Guild Wars 2

I was cruising around lost shores. Saw a Veteran Reef Drake. Took him on, not much problem. Then I took on standard Reef Drake. I was owned in a heartbeat.

Looking at the combat chat and trying to figure out what is killing me, I get

“You were hit by 1808 damage by Reef Drakes using Retreat.”

This is spammed very fast with no animation from the drake, and my health drops from full to 0 in a heartbeat.

Didn’t realize Retreat was so powerful.

We were happily fighting that Reef Drake champ when 8 standard Reef Drakes piled in on our flank.Considering there were only 5 of us,we did not stand a chance.

Do not know if that was supposed to happen or we just lucked out.

I’m a warrior and after several encounters with the drakes from now on i will only engage them ranged or run.

Yeah, the normal reef drakes are a little bit on the unreasonable side. Their confusion spam is a little too frequent and long lived, and their pull mechanic imobilizes you after the pull. If you can manage to kite them without running unto other mobs, they’re doable, but your character must possess an effective way of keeping them slowed to do that. That’s my take on it anyway.

Reef Drakes you have to be observant, if you stand still too long they can knock you down and incapacitate you. You need to dodge and attack, they are not extremely hard but are indeed a nuisance and I usually avoid them.

I think I might get a mini to commemorate the first time I attacked one. I charged in head first as usual then found myself knocked down, then my character stood still unable to move/attack/dodge as I watched on in horror as my health went down shockingly fast, it was a matter of learning the hard way.

White Raven.4368:

We were happily fighting that Reef Drake champ when 8 standard Reef Drakes piled in on our flank.Considering there were only 5 of us,we did not stand a chance.

Do not know if that was supposed to happen or we just lucked out.

Had the same thing happen to me in a group fighting the Broodmother. We got her to maybe 30% health and then got zerged by a group of 6 regular drakes, all pulled into a pile and AOE’d to death almost instantly.

The drakes really are a little over the top. If they didn’t seem to be able to spam that confusion attack so fast they might be a little more reasonable. Even running as much condition removal as possible (and blowing one or two of their confusion attacks on pets/minions) it’s still not enough and you wind up with 6-8 stacks on you. I’ve given up on them entirely.

I hadn’t really dealt with these new drakes at all. I came upon a group of downed event NPCs surrounded by reef drakes. “Meh… they’re just a bunch of drakes,” I thought, “I’ll kill ’em, rez the NPCs and continue the event.”

Well, you can guess what happened.

They were close to a waypoint, however, and I was so mad from getting killed so quickly and so easily that I death-zerged ’em, then rezzed the NPCs.

Only to run into a pack of young karka as the only player on the event.

By the time I was done with them I had no armor left, but I managed to take them all right before I got booted from the game for a new build.

The only issue I had with them, was that some people died to a few of them, and then I killed those and tried to rez them, and died almost instantly myself. I think maybe I had confusion and it was dealing damage per healing tick. I think that the Confusion effect should A: end when you’re downed (which I don’t think it does) and B: not apply to rezzing people.