courtesy of ANet aggro mechanics, which seem to be either not or at least poorly understood by most players. The proper thing to do as a player when that happens is to ask what one did to get so much hate.

What I believe to be the source of so much HoT hate from players results from a perfect storm which seems to happen way to often.

• Most of the events seem to be designed for multiple players. There’s nothing wrong with this, as long as there are multiple players.
• Megaserver was designed with the intent that there would be a much greater likelihood there would be multiple players.
• Players following the path of least resistance tend to stack certain maps, leaving other copies short on players, essentially subverting the intent of megaserver design.
• A lot of players just engage with content when they see it. They have the expectation, fostered by core, that this is a viable approach. In HoT, the skill threshold to get away with this is higher (much higher if mob numbers are great enough).

All of which results in situations where players can get overwhelmed by mob numbers. I see it every time I go into HoT unless I take advantage of the taxi workaround.

That seems a much more honest appraisal of the issue. While I personally enjoy the combat in HoT and have progressed immensely to the point where things I once thought impossible (like effortlessly taking down a veteran smokescale along with a pack of pocket raptors on my glass thief when either enemy by itself would have destroyed me my first day in the jungle!) are now routine, I realize that not everyone has my level of patience and the learning curve is what it is for the individual.

The good news is that the April patch appears to have addressed some of the concern, as evidenced (anecdotally) by a strong showing of returning players learning their way around the jungle and a decidedly more positive shift in the attitude regarding HoT on the forums. Whether or not they ultimately like what they return to is a question that remains to be answered.

I’m hoping so, as HoT is exactly the sort of open world content I’m interested in and I’m enjoying the raids as well. I hope they can make further tweaks to systems such as the megaserver and maps to aid players in navigation and completing objectives.

otto.5684:

Its not necessarily melee unfriendly, its unfriendly to some classes due to game play design. I play melee rev, sword and staff. I have little to no problems and can solo majority of hero points. GL doing the same with thief. Its even easier on ranger, and not due to range, but due to having a large pool punching bag that mobs keep attacking and you can switch every 15 secs.

Generally classes with high sustain ability do well in HoT. Classes that do not, do not do well in HoT.

But thief does have high sustain. Daredevil has the ability to disengage at will, avoiding all damage in the process. Run invigorating precision in the crit strikes line and go glass. You will heal far more with this trait than any dedicated healing skill we have available. If your heal is on cooldown and you take a damage spike, disengage by dodging away with unhindered combat. If you stay on the move, you should be able to avoid damage indefinitely against most enemies – even champions. Re-engage at melee range when you have your heal ready to cover you in case you make a mistake.

The rest comes down to timing and dealing properly with the mechanics. The better job you do with this, the less often you will have to disengage, the faster enemies will die, and the fewer opportunities for you to make a mistake.

Once you get it down, berserker daredevil can be extremely fast, powerful, and difficult to kill in open world HoT. That includes soloing hero point champions like the arrowhead, mushroom king, chak, and vinetooth in AB or event chains with legendary bosses like Jaka Itzel and Faren’s Flyer in VB.

PopeUrban.2578:

Or, you know, dodge. Which is a defensive tool everyone has access to, and is exactly why they gave those abilities to the HoT maps cooldows which roughly align with the amount of time required to recharge enough endurance to dodge again.

If you’re taking half of your Hp from a smokescale, you either weren’t paying attention and aggro’d it while fighting something else, you are just plain wasting your best defensive tool for non-defensive reasons, or you’re deliberately pulling more mobs than your build is designed to handle solo.

I don’t entirely agree. With HoT in general, there’s some lazy and overpowered mob designs. Not to say that dodge isn’t effective, but when it takes roughly 10 seconds to get a dodge back, and their autoattacks are every 3 seconds, you’d best finish that fight in 8 seconds, or you’re going to get slapped.

With the specific case of smokescales, even dodging does not prevent the damage, because the skill lasts longer than the duration of a dodge. So you either eat some of the damage, or you blow your available dodges preventing it. They’re not the only critter to do something like that, either.

Which is where Toughness/Vitality and defense skills come into play, of course. Blocks, positioning, Aegis and whatnot can mitigate anticipated damage. HoT was designed to shake up the full-zerk meta, and it certainly does that. If your skills are top notch, you can keep full damage specs and still come out with just a few scratches. Everyone else is going to have to deal with a few dings and actually using their healing skills more often. (Now if only ANet could make healing power worth it…)

Rauderi.8706:

PopeUrban.2578:

Or, you know, dodge. Which is a defensive tool everyone has access to, and is exactly why they gave those abilities to the HoT maps cooldows which roughly align with the amount of time required to recharge enough endurance to dodge again.

If you’re taking half of your Hp from a smokescale, you either weren’t paying attention and aggro’d it while fighting something else, you are just plain wasting your best defensive tool for non-defensive reasons, or you’re deliberately pulling more mobs than your build is designed to handle solo.

I don’t entirely agree. With HoT in general, there’s some lazy and overpowered mob designs. Not to say that dodge isn’t effective, but when it takes roughly 10 seconds to get a dodge back, and their autoattacks are every 3 seconds, you’d best finish that fight in 8 seconds, or you’re going to get slapped.

With the specific case of smokescales, even dodging does not prevent the damage, because the skill lasts longer than the duration of a dodge. So you either eat some of the damage, or you blow your available dodges preventing it. They’re not the only critter to do something like that, either.

Which is where Toughness/Vitality and defense skills come into play, of course. Blocks, positioning, Aegis and whatnot can mitigate anticipated damage. HoT was designed to shake up the full-zerk meta, and it certainly does that. If your skills are top notch, you can keep full damage specs and still come out with just a few scratches. Everyone else is going to have to deal with a few dings and actually using their healing skills more often. (Now if only ANet could make healing power worth it…)

Again, you think you understand smokescale mechanics but you don’t and that’s why you’re having trouble. Their damaging attack only deals damage at very close range. They will teleport to you more than once, but your options are not limited to dodging. You can block it. You can CC them. The only thing you can’t do is stand there and eat the damage.

On my thief I can dodge. I can block and counter with bandit’s defense. I can CC with impact strike and more. But I can’t stand there, soak the damage, and expect to survive. You see?

Edit: Sorry, think I mixed up two people in this thread. I see you’re advocating different tactics, not pointing out how impossible they are to counter. My mistake!

AliamRationem.5172:

Edit: Sorry, think I mixed up two people in this thread. I see you’re advocating different tactics, not pointing out how impossible they are to counter. My mistake!

They’re actually pretty easy. (Unless you use turrets or other idiot minions that don’t move. -_-) I wouldn’t consider them melee-unfriendly to a huge degree, either.
See red circle, move out of red circle. Like just about every other mob in the game. :P

And they’re kind of pocket-raptory level of squishy, and similarly damaging. One smokescale isn’t a huge issue, and I’m generally okay with them. (The veteran with 2-3 puppies on the other hand…)
Overall, I give smokescales a thumbs-up. (It’d be two thumbs up if their cooldowns were a wee longer, but eh. :P)

Just going to note here that having to use the elite to survive (which is the majority, though not all, of what is being said here) is not a good thing. Some people want to have some choice in how they play and build. Not saying there can’t be optimal vs suboptimal, but optimal vs dead is not good design.

Boogiepop Void.6473:

Just going to note here that having to use the elite to survive (which is the majority, though not all, of what is being said here) is not a good thing. Some people want to have some choice in how they play and build. Not saying there can’t be optimal vs suboptimal, but optimal vs dead is not good design.

That is a massive flaw in HoT as a whole. They introduced the elite spec system, which is a long term design to create build diversity by making it easier for them to balance adding new skills, traits and weapons. They then only added one elite spec so there are actually less choices since elite specs need to be superior to base specs (since you can stack them with any base spec) and thus the whole design is balanced around players using one of exactly one option.

I blame revnant. Should have put the time and effort that went in to designing the class with the least build diversity in to actually increasing build diversity for the existing ones.

PopeUrban.2578:

Boogiepop Void.6473:

Just going to note here that having to use the elite to survive (which is the majority, though not all, of what is being said here) is not a good thing. Some people want to have some choice in how they play and build. Not saying there can’t be optimal vs suboptimal, but optimal vs dead is not good design.

That is a massive flaw in HoT as a whole. They introduced the elite spec system, which is a long term design to create build diversity by making it easier for them to balance adding new skills, traits and weapons. They then only added one elite spec so there are actually less choices since elite specs need to be superior to base specs (since you can stack them with any base spec) and thus the whole design is balanced around players using one of exactly one option.

I blame revnant. Should have put the time and effort that went in to designing the class with the least build diversity in to actually increasing build diversity for the existing ones.

On the topic of Elite specs and builds (I do agree with your comments), I feel restricted just by the fact that we have the specialization system, and can only pick three to have equipped in our build. So my Elite spec takes up space where another useful one (for different reasons) could have gone, but the Elite gives other benefits I can’t easily let go of. The 3-specs for a build makes me have to make tough decisions: sacrifice survival for damage? Heal more, or run faster? Etc. Quite frustrating to say the least.

Moyayuki.3619:

The 3-specs for a build makes me have to make tough decisions: sacrifice survival for damage? Heal more, or run faster? Etc. Quite frustrating to say the least.

What you are describing is “opportunity cost.” You cannot have build diversity in games without opportunity cost. If anything, this game needs more, not less.