Guild Wars 2

My apologies if this has already been brought up. Search didn’t bare much fruit.

Is anyone else finding the personal story quests to be a little… hard? Especially if you are one of the more squishy classes?

I love the level scaling in this game and how it keeps things challenging, but out in the open world if something is a bit too hard for you, you can call for help or wait for more people and usually manage to get through.

In story quests I often find myself repeatedly dieing, rezzing, trying to pick off one more enemy before dieing, rezzing and repeating the process. It becomes laborious and not really ‘fun’. I know I could ask for help and gather more people, but it is supposed to be ‘my’ personal story. You’d think it would be solo-able.

Is anyone else struggling with the story quests?

Does anyone have any tips other than “Learn to play”, “Dodge more”, “Gear up”, etc?

Many thanks

I find the NPC’s in the personal story annoyingly stupid. If they die, and I res them, they charge straight into combat, even if the mob is standing quite far away and not attacking. That prevents me from getting the entire group up and fighting, so I mostly find that I only have my npc’s on the first try.

I think the solo missions could do with a bit of tuning for the squishier classes, as I’ve had to take the same zerg approach several times – even on content that’s a few levels below. I do perfectly fine in the open world content with mobs 2 or 3 levels above, so I don’t think it’s a L2P issue so much as just a wee bit of imbalance somewhere.

The thing is it’s unpredictable, you can have a smooth run, then some mission stumps you. Normally if that happened I’d take that as a sign the devs want me to change up my playstyle a bit, but I don’t get that feeling here, it feels most like just a tweak is needed.

Better still, solo missions should have a difficulty slider like CoH (RIP) or some other MMOs, that way someone who’s more into getting immersed in the story can concentrate on that without worrying about the possibility of dying every couple of minutes, only to un-immersively rez from a checkpoint; while someone who wants a strong solo challenge can have that.

I would like to see the personal story missions NOT scale your level. That way if you are struggling you can just grab a few more levels and try again.

To my mind, it doesn’t hurt anyone as those who want the challenge can do them at the recommended level and players who want to enjoy the storyline and immersion can do so with relative comfort just by levelling a bit more before attempting them.

I want to clarify that personal story missions are the ONLY area I’d like level scaling removed. I love it everywhere else!

I really like the difficulty, personally.

I’ve run into a lot of challenging missions as a mesmer, but I wouldn’t feel like I’ve accomplished much if I didn’t have to work hard to beat them.
That said, the difficulty posed by the NPC AI is definitely something I could live without

Yes I find the personal story chains are very difficult. Too difficult.
Is it possible to change them?

What happens if you don’t do your personal story quests? I have got to a point with one of my characters where it is not possible to go any further as I can’t do the personal story quest.

Hard to say…. on my ug-bash-thump warrior, i’ve mostly found that I generally only “struggle” with the bosses, but tend to come out on top (as it should be, as it feels like an achievement when I succeed)
The few times I have been taken out, a quick res from checkpoint and leg it over to the boss and I can usually polish them off ok.

On my elementalist, on the other hand, using the right elemental spells with the correct choice of weapon (staff, or scepter + focus) can radically alter an instance, taking me from an easy mode slay-ride of death, destruction and debauchery to an up hill struggle of perseverance and endless respawns…

Cant speak for other classes, but I do think they could do with a little more tweaking or something..

I’m an engineer and I can’t finish a level 14 personal story quest — and I’m level 20. I’ve tried different weapons and different utility skills, even purchased upgrades from the TP. I’ll keep trying each level I get, but if there’s really level scaling, I’m screwed. So, until they make some kind of change, I can’t progress my personal story. Unless I find a guild or someone willing to help me out — but I peevishly believe that for your personal story you should be able to finish the story solo. Right now, that’s not the case.

I guess my tip is go do something else, and maybe later things will be different. If you’re lucky, you might have a friend who can help you, or guildmates, since it’s clear some of the more difficult personal stories are not solo-able.

There are some issues with some missions in particular. Some of them (Rumours of Trouble is one of them) are in need of retuning at the moment and are basically impossible to complete by pretty much any class without a death or two (or more). I do think in general they are more challenging than the rest of the PvE content, which I am fine with — I think that’s a good role for them to play in the game. But I do think that some of them are in need of tuning and adjustment because for some classes they can be extremely difficult to complete as presented, whereas for others they are hard yet doable.

I think some parts of the quests are very overtuned.

I got up to about lvl30 in the personal story and then left it completely. I got to lvl80 and bought exotic gear and then went back to do the personal story. It was much easier for the most part but even then at times the odd moment would arise which was very difficult.

I remember trying to complete the boss in “In the Ruins” and it was impossible to do until I was 11 levels higher than the recommendation (an elite skill and the traits basically made the difference).

It doesn’t help that the npc’s are completely useless. They do almost no damage.

I think it’s less about overall difficulty and more about cheap deaths. I’ve now completed Personal Story on my warrior, and at several points the story dropped more monsters than I was able to deal with on my character out of the blue, such as immediately after a cutscene.
It’s definitely in need of some tuning.

As a mesmer, I am on the level 36 story quest and am level 25. Typically I just keep sending clones at the enemies while my teammates do the real killing. The quest with the pirates on the beach broke all my armor, but I finally chipped away at them 1 by 1 till I completed it. Next quest is in the next zone so I have to finish this map before continuing.

If you want to help Arenanet with this it would help if you listed the specific quests where you found the difficulty hard.

I myself found the personal story quest for Norn 10-35 too hard. Since then I started outleveling my personal story quests by three levels, before it would be enjoyable for me to do them.

Again, the NPC’s are really bad and doesn’t help much, Eir often stood around doing nothing, while Garm kept dying.

I find it to be very challenging, it makes you fight in other ways than just run and gun, I love doing personal stories for my Thief even though some are difficult I would not change it cause thats how its supposed to be, it makes you THINK on how you will tackle the problem and not just run in swing your swords and kill everything without even healing. Saying that the NPCs could use a bit of a tweak, the mobs are fine.

Personal Story is not that hard, I am playing ranger and my personal story was on Lvl 51 and I did it on level 42. Ok I died a few time but still had loads of fun. It’s very nice to find the perfect strategie to complete the story without dying. When this was not possible like on my Story LvL 54 I leveled first to 53 before I started it again.

I don’t know the other classes yet, but will found out soon

I’m a level 47 elementalist (based on the number of posts in this particular forum, folks find them the squishiest), and with some points put into traits and toughness added to my gear, I’ve been able to solo all my personal story line at about the same level as they suggest.

I think this game is hyper tuned to how you spec yourself — be it gear or traits or skillpoint choices. I know you have said don’t say “gear” … but honestly it appears to have saved my butt on a number of occassions.

I typically use earth attunement on personal storylines because of stoneskins and barricades that deflect incoming projectiles (lol, half the time the mob kills itself as the projectile barrier — a focus-weapon spell — sends it back to them).

I’ve also found that while the NPCs aren’t particularly useful as described in this thread when they’re rezzed, once I hit about 40 or so in my personal storyline, they actually came back and rezzed me and became a bit less aggressive with mobs. I also once stayed down when I died and watched the NPC kill off the mob, then come back and rez me

I was doing a lvl 42 warrior mission last night and was dying left and right till i changed my strategy, then it was easy. but one thing i hate is 6-8 enemy’s that stun and bleed you at once. so sometime you just need to change your strategy and sometimes your screwed :P

Many of my storyline missions were reasonable, or on the difficult but manageable side. I may suffer a death or two, but I could still proceed. This was on an Elementalist, with a reasonable investment in toughness.

The ones I had the most trouble with were:
Vidkun and his dragon minion as part of the Minotaur Rampant section of the storyline (Honour the Spirits choice). It was quite difficult to separate the two bosses enough to survive the massive burst damage. At that level, I simply didn’t have enough utility skills to reduce the burst damage, and due to how much happens, you quickly run out of stamina to dodge. This one I ended up having to “graveyard zerg” until I managed to get the dragon minion out of that enclosure, and kill him off without Vidkun present.

The Champion Fight was difficult on an Ele due to simply not having enough CC, dodge, and sources of Stability to survive for long. I could get him down to 10-15% reliably, but I’d simply be on too many cooldowns and too low on stamina to avoid his charges and bursts. He heals to full each time you use a checkpoint. I ended up having a couple guildmates assist. They could not fight along, but they could heal me up if I get downed without resetting his health.

The Battle For Claw Island was difficult solo because of the really awkward aggro system. Several times during the mission, it was incredibly difficult to perform the necessary resurrection or reach the necessary area through the infinite respawns. Many times, spawning and respawning mobs would run past an entire group of NPC’s attacking them to come at me, even when I was far behind (far beyond the 1200 spell range). Constant aggro from 10-15 mobs is eventually deadly no matter what you do. Not being able to control aggro in any way just makes it a lesson in frustration.

Parts of A Light in the Darkness, the Pale Tree’s vision, were quite difficult but it could be managed. One small part of it, where about 5 or 6 spectral weapons spawned at once, were able to kill me with a massively fast combination of CC and burst damage, and then appeared immediately on the checkpoint quite some distance away when I respawned. Once clearing that group of weapons, everything else was manageable by taking it slow and careful.

It’s not hard, it’s tedious and poorly crafted.

I can’t remember the exact quest, but it was mentioned above. The undead are attacking the island outside Lion’s Arch. 40 or so spawn and rush into the courtyard. I have to kill them all, alone, because the NPC’s are just standing around sneering at them basically, or dieing instantly. So, I attack a group, die. “Try again.” Die again. Rinse repeat. “Win.”

And then I have to ENDURE the horrid cut scene dialogue “That was a rousing fight!” etc. etc.

It wasn’t anything but dull and costly.

So the next time I’m in a mob-zerg, I decided to test a theory. If I just wait long enough, what would happen?

Long story short, I only needed to actually engage 1 mob out of dozens because it spawned right on top of me. I just sat there and watched as the PAINFULLY SLOW npc v. npc combat concluded.

Between the “can’t win” scenarios, which definitely happen and the “you’re unnecessary to win” scenarios, which also happen, and the “Here’s a completely new game dynamic that you can’t practice: put on this suit of armor, or use this catapult to repel the invaders!” I keep scratching my head and wondering, what the point is?

And really, it’s that last one that bugs me the most. I spent X levels building my character, tuning my build and weapon choices and now in my personal story I have to use a completely unfamiliar setup in order to prevail?

That’s just silly.

So here’s my attempt to help other players:

Skip the personal story until it gets tuned and tweaked, or accept that in places you are unnecessary and in other places, friends may have to help.

And for me, so far, it’s been the first option. It may just be my class and my version of the personal story, but at present there seems to be absolutely no chance that I can fail, or change the outcome of this “story.” If I’m willing to die enough… I’ll “win” eventually, and since I have to “win” to progress, it will all work out in the end.

So for me… meh. I’m in no hurry to finish it.

In my experience the rewards are pathetic compared to what you’ll get just from regular game content; you can be around other players out there; you can actually progress in the game which in theory should make the personal story slightly more accessible later.

So, get out in the world and enjoy it.

I totally agree with the original poster. Especially in the Norn story line with the ice imps and the horn. Within several mins I was completely naked and spent another 10 min finishing that scenario while being one shotted because all my equipment was damaged.

I absolutely HATE the level scaling in the personal story quests. They are too hard for many classes and it ends up just being a corpse jump grind.

On the story line where you fight waves of mobs on the beach until a swarm of aboms comes out, I jumped in with my shiney new racial axes and quickly got owned. And owned. And. Owned.

I got owned for a long time, and no matter what I tried, I’d aggro the whole group of them. I gave up. The next day I went in and equipped my cr#ppy blue longow that was 10 levels obsolete and burned down the lot of them on the first try while eating a bowl of cereal. Sometimes re-thinking your strat makes all the difference.

Skor.4652:

I totally agree with the original poster. Especially in the Norn story line with the ice imps and the horn. Within several mins I was completely naked and spent another 10 min finishing that scenario while being one shotted because all my equipment was damaged.

I absolutely HATE the level scaling in the personal story quests. They are too hard for many classes and it ends up just being a corpse jump grind.

This was the first one I ran into trouble with. The Ice imps with constant AoE and gang style attack was rough…then….. the Veteran….. took me a while before I even noticed the totem or whatever that you need to burn down before he takes damage again. As a mesmer……the learning curve was steep…. finally a good staff and straffing Finally got the bugger down.

It was hard…. but wasn’t a bother to me to be honest. Brought back memories of trying to learn Mario Bros way back in the day. Progress die…observe,….. progress further die observe….. etc…… final win = mental touchdown dance! It’s when you make me work for it but not impossible to do that makes it worth it to me.

I have yet to be absolutely stonewalled on any story quest as a Ranger (up to the level 77 story quest at the moment), but I would like to echo three specific comments made already in the thread:

1)Random Fluctuations of Difficulty
2)Cheap Deaths due to (1)
3)Utterlykitten AI

(1) and (2) kinda go hand in hand. I can handle a hard game. I even like the occasional groin-kicking challenge, but what is necessary when you make something hard is that you make it consistently hard. The problem with a lot of the PvE side of GW2 is that the difficulty is nowhere close to consistent. A lot of the time you’re going along as a veritable demi-god that nothing can touch and then some random mob – possibly not even a Champion – drops out and just wrecks your face in. It doesn’t feel like a good challenge, it just feels like the devs were thinking to themselves “lol, watch this sucker.”

(1) and (2) also tie in with (3), as a LOT of the difficulty I’ve noticed in the latter levels of story quests has come from a quest clearly balanced around you having an AI squad at your back…and that AI squad having the collective IQ of my shoe. They pull random mobs, they behave stupidly in relation to AE and mob mechanics, they either never seem capable of holding aggro or else they hold aggro, but die in 2 hits.

As a stark example of everything wrong with your AI squadmates, words cannot describe watching a Risen Abomination stacking frenzy on a pack of your AI teammates. You know if you let frenzy stack too high, he’s going to utterly destroy you, but you can do literally nothing about it because you can’t get your AI buddies to move, the Abom is immune to CC, and all it takes is a couple of his charge attacks to have frenzy high enough that you’re going to be kiting like a scared cat lest you get one-shot by him looking at you wrong.

i started having trouble with my Ele’s story line at the “Set to Blow” mission. i had to pay another player to join me temporarily to get it done. Killing lv50 destroyers is no easy task, and the camera work in the narrower tunnels can get very bad, as well.

I am now at the mission “Forewarned is Forearmed”. i have to navigate a tunnel at Lion’s arch, and it is rated for level 47 or 48. i could not do it at level 47, so leveled to level 55, and attempted it again with new armor and some new skills and weapons. NO SUCCESS. the Vigil warmaster is always running through enemies and not holding aggro. i am an Elementalist, and i think the story missions are really tough for me. maybe it’s the gear – i am almost now level 72 after a few days, and i want to reattempt it, but don’t have enough silver to get any repairs should i fail again. i have been leveling by walking the other zones and working on map completions to get my levels and gear.

i wish the story missions had a lobby, then i could find players doing the same mission and not span /say channel “LFP FOR [Storyline Quest]”.

Against the Corruption is too hard, the AI dies way too hard and unballanced, no point to pull to kill them off one by one since the Champion respawns new helpers each time you get too close to him. That’s just at the first part of the story line quest, I have no idead how the rest since I can’t get past the first part.. I had asked for help in the chat, no one offered to help!!!!

Id say it depends on the story quest, at least in the beginning.

I tried just about every class to about 16-20, and definitely found the squishies to have a harder time. The most troublesome was my Norn engineers level 14 quest, where i had to kill some dude and the ice dragon. The only problem was, the NPC was stupid and went straight after the guy. (I found out later that the guy cannot die until the dragon is dead). This is something that should be programmed into the NPC’s. Why attack a target if it cannot die? I mean, they didnt even switch targets after I figured it out. I ended up quitting that character for a bit and then coming back. The strategy I had to use, was zerg the dragon and pray the NPCs attacked it too, whilst AOE healing and buffing myself and the NPCs.

I also had a heck of a time with the asuras mesmer quest around level 8, after I chose to go rescue Pol and then interrupt the party. Basically every time I died, the portal turret would teleport me before I got a chance to get inside the building, and I spent about half an hour just running around in circles trying to heal myself while hoping an image would pop to take the aggro off me.

Also, dont get my started on the reactor event in the asura area. That final fire elemental event was designed by one masochistic engineer….

I figured Im playing the class wrong (which is why I came to the forums), but am seeing others having the same issue.

Total agreement. I don’t mind “difficult” but this is “meatgrinder”. My elementalist just doesn’t have sufficient control and/or healing to reasonably deal with many encounters. I would love to watch the developers run some of this content(and AC too while they’re at it).

Yes, as an Engineer having to kite 3-5 mobs isn’t fun or challenging. Some of the Risen grunts hit entirely to hard

Yes, some of them are just silly.

I am now a level 80 Elementalist and I found that I could not do most of them at the level required. I had to get at least 2-3 levels and gear above and they would be doable.

However, I have gotten to the level 75 ‘Estate of Decay’ mission and I cannot get past the boss.

I have not figured out how to do it. I can find nothing on internet about it, which leads to believe that I am either doing it completely wrong, or it’s hard and no one has done it (surely someone has?).

Anyways, yes I have found them to be hard as a squishy class. The NPC AI is plain awful. Those risen sure do run fast!

Playing Norn Mesmer, hadn’t much trouble for the first twenty levels (took the Mists and Revange story, okay during the championship fights I had basically kited for an enternaty to get the oponennts down). The story arc to join the Priory started to become truly painful, especially Silent Warfare was not possible for me alone (I asked two friends to help me). Since then I ask me friends every time I died at least two times in a mission if they would like to help me… maybe it would be a little easier if the mobs would not respawn, so that one can take more time between fights to think about how to approach the next group.