Guild Wars 2

I’m curious as to why world boss fights, specifically Shatterer and Teq, are not like Claw of Jormag? To be less vague, I’ll explain the fight with CoJ.

When CoJ comes in, he is shot down with Flak Cannons (cool). The NPC sound like they’re participating and helping the players in the fight and people even use the bazooka’s there because you have to stay away from him until that ice wall comes down. He’s stunned, everyone rushes in and wails on him til the stun wears off, then he takes flight again. This is repeated until his HP gets low and finally his wings are completely blown off and he crashes (cool).

Second Phase, mobs on the cliffside are constantly flinging stuff at players all while we try to burn down ice pillars and fight off champions; others are firing at CoJ with the bazooka’s and we’re all being feared by the roar. First one champion, then two at a time until CoJ is finally put down. Fun fight.

I will admit that this fight is, like the others, repetitive and you know what’s going to happen after you’ve done it once. But I also have to say that I love this fight more than any other in the game because it is more interactive both with the NPC’s and with other players. It actually feels like a low level raid from a game like Everquest 2 or even WoW.

Now we look at Shatterer and Teq. They do have interesting mechanics but they are never used. Everyone stands basically in the same spot every time (even the bosses), press 1 and then go make a sandwich til the fight is over. The only difference between kitten and Teq is that Teq fears so you have to reset your position and press 1 again. These fights are boring. The bosses are basically constructs with no other interesting features and really massive HP pools; they are nothing but damage sponges.

Fire Ele in Metrica Province used to be so strong it was almost annoying to fight because of all of the adds and AE on the ground. This was eventually nerfed into the ground and now it’s the same as Teq and Shatterer with the exception that you have to move a little to the left or right to get out of the few red circles that appear.

So I have to ask, why can’t world bosses be more like Claw of Jormag? The bosses move, the NPC’s seem to interact more with the players and the mechanics are actually useful? For Teq, I’ve only ever seen the laser fired once and that was because I was the one to fire it for the the achievement. I never see the cannons used for Shatterer. Fire Ele just gets the old tank and spank; Wurm is the same; Shadow Behemoth as well.

I can’t say that I have participated in the Golem or the few others that offer a chest but these events are my most frequent visited ones and I can’t help but wonder why they are so boring and can’t be changed. This really makes me worry for future expansions and bosses as well. Even Zhaitan, with all of the hype from the story, is said to be extreme disappointment. (Note that I’ve never completed the story yet so I can’t speak for myself.)

The bosses need to move, teleport, or something—anything to make them involve the player more than just standing in one spot and going afk after pressing auto-attack. Does anyone else think these things need to be changed?

This has been subject to a huge debate in another (which I cant find annoyingly)

The upshot is, the devs are working as a longer term goal of overhauling some of the bosses to be more exciting. I suspect the staticness of the bosses is a coding/bandwidth/technical issue, but it is universally agreed between devs and community that most of the bosses need changing.

On the plus side, they still look awesome!

We are talking about boss from different levels of the game. But i do agree some tweaking needs to be done as some boss are way too hard (Melandru with less than 10 people…. lol, he healed to full life over a dozen times yesterday) and some are way too easy (I soloed Mark 2 Golem a few weeks back).

They need to probably add a couple of different attack scenarios on how the boss attacks so that it doesn’t get boring after a while and keeps players changing their strategy.

Melandru is an odd one, which i have yet to understand. Its a boss our server usually ends up doing with half a dozen ppl. Sometimes he morphs us and its a roll over, but other times we get the morph phases and its a nightmare.

The biggest issue is that bosses like Grenth which require coordination and are challenging and lyssa whivh needs coordination too, just get ignored. Finding that balance between difficulty and the community not ignoring the bosses will quite the challenge for the devs

I agree the CoJ is the most fun dragon fight…but you also have to look at the level of the area…CoJ is the only level 80 dragon fight. Teq is the next in line in terms of the level of the area, not as intense as CoJ but still fears you, has some strong poison, lots of other mobs, etc. The shatter is next, with less, but rightfully so as it’s an even lower level. You can’t make the FE and the Wurm too hard cause it’s in a starter zone.

I do think they should add some aoe attacks to the wurm and the maw though, the FE and the SB both have aoe (SB’s aoe could stand to get buffed a tad up to the FE’s level) and even though it’s an auto 1 fest at least with the FE you have to move a bit.

For the dragons I wish they would add one more level 80 dragon.

UrMom.4205:

I agree the CoJ is the most fun dragon fight…but you also have to look at the level of the area…CoJ is the only level 80 dragon fight. Teq is the next in line in terms of the level of the area, not as intense as CoJ but still fears you, has some strong poison, lots of other mobs, etc. The shatter is next, with less, but rightfully so as it’s an even lower level. You can’t make the FE and the Wurm too hard cause it’s in a starter zone.

IMO it’s not a matter and problem of difficulty, but a problem of mechanics. You don’t need a ton of AoE to make boss interesting, which CoJ illustrates. CoJ is not hard at all in a matter of fact.

Behemot for instance has a moment when he open portals to the Underworld spawning adds and beeing invulnerable himself. But why is this happening only once? Why can’t the portals spawn all the time and the more there is, the more adds are spawned, the more toughness/healing is given to Behe?

Why do we need a laser at Teq? What are those turrets all around for? At this moment there’s no point for them. But if… if Teq in his “flying move” was completely invulnerable to melee and ranged attacks (beeing out of range simply), at the same time spawning a hell of adds, and AoEing the poison, and the laser was the only way to shoot him down? And turrets were the core of defence against adds?

Golem could use a simple knockback, or some other kind of mini-mechanic (need to overcharge it from the control room to shrug off his energy shields? or stun him for a while?). The same concerns all the world bosses around – they’re boring not because they’re not one-hitting people. Bosses do not have to be difficult. They have to be, like the OP stated, player-engaging.

dadamowsky.4692:

UrMom.4205:

I agree the CoJ is the most fun dragon fight…but you also have to look at the level of the area…CoJ is the only level 80 dragon fight. Teq is the next in line in terms of the level of the area, not as intense as CoJ but still fears you, has some strong poison, lots of other mobs, etc. The shatter is next, with less, but rightfully so as it’s an even lower level. You can’t make the FE and the Wurm too hard cause it’s in a starter zone.

IMO it’s not a matter and problem of difficulty, but a problem of mechanics. You don’t need a ton of AoE to make boss interesting, which CoJ illustrates. CoJ is not hard at all in a matter of fact.

Behemot for instance has a moment when he open portals to the Underworld spawning adds and beeing invulnerable himself. But why is this happening only once? Why can’t the portals spawn all the time and the more there is, the more adds are spawned, the more toughness/healing is given to Behe?

Why do we need a laser at Teq? What are those turrets all around for? At this moment there’s no point for them. But if… if Teq in his “flying move” was completely invulnerable to melee and ranged attacks (beeing out of range simply), at the same time spawning a hell of adds, and AoEing the poison, and the laser was the only way to shoot him down? And turrets were the core of defence against adds?

Golem could use a simple knockback, or some other kind of mini-mechanic (need to overcharge it from the control room to shrug off his energy shields? or stun him for a while?). The same concerns all the world bosses around – they’re boring not because they’re not one-hitting people. Bosses do not have to be difficult. They have to be, like the OP stated, player-engaging.

I’m all for those additions 100%

The difficulty scale/level shouldn’t influence the mechanics at all. Saying that it is that way because it’s low level is an insult to the players’ intelligence. It’s like saying we can’t learn mechanics while fighting. They don’t have to do massive damage or have tons of AoE. CoJ is the most ideal example of how every world boss fight should be.

He moves around, the NPC’s are actually part of the fight by shooting him down with flak and sending golems towards him; even though he lands in the same spot each time he flies off the fact of the matter is he moves away from the players.

Shadow Behemoth could teleport around in the swamp which would cause AE damage to anyone in the ring, his portals could have higher base HP and heal him the longer they are up. His adds could spawn in greater number and faster, scaling with the number of people involved. Fire Ele could spawn more Imps and have different attacks based on player size.

Many many mechanics could be changed that wouldn’t necessarily increase the damage done to players but would just make the fights more involving. Shatterer is the biggest disappointment of all of them honestly. He’s massive, looks amazing, and doesn’t absolutely nothing. The NPC’s don’t fire cannons at him and his attacks are garbage. You’d think at the very least he would have some massive tail swipe or rain lightning down everywhere around him as he took flight and circle the battle field til he was shot down again; who cares if he lands in the same spot every time?

It’s less about difficulty and more about eye candy and mechanics. Many many things can be changed. Would it take time? Of course. But they could do it one boss at a time and have most of them upgraded (or at least the dragons) within 6 months I’d wager.

Haha, I remember when I first did Fire Elemental when it was relatively new – EVERYONE there (about 20-25 people) was in their undies or close to it due to how immensely difficult it was.

Nowadays, it’s rare to see someone actually die against Fire elemental.

I wish Shadow Behemoth was a bit harder though or had better tricks to prolong the fight without making it too hard (due to being in a starting zone) – like maybe his giant red circles would do pulsing fear, or doing huge knockback, instead of doing piddly damage which people just ignore.

IceBlink.4317:

Haha, I remember when I first did Fire Elemental when it was relatively new – EVERYONE there (about 20-25 people) was in their undies or close to it due to how immensely difficult it was.

Nowadays, it’s rare to see someone actually die against Fire elemental.

I wish Shadow Behemoth was a bit harder though or had better tricks to prolong the fight without making it too hard (due to being in a starting zone) – like maybe his giant red circles would do pulsing fear, or doing huge knockback, instead of doing piddly damage which people just ignore.

Yeah the massive AE damage on top of the hundred fire Imps that spawned like every ten seconds. Bodies were everywhere and if they weren’t we were running back from the farthest WP since the other was always contested.

SB circles used to insta down people if they hit. Now it’s like, “This boss has aoe attacks? wut?”

Bosses need phases. That’s the problem. They need phases to the fight.

One more thing that should be added to the topic – Behe is melting like an icecube on a frypan. Not only because of the lack of mechanics, but also because events and levels scaling needs tweaking. 80s in starter areas are too strong. I mentioned it in another topic already, maybe caps should be lower and based by an average stats of players of actual level, maybe the percentage scaling should hit harder. But atm the situation is ridiculous – you’re afraid of doing pre on Behe because you might not come in time to tag him for exp and chest (not to mentioned any involvement in the fight). If you miss the timer, are in a mid of any event or are simply browsing TP, you might not make it to Wurm or Melting Elemental.

Other thing is – why in the world damaging is the only meaning to tag the foe? Why performing other actions within event area (healing, reviving, buffing, cleansing) does not count? This have to be changed as well. Especially since it’s not only the problem of PvE but also WvW when zerg, despite orders, rush to score a kill and hope to grab lootbags.

The description they had for the Tequatl fight before launch actually sounded a bit like the Claw of Jormag fight. The turrets are supposed to be involved in the fight. If they get destroyed you it kicks off an escort event to bring supplies to get the turrets. There may have been other bits I forgot about. Unfortunately none of this seems to have made it to the final version.

The Tequatl fight seems to half implemented. The other things that point to this is the fact that the other events that are part of the meta event doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the Tequat fight except maybe a bit of lore.