Guild Wars 2

This fight needs a bit of tuning.

First, there’s a clear bug where Marjory and Rytlock don’t engage in the fight – they just stand around, so they don’t even help aggro/fight the endless trash mobs for you.

Second, it’s not at all clear what you are supposed to do to drop Adrienne’s shield. The bloodstone elementals that are supposed to train you on this don’t require that you pass the beam through them – just fighting them while it’s on you is enough.

Once you figure it out, it is still very frustrating because the margin between “went too far and the beam drops off of you” and “stayed too close and Adrienne knocks you back” is ridiculously small. Meantime you’re taking DoT from the shard and constant peppering from all the trash mobs.

Once you do drop her shield and you’re trying to DPS you’re surrounded by a huge purple and red light so you cannot see her tells. And she hits HARD, and since you are still being hit by 5-6 trash and hurt from the DoT you’re going down.

I see what they were going for and the fight could be fun, but it needs a bit of tweaking to remove the pain points:

1. Fix the bug so your friends help take aggro
2. Fix the training so it’s clearer that you need to pass the enemy through the beam connecting you to the shard.
3. Increase/don’t have a tether limit when you are trying to pass her through the beam.
4. Reduce the visual noise of the shard effect so you can see her tells.

Oh, i thought Rytlock and Majory were only intereted in the walls in my game.
So yeah, get them into the action. No wonder, the fight felt so long an she was such a damage sponge. I was missing DPS.

Yeah, cause NPC’s do so much damage…

The shard doesn’t DoT if you’d use the special action that’s available.

A bunch of people from my guild have complained about this too. Am I literally the only one who actually figured out immediately that the beam destroys the shield?

I’m not sure how folks fought the elementals without putting the beam on them. Maybe they were close melee types? I and my friend were scratching our heads on the first elemental because we couldn’t touch it while I had the bloodstone buff up; I was standing on the bloodstone. Then I strafed a bit, saw the beam, and circled around to the other side and it worked.

So for me it was a perfect tutorial for Adrienne’s shield. But then again, I was P/P at the time, I wasn’t trying to get any closer to the elemental.

You need to use the counter magic ability. It makes this fight so much easier, and the one after it is impossible without it. Basically when you use it the beam from the bloodstone no longer leashes and you can run at normal speed. You use it, run outside her circle that she is doing, and then run with her to kill her shield. But yes, use counter magic, run outside, and run parallel to her. Do not just try to run the beam out normally.

Donari – I was on my warrior. I pretty much just walked up to it and started smashing, as warriors do.

Icdan – From the NPC dialogue, what I thought was happening was:

1. Get near the bloodstone. Acquire beam suction ability.

2. Fight something until its “power” is absorbed (e.g. the shield)

3. Activate the special skill to gain this power for yourself (weird because it didn’t give you the shield but instead gave you a long burst of superspeed.)

4. Kill the bloodstone shard because… um… I dunno why those are damageable, since they regenerate and killing them doesn’t seem to be part of the fight mechanic.

I agree that the counter magic/beam mechanic wasn’t messaged adequately. There probably should have been a more explicit callout during the training fights with the golems. I broke both of the golems and had no idea there was a tether/beam mechanic. I thought just breaking the bloodstone was what took their shields off.

Maybe an additional phase with a shielded bloodstone or something that required the beam to unlock a door before you got in to combat or something.

However, the mechanic is not at all hard to use during the justicar fight once you understand how it works. You only need it when she’s shielded, and when she’s shielded she follows a predictable path and doesn’t deviate from it. Really easy to get the proper range and put the beam on her.

Well, when I first did it I understood that bisecting her with the beam was how you drained the skill. What wasn’t readily apparent was that you needed use use countermagic for the beam not to leash and for you not to have the slow effect. The way it’s set up until then counter magic was used to just kill the bloodstones. The elemental’s shields were easily nullified without using it. I think a lot of the confusion is coming from the fact that people are picking up the beam and running it SLOWLY out and hoping to get her in it before the beam leashes.

I think the Rytlock/Majory thing needs to be put in the bugs forum. No, they don’t do as much DPS as you might, but they are crucial to tanking the adds enough so you can focus more on the boss. It’s more work YOU have to do, since the adds aren’t exactly slouches (they can hit for a decent amount and can overwhelm you if you leave them alone for long).

The bloodstone mechanic isn’t too hard to do…once you realize the way you should do it. I do agree that this isn’t communicated well that putting the enemy in between you and the stone is how the game is wanting you to do this, basically because any other time, the bloodstone mechanic appears to work by you getting right up into the enemy’s face for it to register hits with it. Maybe the reflecting mechanic is how they communicated it, but why didn’t it just use the term “reflect”?

The other thing: does anyone else see the window that it gives you between when you see the AoE range of her knockdown attack (the cone indicator, not the circle one; the latter is okay) being extremely tight? I swear I only got a half second window between when the game indicated the AoE range of it and when she did the move. It’s a nasty knockdown that you probably should do whatever you have to do to evade, and if you had the NPCs working as intended, you could have a better time trying to dodge this. But it’s a split second chance for you to dodge roll or evade move this (I think I’ve times this at around a second, if that), and I’ve heard some classes have an easier time dodging this than others. But is anyone else finding it too tight of a time window to dodge this attack?

PopeUrban.2578:

I agree that the counter magic/beam mechanic wasn’t messaged adequately. There probably should have been a more explicit callout during the training fights with the golems. I broke both of the golems and had no idea there was a tether/beam mechanic. I thought just breaking the bloodstone was what took their shields off.

I had exactly the same experience.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

PopeUrban.2578:

I agree that the counter magic/beam mechanic wasn’t messaged adequately. There probably should have been a more explicit callout during the training fights with the golems. I broke both of the golems and had no idea there was a tether/beam mechanic. I thought just breaking the bloodstone was what took their shields off.

I had exactly the same experience.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

PopeUrban.2578:

I agree that the counter magic/beam mechanic wasn’t messaged adequately. There probably should have been a more explicit callout during the training fights with the golems. I broke both of the golems and had no idea there was a tether/beam mechanic. I thought just breaking the bloodstone was what took their shields off.

I had exactly the same experience.

First, Marjory says something about countermagic, implicating you need the new mastery. You can also read up on all the effects as the first three bloodstones do not drain much health: http://i.imgur.com/znNbOaY.jpg

Then, right before the elemental fight, Marjory explicitly states that shields will go down if you catch them in the bloodstone flux: http://i.imgur.com/Gg2lygW.jpg

It might have been worded in a more in-your-face manner, but why?
It’s been perfectly explained, there was time to read up on the effects and the new skill, to practice, and to take the shields down from elementals after an NPC tells you what to do.

Once you do drop her shield and you’re trying to DPS you’re surrounded by a huge purple and red light so you cannot see her tells.

All tells you need to see are the orange fields, and they are well visible even through the bloodstone flux. Out of the two – circle and triangle – only the triangle can really hurt, as it knocks you down for a longer while.

If you feel you are getting knocked down a lot or you can’t handle the miniscule damage from the adds, let her kill you and change your skills / weapons for something more adequate: slot ranged AoE (either a weapon for swap or a utility skill) to take care of the adds – they really die in two hits; slot stability and pop it as soon as you see the triangle AoE attack (or just dodge).

I died to her two times before i got it right the first time, and i am glad that not all fights and mechanics are dumbed down in this game anymore, and that we, as players, are actually required to follow advice of the NPCs, prepare for the occassion and execute our fight properly instead of simply pressing 2 for three minutes.

Everything is there, provided by Marjory – but, you know, you can lead a horse to water…

edit:

Once you figure it out, it is still very frustrating because the margin between “went too far and the beam drops off of you” and “stayed too close and Adrienne knocks you back” is ridiculously small. Meantime you’re taking DoT from the shard and constant peppering from all the trash mobs.

You can avoid DoT if you use the special skill immediately – it also creates a bloodstone flux, and one that empowers you instead of draining your life.

I also don’t think there’s any range on the flux, however there is a time limit on it – you are draining hp of the bloodstone, and once it’s destroyed, the flux is over.

drkn: So, if I understand the gist of your comments correctly, because you found the mechanics to be “perfectly explained,” the rest of us in this thread should/could not possibly have been confused? And because you could see the tells through the visual clutter everyone else could/should be able to as well?

Discounting the arrogance of that tone, it doesn’t change the facts that:

1. The training encounter with the elementals does not require you to do anything more than run up and bash the elementals until the shield drops. It happens fast and there’s little chance to learn what you did that worked. Also, “flux” is an ambiguous term – for my part, I assumed it meant the big pulsing purple field on my character. As others have pointed out, when you’re fighting right next to the stone you can’t even see the trail.

2. The special skill is fine once you understand what exactly it does, but it is not at all clearly taught. In the very screenshot you showed, Marjory describes the skill this way: “Interesting. Countering the magic of these bloodstones returns whatever magical properties it absorbed.” What this reads as to me is that you need to get close to the stone, use it to “absorb” a property (e.g. the shield) then activate your countermagic to “return” it. As I and others have said, in practice it seems like you just get superspeed and the bloodstone becomes vulnerable for you to kill it.

This feedback is not about dumbing down the fight – the mechanics are fine, they are just poorly messaged, and a fight that could be fun becomes frustrating. After all, this is not a fight most of us are going to repeat more than a couple of times. It’s really feedback for ANet regarding the scripting of new mechanics.

Kunzaito: I’m not sure why you’re starting with the ad hominem argumentation. Is it hard to handle a dissenting opinion that also is backed up by raw factuation, with screenshots and explanation?
I merely pointed out that everything already is nicely pointed out. If people read/listen to the NPCs instead of running blindly ahead, they will know how it works, especially that there’s enough training via babysteps of bloodstones and golems.
Even if, at some point, i thought to myself that this OP is an entitled rusher complaining about a really cool and well-designed content just because it’s not given out on a silver plate where his regular cookie-cutter build works, i haven’t said such a thing, so i am not sure where your feelings of arrogance came from.

It is actually quite possible that if you re-do this story step, paying attention to all details and not rushing anything, you will notice all the instructions just as they are and will realise no change would be necessary. Worked for a few people from one of the guilds i’m a member of, and they didn’t enjoy the story the first time around simply because they rushed it.

Given the attitude so far, maybe you’ll find it odd but people quite often watch their surroundings in games and when they use a skill, they observe what it does. This is why there are three bloodstones at the beginning – so that you can, at your own pace, witness what it does.
To be fair, with the first bloodstone i thought i simply need to AoE it and hit the special skill by mistake, but the remaining two did the teaching trick for me.

I concur about feedback – feedback is good – as Koda teaches, balance is good as well.
So, going your way, counterbalancing your feedback – my feedback for ANet is that it’s all provided in the best possible way, namely that of the oldschool gaming rather than the contemporary hand-holding the majority of games have employed, including GW2 at times.

You didn’t offer a “dissenting opinion.” You stated that my/others experience was WRONG. To wit:

“It’s been perfectly explained,” – when everyone has taken the time to state why it was NOT perfectly explained to them.

“and they are well visible even through the bloodstone flux.” – except I could NOT see them.

When you fail to appreciate that not everyone comprehends things the way way you to or experiences things the way you do (some people have visual disabilities, for example) THAT is arrogance.

As far as “raw factuation” (whatever that is), I have also provided plenty of explanation (some using your own screenshots) for why I felt the opposite, which makes this not a FACT, but an OPINION.

For what it’s worth, I was not rushing at all. The first time I do a story instance I listen to all the dialogue and try to talk to all the people. I even RP walked through the entire Eir memorial because it felt right to do so. I still had the troubles I described.

Your very point that if it “play it again” I will understand it represents the basic fallacy of your argument. The design of a teaching encounter is only important the FIRST time someone plays it. If they have a prolongued, confused, frustrated experience due to poor design, you have failed, regardless of how well you thing your design worked. If you watch Silicon Valley you would have seen a great example of this last season – the engineers were so proud of their design that was vetted by other engineers, but in the hands of average users it completely bombed.

drkn.3429:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

PopeUrban.2578:

I agree that the counter magic/beam mechanic wasn’t messaged adequately. There probably should have been a more explicit callout during the training fights with the golems. I broke both of the golems and had no idea there was a tether/beam mechanic. I thought just breaking the bloodstone was what took their shields off.

I had exactly the same experience.

First, Marjory says something about countermagic, implicating you need the new mastery. You can also read up on all the effects as the first three bloodstones do not drain much health: http://i.imgur.com/znNbOaY.jpg

Then, right before the elemental fight, Marjory explicitly states that shields will go down if you catch them in the bloodstone flux: http://i.imgur.com/Gg2lygW.jpg

It might have been worded in a more in-your-face manner, but why?
It’s been perfectly explained, there was time to read up on the effects and the new skill, to practice, and to take the shields down from elementals after an NPC tells you what to do.

Among the possibilities are:

• Some of us posting here (including myself) are idiots for not understanding all the “perfectly explained” mechanics and taking time during the fight to read up on effects.
• The explanation was not perfect and reasonable people might have misunderstood.

I don’t have a problem if ANet decides not to update the text, let alone the “tutorial”. It’s an issue only for the first time and folks coming after this week will be able to read the wiki or Dulfy if they have trouble. (Or, as many of my friends have done, ask for help in /guild or /w.) That’s perfectly fine.

I can’t agree with you that the tutorial is well done. I don’t care if I goof up or have trouble — that shouldn’t matter at all. I do care if lots of other people are left confused, which seems to have been the case.

Anyhow, of all the issues we’ve seen in instances over the last year or two, this was the most minor. It’s easily resolved.

I almost quit the fight as a result of the beam breaking all the time and couldnt work it out.

Then I got to the Jade Construct which just sat in the middle all the time launching PBAOE and the beam either broke or I got knocked back and the beam broke. Since the Jade Construct was not moving then on this one I did quit.

Really poor design.