Guild Wars 2

I can’t tell if the scaling is demented with them or me, but it’s absolutely horrible in places like Lornar’s pass. I’ll be running toward a mission (where people are already fighting, so it’s not like they all turn and hit me at once) and then in like 2 seconds get outright annihilated. The ‘battle standard’ was_hitting for around 1.2k in a place where as a guardian I had just over 2k health (and hell even knows how I’m supposed to see where that piece of trash came from with everything going on there) in spite of having a mix of exotic cleric/knight gear and 30 pts in Valor, including Strength in Numbers, and the signet of judgement. With all of that (in combat, so SiN was up) I got the hit for 1.2k.

Even with protection up from the hammer, which is permanent while auto-attacking with my runes, it’s still awful. Yet in places like Frostgorge and Fireheart Rise, it’s never been a problem. Same character, same build, same everything except scaling. It’s not something I’ve really noticed on other mobs either… these guys in particular just seems really awful around that point.

I’m not sure if this is some intentional part of scaling, or a bug, or what. Whatever it is, it’s annoying. PvE spends enough time invalidating any choice but berserk already without suddenly becoming glass just because you went to a lower level zone.

edit: underscore for sped filter.

The Thug’s warbanner is broken for some reason, it’ll one shot you. there’s something bugged with its scaling.

Aetherblade in general are a real pain the kitten to deal with because they can essentially stunlock a large group of players.

Molten Alliance meanwhile are too easy, as they have very low health, do little damage, and it’s even possible to solo their tunneling machines.

The clockwork mobs though seem to fall somewhere in the middle. The bigger guys hurt a lot and really do need to be focus fired, while the small ones can be AoEed and double tapped to make sure they don’t reform.

I’m not sure if this was intentional or not, but that’s about how it feels.

Actually that would explain a lot… I’d been looking at combat logs thinking ‘how was my health so low, I hardly saw a single condition’ because the numbers didn’t make sense with those banners. Like I’d see the point I entered combat, and have no idea where a chunk of health went, only to get obliterated by that thing.

Only in low zones though… I honestly didn’t notice it even did damage until I kept finding it responsible for OHK’s on me when scaled down a lot. Never once had it happen between 70-80 and I don’t recall it upwards of 50 tbh.

And LOL @ Molten. Their damage output is kinda decent, but they’re totally overlooked due to lack of champions (can there even be any besides the shaman?) and the fact that even my WvW zerg-hammer warrior can do a drive-by of their tunnel and end their event in seconds.

Steam creatures too… never get any strong ones, nor any real incentive to fight them. Why add variety to the invasions if we’re going to have no challenge and no reward with half of it?

Aetherblade are definitely… zealous… with stuns, yeah. On the guardian I tend to have two stunbreaks + vaguely spammable blinds, but only the healing really keeps that alive at all. My warrior has been the best for them so far with Shake it Off, Balanced Stance, and Dolyak Signet – on top of CC from the hammer, and warhorn for condition removal because everything and its mechanical dog vomits confusion all over the place. Two sources of stability and three stunbreaks… of course, it’s easier if I’m not melee, but that gets dull.

Honestly though it’s the lightning attack that annoys me more besides that banner. I bring the CC for that, and it works for the usual ones, but then of course they spawn as champions with so many stacks of defiant we’d all need CC just to interrupt them very very occasionally, and naturally with that level of co-ordination we’d be better off just burning it to dust instead.

PolishSausage.1279:

Aetherblade in general are a real pain the kitten to deal with because they can essentially stunlock a large group of players.

Molten Alliance meanwhile are too easy, as they have very low health, do little damage, and it’s even possible to solo their tunneling machines.

.

If you are not a ranger you can solo the tunnel indeed. My bow attacks keeps on saying I am not in range, even if I am standing next to it :/
The aether stun is just way too annyong to be in the game..

IMO Striker stun is fine, it just means that you need stability if you insist on being in the thick of things. if you don’t, stick to the outside of the fighting.

They did buff the tunnel at some point but yeah molten are a little easy.

The shamans should increase the molten strength bar if they time out and the tunneling machines should have some mechanic that requires you to burn through the minions.

I will say though that with the exception of those giant mechanical hares, which are too chunky to really tell much about what they’re doing from animations (even then, they do two things, and both are preceded by it stopping whilst facing you), the actual (twisted) Watchwork stuff has been pretty good IMO. Oh, and the flamethrowers on non-champion (maybe even non-veteran?) Nightmares seem out of whack, I swear they hurt more on the basic ones.

The Nightmares’ spinning attack, the ‘jump on all of you’ thing, and I think there’s another melee bashing type thing, all seem properly visible for once though. The things are so tall and mostly made of limbs, so that when they’re about to do something catastrophic you can actually see it coming even in realistic situations like ‘the middle of a typhoon of effects’.

The Reavers’ mines seem like they made some effort to make it more visible too. I guess it could be coincidence, but finally the thing which takes off massive amounts of health in a flash isn’t just a little circle on the floor, but actually a physical object extending upwards a bit. They do still get concealed pretty easily in some effects (what doesn’t) but it’s better than nothing.

If those tunnels got buffed and it wasn’t in the last like… hour or two… it didn’t work. :P

lol you should have seen them before then xD

stiff breeze would kill them

So I confirmed this in Frostgorge today… lost the exact number because my combat log only goes back so far, but I hot hit by a banner for a bit less than half my total HP in damage, instead of a bit more than it. Same character, build, everything.

Curiously, in practice I went suddenly to almost dead anyway. Not sure if the other attacks in the log happened really suddenly at the same time as the banner hit, or it does some unannounced damage, or what.

Its really quite simple – you’re downscaled, mobs are upscaled. The difference increase the lower the level is. Its not really that you’re weak, its that the mobs are that much stronger compared to someone of the same level. At 80, we’re used to fighting 82+ upscaled mobs. Events arent even remotely as hard as they should be at 80…

Ironically, the aether mobs at frostgorge are the most dangerous, and can sometimes cause mass wipes of a whole zerg with a lucky stun spam/grenade spam combo – lower level areas do not even come close to that.

Oh, and the flamethrowers on non-champion (maybe even non-veteran?) Nightmares seem out of whack, I swear they hurt more on the basic ones.

Those nightmares are actually Lieutenant-grade, like dungeon enemies. You can tell by the silver circle.

Astralporing.1957:

Ironically, the aether mobs at frostgorge are the most dangerous, and can sometimes cause mass wipes of a whole zerg with a lucky stun spam/grenade spam combo – lower level areas do not even come close to that.

While I do notice a lot of people getting annihilated by them in FG (gave up on my group oriented builds in there) IME they’ve been easier than low levels. They seem to spam the same stun fields and grenade effects (chill, vuln) and the same hilarious bleed stacks for swashbucklers, etc. as far as I can tell, except I take less damage compared to my total health at the higher level areas.

Shoe.5821:

Those nightmares are actually Lieutenant-grade, like dungeon enemies. You can tell by the silver circle.

The ‘veteran’ prefix ones, or the ones with no prefix at all? I had heard they added them but I’m used to stuff like AC where silvers still get the veteran prefix.

Either way, it seems weird that their flamethrower is a greater cause for concern than the champions’ version.

The no prefix ones. These wern’t changed, they’ve always been this way. They never spawn directly, they’re always created by 2 Veteran Twisted Horrors merging.

(Veteran Twisted Horrors can spawn directly, or can be created by 2 Twisted Horrors merging.)

Interesting. I’ve also found that if it has no prefix, I could use CC on it and it would get stunned (only stun, even if I tried to knockdown or so), but the veterans just spam ‘immune’ at me no matter what and won’t be stunned. At first I thought it was awesome they’d finally started accepting something besides DPS for that kind of thing, but now I guess it’s just a bug/oversight.

I’ve found the aetherblades and everything else harder in higher zones.

Excalibur.9748:

I’ve found the aetherblades and everything else harder in higher zones.

Well I’d agree for ‘everything else’.

What is your level and gear quality btw? And what do you tend to use for survival (like health, armour, high evasion, healing, and combinations thereof)?

As I said earlier I’m not entirely sure if it’s them or me scaling weirdly. They’re (IME) by far the most dangerous of the invasion mobs anyway, so it’s entirely possible that it’s something like my armour rating scaling horribly, and I only noticed on them because they’re more dangerous to begin with.

LameFox.6349:

Excalibur.9748:

I’ve found the aetherblades and everything else harder in higher zones.

Well I’d agree for ‘everything else’.

What is your level and gear quality btw? And what do you tend to use for survival (like health, armour, high evasion, healing, and combinations thereof)?

As I said earlier I’m not entirely sure if it’s them or me scaling weirdly. They’re (IME) by far the most dangerous of the invasion mobs anyway, so it’s entirely possible that it’s something like my armour rating scaling horribly, and I only noticed on them because they’re more dangerous to begin with.

Lv80 thief. Primarily exotics with 2 ascended. Combination of health, armor, high evasion, healing for survival.

Evasion is definitely handy – or just avoidance for that matter, as there’s no such thing as scaling for them. Since my guardian made low levels annoying and my AH build started to fail in high level areas when few people showed up and none sat in the protection symbol, I eventually switched to warrior with longbow/rifle, and the signet I forget the name of now which cures conditions (active) and increases endurance regen (passive). One cleanse, NO stunbreaks whatsoever, and it’s easy now because I almost never get attacked, and when I do I dodge back, immobilise/cripple, and kite them around that way. And of course nobody drops banners of death on me either.

With the guardian it was primarily healing and mitigation – the healing worked fine but the mitigation clearly wasn’t helping me much, even with my armour itself being reinforced by the signet (and in a lot of cases protection). My warrior in its own melee build had less mitigation but a lot of vitality (in addition to just getting more inherently) and again didn’t have much of an issue, even though occasionally I’d have to sit and regen for a few seconds behind a rock/tree.

I should add though that the guardian with a few people around proved fine in higher level areas. I even sat in front of one of the champion Nightmares once out-healing everything it tried to do, with some people in range of my AOE boons (not the symbol, but still).

LameFox.6349:

Evasion is definitely handy – or just avoidance for that matter, as there’s no such thing as scaling for them. Since my guardian made low levels annoying and my AH build started to fail in high level areas when few people showed up and none sat in the protection symbol, I eventually switched to warrior with longbow/rifle, and the signet I forget the name of now which cures conditions (active) and increases endurance regen (passive). One cleanse, NO stunbreaks whatsoever, and it’s easy now because I almost never get attacked, and when I do I dodge back, immobilise/cripple, and kite them around that way. And of course nobody drops banners of death on me either.

With the guardian it was primarily healing and mitigation – the healing worked fine but the mitigation clearly wasn’t helping me much, even with my armour itself being reinforced by the signet (and in a lot of cases protection). My warrior in its own melee build had less mitigation but a lot of vitality (in addition to just getting more inherently) and again didn’t have much of an issue, even though occasionally I’d have to sit and regen for a few seconds behind a rock/tree.

I should add though that the guardian with a few people around proved fine in higher level areas. I even sat in front of one of the champion Nightmares once out-healing everything it tried to do, with some people in range of my AOE boons (not the symbol, but still).

Level 75 downscaled warrior, exotic armor with ascended trinket
2562 armor
19302(actual was higher due to WvW, around 20k instead)
Warbanner damage was somewhere around 9800 so you can use 25,107,600/your_armor to see how much damage you would have taken. Just need to know how much armor you have in a lv75 area. It was just a bit north of Skyheight Steading Waypoint near the champion broodmother and champion quaggan.

I don’t remember if I had protection but the warbanner seems to hit for a fairly consistent 50%.

Dodging is great unless the thug uses the banner on spawn before it can render so you get hit with a giant spike without any chance to mitigate.

^That actually sounds like the exact same place. I forget what my health was though, so I’d have to check when I log in next. What amazes me though is that 9800 is about twice what the combat log said, which I think began with a 3, but (very roughly) somewhere like what my actual health loss would have been.

PolishSausage.1279:

Aetherblade in general are a real pain the kitten to deal with because they can essentially stunlock a large group of players.

Molten Alliance meanwhile are too easy, as they have very low health, do little damage, and it’s even possible to solo their tunneling machines.

The clockwork mobs though seem to fall somewhere in the middle. The bigger guys hurt a lot and really do need to be focus fired, while the small ones can be AoEed and double tapped to make sure they don’t reform.

I’m not sure if this was intentional or not, but that’s about how it feels.

all molten alliance, aetherblades and steam creatures can be soloed with relative ease (i dont recall attempting to solo a twisted portal, but the corpse mechanic could make it difficult)
- molten alliance either doesnt scale at all with players or scales very badly, soloing aetherblades means theres considerably less

aspirine.6852:

If you are not a ranger you can solo the tunnel indeed. My bow attacks keeps on saying I am not in range, even if I am standing next to it :/
The aether stun is just way too annyong to be in the game..

then switch to a sword or GS?

LameFox.6349:

^That actually sounds like the exact same place. I forget what my health was though, so I’d have to check when I log in next. What amazes me though is that 9800 is about twice what the combat log said, which I think began with a 3, but (very roughly) somewhere like what my actual health loss would have been.

9800 is what it said in my combat log. Too much stuff going on the screen to see what popped up.

Just to confirm, are you guys talking about the champion aestherblade thug’s warbanner??

This is what it hits my thief for:
http://i.imgur.com/FtBffjb.jpg

It does usually spike me to low health but not an anomaly as far as I’m aware. But I guess that IS the hardest hitting attack as far as scarlet invasions go.

Veterans in my case. Never been hit by the champ’s one AFAIK.

Also: I just got hit on my warrior in FG for ‘2,877’ by a Twisted Reaver using a bomb (from combat log – only one hit). It took me down to half of my ~19,000 hitpoints.

I have a feeling the combat log is lying to me lately.

Linguistically Inept.6583:

PolishSausage.1279:

Aetherblade in general are a real pain the kitten to deal with because they can essentially stunlock a large group of players.

Molten Alliance meanwhile are too easy, as they have very low health, do little damage, and it’s even possible to solo their tunneling machines.

The clockwork mobs though seem to fall somewhere in the middle. The bigger guys hurt a lot and really do need to be focus fired, while the small ones can be AoEed and double tapped to make sure they don’t reform.

I’m not sure if this was intentional or not, but that’s about how it feels.

all molten alliance, aetherblades and steam creatures can be soloed with relative ease (i dont recall attempting to solo a twisted portal, but the corpse mechanic could make it difficult)
- molten alliance either doesnt scale at all with players or scales very badly, soloing aetherblades means theres considerably less

aspirine.6852:

If you are not a ranger you can solo the tunnel indeed. My bow attacks keeps on saying I am not in range, even if I am standing next to it :/
The aether stun is just way too annyong to be in the game..

then switch to a sword or GS?

You cannot switch during combat, another brilliant idea :/
But I am a ranger, makes no sense that something I am standing right next to cannot be hit by a bow.

I solo’d a twisted portal yesterday night. I didn’t think it was gonna be possible but I pulled it off. Got into a tricky spot when 2 veterans engaged me at the same time along with the adds but it was fun.

Veterans in my case. Never been hit by the champ’s one AFAIK.

Interesting. I’ll try to see whether the veteran or champion hits harder later tonight.

Shoe.5821:

The Thug’s warbanner is broken for some reason, it’ll one shot you. there’s something bugged with its scaling.

I can certainly attest to that theory…..OUCH

I always find it interesting to travel around the zones after the invasion is over and see what “straggler” enemies I can find to try a match up. If I go down…meh, I was eventually gonna waypoint out anyway (does cost me to repair armor….but I just made a bunch of gold, so no biggie).

I got hit for 21k by a thug’s banner the other day in Frostgorge. I’m guessing he plants it just after he spawns so there’s not much you can do about it.

I don’t have that much trouble taking down the tunnels with my ranger. Some shots are ‘out of range’ but enough damage goes through.

aspirine.6852:

Linguistically Inept.6583:

PolishSausage.1279:

Aetherblade in general are a real pain the kitten to deal with because they can essentially stunlock a large group of players.

Molten Alliance meanwhile are too easy, as they have very low health, do little damage, and it’s even possible to solo their tunneling machines.

The clockwork mobs though seem to fall somewhere in the middle. The bigger guys hurt a lot and really do need to be focus fired, while the small ones can be AoEed and double tapped to make sure they don’t reform.

I’m not sure if this was intentional or not, but that’s about how it feels.

all molten alliance, aetherblades and steam creatures can be soloed with relative ease (i dont recall attempting to solo a twisted portal, but the corpse mechanic could make it difficult)
- molten alliance either doesnt scale at all with players or scales very badly, soloing aetherblades means theres considerably less

aspirine.6852:

If you are not a ranger you can solo the tunnel indeed. My bow attacks keeps on saying I am not in range, even if I am standing next to it :/
The aether stun is just way too annyong to be in the game..

then switch to a sword or GS?

You cannot switch during combat, another brilliant idea :/
But I am a ranger, makes no sense that something I am standing right next to cannot be hit by a bow.

yes you can… unless you’re going double ranged? if so; why?
- not that im arguing against it being stupid that they cant be hit; it is (though they could put a protective bubble around it to prevent people trivialising it -even more- with range)

Stooperdale.3560:

I got hit for 21k by a thug’s banner the other day in Frostgorge.

Well if there were a prize for being hit the hardest by these things I think so far you’d be winning.

aspirine.6852:

Linguistically Inept.6583:

PolishSausage.1279:

Aetherblade in general are a real pain the kitten to deal with because they can essentially stunlock a large group of players.

Molten Alliance meanwhile are too easy, as they have very low health, do little damage, and it’s even possible to solo their tunneling machines.

The clockwork mobs though seem to fall somewhere in the middle. The bigger guys hurt a lot and really do need to be focus fired, while the small ones can be AoEed and double tapped to make sure they don’t reform.

I’m not sure if this was intentional or not, but that’s about how it feels.

all molten alliance, aetherblades and steam creatures can be soloed with relative ease (i dont recall attempting to solo a twisted portal, but the corpse mechanic could make it difficult)
- molten alliance either doesnt scale at all with players or scales very badly, soloing aetherblades means theres considerably less

aspirine.6852:

then switch to a sword or GS?

You cannot switch during combat, another brilliant idea :/
But I am a ranger, makes no sense that something I am standing right next to cannot be hit by a bow.

So you mean your choice of both Longbow and Short Bow keep you from using a melee weapon? His statement stands as a solution to your problem (take a melee weapon instead of one of your bows).

http://i.imgur.com/nFKjNYW.jpg

Veteran Aetherblade thug’s battle standard. Didn’t really do that much damage…but there were like 4-5 other aestherblades so I ended up getting 1 shot from the cumulative damage lol.

PolishSausage.1279:

Aetherblade in general are a real pain the kitten to deal with because they can essentially stunlock a large group of players.

Molten Alliance meanwhile are too easy, as they have very low health, do little damage, and it’s even possible to solo their tunneling machines.

The clockwork mobs though seem to fall somewhere in the middle. The bigger guys hurt a lot and really do need to be focus fired, while the small ones can be AoEed and double tapped to make sure they don’t reform.

I’m not sure if this was intentional or not, but that’s about how it feels.

If it was a group of Molten Alliance Gunners with those protectors, we’d be singing a different tune… XD

Brother Grimm.5176:

aspirine.6852:

Linguistically Inept.6583:

PolishSausage.1279:

Aetherblade in general are a real pain the kitten to deal with because they can essentially stunlock a large group of players.

Molten Alliance meanwhile are too easy, as they have very low health, do little damage, and it’s even possible to solo their tunneling machines.

The clockwork mobs though seem to fall somewhere in the middle. The bigger guys hurt a lot and really do need to be focus fired, while the small ones can be AoEed and double tapped to make sure they don’t reform.

I’m not sure if this was intentional or not, but that’s about how it feels.

all molten alliance, aetherblades and steam creatures can be soloed with relative ease (i dont recall attempting to solo a twisted portal, but the corpse mechanic could make it difficult)
- molten alliance either doesnt scale at all with players or scales very badly, soloing aetherblades means theres considerably less

aspirine.6852:

then switch to a sword or GS?

You cannot switch during combat, another brilliant idea :/
But I am a ranger, makes no sense that something I am standing right next to cannot be hit by a bow.

So you mean your choice of both Longbow and Short Bow keep you from using a melee weapon? His statement stands as a solution to your problem (take a melee weapon instead of one of your bows).

I have them with me always but there are some things about it. If I solo the tunneling device a bow is better, unless I want to go head to head with 10 vets. And ranger sword and GS suck hard. GS attack is painfully slow, and the first and second sword skills are about as annoying as you can make a these skills.

Excalibur.9748:

http://i.imgur.com/nFKjNYW.jpg

Veteran Aetherblade thug’s battle standard. Didn’t really do that much damage…but there were like 4-5 other aestherblades so I ended up getting 1 shot from the cumulative damage lol.

On the other hand this was in Mount Maelstrom.
Seems a bit odd that the regular thug hits for about the same as the champion. Maybe it was scaled up or actually a silver.

I got hit by a Warbanner for 8K on my Thief who has 5K or so max HP downscaled in Bloodtide Coast (wearing full Berserker).

Khisanth.2948:

Excalibur.9748:

http://i.imgur.com/nFKjNYW.jpg

Veteran Aetherblade thug’s battle standard. Didn’t really do that much damage…but there were like 4-5 other aestherblades so I ended up getting 1 shot from the cumulative damage lol.

On the other hand this was in Mount Maelstrom.
Seems a bit odd that the regular thug hits for about the same as the champion. Maybe it was scaled up or actually a silver.

What do you mean it’s a silver and/or scaled up?

But still, wow, the regular hits the same as champion. That would mean it hits harder than the veteran. Interesting…

Excalibur.9748:

Khisanth.2948:

Excalibur.9748:

http://i.imgur.com/nFKjNYW.jpg

Veteran Aetherblade thug’s battle standard. Didn’t really do that much damage…but there were like 4-5 other aestherblades so I ended up getting 1 shot from the cumulative damage lol.

On the other hand this was in Mount Maelstrom.
Seems a bit odd that the regular thug hits for about the same as the champion. Maybe it was scaled up or actually a silver.

What do you mean it’s a silver and/or scaled up?

But still, wow, the regular hits the same as champion. That would mean it hits harder than the veteran. Interesting…

Mobs are ranked from normal(no rim) → veteran(bronze rim) → no name(silver rim) → champion(gold rim) → legendary(purple rim). The silver ones are the same as the ones you typically encounter in dungeons. Unlike veterans and champions they do not get any prefix.

Khisanth.2948:

Excalibur.9748:

Khisanth.2948:

Excalibur.9748:

http://i.imgur.com/nFKjNYW.jpg

Veteran Aetherblade thug’s battle standard. Didn’t really do that much damage…but there were like 4-5 other aestherblades so I ended up getting 1 shot from the cumulative damage lol.

On the other hand this was in Mount Maelstrom.
Seems a bit odd that the regular thug hits for about the same as the champion. Maybe it was scaled up or actually a silver.

What do you mean it’s a silver and/or scaled up?

But still, wow, the regular hits the same as champion. That would mean it hits harder than the veteran. Interesting…

Mobs are ranked from normal(no rim) -> veteran(bronze rim) -> no name(silver rim) -> champion(gold rim) -> legendary(purple rim). The silver ones are the same as the ones you typically encounter in dungeons. Unlike veterans and champions they do not get any prefix.

Ah interesting to know. It probably is a silver then!