Guild Wars 2

Well, I hope that it truly is a high priority on ANet to ensure there are open world PvE mobs that are NOT:

• low armor, low attack damage that do nothing else, very high HP, very rarely use boons, rarely use conditions, almost never use control effects or gain Champion rank too easily. *cough*majority of mobs in base GW2*cough*
• hit at best only 1-3 times, doing about 1000-3000 damage total, before dropping dead when players use full berserker gear.

Hopefully, atleast what I hope:

1. Mobs will use 1-3 boons on themselves and their allies, something that players can remove from the mobs to reduce their effectiveness, unfortunately swiftness is most ineffective boon for mobs to use.
2. Heavy armor becomes more common and other types of defense against direct damage builds (critical and non-critical), berserkers already are too effective in most of open world PvE.
3. Few mobs that focus on inflicting large number of conditions, in burst or slowly.
4. Mobs in Silverwastes hit rather hard, with the nerf of Vigor and some new “on successful dodge” traits, hopefully there will be mobs that keep on the pressure which can be mitigated with dodging and blocking, relieved with healing abilities or prevented with control abilities.
5. Mob ranks, Veteran and Elite are more used than just giving Champion or higher ranks to some big ones, just to ensure that there will be mobs that hit harder than usual but are vulnerable to control effects. Of course Boss monsters would have their new defiance system, to prevent zerg stun locks as usual.
   Example: bosses with their Elite guards, foolishly sends their Champions first to defeat the heroes, when the champs fall, the Boss goes in with support of his/her guard of Elites. Yer usual trope(?)
6. Mobs like Charge/Lunge Teragriffs that will use control effects

Yeah I really hope that Anet are putting in an effort to rework the AI and combat mechanics for all enemies, not just bosses. While still creating new and inventive ways of using telegraphs and/or other mechanics. To ensure that wherever you go you can’t just zerg it with 50 ppl and spam 1. You have to actually stay on your toes and do your best, or you’ll die.

Saddens me abit that this topic didn’t get more conversation about thoughts and views.

But I won’t necro this thread second time, if it doesn’t get any conversation after the first necro…

FrostSpectre.4198:

1. Mobs like Charge/Lunge Teragriffs that will use control effects

The thing that makes these monsters doubly tricky (and therefore interesting) is that they move out of AoE. All. The. Time. Both the Teragriffs and the Vile Thrashers. It forces the player to CC them before laying down their AoE which brings another dimension of combat to the encounter. The CC that these monsters throw out is fairly easy to avoid.

It might be a plan to have more foes move out of AoE more generally, to make the control aspect of the game more viable. Perhaps they should also kite melee attackers (Centaur archers already do this a lot), and line-of-sight ranged attackers such as Rangers and Engis. All of this combined might help in making combat feel a lot more engaging, and bring some underused skills into play.

Nice Idea.
I would like also the mobs move out from the corner.
Example: In that point the mob understund that there is a concentrate damage and move out from there in a better place.
I don’t have a solution but I do all dungeon in corner -.-" (or kicked)

Frost.1503:

Nice Idea.
I would like also the mobs move out from the corner.
Example: In that point the mob understund that there is a concentrate damage and move out from there in a better place.
I don’t have a solution but I do all dungeon in corner -.-" (or kicked)

Again, the dungeon stacking thing could be avoided by making the Monster move around. Monsters in dungeons don’t really do this. They could be programmed to dodge away from walls when they take a certain amount of damage, back to the middle of the room/arena. Another enemy NPC could portal them to a different location at random points throughout a fight, again, to get them away from a wall. Alternatively they could just be programmed to walk to a different place at certain percentage health markers.

I think the only thing that might stand a chance of eradicating stacking is if the foe actively kited players, perhaps leaving damaging/snaring effects behind them as they run like Terragriffs in the SW.

When you take a moment to think, there seems to be a lot of ways which could be employed to make combat more challenging… no idea if any of them would work well enough to have an impact. After all, as Tequatl (initial redesign) and the Bloodtide Wurm have shown, after a short time people get used to fighting them, and when the “new strategies” are worked out they’re “just another piece of trivial content”.

• mobs that steal endurance,
• mobs that steal vigor,
• mobs that apply reveal around them,
• mobs that power lock our heal skills,
• mobs that spike together the same target then change etc.
• mobs that stomps us,
• mobs that rez allies,
• more unique mechanic like pick kind of evinronmental weapon near mob area to destroy mobs special defense.

Mem no Fushia.7604:

• mobs that steal endurance,
• mobs that steal vigor,
• mobs that apply reveal around them,
• mobs that power lock our heal skills,
• mobs that spike together the same target then change etc.
• mobs that stomps us,
• mobs that rez allies,
• more unique mechanic like pick kind of evinronmental weapon near mob area to destroy mobs special defense.

But that would make mobs intelligent and gw1-like! We wouldn’t want that. /Sarcasm

Mem no Fushia.7604:

• mobs that steal endurance,
• mobs that steal vigor,

These would definitely be potent as it’s the dodge function that gives us so much survivability. Foes that have this effect could help shake things up a bit more.

• mobs that rez allies,

This came with the Tower of Nightmares and I really hope we see it again. The Mordrem we know of now feel like they’re expendable, re-growable pieces of the dragon and such simple minds perhaps should not be able to revive each other. The new humanoid (seemingly intelligent) Mordrem that we’ve been seeing in the beta, as well as corrupted Sylvari – hell yes, having to interrupt foes reviving foes would be great.

One of the harder aspects of GW1, I found, were the foes that could resurrect each other.

There’s another train of thought I’d like to throw in at this point. It’s often the case that people focus too much on one boss. I have always found combat to be far more engaging and fun with multiple foes to contend with. Groups of less harmful foes can be a lot more fun than one big bad boss with his telegraphs, in large part because of how you have to consider how to control them, chain blinds onto them, interrupt them, ball them up, etc. I wonder if this is what they’re trying to achieve with the Pocket Raptors.

Meanwhile threads like “remove cripple from hyenas” exist and people qq that ac is hard.

TheRandomGuy.7246:

Meanwhile threads like “remove cripple from hyenas” exist and people qq that ac is hard.

I’ve not heard anyone qq in a long time that AC is hard. In fact, the last time I remember that being a complaint I was playing the original open betas.

The hyena thing is no different to risen mobs disrupting you as you run through Orr. It’s not that they’re hard, it’s that people are lazy. So much so that even dodging is considered too much energy.

I do think that there is some truth in that many of those people who complain that there is no challenging content do also post to complain about features in the game which are intended to provide some tiny challenge, but they consider to be annoying and therefore must be removed. These people are kittens.

I would say the Mordrems in the Silverwastes are a step forward to more Variety. Everyone of them feels different and you can’t just autoattack a bunch of them to win. Try autoattacking a Group of Terragriffs and Menders. This combo can pretty easy wipe a whole fort of 10 or more Players.^^

What i miss from the Mordrems is the rezzing we saw with the Toxic NPCs. But the Humanoid Mordrems could be just doing this. In on of the beta Videos I have seen at least one Type of Mordrem who is dodging quite a bit. This and the fact that the “early” Mordrems ar quite different let me hope that we see good Mobs in HoT.

They are not going to make the game harder. It caters to the casual

Walhalla.5473:

I would say the Mordrems in the Silverwastes are a step forward to more Variety. Everyone of them feels different and you can’t just autoattack a bunch of them to win. Try autoattacking a Group of Terragriffs and Menders. This combo can pretty easy wipe a whole fort of 10 or more Players.^^

What i miss from the Mordrems is the rezzing we saw with the Toxic NPCs. But the Humanoid Mordrems could be just doing this. In on of the beta Videos I have seen at least one Type of Mordrem who is dodging quite a bit. This and the fact that the “early” Mordrems ar quite different let me hope that we see good Mobs in HoT.

While the Mordrem are an improvement in concept, they still adhere to a hand full of designs that aren’t actually difficult, just overwhelming. The main problem is that they outpace the controls used to lock them down, and they resort to the same “spam AOE” tactics most players use. With how some of the player builds are laid out (at least at the moment), all its really accomplishing is dispersing players without a clear strategy path for sustain or many vs many. If you think about it, its like a PvP match where one team gets faster cool down.

Part of this I attribute to the horrendous cool downs and durations of our control skill compared to whats needed for a typical mordrem fight. One could argue that Mordrem are group content; but they force multiply way to fast and too easily disrupt sustain builds that seem like were intended to fight them.

So what ends up happening is the use of WvW blob style tactics when fighting groups of them….. the winner being determined by whose AOE controls hit home first. Thats not how I was hoping the difficulty curve would be ramped up.

Personally I would like it better if their controls were less frequent, but stronger if caught in it; And that the AI be setup so that groups stagger their attacks, so we have area denial, but not because they incidentally stacked from chasing the same target.

I’d also like to see Mordrem vulnerabilities, or Player skills, adjusted so a focused player can dedicate his attention to locking down a single target (by sacrificing DPS) to give breathing room for the other players. As it stands, players just use a variation of Boss fight rotations, where we wait for a moment of vulnerability and just burn as hard as we can until they recover. I know the individual counter play mechanics exist… but you can’t effectively enact them when Mordrem group up.

If you went to silverwastes and watch players, you’ll notice the Fort defense fights have a few obvious patterns.

-Siege is the only reason outskirt mobs ever get attacked… its too risky to not fight them at a given choke point.
- People will wait for the Mordrem to gather at a choke point in order to AOE them down.
- Once the line is broken, you can’t engage the mordrem in a close fight unless you outnumber them. The reason being it just inverts the role of stackers.
- Once they break in, the only thing you can do kite them. Melee classes don’t have a reliable way to separate one from the pack to either thin the group, or engage them one by one.
- Even if you do try to engage them one by one, the travel distance of the ones you need to control tends to put them out of range after one attack.
- Sustain builds are still at a huge disadvantage just because of the damage scaling. If a sustain build could effectively keep them from moving around by being in active combat, I could finally see a reason to break away from the Burst DPS meta that reigns over PvE.

I recognize the little things that make the fights more interesting… but I also realize its a bunch of these other little things that effectively hold it back from being more. They didn’t really make the fight “challenging” in the traditional sense…. it just punishes mistakes by flipping the same cheese tactics against the players.

Mem no Fushia.7604:

• mobs that steal endurance,
• mobs that steal vigor,
• mobs that apply reveal around them,
• mobs that power lock our heal skills,
• mobs that spike together the same target then change etc.
• mobs that stomps us,
• mobs that rez allies,
• more unique mechanic like pick kind of evinronmental weapon near mob area to destroy mobs special defense.

This.

As for rezzing, I remember rezzing Gargoyles from the first game for some reason…

Rym.1469:

As for rezzing, I remember rezzing Gargoyles from the first game for some reason…

I remember summit stone dwarens and margonites and few others that rezzed and that ranger spirit that prevented rezzing, but w/o rupting their rez was something. Gargoyles imo ancient creations of kraktarkrolik that that lost their “brand” with time passing, they actually indeed were rezzing but it was more effective in hard mode. I remember them only from askalon and low lvl hard to tell, but it rather resemble fast to kill them and rez rez rez, plus they used that ele high dmg air ball.