(edited by Gatvin.6510)
“You’re on the wrong server” shouldn’t be the answer.
how about anet actually makes conditions viable, why should there be only one type of build.
That won’t happen, since it would obviously require the game’s handling of conditions to be rewritten completely and the devs aren’t capable of doing that. A long time ago, they already stated that the 25 stack cap wasn’t going to be removed as the engine could not handle more stacks. And as long as the cap is in place, you’ll start running into problems with the condition stacks as soon as there are two characters who apply the same condition, not to speak of 50 …
This can be circumvented by adding more condition types, which they have done at all. Also, temporary world events like this are usually designed to be more casual so as not to expose engine limits. Which this particular fight was until they patched it.
condition reflect is only part of the fight, the other part is the more conditions you apply, the less power the boss has
The trick here is that for that 50% of the fight, condition damage and duration stats on your gear and from your traits not only do nothing, but actually hurt your team. If you specced conditions, you are worse than dead-weight.
Meanwhile, power/prec/crit specced individuals do less damage with the conditions they auto-apply, they last a shorter duration, and all of their stats do 100% or more to the boss the entire fight.
This is worse than a gear check. This fight checks that a certain percentage of the player base isn’t using a particular build.
When the fights were zergable it didn’t matter because then it was just checking that you had the appropriate number of players on the map, but now its a kick in the teeth.
So basically this fight is button pressing between 1 and V.
People like you are why we can’t have nice things.
Did you mean people who specced condition damage or people who make choices based on playstyles they like?
I think you are missing the points here, which are that the Knights fight isn’t interesting enough to be as long or difficult as it is, and they’ve arbitrarily punished the people that chose a specific specialization. They should just revert it so we can forget about it.
If there is no ´DPS test´ it would be way to easy….
Sort of. The HPrime fight is actually kind of hard. Not frustratingly hard, but it’ll mess you up if you aren’t paying attention. Its right about where it should be for non-dungeon temporary content.
The Knights fight is(or was) a Zerg along party that gave some pretty fine crap-loot. It gave a LOT of it, but it was still crap.
Its less of a dps check and more of a build check. Power/precision/crit builds do 100% damage during condition reflect. Once condition crash hits, all damage to the boss is increased based on the number of conditions applied. Condition damage/duration builds however lose all of their damage from those stats for 50% of the fight. If too many people in your group are built for condition damage, you won’t even make it to the first condition crash.
I don’t think its intended to be this way, but its definitely a result of the fight scaling up.
While I’ll agree that much of this content has been buggy — I DO appreciate that Anet has attempted to take steps to break up the zerg train that this event was becoming.
Zerg isn’t always bad. Zergs are something of a party. You just kind of go with the flow. Hologram Prime isn’t a Zerg fight though. You can’t just mindlessly dps her down and if you die, you can’t walk back.
Loot from knights was fitting for a zerg-fight, and a zerg-fight is a fine opener to get everyone psyched for the more interesting fight that comes after.
I think it’s important to step back and gain a little perspective here.
ArenaNet is attempting something completely new to MMO’s by implementing multifaceted content to be released every two weeks by individual teams who are given an average of one month from start to finish to create. This is incredibly ambitious even for a large AAA game company.
appreciated.(edited for space)
Yes living world is ambitious, and really really cool.
As a game design major though, you should appreciate how actually poor the Knights fight is now. The positional aspect of the dive/vacuum is cool, and the buff grabbing has potential to be interesting. But the damage-sponge scaling combined with preventing half of the potential damage specializations from fighting the boss makes the fight kind of terrible.
Damage sponge is important for a little bit of intimidation, but overkill makes a fight a boring grind. Forcing players into a certain spec removes a lot of depth and makes players feel like they are not in control of their character.
These two aspects were absolutely fine when you could zerg knights, because the speed at which you took them down meant you needed to keep on your toes for the buff swap. Now condition specced characters are forced to use almost no abilities and do pitiful damage the entire fight against the boss until condition crash finally hits. On my server, that’s two minutes before the boss despawns.
You can get into the final battle with her by equipping any level Spinal Blades back item.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1zjufq/ipsa_you_can_go_to_the_final_confrontation_with/You can get into the killing of the crippled Scarlet, but not actually face her huge hologram, which is the real last boss fight. This is how it finished by the way. Not a single knight down.
If people can’t beat the knights, what makes you think they’ll beat the holograms?
Yep. Because the knights are the only thing that changed. I was impressed with the Hologram prime fight because it was a fight that we lost as often as we won. It was just right. I did it about 6 times before the patch, lost a few and won a few.
The first couple were a mess, and a glitch with the ultraviolets ruined another, but the other two went pretty smooth. There was always a little sweat over triple holograms, and Ultraviolets got a little hectic, but it was a REALLY well put together fight.
And now my server can’t down Knights. Event done. gg.
Its not a huge problem that they’re going to have stuff that uses them in the future, its more that there isn’t anything to use them on right now. An alternative recipe for Twisted Watchwork Portal devices could be a good use for them. Especially if they are a permanent drop from aetherblades now.
Its actually a reasonably elegant system most of the time. You get gold for doing stuff you like, and then you can convert the gold into stuff you want. If you want cores, fight the Knights, get loot, sell salvage, and either get the cores as drops or buy them from the profits of stuff you get.
The event itself is still messy though.
So how do we all rate the end of LS season 1
in Battle for Lion’s Arch - Aftermath
Posted by: Gatvin.6510
The content release formula currently used creates a pretty cool flavor, something other mmo’s don’t really offer. However, it feels like the breakneck release pace resulted in some design/development failures, especially in the last three patches. While great at offering a little bit of everything, the new content was usually too fleeting to build on previous content, and drew too many people from other events to experience the full picture. Its a tough problem and one I’m glad they tackled.
This most recent patch is definitely the most lackluster. Building on the previous lion’s arch events is a mixed bag here because the new event trample on old events that are secretly new events. While there are lots of new fights, there aren’t that many new rewards, and buggy content replaced with unreachable content leaves a really sour taste. In most things, unfortunately, its the end that people remember.
My suggestion for next time is to give players a break between events. Events have been so pushed the past month and a half that there’s been little time to just enjoy the world. As a content release experiment I feel that this was a resounding SUCCESS!
p.s. The very angry player in the back of mind would like to remind the ANET folks to revert or nerf Knights.
I love it personal. Oh sure its challenging but that is how a final boss is meant to be. She presents a challenge to us. she can cripple our HP with ease but that is provided you aren’t paying attention. We now have telegraphs that are short of slapping you across the face and screaming “SOMETHINGS ABOUT TO HAPPEN, PAY ATTENTION!” so you have very little excuse for standing there in the hit box now.
Except she’s not the final boss. The attacks you are talking about don’t actually make a big difference. Its the unmarked attacks that rapidly knockdown in an aoe around the knights that are important. People just care about slam and vacuum because of the achievement. The slam and vacuum are also the one truly interesting thing about the fight.
The rest is just 15 minutes of “ok don’t use anything but autoattack, ok now use your normal rotation, ok back to only autoattacking.”
I’m just going to throw in at, our sever was able to muster about 30 for each and it stunk. We couldn’t even hit 50% on any of the knights.
The knights are not hard if your zone is coordinated. Make sure that everyone has the correct color circle buff for the mob that they are fighting. No buff means no damage to mob. Make sure that when the large orange circle disappears, everyone evades or else they will be pulled in to the Knight. The group on blue needs to grab the menders prior to them getting close to the Blue Knight or they will heal it. All knight have a buff on them that reflects conditions. Stay away from conditions until that buff wears off.
If your zone is cooperating, they should be calling out on map how many spaces available at each Knight and how much life is left so if one knight needs more players, they can switch among them. I was in about 6 events today and the only time that we missed it was when Blue healed itself due to the menders reaching the Knight. It can be done with some cooperation. Good luck!
Scarlet is a different tactic all together. I saw only a few changed with her since the 3-7 patch.
I apprecieate your advice, all things we practice and were aware of before starting the fight. But either because we don’t have the gear or maybe we actually just stink at doing damage, we can’t get them down. The only way to know for certain is some kind of gear check, which is impractical in this game.
When you don’t have proper raids with raid warnings and controlled player pool, the tool you have is swarming, which has been taken away.
Again, knights aren’t even interesting. There’s no suspense for when condition reflect will go up, its just a flat “This unit takes less damage and you take more damage”. It forces players not to use certain skills, which for many classes are the more interesting skills. Heck, most Auto-attacks inflict conditions, so most of the time you’ll end up using conditions anyway and just need to eat it.
It was cute when knights could be zerged, but now its just obnoxious.
They’re not even an interesting boss. Kill 3 at the same time is the same mechanic used in wurms and holograms to much greater effect. The anti-condition buff is a kick in the teeth to all the people that specced condition damage. It doesn’t even make the fight more interesting when its up. Its just a check to see if A) did you get gear that isn’t condition based, and B) can you make a build that switches between using conditions and not.
The anti condition buff should pop up on a semi-random timer, not percent health. A corresponding attack reflect buff that it switches with. Condition reflect buff could increase basic attack damage, and an attack reflect buff could increase condition damage. Then at least its more than a gear-check damage-sponge.
50 man limit per boon on Assault Knight
in Battle for Lion’s Arch - Aftermath
Posted by: Gatvin.6510
Also I hope you didn’t spec Condition damage/duration.
Wow, talk about a thread filled with massive entitled whiners. You guys have no idea how hard it is to program a game, let alone an MMO.
Its difficult to do a lot of things, which is why we pay people to do them. When the output is unsatisfactory, we give feedback for what will keep us interested in playing. Whether or not that feedback is constructive or not is another issue.
Some things I like about this patch:
New items
New events
New enemies
Story elements being tied together
Of these things, I have access to about about 1/2 a new event in the form of Knights and 1/2 of the new enemies(again knights). The rest are just events that were introduced last time. This brings me to things I don’t like about this patch:
Event timers train-wreck each other.
New enemies are (now) pretty boring
Can’t get new items
There aren’t many new items.
This event as a whole has a lot of cool concepts that you can’t really see because they aren’t coordinated with each other. One person is shouting to take Cannoneer, another wants to do Miasma, some people are getting ready for Knights 20 minutes ahead of time, and the rest do defend/drive off events because they are easy to get to. Its not uncommon for all of these to fail (including defend/drive off) because each person is trying to get a different Achieve. Tags kind of help. But not a lot.
All of the actually new items(2) in this patch are part of the Scarlet fight(which is a really fun fight by the way), which you need to do the Knights to get to (which is really boring). To top it off, only a few classes can actually use these new items.
I’m going to stress here that its not that there’s ANY content I can’t access that bothers me, but that MOST of the new content is inaccessable. And because I got to do that content while the event was “bugged” I can say that that’s the coolest part of the new content. THAT is what bothers me.
Miasma have a chance to drop ascended. Its rather low. That said, its currently better than your chances of seeing Holograms on my server.
Agreed. I’d like to actually fight Scarlet again.
I’m just going to throw in at, our sever was able to muster about 30 for each and it stunk. We couldn’t even hit 50% on any of the knights.
Knights are too much of a gate to Scarlet now
in Battle for Lion’s Arch - Aftermath
Posted by: Gatvin.6510
Ok harsh comments are out of my system. The new content is really cool, but after the most recent patch, I’m not going to get to see any of it except for the stuff I’ve been doing for the past 2 weeks.
Please switch it back to the previous version.
Battle for Lion's Arch Open Issues and Tips
in Battle for Lion’s Arch - Aftermath
Posted by: Gatvin.6510
Not to mention that getting to Scarlet to get her very difficult achieves is now almost impossible. So much for hoping for a Scarlet’s Kiss. Or any meaningful reward at all.
Please just switch it back.
Look, I like playing a tank. I like being a pile of HP that takes hits and defends my allies so they can enjoy the pretty 4 and 5 digit numbers floating over the boss’s head. This is for the most part impossible outside of MAYBE WvW.
Also, this fight stinks now. At least when we lost marionette EVERY TIME we got loot. Just switch it back to last patch. Please.
This patch is just terrible. Making Knights a little harder I can see, but this is just ridiculous.
At least I could still get a hold of cool rewards from that one. All that’s left of this event now is two weeks of crap loot grind and failure.
since the character cap is 64(I read somewhere), you’ll need about 96 stacks of blade shards to ensure you’ll never need another one. So really the question is “How do I get 20000 more?” =P
In all seriousness though…can we get another recipe that uses these? like an alternate to twisted watchwork portal device or something?
We’re speculating in an area of minimal changes. Neither of these changes would be super huge for someone running around, mostly either slightly more convenient, or slightly less.
Its just idle speculation on how that convenience will affect combat flow.
The reason fortified gates melt so easily is because they are often undefended. When people are actually there doing a combination of repairing and arrow-carting, you only need a handful of people to stop a zerg.
I highly disagree with the last statement. You can have all sorts of objectives. Some are served by not fighting (especially an uneven fight) but others are just as well served by bringing fights.
Making people walk farther means a big group can’t be as reactive and as mobile, hopefully splitting them up to defend things. I don’t know if that’s what would happen but I like to think WvW fought on more fronts would be a more interesting WvW.
Removing waypoints will restrict mobility, but of BOTH large and small groups.
I’m fine with rewarding defending, and small group play, but making defense the primary activity on top of the extra walking doesn’t sound like much fun.
I remember Devon saying they were going to remove waypoints and it still seems like a really great idea to me.
Reading the map to see where enemies are, cutting off reinforcements, creating diversions, all of these things are PvP that’s on a different level (not a better or worse level, just different) than just straight out combat (it’s more server versus server than guild versus guild). I think it’s a fun level and I would like to see it continue to be relevant. It definitely makes small group stuff more fun as it gives you valuable roles.
I would be ok with very different WvW, as long as it rewards players appropriately for playing in a fun way.
That said, WvW is about avoiding combat as much as possible right now, so I don’t feel removing them will introduce much change beyond walking further.
Killing waypoints won’t kill zerging but the point is it can reduce their effectiveness. When a Zerg can port all over a map to respond to anything in such a short amount of time it trivializes smaller guerrilla tactics that can actually prevail over a huge group. Sure some groups may be caught, but if you’re taking more points faster than the Zerg can respond, it ends up working.
I did think about this. The problem here is while it makes zergs worse in one way, it makes them more desireble in others. Since fewer waypoints will punish death more, players will stick together more to stay alive, and take even fewer chances to engage enemy groups of similar size.
Very competent players will be able to outmaneuver, but I’m not sure they’d be able to accomplish much since if they are killed, they’re punished just as much as the zergers (in terms of time to get back into combat and mobility).
If you think removing WP’s is the answer, you really must be playing another game. All that would do is INCREASE blobbing, Golem rushing, and rezzing. All things people complain about too. Thus, put it this way, people just like to complain when they are losing.
Contested WP’s to me is illogical. Especially in PvE when they have an event you are supposed to participate in yet, they close off access to it! It’s quite the opposite of what should happen.
I wouldn’t say playing another game, but yes. Killing waypoints won’t kill zerging. Just about any game with mass pvp has zergs. Its not something that should be hindered, its something to be balanced around. And its not bad either. not everyone likes zergs, but lots of players have fun in them. Both playstyles will probably be supported.
I exactly agree about the mixed message of “go here for combat” and “don’t use the convenient spawn point we put here”. Contested waypoints are (kind of) a necessary evil to prevent waypoint hopping for supplies. The supply system existing is worth it though. In my mind though, players should clash more often, and be rewarded for trying. Winners being rewarded more of course.
Can’t really say #2 is an issue, if you’re a small group you need to be aware of when to leg it. Adding waypoints would really just help zergs to res-rush you and overwhelm with numbers even more so.
If the hike is the issue, then wait for the waypoint timer.
A given small group does need to know when to leg it. At the same time, they don’t always get away. If getting steamrolled by zergs didn’t feel bad, I wouldn’t see so many people complaining about it.
The hike is the most immediately bothersome thing, but there is more to it than just that. I mean, anything that makes it harder for zergs to spawn, also makes it harder for small groups.
No. This would ruin small group roaming. Also, you zerglings need to be killed on the way to your precious zerg.
I don’t think it would. I’ve always had three issues functioning in small groups.
1. Tracking enemy zergs
2. Respawning after getting rolled over by them
3. Finding something meaningful to accomplishing world goals that can be accomplished before zergs roll over me.
In my mind, this helps 2. and 3. More spawn locations means more ways around a zerg, and in that a waypoint that can be easily flipped gives small roamers a real impact that they are rewarded for.
What are you usually doing in small groups that this would inhibit?
(edited by Gatvin.6510)
I feel like Sentry (or whatever you call the guys marked with flags on the map) waypoints would be a better fit since they don’t have supply stock. The ability to spawn in them would make disabling all foreward spawn options have a few more steps to it. A nice secondary benefit is allowing skirmish groups to have a small impact on both outgoing and incoming zerg flow by taking sentries.
Special thanks to Muramasa for his concise explanation of why waypoint delays are important. =P
Its a battleground that can support PvE as the PvP boils over less. I’ve had dead weeks in EB where me and a couple friends run around grabbing npc camps and such while weak zergs chase each other around. There’s also the supply aspect, which could be made more interesting.
I imagine WvW is rather hard to gather data for, but usually you want to steer your game toward an ideal mix of builds rather than one being best. We’ll see where they push it in the future.
Got this game as a gift from a friend recently and having a blast. WvW is great but could use a tad more smoothing and depth. (I use “tad” not sarcastically, WvW is great).
First and foremost, Waypoints. Respawning in WvW need some smoothing. Poking a base results in a disabled waypoint, forcing long treks across the map when no actual combat is occurring.
Things I can think of that would fix this include, deployable spawn points, spawning waypoints at sentries, and removing “contested” status from waypoints. I’m sure there are more options, but the main goal here is reducing the time it takes for players to get into action.
Thoughts?