Guild Wars 2

I have a mesmer, he’s at 65 now.

I’ve got a good build, good gear and I’m not bad skill-wise. Not ubersuperduperawesome, but good, and have no trouble in most if not all PvE fights.

Except the Risen for some reason (that rhymes). They seem to always give me problems. They are both strong and fast (the asuras are the most annoying, but the big norns also manage to get to me in an eyeblink), and – do they really have more HP than usual mobs or is it just my impression?

Anyway, I’m not certain why, but I do have issues when Zhaitan’s minions are involved. I went down twice in the Personal Story where you defend the Claw Island. They swarm me, they hit hard and they take forever to go down.

Is there a trick to beating the Risen? Am I just bad or are they supposed to be harder?

If you are only referring to the ones in the Personal Story at Claw Island, yes, they are tough even for your level, especially cloth-wearer. In fact, I find personal story are harder to do unless you are at least 5 to 10 levels above the recommended level. I have brought 4 different profession through this story and they are all tough. So don’t worry about it.

There are some good tricks to get through Claw Island. Knowing where to go and what to do you can seriously decrease the number of guys you’re fighting at one time. Judicious pulling of mobs to separate them can help too.

Risen Brutes seem to have abnormally large health pools (it takes me longer to kill one than a Risen Abomination, sometimes), but they also seem to be much slower than normal, so I guess that’s their trade off.

The ones I hate the most are the Risen Thralls. They swarm you and inflict Poison with their attacks, so you can quickly end up dead under a never-ending Poison. The Risen Krait that summon minions are also dangerous, if you don’t spot them doing their summon animation and interrupt them.

Claw island is hard for a mesmer- try to complete the objectives without trying to kill everything because I don’t actually think they ever stop spawning.

As for risen in general, they are a pain. My mesmer actually copes with them much easier that my other classes.

I run GS/ Staff. The staff is great for this: nr5 chaos storm AOE/ defense, nr 2 skill jumps you back, puts a clone in your place and creates a shield
GS does most at a distance and if you get swamped use nr 5, swap to staff.

Having max clones and phantasms up helps a lot to keep aggro away from you and you have shatter fodder to spread the pain around.

Feedback bubble works great against ranged and use either null field or phantasmal disenchanter for getting rid of conditions.

[mesmer here]

I actually didn’t find it too hard to do, when there all attacking and you have to take the middle (fort or w/e) back with the blue circle just hop on a siege machine on the wall and pound them into dust.

also enduring that part have feedback traited and time warp and you can res everyone in seconds then hop back onto a siege alternatley you can kite them up the ramps, jump off the edge onto the smaller ledge wait till they run to you hop back up on the ramp (can get half way up if you jump from the ledge(s) ) then rince and repeat.

Zhaitans minions in the personal story i believe do have a bigger Health pool though, thats what it felt like to me :P

I don’t know, I’ve always found the risen to be a bit more vicious than most of the other enemies in the game. I think it makes sense though. They are after all the main enemies of the over-arching plot. It would be kind of lame if they were all push overs, wouldn’t it? I like seeing an enemy that makes me go “well crap, here we go again…” and then finally as I level and gear up I start to conquer them more and more efficiently. That just kinda feels good

Knowing the mob mechanics makes a big difference. Trying to pick them out in the chaos of a large fight can be problematic. That said, what to watch out for with the Risen at the Claw Island level.

Yeah, I personally hate the karate zombies. I had one player ask me to help him with his personal story and it went really well. You never see anyone ask for help on chat with their ps. Is that a no-no or something?

There is usually no hurry or urgency to do personal story. when it became to hard, just level a few and come back. That’s what I do all the time – I do my personal story 5 to 10 levels above the recommended. Sure, the loot gears becomes obsolete, but the XP are still good. I have done this with squishy profession such as my Ele and Thief.

Yes the risen are harder than other creatures..They made changes to the undead that made it easier to deal with them in the Orr zones, but those changes did not filter down to the lower level ones. A trick to Claw Island and beyond with the personal story line is to always let the Pact engage the enemy first when ever you can.

Aly.3429:

Yes the risen are harder than other creatures..They made changes to the undead that made it easier to deal with them in the Orr zones, but those changes did not filter down to the lower level ones. A trick to Claw Island and beyond with the personal story line is to always let the Pact engage the enemy first when ever you can.

They made the Risen easier in Orr zones?? Geez, I feel sorry for everyone that fought them before. I actually came to the forums because my 80 ele has been spending a lot of time facedown while fighting them and I thought I was missing something. Maybe I just need to get the hang of it.

I was listening to a recent podcast about Mesmers (Mesmerized – Sitting on a Couch.com) the Mesmer people where trying very hard to think of something their class wasn’t completely awesome at.

After much deliberation, farming Orr was offered.

Meticulouslymediocre.6578:

Aly.3429:

Yes the risen are harder than other creatures..They made changes to the undead that made it easier to deal with them in the Orr zones, but those changes did not filter down to the lower level ones. A trick to Claw Island and beyond with the personal story line is to always let the Pact engage the enemy first when ever you can.

They made the Risen easier in Orr zones?? Geez, I feel sorry for everyone that fought them before. I actually came to the forums because my 80 ele has been spending a lot of time facedown while fighting them and I thought I was missing something. Maybe I just need to get the hang of it.

The change referred to was a reduction in mob density in many areas, not a general nerf of the Risen. More recently, several of the Risen were changed, and some of them became capable of more damage than before, e.g., Risen Pirates now proc a fire field; they also have a gap closer which, if they do it through the fire field generates a fire aura that burns you while in melee range with them.

Yeah, the risen are very overpowered. The risen krait can essentially summon infinite minnions, and the thrall spam poison making healing pointless. Its mostly the story mode though, like claw island, thats where you get hit the hardest.

They only seem tough because everything else in pve can be steamrolled blindfolded. They should be challenging imo.

Paraphrasing the words of Ted Danson from his role as a zombie risen from the ocean in Creepshow

“You can’t kill us, we’re already dead”

Strangely I found them easier to kill in the water than on land. It depends on the weapons used, how many swarm you and where you spent your skill points. My two sets are Greatsword for range attacks and Sword/Focus for melee.