The open world difficulty is fine. You can go anywhere and if the density of monster is too high at some place, just run and avoid them.
Most of the hero points, even with champion can be done alone. The only annoying thing is when trashmobs (like these bad frogs) are on the hero points and then respawn while you are fighting the champion.
I have only one thing to say for the difficulty of HoT:
- In core Tyria, i can complete the same map on two different accounts at the same time (one hand on the keyboard of my laptop and the other on the keyboard of my tower). It’s just tedious for some heart, like the one with hungry rabbits.
- In HoT, with one hand, it’s really hard but using two hands, it’s fine.
The main problem is that many players do not know even the basis of how to play. They only follow the zerg and faceroll every skill they have. While this could be fine in the core Tyria where the open world is the “practice mode”, some high lvl map and majority of dungeon the “easy mode”, some dungeon paths and fractal the “normal mode”, in HoT, there is only “normal mode” maps and some things a little hard.
To player complaining about the difficulty I can only advise you something. Difficulty of many game is about two things => bad design or bad attitude.
Bad design it’s when you lost because the camera turn at the bad moment, you pressed the button but the character did not the desired action, the bad guy hits you even if you think that you evaded the attack. When the game-play is bad, you can do nothing, you lose because the game made you lose.
But on other hand, some games have a really robust game-play and when you lose, it’s not because of the game but because of you. For example, in Dark Soul, when you first play the game, you die every 10 seconds, all mobs one shoot you, you cry, you try the same boss one hundred time before killing him. But after hours and hours, you progress into the game and maybe one day even finish it. At that time, you start a new play from the beginning and you realize that all mobs are slow, that you can easily kill them and you progress smoothly through the game. Why? Just because you learned the game-play and how to react to your environment. Now, you mastered the game.
In GW2 it’s the same thing, for some encounters like Liadri, some fractals you need to mastered the game to efficiently do the content. The big problem with GW2 is that for 95% of the game, you don’t need to master anything and just follow the zerg with you auto-attack.
This is why HoT seem very difficult for a part of the playerbase. These player only know the “practice mode” and never have to use all the tools offered by the game. So when they go in HoT open-world, they find only “normal/a little hard” content and without knowing how to play with “easy content”, the normal content is incredibly difficult for them. But it’s not their fault, it’s just a too big step in difficulty.
On the other side, for players that already have mastered the core game HoT is not that hard, they just need to be “active” and care about their environment. And for some part, they just know they can’t do the content because they are just not enough, so they just find help with other players.
Some advice for players that find HoT hard:
- The important thing is not to deal a massive amount of damage, the important thing is to stay alive. If you stay alive enough time, the bad guy will die.
- Avoiding damage is better than heal or damage reductions.
- All classes have dodge. But dodge is precious and must not be wasted.
- Don’t dodge if you can avoid an attack just by moving (with going out the red area on the floor or behind the bad guy when he make an heavy attack).
- On most class, you have two type of skill, skills part of your dps chain and skill of opportunity. A skill of opportunity is a skill that is not useful for your damage output but is useful for the effect provided. Per example the 3 of the revenant hammer. This skill has not really good damage but make you dodge all attack while using it. You can use this skill has an additional dodge. So use it for dodging and don’t waste it as a random attack.
- When you think, I can’t do anything, i will be hit by this big attack, then it’s time to dodge ^^.
- When you know how not to die with your active play, you can decrease your defensive statistics and increase your offensive statistics (the most extreme way being the all berzerker). For myself, i have the armor in Celestial and the rest in Berzerker (with some additional celestial trinket for when i’m tired of dodging :p). This way, the fight will be shorter and you will have less opportunity to die.
And for end, the more important thing, the will. If you know that you will do it, then you will. Don’t discourage yourself. Something may be hard so try to figure why you fail and how to avoid that.
