Guild Wars 2

So, these are a bit silly really. Unnecessarily so, actually, given that they would be reasonably dangerous with their abilities toned down so that they didn’t have defenses and attacks most players would kill for. Specific issues:

Smokefield: This is some kind of uber blind field that most players would KILL to have access to. It appears to lasts a good deal of time (10+ seconds). Allows the Smokeskale to evade (i.e. invulnerable) while within it no effort on their part – in other words no dodging with endurance no mesmer like very short term blur effect on one weapon attack. No this ability feels like a good 10+ seconds of invuln vs. EVERYTHING. It would be less egregious if you could at least hit it with AOEs. Kiting it out of the field works a little bit (esp. against the normals) but the Veterans delay leaving the invulnerability field (I watched it happen – gotta love that improved AI . . . most of the time). Oh and the “good” news (for the Smokescale) – it seems to have pretty short cool down (seems about 30 seconds, but maybe more like 40 – 45?). Even more good news (again, for the Smokescale) – the kitten ed field seems to last after it has left the field and and you have left the field. In other words you lose several attacks after its out of the field and you are out of the field. Of course the Smokescale has no problem hitting you. If that’s not lag on my end . . .its just BS on your end ANet. Seriously, their “mistfield” is nothing more than a glorified blind field – if my thief with offhand pistol isn’t invulnerable to all hand to hand and all ranged attacks why are they? I’m trying to think of a single ability that a player has access to that would be the equivalent of what you’ve given to these trash mobs (feels like about 33% invulnerability up time). I’m suggest one of two things – treat this ability like a pulsing blind field (hell make it twice per second if that will make you feel good) that would make hand to hand combatants miss so long as the were in it but not make them immune to ranged or AOE attacks OR leave the field as is but make them vulnerable to AOE while in the field.

Assault: The Shiro Sword Three Burst attack is ok on the normals, except that it does not seem to be dodgeable – that is you get one miss and the Smokeskale is immediately teleporting to you and hitting again. It is blockable but that doesn’t mean much usually when the chain is 5 or 6 (or 7?) attacks. Assault might be interruptable (?) – but the best/quickest to use interrupt I can think of is thief pistol offhand 4 and you have to be facing it while its teleporting around you. Usually the PCs are outnumbered so while Shiro’s Sword 3 Revenant attack can flit around uncontrollably to multiple targets often times the Smokeskale just focuses down one target. So, on Veterans . . . well that can get a bit messy. My Zerk+PVT trinket Guardian was taking pretty significant damage (4225 damage even with Focus 5 absorbing three of the attacks). Hate to see what that would be like on an Elite. Hate to see what it would be like on a real squishy (thief or ele). Not much fun being one-shot by level 80 non-champs.

So, before the “NO DON’T NERF ANYTHING!!!” crowd gets ahold of this post and runs it down, let me say this: Most of the HOT mobs haven’t been too horrendous – they are tough but defeatable solo. Normals in pairs or triples, some Veterans handled readily enough but many are real challenge and I don’t mind it. Even the Mordrem snipers are acceptable once you understand what’s going on with them. I expect that we will get better, the community will learn how to deal with them one after another . . . but I’m not seeing how that going to work with Smokescales.

Got more or less the same impression rather op mob atm XD
And that revenant sword skill looks kinda funny on them as it appears that they are frozen and blinking around.
Well some tweaking to their field would be really helpful but otherwise not that big deal

Plz do not change the smokescale. It is awesome

ha ha, i’m loving the tears on this thread

Hmm, I dunno, defeating them requires abit more of thinking and positioning.

Only time I’ve been completely overwhelmed while solo, is when I got Veteran and basic Smokeskales double team on me, which would pretty much chain their smoke fields.
Haven’t experienced a group of smokeskales vs. group of players tho, so I can’t judge with that.

Perhaps make them do more damage while they’re in their smoke fields, or just have higher crit chance, this ought to anger stand-spammers.
But I dunno.

veteran creatures are supposed to be a challenge if you’re solo, no matter what creature it is

Arrow.4619:

Assault: The Shiro Sword Three Burst attack is ok on the normals, except that it does not seem to be dodgeable – that is you get one miss and the Smokeskale is immediately teleporting to you and hitting again.

It’s a channeled attack. Dodging a single tick of that attack won’t dodge the entire thing. If you dodge twice however, you will evade the full channel.

As for the mist field, simply keep mobile and it won’t even be an issue. Start by pulling them from range. They’ll either immediately open with their teleport multi-hit attack or they’ll waste their mist field, then teleport.

I prefer them the way that they are. There are so many unique enemies in VB and if you try to solo around the jungle and run into one of these or the many other unique enemies it puts you to the test. Keep the difficulty high Anet, we will all get better and learn new strategies to deal with the difficulty.

Honestly, I’d like to see more like them. Bosses could learn a thing or two from these guys.

It should be tastefully done mind you (not every mob needs to be a smokescale to the point of absurdity), but they’re a great kind of critter that breaks the norm.

These kinds of guys are the trick to beating stacking and other brain dead tactics. Any mob that forces the player to think is a good mob.

Definitely hope to see more kinds of these encounters.

I’m not sure that the monster itself needs to be tweaked – however, there have been a few times when I’ve been part of a group fighting them, we’ve had them nearly down, and then the first ones we took out respawned while we were still fighting and had depleted resources and took us out.

So it might be a matter of slowing down the respawn timer so you have time to deal with the mechanics rather than nerfing the mechanics. The mechanic itself is one that will probably be fun and interesting when we get more experienced with it. Having half of a pack respawn while you’re still fighting the other half never is.

I like the mob, Im not arguing it should be nerfed. However, there is a path which has 3 veteran smokescales, 2 veteran stoneheads plus 3 veteran beetles, either chained or near each other. That’s a tad overkill for trash mobs on a linking pathway, when people are training mobs everywhere so you can’t focus on the mechanics of the mob at hand.

I would either reduce the density or scale surrounding mobs down from veteran level – make the learning curve through the map much less steep so people can get used to the mechanics early on then ramp up the densities later

Other than that, it’s great to see new, more challenging mobs.

I’m not a fan. it feels like I spend most of my time not hitting them, and in a way I can’t really do much to change. this results in the fight lasting longer, but not being more fun. I have to sit there and take it when it assaults, when is smoke fields, etc. i don’t mind either of these in and of themselves, but they’re spammed too often and last too long.

what it comes down to is a mob that takes too long to kill to be fun. there’s no trick I can see, and no way around it, it’s about as fun as increasing mob health – increases time, decreases fun.

Do not nerf anything please. I like mobs that aren’t brain dead mash 1 to kill.

You have to actually think about positioning, which if “challenging group content” is going to be raids…..there are going to be mechanics like this where you need to kite the boss out of a field they drop down, this is simply teaching you to do that now while you are solo.

If Anet drops the difficulty of solo, then that makes the gap that much farther between solo play and challenging group play, and then everyone will be calling for the nerf of the challenging group content.

Problem is not the mob itself as long as you are facing just one veteran, but
the density .. if you need to go through a small path and there are 5-6 mobs
where one is a smokescale vet, 2-3 others are normal and then there are
even some other vets before and behind you.

But i wonder what all those “i can dodge everything everytime” players do if
you just see 5-6 red circles there for 10+ seconds .. beside try to run and wait
if maybe some other players appear in the next time

Also .. standing around waiting for me is not really fun .. its the same as beeing
disabled or lying on the ground all the time.

Smokescales are awesome once people learn how to lure them out of their AoEs. It’s kinda like with beetles. Amazing creatures, leave them as they are.

Difficulty seemed fine to me. It’s one thing Anet is doing right.

So, Smokescales can join the, very much missed, Molten Protectors in the list of mobs that make stacking a pain. Anyone who remembers those Protectors should remember the need to prioritize that guy and make sure he didn’t make group fights a pain. With the amount of CC available to players, it should be possible to take down even two regular smokescales together. I believe we are simply too used to being able to take down groups of vets that have 0 defensive capabilities. This guy is very much much anti-zerker, he can evade attacks with a relatively high uptime if he is not constantly being CC’d and his offense has innate defense by being hard to target.

I don’t know about toning down smokescales, or at least, I don’t know how I would tone them down if they needed it, maybe increase the cooldown on their smokefield a bit. But they aren’t mordrem, so I’d imagine you won’t see them in team fights with groups of other mordrem typically. This would make them much less of a problem for players given where you are likely to run into them unlike the mordrem wolves who buffed their team mates with retaliation, which absolutely wrecked players without boon stripping given their uptime. That was really only problematic given the number of wolves that typically showed up in group fights allowing almost 100% uptime on retaliation. Smokescales, given their location at the moment, and where they are likely to appear, are only a problem if you run into a bunch of them at once. Running is always an option.