I’ve reduced the difficulty of both the abomination and Mazdak; it’s still important to use the lightning attack on the sword to thin down his bodyguards (since it can chain to all of them) but it should be a lot easier now. We’re on a slower update schedule now, so it won’t hit the live servers until the Monday update. (9/17)
Again, thanks for the specific info, it really helps me to quickly look at and adjust these issues.
Can you be a bit more specific? Simply nerfing both of them doesn’t seem like the right answer.
with the default button setup, i cannot use my Staff #2 fire skill, cause i have to set a location while running and dodging.
I assume you are an elementalist, what problem are you running into while trying to use Staff #2 fire while running and dodging? I have my strafe remapped to A and D so that might be the difference but I am actually using that skill all the time while running and dodging. In case you are not aware it is possible to pan with the mouse while that is active without canceling the skill. If you right click and drag instead of just right clicking it does not cancel the skill. This is true for all targeted skills.
I can count on one thing and that is that I’ll die in a 1v4 battle. I’m downgraded to whatever level the mission was, but I have a gut feeling that the enemies are at least one level above me despite what that little number above their head says.
I don’t see the downleveling as a direct issue, it just means you can’t use leveling as a solution. That in itself is fine assuming they get the other parts right. Out leveling to complete the content is pretty much the purest form of brute forcing it. That shouldn’t actually ever be or become the default solution in any game.
The game should provide challenges but the challenges should be fair. They talk about having fair fights in PvP but why shouldn’t that apply to PvE as well?
I haven’t really found that to be an issue.
I have a lv73 and a lv40.
The lv73 didn’t start on the PS until lv70. The lv40 did it as they “came up”. For the lv40 I’ve been mostly at or one level below. This included 100% map completion for whichever map the missions were taking place. The purpose of that is for exp, crafting material from completion reward and to avoid having to redo the map later on at a higher level which results in implicit penalties.
If you bought the game just for the PS then you have probably wasted your money because it is definitely not one of the better part of this game.
On the other hand I definitely do NOT recommend the ‘get to high/max level then start PS’ route unless you are confident that you can do every mission with 1 try. That route involves a disproportionate cost for failure. Even if you don’t fail you’ll end up wasting either time or money going between the racial main city and where the missions take place.
If the overall difficulty is too high, or something is too hard just for some class, it’s the fault of the beta (and other) testers, not the designers. Designers cannot really evaluate their own designs because they know exactly how every encounter is supposed to be done.
Spread the blame if you want but a designer should also be considering all possible ways something might be encountered. If they create an encountered and thought “people should only solve it by doing X” then that is just as big of a failure. The designer should also be familiar with how EVERY class is played. In this game that also means every weapon combination.
Maybe I am just a bit naive but it seems fairly obvious how a 1 vs 5 encounter or 1 v 1 encounter where one side does 20%-25% per hit will resolve. Then just to be sure you give the 5 and the 1 Frenzy so they attack twice as often.
Edit:
Secondary issues, a tester probably doesn’t need to worry about running out of gold or paying for their trait book which will eat all their accumulated gold. Experimenting is not actually a problem in that case.
And yes, he meant sword, more specifically Caladbolg.
That much could be guessed but I was just making sure that it wasn’t like the previous mission’s(Bramble Walls) missing golems.
Edit:
Finally got through that after wasting some more gold. Mazdak himself was killed on the first try but that is only because of Jeffrey’s hint. This brings up a new issue. You don’t get a chance to look at the sword’s skillbar before the fight starts. At the very least it would have been better to switch to the sword as soon as the door is opened rather than after you have already aggroed Mazdak. “Here is a completely alien skillbar now go fight that boss.” is not a great way to do things. Even better would be switching to the sword BEFORE the doors are opened that way you can practice the skills on the spiders.
So what changed in the end? Swapped vitality/condition damage shoulder and chest for precision/toughness. Ate an artisan tuning crystal(4% of toughness and 2% of vitaility added to condition damage). Ate a white cake(+3% burn duration) which only adds about half a second of burn to Flame Burst but I also have a 30% chance to burn on crit. The gear change also added around 4% crit chance. Replaced Armor of Earth for Signet of Air as suggested above. Replaced Final Shielding with Renewing Stamina because if something can kill you in 2 hits Final Shielding is completely useless.
The crystal and cake made it feel a bit like cheating but I’ve stop caring, this is just to get things out of the way so I can get the POI later on. The biggest issue for me is still the high cost of experimenting with solutions but that is not specific to this one mission. I would really prefer not to have to check any outside source for these things.
I’ve reduced the difficulty of both the abomination and Mazdak; it’s still important to use the lightning attack on the sword to thin down his bodyguards (since it can chain to all of them) but it should be a lot easier now. We’re on a slower update schedule now, so it won’t hit the live servers until the Monday update. (9/17)
Again, thanks for the specific info, it really helps me to quickly look at and adjust these issues.
This is actually a situation that can be overcome with brains rather than brawn.
Remember that hallway full of traps you passed through on your way to the room with the abomination?
(Now, the fight AFTER the abomination… that one is tough. I had to kite and abuse the AI a fair bit to win that one as a squishy mage.)
Have you actually tried doing it this way? The veteran might kill me in 2 hits but the traps will kill in 1. I don’t see where you will find the time to wait for the traps .
In the story I’m supposed to use golems to wipe out the Risen Army (which turned out to not really be an army, but a tiny squadron which is why I thought the golems would come later) in front of this keep. Well I couldn’t access any golems right out of the cutscene and I didn’t even realize until after I did the whole thing by myself (which was ridiculous because the quest wasn’t even designed to be a fight between me and the army, I was supposed to be able to control the golems to fight the army), that I was supposed to be controlling golems to fight for me. I thought maybe the golems came after so when the quest finished, I had a very big “wtf” moment..
Was my individual personal story just glitched? If I was supposed to be able to access them by talking to Iowerth or Kekt to be able to control them, the quest objective in the top right corner should be more clear and tell me to talk to them to be able to access the golems in the first place.
So yeah either it’s a bug with my personal story, or the quest should be more clear out of the cutscene..
You mean you actually SAW golems in that story?! Well that is a bit more than me. I just assumed the Durmand Priory was just a bunch of lying kittens who will sacrifice anything and anyone to get the job done(while moving in on the Whispers’ portfolio).
It made me wonder how their plan of sending an army of 1 was any better than the Vigil’s plan of sending an actual army.
I don’t ever really miss GW 1 except when I’m on a Personal Story mission – when I ALWAYS miss GW 1. I really want a “stop being stupid” ability I can use on my NPC allies in Personal Story missions.
Well GW1 didn’t have that either, not for henchmen anyway. Heroes were an improvement but that is because you can set their skill bar and position them to avoid AoE. On the other hand at least GW1 henchmen can still carry their weight in battle. They may not have been the best but at least they were mostly better than nothing. At least they tried to use skills at appropriate times against appropriate enemies.
I guess the difficulty depends on the class then. As a human thief, at lvl 79 quest now, I haven’t had big problems. I’ve had about 5-6 deaths in the whole story. Sure lots of tight spots and lots and lots of jumping and kiting but nothing too hard. Overall it’s been really fun and challenging, exactly the right tune for my thief. Gives the feeling of really accomplishing something
Well that is the core of the problem isn’t it? Whoever designed these seems to have forgotten that the game has multiple professions. I am around the same area in the story with my human Warrior who joined the Vigil and that felt like it was a bit too easy at some points.
They’re still sorting out my account settings, so I’m not sure this will tag me as an ArenaNet employee. :P
Anyway, for any difficulty issues, it’s very important that you provide us with the quest name, your current objective, your class/level, and the issue (too many enemies, enemies are too tough, you’re being rooted or CCd for long periods, etc.). Just telling us “That LXX mission is too hard” doesn’t help because it’s likely that there are at least 3 different versions of any given quest.
Dead of Winter
lv73 Sylvari Elementalist
with the Priory in Mazdak’s tomb
The main lesson is DO NOT use the restart from checkpoint option. That is just a waste of gold because with most of the NPCs dead and a veteran glued to you there won’t be enough chances for you to attack.
List of issues.
- Why does the game give me the option to restart from checkpoint when it is just going to waste my gold?
- Failure becomes extremely disproportional if you don’t do the missions ‘at level’ due to repair cost. On top of the repair cost I also have to waste time because the closest repair NPC is on the other side of the map. I could use a waypoint but waypoint cost also skyrockets with level.
- How do you expect an Elementalist to tank a veteran? The room is tiny and the path behind me is has traps that oneshots. It might take two hits for the veteran to kill me but if the knockdown hits there is no way to avoid the second hit.
- Repeating here but why is the enemy glued to me like butter to toast? None of the other veterans in the game seem to behave this way. It didn’t seem to have much interest in my elemental either.
- I could theoretically dodge all the attacks but Caithe and Trahearne combined are apparently not enough to do any meaningful damage. Eventually I will just become too tired to keep up with the dodges.
- Speaking of dodges, why must I use dodges to avoid attacks? The veteran’s knockdown looks like a melee attack without any sort of AoE effect but I still get knocked down when I am several feet away. This makes it feel like the game is cheating. It’s fine to have a difficult game but not when it feels like the game is cheating.
- You should really reconsider having fights in tiny rooms. There is the obvious issue with kiting but it also means that you are fighting the camera at the same time. Ideally the camera would be fixed but this camera issue has been in place since GW1 so I am not going to bet on that one.
There is another obvious solution to my problem, just grab another person since Caithe and Trahearne are pretty much useless damage wise but if these are meant to be done with a party then please say so.
If you think that is irritating wait till you start doing the personal story. -_-
Needless to say the experience with a Sylvari Elementalist has not been good so far.
I did the same as OP but the Owl Amulet is in my Jeweler’s list. This might be an issue similar to the “Crystal Scroll” recipe sold by Sagum Relicseeker. The recipe says Crystal Scroll but item on the list is actually called Harpy Totem.
Another thing you can check is to type in ‘Copper Chain’ in the search box and check each item. The amulet only uses Copper Ingot and Copper Chain, no jewels.
