Guild Wars 2

First off why is it’s defiance bar soo difficult to break?

For this being necessary to control the fight this mechanic doesn’t scale well, nor does it give time to break compared to practically most fights.

Instant down attack, there’s not evasion or avoidance of this attack that downs any player of any health gear or abilities without any attempt to fight back. Second because the leap is soo far it takes players out of the fight to break the breakbar. I have yet to see this event defeated…

Two changes that should happen, one increase break bar uptime. Limit damage of attack not to auto down player. You can bind them and kill them, but auto downing means the players loses all their cc to assist in breaking the bar.

You are too late. Got killed regularly when HoT was fresh two years ago. But check LFG, maybe you find something.

Damage and completely OP bosses is something I wonder in GW2 since years. The developers still think, if they absurdly overtune the damage output of bosses this is fun and challenging. But it’s not.

If u go on vinetooth with 5 people it will be super ez. The problem is both health and defiance bar scale with people. When 9/10 dont know what cc is then vinetooth becomes a problem. It is not a boss issue but a l2p issue. With PoF release there will be less people doing AB so vinetooth will get much much easier.

Also if u are about to do vinetooth dont ever….ever pop a tag. Less people is always better for that event.

zoomborg.9462:

If u go on vinetooth with 5 people it will be super ez. The problem is both health and defiance bar scale with people. When 9/10 dont know what cc is then vinetooth becomes a problem. It is not a boss issue but a l2p issue. With PoF release there will be less people doing AB so vinetooth will get much much easier.

Also if u are about to do vinetooth dont ever….ever pop a tag. Less people is always better for that event.

This. Five people with good bar breaks will always beat the vinetooth prime.

Don’t fight the Vinetooth during the weekend. The weekend warriors are terrible at this game plus you get way more players on weekends that make bosses harder
Don’t fight the Vinetooth on “meta” maps. If you go on a meta map it will attract more players, which makes the boss much harder to kill

The less players, the better. If you create a LFG listing for Vinetooth Prime (party not squad) beforehand it helps too.

I will have to keep trying, but given the scaling problem this may be a catch 22 since activating the beacons to start the Vinetooth Prime require a group.

If scaling is the problem then Anet should tone down the scaling to make the event better for many players not just a handful. I mean HoT is about grouping up?

Egrimm Van Horstmann.7921:

If scaling is the problem then Anet should tone down the scaling to make the event better for many players not just a handful. I mean HoT is about grouping up?

Scaling is not the problem, player skill is. With more players it’s harder for the competent players to carry the blob.

I’ve killed him several times without even stunnin’ him once. Most of the players don’t know anything about CC. You can say in squad/map chat bevor going down to him and nobody cares. Some also wrote that they did not see the blue bar. For whatever reason.

maddoctor.2738

That would actually make scaling the problem. You can’t expect 20 players to coordinate what five can, that’s not how bigger groups operate in large events. It also prohibits wanting more player coop which in HoT is usually a death sentence for events.

I’ve been in small and large successful DS meta, they are a blast and the more you have the easier the content gets. This should be the same for the Vinetooth Prime given that the Revenants Ascended shield and a mastery point is tied to this particular boss.

Stalkingwolf.6035:

I’ve killed him several times without even stunnin’ him once.

I can confirm this can be done. Instead of waiting for a rez, it does require people to WP when fully dead and run back… it’s not that far. Others lose too much dps and risk getting down themselves when rezzing.

onevstheworld.2419

I like that plan of attack, hopefully I can get a group together to get it done. It was at 2% that last time when time ran out with about 7-8 players.

I have done Vinetooth Prime several times and never failed. Get some friends who know what to do. When you read about people soloing HP champs or killing this or that with two or three people, it’s always those who know what a defiance bar is, how to break it and who set up their skills before the fight and then actually do it.

Most people don’t know what a defiance bar or cc is. I think the game should teach it the hard way. At some point in the story, you should be required to break a defiance bar to succeed, even if you bring 3 friends into the story. We would see many people complaining on the forums about it first, but they would be forced to understand what it is and to figure out which skills their class has to break it.

When I started, I had no clue either, sometimes heard about it, but in the heat of battle, you really see no blue bar, especially if it only appears shortly. As a newbie, you are so busy with other things. It’s like learning to drive a car. At some point, you are on autopilot and can notice other things around you. Now I even watch the counter at Subject 6 when it’s shielded while taking care of oozes.

/rant

hope you get your kill soon, maybe talk about the defiance bar with the squad when you do the pylons and remind them to equip the necessary skills before arriving at Vinetooth Prime. From the point where one understands the defiance bar and how to break it, GW2 becomes a different game. I think the designers could do a better job presenting the players with it and let the game teach it.

Egrimm Van Horstmann.7921:

You can’t expect 20 players to coordinate what five can, that’s not how bigger groups operate in large events. It also prohibits wanting more player coop which in HoT is usually a death sentence for events.

That’s simply not true. It’s easier to get five people to act in concert, since you already know what 20% of them will do; it’s just harder with 20.

I’ve seen VP succeed multiple times with large groups and in nearly all the cases, there was one person who took just a few minutes to explain what was needed. They popped a tag, asked folks to wait to trigger the event, and explained the primary mechanics (including the breakbar) and offered skill suggestions.

The only thing we “cannot” do is to assume that everyone knows the same things that we do. That’s fine in most events; it doesn’t fly for VP nor for the Wyverns in Draconis, or a variety of other events.

Egrimm Van Horstmann.7921:

I will have to keep trying, but given the scaling problem this may be a catch 22 since activating the beacons to start the Vinetooth Prime require a group.

That seems to be the biggest problem. Getting past that first event borders on impossible with how quickly the healers/tenders respawn. So it takes a small group just to do that, and then the meta line progresses upward, gaining visibility by roamers. There’s enough time delay that by the time that meta string is done, 20+ players have tagged along.

I’ve seen it killed a couple times without breaking the bar. Both times the squad was split into sub squads of five each to spread out boons evenly. Perhaps the commander can do this to make things easier. It definitely works for Gerent as I think it was [LUCK] that uses it to do the single burn runs and this is mostly with pugs.

VP needs 1 of 2 things:

- decent damage
- bar break before his jump

Both of those are in short supply with a fraction of the playerbase. He is easily doable with 5 people because that’s his basic scaling level. With each person added it becomes harder to compensate for lack of damage or crowd controll.

VP gets done a lot more seldom nowadays but I’ve gotten 2-3 kills within the last few weeks without even trying to catch the event (and I’ve had the achievement done since week 1 of HoT release).

Either gather some friends and do the event as a small group or join a group when they do it and hope the amount of competent people outnumbers the “afk 1” spammers.

Cyninja.2954:

Either gather some friends and do the event as a small group or join a group when they do it and hope the amount of competent people outnumbers the “afk 1” spammers.

Or just take a minute to explain what people need to do. It really works often, especially since many folks who join are motivated to get it done.

not really. i killed him several times and the commander always explains when to CC him. Nobody understands or takes care to do it.
But thats not only a problem with Vinetooth. Thats a problem with most of the open world champions. And you can survive the jump if you know your class abilities.
On the other hand if you don’t stun him, you need a lot of dps. Next open world problem ;-)

Stalkingwolf.6035:

not really. i killed him several times and the commander always explains when to CC him. Nobody understands or takes care to do it.
But thats not only a problem with Vinetooth. Thats a problem with most of the open world champions. And you can survive the jump if you know your class abilities.
On the other hand if you don’t stun him, you need a lot of dps. Next open world problem ;-)

Yes, really. I’ve been at or observed about 2 dozen such successes. It depends on how it’s explained — the squad doesn’t need everyone to do it, just enough people.

I’ve seen other failed attempts that include explanations. The commander sticks to “bring CC” and “CC now”, which isn’t sufficient — the commander cannot assume that anyone knows what that means or more importantly that people have actually swapped skills before the fight. One of the commanders specifically set aside a subsquad of CC and checked with the group ahead of time about skills.

I still see him killed regularly if there is a healthy group doing the East Watch chain.

Just come early to the chain, Mentor/Tag up if you can. Taxi in ppl if the current commander isn’t. Hopefully the group will have snowballed by the time VP is up.

GL!

Got in a successful run, only broke the bar once. Had 20+ players and the damage was able to get him down fairly well.

Egrimm Van Horstmann.7921:

Got in a successful run, only broke the bar once. Had 20+ players and the damage was able to get him down fairly well.

Awesome, glad to hear it
Thanks for letting us know.

Any advice you care to offer those who are still finding this one daunting?

For the people complaining about the scaling issues, it breaks down as follows to needing to deal 120 break bar damage per player at 5 people and scales up to 180 break bar damage at map cap. So yes the bar damage scales to higher amounts the more people you have, but when skills like Bane Signet do 300 damage so 2 Guardians do the work for 3, it is not that hard to get to the 180 needed per person. The hard part comes from the fact that you don’t get 2/3 of the people throwing CC but only 1/4 of the people, so the bar does not break. If each person threw at least 1 CC each time the bar came up, then bars would break all the time. I am of the opinion the opening instance for HoT should have forces a break to occur in order to get past the instance and into VB.

Azoqu.8917:

For the people complaining about the scaling issues, it breaks down as follows to needing to deal 120 break bar damage per player at 5 people and scales up to 180 break bar damage at map cap. So yes the bar damage scales to higher amounts the more people you have, but when skills like Bane Signet do 300 damage so 2 Guardians do the work for 3, it is not that hard to get to the 180 needed per person. The hard part comes from the fact that you don’t get 2/3 of the people throwing CC but only 1/4 of the people, so the bar does not break. If each person threw at least 1 CC each time the bar came up, then bars would break all the time. I am of the opinion the opening instance for HoT should have forces a break to occur in order to get past the instance and into VB.

I could have swore that it did during the beta but maybe I’m mistaken.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Defiance_Bar#Dynamic_scaling

This is why you’re having a hard time most likely.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Egrimm Van Horstmann.7921:

Got in a successful run, only broke the bar once. Had 20+ players and the damage was able to get him down fairly well.

Awesome, glad to hear it
Thanks for letting us know.

Any advice you care to offer those who are still finding this one daunting?

Yes actually the best advice I can offer is, park a toon in the cavern to the right side cavern that leads to Vinetooth Den. Safe spot to pop in and if you can see if the pylon event is progressing. So for me that almost always runs solo it made it so if VP is up I could hop down into the Den and fight it or run to the current pylon to assist with event leading up to VP.

Second stay as close as you can to the VP so more people can still lay into him after he leaps with little repositioning.

With some patience it should happen, just park a toon you can forget about for a week or two doing anything other than the East Meta in AB. So if you miss it there’s still some loot to be had.

Parking a toon in a safe spot near the desired event is a great idea (whether for VTP or any other target).

Artemis Thuras.8795:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Defiance_Bar#Dynamic_scaling

This is why you’re having a hard time most likely.

Hah, I just brought that up in General not too long ago. Complete with math and a chart (that I can’t load because wonky forums).