Guild Wars 2

yesfourme.8906:

Noctes.2537:

Don’t start acting as though Anet is suddenly disregarding the casual player and catering only to the “hardcore” crowd. Most of the stuff in this game is accessible to the casual player, so why not have a boss or two for those with the will to keep trying?

First: accomplishments affect your account (ex: magic find).
Second: Gw2 was aimed at casual players. That’s been said, I understand you want something worth you game time (after all the nerfs of Arah p4, CM story, fire elemental boss, etc…). This boss feels a bit too hard and too random imho, and it is at the limit of what I can do. And please don’t act like it is the first time you got something “hard”: We had the mad king jumping puzzle, the winter puzzle, AR dungeon, fractal level 80, etc…

First: Getting an extra 30 or so achievement points towards the larger 500 that it takes to get an achievement chest which sometimes gives you a +1% (so large) increase to magic find is hardly a reason to nerf these fights. None of the account bonuses are game changing, they’re all convenience upgrades that come in minuscule increments. So you don’t complete all the Gauntlet achievements. So you’re stuck with +6% magic find instead of +7%. So what?

Second: This is not a matter of casual players versus hardcore players. This is a matter of casual content versus content that you can’t walk in and faceroll on your first or second attempt.
If this were a case where certain classes were completely unable to complete a fight, due to their class not possessing certain mechanics, then yes, I would agree in nerfing the fights. HOWEVER, every fight has been completed with every class, proving that it is not impossible. Is it more difficult for some classes than others? Undoubtedly. But it is still doable. People say necros have a terrible time with Liadri, yet I’ve seen other necros complete the boss flawlessly. The same is true for rangers.

Also, for all the “hard” content you listed, the casual content outweighs it by 4:1 if not more. The Mad King’s Clock tower during Halloween was difficult. The other “achievements” that involved carving pumpkins, eating candy, and competing in the Infection mini-game? Those were for the majority of the crowd. The same is true for the Wintersday.
As far as the Aetherblade dungeon, I commend Anet for not backing down and dumbing down the fights.

Like I said, of the 12 fights in the gauntlet, 11 of them range from easy to moderate. THAT is for the people that want to take only one or two attempts and feel like they accomplished something. 11 out of 12 fights. That’s a whopping chunk. Liadri and the gambit system are for players that are willing to give it however many tries it takes to complete the challenge, and they should be rewarded as such.

Like so many people in this game, you’ve been fooled into thinking that you should be able to check off every box in the achievement tab. You think it’s a laundry list of things to complete. You fail to realize that an “achievement” means that a great deal of effort needs to be invested, and that not every player will succeed. An achievement is not something that’s given out to you like candy on Halloween. An achievement is not something that gets progressively easier the longer you complain over it.

“…it is at the limit of what I can do.” If that’s the case, then I’m sorry to say, but you can’t complete the gauntlet. You may get 11/12 (which, like I said, is already a giant chunk) but you will not be given the final 12th kill because this is not a fight that Anet is going to hand out to everyone so the player can feel all warm and cuddly inside. It’s a challenge, and it’s going to remain that way.

Are there things with the gauntlet that need tweaking? Undoubtedly. I’ve never had problems with the camera angle but I can see how people can be troubled by it. The AoE circles on Liadri could be more visible. Things like this can, and should, be fixed. Dumbing down the last fight of a living story, however, would be a sad move.

tl;dr version: Not everyone will be able to complete every achievement, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Just because one small portion of the game is not accessible to you due to a lack of skill/patience does not mean it’s broken, you still have 95% of the game left to enjoy at your leisure.

yesfourme.8906:

No, the good players are sadistic.
They want the game to be harder because they want to “a challenge” and because they want other people to recognize they have “the skill”. As the result, the game becomes because harder and harder to keep the good players from being bored.
But if everything is going to be too hard (like this boss), the (large) majority of players will leave as they will feel the content of this game is not for them.

“But if everything is going to be too hard…”
Yea…you lost me there. All of these fights, with the exception of Liadri, range from easy to moderate difficulty.

People think that as players they should be entitled to getting every single achievement in every single category. But guess what people? They’re “achievements”. In MMOs the term ‘achievements" has been watered down so much that they reward you for killing “X amount of critters” or eating “Y amount of food items”. I’m glad Anet is finally making content that players have to actually WORK towards, instead of completing it in one or two tries and then patting themselves on the back like they earned something.

If all achievements are accessible to every player, then it is no longer an acheivement, instead we’re left with a laundry lists of tasks to complete so we can give ourselves little e-medals.

Anet creates a lot of casual content, and I’m glad that they’re finally starting to branch out and create some bosses that not everyone will be able to complete. I say that not because I want the winners to brag about their success, but because I think it’s a healthy dose of reality for those that came up short to realize that you can’t win every challenge, and not everything will be spoon-fed to you.

Don’t start acting as though Anet is suddenly disregarding the casual player and catering only to the “hardcore” crowd. Most of the stuff in this game is accessible to the casual player, so why not have a boss or two for those with the will to keep trying?

Fancia.3746:

WatchTheShow.7203:

Fancia.3746:

Stark.1350:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/jubilee/Liadri-the-Concealing-Darkness-tactic/first#post2569442

Im sorry that you have not played a ranger yet… Rangers CANNOT continiously dodge like that… At best we have Vigor+50% extra regen… That gives 2 dodges, and then at minimum, another 3 seconds before the next dodge is possible… Given optimal conditions… Given the right weapons or skills, we can get another dodge or two in, and then only have 1-2 seconds of not being able to dodge… These dodges however are highly limited in direction and range. It’s not a viable option during Salazan, so that leaves two dodges before the 3 second window of not being able to… Now, we can have a sigil that gives full energy, giving us another 2 dodges… At which point we’re still back no dodges… Now, here’s the kicker… Assuming you’re running a fully defensive build, a ranger have ~24k HP. Salazans fire, hit you twice per second for 2000-2500 damage, for 10 seconds… You have at best 4 dodges giving you 3 seconds of immunity provided you are lucky enough to not get hit inbetween the dodges, which with twice per second is very common… That’s 7 seconds to go in which you have no dodges left. That means 14 hits, at 2000 damage each, at best… That’s 28k damage… You can heal for ~9k of that resulting in a net loss of 19k damage… And that’s the first 10 seconds of the fight… Now, the luck part comes in… Because Salazan will either start throwing a couple of fireballs on you which is easily avoided, but for the most part, he’ll just throw another fire ring on you… Except this time, you have 1, perhaps 2 dodges… And you’re dead… But hey, we have more skills to consider. We can be inv for a couple of secs, so let’s add that too… Well the inv is 6 seconds. So we can actually avoid all damage from the first ring… But then we take full damage from the second ring, so it’s still a death at that point… So in essence, the only way for rangers to kill, is to kill prior to that second ring being cast… Which is, as I said before… 100% based on luck… There’s zero skill involved in that because we have no way of influencing when that is being cast…

Beat Salazan on my ranger first try. Didn’t think he was tough at all.

I used full berserker gear and runes of ogre.
Went in with longbow/shortbow.
Traits set up 30/20/20/10/0

Don’t even need to dodge. Stay in the ring of fire and avoid your fire tail. It’s like playing Snake. Hit your tail – you die.

And yet another not actually reading what I’ve written… I didnt say it was tough… I did not say it was hard… I said it was 100% based on luck… That has NOTHING to do with hard OR easy… Because luck isnt a factor of skill no matter how much some people claim that to be… The entire fight is all about either being lucky, and then he dies with no effort what so ever… Or you’re unlucky, and then you die… The damage done if you’re unlucky, is simply not something that rangers have a skill arsenal to handle more than once… But in no way does that make the fight hard… It’s super easy, but that doesnt change that it’s 100% based on luck…

So I finally got sick and tired of you insulting other people’s success at this boss and invalidating all their hard work by calling it completely “luck based” and decided to do a bit of an experiment.

I went back on my ranger, without changing any traits, without any optimization, without any food buffs, and decided to try the “100% luck” Salazan boss.
And guess what? I one shotted it. I didn’t even need to dodge.

ALL I had to do (and listen up, because I’m about to explain what you need to do to finish this fight) is strafe. If you stay still the fire patches will kill you. If you stay still the traveling fire wave will kill you. Simply strafe around the ring until it dissipates, keep moving, and continue to kill him with a shortbow (which I wasn’t even specced for).

I did this on one of my least played characters, 41 hours played compared to the 2500 on my ele and 100+ on other characters.

My conclusion? This is 100% a l2p issue. You need to practice with your class until you’re able to succeed with your own skill and not with “luck.”

Otaur.9268:

Wethospu.6437:

Otaur.9268:

Not everyone plays classes that have access to several evades, blocks, invulnerability, massive melee damage. So there really isn’t a fair option for some classes. Hell there is a video of a full zerk warrior just eating the shadow aoe and clone explosions as he kills Liadri in under 5 seconds flat. This challenge is broken. Period.

You probably should first learn few things about the encounter. Or pay more attention when watching that video.

I know the orbs need to be melee’d not all classes melee. Period.

Untrue. Ele’s lightning scepter2 and fire scepter3 are both capable of killing orbs from ranged distance.

Otaur.9268:

Noctes.2537:

Shakki.3219:

Noctes.2537:

@Shakki: I’ve completed Liadri on my ele with both zerker and knights gear, and on my guardian with knights gear. You do not need a “specific gear setup” or a “specific class/build” in order to kill her. All you need is the will to keep trying.

And what if it’s a failry new Player,who don’t have 8 chars wioth differenty gear but only one and no money to modify it for example has an Ele Support healing Power build, you think this player can kill her? i think not.

That person needs to do the best with what they have.
And perhaps they give it their all and they still don’t succeed. I see no problem with that. This boss is by no means beatable for everyone.

Video of you doing this on Ele? I would love to see it, as her grasps alone out damage all the heals I have. And if I do go condition, I cannot stack them fast enough during phase 2 to beat the timer.

My computer would die if I tried recording and fighting her at the same time. But here’s a screen shot tho. I did every gauntlet achievement on my ele, except for the 5gambit one (which I did on my warrior).

Fortus.6175:

Crovax.7854:

that’s why you have weapon swap, use it!

What do, Im an ele, I cant “swap” weapons. No, seriously, Im an ele, I have to either pick or choose, cant have both; either I get pulled to death or I melee the darn things.

See how the entire thing is flawed, giving only certain classes/specs the upper hand, in this case eles are almost completely alienated. You have to get lucky that it doesnt pull you to a invisible red circle of doom, thats where the luck comes from, among others like; having the white field appear on a convenient place, that 2 shadows step o it at the same time, the random blinds (screws burst people or people who can only land a few attacks every now and then)

Sure the AoE is always the same, but everything else isnt, which is why this actually DOES need luck…

Elementalist is my main character, I’ve invested over 2500 hours into her, and I completed both Liadri on normal and the Light Up the Darkness.
I’d just like to say that I’m a bit insulted that you would imply the hard work I (and many others) put into this boss was actually just, as you put it, luck.

Shakki.3219:

Noctes.2537:

@Shakki: I’ve completed Liadri on my ele with both zerker and knights gear, and on my guardian with knights gear. You do not need a “specific gear setup” or a “specific class/build” in order to kill her. All you need is the will to keep trying.

And what if it’s a failry new Player,who don’t have 8 chars wioth differenty gear but only one and no money to modify it for example has an Ele Support healing Power build, you think this player can kill her? i think not.

That person needs to do the best with what they have.
And perhaps they give it their all and they still don’t succeed. I see no problem with that. This boss is by no means beatable for everyone.

@Shakki: I’ve completed Liadri on my ele with both zerker and knights gear, and on my guardian with knights gear. You do not need a “specific gear setup” or a “specific class/build” in order to kill her. All you need is the will to keep trying.

“Meh” to the cosmic rifts, they can stay or be changed, either way.
Yes to fixing the camera.
Yes (?) to the targeting system.
Yes to previous bosses not despawning.

NO to tampering with her actual mechanics.
You by no means need zerker gear to complete Liadri, and Anet by no means should nerf the fight so that anyone can defeat it. I’m glad that they’re finally making challenges that not everyone can succeed at on their first try or two.

1: Perhaps the one legitimate gripe is the camera angles and the aoe circles. While I’ve never had a problem with either, some friends of mine have pointed it out and I can see how standing on the edge can cause the camera to be less than a agreeable. Same applies to the AoE circles, I can see how the mesh flooring can obscure them, but I’ve never had much of a problem.

2: You don’t need to pull the Visions of Mortality, kiting them is easy and with a bit of practice you can run in between them and pick up the orbs without a problem.

3: I completed this fight on my main, an Elementalist, with one of the lowest (if not the lowest?) base HP pools in the game. You don’t need a massive HP pool, you don’t need to stack healing, and you don’t need to stack toughness. You just need to get used to the fight to the point that you can keep her at a distance while kiting around the room.

4: Simply put, always make sure to register your surroundings. Don’t tunnel vision on just the boss and you can see a rift pop up. They take about 5 seconds after forming to pull you in anyway, giving you more than enough time to kill them in 1-3 hits. Heck, an alternate strategy involves always keeping a rift up so you can kill it to rally. Either way works.

5: The time limit is based on how familiar you are with the fight. Again, if you keep trying it and become more familiar with the mechanics, the time limit will become negligible. By no means do you need to go zerker (and I would highly suggest against it).

@Jaydo: If a circle spawns at the edge of the room, stand over it and wait for a clone to approach you. Right when it’s about to it, dodge backwards to avoid the explosion and still get an orb. Also, a circle spawning in the corner shouldn’t have a big impact on the time limit. If you ran out of time due to this, it was probably due to a multitude of other factors.
Also, I don’t know what you’re talking about when you say invulnerability skills won’t stop the clone explosions. Arcane Shield and Mist Form on my ele absorb their explosions, as well as the AoE, without a problem. My guardian can block these as well.

A lot of other “gimmicks” are simply a result of people not paying attention to the fight mechanics. For instance, I see a lot of people complaining about the “randomness” of her AoE in phase 2 when in reality it’s anything but random. It goes in a repeating pattern. Not only that, but just like the AoE of Subject Alpha in CoE, if you learn the timing, you can dodge right through the AoE without standing in a safe zone.

More than anything, I hope Anet DOES NOT dumb this fight down at all. Fixing camera angles and making the red circles more visible are legitimate concerns, but everything else is just a matter of fighting Liadri over and over until you get better. And perhaps some people, even after trying everything, still can’t beat her. I honestly think that’s fine and perfectly acceptable. It proves to a spoon-fed generation that you can’t always win at every single challenge you come across.

tl;dr Just keep trying until you familiarize yourself with the mechanics and beat her.