Guild Wars 2

Legendary Grenth.3561:

Throwing my two cents in here, I have to agree with OP here. I have been playing Guildwars since factions came out. I liked how the world was instanced at first, made me feel like I was actually doing quests and stuff was happening in my world. Parties and community mattered, then heroes came along and everyone abandoned everyone for preference of controlling AI with OP builds. The community died, and became a grind fest.

Now I loved the core GW2, HoT fell short for me and I have never done a raid but am interested, however. With the updates that are being thrown in and pushing endgame further and further into a grind I can no longer keep up or even keep and interest in the game anymore. LS3 is just one big grind now, I hate it, it’s annoying and boring killing the same mobs over and over, there is no substance and no actual questing being done like in the beginning. GW2 is becoming just another kittenty MMO imho, I barely even log on to make the daily log on rewards now, when I was so excited for LS3.
Dungeons which were one of my favourite things to do are pretty much on life support and the way raids are headed, I will never be able to learn / keep up unless I dedicate all my time to it just to try it, that is if I can find anyone willing to take me on as a super casual student.

I agree with OP here, GW2 has lost its identity as a game that’s different, which is sad because it came out with so much potential.

Help me out here. What is “real questing?” When I visit core maps I see the same events and the same enemies every time, just like in the LS3 maps. What’s the difference?

As for grinding, it seems to me that LS3 offers map currency which players may use to purchase useful rewards while core Tyria offers no such rewards. I can see how one might feel compelled to “grind” for these rewards, but having no rewards doesn’t seem like any kind of solution to that problem.

You’re welcome to your opinions, but you might want to give it more than a month before you decide the game is too difficult and everything needs to be turned on its head in order to make it right.

There is a lot to learn in this game, particularly when it comes to combat and class mechanics. You might surprise yourself at some point down the road when you find yourself conquering challenges you previously thought were impossible to do with your class.

I know because I had a similar initial experience. In retrospect, I was making a lot of new player mistakes. I just didn’t realize it because up until I hit the jungle, my build and tactics were working out great! I totally steamrolled the personal storyline and core Tyria maps! Then I entered the jungle and fell flat on my face! Ouch!

It sounds like you’re in the same place I was. Yet today I can solo those hero challenges you think require a raid and charge right into those camps full of chak and mordrem. Give it time. Explore your options and practice. You might surprise yourself.

Aurelian Omenkind.2470:

I’m a story first kind of player and typically solo content. HoT was fun for me story-wise but a royal pain for some of the missions. Hearts and Minds was supremely annoying to me soloing as a ranger. Season 3 is categorically harder, especially the last boss fight to date. Died prolly 12 times, no exaggeration. Used at least 2 repair canisters to get through it.

I like the co-op feel of open world content in HoT and S3 maps when enough people are there to help, but I wonder if I’ll ever map all of DS due to the low player population nearly every time I log on. I may never be able to complete the meta achievements or earn the rewards I need for a legendary because of Dragons Stand and Tangled Depths.

It would be easier to get PUGs and crowded meta events if Anet could incite new interest in these maps. I think soloing content feels easier when you know you can join a PUG as an option.

Just FYI, DS is almost always running at least one full map. The problem is that people who join it know that they’re in it until the end. The result is that the map fills up quickly at the start and very few people ever leave. So if you attempt to join at any other point in the cycle, the map you want to join will be full and you will instead find yourself on an empty overflow map.

Try entering the zone a few minutes prior to the reset and checking LFG for a DS group forming. There is almost no reason to be there if you aren’t running the meta, so this is probably the most reliable HoT map in that sense. You should have better luck completing the map this way.

I’m always game for another jungle map, bonus if it involves lost Rata Novans, top score if it’s something like Tangled Depths!

Solstace.2514:

The only issue I have with some of the metas is the massive investment in time needed. Dragon stand is fun but takes over an hour. Tangled depths event is shorter but you have to taxi in early or you will not be able to get into the one map doing it. AB is shorter but since they nerfed the drops it’s harder and harder to find active maps.

TD meta doesn’t usually organize much earlier than 15 minutes ahead of start time. I did it twice yesterday and both groups organized in the 10 minutes leading up to the meta.

DS and VB are much worse, since they more or less require the entire event cycle to succeed. And DS you can’t even join in late most of the time!

I have one of each class up to level 80 with elite spec unlocked, just in case I feel the urge to play them. But I tend to stick to one class at a time, for the most part. My current favorite is my elementalist and I spend basically no time on any of the others.

Feanor.2358:

AliamRationem.5172:

Soloing group events/champions in HoT is exactly the sort of gameplay I find enjoyable and I see plenty of benefit to using non-meta builds to do so.

Great! (Sincerely)

You’d still agree (I hope) that this is a niche scenario. There are certainly players like this, but they certainly aren’t the majority. It doesn’t make much sense to take niche applications into account when discussing the viability of skills in general. Most players simply never run into the situations which make these skills good.

And by the way, when I’m saying “there’s no reason to not run full glass” I mean in the typical usage for your average player. Of course, if you’re seeking solo challenges this changes. But the players who do this type of content usually know what they’re doing. So I’m disregarding them and generalizing for simplicity.

What I do is niche, yes. But I don’t think I’m the only player who could benefit from using a more defensive setup than the meta. A majority of players? Probably not. But certainly a significant number, if the number of players who express frustration with this class as being too squishy is any indication.

Regardless, I think we’re on the same page here. The statement “literally no reason” kind of threw me.

Feanor.2358:

katniss.6735:

My 2nd set is maurader. It’s just a little bit extra room. Especially at the circle run before the dargon in DS.

Yeah, I used to run Marauder armor. In solo scenarios the dps loss is negligible, but then I got tired of swapping gear all the time and went full zerk everywhere. And… the survivability loss is negligible as well.

AliamRationem.5172:

Feanor.2358:

More dps is always preferable to less dps. It means killing stuff faster, which in turn means stuff poses smaller threat. There’s literally no reason to not run full glass in the open world. Even on HoT maps.

Unless it kills you first. Then there is literally every reason to not run full glass.

I’m not saying that you can’t succeed in full glass or even that it’s a bad idea to run it. However, to say that there is literally no reason to run anything else is only true for you and your priorities. Other players may have their own reasons to do otherwise, including but not limited to being less skilled than you are and participating in activities which you would also fail at in full glass, but don’t bother with for your own reasons.

Telling everyone they should always use full glass and that there is literally no reason to ever do otherwise isn’t helpful. It’s probably part of the reason so many players call elementalist a “squishy” class when it has some of the strongest healing and why a lot of players struggle with solo open world HoT content.

Thanks for the tip, though. You are so pro, bro.

If something is consistently killing you in the open world, you’re doing something wrong. It’s fine to use defensive gear and/or abilities while learning to play the class, but it doesn’t make either of them an actually good choice. It only makes them good a) while learning the class and b) in niche scenarios like if for some reason you want to solo group events like HoT hero point champs. But in general, I’m sorry, they are simply poor choices.

Also I’m nowhere near pro. Most I can qualify for is “decent”. And you don’t even need to be decent for the open world.

Then we’re in agreement. There are reasons to use builds other than full glass.

As I said, it may not be relevant to your priorities but there are players out there like myself who spend most of their time in solo open world play. Soloing group events/champions in HoT is exactly the sort of gameplay I find enjoyable and I see plenty of benefit to using non-meta builds to do so.

If I want to raid, then I use the meta build. That’s what it’s there for. But raiding takes up relatively little of my time spent in game.

Feanor.2358:

More dps is always preferable to less dps. It means killing stuff faster, which in turn means stuff poses smaller threat. There’s literally no reason to not run full glass in the open world. Even on HoT maps.

Unless it kills you first. Then there is literally every reason to not run full glass.

I’m not saying that you can’t succeed in full glass or even that it’s a bad idea to run it. However, to say that there is literally no reason to run anything else is only true for you and your priorities. Other players may have their own reasons to do otherwise, including but not limited to being less skilled than you are and participating in activities which you would also fail at in full glass, but don’t bother with for your own reasons.

Telling everyone they should always use full glass and that there is literally no reason to ever do otherwise isn’t helpful. It’s probably part of the reason so many players call elementalist a “squishy” class when it has some of the strongest healing and why a lot of players struggle with solo open world HoT content.

Thanks for the tip, though. You are so pro, bro.

Khisanth.2948:

Yes and no …

If I walk near a smokescale with my ele and do nothing the assault skill will be fatal

If I do the same with my guardian it will barely leave a scratch

On the other hand there were things I’ve done on the ele that was fairly easy but it was a struggle on the guardian because the game was throwing a horde of mobs at you.

Sometimes it looks a lot more like the devs do not understand how the mobs scale in their own game. One of the WM necromancer’s skill that normally does ignorable damage can one shot you when it is a lv83 veteran.

Perhaps. But it seems to me that without the trinity the system is set up with flexibility in mind. There is no reason the elementalist must be squishy. They do have the lowest health and armor, but you can use stats, traits, and utilities to mitigate these weaknesses. It’s the same for any class. I don’t have extensive experience with all of them, but so far everything I’ve tried has the option of breaking the mold and mitigating their weaknesses. That’s something that trinity games with their rigidly defined class roles don’t offer.

The meta generally does not encourage this, so it may appear that the game has poor balance. But it strikes me that this is a result of players attempting to use a build that assumes some degree of support from other players when they are playing the game solo. Not that you can’t use a glass build for solo play, but if you consider ele too squishy you should probably explore your options a bit more.

The trinity is fine. But I don’t think you make a compelling case for why we need it here in GW2. Why is controlling enemies by forcing them to attack you so critical? GW2 raids have proven that this can be handled in other ways. Meanwhile, I see no reason the rest of the game and the entire combat system should be redesigned to accommodate the trinity.

Simply making the vague observation that combat is “chaotic” is not a reason to make this change. Why should we do it?

Rink.6108:

I agree that atm the content doesn’t really have to be nerfed, as the maps have enough population. Some hero points with champions aren’t easy to complete solo, but people help out if you ask in mapchat or after the meta (I completed VB, AB and TD on the weekend without problem). And there is only one (mushroom in TD) that maybe isn’t possible to complete with 1 teammate. But LS3-maps show, that the content will be probably better scaleable in the future also for solo-players.

Breakbars: I also think it would have been nice to have learned this new mechanic through story before it was implemented in the world. Now I know how it works and what skills have a big or small effect on the breakbars, but it really isn’t “easy” to understand. You have to check the internet to find out what skills you have do how much to breakbars.

I am not sure what the next expansion will bring. If it is the same as HoT, then we can expect that all classes get more powerful through the expansion and this would make future nerfing of HoT-maps unnecessary.

Some breakbar training would be welcome, but again it isn’t that critical. Certainly players who have no knowledge of breakbar mechanics are a burden during certain boss encounters (most notably wyvern matriarch), but for the most part in open world play it isn’t that big a deal. Certainly not to the point where players are forced to make drastic changes to their builds just to deal with breakbars, as another player asserted.

I solo’d that mushroom queen HP on my elementalist. I used my preferred weapon set (daggers) instead of a ranged weapon, and swapped out only one utility (arcane wave for mist form) and one trait line (earth for water) from my normal open world build. Although I am capable of breaking her bar with this build, it requires dropping soft CC on her with overload earth at close range which is not ideal. So I didn’t bother trying to break her bar and just beat her straight up.

Still, I would welcome some form of training as part of the initial HoT experience. It really couldn’t hurt, even if we’re making a bit too big a deal about the importance of breakbars here.

As for future expansions, I have a feeling new elite specs will emerge and that they will be mutually exclusive such that players choose 1 of however many elite specs are available and two of the other specs. If not, they will probably have to rebalance the trait system so that non-elite trait lines don’t become irrelevant. This may or may not involve further power creep. But it’s all just guesswork, really. I suppose we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Bobert.7458:

OK so I made a necro and it seems pretty cool actually the only problem is I’m not sure what weapon set would be best to use. I’ve been told a lot of different things and searching online has proven useless due to nothing being up to date. Any useful tips for necro?

I wouldn’t worry too much about what are technically the “best” weapon/stat combination. First, it can change from one patch to the next. But more importantly, what is best for one part of the game isn’t best for everything else. And even more importantly, when it comes to solo play it is 100% your show. All that matters is that you feel effective at doing whatever it is you enjoy doing.

Edit: But if it helps, I believe I liked dagger/dagger for leveling my necro, with dagger/warhorn as my swap.

I’ve heard this is basically abandoned content, but it seems to me that these could be enjoyable if they weren’t designed so poorly that players refuse to actually play through them!

Every dungeon I try is either a 10 minute affair of rushing past hordes of trash to reach the bosses or failing to do so because 1 or 2 players get killed along the way. I can see why they do it this way. First, because they can. But also, the rewards seem so poor that taking the time to clear all that trash simply isn’t worth it!

Wouldn’t it be better to just remove the mountain of trash and replace it with a few forced encounters along the way so that players can’t bypass it and actually play through? Then adjust the rewards so that this isn’t a complete waste of time?

Limodriver.4106:

Windows® Minimum System Requirements

Windows® XP Service Pack 3 or better
Intel® Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz, Core i3 OR AMD Athlon 64 X2, or better
2 GB RAM
NVIDIA® GeForce® 7800, ATI X1800, Intel HD 3000, or better (256 MB of video RAM and shader model 3.0 or better)
35 GB available HDD space
Broadband Internet connection
Keyboard and mouse

there is no way u can play with this setup, u can log in and just stand there thats about it lol.

I play on a laptop that is barely above these specs. I can play just fine on lowest settings and the autodetect, while a bit too choppy for my tastes, even produces some better detail.

Don’t get me wrong. I wish I had a better system, but I believe the game is playable on lowest settings with these specs.

Feanor.2358:

You can always Overload Earth to get a magnetic aura and it’s not on a 45-seconds cooldown.

That’s true. However, only if traited and the aura is applied after the 4 second cast. It is a reflect on a short cooldown, but it carries some major drawbacks that aftershock doesn’t share.

Now if you’re saying that aftershock could have a shorter cooldown, then I’m right there with you! I’d never say no to that!

Valento.9852:

“Aftershock!” is my go-to skill for open world, I never ever take it out.

Agreed. “Aftershock!” is easily the most useful shout, in my opinion. Since much of our damage centers on the elementalist, enemies that spread out and fire projectiles tend to stay alive longer and deal more damage. This makes magnetic aura a very potent effect all by itself, even before factoring in the potential additional benefits of applying an aura.

It’s especially useful if you happen to prefer a weapon set that has no base reflects, like dagger/dagger.

TheGrimReaper.9510:

I think it was a good decision of ANET to patch out the multiloot thing with Battle of Tarir. What wasn’t a good idea in the slightest was make the chests in Tarir daily. Why?

Log in almost any time of the day the event is on. This map is dead. Nobody plays it anymore because it’s not worth the effort.

Either ANET is gonna have to make the chests just event-tied and NOT daily OR they have to offer useful things in the chests.

I agree the multiloot was broken but here’s the thing.
People do chestfarm on Silver Wastes when they don’t really care and just wanna farm.
People did multiloot on Auric Basin because the normal loot afterwards just wasn’t worth doing it every time BUT you could at least do it any time of the day and get loot.

My point is, it doesn’t matter if you offer 26 chests when only 5 of them offer anything useful. That’s why people did the multiloot thing in the first place.

A shame because HoT was supposed to represent the new way of handling maps and ANET has not only made them slightly easier over time, the rewards are a joke. Why force ourselves through more trouble if the pay in the end isn’t worth it?

And what of the next expansion? If you cannot keep HoT alive for a year, let alone what to expect how they are gonna handle the next one >_>

As others have said, AB isn’t dead. It’s still the easiest and most rewarding HoT meta and it’s still easy to find organized maps for it. It’s just less likely that you will ALWAYS find yourself on a meta map because all of the shards aren’t being strung together as part of a multimap group spanning every available instance.

Also, what are you talking about with the chests? There is no daily cap that I’m aware of. When you successfully complete the meta, you will always be able to loot all of the chests beneath Tarir. You just can’t jump maps and loot them two, three, or ten times like you could with multimap.

Bobert.7458:

Hi there, just got the game and was thinking of starting as an elementalist. I’ve heard for the most part pretty good things about the game and was just wondering what would be a good NA server to start on and if there are any tips a green horn such as myself know before I get started on my adventure. Thanks in advance.

Welcome to GW2!

Make sure to play around with all of the weapons available to your class to get a feel for them. In GW2, each weapon offers its own set of skills, unique to each class. For this reason, changing weapons can produce drastically different playstyles even within the same class.

For example, a thief using dual pistols is going to feel very different from a thief wielding a dagger and a pistol. And in fact, it even matters which hand you equip one-handed weapons in! A pistol/dagger thief shares not a single skill with a dagger/pistol thief and presents an entirely different style of play! But even then, since thieves may swap weapons in the middle of a fight, a dagger/pistol thief could become a pistol/dagger thief mid-fight!

Elementalists aren’t thieves, however. They aren’t able to swap weapons in combat. What elementalists do instead is swap elemental attunements: fire, water, air, earth. Where the thief has 5 weapon skills to each weapon set and two weapon sets to choose from in combat, the elementalist has 5 weapon skills to each attunement and thus has twice as many weapon skills, despite having only the one weapon set!

Cool, huh? There’s a lot more to this combat system, of course. But that’s probably the most interesting part, in my opinion. So be sure to try those different weapon sets out. It can be a lot of fun!

Storage expansion and bank tabs on sale would be nice.

Runiir.6425:

As for where people who want a challenge should go? Open world and story content should be soloable. If you want a challenge…that is what veteran modes, dungeons, raids, and instanced off areas are for. The meta bosses fit this description as well. Just getting around a map should never be challenging. Apparently enough people consider HoT maps too challenging to just explore. We might not see it that way but it is a completely valid concern. I hear most of the problems though are related to the fact the minimap is of almost no help in getting around HoT maps. If they could fix this people might stop complaining about the vertical map complaints.

Another often seen complaint is the fact so many of the hero challenges in HoT require a group. These things should only spawn champs if they sense 4+ people within range, like 1200 of the challenge. Otherwise, just spawn a dang vet or silver and call it done. They are supposed to be hero challenges, not group challenges. Otherwise I expect group reward (IE drop dungeon loot/tokens/map currency).

Break bars are another issue of contention as they negate many fun builds from being playable. As I have seen and used myself as an example, sword/sword – rifle warrior is a popular and fun build that is nigh unplayable in HoT. Because of the breakbar and reliance on AoE damage to survive encounters in the new maps. This is a dev issue as it is bad game design to allow any POSSIBLE build to be kitten in such a way. Every weapon should be capable of breaking a break bar, just add an effect to one of the attacks so the weapons can continue to be viable.

These being just some of the issues I see brought up in map chats, and here.

So you’ve determined that I should be forced to raid and run dungeons to find a challenge? And who made you king, bud?

As a mostly solo open world player, I happen to enjoy the challenge and complexity in the HoT maps. In fact, in my opinion it is what GW2 does better than any other MMO out there and it’s the primary reason I was attracted to this game. Pick any other game mode and there is an MMO that does it better. And you want to kill my playground because you think open world content should come in only one flavor? I don’t think so.

Learn to compromise. You don’t see me demanding that they stop designing maps the way they have in LS3, do you? You can have all the flat, non-meta maps you want. But don’t demand that other players can never have what they want just because you don’t like the design.

And as usual, your complaint regarding breakbars is complete nonsense. You can run sword/sword-rifle in HoT without issue. If your weapon set is light on CC and you know you’re going to need it (Hint: Many enemies with breakbars actually don’t require you to break them in order to win!), warrior is armed to the teeth with CC utility options. Stop making a big deal about nothing. You’re simply wrong on this one.

Feanor.2358:

AliamRationem.5172:

Wouldn’t that depend upon how much time you could expect to benefit from the might stacks? You’re only ramping up your damage unnecessarily if the enemy is dead before your rotation ends and there are no other targets, no?

Yes. And this is the case in 95+% of the actual encounters in the open world. The rest of the encounters are usually group events and you get might from other players around you.

Makes sense. I’m a bit odd when it comes to what I enjoy in open world. I’m not opposed to running with a group/zerg, but I enjoy being inefficient (I guess you might call it?) and doing things like soloing champions and group events. I guess thats why the might stacking seems to make sense for me. I’m not concerned with downing a single trash enemy a little bit faster so my overall rate of progress increases. I care more about being able to charge right into an army of chak with my daggers or take down the mushroom queen by myself. Not optimal or particularly efficient, but it’s what I like and I’m able to find challenge and feel powerful in open world doing what I like to do.

That’s why I advise using the weapons you enjoy and building around that rather than laser-focusing on efficiency (unless that’s what you enjoy!).

Feanor.2358:

The goal isn’t to stack might on yourself, the goal is to kill stuff quickly. You can take blasts, sure. But then you use them to generate might when you could have been using other skills to deal damage. In the end you end up progressing slower simply because you’re wasting time to ramp up your damage unnecessarily.

Wouldn’t that depend upon how much time you could expect to benefit from the might stacks? You’re only ramping up your damage unnecessarily if the enemy is dead before your rotation ends and there are no other targets, no?

Runiir.6425:

You know, a huge problem in HOT was shown to me a few days ago when a bunch of us were talking about it in a map chat after a successful meta. The reliance of the devs on break bars SEVERELY hampers build diversity to the point they really just need to make any/all attacks effect the break bar to bring back some diverse builds. A lot of the problems in soloing things are 100% the break bar and it is a mechanic completely ignored untill HOT with NO EXPLINATION OF IT ANYWHERE.

Seriously, play through the story of HOT without a single skill on your bars that effects a break bar, or only one skill that isn’t spamable that effects it, and you have a lot of weapon/build combinations people enjoy playing (typically these are the medic builds or pure self survival builds). Now try to solo it all. Emphasis on solo, no bringing in anyone else, ever. I’ve been trying this and, frankly, HOT looks like a giant kick tot he nethers if you despize some of the build changes it forces on you.

If you force people to change builds to fit content, you failed at building your content. Every build should be viable, thus the break bar mechanic is a failure that needs retooled. Seeing as an entire map chat on a meta agreed with this, almost all of us having solod the story and most of the maps, there could very well be something here as to why HOT is so hated. As the vast majority of people despize any reason to alter their build. They built it to suit their gameplay style, there should be no reason to alter it just because of a kitten mechanic.

If it required you to make major alterations to your build, then I might agree with you. But can you name a scenario where that is the case? Because I can’t think of any. All of the classes I have experience with so far have CC on their weapon kits and can easily add more simply by swapping a utility or two. This does not drastically alter the basic playstyle of these classes. So what are you talking about?

FrizzFreston.5290:

AliamRationem.5172:

Just because you feel strongly about something doesn’t mean you’re correct or representative of the majority.

Noone is really. There has been this focus on there not being a majority or being a minority in pretty much every argument. But it doesn’t really mean anything.
All that really matters is If it is a significant amount of people disliked HoT.
After 4 years, you don’t want to lose/disenfranchise a significant amount of your loyal players.

That’s why I advocate a mix of offerings from the flat, no-meta maps LS3 has mostly consisted of to the sprawling, vertical mazes with meta like Tangled Depths and Verdant Brink. What I am against are people claiming to speak on behalf of a majority, hoping to dictate an end to the sort of map design that drew me into GW2 in the first place.

Given the frequency of this type of debate I don’t think it’s a stretch to observe that plenty of players feel strongly about both types of map design. Regardless of who is technically the majority, I think it’s safe to assume that a large number of players would be disappointed with only one style of map design in the next expansion.

Healix.5819:

AliamRationem.5172:

They require players to develop strategies and utilize the abilities available to them to handle the mechanics in some way.

Not when you’re a high damage build. Shadowleapers for example might look special if you let them, but what they simply come down to is entering melee range and killing them before their first shot. I run trash alts through HoT in the downtime (random profession/build 1-80, only equipped in what the story provided, then delete) and the overall most deadly regular enemy has actually been chak zappers, simply because of their retaliation-like shield.

The trick about the core game is that vertical progression makes a huge difference. It’s not just your gear, but your level. The higher you are compared to your target, the more damage you deal and the less you take. If you only play in equal+ level areas and normalize your gear to that of the smith merchant, you’ll find that the enemies are capable of taking chunks out of your health while taking far longer to kill. Enemies are far less mobile compared to HoT, but they do have their own deadly attacks to watch out for. For example, a destroyer troll will easily kill you if you attack its fire shield, a risen carrier will/nearly 1 shot you if you let it, or the leap of a brood wolf can double hit in melee for devastating damage. As a simple comparison, the pirates in Gendarran or Bloodtide deal similar damage to the White Mantle in Lake Doric.

The point was that it isn’t only gear that makes core enemies fodder. Congrats on beating the shadowleaper boss and finding a handful of examples in all of core, though. Nice effort!

Clearly, the mechanics of HoT enemies are a bit more complicated. You don’t typically find large groups of mixed enemies such as mordrem snipers shooting arrows and dropping lines on the ground while tormentors apply condi, tendrils spit poison, and mordrem cavalry charge at you from all directions. That’s commonplace in HoT and rare to non-existent in core, whether you can power through them or not.

Sotha.1283:

Try to play with staff. You have extra dodge on fire 4 and play range. Utility skills to arcane shield, sandstorm, lightning flash. This should give you enought survivability.

I tried to play celestial and knight. It was massive dps decrease and I didn’t feel any better with survivability.

Run the weapons you want. Staff relies heavily on ground-targeted area effects that more or less require you to forgo the range advantage to deal effective damage. Range is still an advantage, however, particularly if your “solo play” involves a lot of zerg play.

Also, staff has many combo fields but hardly any blasts. Running d/x or s/x you can take up to 5 blasts, allowing you to self-stack 25 might. This is a much bigger advantage in solo play than in groups where others can stack might for you.

As for celestial gear? I’m going to have to disagree with it not improving survivability. I run d/d celestial and it feels practically invincible. I get wrecked trying to solo the tougher HPs such as mushroom queen in Tangled Depths in berserker gear. In my celestial set it’s no problem. But I suppose every player is different, so your mileage may vary.

Healix.5819:

Vayne.8563:

There are people who couldn’t play core Tyria solo either and complained about difficulty. Should we make the game easy enough for them? If we did, how many other people would leave.

Either some form of vertical progression should be added to allow players to casually play through older content, or the difficulty of the core game should be reverted to how it was in beta.

Just look at the people calling the core game easy for example. Why is it easy? Because they’re overloading on vertical progression to make it easy. Not only does HoT not offer any form of that, it’s also no longer balanced for low geared levelers, so suddenly they no longer have that crutch. Most MMOs are like the core game, where the difficulty is faked due to vertical progression, but that’s also what allows everyone to play through it. Here, those who can’t are expected to group up or quit.

The lack of a traditional experience can also be a major problem. New players simply following the story for example will end up in HoT wearing only rares with no upgrades or accessories. Traditionally, the first few quests would provide you with everything you needed.

Gear is certainly a factor, but it isn’t the only factor. Many HoT enemies are delightfully (or frustratingly!) vicious. For example, shadowleapers, bladedancers, pocket raptors, smokescales, mounted mordrem, stoneheads, and bristlebacks to name a few. All of these enemies have mechanics that can’t easily be ignored. They require players to develop strategies and utilize the abilities available to them to handle the mechanics in some way. The core game rarely challenges players this way.

VaLee.5102:

The fact that we still have topics like this 1.5 years after release means that HoT did something very wrong, there’s no point in defending it and trying to find excuses.

Yes, HoT had a very steep difficulty increase to address the vocal minority that was crying that the game is too easy for them. In return that screwed up the majority of the casual players, since ANet decided to treat all players the same instead of focusing and splitting the content to different kinds of player groups.

We defend it because we enjoy it and we’re not going to sit back and allow the vocal minority (See? I can do it, too!) dictate the moves ANet makes moving forward.

I can agree that HoT content was probably too difficult with the initial release, but they addressed quite a lot of those complaints last April with a patch that made a lot of things in HoT easier. Of course there are still players who dislike the difficulty level and it seems obvious by the sales numbers that there are other factors that players dislike about HoT besides just straight difficulty (pricing, content drought, guild halls, raids, megaserver issues, and so on).

Just because you feel strongly about something doesn’t mean you’re correct or representative of the majority.

Eponet.4829:

And Verdant Brink Night fails whenever you don’t bring a small army of people to it, because the map never reaches the same numbers as the other HOT maps.

VB is definitely the toughest meta to complete, but it isn’t because the map never has the numbers. How could you possibly know that? As far as I know, there is no means by which players may determine how many other players are present on a map. The best indicator we have is when a map is full, but the only method we have of observing that is via LFG – and we still don’t know what that number is.

The problem with the VB meta is that it doesn’t start when the bosses spawn and killing the bosses does not guarantee a T4 win. The meta is the entire night cycle. So here’s the problem with that…

This morning I logged in to VB to grab the shard of Caladbolg for the latest current event. It so happened that I logged in right as the night cycle started and a few players were asking in map chat if this was a meta map. I responded that LFG had no meta map in progress, but if they wanted to we could begin to organize one.

So I threw up my mentor tag (I don’t have commander) and explained that I’d need 2 or 3 others at my location to maintain the camp and that others should spread out and claim camps, tag up, and move on if more than 4 or 5 players were already present at a camp.

A few others followed my lead, but throughout the cycle players kept popping into map chat to complain that the map was dead. The map is dead! Nobody is doing the meta!

How could they know that? In this case, there were several groups actively participating in the meta. And when the boss cycle came it turned out there were quite a lot of players present on the map. In fact, we completed all of the bosses with several minutes to spare. Unfortunately, because players were convinced they were on a dead map, they didn’t do enough prior to the bosses to get a T4 win.

Obviously, part of that is players not understanding how the VB meta works. And part of that is the VB meta itself. I think in this case I could agree that it would be a lot easier to win VB if killing the 5 bosses were all that was required to score a T4 win. Players are much too quick to look for others to do all the work and will not participate otherwise. Megaserver and the LFG mini-game aren’t helping the situation here, even if it works adequately (for those who know) on all of the other HoT maps.

Feanor.2358:

Ookamikun.6472:

Should I swap my Traveler’s Runes tho?

Most likely. You can get a 25% movement speed boost in Air attunement, and that’s the major feature of the Traveller runes. Seeing that you’re not really a “meta player”, I’d recommend using Strength runes. If you find these too expensive, Flame Legion runes are a decent pick (especially since Celestial gives you some condi damage). Another option are Rage runes.

I agree with strength runes, especially if you’re using a weapon set with access to several blasts – basically, anything other than staff. Again, this is assuming you’re using celestial outside of organized group content. In this scenario, the ability to stack up to 25 might and maintain it is quite useful for mitigating some of the damage loss from using a more defensive stat set like celestial.

I run celestial on my elementalist. It isn’t useful for raiding, but I prefer it for solo play because it’s almost impossible to die even using a close-range set like dagger/dagger.

Healix.5819:

Failure is the reason it turned out this way. You don’t need a full map, not even half of one, but most people simply can’t handle the difficulty. The higher the chances of it failing, the less people will bother showing up. To counter this, people started using LFG to make a full map, which greatly reduces the difficulty simply due to numbers. As people taxi out of the other maps however, it causes them to die out, which is why there’s a bunch of empty maps and a single full one. The real problem here is that megaservers don’t fill up a map, but instead open a new one once a map is half filled.

From the perspective of the average player, the game is going to appear dead because they’re simply going to login and play, not LFG. These metas would have been far better off as activities, where you simply queued in and were automatically placed in teams.

So what is the solution? As far as I can tell, the bosses already scale to the number of players. The difficulty appears to derive from the required coordination such as killing 5 bosses spread across the jungle canopy while simultaneously controlling camps on the ground. Yet this is partially what makes the events fun and engaging and worth playing. Are you suggesting that we completely rework these events to require less coordination? Or what?

Sartharina.3542:

AliamRationem.5172:

I don’t understand this achievement. Do I have to be in my own instance to get credit? The rocks are easy to see and slow-moving, and I don’t appear to get hit by them but I still never get credit. Is there some other reason I wouldn’t get credit for it? I can’t figure it out!

Tiny, weak, hard-to-see orbs show up in later flights. All they do is an insignificant amount of damage and strip the achievement from you.

Ahh, now the rocks may be easy to avoid but those little guys are far more numerous. Is there some trick to avoiding them?

Sartharina.3542:

The only time I’ve had a problem with the Exit Instance in H&M is when I group up with someone else and don’t have the mission active in my journal.

That could be it. As the character I help out with has already completed the story, I wouldn’t have the mission active in my story journal. In any event, it sure is annoying! I will try activating the mission next time and see if it stops doing that. But still, it sure is an annoying “feature”.

Doam.8305:

AliamRationem.5172:

Doam.8305:

There are no complicated metas they can all be beaten like any world boss if they have the numbers. AB can be done with the least amount of people while a perfect VB needs the most however HoT maps don’t have the steady numbers to be completed like any other map.

My comments have absolutely nothing to do with events failing on occasion at all and have everything to do with tuning. From buggy last story instance to people still complaining about buggy collection vendors a person could write a book. However on things that everyone notices are that problems reported are HoT related. People are not posting about issue with ls3, ls2, nor the core maps and people aren’t making up excuses to defend ls3, ls2, or the core maps as HoT is the issue.

HoT maps are the most underused, buggiest, and without a doubt the most unbalanced in this entire game. They’d require the most work to fix and Anet doesn’t fix they remove as was seen with underwater, certain class mechanics, anything that even slightly bothers esport activity. HoT has been nerfed once already and the large post HoT powercreep we’ve seen not even two years since it’s launch should count as an additional nerf to HoT.

They’ll no doubt nerf it some more because their feedback and their presence is more Reddit based than these forums. This place has a voting system but it’s hidden. The entire forum can be swinging one way but the hidden upvotes can be in another direction. I read both forums because the devs are on both and HoT isn’t perfect and it has and no doubt will be nerfed again in the future. I’m against hard nerf but am all for fixes and soft power creep nerfs.

You say that HoT lacks the steady numbers to complete the meta. This is objectively false as the metas are completed routinely at all hours and the maps that organize almost always fill up to the player limit. Further, if you care to organize a second map, that map will usually fill up also, provided you have sufficient time between the time the first map fills up and the event begins. Even a map with an awful reputation like TD.

You go on to state that the HoT maps are “underused”. How did you measure player traffic in order to determine that they are underused? The short answer is: You didn’t.

And compared to what? SW is the same way. If you just zone in and don’t use LFG, you could easily end up on a chest train map. Or an overflow map that just has a few players slowly progressing the meta with no chance of completing it. Just as in HoT maps, players who use LFG to find or organize a meta map leave underpopulated maps with less chance of completing the meta behind as they jump maps.

Of course, you know all of this as you’ve been told on multiple occasions. So I’m not going to convince you otherwise, even when it’s plain as day that you’re wrong.

Your first statement is false cause they most definitely are not being completed at all hours.

I get how it could appear that HoT is empty if you don’t use LFG. That’s a side-effect of the megaserver system. An organized map is going to fill up with players who want to do the meta. Meanwhile, they leave several other instances of the map underpopulated when they jump to the organized map. Guess which map you waypoint into when you don’t use LFG? I’ll give you a hint: It isn’t the full map.

I’ve been working on completing collections that require running the AB and DS meta a lot recently and I’ve had no trouble getting groups. Just check LFG an appropriate amount of time prior to the meta and you’re in. It’s that simple. But I suppose you could just assume I’m making it up to score internet points. I’ll leave that up to you.

Doam.8305:

There are no complicated metas they can all be beaten like any world boss if they have the numbers. AB can be done with the least amount of people while a perfect VB needs the most however HoT maps don’t have the steady numbers to be completed like any other map.

My comments have absolutely nothing to do with events failing on occasion at all and have everything to do with tuning. From buggy last story instance to people still complaining about buggy collection vendors a person could write a book. However on things that everyone notices are that problems reported are HoT related. People are not posting about issue with ls3, ls2, nor the core maps and people aren’t making up excuses to defend ls3, ls2, or the core maps as HoT is the issue.

HoT maps are the most underused, buggiest, and without a doubt the most unbalanced in this entire game. They’d require the most work to fix and Anet doesn’t fix they remove as was seen with underwater, certain class mechanics, anything that even slightly bothers esport activity. HoT has been nerfed once already and the large post HoT powercreep we’ve seen not even two years since it’s launch should count as an additional nerf to HoT.

They’ll no doubt nerf it some more because their feedback and their presence is more Reddit based than these forums. This place has a voting system but it’s hidden. The entire forum can be swinging one way but the hidden upvotes can be in another direction. I read both forums because the devs are on both and HoT isn’t perfect and it has and no doubt will be nerfed again in the future. I’m against hard nerf but am all for fixes and soft power creep nerfs.

You say that HoT lacks the steady numbers to complete the meta. This is objectively false as the metas are completed routinely at all hours and the maps that organize almost always fill up to the player limit. Further, if you care to organize a second map, that map will usually fill up also, provided you have sufficient time between the time the first map fills up and the event begins. Even a map with an awful reputation like TD.

You go on to state that the HoT maps are “underused”. How did you measure player traffic in order to determine that they are underused? The short answer is: You didn’t.

And compared to what? SW is the same way. If you just zone in and don’t use LFG, you could easily end up on a chest train map. Or an overflow map that just has a few players slowly progressing the meta with no chance of completing it. Just as in HoT maps, players who use LFG to find or organize a meta map leave underpopulated maps with less chance of completing the meta behind as they jump maps.

Of course, you know all of this as you’ve been told on multiple occasions. So I’m not going to convince you otherwise, even when it’s plain as day that you’re wrong.

I don’t understand this achievement. Do I have to be in my own instance to get credit? The rocks are easy to see and slow-moving, and I don’t appear to get hit by them but I still never get credit. Is there some other reason I wouldn’t get credit for it? I can’t figure it out!

Orpheal.8263:

when you reach the point, where exp plays for you and your played charactdr no role anymore, because you are max level, you mastered everythign ect., then should become the gained xp you get from kills, events ect. partwise an additional bonus für Karma and Gold.

Example.

You get 10000 Exp from an Event,, you have no use for those Exp anymore, then should 70% of the Exp be turned into Karma and 30% of the Exp be turned into Gold based on Copper Coins.

So a useless 10k Exp gets turned for you then into a Bonus of 7k Karma and 3000 Copper Coins (3 Gold)

This way would become farming events that give alot of exp alot more lucrative for people, that have no use anymore for exp.
Either such a system, or the exp gets split up into 3 equal bonuses, +30% Karma, + 30% Gold and +40% Bonus on Magic Find or increased Map Currency.

When theres simply no need anymore by game design of Exp for you, then the game should change always automatically to increased base system rewards, that will be always useful for you – which is Karma, Gold and MF/Map Currencies

Your numbers seem a bit off, but I like the general idea. The problem is that spirit shards are a fairly meaningless reward currently, and when your masteries aren’t complete you get nothing.

This suggestion got me thinking. What if everyone could get what they want out of this? Offer a base reward for experience, perhaps something a bit more useful than spirit shards? You gain this reward when you’re level 80 regardless of mastery status. Then offer bonus rewards for experience upon completion of mastery tiers as it is now.

So you have to work for the additional rewards, but nobody goes empty-handed with their experience.

Khisanth.2948:

I have gone through H&M around 14 times now and I have no idea what dialog you are referring to. Generally exit instance dialogs don’t show up until the instance is complete. You might want to elaborate on what you are referring to. The exit instance button on the bottom right does show up if you are redoing for achievements but that is off to the side.

That’s odd. There’s no way you could possibly miss it and it’s not a one-time thing for me. I have done the fight many times and every single time it’s happened. You know how you walk close to a storyline exit marker when you’re in a story instance and it pulls up a dialogue box asking if you want to leave the instance, with two buttons “Yes” and “No”? That’s what I’m talking about. Every time I fight Mordremoth I spend most of the fight with that stupid box blocking my view. The exit is located centrally on the platform, and you don’t have to be very close to it to get the box.

Another apparent discrepancy are the updrafts. I’ve had this discussion a bunch of times. Walking into the updrafts simply doesn’t do anything for me. Yet others who have done the fight many times swear that it works this way. Yet if I walk over to them, stand in them, then push interact it immediately launches me into the air.

I have no idea how it’s possible that we could have such different experiences, but as I said I’ve done the fight a bunch of times helping friends with it. Perhaps it makes a difference whether it’s your instance? I don’t think I’ve done the fight in my own instance in almost a year, but I help other players with it plenty (just yesterday, in fact).

Kythan Myr.4719:

Population is down or spread out. Still new players coming in. Metas were completely doable and achieved a healthy life cycle, but that was 2 years ago. Metas can still be done, but not as reliably as before even during NA prime time. Seen more and more metas fail that past few months and I’m showing up (when I do) the same time as I did a year or so ago. I think they had a good run, but if they are going to be reliably doable, I think they need the SW QoL adjustment.

It sounds like you don’t understand how megaserver works with regard to HoT meta events, which is probably why you perceive events failing more often now than previously.

Organized maps don’t usually fail these events, which makes sense because HoT has been out awhile and most players have at least a basic understanding of what it takes to complete them. If this were an issue of too few players available, then the organized maps would not fill up. But we see that they generally do.

However, when you waypoint into an HoT map prior to the meta, you’re placed on one of a number of open instances of the map. Meanwhile, the players interested in completing the meta utilize the LFG system to jump to the map that is organizing. This map quickly fills up and the remaining maps are the depleted maps these players left behind. You’re far more likely to waypoint into one of these leftover maps than the organized map, especially if it happens to be full already!

This also explains why around meta time you often find yourself prompted to jump maps due to low population. And when you jump maps this way, you’re often prompted to do so again and again. This is the megaserver system attempting to condense the depleted instances of the map according to its own rules.

Try using LFG ahead of the meta. It’s rare that these events fail these days when players are actively organizing a map to complete them.

LoL Insult to injury! I just ended up having to redo “The Jungle Provides” (and watch helplessly again as Tizlak did the slow walk across Verdant Brink!) because apparently there is a bug during the part where you pop the mordrem blisters where if you happen to be standing next to them when the breachers spawn, they can stick you inside the ground. At that point you’re unable to move to complete the story chapter and are forced to log out and restart from the beginning! Fun!

So, the new addition to current events for Caladbolg inspired me to go back and do the HoT storyline again. This is nothing new, but honestly ANet your QC is amateur night. Just to name a few instances of “Who thought this was a good idea?” that seem to indicate a complete lack of pre-release testing:

In “The Jungle Provides”, why does Tizlak walk so slowly and if you move so much as a few steps ahead of him he will pause and hold up story progress? At the same time, if you try to shadow him he will repeatedly stop and wait for you, even though you’re standing right next to him so that no matter what you do it takes an obnoxiously long time to do this chapter simply because of Tizlak’s movement? Who thought this was a good idea? Seriously!

How about on the final fight with Mordremoth? Did it never occur to anyone in QC that it might be a good idea to either place the instance exit somewhere other than smack dab in the middle of the small platform we fight him on or at least disable the exit dialogue so that we don’t spend the majority of the fight with our view blocked by a “Yes/No?” dialogue box? Really guys?

Speaking of dialogue boxes. Did you know you forgot to put one on the updrafts so that players end up scrambling through, jumping into, and ultimately just dying instead of being able to take to the air to avoid the auto-death mechanics of the fight? If like every other interact-able object in the game they popped up the box prompting you to push your interact keybind, a lot of frustration could have been avoided.

There are just tons more bugs and oversights like this just in the HoT storyline. I hope in future you will take a little more time to QC these things so that you don’t ruin what might have been a perfectly good storyline with endless annoyances.

vpy.6183:

Newbie questions

a) How hard is solo leveling a thief from lvl 1 via quests ?. Any particular weapons i should go for ?
b) Do thieves get permanent stealth in GW2 or is there a specialization or something that gives them permanent stealth ?

Generally speaking, leveling in GW2 is pretty easy.

I recommend sword or dagger paired with off-hand pistol, and shortbow for mobility. However, you might also consider dual pistols instead of shortbow for fighting tough enemies that you aren’t comfortable getting close to.

Passive permanent stealth is not a thing, however you can maintain stealth indefinitely by stringing together active sources of stealth. This is of limited value, however, as eventually you are going to have to break stealth in order to deal damage. Also, in close quarters combat you can still be struck by area effect/cleave damage while in stealth.

Other advice:

Take power first, precision second, ferocity third for equipment stats while leveling.

If you find you’re dying a lot and your heal is too long on cooldown, try picking up the critical strikes trait line and using the invigorating precision trait. It returns 15% of critical damage as health, so that the more damage you deal the more you heal.

We’re talking about the final fight with Mordremoth, correct? If it’s giving you that much trouble, I’d be happy to help you with it, Tom.

Use pistols instead of shortbow. There is no reason to use shortbow on this fight as it encompasses a small area and the mobility offers no advantage.

Also, make sure you trait invigorating precision if you’re taking too much damage. It should make it a lot easier on you.

Other than that, there seems to be some confusion on how exactly the updrafts on the air phase are activated. If that’s a problem, I seem to recall having to use the interact keybind even though there was never an interact dialogue as expected. Once in the air, simply deploy your glider normally and fly circles from updraft to updraft. I don’t recall getting hit by the rocks much, if at all.

Malice.8439:

There must always be… A Lich King…

LoL A mini-lich king! Thanks for that!

Irensaga.6935:

I appreciate all the good input on this thread.

Here’s a report on some stuff I tried out since I wrote the OP.

Defensive gear isn’t going to allow you to ignore critical boss mechanics, for the most part. However, I can tell you that particular boss can’t take down my celestial elementalist. I found myself last man standing the other day with a group that didn’t understand the mechanics. I was able to continue fighting on my own and keep my health up until I ran out of time.

Is that useful? Not particularly. But it might be if you’re the sort who enjoys the playstyle of elementalist, but considers them too squishy for enjoyable solo open world play. I mean, the very fact that people call elementalist “squishy” has all to do with the berserker meta, because it isn’t an inherent limitation of the class. In fact, they have strong mitigation and healing options, and vitality can turn a low health class into a high health class.

Again, don’t get me wrong. Berserker gear will allow most players to survive adequately and deal far more damage than a set like celestial. And it’s pretty much a must for high end group play like raids and non-PUG fractals. So for most it is the better option. But for those who think ele is too “squishy”, there may be a better way for solo play.

Healix.5819:

Mabuse.2879:

I am very glad that is it more challenging, because levelling through Central Tyria was trivially easy and got quite dull. I even resorted to doing it in white gear so that I could learn to play my professions better without killing things so fast.

Difference in level is a difficulty modifier. Your target should always be a minimum of 1 level above you, 3 if you actually want to play on normal mode. If you’d prefer hard mode or are simply playing a joke like a necromancer, go up to 10, especially from 1-20 to counteract the nerfs. Gear? Simply equip what’s provided to you, which will likely result in wearing pieces 10-40 levels below. Leveling through core can be far more challenging than HoT if you want it to be.

Yeah, but that’s like telling a mountain climber who lives at sea level to just tie one arm behind his back. People who like HoT want content like HoT, not to be told to handicap themselves so that they can enjoy playing GW2.

I was just as confused, so ended up doing other achievements instead. Supposedly, you can target the chandelier and hit it with a ranged attack, causing it to fall. Assuming that’s correct, all you need to do is stand under it and wait for the special action button to appear. Caudecus will teleport to you and stun himself, then you hit the chandelier with a ranged attack.

I wasn’t able to do it, but I didn’t find out until after I had tried it a few times that you actually have to attack the chandelier.