Guild Wars 2

On the one hand, I like the idea of having a ‘real’ endgame content dungeon that requires time and effort spent to get to the rewards at the end, rather than watching a youtube video once. On the other hand, I absolutely do not like the idea of the stats you gain from this dungeon applying to pvp, or even other pve areas.

Gear progression can be good, I think, but not this walk toward a treadmill. Those extra stats that you need? Those bonus points, on top of the infusion? Make it only apply in the Fractal dungeons, or other related content. There, I can do my endgame dungeon that requires time and effort, and it doesn’t influence the rest of the game.

As it stands now, I don’t like where this is going.

Sorrow’s Embrace… hard? Long? Whaaa?

Maybe I just got crazy lucky, but when my team of five first-timers went in for all three paths just a few days ago, each path was about 30-45mins long and easier than AC. It sounds like your group had some coordination issues, stood in the fire, etc. I honestly can’t find anything else that would make SE remotely challenging.

-helpless shrug-

Edit: Unless you’re talking about story mode, in which case… -even more helpless shrug-

Alpha shouldn’t be creating any Venn Diagrams of Death unless your team is bunching up. The concentric double circle attack doesn’t count, since those aoes don’t overlap each other really.

Edit: I sort of agree about the HotW story fight though. There’s a safe spot on the far side of the room in the barrels/crates however, which invalidates most of the difficulty. You can stand there and not get hit by either the frost floor or the ice nuke. Not an excuse for the rage first time groups experience on that fight, though…

I raged pretty hard at Subject Alpha the first time I fought him. After that, I was like “oh, this isn’t so bad.” Honestly, my biggest problem with him is the ginormous health pool.

Firstly though, you should probably get past the mentality that downed = killed. Any coordinated team can get you back up even if you do get a really unlucky crystal prison right into an aoe. Secondly, the crystals take about one second of focus fire from an average team before breaking in my experience, so this sounds like another coordination issue. If your team fought him already in the path, they should know his attacks well enough by the time the second fight rolls around. It’s not very hard to hit the crystal while dodging the aoes if everyone is properly spread out – hell, I usually break them with heartseeker instead of ranged attacks, which should be twice as safe.

Alpha is an annoying boss until you get used to him, for sure, but I think you’d be surprised how easy he is with a decent amount of coordination. CoE in general is one of the easier dungeons once your team understands his attack patterns, imo.

Edit: Also, if you’re playing a class with a teleport stunbreaker (Lightning Flash, Shadowstep, Blink), you can jump out of the crystal without waiting for your team.

Editx2: My thief doesn’t get oneshotted by any of Alpha’s attacks, by the by. Are you running a pure DPS (Berserker gear, etc) build? If not, you’re probably being hit by two aoes at once.

Speaking as someone who was there to get hit repeatedly by the ever growing EB zerg at 4-5 a.m. Central, you sure as heck do have a sizable night crew. 60 vs. 6 at Anzalias, 70 vs. 4 at Mendon’s. Fun times. :p

If you don’t want gear to play into it at all, then spvp might be a better fit for you. Personally, I’ve beaten geared 80s in my 35 rares simply by outplaying them, which is way more fun to me than having it be sPvP 2.0.

Also, if you’re getting hit for more than a ballista by a player in a single hit, you should probably not be built so entirely glass cannon. If you’re talking about being stunned in a hundred blades channel or whatever, just get accustomed to your stunbreaker skills.