Guild Wars 2

I love every aspect of the Living World S2, everything but the battles. It’s almost like you guys designed the battles for group-play. Wait…YOU DID. Hahaha! So lame!

Look, I loved the story, and I loved the tasks. They were fun. However, the battles make the whole experience extremely lousy. Are they unbeatable? No. Are they frustratingly annoying to the point of me slamming my genitals in a door jam? Yes. Actually, I take that back…You ABSOLUTELY need a group in order to kill the dragon on the last story mission. It’s bull that the meter reduces over time.

I liked the way you designed the race story lines. Please don’t F up again with S3, please. The battles shouldn’t require 2-3 people in order to get through without dying 6 times. It’s just annoying. Even with free repairs…it’s annoying.

And before anyone says “but it was easy for me”…I play a Warrior, and we’ve seen a 30% damage nerf since april of 2014. It sucks. Our class sucks. And the boss battles suck.

Uhm…

If you’re talking about the instanced content, I’d say all of S2 content is entirely soloable. I ran through the entire story on my engineer, which is by no means my best character, and I’m no pro at the game in any way. If I can do it, I’d say anyone with a decent computer and connection can.
The hardest so far for me was the dragon fight in mystery cave, I spent probably 30-45 minutes on lighting the 2nd ring of fire. (Afterwards I realized that the smothering thingies were killable, but I was able to complete even without that knowledge.)

Now, if you’re talking about open world content, those fights are designed for groups but that’s as is should be; open world is meant to have people in it. And you can finish the Silverwastes fights with 5 people at each fort, and probably a little more for the Vinewrath fight.

So I’m sorry but if you’re on a warrior you should not have any problems with the instanced content, unless you have a low-end machine or poor IP connection.

I must add to this.
the battles are in no way hard, but they are boring, tedious and take too much time.
the boss battle especially.
u should base those battles off of Zelda when u repeat the cycle 3 times and that what gives the satisfaction. 3 times is not too much and not too little.

the last battle in the living story took me an hour, after 4 times repeating the cycle I started watching tv, when he got to half health I went for a launch break.
seriously if it gets to the point when I do a battle only to finish it and do other stuff meanwhile it means the battle is bad designed.

this is not hard, this is not challenging, this is just tedious.

Thenme.6491:

I must add to this.
the battles are in no way hard, but they are boring, tedious and take too much time.
the boss battle especially.
u should base those battles off of Zelda when u repeat the cycle 3 times and that what gives the satisfaction. 3 times is not too much and not too little.

the last battle in the living story took me an hour, after 4 times repeating the cycle I started watching tv, when he got to half health I went for a launch break.
seriously if it gets to the point when I do a battle only to finish it and do other stuff meanwhile it means the battle is bad designed.

this is not hard, this is not challenging, this is just tedious.

If the battle took you an hour you did something wrong.

Thenme.6491:

I must add to this.
the battles are in no way hard, but they are boring, tedious and take too much time.
the boss battle especially.
u should base those battles off of Zelda when u repeat the cycle 3 times and that what gives the satisfaction. 3 times is not too much and not too little.

the last battle in the living story took me an hour, after 4 times repeating the cycle I started watching tv, when he got to half health I went for a launch break.
seriously if it gets to the point when I do a battle only to finish it and do other stuff meanwhile it means the battle is bad designed.

this is not hard, this is not challenging, this is just tedious.

4 times? That strikes me as odd. For me it was:

1. Tendrils
2. Fire ring
3. DPS boss (down to ~50%)
4. Tendrils again
5. Fire ring again, with the smotherer
6. Final DPS on boss

And since I don’t have über DPS on my engi, I can’t imagine the fight taking anyone more than 2 cycles. Strange.

Rethmar Stokestrike.1927:

You ABSOLUTELY need a group in order to kill the dragon on the last story mission.

I did it on a war toon, solo. My build was iirc axe – mace plus, and this is important – a bow.
Since you are a dedicated war I believe, you might find it very difficult since you tend to go melee by instinct. It might get even worse if you are frequently doing dungeon fast runs and fracs. But for the last boss the best tactics was to be highly mobile and stay at range.
I traded the usual offhand mace for a horn during this fight to keep me fast, also I swapped 1st trait in the last line for the 25% movement bonus, and I used bow to damage the tendril from distance. When I understood the mechanism of the fight, it was doable with not much problem. You just need to keep in mind that the most important task is to stay away from the pesky aoe and cc attacks of the boss.

This said, I think that many players had the same problem you did. From my point of view, everything in the Mordy content is way too much cc heavy while unccable itself, and once you get stunned or knocked you are almost surely dead since the attacks are followed by a massive aoe damage fields. This I believe is pretty cheap unless they really wanted to make you forget most of your defensive skills and concentrate solely on dodging.

Zohane.7208:

And since I don’t have über DPS on my engi, I can’t imagine the fight taking anyone more than 2 cycles. Strange.

Well you dont but unlike OP you are used to ranged combat. For a dungeon oriented war its a disgrace and a sign of noobness to go ranged (in most cases). I remember times when some elitist pug groups would kick you without warning if you dared to swap to a ranged weapon in a dung or frac.

Rethmar Stokestrike.1927:

It’s almost like you guys designed the battles for group-play. Wait…YOU DID.

fyi, the instances and their achievements are solo content. If you bring a group, it’s either because you can’t personally handle it or you’re not bothering to understand the mechanics. For example, from what I’ve seen, quite a few people didn’t realize that you can kill the shades.

It sounds like you’re having trouble with the dragon, here’s a video.

Fext.3614:

For a dungeon oriented war its a disgrace and a sign of noobness to go ranged (in most cases).

You can melee if you want. I’m assuming tendrils? You just have to constantly move, both in and out of melee range in tune with it’s melee swipe and around the enemy to avoid the other tendril’s projectiles.

honestly, I don’t think Arcana Obscura is scaled for a solo player, because it’s excruciatingly slow by yourself.

lol. I SOLO that “last boss” you mentioned with THREE DIFFERENT CHARACTERS/CLASSES EASILY. (Before you ask, I do so with WARRIOR, GUARDIAN AND RANGER)
I got all the AP from that boss SOLO too.

The only one I find it ridiculously tedious is the AP for the centaur boss, which is almost impossible to get because you’re forced to play that kittenty Caithe during the boss fight. If I can solo him with my ranger, I can easily get the AP.

Old respond, it’s a l2p issue.
Seriously, if you have trouble doing anything with a Warrior, you’d have much more trouble when you try other classes that is not ranger or guardian.

Hyper Cutter.9376:

honestly, I don’t think Arcana Obscura is scaled for a solo player, because it’s excruciatingly slow by yourself.

All of the story mode instances are quite doable solo, including Arcana Obscura. The extra achievements, however, are a different matter. Quite a few of those are hard, if not impossible, to solo.

As others have touched on, the battles are easy once u just do the pattern required. This is not a fight where u stand n deal dmg in their face from start to end. If u cant do a boss then it is most likely that u need to get ur tacs straight. And i actually found the fight quite easy on my warr mainly thx to healing signet passive n kiting inbetween tasks. Instead of calling something op one must understand what n why makes it first.

The fights were pretty annoying, if only because of how boring and repetitive they were. For the most part, the bosses just went through cycles – you have to do some task(s) in order to break its defenses, followed by a burn stage, and then it resets. Personally, I would’ve preferred it if they had phases instead so that their mechanics changed over the course of a fight (e.g. when its health hits a certain threshold, it starts using different attacks or something). As it stands, after you figure out the mechanics from the first cycle, you can pretty much predict everything the boss is going to do and the fight just turns into a sort of dps grind.

They have definatly picked up the phase from the zhaitan failure with this seasons boss fights but they can n should go further. Even vinewrath isnt any special, there should be more variation

Zohane.7208:

All of the story mode instances are quite doable solo, including Arcana Obscura. The extra achievements, however, are a different matter. Quite a few of those are hard, if not impossible, to solo.

I’m assuming that timed achievement? All you really need to do is pull everything out of that first capture point and stall so it can be quickly completed. For the rest of it, either go full DPS and use LoS to pull everything to one spot and AoE or use invisibility/invulnerability to just steal the item and run.

It’s all soloable, you just need to know what you’re doing.

Thenme.6491:

I must add to this.
the battles are in no way hard, but they are boring, tedious and take too much time.
the boss battle especially.
u should base those battles off of Zelda when u repeat the cycle 3 times and that what gives the satisfaction. 3 times is not too much and not too little.

the last battle in the living story took me an hour, after 4 times repeating the cycle I started watching tv, when he got to half health I went for a launch break.
seriously if it gets to the point when I do a battle only to finish it and do other stuff meanwhile it means the battle is bad designed.

this is not hard, this is not challenging, this is just tedious.

It is apparently hard for you since you seem to be playing the encounters wrong and therefore it takes a longer time.

I agree with the OP – the boss fights in LS 2 are pure definition of obnoxious.

They aren’t challenging - they are incredibly long for no reason → boring – > annoying. You spend about 5% of the time DPSing the boss and 95 % running/rolling around like moron, lying down after missing one of the spammed CCs, waiting for condition cleanse to come off cooldown, or smashing something in RL due to inevitable frustration.

The first one can at least be defeated by attrition. The second one too I guess. But the third one made me ragequit after the pitiful damage I managed to deal to the boss was negated for the third time by the mender. I guess it’s “get ranged zerker or GTFO”.

I tried really hard to like the game when I returned after 1,5 years. But I think it’s finally the time to admit it is not for me. It has many great concepts which I’d love to see in other MMOs; but the sad truth is, I only enjoy GW2 until the moment I’m forced to fight.
And playing a MMO where you hate the combat system is most likely impossible in the long run.

TOO MANY KNOCKS !!!!!!!!!!

Seriously STOP WITH THE KNOCKS ANET !!!!

the fight aren’t hard soloed it all with 2 of my chars.

BUT THE KNOCKS !!! THOSE kitten KNOCKS !!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thenme.6491:

I must add to this.
the battles are in no way hard, but they are boring, tedious and take too much time.
the boss battle especially.
u should base those battles off of Zelda when u repeat the cycle 3 times and that what gives the satisfaction. 3 times is not too much and not too little.

the last battle in the living story took me an hour, after 4 times repeating the cycle I started watching tv, when he got to half health I went for a launch break.
seriously if it gets to the point when I do a battle only to finish it and do other stuff meanwhile it means the battle is bad designed.

this is not hard, this is not challenging, this is just tedious.

The final boss takes 2 cycles.

The battles are definitely easy mode, they rely on gimmicks to pad out the boss fights.

We have such an amazing combat system yet Anet wants to throw that system away in favor of running around in circles like an idiot. Why not copy dark souls for boss design?

Normally I’d say, it depends on the classes and their advantages/disadvantages.
But I solo’d every LS S2 chapter with all classes, so it really isn’t hard or even annoying.

y cant metroid crawl?

So..
OP is playing a massively multiplayer online game, and QQing at having to play the game with other players?

GG.

Lifestealer.4910:

The battles are definitely easy mode, they rely on gimmicks to pad out the boss fights.

We have such an amazing combat system yet Anet wants to throw that system away in favor of running around in circles like an idiot. Why not copy dark souls for boss design?

Imagine all the rage whiners if they make bosses like the Dark Souls ones.
I personally really REALLY enjoy Dark Souls 1 and 2 though.
Best combat experience ever

The new Dark Souls 2 DLC bosses are hard as kitten but I still manage to beat them after countless tries. However I can imagine many people wouldn’t have my kind of taste, and would actually be raging about bosses one/ 2 shorted them if they missed the dodge. They’d post a full list of whining about what bosses should NOT be, instead of learning all the boss’s attack patterns and try to improve themselves.

Seriously though, if I’m fighting an Elder Dragon like Mordremoth, I’m really expecting something like the Dark Souls type of bosses, tremendously huge, able to 1~2 shot you, and require you to dodge everything to succeed.

Are we playing the same game ? I finished the last episode in 20 minutes with a cleric guardian lol…. After the last boss i tought: thats it?! …. Maybe i was playing easy mode lol

There is a difference between hard content and players having l2p issues. If one can’t adapt to a certain fight and do what is necessary to succeed, then one does not deserve to succeed. Perhaps one should then attempt tasks more suited to his level, like climbing some stairs in Divinity’s Reach or watching a vista.

SkyFallsInThunder.8257:

There is a difference between hard content and players having l2p issues. If one can’t adapt to a certain fight and do what is necessary to succeed, then one does not deserve to succeed. Perhaps one should then attempt tasks more suited to his level, like climbing some stairs in Divinity’s Reach or watching a vista.

Some vista can be tricky to get to. :p

Finished the living story chapters few times with my mesmer, and i never found it as a difficult one, Glint’s Lair was frustrating because my phantasms died upon approach but i liked it because it forced me to adapt to the fight. took me time to understand the mechanics of the finale boss fight, but i enjoyed it when i was able to figure it out without any type of help.
In my opinion LS2 bosses are a lot better better then the dungeon bosses but Anet need to use them as a baseline for the expansion and improve them, i hope to see phases and some interesting mechanics.

I hate speed clears and i find stacking as useless, constantly change my skills in order to help the party, for me harder is better (and i don’t mean damage sponge boss fights)

sorry if i went a bit off topic.

I’ll try to be more constructive in this post than I was in my previous one (which was basically just raging).

First, some background:
Relatively new player (about 2,5 months in total, 1,5 month of it more than a year ago). Little experience with “action combat”. Elementalist class. Exotic gear and two exotic weapons (scepter and dagger). Unlocked most skills, but only about 10 major traits (so far).

Now, regarding the individual episodes/chapters bosses (including some general remarks):
Cornered: The fight is way too long for no reason and the orange fields are spammed way too often. This introduced the gimmick where you spend a lot of time running around and very little time actually doing damage. I guess that’s what “action combat” is about, but …well.
Note: Fights where most damage is negated by movement and you only have small windows to hit the boss don’t discourage “all DPS” builds, but encourage them instead.

Trouble at Fort Salma: This boss is relatively OK (though it could be shorter again, but that can be said about the majority of LS2 bosses). The AoE spam isn’t that bad and the chance to utilize other things than pure damage to slow the wolves was appreciated.

Plan of Attack: That one made me ragequit with the Scepter/Dagger set. Afterwards I purchased a staff and with it finished the encounter on the first try.
Apart form usual “too long”, the frequency of Menders should be lowered a bit. I also had some troubles with the spheres’ hitboxes – it was difficult to time the dodge correctly for me.
Note: I’m not sure if “forcing” a player to certain weapon/skillset/traits set in order to overcome an encounter is the way to go, especially if there’s a chance that the player doesn’t have the weapon/skills/traits at all.

Recalibrating the Waypoints: This one was more or less fine, similar to the one from Fort Salma. Several phases with different mechanics, nice, as well as the variable AoE zones. Only the length again …

The World Summit. Ahaha. Alright, I watched a few videos with it and they all were like “fight starts, player gets downed/killed after a moment, then cut and skip to the end of the encounter”. The way I did it? Pure attrition. I just stood on the checkpoint and spammed Staff Fire 1&2 from there; once I died enough times and my armor got completely destroyed, I started to skip downed phase so the respawns were instant and I even enjoyed a short invulnerability after them. Took me about 10-15 minutes to finish it (I forgot to kill the Leecher at first and it healed the dragon from 50% to full) and about 50 deaths …
Let’s call it down to personal opinion, but this fight is horribly overtuned. There is way too much stuff on the ground from the tentacles and the dragon, and the DPS windows are extremely short.

Hidden Arcana: By far the BEST boss fight in Season 2. That’s how I’d like all the fights to be – interesting mechanics, switching between DPS and mechanics in roughly equal ratio, no excessive AoE/conditions/trashmobs spam. If the RNG of it would be improved a bit, it would be almost perfect.

Tangled Paths(all bosses): Way too long and uninteresting.

Meeting the Asura: Fine UNTIL the very last step, where you need luck so that 3 individual patterns synchronize well enough for you to succeed (lure away the small golems, break the generator AND hit the boss before the golems return). Pity about that, it would be pretty good otherwise.

The Mystery Cave: Haven’t done it yet.

Last but not least, another note about something which isn’t unique to GW2: taking the character control away from the player due to excessive CC used by the NPC is NOT challenging; being delegated to a viewer instead of player is always bad concept, and it should be used as sparsely as possible (and always avoidable).

I’ve been doing LS2 on my necro and completed it all without much of a problem. I command SW and VW runs fighting in the frontlines without going down.

Please, tell me more about difficulties when playing with a warrior.

Thanks for the tips on the final Shadow of the Dragon fight. I was literally on divine fire phase two for 45 minutes straight trying to keep up with how fast the fires extinguished. I didn’t realize they were put out by the smoldering shades. Since the shades kept coming up as “invulnerable” I ignored them, must to my demise. Having gotten through LS2 now (playing ele, just started playing again when HOT was announced after having quit shortly after launch b/c my friends left the game) I agree with some of the folks sentiments that the fights get a little long and repetitive but I’d much rather these types of encounters than boring DPS races. Those are even more repetitive. Yes it was frustrating to die and rez repeatedly while learning the fight mechanics but I think that learning curve was what made the fights worthwhile. While I was raging in the middle of the battle trying to stay alive and figure out how to win, I felt much more satisfied at the end when I succeeded. If I went back and did it on a 2nd character, I’d have a much easier time of it. I’ll reiterate what some folks have said here in that the content is soloable once you learn the mechanics. Too many orange patches on the ground to avoid? Yes, especially in when you get stuck in one that chains to the next two or three because you can’t move. Overall, though, pretty fun fights.

Rethmar Stokestrike.1927:

You ABSOLUTELY need a group in order to kill the dragon on the last story mission.

No, I did all by myself the first try. It’s really not hard. If you want to play a hard game, go play Dark Souls, but I assume you only know FIFA and CoD…

Nyminett.8954:

Cornered: The fight is way too long for no reason and the orange fields are spammed way too often. This introduced the gimmick where you spend a lot of time running around and very little time actually doing damage. I guess that’s what “action combat” is about, but …well.
Note: Fights where most damage is negated by movement and you only have small windows to hit the boss don’t discourage “all DPS” builds, but encourage them instead.

If you have a ranged weapon you should be DPSing 90+% of the time. If you only have melee weapons it’s up to you if you want to jump around(I did on my first run because I was using axe/axe+sword/warhorn).

Trouble at Fort Salma: This boss is relatively OK (though it could be shorter again, but that can be said about the majority of LS2 bosses). The AoE spam isn’t that bad and the chance to utilize other things than pure damage to slow the wolves was appreciated.

Uh … this one is a bit stupid actually. Kasmeer’s bubble that blocks enemy projectiles also block player projectiles(need to confirm, animation on the bubble implies it is blocking but I haven’t checked the combat log).

Plan of Attack: That one made me ragequit with the Scepter/Dagger set. Afterwards I purchased a staff and with it finished the encounter on the first try.
Apart form usual “too long”, the frequency of Menders should be lowered a bit. I also had some troubles with the spheres’ hitboxes – it was difficult to time the dodge correctly for me.
Note: I’m not sure if “forcing” a player to certain weapon/skillset/traits set in order to overcome an encounter is the way to go, especially if there’s a chance that the player doesn’t have the weapon/skills/traits at all.

They have done a very poor job of communicating this during the leveling process but it does seem like they want people to adjust their skills depending on the situation. There are weaponsmiths all over the place that sells every weapon type. It was also fairly common in GW1.

Recalibrating the Waypoints: This one was more or less fine, similar to the one from Fort Salma. Several phases with different mechanics, nice, as well as the variable AoE zones. Only the length again …

Well there is the fixed amount of time where it is invulnerable and then the rest depends on your DPS.

The World Summit. Ahaha. Alright, I watched a few videos with it and they all were like “fight starts, player gets downed/killed after a moment, then cut and skip to the end of the encounter”. The way I did it? Pure attrition. I just stood on the checkpoint and spammed Staff Fire 1&2 from there; once I died enough times and my armor got completely destroyed, I started to skip downed phase so the respawns were instant and I even enjoyed a short invulnerability after them. Took me about 10-15 minutes to finish it (I forgot to kill the Leecher at first and it healed the dragon from 50% to full) and about 50 deaths …
Let’s call it down to personal opinion, but this fight is horribly overtuned. There is way too much stuff on the ground from the tentacles and the dragon, and the DPS windows are extremely short.

Relatively easy fight if you just stand by where the dragon’s head appears. It does seem to open with the same attack everytime(important to remember if you are trying to do the achievement that requires avoiding claw and breath attacks). Plenty of room to roll and around avoids edges where you can accidentally roll off.

Hidden Arcana: By far the BEST boss fight in Season 2. That’s how I’d like all the fights to be – interesting mechanics, switching between DPS and mechanics in roughly equal ratio, no excessive AoE/conditions/trashmobs spam. If the RNG of it would be improved a bit, it would be almost perfect.

Fight is okay unless you get the vortex spawning inside a wall.
There isn’t much need for DPS here so I am not sure what switch you are referring to.

Meeting the Asura: Fine UNTIL the very last step, where you need luck so that 3 individual patterns synchronize well enough for you to succeed (lure away the small golems, break the generator AND hit the boss before the golems return). Pity about that, it would be pretty good otherwise.

That is only necessary for the achievement. Murdering everything is a much simpler solution.

No mention of “No Refuge”?

Point 1 – not all builds are viable solo builds for some content (confusion or retaliate build for example)
Point 2 – GW2 is an MMORPG… content may not be intended to be solo’d… even if it is soloable.
Point 3 – Ima go cry in a corner now… OP? Hold me?

Before I comment, GW2’s current storyline is just blowing me away. I love it. Having said that;

I solo’ed the S2 Storyline on my main Mesmer. She’s in full ascended gear (including trinkets) and carries ascended staff and greatsword.

She is a fairly strong fighter. I didn’t feel heroic at the end of the Mordremoth Shadow Dragon fight so much as I felt battered and maybe a little abused.

It wasn’t an issue with the mechanics, they were pretty clear from the start.

On the one hand this story is about epic heroism. So, challenges are needed and expected.

On the other… well I think that the idea of setting up fights for groups trying to get achievements has ratcheted up the battles too much. I was actually angry by the time I got finished. Too much pounding.

@Vain.3805 It’s true that many aspects of the game are clearly created for groups. It’s also true that the game is about heroism.
There is something about the whole process of gathering a group to make a task easy that is anti heroic to me.

I tried first battle in LW2 1st chapter with my thief and the small golems were constantly stunning me when I tried to fight with knives, so I had to use pistols which have no AOE and small damage = long and annoying. I will never have ascended gear and a legendary weapon so I guess it is better for me not to continue? I don’t understand the reason why the mobs have that kind of constant and unavoidable attack.

After dying like 20 times when I was completing Malchors Leap because of such unavoidable annyoing mobs in both PVE and some story missions ( like combo: spiders/AOE shooters who was doing dmg for 5k when I was spinned on the ground without power for dodge and with CD on shadow skills ending in deathtrap quite often, with champions hiding next to skill challenge, etc) I came to this and it is even worse, so I feel really horrible.

Mudran.8105:

I tried first battle in LW2 1st chapter with my thief and the small golems were constantly stunning me when I tried to fight with knives, so I had to use pistols which have no AOE and small damage = long and annoying. I will never have ascended gear and a legendary weapon so I guess it is better for me not to continue? I don’t understand the reason why the mobs have that kind of constant and unavoidable attack.

After dying like 20 times when I was completing Malchors Leap because of such unavoidable annyoing mobs in both PVE and some story missions ( like combo: spiders/AOE shooters who was doing dmg for 5k when I was spinned on the ground without power for dodge and with CD on shadow skills ending in deathtrap quite often, with champions hiding next to skill challenge, etc) I came to this and it is even worse, so I feel really horrible.

I would have used shortbow on thief but if you really want to stick with pistol then I would recommend using the Riccochet trait with Signet of Malice. If that is still not enough there are a couple of other things you can add on.

As for champions next to skill points. It is actually easiest on a thief. Just use Shadow Refuge then run up and commune.