Feedback on HoT Stress Test [merged]
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: The Arctic Fox.6720
Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns Beta user feedback
The Mastery Skills were fun once I found out how to use them. The hints may have been either too quick or ignored so I inquired to the players on its whereabouts, as I was receiving these Mastery Points with no idea how to redeem them. The Mastery icon in the bottom right was perhaps too small and innocuous for me to notice during gameplay. As a result, I had only time to experiment with Gliding in the second beta session.
The Revenant Profession was a delight to play, to the point where I forgot to try out the other professions for the Specialisations. After testing the various weapon skills in combination with utility skills, I soon favoured the Hammer instead of the Mace/Axe combo, as I found the former to deal more damage with ranged attacks of significant distance. At first I had considered the range of 1200 to make the Hammer overpowered, but it proved useful in the Wyvern Boss battle, making the fight rather easy to accomplish with enough numbers. I still may suggest bringing this down as a range coupled with the damage output still makes it rather overpowered. Legend switching to different skill-sets was interesting, but I did not have enough time to play around with them more. It certainly would have made immobilisation mitigation more enjoyable.
I wish I had a bit more time to play with the Specialisation, but from what I saw of the other players and their comments, it looked fun.
The new storyline path is intriguing, exploring deeper into Maguuma as well as revealing more about Mordremoth and his influence. Won’t say much more as I enjoy the Guild Wars storytelling enough to not warrant spoilers.
The two new areas are enjoyable, although in Verdant Brink after the fight with the Wyvern and you return back on that raised platform, due to camera placement resulting in an obscured character, I sidestepped and fell off into the abyss below. Despite the zone restriction, there was quite a bit of the map to explore and I really wanted to explore past the boundary. The events in VB were enjoyable, though did require more cooperation amongst players to complete. One thing that was refreshing to see was the NPC AI doing a much better job than usual in switching between fighting and event objectives. The same goes for the NPCs in the Wyvern Boss Fight that were also resurrecting downed players, showing non invincibility while being set on fire, thus adding to the risk normal players would endure under the same circumstances. The Adventures are nice little activity-like games and challenges which is a nice little break from the fighting.
The Legendary Wyvern Boss Fight is great fun, although for the most part, coupled with ranged attacks and stability and/or condition mitigation, it just takes a bit of time and patience to whittle the health down. I do get a sense of a non-repeating pattern in the attacks, which helps keep it dynamic and variable, while at the same time offer enough of an indication and time to prepare and interrupt the Boss attacks. The fact that you can fall off and be teleported back to the WP or even manage to glide yourself back onto the platform keeps the pace up, although at first I thought I ended up in another server with the same event running (due to the loading screen). Definitely felt
like a real dragon fight.
Notable reported oddities:
While facing off against numerous mobs in Verdant Brink for soloing experimentation during the Bomb collection event, I had died (usual AOE barrage + immobilisation). When waypointing back I had noticed that my shoulder armour had become damaged. Prior mob deaths never did this, and was confirmed by other players that it had never happened to them either. The lack of repair stations explained this beforehand, however the damaged armour did not have any noticeable effects on gameplay. This is probably more of a beta operational process issue than of the content itself.
The Mastery Orb at the top of the rock column was hard to get to due to its height above the players’ reach. Most kept spamming the Interact button as the player could not get close enough to it for longer than a second before sliding back down. I’m thinking that this was meant to be jumped up on in some manner, not using a glitch to obtain it.
Not everything in the chasm below has collision meshes. I should either be able to land on the big vines below, or they should not be there at all.
Bring on the next test . . .