Guild Wars 2

It is not that the karkas are unkillable. They are. But it is not fun to do so. There is challenge and then there is annoyance. Personally I find all skills annoying which leads to me not being able to do anything. Stun, Daze, Binding etc. As a guardian I can use stability and aegis to a certain amount to circumvent it or dodge away but all these is restricted. With the amount of karkas around the situation is quite fast at hand where all helpful skills are on cool-down. Even so I can survive it and kill these monsters in the end.

But being able to kill karkas during this event does not solve my problem with this event. My point is: it is not fun for me. Especially now with karkas swarming all over the place. I prefer monsters who hit harder or bleed, poison… whatever. These skills can be also very damaging but I don’t lose the control over my character completely.

personally I think the difficulty is perfect. makes it worthwhile when you use a defensive build/trait in pve. So many people waltz around in zerker gear, its good to actually have dangerous fights. Every class can be defensive, try it some time

Claudius.5381:

It is not that the karkas are unkillable. They are. But it is not fun to do so. There is challenge and then there is annoyance. Personally I find all skills annoying which leads to me not being able to do anything. Stun, Daze, Binding etc. As a guardian I can use stability and aegis to a certain amount to circumvent it or dodge away but all these is restricted. With the amount of karkas around the situation is quite fast at hand where all helpful skills are on cool-down. Even so I can survive it and kill these monsters in the end.

But being able to kill karkas during this event does not solve my problem with this event. My point is: it is not fun for me. Especially now with karkas swarming all over the place. I prefer monsters who hit harder or bleed, poison… whatever. These skills can be also very damaging but I don’t lose the control over my character completely.

One of the rare people who actually understood the point of this thread. People, A-Net, forum Moderators who like changing titles, this is an example of what I’m talking about. SC is filled with irritating enemies that aren’t worth the bother of killing them, which is bad for gameplay. That they can be beaten is trivial if it’s not enjoyable.

Malleus Maleficarum.2603:

personally I think the difficulty is perfect. makes it worthwhile when you use a defensive build/trait in pve. So many people waltz around in zerker gear, its good to actually have dangerous fights. Every class can be defensive, try it some time

This is an example of someone who saw the now very misleading title, and clearly didn’t read the post, thinking I’m using a glass cannon build and constantly dying. This is completely unrelated to what I’m talking about.

Then the problem is that there is not clear-cut definition of where the line is that divides difficulty and annoyance. I imagine the location of said line is different for everyone. Personally, I don’t have a problem with stuns or conditions because there are ways to remove them that should be a part of every build.

However, this is largely what happened in GW1; mobs had Mesmer abilities that could disable your skills for extended periods of time; sap your energy to the point where you had none to use and, therefore, couldn’t use skills; and make you take ridiculous damage for using your skills, which came back in the form of Confusion. Necromancer mobs could place many debuffs on you, strip your buffs for damage, and cause you to take extra damage or deal damage to your teammates based on what you do (Spiteful Spirit/Barbs). Hell, Mursaat would more or less one-shot you with a condition if your armor wasn’t at least partly infused. I’d list more examples -cough Ritualist bosses punishing bad positioning cough-, but I think these are sufficient.

It’s very dependent upon what you consider to be annoying. Lack of having control sucks, yeah, but I don’t really see any alternatives that would have the same effect on players as stuns/dazes do.

If there was a few seconds of lingering invulnerability to CC effects after you cleared one instead of it being applied again instantly such effects might not be quite so annoying. I mentioned – only half in jest – to a guildie the other day that I wished I could have an entire skill bar full of nothing but CC breakers (maybe one attack in case I might get a chance to use it), but even if I had that it still wouldn’t be enough for some of these guys.

Ya I think on top of the annoyance/frustration of fighting most of the mobs in Southsun there is also IMO frustration is getting around the place as well. Having to run way around to get up out of the water and knowing I either need to wade through tons of obnoxious enemies or avoid them all while I run halfway around the map is adding to the overall annoyance of the zone.

My suggestions:

1) Telegraph the skills that make you lose control of your character or massive amounts of health a bit better (up the regular damage in between if necessary to retain challenge)
2) Make it a little easier to get out of the water and where you want to go in some areas of the map. Or perhaps a bit more space between some mobs if you just want to get from point A to point B.

Honestly i don’t see the problem…

I am an ele and hopefully don’t get “misleaded by the title”. Your argument seems to state that you get constantly CCed and that the game is therefor not fun for you (or at least particular areas in SSC).

Please explain it to me: i have been on SSC very often but i have yet to be “stun-locked”. Wind Riders have barely any CC at all. They have a very high life pool and the boon steal is really annoying but if you can blind them once in a while they are no threat because of their low attack speed.

Drakes are annoying, only way to fight them is to outrange them.

Young Karka are easy. Very glassy and if you evade/dodge/reflect their initial attack spike they go down very quickly.

Adult karka are a bit more annyoing (i’m talking about you double stomper) but they are doable aswell. Melee is bit more challenging and dangerous imho so i prefer to range them. The rolling karka are hilarious! It’s so easy to predict it’s funny. A little advice: If they start evading take a step back, heal up and be ready to dodge since something nasty is about to come. Having said that you can usally advance one or two seconds later without a risk.

Those are the first mobs that are challenging not due to their ridicolous amount of health and dangerous auto attacks but because of their briefly animated strong skills, which quite frankly make it a real challenge, at least more than any other trashmob does atm.

Pls don’t ruin it and let arenanet believe that they did something bad with your hate posts!

LameFox.6349:

People, A-Net, forum Moderators who like changing titles, this is an example of what I’m talking about. SC is filled with irritating enemies that aren’t worth the bother of killing them, which is bad for gameplay. That they can be beaten is trivial if it’s not enjoyable.

Pretty much. As I said in my previous post, I pretty much ignore regular reef riders. They take forever to kill while representing pretty much zero threat to me back. They’re not hard at all – as I said, they don’t even rate as a credible threat – it’s just that they take so long to go down that they’re not worth the effort. They could probably do with an upgrade to their damage and a downgrade to their durability – calibrate it so that they’re likely to deal about the same damage over their expected lifetime, but so that that lifetime is shorter..

On the CC issue… personally, I find SS to be much better in that respect than areas with lots of the Orrian floating weapons. i don’t recall ever being stunlocked in SS, but Orrian weapons – bows especially with Magic Bullet – can and will chainstun you if they achieve critical mass, and nothing short of Stability will help (and some professions have no source of stability).

With regards to the argument that GW1 had plenty of stuff that can shut you down… this is certainly true. However, GW1, at least once heroes were available, also gave you lots of ways to remove such control effects. If you’re going up against enemies that spam shutdown conditions, you can bring lots of condition removal spread throughout your party and keep vulnerable characters clear. Same with shutdown hexes and hex removal. In GW2, though, you’re limited in how much condition removal, stability, and stun breaks you can have, and it’s very easy for the mobs to simply overwhelm them.

What the game probably needs is some sort of control-resistance mechanic – every time you’re hit by CC, you get a status effect that reduces any other crowd control for a short time afterwards in duration. This mechanic stacks until eventually the duration of control effects gets reduced to 0 until the status wears off (you can still be interrupted, but you don’t get disabled and can resume immediately afterwards). This would allow for the current Defiant mechanic to be removed as well – you have an inbuilt mechanic for limiting crowd control that stops players and bosses alike from being stunlocked.

And in all seriousness, all of the ‘move and deal damage’ effects really should end if you’re rendered stationary sue to blocked terrain. A karka stopping and spinning in place really doesn’t make much sense. Nor does a mesmer being able to constantly Feigned Surge a mob, however cunningly that mob was worked into a depression to make it possible.

as an elementalist with the lowest health and armor in the game I experience this throughout the game and it is what I like about the game, it makes it challenging instead of a mere match up of damage versus your stat-survivability its a battle of your skill against whatever comes your way.

The karka roll was hideous the first 2 times but when I caught onto the skill animation it was very very easy to dodge. Just stay in melee and when you see where its gonna roll towards just roll in his direction and y’ll avoid all damage and knock down.

Don’t wariors have that stance that makes them invulnerable? Why not use that? or the shield skill that blocks stuff for a while + the trait that makes all blocks reflect the attacks should deal with all the karkas easily.

With some skills all the monsters in SC can be taken down without taking any damage. You just need some practice. Just like with the jumping puzzles being annoying at first later when you get more skilled at them they become more fun and less annoying.

Group up then, it is suppose to be a group area. Yesterday I was just doing the JP and did not team up so getting there was slower. From then on I was with a group of another guild and we swept the place clean.

I can only agree with the fact the event is annoying. I’m a solo player and this discriminates me from completing the content of the living story. This is the complete opposite of the previous opus: Flame and Frost.

I understand that the southsun cove is supposed to be designed for groups but that also mean non-grouped players will be cast aside.

As a casual player having freshly reached level 80 with my thief I have absolutely no fun trying to complete the different achievements. Mobs have so much CC that it is nearly impossible to run by without getting insta-stunned/pullers/crippled/… and die even quicker (problem of the “normal” drakes pulling you in their AOE with no other choice than to die, among other).

I am convinced that the living story should be accessible to everyone and I’m not sure low-level players – even if scaled to 80 – will have a lot of fun either.

[On a side note, I’ve noticed that mobs here are able to AA me while stealth, is this a bug or is it intentional?]

Lamefox, considering it wasnt just me but every other post that apparently misread your OP as a complaint about difficulty, maybe it has to do with the way you presented your argument. For example of the bit about being afk-attacked wasnt relevant to the point you’re making, leave it out.

Anyways, being annoying is very much a matter of individual perception and I dont find anything in Southsun ‘too annoying’. sure a Karka doing his roll attack entirely on your head isnt ideal, that’s possibly annoying – but it’s also probably not intended and I judge it as such. Latency and individual pc performance (and bugs) can all be very annoying, and you’re right that to some degree they can plan for that, but it’s always going to be a factor that varies too much to account for completely.

There are some spots in GW2 (in Southsun and also elsewhere) that for some reason half my fps, and certainly some attacks I consider no problem usually are annoying under these conditions. It’s also something that might be fixable on A.nets side of things. But I wouldnt say the mobs need a redesign based on that to reduce potential annoyance.

Edit: one thing that became apparent to me that often stings me is the limited choice of skills I have. GW1 was leagues more flexible in this regard. I do usually tailor one or two skills to better deal with the local opposition, and found my choices in condition removal lacking (on Mesmer, mostly due to cooldowns being too long – they are AE or have secondary effects that justify the cooldown, but here I just wanted to remove one boon). I think mobs using special boons and conditions beyond the standard ones is underused anyway and improving on that would open the door for more special skills (pve only maybe) to deal with it – in place of the annoying features.

After yesterday I’ll say that those kitten little facehugger karka hatchlings are the #1 most annoying thing in Southsun.

I personally don’t find it that annoying. It’s tough, but when I happen to die… so what. Atm you have mostly several people around to do the stronger mobs, so it’s not that I have to solo them and in case you go down there is usually someone to get you up. And when I think something is to strong for me alone I try to sneak past it. For me it’s pretty ok.

I like the challenge.

Managed to solo a veteran karka once, it made me so happy. Usually other mobs get pulled in the fight though, so even finding one you can solo might take some time. Plus they roll such long distances.

But the point kinda is, they’re supposed to be taken down by a group.

LameFox.6349:

Actually, being saturated in control effects just isn’t enjoyable in general. If you can avoid it no difference is made, if you’re constantly stuck in it until death it’s frustrating, and if you have the resilience to ride it out and save some stability just in case (i.e. my approach right now) it’s tedious.

It took Anet something like 9 months to finally admit that they messed up with Orr, and that it was more annoying than anything, and needed some major tuning.
Wanna bet how long it takes them to have the same idea a second time ?

Asbrandr.6324:

Then the problem is that there is not clear-cut definition of where the line is that divides difficulty and annoyance. I imagine the location of said line is different for everyone. Personally, I don’t have a problem with stuns or conditions because there are ways to remove them that should be a part of every build.

Well I think poorly telegraphed skills that deal massive damage are pretty widely ‘annoying’. That was – when it was working properly – one of the best parts about the MF dungeon: you could see pretty much anything important quite easily, and act appropriately to deal with it. Under normal circumstances, I also consider young karkas to have a fairly well-telegraphed ranged attack, which is fitting of its damage (not so much when they make one into a champion).

I did say somewhere in here that I don’t care that CC exists, my issue with it is when there’s a lot of it. SC isn’t even particularly bad for that relative to some places (granted they did make some changes to Orr, like those anchor guys no longer chain-pulling around the zone) but when you get things acting weirdly like the roll staying in place, it just gets silly.

A lot of this (not the roll specifically) is probably thanks to balancing for PvP. Small, even teams aren’t going to face the sheer volume of CC that players can encounter in PvE and WvW, and their stun-breaks and stability are sufficient for what they do encounter. Playing on a warrior I’m pretty lucky as far as CC goes because I get such easily accessed stability; on the other hand for an engineer (possibly others, this is just an example I’m familiar with), you gain stability only from elites and have a chance of getting it from one toolbelt skill. It’s fine when you just need a stunbreaker, like fighting most regular mobs or a small number of players, but when things are getting constantly re-applied it quickly becomes futile.

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…why the 1?

Lucas of the Desert.2165:

I am an ele and hopefully don’t get “misleaded by the title”. Your argument seems to state that you get constantly CCed and that the game is therefor not fun for you (or at least particular areas in SSC).

I think you’re taking this as ’ohgodsIcan’tmoveCCeverywhere’ or something, which it’s not (most of the time). My point is that not being in control of your character is not fun – it’s not even really playing anymore, just watching. While adding in a little of it here and there isn’t so bad, because one control effect typically doesn’t last long and can be countered, creating situations where people are hit multiple times in a row and often unable to recover (for instance you get pulled, and you’re not a class who can stunbreak and give stability with a single skill, so maybe you use your stunbreak and start getting up… but then you’re pulled again, because there are multiple creatures there all doing this, and of course they all chose you as a target when you got yanked up to them the first time) is just irritating and doesn’t add anything positive.

I’ve been doing the event with the champion drake for instance (which is amusingly harmless compared to regular drakes) and seen people just get chain-sucked into the pools of acid (or whatever it is) by the regular drakes surrounding it, and it’s like… yeah… there’s no way I can get that out of there before it dies, see you in your next life, random guy!

Lucas of the Desert.2165:

Drakes are annoying, only way to fight them is to outrange them.

It’s not the only way, but it’s the safest way. And their being ‘annoying’ is the whole reason I mentioned them. Notice things like the air-jellyfish, (non-champion) young karka, etc. were not brought up. People keep talking about stuff I didn’t have a complaint about as though it disproves something they dreamt I’d said. Even veteran karka only made my list because of one attack, and only when it’s behaving in a bizarre manner at that. Spend the time to read my actual complaint about something, and save the time you spend defending things I didn’t have an issue with.

draxynnic.3719:

On the CC issue… personally, I find SS to be much better in that respect than areas with lots of the Orrian floating weapons. i don’t recall ever being stunlocked in SS, but Orrian weapons – bows especially with Magic Bullet – can and will chainstun you if they achieve critical mass, and nothing short of Stability will help (and some professions have no source of stability).

It’s certainly better than some areas – largely because some of the worst offenders don’t use the skill that often. I killed loads of the drakes for example before any of them ever tried to inhale me or whatever it is they’re doing. Or the veteran karkas, which aren’t that annoying unless by chance they hit a rock or tree stump or whatever and stay on you. But when you’ve got a zone full of things with high HP that makes progress slow, it doesn’t take things being constantly annoying (like the old risen with their anchor-pull) to make the place more bother than benefit. A few particularly irritating skills/scenarios are quite easy to point out and address in the short term, compared to rebalancing a zone entirely like was done with Orr.

I fully expect that once the event is over it’ll go back to being ignored for the most part, and occasionally used to farm blood, until they eventually take a closer look at it.

Mastruq.2463:

Lamefox, considering it wasnt just me but every other post that apparently misread your OP as a complaint about difficulty, maybe it has to do with the way you presented your argument. For example of the bit about being afk-attacked wasnt relevant to the point you’re making, leave it out.

There were replies even before I added the note that seemed to know exactly what I was talking about, so I don’t think it was that unclear. A lot of the unrelated comments indicate not having read the post at all, like the ones saying ‘but this other random creature can be killed like this’, or implying I have a glass cannon build which has 27k health and 3k armour.

The relevance of my being attacked AFK was to put into perspective the durability of the character; I mentioned its stats but not everyone is going to see 3k armour and immediately have an idea what practical difference it makes. So after both times tabbing in and playing through the event which started on top of me, only to see other players being downed around me, I took it as an opportunity to provide an example.

Whoever came up with the great idea that drakes should be able to apply confusion with a duration of more than 10 seconds (!!!) should be fired, especially when there’s at least for of them around a brood mother. Wish I could do that, then confusion would eventually be slightly useful in PvE. Same for cripple, being cced forever isn’t fun. Also, making the smaller karkas attack in waves, where it’s hardly possible to dodge their sting attacks, ist stupid. Generally, some very deadly attacks are very hard to see which means hard to dodge. Also the mobs respawn too fast and are placed too close, just like in the original orr. The crab minigame is just crap in its current state. And finally, southsun cove seems to be hardly optimized - in some places, FPS drop below 30, which normally happens only in huge WvW zergs. GPU load is about 50% then, so again it’s a CPU issue. All in all, I’m not really impressed. I’ll try to get as many achievements as possible, farm mats and rip off people for porting at the JP and then probably never return to SC if it isn’t changed any further.

LameFox.6349:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Pay attention, do something other then stand in one spot and spam hundred blades, dodge occasionally; win.

My thief has like 14k health and 2k armor and I have only died once in about 8 hours of play there. I just wish the rest of the zones were like this, it makes the game so much more fun when you can’t just smash your face into the keyboard.

‘Pay attention’ says the n’th person to make a pointless reply unrelated to what I’ve said.

Not counting the nosedive into lava for the achievement I’ve died… maybe twice? Once that I remember, and I think the rest was just being downed. This thread is about things being annoying and tedious, not unbeatable. People are apparently having trouble with this concept.

…and why would I make a resilient build only to put a greatsword on it?

I clearly stated that I find the added difficulty and the actual use of mechanics fun. I do not find them tedious and boring, they are the most interesting part of southsun. I understood the point of the thread just fine, I just don’t agree with you.

I agree and disagree. I found most of the damage wasn’t too bad when I was there playing with my level 60 ranger upscaled.

However, I did find that at one point the damage was out of whack. A small karka just ran through me and I was instantly killed, not sure what it did?

My biggest problem are the conditions that cannot be removed with condition removal. These are just silly and frustrating.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

LameFox.6349:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Pay attention, do something other then stand in one spot and spam hundred blades, dodge occasionally; win.

My thief has like 14k health and 2k armor and I have only died once in about 8 hours of play there. I just wish the rest of the zones were like this, it makes the game so much more fun when you can’t just smash your face into the keyboard.

‘Pay attention’ says the n’th person to make a pointless reply unrelated to what I’ve said.

Not counting the nosedive into lava for the achievement I’ve died… maybe twice? Once that I remember, and I think the rest was just being downed. This thread is about things being annoying and tedious, not unbeatable. People are apparently having trouble with this concept.

…and why would I make a resilient build only to put a greatsword on it?

I clearly stated that I find the added difficulty and the actual use of mechanics fun. I do not find them tedious and boring, they are the most interesting part of southsun. I understood the point of the thread just fine, I just don’t agree with you.

You made a dismissive and intentionally obtuse reply worded to suggest that my opinion of the things I listed was due to [dying of] standing in place pressing 2 when it came off cooldown, which is completely and utterly worthless to discussion. Now you’re associating the subjects I raised with ‘the actual use of mechanics’ – is bringing up some specific things one and the same with wanting whatever you consider ‘mechanics’ removed in general?

The things I took issue with were:

-a standard creature that appears all over the place randomly having an attack (or attacks?) which is more punishing than the champion version of that creature is. Quite possibly an oversight or bug, but whatever the reason it seems absurdly disproportionate – though perhaps you don’t care to defend this one, unless ‘does lots of damage’ is one of those mechanics you’re talking about.

-a certain attack on a different creature which under some circumstances can apply all the damage (and knockdown) it would normally have spread over a long area to one specific place. This is not a thing it does as some kind of alternative skill, merely the strange way it interacts with terrain. Note that I brought up that particular behaviour, not the ability overall.

-a champion which has a drastically increased single-target damage output. While totally inept at actually defending itself or challenging a group (might we not expect that from group content?) it has the ability to immediately down an individual player which it has targeted, made worse by the fact that in being promoted to champion it now gets focused by loads of people and buried in spell effects, but doesn’t use a more visible wind-up to its attack than the normal creature (almost like I’m complaining it doesn’t have new mechanics. Shocking, isn’t it?).

-the fact that control effects in abundance can render meaningless our intended counters to them, especially with certain classes that have little access to stability. Though I should point out that this might be less of a problem if the multiple monsters were less likely to target the same player(s) with so many to choose from.

Now how is any of this indicative of disliking ‘the actual use of mechanics’ or preferring [when you can] ‘just smash your face into the keyboard.’? Was ‘saturated’ too subtle or something?

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again…Southsun Cove may as well be a dungeon, because these enemies hit as hard as dungeon mobs, ESPECIALLY the Karka.

Malleus Maleficarum.2603:

personally I think the difficulty is perfect. makes it worthwhile when you use a defensive build/trait in pve. So many people waltz around in zerker gear, its good to actually have dangerous fights. Every class can be defensive, try it some time

No need for defensive imo, my zerker necro can solo 3+ no problem dagger/focus – staff.

The thing is that most of people answering on this thread are considering players have full gear. Again, as a casual, I’m far from being fully built.

Another problem is that Guild Wars 2 is proclaming itself a worldwide game. However, with server only in EU and NA, and me living in Australia, my ping is relatively high. It doesn’t make the game unplayable BUT avoiding critical nukes is sometimes totally impossible… and mobs are not all telegraphing their next attack.

This is another reason that an event designed to be accessible to the masses shouldn’t be that punishing, taking into account players who have 200+ constant ping.

Outside from that, I enjoyed the game a lot so far, even as a solo player! The difference in difficulty and frustration on the southsun cove living story is just to an other level.

Tyfox.3471:

The thing is that most of people answering on this thread are considering players have full gear. Again, as a casual, I’m far from being fully built.

Another problem is that Guild Wars 2 is proclaming itself a worldwide game. However, with server only in EU and NA, and me living in Australia, my ping is relatively high. It doesn’t make the game unplayable BUT avoiding critical nukes is sometimes totally impossible… and mobs are not all telegraphing their next attack.

This is another reason the an event designed to be accessible to the masses shouldn’t be that annoying and taking into account players who have 200+ constant ping.

Outside from that, I enjoyed the game a lot so far, even as a solo player! The difference in difficulty and frustration on the southsun cove living story is just to an other level.

First part, this game makes it very easy to obtain max stats gear. It was part of their design philosophy, and they have designed the content to be challenging for people with this gear. My recommendation is that you sell all mats that you gain through levelling/playing and then use that gold to buy your gear. Won’t take you very long. For example, my Ranger has 20 gold at level 60 using this strategy, and every 10 levels I buy the best possible gear I can. At level 80 I will have well above 20 gold and can use that to buy full exotic gear and then some.

That is rather unfortunate about your ping though are you sure it is Anet server side and not ISP side? What sort of internet speeds you subscribe to?

Jemmi.6058:

Tyfox.3471:

The thing is that most of people answering on this thread are considering players have full gear. Again, as a casual, I’m far from being fully built.

Another problem is that Guild Wars 2 is proclaming itself a worldwide game. However, with server only in EU and NA, and me living in Australia, my ping is relatively high. It doesn’t make the game unplayable BUT avoiding critical nukes is sometimes totally impossible… and mobs are not all telegraphing their next attack.

This is another reason the an event designed to be accessible to the masses shouldn’t be that annoying and taking into account players who have 200+ constant ping.

Outside from that, I enjoyed the game a lot so far, even as a solo player! The difference in difficulty and frustration on the southsun cove living story is just to an other level.

First part, this game makes it very easy to obtain max stats gear. It was part of their design philosophy, and they have designed the content to be challenging for people with this gear. My recommendation is that you sell all mats that you gain through levelling/playing and then use that gold to buy your gear. Won’t take you very long. For example, my Ranger has 20 gold at level 60 using this strategy, and every 10 levels I buy the best possible gear I can. At level 80 I will have well above 20 gold and can use that to buy full exotic gear and then some.

That is rather unfortunate about your ping though are you sure it is Anet server side and not ISP side? What sort of internet speeds you subscribe to?

Totally agree with the fact there is no need for gear grinding in GW2 to get max stats and thanks for the tip about materials selling

For the ping it’s neither Arena Net or My ISP but rather that servers are hosted in America and Europe while I’m playing from Australia. Nothing I can do about this unless new servers are deployed on the continent.

The result is just that the game is more difficult/frustrating when fighting mobs with lods of CC/nukes just because your dodges are out of sync (how many times did I avoided a nuke but got repositioned by the server because on it’s side I didn’t roll in time).

I’ve learned to anticipate but it is not always enough (too early and you waste it, and a split second too late and you get it in the face). However in southsun cove, a lot of the attacks appear in an instant making them rather difficult to avoid.

And to respond to one of the poster above: he said that he could find lots of players already playing on the map and doing group events. It would be nice if I encountered that many players but I’m getting confined in the overflow servers where there is nobody (even with 1/2 hour to an hour playing) and haven’t found enough players around, for example, the champion karka at the top of the nest. It might be a time difference problem too (AU vs NA).

My whole point is NOT that the game sucks (far from that), but IMO the previous opus, Flame and Frost, was MUCH better suited to all kind of players, even the solo ones (I ony did the Molten Facility dungeon with randoms, twice, and that was VERY doable while still really enjoyable).

I can understand that hardcore players – might – not have found F&F to their taste and expected something more challenging too.

So, to summarize, I feel like the Southsun cove event is not designed for the masses or at least the most casual players (I work and am pretty busy outside work so it’s difficult to afford more than an half an hour to an hour every now and then), especially casual-solo players.

LameFox.6349:

For want of a better term, it’s a list of cheap-shots.

+1, I wish I could +100.

My favourite so far has been using a WP to get insta-downed on spawn because of some mob there. I don’t really know what did it, but I certainly couldn’t avoid it because I was in the downed state by the time the client finished loading.

You didn’t mention the rock worm wossits that move faster than a stallion’s sprinting pace and insta-gib you either. Those things plain suck.

Overall, I like the zone and what they’ve done more than SAB, but there’s an overall grindy feeling to this that makes it feel cheap. The jumping puzzle (I don’t think Anet are good at these, their controls and camera make them harder than they should be in the first place) is maddening, because the rocks don’t actually seem to stabilise when they appear stable (could be lag, hard to tell).

The tragedy here is a lot of the good work that’s gone into it from e.g. story teams is being shrouded by people who put in nasty mechanics.

All in all, I feel like I should like it a lot more than I do; I like the theme, I dislike the implementation. The one-shots alone are eye watering. Pro tip: the downed state is not a super-fun mini game!

Don’t get me wrong – I’ve managed to grind through it, get my Censer and Shell back pieces, and now I’m done with it. Which is a shame, because I think a lot of the art and story deserve more attention – I just can’t be bothered trying to play dodge-and-res for hours at a time.

I heard of the worm-things, but I’ve not actually encountered them. I take it they appear in a very specific place or for some event I’ve consistently missed, but it didn’t sound as though I would be better off for having found them.

I don’t mind the difficulty of the mobs, its meant to be a difficult area.

The respawn time on some of the veteran karka’s is way too short though. Me and a group of about 6 ppl spent a couple of minutes killing one for the escort event, only for another one to spawn immediately after and killing the NPCs again.

Tachenon.5270:

…I wished I could have an entire skill bar full of nothing but CC breakers (maybe one attack in case I might get a chance to use it), but even if I had that it still wouldn’t be enough for some of these guys.

LMAO I was just thinking this while running through Southsun. Don’t care if all im left with is auto-attacks, I’ll take all CC breakers and 1 heal any day just to get around.

Just saw a complete group of around 20/30 people get one shotted by an event of champion karkas. I take it back that the content is for groups, annoying one shotting champs with out of control animations are not fun in my book.

aspirine.6852:

Just saw a complete group of around 20/30 people get one shotted by an event of champion karkas. I take it back that the content is for groups, annoying one shotting champs with out of control animations are not fun in my book.

That and being repeatedly snared/immobilized by them, why no cool-down on that annoying skill.

Im Mudbone.1437:

aspirine.6852:

Just saw a complete group of around 20/30 people get one shotted by an event of champion karkas. I take it back that the content is for groups, annoying one shotting champs with out of control animations are not fun in my book.

That and being repeatedly snared/immobilized by them, why no cool-down on that annoying skill.

There is. Vet/champ karka either do: lay eggs (2 times)/poison >>> immobilize (2 sometimes 1) >>> jump for ground shake/rolling. Champ Karka ground shake will 100% down you. You can evade it right after this champ jump and achieve maximum height. Or if your latency is a bit bad (not trully bad), you can evade it just after she jumps.

What skill you need to survive in this island:
Condition removal (if you have more than 1 is better)
Other ? Stability or something along that (which can wake your character faster).

ps: this may be hard for thief (well they have stealth) and necro (poor class….)
Tips: never do vet karka if you are solo, its wasting time. If you want karka shell better play crab toss or kill young karka.
Note: almost all native events in this area are group events.

Sorry if these have already been covered.

• Veteran Karka retaliation that lasts forever: annoying
• Veteran Karka life bar reset: annoying
• Reef drake confusion that lasts forever: annoying, especially for mesmers after the 50% WvW confusion nerf.
• Karka hatchling effects: annoying and repulsive
• Low item drop rate (it seems to me) for young karka, reef riders, and reef drakes: annoying.

Okay, I am being hyperbolic when I say an effect lasts forever, but that is the way it seems. I was looking forward to going back to Southsun Cove and thought Arenanet would have changed some of the things that turned me off the first time. Wow was I wrong.

I might be reading too much into this, but I watched the first minute or so of this:
http://youtu.be/0wQfJQ0KQL0

You’ve got the dude on the left (Ordin) and the chick on the right (Rivera). Both are game designers at ANet, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say Ordin was the guy who designed the Crab Toss (and Rivera is not, or playing at someone less familiar – “Anthony’s going to be teaching me how to play today.”).

Listen to the narrative going on.

“So basically what you’re gonna want to do is grab the crab.” Let’s not get into a game called Toss, not Grab, but…

“Aaaaaah I’m pushing 1 a lot…”

“Oh no!” as a giant Karka facerolls her and half her health goes…

“So your basic strategy here … is to plan ahead a little bit.” It’d probably suck to be on a higher latency connection.

“Grab the person who’s grabbing the crab” – if you’re clairvoyant…

At this point I kind of stopped watching, Ordin’s getting a little impatient watching Revera play, despite her obvious enthusiasm

That mini game is a good example of cheap. For a novice, it’s hard to know what’s going on. It’s also hard to know why you’re not successful at the game – did you miss the target? Did someone else get the crab? Did lag get in the way? Etc.

It’s a frustrating mini game that lacks a clear tutorial or matching with other skilled vs. noviciate players. I must say I felt much better after watching Rivera have a very similar experience to mine going in there the first time: WTF am I doing, what’s going wrong, and how did that giant karka steam roll me?

I almost get the feeling someone designed this for gimmicks and cheap tricks and forgot to add a salting of fun, that would make it enjoyable. The game should be fun for its own sake, not another grind to get a set of rewards.

Debois Guilbert.6413:

• Veteran Karka retaliation that lasts forever: annoying

I was grouped with someone earlier who was instantly downed by reflecting a karka’s projectile at it (the kind that causes poison IIRC) and hitting the retaliation for numerous ticks. It was pretty funny. I need to find a way to do that to people in WvW…

I carry a sword to use Larcenous strike to steal the retal and protection. But the reef drakes! Dat retreat! Wth is up with their power?!

LameFox.6349:

[…]This is not a thread about things being hard, because they’re not. It is not about things being in-completable, because they’re not. It is a thread about things being needlessly annoying.

[…]

Actually, being saturated in control effects just isn’t enjoyable in general. If you can avoid it no difference is made, if you’re constantly stuck in it until death it’s frustrating, and if you have the resilience to ride it out and save some stability just in case (i.e. my approach right now) it’s tedious.[…]

The problem with understanding your post is that everything you complain about as being too annoying, frustrating, pick-your-favourite-adjective, can be understood as SC being too hard in the sense that it requires players to adjust their playstyle to whatever mob they’re fighting. And this, whether you like it or not, is what playing in SC (and other areas of the game) comes down to: adjusting your playstyle so being in SC (or anywhere else) is not totally annoying.

Your main beef with SC is that the mobs are “needlessly annoying”. What other people find challenging (and after a while not really challenging anymore) you find annoying and, what is more, you actually don’t see any point to the fighting styles of certain mobs. Okay, fine. However, everything you describe as annoying can be countered – if you get spiked or CC’ed then you only have yourself to blame. So your problem is that you don’t seem to want to adjust your playstyle and thus claim that the mobs’ main objective is to interrupt your preferred style of play, which renders their skills annoying. As that is what I get from what you wrote (and it is by no means an unreasonable interpretation of your text), I cannot help but see this as another QQ-thread.

On another note, saying that avoiding attacks makes no difference is quite ridiculous (and this is why it is so hard to take what you’re trying to say seriously and so easy to attribute it to a “l2p” issue, as many have done). There’s a very clear difference between being hit and not being hit (and thus CC’ed). What other effect should a move to avoid an attack have? You have neutralised the attack and can proceed to kill the mob. Congratulations.

Well, but maybe my reading comprehension isn’t so good either, as you so saucily and arrogantly throw into everyone’s face who does not 100% agree with you.

Debois Guilbert.6413:

• Veteran Karka retaliation that lasts forever: annoying
• Veteran Karka life bar reset: annoying
• Reef drake confusion that lasts forever: annoying, especially for mesmers after the 50% WvW confusion nerf.
• Karka hatchling effects: annoying and repulsive

1. Strip the boon.
2. The reset has a reason: remove the shell, then you can kill it. Pretty cool to me. Plus it’s a type of veteran that is at least somewhat challenging to fight. Also, you do understand that you don’t have to fight them, if you don’t like their mechanics, right?
3. Either avoid the confusion or just remove it.
4. Annoying? I think it’s a pretty neat machanic, it’s a veteran after all. Also, just dodge to remove them. Repulsive? Never play Half Life. Seriously.

I actually Enjoy soloing karka and have been since… well since I decided I wanted more omni infusions than it really reasonable. This patch is even better as each one guarantees a shell (plus its nice that I don’t need to solo them at the moment because there always happens to be a few people nearby)

I realize a lot of people don’t frequent southsun because they find the mechanics there counter to their build, but lets be fair here. The skills and traits systems are designed specifically to be hot swapped for encounters, and all of southsun is pretty much designed to be murder on zerker builds.

I don’t have a problem with that, considering how much of the rest of the game is so easy you can quite literally stand in one place and hit two buttons with the right build on almost any class.

I play an evasion/bleeds thief with Signet of Malice. This is a build that’s durable but subpar is most other places in the world. I don’t play it because it’s efficient, I play it because it’s fun. I also found out really fast that it’s the only character I’ve got that can take on three or four veteran karkas at once and come out on top. I’ve got low base damage, which makes the retaliation pretty managable, I’ve got passive healing that scales with the number of enemies I hit, and I’m build for enough evasion that if I play it right I can get out of the worst attacks pretty well.

“Well good for you” You’re thinking to yourself “That’s really unfair to the rest of us though, and we don’t find it fun at all”

If you bubble/wall/haste/HB through everything else… that’s fine, but your one trick pony shouldn’t work everywhere. Even if you’re not one of the “glorious three” most-seen PvE builds, chances are there are certain things your build is very good at, which is probably why you built it that way. Dungeon farm builds are very good for that purpose. AoE builds are very good event farmers. The thing is, just because your build is awesome at one thing doesn’t mean it should translate to being equally good at everything else. For instance, take a HB dungeon farmer to any form of PvP and watch what happens. Put a backstab thief in a room with a ton of trash. Put a wells necro in a fight with a boss. Sometimes your build isn’t the most awesome at what you’re doing. That is okay.

My build is horrible, for instance, against anything with a high frequency of ranged poison and confusion applications.(like reef drakes, gangs of blowgun hylek… or really good confusion mesmers). They kill my passive heals, sap my life, and generally make it very difficult for me to maintain well enough to take the occasional hit long enough for my bleed stacks to do their job. See, I don’t have a lot of condition removal and usually rely on my heals and evades to mitigate most damage. Confusion punishes me for using skills, and I need to use skills to get my lifetaps off. Poison brings down my healing numbers, which can be devastating for my sustain since I’m geared around having just enough heal to keep up. When I know I’m going to be in these situations I swap out a few skills and traits and play more conservatively, knowing that I’m not built for the encounter. In addition, it’s a condition build, which means it’s not as efficient in terms of damage as a raw damage build. When I designed my build I knew it had weaknesses, and I knew it had strengths. Your build also has weaknesses, and that’s not because the mobs are badly designed, it’s because you built it to do something else

Certain builds should absolutely be disadvantaged in certain situations, and advantaged in other situations. Not every build will be optimal, or even good for every encounter. That’s fine, it’s what makes people want to hook up with other people, do events with other people, etc. Your build should have weaknesses as well as strengths. If this isn’t true, if your build is good everywhere then either the world is designed poorly, or your build is an outlier option and begging for a nerf.

Stuff like what you see on Southsun is what makes monsters interesting. GW2 does a pretty good job of making most species of monsters behaviorally unique, and in cases of humanoids often with unique and recognizable subtypes. The creatures in southsun have, in my opinion, fun mechanics that tend to punish the laziest builds (HB zerker signet warrior, I’m looking at you) the most and require a slightly higher awareness than normal mobs. I don’t think that’s out of line, considering that southsun is effectively an “endgame zone” and most “standard” builds can simply faceroll through the vast majority of the open world. We need more zones with difficult mobs, difficult mechanics, and difficult events so that there’s a risk/reward basis to have somewhere to go where you’re not just farming and getting bored. The addition of blooming passiflora and the level scaling and re-placement of southsun’s mobs is a good start IMO.

frogshake.2419:

Debois Guilbert.6413:

• Veteran Karka retaliation that lasts forever: annoying
• Veteran Karka life bar reset: annoying
• Reef drake confusion that lasts forever: annoying, especially for mesmers after the 50% WvW confusion nerf.
• Karka hatchling effects: annoying and repulsive

1. Strip the boon.
2. The reset has a reason: remove the shell, then you can kill it. Pretty cool to me. Plus it’s a type of veteran that is at least somewhat challenging to fight. Also, you do understand that you don’t have to fight them, if you don’t like their mechanics, right?
4. Annoying? I think it’s a pretty neat machanic, it’s a veteran after all. Also, just dodge to remove them. Repulsive? Never play Half Life. Seriously.

1. Ok I have an ele and warrior there, How do I strip the boon? I am not a very good player but since I hear other people saying it I think it’s not just me.
2 Agreed, that is one of the nice things, Anet could have made it clearer to us by giving the armour health another colour. I did not know that and even see(must be blind or something) that the armor came of during the fight. I just thought wtf happend to this health.
4 Agreed, it’s more annoying than doing anything else, and I also thought about HL, and that is never a bad thing

so basically the complaint is you have to be active in your fights instead of walking up, hitting auto and maybe 1 or 2 skills to kill mobs? I love the whole idea that you can’t run around mowing down groups like they are nothing. Here in the south players are the prey not the wildlife.

frogshake.2419:

The problem with understanding your post is that everything you complain about as being too annoying, frustrating, pick-your-favourite-adjective, can be understood as SC being too hard in the sense that it requires players to adjust their playstyle to whatever mob they’re fighting. And this, whether you like it or not, is what playing in SC (and other areas of the game) comes down to: adjusting your playstyle so being in SC (or anywhere else) is not totally annoying.

Your main beef with SC is that the mobs are “needlessly annoying”. What other people find challenging (and after a while not really challenging anymore) you find annoying and, what is more, you actually don’t see any point to the fighting styles of certain mobs. Okay, fine. However, everything you describe as annoying can be countered – if you get spiked or CC’ed then you only have yourself to blame. So your problem is that you don’t seem to want to adjust your playstyle and thus claim that the mobs’ main objective is to interrupt your preferred style of play, which renders their skills annoying. As that is what I get from what you wrote (and it is by no means an unreasonable interpretation of your text), I cannot help but see this as another QQ-thread.

-Ignoring for a moment the various replies which would make it obvious I don’t just keep using the build from the first post exclusively (and quite possibly class – but if I didn’t give that away before I suppose I have now), what exactly do you consider a ‘style of play’? Because if you’re referring to the fact that ranged attacks render everything on southsun a sad joke while melee needs contend with things like chain pulls into drake acid spit, then I’d say I definitely oppose that on principle alone, even though personally I’m happy to use my assortment of ranged weapons/kits I’ve accumulated on my classes. Hell, I even made a mystic speargun for my engineer just to farm SC, and I pay so little attention to water content I had to replace the starter breathing mask at the same time.

frogshake.2419:

On another note, saying that avoiding attacks makes no difference is quite ridiculous (and this is why it is so hard to take what you’re trying to say seriously and so easy to attribute it to a “l2p” issue, as many have done). There’s a very clear difference between being hit and not being hit (and thus CC’ed). What other effect should a move to avoid an attack have? You have neutralised the attack and can proceed to kill the mob. Congratulations.

Well, but maybe my reading comprehension isn’t so good either, as you so saucily and arrogantly throw into everyone’s face who does not 100% agree with you.

-‘If you can avoid it, [a control effect] makes no difference.’

Were I saying that avoidance didn’t work, there probably would have been a ‘try’ in there somewhere.

PopeUrban.2578:

I actually Enjoy soloing karka and have been since… well since I decided I wanted more omni infusions than it really reasonable. This patch is even better as each one guarantees a shell (plus its nice that I don’t need to solo them at the moment because there always happens to be a few people nearby)

Well… it’s lucky you enjoy it then, since karka shells are extremely cheap and you’d get them quicker by farming and selling more valuable mats, then buying the shells.

PopeUrban.2578:

…and all of southsun is pretty much designed to be murder on zerker builds.

What makes you say that? If you stick to range most of what will hit you is pretty weak (lol reef riders) or conditions. So long as you can remove the conditions, the extra damage output is great for the large healthpools things have in SC.

PopeUrban.2578:

I’ve got low base damage, which makes the retaliation pretty managable, I’ve got passive healing that scales with the number of enemies I hit, and I’m build for enough evasion that if I play it right I can get out of the worst attacks pretty well.

Uhh… I’ll just leave this here.

Also I went to quote the part about your build being bad at drakes but I must have skimmed over it; regardless, I happen to know 900 range is enough to avoid their damage entirely. To cast their acid puddle, or even their pulls, they will need to waddle closer and start wriggling. So long as you back off fast enough that you aren’t still in range when the wriggle gives way to an attack, they’ll die miserable and harmless creatures. I can try mailing you a shortbow if you like…

Chaotic Storm.2815:

so basically the complaint is you have to be active in your fights instead of walking up, hitting auto and maybe 1 or 2 skills to kill mobs? I love the whole idea that you can’t run around mowing down groups like they are nothing. Here in the south players are the prey not the wildlife.

I do? Well… this is unsettling. When did that happen?

Chaotic Storm.2815:

so basically the complaint is you have to be active in your fights instead of walking up, hitting auto and maybe 1 or 2 skills to kill mobs? I love the whole idea that you can’t run around mowing down groups like they are nothing. Here in the south players are the prey not the wildlife.

No not really, do you see any people there just doing that? I dont, what I do see is warriors and guardians trying their kitten best to get in melee range and not getting hit by all the snares and so on. Also like myself the d/d ele’s are right in there but I am not mowing anyone down.
I imagine it being way easier if you are a ranged char yeah.

I hope Southsun doesn’t get nerfed the way of Orr. The issue here is that you not only need to know how to use your class well, but also understand the enemy well. Southsun really made the risk/reward of melee vs. ranged show through. These are essentially the same complaints we heard with the Risen Putrifier’s pull attack and (some) Acolyte’s large aggro range, just magnified a bit.

Reef drakes are essentially harmless if you CC them and keep your distance. If you get in melee range, you are choosing to put yourself in harm’s way for better DPS so you should be responsible enough to bring enough stun-breaks and condition removals to deal with them in close range combat. Otherwise you’ll kill yourself through either standing around since you’re stunned, or through dying from confusion.

Karka’s only deadly attack is their ranged projectile barrage. Bring a reflect skill to make them kill themselves, or bring a block skill. Otherwise, double-dodge. Again, not difficult but it requires you to learn how the enemy behaves. Their melee attacks aren’t all that dangerous, and if you kite around them in a circle they won’t even be attacking you half the time.

Veteran Karka. Projectile destruction/block. And dodge when they roll. Simple as that.

In the case of reef drakes, someone ingame said that they’re OP and nearly impossible to kill. I whispered them (since I thought I may had already moved before noticing the message) to advise them to use CCs like stun/cripple/immobilize etc. About 10 minutes later, that person responds with a simple “Thanks, that helped a ton”

Reef Riders are pitifully weak. They have one damaging attack with a long wind-up. It’s the one that bounces between players. Dodge once every 5-10 seconds when they use it and you’ll be fine.

Mobs must have elements of CC, otherwise they’re braindead easy to kill like 99% of the explorable world. Melee is also possible. I was running D/D and S/F in pretty much melee range on my elementalist. That was extremely difficult compared to range since I had to be spamming condition removal and dodges. Running with staff and spamming earth #3 for projectile reflection makes combat in Southsun a joke. Risk/reward of melee vs. range. Ranged fighting will always be easier.

LameFox.6349:

Stuff you said

I like to think southsun is essentially zerker build hell because the mobs tend to have nasty control or damage return skills, or in the case of the riders, bounce attacks and boon theft. Sure things are easier at ranged, but that’s the entire game for the most part, and it’s pretty much a known fact that in a ranged versus melee damage arms race, melee wins by a pretty darn good margin as long as you can keep swinging. It’s not that you can’t run zerk out there, you can run anything anywhere if you’re good. it’s that the mobs are designed to steal your might, immobilize you, hit you with confusion and retaliation, and do a number of other things that make most “standard” zerker builds a lot more susceptible to serious harm out there.

Yes. I’m aware I could make more shells faster doing XY and buying them off the TP. I could make more of a lot of things faster. That’s not the point I’m trying to make. I’ve always had fairly good loot rolls on karka, I like fighting them, I’m good at it, and the guaranteed shell is nice mostly because it makes sense and is a 100% guaranteed drop.

Good information on retaliation, I honestly thought it was related to output, which is why it always does such awful damage. I don’t see it enough that I ever bothered to look it up. I was under the impression that’s why people were complaining about it, because it hit them harder. Thanks for teaching me something new! (Is it obvious I’ve never rolled a guardian? Heh.)

I didn’t say I Can’t fight the reef drakes or don’t use a shortbow for it. Cluster bomb is my standard ranged fallback for situations like this (multiple attacks per activation and bleeds) I said my general build wasn’t good against them (as in, the daggers, which I use to kill most things, which the whole thing is built around using as the primary weapon) and in fact this is an instance where I need to vary up tactics and weaponry specifically because AoE confusion fields are something that my build is non-optimal against due to my primary damage source (death blossom) being a leap that’s only semi-controllable. If they’re in big enough groups (like for the lionguard escort event) I’ll actually just dump all of my cooldowns to shadow refuge>caltrops>daggerstorm the whole mob, get killed by my own mad king birds from confusion, and then instantly rally from the bleed kills and finish the stragglers just to save time, and because it makes me laugh to watch the confusion numbers pile on that fast.

The Mob design in Southsun is probably the biggest reason almost no one ever went there before the LS event. (That, plus the pitiful reward for the amount of effort).

Now we have the LS and completing it, for many, is worth the effort, but I think by the time most people are done with it they will certainly never, ever want to return there and, sadly, the experience is draining enough it might turn some off from the game entirely.

In short, the mob design makes playing this LS event about the most opposite from fun as you can get.

I get flashbacks of Asian Grinding MMOs when I go to South Sun. The continual level of annoyance you need to overcome to achieve something doesn’t actually make the achievement seem more worthy. Rather, it usually just results in the souring realization that the game just excels at being a colossal waste of your time and mental energy.

It’s an approach that is completely in-congruent with the design philosophies around which this game was developed, which makes it just feel like really weak, cheap game design in context.

LameFox.6349:

Debois Guilbert.6413:

• Veteran Karka retaliation that lasts forever: annoying

I was grouped with someone earlier who was instantly downed by reflecting a karka’s projectile at it (the kind that causes poison IIRC) and hitting the retaliation for numerous ticks. It was pretty funny. I need to find a way to do that to people in WvW…

Several posters have discussed ways of dealing with the things I found annoying, and while that is great, it misses the point. I can already deal with them fairly effectively. I suppose why I found these annoying is that 1. I can’t really use them myself and 2. all the effects would be enormous fun to use against other players in WvW. Retaliation that lasts more than 30 seconds, muhahaha. Life bar reset, haha, jokes on you buddy. Karka hatchling effects, let the rage quitting commence. Really effective confusion, oh wait, Arenanet decided that was hurting the game.

I suppose I am also still burdened by the memory of fighting the Ancient Karka. It went on so long and became so tedious that I can recall sorting my inventory during the battle just to pass the time… and that was before the life bar reset.