Guild Wars 2

Ariella Goldstein.3562:

Blaeys.3102:

I enjoyed the fight and did not find it overly frustrating or difficult.

True, if you try to simply zerg the statue down, you will probably fail, but adding the need to switch and move a little doesnt make the fight frustrating. It makes it more fun.

Keep in mind that it is virtually impossible to fail the fight since the Rox will keep rezzing you if you go down. Seems like a good mix of casual and semi challenging to me.

Worst case scenario, grab a friend or two and head into it. It goes pretty fast with multiple people in the fight.

Seems to me that part of my problem is that I don’t seem to have the reaction time some of you have I guess. Gear is pretty good, I’m getting rid of the menders, except for when rhythm ends up breaking for one reason or another. I move as fast as I can to get the things down, bottlenecking the menders in the door, freezing them with signet, and maybe 4 out of 5 I can get down, it’s the 5th one that’s the problem because it gets through and it’s back to the beginning. So no, not zerging, I am taking a tactical approach.

And these instances are supposed to be allowed for soloing, so I’d like to be able to do it that way. And please don’t give me the “why are you playing an mmo”. There are times, even in an mmo, that I don’t want to depend on a group due to RL reasons. I only get a chance to play in between naps and activities of my kids. So it’s nice to have things I can access on my own schedule, and if I have to leave because of a rl emergency, I don’t leave anyone hang. I like being polite.

I AM going to check my gear and traits again, but I’m really not sure how helpful that’s going to be in the end.

Anyone that uses the lines “why are you playing” or any other similar derogatory in a thread like this is mainly trolling. It’s best to just ignore them if you want a real discussion.

Your post is well worded and worthy of discussion. Best I can do is offer some advice. It sounds like the path you are taking will work with a little perseverance and adapting. If the fear wards are the big issue, take a sec to range the ones nearest you down. If its the immune adds, I find it best to run toward them and dodge through (or pop damage immunity of some kind). They disappear as soon as the explode so letting them explode earlier (in ways you dont take damage) will keep them from overwhelming the room. If you have any kind of pets/summons/minions, try to get them onto the statue early. Additionally, hit the statue with your biggest burst of damage at the very start of the fight to give yourself a headstart and shorten the fight considerably. There are fewer adds to deal with and you can usually make a sizeable dent before you have to head off the mender.

Beyond that, I would ask someone who plays the same profession for some tips. Often a slight change in traits or utilities will make the fight much more manageable (for instance, when I did it on my necro, the chilling darkness trait make a big difference for me).

Mh, I’m a bit mixed about this. It wasn’t really to clear to me what advanced the fight. I guess you needed to kill the ghosts in order to “charge” the sword. The orbs kinda came out of nowhere, I noticed the orb only the second time being downed by one – after that this part was clear. At least Rox healed me, not like Braham in a previous episode. All in all not too much trouble – but didn’t feel very heroic either.

Something feels really off. In the previous episodes, your NPC friends have been relatively effective, and deal a reasonable amount of damage. This just isn’t balanced.

Is it do-able…yea. But it takes a kitten long time since Smoldur and Rytlock hit like newly spawned level 2’s instead of epic heroes. Me dealing with adds, totems, sparks, and menders…and then I check to see Barradin’s health and realize those two have been throwing cotton balls at the statue. Thank goodness for a longbow, I could start picking away at Barradin between it all. At least Rox is attentive to helping you rally.

I’d say just remove the orbs. Weak allies, Barradin’s attacks, fear totems, adds, having to take down the menders…and THEN an orb that can one shot you without warning if it spawns close. Just take out the stupid orbs and that would be enough. Or have the orbs in the achievement version of the instance. As is, the list of challenges that need to be dealt with is more in tune with a small group instance than something that should be solo-able for the personal story across professions and play styles.

Blaeys.3102:

I enjoyed the fight and did not find it overly frustrating or difficult.

True, if you try to simply zerg the statue down, you will probably fail, but adding the need to switch and move a little doesnt make the fight frustrating. It makes it more fun.

Keep in mind that it is virtually impossible to fail the fight since the Rox will keep rezzing you if you go down. Seems like a good mix of casual and semi challenging to me.

Worst case scenario, grab a friend or two and head into it. It goes pretty fast with multiple people in the fight.

Seems to me that part of my problem is that I don’t seem to have the reaction time some of you have I guess. Gear is pretty good, I’m getting rid of the menders, except for when rhythm ends up breaking for one reason or another. I move as fast as I can to get the things down, bottlenecking the menders in the door, freezing them with signet, and maybe 4 out of 5 I can get down, it’s the 5th one that’s the problem because it gets through and it’s back to the beginning. So no, not zerging, I am taking a tactical approach.

And these instances are supposed to be allowed for soloing, so I’d like to be able to do it that way. And please don’t give me the “why are you playing an mmo”. There are times, even in an mmo, that I don’t want to depend on a group due to RL reasons. I only get a chance to play in between naps and activities of my kids. So it’s nice to have things I can access on my own schedule, and if I have to leave because of a rl emergency, I don’t leave anyone hang. I like being polite.

I AM going to check my gear and traits again, but I’m really not sure how helpful that’s going to be in the end.

Simonoly.4352:

I

The only thing I don’t like about this fight is the orbs. They kept on spawning right on top of me which is a bit silly really.

Agreed. Wish we could kill the blessed things.

Ayrilana.1396:

The average player can easily beat this. It’s the lower 1% that are having difficulties.

Hey look, yet another person missing the point. The imaginary 1% that you’re referring to isn’t even present in this thread, outside of a number that you could probably count on one hand. The main complaint is how obnoxious the mechanics are. Not the difficulty level.

While i didn’t find this fight particularly difficult, i do agree that they should be fairly simple/easy for most players. Just tell the story and have some good fights, here and there. If they keep the achievement stuff, make those hard or harder, but first run through should really just be about the story. Also, for sure, no more open world event stuff to progress through the story, it’s far to hard to manage these large scale events and keep them bug free. Have them be side events people can do outside of story progression.

the only problem i had with this fight were these fear wards poppig up right beneath my feet
as mellee this is no problem so yeah…
you should really ad red circles before these wards appear
otherwise its a pain if u are soloing that instance standing close to where menders spawn and getting feared without anything u couldve seen coming

i liked the rest

understanding that one achievement was to let the menders heal him was a bit
well.. it was basically just me misunderstanding and thinking there was a translation fail…xD so i killed the ghosts first few times and never saw his charged hit

next timepls think about making the menders a bit faster it took ages until they reached the statue

to balance it then let the ghosts spawn a bit less frequently
(and/or) dont let multiple types of the same ghosts spawn (even if i didnt had problems with this)

Edit: you can always search for a group
usually makes it easier

however elite mage can somewhat kill a teammember set his aoe on his down stayed and kill the rest of your teammates…
(but this rarely ever happens)
especially if u use teamspeak or play with friends/guildies

digiowl.9620:

Holy skritt, the 1337s are out in force…

I highly agree with op, this fight was the salma boss squared.

Not even remotely, especially when you also did the achievements. The fight in fort salma was more difficult – at least in my opinion. But I didn’t have any problems with both fights so… Difficulty is something highly subjective, so arguing about that doesn’t make much sense

digiowl.9620:

Never mind that it happens indoors where we get to experience the camera issues of the game first hand.

Normally, as an Asura, I often experience those indoors. However, I didn’t experience any in that fight. Maybe I was just lucky, but I did that instance quite often and never had any camera issues.

digiowl.9620:

Everything felt like it had only been tested on a zerker build with easy access to aegis and/or stability.

I didn’t have any problems running defensive builds or even a condition build on my ele. The only difference is, how long it takes you to get to the shield phases, since those seem to be bound to the HP bar (50% and 25%).

Also, stability does not count towards the achievements, so everything that knocks, fears, etc. is meant to be avoided/dodged. Since every single attack has tells and red circles are all over the place to telegraph literally every single knock down/back, stability is not a requirement.

digiowl.9620:

The fear AOE was silly enough, but the insta-launch discoball and the mender was just “gravy”…

The fear is something you can avoid entirely by simply not stepping into the red circle. You don’t need to destroy the fear wards, so just don’t get close to them and you should be OK.

Regarding the “discoballs”. Those are supposed to be kited. They disappear after a short time so you don’t need to dodge into them or through them to make them explode, they will explode after a set time.

Hopefully helpful hints for the OP:
The best/fastest way to beat the boss is to DPS it down to 50% as fast as possible. If you have similar attacks to FGS 3,4 and the charge attack of the Flesh Golem, this is doable before the first mender enters the room and therefore you don’t waste too much time on the menders in the first phase.

I guess the best solution on a Mesmer would be to use Sword/Focus and GS -> pop Illusionary Berserker and Warden at the statue. Also staying in close range and using Sword 2 when the boss does the big AoE (since Sword 2 has evade attached to it) could help.

When the shield phase starts, kill the menders (pull of focus could be helpful in case you can’t get it down fast enough) and kite those knock back spirits. Stay in the third of the room next to the entrance as much as possible, so you don’t need to dodge the big AoE circle (use S2 if you need to). When the spirit despawns, start killing a few ghosts until the next mender and/or spirit orb spawns. Repeat until the shield is down -> DPS like described above.

In case 3 menders get through, prepare to dodge the AoE shock wave. It’s easiest to dodge from near the entrance and by dodging towards the boss.

I hope it helps a bit.

I didn’t really find the fight “difficult”. But it was certainly a chore to do. It dragged on for a bit longer than it should have, not helped by the fact that you have to stop doing damage multiple times to deal with oncoming menders. Combined with the fact that your allies do basically no damage to speak of, that means any time you’re fighting a mender you’re basically making no actual progress towards the fight being over. Dodging the fireball was again another mechanic that just served to stop you doing damage and further prolong the already long fight.

A bit of “prolonging the battle” is fine, don’t want a big boss fight to be over in the blink of an eye, but two separate mechanics (three really, counting the whole “need to stop and kill ghosts for a while before the shield will go down” thing) is a bit overkill, especially when the enemy in question already has a pretty hefty health pool.

Did it on my Guardian all right, though I wouldn’t have called it easy. My main issue is trying to get the achievements. An unlucky fear Ward into a hammer smash or one of those orbs just ends it. Very frustrating given how much dialogue there is leading up to the fight.

Holy skritt, the 1337s are out in force…

I highly agree with op, this fight was the salma boss squared.

Never mind that it happens indoors where we get to experience the camera issues of the game first hand.

Everything felt like it had only been tested on a zerker build with easy access to aegis and/or stability.

The fear AOE was silly enough, but the insta-launch discoball and the mender was just “gravy”…

You can criticise and put me down as much as you like, I don’t really care. I don’t have to prove myself to any of you or justify my playstyle, but you’re missing my point.

I’m not saying this boss is difficult, the only difficulty here has been artificially inflated, by spamming you with CC’s. Like LordOverload says, I play games to have fun and being constantly treated like a football in this game is extremely disrespectful of the player and not fun at all.

I really thought Anet learnt from Orr about taking it easy on CC’s and they seem to as they reduced it there, but in the past year or so, they’ve returned to CC mentality with a vengeance and I really, really hate it. It does not represent fun or challenging gameplay at all, just extreme annoyance.

Edit: I had a friend help me out and it was much easier with the 2 of us but it shouldn’t be required.

Styxx.1564:

Story/Lore is accessible by reading books.
You’re supposed to be a hero, someone who knows how to do things, and knows how to fight.
Otherwise Rytlock would probably just get a villager to do the work instead of you.

A game without a challenge is an extremely boring game.

It’s hard to feel heroic when you’re treated like a football. There’s nothing heroic about that, nor challenging, just annoying.

DoctorOverlord.8620:

PvE content in videos games is about learning to jump through the right hoops at the right time. I don’t consider that either skill or tactics, it’s just a timesink. I can understand a sub-based game using that kind of mechanics, it’s needless in a B2P game like GW2.

I agree.

Seeing the Mordrem going invulnerable every 2 seconds is rather annoying and a complete waste of time. Otherwise it would have died so fast given there’s a whole bunch of people there after the patch.

Making the Mordrem not scale up and down based on the number of players, and giving it damage immunity instead, is a lazy design effort.

Kain Francois.4328:

DoctorOverlord.8620:

Story/lore should be accessible by players of ANY skill level.

That’s like saying you should be able to progress in Final Fantasy 7 even though you insist to attack the Scorpion boss while his tail is up.

This is most definitely a l2p issue. If you’re having hat much a difficulty with this boss, then PM me ingame and I’ll teach you which tactics to use.

I beat the Fort Salma boss and I’m sure I can waste my time to figure out how to beat this boss, don’t try to act like any game is that hard to figure out.

PvE content in videos games is about learning to jump through the right hoops at the right time. I don’t consider that either skill or tactics, it’s just a timesink. I can understand a sub-based game using that kind of mechanics, it’s needless in a B2P game like GW2.

Modern single player games have something called Difficulty levels. It gives the player the choice of whether they want to spend their time sloughing away at a game. GW2 started to implement a similar mechanic in their dungeons using the Story and Explorer modes. I’m highly disappointed to see they are throwing that worthwhile mechanic out.

Offering something similar for the Living Story would allow players of any level (or available time) to go through the content the way they want to do it. The higher difficulty levels would provide gating for greater rewards and achievements. Story and lore should not be gated in that way, but it looks like ArenaNet has decided to go that route.

Oh wonderful. So far every final boss fight of in Season 2 has been tedious, annyoing and completely lacking anything resembling fun.

Hearing this fight is worse than Fort Salma drains away any interest I have in following this storyline. I detested the Fort Salma fight and I would feel the same way even without that major NPC bug at the end. Even though I would like to see how this story develops, I play games to enjoy myself and that is the opposite of what I experienced so far in the content design of Season 2.

A well-designed challenge in a game makes you want to try it again if you fail. A frustrating timesink makes you wonder why you’re wasting the time trying to get through it. So far the content of Season 2 has felt more like needless timesink rather than a well-designed challenge.

I still don’t know why ArenaNet doesn’t split the ‘challenging’ content away into an Achievement mode and provide much more straightforward Story mode content for these chapters. They do it for the dungeons and that worked very well, it’s disappointing that they have forgotten that.

Another advantage of straightforward content is that even if is laden with bugs (as the latest update seems to be), at least players have a better chance of being able to finish it rather than getting locked out by poorly designed content that thinks its ‘challenging’.

Gyler.8150:

OP, this is probably not the content for you. That or it is a most definite learn to play issue.

Story/lore should be accessible by players of ANY skill level. It is the one thing that unites a community whether they are hardcore or casual, dedicated or part-time. The lore of the game provides a common ground for players and that is the foundation needed for a strong community.

Gating story and lore behind needless timesinks pretending to be challenges is not a good idea. Achievements are available for those who have the time for that kind of thing and want to replay content over and over for the challenge. Story and lore content is not the place to frustrate players, it ruins the story presentation and detracts from a sense of drama.

Remember in Star Wars how Luke Skywalker kept having his X-wing get blown up and how he had to go back to the Rebel base over and over to stretch out the ending another hour? No? Because that’s a terrible way to tell a story. Games shouldn’t tell a story like that either.

I don’t know if this fight has been buffed or it’s bugged or what, but i cannot do it on my mesmer. I’ve already completed this on the first day on my ranger, it didn’t seem too bad, even with trying to figure out what i had to do and did it in a reasonable time. But today, I spent an hour or more with my mesmer trying and finally gave up in frustration

The ghosts that feed Barradin just keep spawning. No sooner had i killed one, then trying to get in range of the statue do dmg it, i get this annoying , repetitive (like a scratched record) message from Rytlock to stop him again, while he just stands there doing nothing.

My clones are useless, constantly being cc’d just as I am, so even when i try to shatter them on the ghost, they cannot reach him in time as they’ve been slowed down by endless freeze and what not.

Meanwhile i have 2 useless npc’s that can’t kill even one ghost between them that are crippling me and setting me on fire, while I’m trying to intercept these mindless ghosts.

How is this challenging? Turning my character into a football, that’s constantly and I mean constantly being bombarded with cc’s. Knocked down every few seconds by a stupid orb that spawns under me just as I’m about to cast a skill, interruping me and if that isn’t enough, add fear turrets all over the room (of all things, which btw i don’t remember seeing the first time i did this) that keep fearing me into walls and getting me stuck there.

But wait, there’s more. How about we get the statue to knock you down every few seconds as well, hit u with a freeze that reaches all the way where the ghost spawns right across the room and completely disable your skills along the way!

Still not enough though, so why don’t we add falling ceiling all over the room and get that to knock them down as well. Surely all these things combined, will make it next to impossible to intercept the feeding ghost, which then reaches the statue, feeds it and heals it, prolonging the whole encounter beyond joke.

This fight as it stands now is worse even than Fort Salma and that was a lot of garbage! But hey, congrats, you’ve succeeded in frustrating me to a point where I’ve abandoned the quest and I never do that before and for that, you can pat yourselves on the back.

Really, really disappointed.

It’s disappointing that there’s only been one red post in this thread and it was from a year ago.

It’s quite hard to keep a level head after being ignored and lied to for more than a year and then, as if things weren’t terribad already, nerfed into oblivion with pointless “fixes”…

But yes, I hope we can keep this thread more civil than hostile.

Deaeira.2651:

Regarding QoL #1, Temporal curtain… my impression so far was that it only works on myself and does not stack with any bonus. Which is a pity, because as a mesmer there are only few skills which you can use for buffing the group.

My TC most certainly works on others, but yes, it does not stacks with swiftness provided by other sources, as it is stated in QoL #1. A long-known issue (what a surprise :/ ).

I’m also experiencing this bug (8 months later), so I assumed that this would be worthwhile to bump up.

I second the idea that ‘just don’t use large’ isn’t an acceptable fix.

shadow.6174:

lol yeah, that place is terribly known to have that issue. It gets even worse if you decide to jump on that slope and then it takes off around 80% of your health at once. It needs to be verified ASAP.

Since it’s already verified, I think the word you’re looking for is “fixed.”

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

kitten now I have to go back there.

EDIT: and of course I can’t just replay that mission, I have to replay the entire kitten episode…

Well, based on this info, I did go and redo the entire episode as was suggested above. Got some of the achievements as I went, so not too much of a loss. Anyway, I found that you can indeed interact with the holodevice once the mission is ended and its interesting stuff, voiced too. As an owner of the journal, it would be nice if this dialogue could be added to that, as a permanent record, especially as it is voiced.

Thank you for supporting the cause Shadow! And Astral Projections, will do that right now.

I turned in a ticket, I do hope they read it and refund me sword back. Here’s hoping >.<

Mystiq Angelic.8193:

Even after two years since release, the Mesmer is still having bugs with its “teleport” mechanic. There is an issue with the Staff #2 Skill – Phase Retreat and Utility skill – Blink that can cause your character to root itself on the ground after using it as a CC breaker (from Knock Back, or Immobilize as an example). Even when there is no crowd control condition on your character, the character would still get stuck or rooted permanently at the spot where u just phase retreated or blinked. You can pan your camera around with mouse right click and try WASD to move your character but nothing will work. You can wait for your phase retreat or Blink to come off CD and teleport again to a new spot hoping that it will “unbug” the rooted effect on your character, but it still wouldn’t work for a period of time. After a couple repeated attempt of teleporting again and again for long duration of time spent, the character will finally be able to move again.

In SPVP or during any combat scenarios, this means an instant death sentence to your character. This is a severe issue and quite game breaking when the bug happens. This type of teleport bug should be in the top of list to address for Mesmers.

THIS is my #1 problem with my favorite class. It happens to me several times a day in WvW and puts me at a huge disadvantage. I can’t anticipate when it’s going to happen, and I have to frantically type /sit to get out of being stuck.

Not going to let this drop off. Time Warp-style bump.

I never disconnected from the game or any other game as much as I have since Mega-Servers were created. The constant disconnects is beyond annoying … the the worst part isn’t the disconnects. Its that I can do 95% of a boss and disconnect … only to come back to a map that killed it already and not to get credit. It almost makes the game worthless to play to constantly disconnect during boss fights or in a big WvW fight only to get nothing out of it. I’d love to see Mega-Servers at least retain a person’s spot on the map if they DC and allow them to come back if they reconnect within a certain amount of time.