Guild Wars 2

The final battle against the shadow dragon was incredibly frustrating. If I hadn’t been in with my ranger I would have wiped out my armor a dozen times over.

All I could do was run around in the futility of trying to avoid getting stomped. It was obvious that I needed to do something with the gears, but when I got there, I couldn’t do anything because I didn’t have divine fire. And, the divine fire is outside the ring.

I hear my friends trying to help me, but I can’t reach them. I ran around scraping the edges a lot trying to get to them to get my divine fire back. After all, it’s outside the ring, right?

Then, I accidentally stumbled across one of the white circles (which appear to be something to avoid until I accidentally ran over one and didn’t get fried). Only then did I have a prayer of noticing that I had another ability. But no, because I’m running around in circles one step from the grave, and the visual appearance of my character changed only a little, it really wasn’t possible to notice the divine fire.

After an hour of running around in circles (MAN I’m glad they got rid of having to pay to fix your armor!), I finally figured out that I could light the fire while I had the fire. (ANet, couldn’t you at least put a different color on us? SOMETHING to let us know that something has changed, please!)

After another hour, I finally got the whole ring lit. Whew. Should be easy from there, right?

Wrong! Now the dragon sends out little invulnerable critters that put out the fires. So, yet another hour goes by, and I gave up, exited, and read the wiki. ANet, we shouldn’t HAVE to read the wiki to get through this! You’ve GOT to give us some clues that we can see or hear.

Once I read the wiki, it was easier. At least I knew what I had to do, but still, it wasn’t possible to finish it without getting perilously close to death again and again. Being a ranger was the only reason I survived as long as I did (pet could revive me).

Finally, it’s over. I can breathe.

And then it gets worse. Recall that we took on Zhaitan with 3 pact ships and 10 heroes, along with some cannon fodder. But in end-of-battle trailer, there are dozens or hundreds of ships, all loaded with troops. Should be a piece of cake, right?

But no, Mordremoth trashes them ALL in seconds. What logical sense does that make? If Mordremoth were that much more powerful than Zhaitan, it would have killed Zhaitan itself the last time the dragons awoke. It made for a great cinematic, but totally trashed the lore.

And, finally, there’s the Heart of Thorns announcement. Mostly good stuff, but one very scary point: you promised challenges beyond anything we’ve ever faced. ANet, is what you meant by that battles LONGER than this marathon, where no progress can be made except by accident? (Or, reading the wiki to take advantage of somebody else having already gone through the frustration?)

Frustration just isn’t fun. There needs to be a way to interact with the game in a way that I can figure out what to do next.

Great cinematics that are totally illogical also do not give hope. The lore in this game is what makes the game. It’s GREAT. But, one dragon trashing a fleet that massive in a few seconds?

Please have some normal people playtest the new material before you release it. Watch their reactions. If they have to try over and over again, getting more and more frustrated, it’s not good. Do not choose players who are already operating at a god-like level (they’ll be the ones who reply to this thread favorably comparing their playing abilities to mine). Those are not good play-testers.

When you see NORMAL players unable to proceed, don’t dismiss them as noobs; take it to heart. Add some clues. Give some direction. Look at those camera angles. Show us an overhead view such that when an NPC tosses over some fire, we SEE it tossed over, AND we see it land.

When our pals grant us protection, have them SAY that. Not just “maybe you can use this”, with no connection to the out-of-sight protection sphere that the game intends as the only way to make progress. Change the dialog when we obviously don’t “get it”. Have the NPC say, “here’s a protection sphere; go stand under it”.

You guys have done a great deal of excellent work. I really want you to succeed. But please remember that frustration isn’t fun. This battle was awful. But, the portent that we’re going to have even greater “challenges” in the future, especially when compared with this battle, it makes me fear for the future of the game.

Daddicus.6128:

You guys have done a great deal of excellent work. I really want you to succeed. But please remember that frustration isn’t fun. This battle was awful. But, the portent that we’re going to have even greater “challenges” in the future, especially when compared with this battle, it makes me fear for the future of the game.

I found the battle simple to understand and simple to complete on a full zerker engineer. Idk, maybe this is a l2p issue?

Daddicus.6128:

After an hour of running around in circles (MAN I’m glad they got rid of having to pay to fix your armor!), I finally figured out that I could light the fire while I had the fire. (ANet, couldn’t you at least put a different color on us? SOMETHING to let us know that something has changed, please!)

Really… wow. You mean to tell me that you didn’t realize you could LIGHT THE FIRE WHILE YOU HAD THE FIRE? You never once looked at your buffs? Jebus this is definitely a L2P issue.
I was wondering why games are so dumbed down nowadays and then I see this post.

I’m normal player and I pass this fight without dying at all. //Carrion engi.

It’s understandable and really simple to be honest.

Battle made me stand for 30 sec, think it over and.. after using my brain it was easy.
Thanks brain!

Done it with full zerker warrior while being slightly drunk.

I think your problem might be located between your chair and keyboard

I found the fight itself to be challenging, not frustratingly so, but one of the simplest to learn the mechanics in a very short period of time. Longbow ranger. Didn’t have a problem with it. Yeah, I died a couple of times, but I made sure to check my buffs and read and came through okay. This ended up being one of my favorite battles of the season.

The only thing that I found frustrating was when I got the stability buff but was still getting smacked out of the way of trying to light the torches xD. Also there was about 5 minutes or so where I didn’t realized the little trolls were putting out the ring. After that it all made sense and was kind of neat.

It was fairly simple for me to get as well but I don’t think we should be bashing OP just because the signals were more difficult to understand for them.

The battle was unlike most other types of battles we encounter in GW2, so it’s understandable that the mechanics aren’t immediately obvious to everybody. I personally try to connect the dialog in the text box with absolutely anything happening in the circle arena, and once I made the connections I understood what was going on. Maybe I was trained by the Liadri battle and other Queen’s Gauntlet battles to stand in the fire to be able to harm the enemy. I dunno. But as this particular battle hasn’t existed before, I don’t think it’s fair to say it’s a Learn to Play issue.

I would recommend paying attention to dialog and everything going on in the arena in unusual battles, they usually explain themselves. Personally I believe all the info is there in-game.

LOL — and they said we have the friendliest community in all of MMO’s.. LOLOLOL

Learn to play? That’s what you have to say? No sympathy for the person who has no time to invest in learning how to tweak their build to squeeze every ounce of damage output balanced with damage mitigation. Anet made it clear from the beginning that the story would be for those who could casual with high end content for those who want challenge. When fights in the story are solo and they are hard challenges it locks the story away from the casual. The challenging content is supposed to be outside the story. Even story mode dungeons are hard enough for the casual who just wants to know what is going on in the story.

I sympathize with Daddicus on the difficulty of the Shadow Dragon fight. I picked up quickly from the animations, object names and hints, and the dialogue of my pact that the glowing spot on the ground was tossed over by them for me and that I should somehow use it to “Light the Fire”. Except that there was never a place I could stand long enough to light the fire that I wasn’t being downed instantly. Even when I only went to the gear that had the protection surrounding it. The first time was okay but the second go around the Shadow Dragon would pop me up, then pound me to the ground, then scrape his claws across the ground, and I was unable to dodge, especially to any place that wasn’t orange circles. I still haven’t completed it.

This isn’t about separating those who can hack it and those who can’t; it separates the players who don’t have the time to invest in detailed builds from those who only ever care about building the absolute most powerful build. Even real money can’t buy this win; besides who would want to pay $600 for a sword or armor that won’t even help because the build doesn’t compliment them. What happened to play my way. It’s more like Play your way – but you should know it will never work.

It reminds me of the days that I stopped playing tabletop D&D because the only “good” players were power gamers interested in building the best stats possible, killing, looting, rinse and repeat.

I love this game. I recognize that I suck as a player. I don’t do WvW or PvP because I hate them. I want story, I want fun, I want to feel like when I hit something with my bow, my sword, that it actually felt my hit. This fight with the Shadow Dragon felt more like Anet was saying, “this dragon could totally eat you alive in one go, but we’re taming it down so you have the feeling like you might actually be able to best it, <chuckle>.”

rivendahl.5208:

Learn to play? That’s what you have to say? No sympathy for the person who has no time to invest in learning how to tweak their build to squeeze every ounce of damage output balanced with damage mitigation.

Could prolly do the fight naked or without traits. This is GW2, after all.

“I have 4 jobs, twelve kids, and a wife with terminal cancer, and I have to commute 12 hours a day to spoonfeed my dying mother,” is not an acceptable excuse to dumb down the game. Maybe you shouldn’t be playing the game, instead of expecting it to change for you? Idk, maybe making unreasonable forum rants is a better idea.

rivendahl.5208:

Learn to play? That’s what you have to say? No sympathy for the person who has no time to invest in learning how to tweak their build to squeeze every ounce of damage output balanced with damage mitigation.

Did you read his post? By his own admission he spent like 4 or 5 hours messing around having no idea what to do. If at any time during those hours he had spent 5 seconds to stop and think or 2 minutes to go look up what he was doing wrong he could have saved himself the entirety of that time. The fight is not hard.

My first time through this battle I do recall being a little flustered by the divine fire mechanic. First I didn’t notice it (too many red/etc circles distracting me), then I had trouble getting from there to the gears without either taking a wrong path and getting slowed/downed or going to one that didn’t need it (I wasn’t watching the minimap). I was with a party, though, so that didn’t end up mattering all that much.

It cleared up after that – the battle got to the “relatively easy” point once going for achievements, it was just doing it perfectly which was not – but I still recall the only reason I (and the rest of my party I think) realized that the shadows could be killed off so easily was either the wiki or a forum post. That could have done with some extra hinting.

The divine fire blob itself, I’m not sure. It seems most people eventually realize where it is, but some still have to be told. All I can really suggest is “ask someone”…

P.S. Oh yeah, the trailer. Trahearne ordering the fleet to fly so low they were within easy reach of Mordremoth’s innumerable tentacles: incompetence or intentional sabotage?

Just to touch on this…

Daddicus.6128:

But no, Mordremoth trashes them ALL in seconds. What logical sense does that make? If Mordremoth were that much more powerful than Zhaitan, it would have killed Zhaitan itself the last time the dragons awoke. It made for a great cinematic, but totally trashed the lore.

Remember around the time of the establishment of Fort Trinity? A single Mesmer that had infiltrated the Pact on behalf of the Risen caused no end of mischief and required the heroic efforts of the Pact Commander to restore order.

If a single Mesmer can do that, now imagine what would happen when one of the five races comprising the Pact armies, a full fifth of the Pact soldiers, suddenly switch sides and turn on the Pact aboard their own airships while the dragon is counterattacking. And no Pact Commander handy to try to stem the tide.

Betrayal from within is always an effective way to bring down an overwhelming force.

I actually found that the final battle was super interactive and enjoyable. So many games
(even a bit in our very own GW) present dragon fights as a linear, non-interactive whack-fest. The battle with the Shadow on the other hand actually made a fight out of it, you weren’t just standing somewhere jamming a button. Kudos to you Anet, I was really impressed with the dynamic combat you brought in this dragon fight.

Relating to the OP, as others have said, this is a skill issue. I was able to solo the dragon in a short time on a berserker elementalist, it really isn’t an imbalanced fight. It’s the final battle of the season, it’s not meant to be as face-roll as the intro fights presented to newly created characters. Challenges are good, people seem to be forgetting that. At any rate, if you encounter something you are struggling with, go get a group! There are always people willing to help, and I’m sure people who are looking for help to.

The final battle was quite easy. Took me no more then 5 minutes on the first day to figure out the machines. Achieving rock dodger by my self however took me about 30 attempts. To avoid having to restart the instance from the beginning with all its scenematics I’d blaze through it so I could restart at the mote. I can’t understand what all the fuzz is about. Each fight would take me no more then 10 minutes to complete on my full zerker warrior. All I needed was a stability skill and traited for speed.

I solo’d the battle as a mesmer in full zerker gear. As for the battle, it was the last fight against the shadow of the dragon and the introduction to the announcement of the new expansion; it’s supposed to be challenging.

The hints are fairly obvious if you pay close attention. Listen to Kasmeer or read the map chat to know what to do with the shadow imps.

At the worst, you could form a party with your guild or pug it under the open world search tag if you have issues with future LS segments.

Sorry man, but you just sound unskilled.

ALso on my ranger, aced it on the first try. And I’m not even a good player. I get roflstomped in dungeons and PvP. My character wears some exotic junk I cobbled together, not even paying attention to stats.

First of all, saying that thos who could beat the Boss have God Like Skill isn’t really good to start with, some players sure have those skills, but most of the players here are just normal players, playing to have fun. Some with more skill some with less and all of these normal players killed the Boss. By saying that you are a normal player and coming up with these Problems you are just doing one thing. Disgracing the normal and Casual Players and being responsible for their bad rep.

Secondly. Have you ever used AOE Skills? Even once? This is a serious question because AOE fields had two Colours since the beginning. Red for Bad Stuff and White for Good Stuff and friendly AOE Attacks. White Circles aren’t supposed to be something to avoid, if you used AEs just once you would’ve known that.

This isn’t Anets fault. Only a Learn the kittening Basics issue.

Here, how to kill him:

Phase One: Avoid cone attack, red circles and kill the two adds.
Intermission Phase: Don’t stand in the middle
Phase Two: Move from red circles, avoid moving Ground, get the fire buff, set the edge on fire, kill add while on fire and burst the Boss.

Nothing more, and you don’t need a wiki to see how this fight wrks. Add trying to erase the fire and inv? Try it with Fire buff, was the first idea I got after seeing him. The only thing you need is logic.

I think pictures are needed to help this one out. That and someone to party up with him to do the battle for him.

I found the fight and its mechanics very intuitive.

But in other games, I’ve occasionally come across things where I’ve had absolutely no idea what to do, tried everything I could think of, looked it up, and realised it was pretty obvious what I should have been doing. I don’t see this as a design flaw in the game, most of the time. I see it as me having a bad day mentally, and missing the cues I was provided.

So I sympathise that the OP had a frustrating experience, but I think the game did enough to guide the player through the fight, but without becoming a stilted step-by-step walkthrough.

very sorry op… but no way arround it…

The boss fights in this game so far have been a piece of cake. I really hope that the new AI developer implements super hard mechanics in the new expansion. One can dream.

Daddicus.6128:

This battle was awful.

No, it wasn’t. It was pretty well designed and a step into the right direction. It’s all about adapting to the boss fights. If you fail the first few attempts, analyze the mechanics and swap your utility skills accordingly.

Of course, there are people that get frustrated after failing too many times, understandable. I had those moments as well while playing Devil may cry on the highest difficulty back then, but that game is much, much, much harder.

I hope you will have a better time in heart of thorns OP.

Daddicus.6128:

And then it gets worse. Recall that we took on Zhaitan with 3 pact ships and 10 heroes, along with some cannon fodder. But in end-of-battle trailer, there are dozens or hundreds of ships, all loaded with troops. Should be a piece of cake, right?

But no, Mordremoth trashes them ALL in seconds. What logical sense does that make? If Mordremoth were that much more powerful than Zhaitan, it would have killed Zhaitan itself the last time the dragons awoke. It made for a great cinematic, but totally trashed the lore.

You can’t compare Zhaitan and Mordremoth. When we first met Zhaitan in the skies, he was very weakened because of the things we have accomplished during the personal story. As far as mordremoth is concerned, Trahearne went full kitten and just attacked him straight away even though M. fights at full strength.

rivendahl.5208:

Learn to play? That’s what you have to say? No sympathy for the person who has no time to invest in learning how to tweak their build to squeeze every ounce of damage output balanced with damage mitigation.

I’d consider myself a pretty casual player myself, but I got through the boss battle without dying once (downed state doesn’t count if I get back up), and I’m positive my build isn’t optimized (whatever “build” means in this game). And I suppose I should premise this with the fact that I haven’t done any sPvP, WvW on and off (mostly for 100% map completion), and maybe some of the holiday PvP stuff.

Did I run around for a while, wondering what I’m supposed to do? Absolutely. I knew, though, that once the glowing fire in a white circle entered, I had to grab that. The prompt that I needed Divine Fire at the gears told me that I grab it, then run to the edges. The red circles told me that the dragon was coming and I need to get out of there.

The hardest part for me was the second stage when the shadow creatures started to extinguish the flames. At first, I thought I just had to rush through, and was cursing Rox for not tossing fire in more often. After about 20 minutes of that not working (not an exaggeration by much), I decided to try and kill the beast instead. Lo and behold, that worked. Didn’t even realize it was invulnerable unless I had the fire buff. Thankfully, much like the boss fight in chapter 4, the dragon seemed to be stuck there long enough that I could beat it down in 3 separate stages.

So is the fight difficult? Of course it is! But it’s also not so difficult that if you understand the mechanics of the game, and the special rules of this encounter, that you could beat it even with the worst build possible. (I’m almost, ALMOST tempted to try that out now.) “Learn to play” might be a bit harsh, but it’s kind of apt here, especially as you don’t even need to be outstanding.

I had a pretty bad expedience like the op, but I only went through a single set of equipment as it was new content and I had to figure it out. Once I did, it took me a full half hour start to finish.

I kinda liked the fight. It was hard and kept me on my toes. My only problem with it wasn’t with how it was designed, but my computer being too crap to have me respond fast enough to attacks and stuff which contributed to many of my deaths. There was too much going on in an instance to have the speed necessary to react.

If I had a better computer, I’d be able to hit my dodge and use skills faster with less lag and latency and faster reaction times.

I probably have to play better too, but for the most part, it is doable if you know what you are doing. And for first timers, it can be hard with so much sensory overload.

The game is already way too easy, they should make more content like this battle. I feel like there’s so many people that want a game where they can just spam 1.

The fight was really nice. The first time i was one time in downstate but i rallied.
Took me also a couple of minutes to understand the fight mechanics.

The achievment “rock dodger” was the real challenge. I needed at least 10-15 tries to do this on my own. I really like these achievements. You have to think about your build and skills and you have to plan your steps wisely. But having done it gives you a good feeling of satisfaction.
Therefore i do not understand all people which try to find “save spots” or groups which do it the easy way.

can I have a link to the wiki page, please … I’m stuck on this excruciating fight!

a video would be nice too … or maybe I could spend 200 gems and just skip to the end.

This right here is the reason why the video games of today are so dumbed-down.

muckshifter.9731:

can I have a link to the wiki page, please … I’m stuck on this excruciating fight!

a video would be nice too … or maybe I could spend 200 gems and just skip to the end.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Mystery_Cave

HykCraft.4610:

LOL — and they said we have the friendliest community in all of MMO’s.. LOLOLOL

Well in all fairness everyone’s just being (for the most part) honest here. There does come a point in time when you just have to accept the facts and the facts aren’t always nice. This is clearly a L2P issue, there’s no getting around it. The fight introduced no new mechanics, nor did it require any specific gear, trait or skills to complete. The audio cues were very clear and detailed. I’m sorry but that’s the truth, OPs experience isn’t the norm. Maybe OP hasn’t played the other episodes perhaps? Perhaps OP is new to GW2? I guess there’s a number of explanation but it all comes down to L2P.

rivendahl.5208:

Learn to play? That’s what you have to say? No sympathy for the person who has no time to invest in learning how to tweak their build to squeeze every ounce of damage output balanced with damage mitigation.

Yes but you don’t need to do any of those things for the final fight. In this case L2P isn’t an elitist dismissal. All that is required is a basic recognition of mechanics and then to follow the rather clear instruction provided. The only thing that wasn’t made clear was to kill the adds before they killed the fire, and honestly that wasn’t too difficult to figure out either.
Depending on when exactly OP undertook the fight, a simple google search could have saved him hours.

HykCraft.4610:

LOL — and they said we have the friendliest community in all of MMO’s.. LOLOLOL

We do, we just don’t want to have challenging content be hindered by people who fail to understand mechanics, and run around without thinking of what needs to be done.

Daddicus.6128:

Frustration just isn’t fun. There needs to be a way to interact with the game in a way that I can figure out what to do next.

100% Agreed. Frustration isn’t fun. You know how you get frustrated? By not trying to understand what needs to be done. Take a step back, think, and re-approach. You spent 4-5 hrs on this. I don’t mean to sound rude, but the fault pretty much lies on your end for not being to figure out the mechanics. Figuring things out is half the fun, vs. just dps’ing a boss down mindlessly.

White circles are good. Red circles are bad. Pretty evident in both PvE & WvW. How you fail to realize that, well..I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and say you panicked under stress.

Daddicus.6128:

When you see NORMAL players unable to proceed, don’t dismiss them as noobs; take it to heart. Add some clues. Give some direction. Look at those camera angles. Show us an overhead view such that when an NPC tosses over some fire, we SEE it tossed over, AND we see it land.

When our pals grant us protection, have them SAY that. Not just “maybe you can use this”, with no connection to the out-of-sight protection sphere that the game intends as the only way to make progress. Change the dialog when we obviously don’t “get it”. Have the NPC say, “here’s a protection sphere; go stand under it”.

Unless you have tunnel vision, and don’t look up, down or around you – you can SEE the divine fire being tossed.

Also I found the dialogue pretty understandable, given that the bubbles gives protection. I also did this on my Ranger, extremely fast too. You have 2 stabilities, use them if you don’t get the protection bubble. Rampage As One & Signet of the Wild.

If you are the type of player to get easily frustrated, then just relax, take a break – wait for a guide to go up and then do it. Otherwise, try to look around you and understand the mechanics.

I hope that helps, good luck on your future endeavors

EDIT: Asking a friend for help or guidance also does wonders!

I think I sort of have to agree with most of the comments here, it’s more of a L2P issue than an issue on the part of the devs. This is one of the few challenging fights in the game. I wish some of you people had seen the Zhaitan fight before it got nerfed to the ground. Originally, fighting Zhaitan was horrible, because there were a bajillion risen, most of the mobs had insane health, and I specifically remember my entire group being naked because the hordes of risen kept killing us. It felt sooo satisfying to finally kill Zhaitan.

But then they nerfed Zhaitan, just like they did with the boss in the Source of Orr mission too. A lot of personal story bosses used to be incredibly difficult, but they all got nerfed. This fight is roughly on par with most of the personal story’s bosses back before those bosses get nerfed. If you weren’t around at launch, and didn’t fight Zhaitan early into the game, you would have seen the nerfed version. It only took Anet a few weeks to nerf him lol.

Case in point: I fought this boss with my hp generally hovering around max, and when I burned the thing down the first time, I got it to half hp and had to wait for what felt like 3 minutes for the invulnerability buff to go away so I could start phase 2. The only part of that fight I hated was waiting for the boss to actually continue fighting lol. So, OP, you honestly haven’t seen the half of it.

Some advice below, since I don’t want to leave a comment without attempting to help out a bit.

You need to take some time to breathe, relax, and observe the situation. It’s not all that difficult to figure out what does what. Listen to what the NPCs are telling you, their dialogue is usually very valuable. Also, white circles are normally always good. It’s the red and/or orange circles that you want to avoid. If you see any circle that isn’t explicitly red or orange, it’s not going to harm you. Harmful circles are always red or orange.

Hope that helps, and apologies if this comment seems a bit long-winded.

Vargamonth.2047:

muckshifter.9731:

can I have a link to the wiki page, please … I’m stuck on this excruciating fight!

a video would be nice too … or maybe I could spend 200 gems and just skip to the end.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Mystery_Cave

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S244BwtcPDQ

Thanks for that … think I’ll take up knitting, or at least, go do something a bit more fun!

Awesome fight and mechanisms, applause for Anet.

I can appreciate that some people who are not used to somewhat challenging boss fights and games requiring you to figure out a puzzle to solve a task, but seriously, this fight is not one of those obstacles.

Audio clues… Braham goes: “Boss, watch out!” when there’s AoE to watch out for and he casts “Sanctuary” to shield you on one of the fire igniting spots.
Rox goes “Here, take this” and a second later a torch enters the ring and creates a light AoE field… obviously, that’s going to help us so I’ll run into that.
Kasmeer even tells you what the Smothering Shadows will do so ofc, we hit it with fire.

The whole thing was self-explanatory – I’ve yet to die in the encounter having played it on 3-4 professions so far (all armor classes).

Like I said, more of this, Anet, please!

Being able to pick up on boss attack patterns is an important skill in any game. Personally I found this fight very entertaining. Favorite part of season 2 by far.

Also this seems like an entertaining place to link a vid of me doing it without armor or traits. Sorry the quality isn’t very good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojW3MlxRUBs

So there are a number of problems with your comment. For starters, each of the NPCs say something when they throw the divine fire into the ring, things like here boss this’ll help. You can see the fire effect on your character while you have the divine fire. I was able to see I had the divine fire and when I originally did the fight I was doing it with my onboard graphics because my video card had died. The only time your gear made any difference whatsoever was when you were finding the tendrils, during the burn phases he goes in Invulnerable after taking a certain amount of damage. The only thing about the entire fight that wasn’t intuitive was the fact that you could have the divine fire buff and kill invulnerable shadows before they put out the ones you lit in the second phase. I’m sorry to sound insulting, but this is a direct result of people running around on boss trains for most of the time that they play the game.
I am sorry that it took you so long to figure out the mechanics of the fight, I really am, but this was not something that was of extreme difficulty. This is exactly what this game needs to push Players past their comfort bubble to actually learn how to play the class a little better without being put in a situation that they find toxic which is what a lot of people consider dungeons.

The main issue I have with this fight is that it’s more like a frustrating puzzle that I have to reply every 2 minutes in order to get to what I actually want to do. FIGHTING!

I don’t mind the Aoe’s, I don’t mind the tendrils, I don’t mind the bomb plants or the dragon itself. but stop making me run in circles to light those stupid flames that go out if I miss a single frikking dodge! ! it’s long, tedious and annoying.

the dynamic fighting style in gw2 is great fun but it only works if I have the satisfactory of actually HITTING something! something this fight is only 1/5th of!

I’ve done it solo on my Mesmer as well, in full zerker gear. I admit it took me a while and I died a couple of times because I somehow didn’t get the idea that you can kill the shadows while you have the fire-buff. I’ve only ever tried it without the buff and found they are invulnerable. But after complaining in guildchat about my allies not throwing the fire often enough to keep up with the shadows extinguishing the fires I’ve already lit, someone told me that you can actually onehit them as long as you have the fire-buff. As expected, this made it quite a bit easier and I’ve completed it without any major problems. Overall, it was kinda fun. I just hadn’t gotten the idea to try attacking them with the fire-buff yet, because I usually was too busy quickly lighting a new fire when I had the buff (in an attempt to keep up with the extinguishing…) xD. But ya… if nobody would have told me, I would just have looked it up online eventually.

Honestly, that battle was probably the most fun I’ve had in GW2 in a very long time.

The battle was actually challenging. This is how dragon battles are supposed to be! That big shatterer dragon that appears in Tyria that is supposedly super powerful? Nah, you can sit under one of his arms and auto 1 the whole battle. ARE YOU SERIOUS? IT’S A DRAGON! This solution to scaring off a dragon should not be this easy (or so wimpy).

I spent quite some time trying to figure out how to beat the last episode solo, with no outside help, no walkthroughs, no tips, nothing. Although frustrating at times, after 45minutes/hour of trying different things and learning how the mechanics work, the feeling you get after defeating the beast is incomparable. It’s relief/awesomeness/“funness”/epicness all mixed together.

If you’ve ever played GW1 you know that feeling. The final missions in Prophecies, Factions, and Nightfall were challenging (only if you didn’t speed clear it). Your first time running through the missions might have been extremely frustrating, as you and your buddies wiped, tried a new strategy, wiped again, tried a new strategy, wiped again, until you finally found a solution. These scenarios are what makes battles in any game actually fun.

In my honest opinion, I believe this is something GW1 had that GW2 lacks, and lacks badly. I believe people are so used to the philosophy of “Auto 1 + maybe a little 2, 4, 3” in boss battles that they expect, maybe even want all battles to be as easy as the majority of the fights in GW2.

If this is what you (the “general” you) want, then you are really missing out.

EDIT:
And after reading through many of the posts in this thread, I would just like to note, I consider myself a very casual player. Not in any way shape or form a “pro”. I have sympathy for those who were sincerely confused or may have not played challenging content before (thanks to the many “boss” battles in GW2), but just because you (to anyone who believes so) choose not to stop for a second, observe everything that is going on, and make a decision that leaves you saying “Ah-Ha!” doesn’t mean that the game should be dumbed-down so that the developers can hold your hand as you skip along.

I found the battle incredibly reasonable. And as offensive and elitest as it sounds, a little “learn to play” might be in order.

I’m going to assume a few things. One is that this is not the first LS from season 2 you’ve played. The other is that this is not the first video game you’ve played. If this is the first time you’ve ever played a game, then I’m sorry, all my points are invalid.

Yes, the boss had some mechanics that weren’t explicitly brought up, but so has every boss this LS. Should this be expected by now? Shouldn’t we know it’s not going to be a straight DPS fight? So going in, you should be looking around, checking your buffs and reading the descriptions of your enemies. Next, there are lots of clues given to you by the NPCs. Did you not hear when they shout, “Use the fire!” and then see the ‘white light’ get thrown into the ring with you? Certainly that would be a clue that it wasn’t just your normal AoE. Lastly, with the invunerable shadows. Yeah, they got me confused for about 30 seconds to a minute. But like you, I was soloing the boss, and I quickly realized that they must be beatable, because otherwise they would put out fires at the exact rate I lit them. And they seemed to die when the ate the fire… so maybe I needed to use the divine fire against them.

What I’m saying, is instead of getting angry, pay more attention to your surroundings. Arenanet has been doing a superb job of showing and not telling when it comes to teaching new mechanics this season. But that requires you to be invested in the game and doing your part to pay attention.

I guess some people comment without actually reading. Probably my fault for making it so long.

First off, I did finish. But I had to read the wiki, which was one of my main points. Couldn’t there have been ONE cut-scene showing my allies tossing over the fire? No, they SPEAK “here take this”. So, naturally, I go to the wall near them and try to grab it. But, because the light circle is now behind me, I can’t see it. Maybe you geniuses can tell what happens behind you, but I’m not so good at that.

Just one cut-scene showing Rox tossing over the fire would have shortened the battle (for me) by half. Or is that dumbing things down to much for the pros?

Second, we are misled by a statement made by one of our allies as to the nature of those things that put out the fire. Every time I heard it, it implied to me that I needed to stay away from them. Couple that with the fact that they’re invulnerable means (to me) that I’m racing against them. While in the heat of combat (kiting and dodging just to stay alive), I don’t exactly have time to test theories.

Third, the only indication that anything has changed is a single icon showing up in the list of buff and condition icons. When I had the fire earlier in the mission, I was lit up like a Christmas tree. Couldn’t that same effect have been used in the battle?

Regarding the battle where M trashes the fleet, it wasn’t clear to me that the Sylvari revolted. I saw a few of them fighting, but I just didn’t catch that they were fighting our side. So, I’m OK with that part now. Thanks.

To all you guys who said “learn to play”, your comments really aren’t worth responding to, so I’ll only say:

Instead of making a really dumb @ssumption, try asking next time; your statements won’t be so foolish. I’ve been playing this game at least as long as any of you. It wasn’t game skill that showed the solution here. I applied my game skills, but except for being able to stay alive for nearly an hour, those skills were pretty useless. One had to learn the specific tricks, which were not easy to discern.

To all of you who made it through in one pass without dying, congratulations. But, realize that stroking your own ego doesn’t solve my problem. (Frankly, I don’t believe you anyhow.) But, even if you did, are you seriously saying you didn’t get lucky? You just figured out the fire, and that those invulnerable creatures could be killed after all? All while not dying, reading the wiki, or talking to someone who had been through it?

It’s easy once you know the tricks. But learning those tricks is decidedly non-trivial.

Piecekeeper.4361:

…
Did you not hear when they shout, “Use the fire!” and then see the ‘white light’ get thrown into the ring with you?

See my post, but they don’t say “use the fire”. They say “here, take this”. When I heard that, I assumed I had to make contact so they could hand it to me. So, I moved next to them, assuming there was a hole in the wall or something through which I could grab it.

Scraping the walls trying to find the non-existent door/window, my back was always to the fire (for the first half hour or so). I never saw a circle until I was so far down in HP that I had to start kiting again. At this point, it’s just another circle on the ground, albeit a white one. Do I trust the white color? Or, do I take it as another dragon attack (most of his were also circles)?

I don’t think I died at all before I figured out that the light lights the fires. It took a while (45 – 60 minutes), but I figured it out. Where I got stuck mostly was at phase 2. But, having spent an hour kiting and dodging, I’m already frustrated.

At that point, since I “knew” they were invulnerable and didn’t attack, I assumed it was a race: get my 4 lit before the little guys could put one out. It took two hours before I gave that up, realizing I couldn’t win that race. kittenumption, but that’s what I was thinking.

Daddicus.6128:

To all you guys who said “learn to play”, your comments really aren’t worth responding to, so I’ll only say:

Instead of making a really dumb @ssumption, try asking next time; your statements won’t be so foolish. I’ve been playing this game at least as long as any of you. It wasn’t game skill that showed the solution here. I applied my game skills, but except for being able to stay alive for nearly an hour, those skills were pretty useless. One had to learn the specific tricks, which were not easy to discern.

To all of you who made it through in one pass without dying, congratulations. But, realize that stroking your own ego doesn’t solve my problem. (Frankly, I don’t believe you anyhow.) But, even if you did, are you seriously saying you didn’t get lucky? You just figured out the fire, and that those invulnerable creatures could be killed after all? All while not dying, reading the wiki, or talking to someone who had been through it?

It’s easy once you know the tricks. But learning those tricks is decidedly non-trivial.

Look. You had difficulty with the fight, but that’s no reason to attack posters who explained how the fight’s mechanics were (at least to them) happily intuitive, as “stroking their egos.” You started a forum topic on this fight, you have to expect people to reply with their own experiences and opinion. Yes, most people figured out everything in the fight from what was there – otherwise there would be a ton more topics and posts echoing your own. Claiming you don’t believe it is just sticking your head further in the sand.

I could go over how you acted in a completely bizarre way, ignoring cues (eg. “We’re cut off!”) and basic game mechanics (eg. white circles good, red circles bad) , but it appears you don’t want to listen.

White circles: good.
Red circles: bad.
Orange DISKS (filled-in circles): really bad.
White disks: ?

In the heat of the moment, it’s not so easy. I do not recall having seen white filled-in areas anywhere else. All other filled-in areas have been orange, and they’re mostly deadly.

My snap judgment was danger, completely wrong. But, as I said, that’s only a minor part of the frustration. It merely got me in the mood for the upcoming frustration.

Regarding “learn to play”, was that not insulting to me? All I did was point out that their basic assumption was completely false (I know how to play, and in fact have been playing at least as long as any), and that their following statements are thus based on a false premise.

all these posts, loving the challenge……does everybody want challenge?
I find that hard to believe.

I do wish anet would leave the challenge for outside the initial story… like a replay mode. Have a choose fight..and up the difficulty that way. They have the motes, we know they can do that!

I didn’t notice the things putting out my fire, shamed to say. though I got too frustrated with the dragon’s constant orange circles.

I did figure out the white was good and stability buff we get, but still there is too much going on in this fight to be enjoyable to me. Particularly when I’m in the mood to just “see a little more of the story”.
The basic story SHOULD be easy.

Achieves should be progressively difficult, with challenge modes..maybe even 2 levels of challenge modes, for increasing difficulty, for those who want it.

Maybe for some of us, we just pick it up pretty quickly. I found it to be pretty easy to work out. It’s just a lack of situational awareness brought on by a barrage of details happening at once. The first 10-20seconds of the fight I spent running and dodging. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I analysed the fight, but that was more than enough time to observe the various details before engaging.

In all, I died maybe half a dozen times (and I played as a necro mind you, just for added challenge) but since my char had 3 sets of armour on her it wasn’t a big deal.
And to answer your question, yes I figured out the mechanics of the fight without reading the wiki or talking to anyone. I succeeded on my first run through. Broke maybe 4 pieces of armour and damaged a few others.

It’s just a matter of paying attention.

aye….Feel like you just ran your face into over and over again and expected it to magically transition back into a kill phase.

Every mechanic here has parallels throughout gaming.

First "add phase’ where you have to kill a set of adds to draw out the boss.

Second “mechanic” phase where you have have to focus on a way of weakening the boss so you can damage it (using divine fire to create a cage for it)

third “burn phase” Heavy dps on the now weakened monster while evading its desperate attempts to kill you

Fourth (Second add phase) Similar to the first with an additional danger

fifth (Mechanic phase with countermeasure) You have to create the cage again but now he knows your going to do it and sends something to try to stop it. Splitting your attention.

Sixth (Execution phase) Boss is going full on to kill you now that you have caged in for good. Lots of red circles. Kill him as fast as you can while dodging. Either by bursting him down or holding back and “playing it safe”.

This was definetly an up on difficulty but no where near as much as your making it out to be. Your exaggerating to the point that it sounds fake. And some of the things you have said simply are not true (the bit of about divine fire appearing OUTSIDE the arena?….what?) But im making myself take you seriously for the sake of the forums. Im sorry but the content will probably be atleast at this level in HOT if the trailer and the way they have talked about combat and level design in there announcment are any indication. After all. One of the biggest complaints about PvE was that it was simply too easy. It didn’t encourage players to grow at all. It simply taught people to rely on the others around them to carry them forward through sheer numbers. Be it raw damage in dungeon runs to quickly kill bosses before they can hurt you.. or numbers of people in a zerg overwhelming events designed for half those numbers.

I feel that if your serious you should really brush up on boss mechanics in general. Expansions usually add another level of challenge in most games. Because thats what most gamers desire in my experience. I hope your ready for it by the time it releases.

The cinematic did make logical sense though. The reason we killed Zhaitan so “easily” is because we had many personal story episodes prior to the main fight where we weakened him to the point where we can actually fight against him.

Mordremoth on the other hand, was just awoken, with full strength. The pact ships also had sylvari crew, who turned against the pact as the minions of Mordremoth, since no one at the time knew that they were minions.

Daddicus.6128:

When you see NORMAL players unable to proceed, don’t dismiss them as noobs; take it to heart. Add some clues. Give some direction. Look at those camera angles. Show us an overhead view such that when an NPC tosses over some fire, we SEE it tossed over, AND we see it land.

Only problem i had for a while in that boss fight was when i didn’t realize that the critters can be destroyed with the light, but i figured it out fairly soon after.

There were clues during that fight and you DO see the fire being tossed and you DO see it land.
Not just that, but you assumed the white light was bad, even though you were actually carrying the same light source prior to the bossfight ??

All of the boss attacks were also telegraphed, giving you time to dodge them or use other defensive skills. The plant mines had visible tripwires and so on.

It was more challenging than other fights in the game for sure, but it wasn’t THAT hard, you were given so many visual and audio clues during it its not even funny.