Guild Wars 2

Fox.3469:

Snip

Well, that was my experience.

The snipers took me by surprise the first time – and what a pleasant surprise it was. I truly enjoyed having to actively engage them in combat. This is a game, and games need to offer a degree of challenge. This should be the bare minimum amount for endgame content.

apharma.3741:

Nice one Anet, now dial it up a notch, force people to think and actually do more than equip PVT and zombie through it all!

Agree. I’d like to see more enemies present physical and arcane challenges. Go Anet!

Elrey.5472:

Fox.3469:

Snip

Well, that was my experience.

I’m pretty sure your experience was “new class let’s check all the skills, alright let’s go, crap i forgot to dodge”
Just like mine was “3rd time, easy, crap i forgot to dodge”
This stuff happens, who cares.

Revenant is not perfectly balanced by a long shot, but it’s certainly capable of making it trough that intro without any kind of trouble.

They seem a bit OP to me too, but if someone can tell me something I’m missing that would be great.

Dealing with them on my own is easy enough, but the biggest issue imo is that unlike other dangerous mobs (teragriffs, etc) neither they nor their attacks seem to have very much visual presence, so I don’t notice them in big events until I’m lying on the floor in three intersecting not!Fiery Rush trails. If I could tell them apart from other humanoid mordrem mobs or if their attacks had bigger tells it would feel manageable, but as it is now they seem kind of cheap.

Otherwise I’m loving the rest of the enemies in Verdant Brink.

radioAspen.6829:

They seem a bit OP to me too, but if someone can tell me something I’m missing that would be great.

Dealing with them on my own is easy enough, but the biggest issue imo is that unlike other dangerous mobs (teragriffs, etc) neither they nor their attacks seem to have very much visual presence, so I don’t notice them in big events until I’m lying on the floor in three intersecting not!Fiery Rush trails. If I could tell them apart from other humanoid mordrem mobs or if their attacks had bigger tells it would feel manageable, but as it is now they seem kind of cheap.

Otherwise I’m loving the rest of the enemies in Verdant Brink.

The thing is they have very little health so it’s really easy to burst them down and their projectile is really slow.

The problem with snipers is that they follow that burst skill with a rather long duration high DPS rapid fire type skill which is pretty annoying and dodging it entirely requires two dodges in the first place.

And since this attack tracks, it does feel very anti zerk.

Let’s not forget also that their chanelled shot seems to leave a trail of fire on the ground that pulses and hurts at rather high frequency too and gives them LOADS of might stacks at each pulse. And NPCs are dumb. If you see what I mean :p

Tips for dealing with the snipers:
-Dodge when you see a target above your head, if it doesn’t directly go away don’t dodge again seems to be a little stuck sometimes. Obviously don’t move into other people.
-There are very clear lines on the ground, and unlike people think, they don’t oneshot, they do big damage ticks over time.
-Position yourself to the side of the mob, you’ll clearly see him turn around if he wants you.
-Once the line is laid down these mobs are terribly vunerable, doing nearly nothing for a full 2 seconds.

Easiest tactic for ranged, just dodge when you see the mark above your head, don’t stand on top of eachother.

For melee: dodge to the back of them and just hundred blades or spin to win or backstab or do your ghostly revenant tango, it’s all the same, they will be dead once it’s over.

Tiger Ashante.1792:

These snipers one shot my mesmer every time i come across them, they need a bit of toning down imo. It’s especially bad when there’s more than one of them, it’s insta death, not fun.

Darn. A skill that can finally kill the Mesmer who can kill three or five if left to their old builds and devices.

Now you will have to dodge just like the rest of us and maybe lose – again, darn.

Too bad that doesn’t happen in WvW…

Make it kittening harder.

The goal should be to make PvE as challenging and interesting as PvP is.

warbignime.4610:

The thing is they have very little health so it’s really easy to burst them down and their projectile is really slow.

I’m not sure about their normal attacks, but their trail seems instant to me? And like I said in my post, I don’t have an issue when I’m fighting them by myself, it’s the way they blend in with other mobs in events and stuff, so being able to burst them down doesn’t really help.

Oh and btw something i forgot, if you can’t handle being nearly oneshot by these clear tells, don’t get zerker gear.

Although there’s a clear tell for their rapid fire, the duration of the attack is so long you cannot dodge it correctly.

I wonder with what kind of rewards they will bring the players to play this maps
since without them i say they will be barren like Southsun Cove after a short time.
Was exact the same .. everybody wanted “moar challenge” then we got that zone
and after a short time it was a wasteland.

Well their way to make the place challenging is so similar to Soutshsun Cove : loads of rapid fire wielding ranged mobs. ¤Fun¤ ensues :p

binidj.5734:

They are ridiculously OP for melee characters … almost certainly trivial for ranged.

I don’t know if that’s what it was, probably since i was trying out the shield and sword combo. I don’t usually play melee on my mesmer so not well practiced in that combat mode, regardless though, when they hit her, just one hit and she was barely alive. And no, i wasn’t using berserker gear only on my trinkets and weapons.

radioAspen.6829:

warbignime.4610:

The thing is they have very little health so it’s really easy to burst them down and their projectile is really slow.

I’m not sure about their normal attacks, but their trail seems instant to me? And like I said in my post, I don’t have an issue when I’m fighting them by myself, it’s the way they blend in with other mobs in events and stuff, so being able to burst them down doesn’t really help.

No, it’s not instant. It’s a slow moving red line and it’s really easy to avoid.

Had the most fun combating the Stampeding Dinos with a dragonhunter (bow/greatsword). Especially those stonehead beasts are quite vicious. Think i will stick with the dragonhunter this weekend. It fits me more then the revenant. The survivability with the dragonhunter is better than a revenant in my opinion. One advise, use Light emitting swordskins when fighting at night, Cobolt skin is perfect source of light in the darkness of the jungle :-)

At first i kept dying and whas thinking, whats this? Then i learned too spot those snipers and put them down first. And people sticking with the zerk equipment/mentality, the concequence is dying quicker when missing a dodge here and there.

binidj.5734:

Questions of how challenging mobs are or are not aside (you want to discuss that, there are other threads waiting for your opinion) I can’t help but feel that there are simply too many of them! Mordrem tendrils are a particular pain in this regard, it seemed at some points that you couldn’t walk 5 feet without one of the things throwing little red circles at you! Somebody (probably several somebodies) at ArenaNet have worked kitten hard to create the jungle and I’d really like the chance to look at it! Fewer mobs with a lower respawn timer would be good … give us a chance to breathe and enjoy the environment! Make fights epic not annoying. I had enough of this sort of mob density in early (and arguably current) Orr thanks awfully … if I want to wade through endless mobs, I’ll head there.

Agreed, everywhere i went there was mobs everywhere, it was impossible to stand back and enjoy the scenery. with the having to watch every step due to difficult terrain and then being mobbed by mobs every second, how are we to appreciate this new zone?

tbh, i’m sick to death of fighting all the time. It would be nice to have some places where we had some more interesting non-combat stuff.

The sniper are fine, mobs are hard and that’s what we want. Those of you who cant do it, sorry but play more, try new build, do something, learn to dodge.

By all means Anet devs, dont nerf the mobs.

I think you where out at night? I was at the back of the map at night, with only one other player. Then it can get ugly, Managed too stay alive until i encountered a Mordrem Troll Champ, was a little bit to much to solo, with all the minions around him :-)

agreed, wouldnt want the mobs go back to vanilla guildwars 2 tank and spank challenge. Love the stampeding Dinos etc, that actually move instead of standing somewhere and showing more challanging and natural behaviour.

Use interupts, reflects, absorbs, invulns and dodges. They are not too strong and you have the tools (especially on a Mesmer) to deal with them – try playing differently before claiming “too strong.”

Haha I died in so many embarassing ways, it was awesome! I thought I could faceroll that raptor swarm when coming out of the cave, but they almost annihilated me! Granted I was trying out the revenant that time so my skill might be lacking here. :P But this is a really good improvement on the enemy combat, I actually had to make choices who to take out first, where to position, play defensively etc. Some enemies in particular are truly fearsome, love it!

Yeah, they have super strong attacks but definitely weaknesses as well, which is good. Learn how to deal with them and adapt your strategies, that’s half the fun of it.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Fernling.1729:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Personally, what I wish they had done was a way to leave the starting area instance and go to LA to grab our ascended gear and out to vanilla maps to learn the new weapon skills, then be able to jump back to Silverwastes and speak to an NPC to start. I died a couple of times, not only through getting swarmed at the end but also cuz I was using my new weapon and didn’t know the skills.

Isn’t that exactly what you can do?
I left the instance area and went to a few older zones and messed around before going back to silverwastes and starting the story missions that led to the beta zone.

Can you? I left, geared up and came back and couldn’t find the NPC. But maybe I didn’t look hard enough, or needed to go into my hero panel and start up the story.

Edit: went back on my Revenant. Didn’t see an NPC to speak to and my hero panel didn’t show any story line I could activate to start it up.

That’s strange, it works for me. I just checked it on a revenant and a mesmer. It directs me to Tactician Elke at red rock bastion. I did it this way and completed the story mission with my elementalist earlier.

If you don’t immediately leave silverwastes after creating a new character she is located inside the fort. If you return after leaving silverwastes you go to a spot just south of the doors. There isn’t anything there, you just go to the green marker and a window pops up asking if you want to continue the story. For me at least.

Agreed on this. Using zerker gear should be a challenge. It shouldn’t be a brain dead way to play because the mobs aren’t strong/quick or smart enough to deal with it.

Keep it up, ANet. New mob AI is a huge improvement.

Fernling.1729:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Fernling.1729:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Personally, what I wish they had done was a way to leave the starting area instance and go to LA to grab our ascended gear and out to vanilla maps to learn the new weapon skills, then be able to jump back to Silverwastes and speak to an NPC to start. I died a couple of times, not only through getting swarmed at the end but also cuz I was using my new weapon and didn’t know the skills.

Isn’t that exactly what you can do?
I left the instance area and went to a few older zones and messed around before going back to silverwastes and starting the story missions that led to the beta zone.

Can you? I left, geared up and came back and couldn’t find the NPC. But maybe I didn’t look hard enough, or needed to go into my hero panel and start up the story.

Edit: went back on my Revenant. Didn’t see an NPC to speak to and my hero panel didn’t show any story line I could activate to start it up.

That’s strange, it works for me. I just checked it on a revenant and a mesmer. It directs me to Tactician Elke at red rock bastion. I did it this way and completed the story mission with my elementalist earlier.

If you don’t immediately leave silverwastes after creating a new character she is located inside the fort. If you return after leaving silverwastes you go to a spot just south of the doors. There isn’t anything there, you just go to the green marker and a window pops up asking if you want to continue the story. For me at least.

Ok. Ty. I didn’t see a green market in that direction, I was wandering around near the waypoint. I’ll try looking over there.

You say it directs you? By seeing the green star or was there a message somewhere?

So people don’t dodge in normal PvE? Is that what you are telling me?

Welp it’s official, I guess I am a nub and should go back to not playing. I dodge all the time in Central Tyria and I run out of Endurance all the time. The same in PvP.

I don’t know when everyone got good at the game. Must be all that gear and stuff I never get. :p Oh well, it seems that it’s 60/40 in favor or harder difficulty. As long as people are having fun with it and it’s not possible.

Throw enough bodies at something and you’ll get through it. At least it’s free to Repair nowadays, so the penalty for dying isn’t too harsh.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Fernling.1729:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Fernling.1729:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Personally, what I wish they had done was a way to leave the starting area instance and go to LA to grab our ascended gear and out to vanilla maps to learn the new weapon skills, then be able to jump back to Silverwastes and speak to an NPC to start. I died a couple of times, not only through getting swarmed at the end but also cuz I was using my new weapon and didn’t know the skills.

Isn’t that exactly what you can do?
I left the instance area and went to a few older zones and messed around before going back to silverwastes and starting the story missions that led to the beta zone.

Can you? I left, geared up and came back and couldn’t find the NPC. But maybe I didn’t look hard enough, or needed to go into my hero panel and start up the story.

Edit: went back on my Revenant. Didn’t see an NPC to speak to and my hero panel didn’t show any story line I could activate to start it up.

That’s strange, it works for me. I just checked it on a revenant and a mesmer. It directs me to Tactician Elke at red rock bastion. I did it this way and completed the story mission with my elementalist earlier.

If you don’t immediately leave silverwastes after creating a new character she is located inside the fort. If you return after leaving silverwastes you go to a spot just south of the doors. There isn’t anything there, you just go to the green marker and a window pops up asking if you want to continue the story. For me at least.

Ok. Ty. I didn’t see a green market in that direction, I was wandering around near the waypoint. I’ll try looking over there.

You say it directs you? By seeing the green star or was there a message somewhere?

I really hope we are talking about the same thing..haha
but yeah, it directs me like any other story mission would.

They are actually challenging now, which is good for GW2. We need a spike in difficulty.

If you nerf the mobs, that’s gonna make it that much more of a gap between open world content and challenging content.

DONT DO IT ANET!

Agreed, mixed feelings on snipers though, but eh leave em be, i remember encountering a sniper champion, lets just say it did not die xD

Dodge and Projectile Reflect

EZ PZ

Fernling.1729:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Fernling.1729:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Fernling.1729:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Personally, what I wish they had done was a way to leave the starting area instance and go to LA to grab our ascended gear and out to vanilla maps to learn the new weapon skills, then be able to jump back to Silverwastes and speak to an NPC to start. I died a couple of times, not only through getting swarmed at the end but also cuz I was using my new weapon and didn’t know the skills.

Isn’t that exactly what you can do?
I left the instance area and went to a few older zones and messed around before going back to silverwastes and starting the story missions that led to the beta zone.

Can you? I left, geared up and came back and couldn’t find the NPC. But maybe I didn’t look hard enough, or needed to go into my hero panel and start up the story.

Edit: went back on my Revenant. Didn’t see an NPC to speak to and my hero panel didn’t show any story line I could activate to start it up.

That’s strange, it works for me. I just checked it on a revenant and a mesmer. It directs me to Tactician Elke at red rock bastion. I did it this way and completed the story mission with my elementalist earlier.

If you don’t immediately leave silverwastes after creating a new character she is located inside the fort. If you return after leaving silverwastes you go to a spot just south of the doors. There isn’t anything there, you just go to the green marker and a window pops up asking if you want to continue the story. For me at least.

Ok. Ty. I didn’t see a green market in that direction, I was wandering around near the waypoint. I’ll try looking over there.

You say it directs you? By seeing the green star or was there a message somewhere?

I really hope we are talking about the same thing..haha
but yeah, it directs me like any other story mission would.

Ty. I was able to get back in the story and into Verdant Brinks.

Setting the tone, if you are running berserker, the zone will be much more damaging than you are used to. Running Glass cannon carries some risk now.

Snipers are fine.

No problem completing story on Rev, Tempest, DH. Not sure how people are having problems with this. I don’t get it.

I’ve found that I’m having a good deal more fun playing a non-traditional (sounds weird since it’s not even released yet) Revenant. I’m running the traditional Shiro line, but also running Ventari.

I’ve opted to NOT use dual swords, but instead staff and hammer, staff being my primary dps weapon. It offers me condi-cleanse and blocks for the odd occasion that I can’t dodge, and still gives me good dps with AA and skill 2. When channeling Impossible Odds, I can melt pretty much everything in seconds flat (typically before I run out of energy). I save skill 5 for 2 situations. I use it to engage from a distance (can also use Shiro’s utility skill 8 to shadowstep in if you want), and to single out an enemy. Using skill 5 will drag a single enemy with me, interrupting them in the process, and push other enemies out of the way.

If I’m going up against something that will 1-shot up close, then I switch to hammer, and start range-smashing.

Hope this provides some help in dealing with the new mobs. I find them fun. I had to go into the Rev, see what worked, and what didn’t. This is what I came up with to provide both survivability and damage simultaneously. It’s also the first character I’ve ever ran 100% zerker gear on and actually enjoyed playing.

apharma.3741:

Nice one Anet, now dial it up a notch, force people to think and actually do more than equip PVT and zombie through it all!

I think that players that equip PVT should be able to zombie through it all.

Otherwise, there is no point in that gear. Toughness and vitality should be easy mode but less efficient.

I played revenant, I didn’t go full Zerk, I went Soldier and I had a blast.
Rarely died, did quite a bit of damage and ran Shiro-Jalis. I didn’t die that much because I understand the importance of dodging. Heck shiro even gives you an extra dodge.

I refuse to believe anyone that says that Rev wasn’t made for this content.
Stop running zerk, try something new and flipping learn to dodge…gee.

JustinFarfan.6840:

these kind of posts is why we cant have actual hard content. because players complain about it being ‘too hard’. seriously ):

hard content should be optional for a reason….

this wasnt.
after doing it for each beta character its more annoying than fun.

Smokescales: Wait, what hit me?
So here’s what’s up with Smokescales.

After many, many people talking about them in map chat, it seems that it is not a well known fact about them that they evade all attacks while in their mist field, and for a short while after leaving that field.

This means that, if you don’t know those things, Smokescales are very, very strong. You can’t hit them, and they will teleport around and hit you very hard.

However, if you do know their mechanics you know that in order to kill them you must kite, pull, stun, interrupt, and immobilize. Pull and kite them out of their mist fields, and stun and interrupt them before they can lay another one.

Terragriffs, Smokescales, and Adorable Tiny Raptors
Smokescales, then, are an excellent example of a mob that is impossible to fight if you don’t know the mechanics, and difficult to fight if you do. This seems to be the mob design that we see more in Heart of Thorns. Pocket Raptors are another example of this – they jump around, are tiny, and very hard to hit, and they hit like tiny 16 wheelers. But if you make good use of aoe, immobilize, stuns, conditions, blocks, and cleave, then they become much, much easier.

A pre-BWE example of this is Terragriffs. Widely regarded when they first were encountered as punishingly difficult, Terragriffs are an excellent example of an enemy that is very difficult to fight if you don’t know the mechanics, but fairly simple if you do. They charge and demolish anything in their path, unless their movement is impeded in some way in which case they’ll collapse to the ground helplessly. Fighting Terragriffs as a Thief with Shortbow 3, for example, is trivial.

Understanding and Discovery as Mob Challenge
The point we’re getting at should be fairly clear at this point. Smokescales, and other similarly ‘difficult’ mobs in Heart of Thorns will be punishing in the first BWEs and when Heart of Thorns comes out. They will continue to be difficult whenever someone new encounters them. They should be – they are designed in such a way that they are very challenging. For the rest of us, we’ll get used to their patterns in the first couple months, get used to their skill timings, get used to their AI and movements. We’ll be able to time our skills and move easily to keep them out of their circles and nuke and stun them to oblivion. It’s only a matter of time. What matters is that ideally smokescales will still stay engaging fights – when Colin says that he wants us to use our full skillbar and our skills and traits intelligently for simple mob fights, I believe smokescales are an excellent example of this philosophy. In the future, you will find them not ‘impossible’ or ‘OP’ – but you will still have to correctly execute your skill combinations to kill them effectively that ideally will be slightly more complex than your standard spamming your most damaging move.

In Conclusion
Arenanet and fellow players, please take any early encounter with mob difficulty and encounter difficulty in Heart of Thorns with a grain of salt. If you remember how difficult dungeons seemed at launch, you’ll know that all it takes is figuring out the mob and encounters, and it will be done by the community at large fairly quickly. Hopefully smokescales, pocket raptors, and their like are kept engagingly difficult even after this ‘learning’ phase is over – because everyday fights that actually engage with GW2’s amazing combat system are what so many of us have always wanted.

Thank you for your time. TL;DR – Smokescales are difficult right now, but they won’t be in three months after HoT releases, same as anything else. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Don’t have much else to add, I very much agree with this.
The mobs are decently challenging and require players to actually pay attention to what they are doing and learn what the enemy does.
This is excellent and GW2 should continue designing in this way.

I’m not actually in beta, I’m personally referring to teragriffs and the like, and agreeing with his assessment of HoT mobs.

I don’t think of myself as a super good player. I can certainly handle PvE and JP’s, so maybe I’m a leg up on people that can’t, but I’d be wrecked in PvP, or at least ineffective at wrecking anyone else.

Today I made a Chronomancer, a Dragonhunter, and a Reaper, then spent time in Verdant Brink on each one (by “time” I mean “so many hours I don’t know where the day went”). I did die a few times, albeit more from reaper roflcoptering off cliffs than from the mobs themselves. I didn’t do pure Berserker but I did a lot more of it than is my wont.

My verdict? Tons of fun, obviously there are things to learn about the map and mobs, but it’s far from overtuned in the portion we’ve gotten to. The scaling on filling the Ixtel food baskets might need work, though. I mean, it wasn’t deadly, but with just a few people working it those baskets never filled. At one point I had something like 15 grubs in a basket and it still didn’t count as full, then the bats came back … grrr.

Tomorrow I’ll try out a Shiro Rev.

One hint: Some of the time I spent was just standing still after creation, redoing armor and weapon stats, runes, sigils, traits, and appearance, then test casting all the new spells and utilities to see what they did. I didn’t go into the Story step in the default Celestial/Dolyak. This may have helped.

Sykper.6583:

Setting the tone, if you are running berserker, the zone will be much more damaging than you are used to. Running Glass cannon carries some risk now.

Snipers are fine.

No they’re not. snipers are fine is ur opinion, mine differs. Trash mobs should never be that op where u have to use all ur recourses to beat them, especially with the huge numbers of these trash mobs everywhere, even during the day, night time is ridiculous.

NEW
CHALLENGING
CONTENT

Suck it up and RUN WITH A HEALER

You keep using the word OP, which stands for over powered. This statement is simply not true, they are squishy as anything but they just hit hard.
They are weak to reflect, they are weak to stuns, they are weak to interrupts AND YOU WERE PLAYING A MESMER.
Sigh…

I don’t understand threads like this. Not to be rude or anything, but this is a L2P issue. You have many tools under your belt to combat these mobs. The best being dodge, which everyone has the ability to use. All those mesmer reflects should be pretty great too.
Why even have dodging if the game doesn’t warrant using it?
Besides, what’s wrong with dying every once in awhile?

I really wish Anet would find a way to make a nm/hm work.

Bolbo Baggins.8594:

I think you where out at night? I was at the back of the map at night, with only one other player. Then it can get ugly, Managed too stay alive until i encountered a Mordrem Troll Champ, was a little bit to much to solo, with all the minions around him :-)

It don’t matter, day or night, there’s too many mobs. night time ofc is much worse. Personally i feel, that if this is what HoT is all about, fighting endless mordrem, sounds like a huge mob grind to me and that makes it no different than SW or Orr for that matter. I see this becoming tiresome and old very quickly, at least for me. Put it this way, i spent half an hour there and i was already bored with it. All i was forced to do during that time, is endlessly fight off large groups of mobs that spread their hideous aoe’s all over the joint, or tossed you around like a ball, even knocking u off bridges etc, when all i wanted to do, was a bit of exploring. I don’t mind having to fight mobs in an event but this place is crawling with them everywhere you go, making my experience there very tedious. bleh, i’m starting to regret pre-purchasing this expansion.

Tiger Ashante.1792:

Sykper.6583:

Setting the tone, if you are running berserker, the zone will be much more damaging than you are used to. Running Glass cannon carries some risk now.

Snipers are fine.

No they’re not. snipers are fine is ur opinion, mine differs. Trash mobs should never be that op where u have to use all ur recourses to beat them, especially with the huge numbers of these trash mobs everywhere, even during the day, night time is ridiculous.

Oh no, the content requires players to do planning before engaging and actually think things through and requires skills. So OP nerf plz.