Guild Wars 2

Ok, so I’ve played this game since it came out, and i’ve pretty much been here since pre launch. I’ve seen it before and not talked about it but just the amount of, and the silliness of how overpowered some of the mobs/dungeons are in this game is really starting to tick and turn me off.

This came after dying 4-5 times off a one shot skill in a level 14 story quest. I have a maxxed level as well so i’ve seen/done all that stuff, and run into more op’ness and just general bad skill design, CoE exp being the biggest culprit there in my mind.

This has to be curtailed, everyone isn’t hardcore, everyone doesn’t want to die to cheap skills that they don’t have time to get out of the way of. Keep the skills, lower the damage, or keep the skills, add a player sightable cast bar so we have a chance to actually enjoy the skills and enjoy the challenge while not feeling like we’re getting robbed of repair money by utterly cheap, undodgable skills.

Please don’t focus on the CoE exp, that wasn’t the post, there is a general level of overpoweredness in total.

The simple fix is to add a cast bar to the skills, so they don’t just randomly shoot at us in 1/10 of a second. This needs to be adressed now, this is a huge flaw with this game.

I just tried the story quest again, and got one shot again, I have a little over 1000 hp’s and the mob uses a skill that takes it all off in one hit, so cheap, so unfun. ugh.

I can’t say I have seen that much skills that are ‘OP’. It is far from a huge flaw, but could be addressed if there are some unpredictable, too strong spells.

I honestly think you are overreacting a bit.

Those Who Remain.1987:

I can’t say I have seen that much skills that are ‘OP’. It is far from a huge flaw, but could be addressed if there are some unpredictable, too strong spells.

I honestly think you are overreacting a bit.

The OP isn’t overreacting at all. You just haven’t done that much content – many mob skills just hit you without any animation frames at all, some of these attacks are also extremely OP. Look at the Champion Shark in Sparkfly Swamp for instance who can pretty much one shot anyone without even being close to it – this is a significant problem and design flaw.

I’ve personally lost count how many times I’ve died to cheap attacks that have been unavoidable.

I was actually just thinking about this after leveling an alt and doing the champion Modniir Ulgoth DE…..he uses some kind of spell that randomly one shot kills random people regardless of where they are what what they are doing……you cannot avoid it, you cannot even see it coming most of the time, you can only hope someone will rez you….there is absolutely no skill involved what so ever, you just hit him until he one shots you…it is seriously un-fun.

….and dont even get me started on the Risen Hyleks and their super awesome poison dart machine gun of awesomeness.

haha, ya.. mine was a umm.. devourer.. thing.. cast a fireball that you just couldnt see coming.. hit 3 times in a row for 400 or so damage each. no tell bar, or cast motion just boom. 1200 damage out of nowhere with a health pool of a little over 1.000.

Try 6 carrion devourers-got kd’d once on my thief,used stunbreaker,got kd’s again in 0.1 sec and stunlocked for the next 10 sec till i died

The only problems i feel are those stunblocks.... they need to add a defiant timer after a certain number of stunlocks in a row. OP’ness i dont really see it tbh... One shot kill or one shot downed? ivenever been one shot killed, well sometimes rarely if i have v low health.. I get downed then that takes one extra person from fight tor evive me... tnis is fine in my eyes... it forces peope to work together and actually REVIVE each other...

For story mode dungeon, they should be easy. Since they’re for the story, they should be tuned to a general, moderately easy difficulty level.

For explorable modes, what most people seem to forget is that these dungeons were announced as the hardest content in the game designed for a group of coordinated players. When I first heard that, I assumed they wouldn’t be PuGable. When I did my first explorable (HotW), I went in remembering what they said only to realize that the actual difficulty was a joke and I thought story modes were harder. All dungeon grouping (no lfg, leader drop kick) problems probably exist because dungeons were designed for friend/guild runs only.

Adding a cast bar for your target would be against their design decision. You’re supposed to watch the animation of the mob, not the UI. One thing they do need to work on though is telegraphing (obvious start up animations for big attacks). Some mobs have it while others don’t. For example, mobs should actually turn to attack and not just do a 180 flip. See Tera for an example of what mobs should be like.

i agree with that aspect of more obvious telegraphs on some mobs

Jezath.7395:

The only problems i feel are those stunblocks…. they need to add a defiant timer after a certain number of stunlocks in a row. OP’ness i dont really see it tbh… One shot kill or one shot downed? ivenever been one shot killed, well sometimes rarely if i have v low health.. I get downed then that takes one extra person from fight tor evive me… tnis is fine in my eyes… it forces peope to work together and actually REVIVE each other…

on solo story missions it’s the exact same thing. one shot down.. one shot dead. you have noone to back you up. if yer downed yer dead.

Then i agree if theres no way top counter thatstuff they should remove the one shots from solo play instances... its just not fun and not fair to the player

multiplay intamnces tho, it should stay i feel. but thats just my opinion of coiurse

Those Who Remain.1987:

I can’t say I have seen that much skills that are ‘OP’. It is far from a huge flaw, but could be addressed if there are some unpredictable, too strong spells.

I honestly think you are overreacting a bit.

Let me ask you this – have you ever fought the Krait Witch in the level 1-15 Sylvari area? You know. The one that two shots people with a ranged auto-attack? Or insta-gibs multiple players with an instantaneous no-telegraph version of Lieutenant Kholer’s pull?

This kind of cheap design is prevalent in a lot of PvE bosses. Too many of them – instead of having challenging and/or interesting mechanics like a GOOD boss fight – rely on being overpowered forms of regular mobs.

I have to agree with OP. I can’t count how many times I got killed by some instant move that had me saying “now hat the heck did just kill me?”

Besides, there are some mobs in game that have overpowered moves paired with an awfully short or non-existant animation like Icebrood Wolves’ Leap skill or underwater enemies’ Dart skill.

In the case of Icebrood Wolves’ Leap, you just see the ground under the wolf cracking in an instant, and depending on the monster strength, everyone in melee range gets their HP down by a good chunk or just get downed in one hit.

Dart is another move that catches you all of a sudden and depletes your HP faster than a bleed on 50 stacks with multiple chained hits that can do even 5k, without any animation beside protruding their weapon towards the player.

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

Those Who Remain.1987:

I can’t say I have seen that much skills that are ‘OP’. It is far from a huge flaw, but could be addressed if there are some unpredictable, too strong spells.

I honestly think you are overreacting a bit.

The OP isn’t overreacting at all. You just haven’t done that much content – many mob skills just hit you without any animation frames at all, some of these attacks are also extremely OP. Look at the Champion Shark in Sparkfly Swamp for instance who can pretty much one shot anyone without even being close to it – this is a significant problem and design flaw.

I’ve personally lost count how many times I’ve died to cheap attacks that have been unavoidable.

I have never been one-shot by that shark.

in fact, I kitten near soloed it, even though it managed to hit me a few times.

you can’t have a glass cannon build and expect to properly face off against champs and even some vets.

If you take a glass cannon build built to be like the traditional mmo “max dps” spec, you will be flattened over and over until you’ve done something about that.

Either equip toughness or vitality as one of your stats, or spec heavily into at least one survival trait line. (doing this will also give you more group utility)

Which level 14 quest are you getting 1 shot in? I’ve never been 1 shot in any story quest. As for Champions and bosses, well, I like the idea that some of them will 1 shot you. As Robby mentioned though, those Hyleks are horrific.

Having logged over 500 hours across all my characters, and 300 on my engineer, I can say that I do not quite agree with the OP.

Many NPCs do have some pretty heavy hitting attacks, but dodging immediately negates them. Whether the attack does 1,000 hp or 1,000,000 HP, it all just shows up as “Evaded” for me. Some are harder to dodge than others, but they are all dodgeable.

I find it odd that most of the mobs of the world have a chargeup effect but there isn’t one for these bosses, they use these skills like I would swat a fly.

Something does need to be changed in the ui.

I have never encountered such an OP mob. Probably my biggest pet peeve would be the vet risen abomination due to the stacks of berserk he can get and eventually being able to 2-3 shot my engineer. I played with ele, eng, guard, and war and while I die ALOT in my ele, I really can’t say its OP. It’s definitely harder on a light-armor class, but it does help you know how to chain your skills well to survive/give max dmg output and the playstyle of the class.

I’m all and good for OP mobs, or mobs that would 1-shot glass cannons (as they should), but I’m rather irked at one of the SE path before they changed it, the one with infinite waves. (I heard there’s still the infinite waves thing, but idk what the changes were exactly. not exactly alot of people lining up to do SE dungeons now).

plasmacutter.2709:

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

Those Who Remain.1987:

I can’t say I have seen that much skills that are ‘OP’. It is far from a huge flaw, but could be addressed if there are some unpredictable, too strong spells.

I honestly think you are overreacting a bit.

The OP isn’t overreacting at all. You just haven’t done that much content – many mob skills just hit you without any animation frames at all, some of these attacks are also extremely OP. Look at the Champion Shark in Sparkfly Swamp for instance who can pretty much one shot anyone without even being close to it – this is a significant problem and design flaw.

I’ve personally lost count how many times I’ve died to cheap attacks that have been unavoidable.

I have never been one-shot by that shark.

in fact, I kitten near soloed it, even though it managed to hit me a few times.

you can’t have a glass cannon build and expect to properly face off against champs and even some vets.

If you take a glass cannon build built to be like the traditional mmo “max dps” spec, you will be flattened over and over until you’ve done something about that.

Either equip toughness or vitality as one of your stats, or spec heavily into at least one survival trait line. (doing this will also give you more group utility)

The issue with your viewpoint is we are’nt given instruction as to what we need to survive. The game just throws you in at full speed and you just have to figure it all out. Which I guess is fun for some, but I think the majority of people would prefer a ramped difficulty, where at least for the first 30 or so levels it’s a decent amount easier, so you can actually figure stuff, gear, stats.. what this does, that does without having to die over and over and ultimately get frustrated and quite possibly quit.

The game is too hard for low level, it’s too hard for solo.. if you expect a level 10 to understand about toughness and all that, then I think you’re being a tad bit silly.. crap, I still don’t really understand all that, and am just now, getting a smidgen of an idea about it.

Add animations that are easily sightable and recognizable at least 1-3 seconds before mob casts uber spell, give more time of red circle before dropping the spell.. there’s a bunch of issues with this, that if they fixed them the game would be so much more pleasing. For me, most definetely, but I don’t think I’m the only one.

If this game is meant for the hardcore of hardcore then fine, i’ll leave now, because that’s not what I want out of my mmo’s.

macabakur.4521:

The issue with your viewpoint is we are’nt given instruction as to what we need to survive. The game just throws you in at full speed and you just have to figure it all out. Which I guess is fun for some, but I think the majority of people would prefer a ramped difficulty, where at least for the first 30 or so levels it’s a decent amount easier, so you can actually figure stuff, gear, stats.. what this does, that does without having to die over and over and ultimately get frustrated and quite possibly quit.

The game is too hard for low level, it’s too hard for solo.. if you expect a level 10 to understand about toughness and all that, then I think you’re being a tad bit silly.. crap, I still don’t really understand all that, and am just now, getting a smidgen of an idea about it.

Add animations that are easily sightable and recognizable at least 1-3 seconds before mob casts uber spell, give more time of red circle before dropping the spell.. there’s a bunch of issues with this, that if they fixed them the game would be so much more pleasing. For me, most definetely, but I don’t think I’m the only one.

If this game is meant for the hardcore of hardcore then fine, i’ll leave now, because that’s not what I want out of my mmo’s.

I understand this, and do think its an issue.
Perhaps some tutorials or recommendations in-game are a good idea.

I found it out the hard way, too, before doing some more research thinking “if it’s this hard i’m doing something wrong”, and it turned out I was.

There will always be builds out there for those who don’t have the time to theorycraft thanks to the community.

tigirius.9014:

I find it odd that most of the mobs of the world have a chargeup effect but there isn’t one for these bosses, they use these skills like I would swat a fly.

Something does need to be changed in the ui.

I notice this happens a lot with shark champion DEs in any zone. For those saying “suck less”, some of these literally have no choreographing and thus aren’t realistically avoidable sans a lucky dodge, or having aegis covering you at all times.

Underwater krait witches do this a lot too. I think the idea is that for group events, they are intended to be able to one-shot people at random. The problem is, it kind of undermines the concept of skill based play.

There are some DEs that have a champion that aren’t labeled [Group]. These ones can usually be taken down solo, but it takes a while.

I don’t know if building for tankiness is even viable early on; You only have two stat items until level 60ish, and there is no power/toughness affix. I guess you could go half power/X and half vitality/toughness, but that seems like it would really hurt your killing speed.

macabakur.4521:

The issue with your viewpoint is we are’nt given instruction as to what we need to survive. The game just throws you in at full speed and you just have to figure it all out. Which I guess is fun for some, but I think the majority of people would prefer a ramped difficulty, where at least for the first 30 or so levels it’s a decent amount easier, so you can actually figure stuff, gear, stats.. what this does, that does without having to die over and over and ultimately get frustrated and quite possibly quit.

The game is too hard for low level, it’s too hard for solo.. if you expect a level 10 to understand about toughness and all that, then I think you’re being a tad bit silly.. crap, I still don’t really understand all that, and am just now, getting a smidgen of an idea about it.

Add animations that are easily sightable and recognizable at least 1-3 seconds before mob casts uber spell, give more time of red circle before dropping the spell.. there’s a bunch of issues with this, that if they fixed them the game would be so much more pleasing. For me, most definetely, but I don’t think I’m the only one.

If this game is meant for the hardcore of hardcore then fine, i’ll leave now, because that’s not what I want out of my mmo’s.

Anyone with a basic grasp of the English language should be able to figure out what Toughness does – it makes you tougher. Things like Power, Defense and Toughness are pretty self-explanatory, things like Precision may need some explaining but all you have to do is hover your cursor over it in the Character window and it tells you. Do we really need a “Push W to walk forward” tutorial, or do we just need to use our brains/common sense.
In my experience with mmo’s this game does actually teach you a lot more than others do, with in-game WvW tutorials, PvP tutorials, Scout NPC’s… there’s a lot of help here, plus the official GW2 wiki.

Reminds me of Lupicus infection. About every 15 seconds it does obvious 3 second animation and some/most people don’t see it.

I agree that of the story quests some are a lot harder than others. Some story quests are to easy. Many story quests are either a walk in the park or near impossible.

Pitting a ~lvl20 player against a group of 8 on-level bandits? What’s up with that? Only way to deal with that is ugly hit-and-run, go down and rally a few times, not particularly heroic.

I don’t find the game hard, but I am EXTREMELY ANNOYED (to say the least) at attacks that you don’t see. They often oneshot you, but that’s not important… you should be able to see every single attack.

The problem I see from many of these replies is assumed skill: you think you’re a good enough player, but the proof you are not is that you get killed. Some of the story quests are indeed difficult, but nothing which cannot be overcome.

All mobs have animations which play before an ability is cast, but you may not see it because you weren’t paying attention. The biggest one is what some people have called “dusting” where the mob appears to gather energy to itself before unleashing the attack (which, I guess, kinda looks like gathering dust, hence the term). This dusting can be very short but often it’s plenty long enough to see… if you’re watching.

As for the risen hylek (well, any hylek, for that matter) and their rapid-fire dart abilities: every profession has abilities that reflect projectiles. If you’re not smart enough to use them, I don’t know what else to tell you other than dodge, which of course you should be doing, anyway. Often the biggest source of damage when fighting multiple mobs is ranged attacks from the other mobs you’re currently not trying to damage. You have to use block/reflect/absorb/dodge abilities or you’re toast.

I find it insane how cheap potions are on the trading post: for goodness’ sake, use them. Eat them like candy. You can’t laugh off an additional 10% damage dealt to a class of mobs plus -10% incoming damage from mobs (hello Potent Potion of Undead Slaying… oh, how I love you!).

Want to add a anecdote to this.

I was passing thru one of the norn zones on my way north, and there was the end of a DE chain going at a ice “fort”. Me playing a L80 dagger necro in rare gear.

So i stopped by, found a lone ranger fighting a champion and figured i would help. Found myself more or less tanking the champ using daggers to charge DS, then pop into DS until i reached about 50% and repeat.

At one point, while just about to switch out of DS the champion made a simple swipe at me, no dust up or anything like that, and i watch that 50% of my DS vanish.

Now 50% DS vanishing means that this champ did what appeared to be a normal attack that did enough damage that had it hit my health it would have removed half my health. And with necromancer being one of the two high health professions in the game, it would have likely dropped guardians (except for their abundant aegis), thieves or elementalists, and badly damaged the rest.

Sometimes i wonder if Anet went a bit heavy handed in their drive to make the fights more dynamic. I can understand the occasional big hit that needs to be dodged, but it sometimes feel like the only real way to play this game is like a third person action, continually kiting and circling.

Stand your ground, even with a mob, and you are likely to come out with perhaps 50% health, after having used one or more heal during the fight. Two or more mobs, never mind a veteran or two, and you will be hard pressed to come out of it without one or more trips into the down state (if you win at all), unless you run around like a squirrel on a energy drink high.

And the whole idea of watching the animations may work fine on a lan or in single player, but on the internet you can have lag spikes and packet loss. Meaning that the supposed animation may be overruled because the packet that was supposed to trigger it comes after the damage was dished out. And Anet already has enough trouble with their heavy handed object culling in mass fights.

As for potions and such, meh. First of you need to figure out what your up against, and the number of potions out there is staggering. Never mind that the mobs are not clearly flagged as to what “race” they belong to. So you fill up half your bag with potions? Meh, just as well go with a fury build. This as you get 50% more damage while under fury, at least.

Offense is the best defense in this game, in terms of PVE. The faster you can drop a mob, the less damage you will take.

biggs.4702:

The problem I see from many of these replies is assumed skill: you think you’re a good enough player, but the proof you are not is that you get killed. Some of the story quests are indeed difficult, but nothing which cannot be overcome.

All mobs have animations which play before an ability is cast, but you may not see it because you weren’t paying attention. The biggest one is what some people have called “dusting” where the mob appears to gather energy to itself before unleashing the attack (which, I guess, kinda looks like gathering dust, hence the term). This dusting can be very short but often it’s plenty long enough to see… if you’re watching.

As for the risen hylek (well, any hylek, for that matter) and their rapid-fire dart abilities: every profession has abilities that reflect projectiles. If you’re not smart enough to use them, I don’t know what else to tell you other than dodge, which of course you should be doing, anyway. Often the biggest source of damage when fighting multiple mobs is ranged attacks from the other mobs you’re currently not trying to damage. You have to use block/reflect/absorb/dodge abilities or you’re toast.

I find it insane how cheap potions are on the trading post: for goodness’ sake, use them. Eat them like candy. You can’t laugh off an additional 10% damage dealt to a class of mobs plus -10% incoming damage from mobs (hello Potent Potion of Undead Slaying… oh, how I love you!).

Channeled ranged abilities can’t be dodged. You’ll evade one or two ticks of it, then it’ll start damaging you again. They’ll also tear through blocks, same thing – it eats up their trigger counts fast on any (eg. most) blocks that have them.

Basically, if you end up fighting a champion who channels and you didn’t know to equip a reflect before hand, you are either built to tank or you are screwed.

I have to agree that putting in a dodge mechanic and making abilities invisible is a low blow…blocking vs reflecting channeled abilities is a sort of fair mechanic though I’d say.

One thing for sure though, any champion below level 15 shouldn’t have any of these let’s call them ‘lame’ mechanics (see krait witch imo). Basically if you know what you’re doing and you still run a good risk of getting insta-gibbed it shouldn’t be in a starting zone, it’s just cruel. By comparison there are champs in the norn zone that can 1 shot you, but have small jumps telegraphing their abilities, which I believe is more fair.

Just my two cents, btw not saying people should be able to get away with dodge as their only defensive ability in pve, but since this is a more ‘actiony’ game not even seeing something coming is a bit too much.

tomlin.8204:

Anyone with a basic grasp of the English language should be able to figure out what Toughness does – it makes you tougher. Things like Power, Defense and Toughness are pretty self-explanatory, things like Precision may need some explaining but all you have to do is hover your cursor over it in the Character window and it tells you. Do we really need a “Push W to walk forward” tutorial, or do we just need to use our brains/common sense.
In my experience with mmo’s this game does actually teach you a lot more than others do, with in-game WvW tutorials, PvP tutorials, Scout NPC’s… there’s a lot of help here, plus the official GW2 wiki.

… look how many people see issues, and think over what you’re saying.. if 40 people say the game is too op, then maybe you need to reconsider your stance. You and the 3-4 other people who are proponents of “Keep the game super hard, we love dying over and over again” are in the minority at the moment.

I’ll stick to my original statement, the game builds itself to be content for a general populace but is tuned for the 5 pct who enjoy playing games on elite difficulty. It needs to be toned down or it’s going to lose a significant amount of people..

Some of the story segments may still be overtuned, I reported a few during beta and they were adjusted in later versions. If you have trouble with a specific step, use the bug report feature to notify ANet, and include as much specific information about the particular instance and your profession/level/build as possible so they can test it.

I do not agree with tuning down the difficulty of anything labeled [Group Event] or dungeons. Downed/revive is part of the teamwork of the game, dodge and other damage mitigation is important as well as positioning. This game wasn’t designed to be able to face-tank anything, and since beta the difficulty in general has been reduced quite a bit (most professions actually can face tank regular content now). Not all content should require groups and teamwork, but some should. Some of the mob animations before big attacks could maybe be lengthened or made more obvious, but they should still have the ability to kill, otherwise there is no challenge.

I don’t think it’s elitist to want some content to be challenging. Hell, Super Mario Brothers took me countless hours to get through, some was quite challenging at the time, but I didn’t send letters to Nintendo complaining about how hard it was to learn.