Guild Wars 2

There was a livestream about it earlier today.

Only things I noticed different from gw2lfg -

• You can see the classes of all the party members in the post
• If anyone in your party is under the level requirement for some of the dungeons, no one in your party will be able to use lfg for those dungeons. (to “avoid confusion”)
• If you find a post for the same content as yours, you can automatically join that other group, skipping the approval process through the “merge party” feature.

Went in to check out the new map. First thing I noticed was the constantly flashing buff icon. Went to cap a point, the fight was 5v10 or close to, no graphics based lag to speak of, but the rubber banding and skill lag was insane. >2 seconds delay on casts times, everyone around me was teleporting every few seconds. Absolutely unplayable. Gave up after 15 minutes or so to check out tequatl. Hardly any lag with the massive zerg that was there. Something is definitely going on in the borderlands atm.

A big thank you to Josh Foreman.

Thank you so much for the bug fixes and… game-engine-wierdness fixes. I know not everyone encountered those things, but those changes made a huge difference for me. Suddenly I could experience the amazing design of the levels, instead of being distracted by lag and hit box issues. The change to the water spouts is not what I would have wanted, in an ideal world (I love recognizing patterns and timing my jumps), but I understand there was nothing much that could be done in so little time. Perhaps when w3 comes out, the spouts will be back without the mysterious knock back effect .

Anyway just wanted to leave an update – after the awesome feedback I had here, I decided to show my support and bought the infinite continue coin and tried my hand at tribulation mode. After many hours and many, many deaths later, I have two new staff skins. I’ve seen a lot of the green skins around la, and a handful of the yellow ones – don’t be discouraged, people are definitely playing! Even some of the hard core PvE guilds that had all but given up on the LS are playing (8:30 min speed run of w2z1 trib mode on a charr).

A rocky start is sometimes the price paid for testing limits – but playing it safe will get you no-where interesting. Keep doing what your doing, people on forums (me included) can get worked up over tiny hiccups. From where I’m standing, this update was a success story.

As I understand it this happens to mobs if your standing in a place where they can’t hit you but you are hitting them. You can see it if you’ve ever tried to range the final boss in AC p1 from the stairs – if you range him from a position where he can’t get to you and has no chance to damage you, he will turn invulnerable (and then no-one can deal damage to him). It’s a mechanic intended to reduce the number of exploits, similar to the way mobs will reset if you kite them to far.

What’s happening in the harpy fractal is the same thing – it’s just one of the few places in the game where it’s easy to trigger it with out purposefully trying to exploit. The safest thing to do is just melee with stability and reflects as needed.

Eles and rangers also have reflects, the only classes without reflects are necro and warrior.

Aren’t dolyaks a shiverpeak thing? With those big shaggy coats it seems like they would be native to cold climates. Orr is a good ways south, south of the seemingly warm Maguma territory. There are risen bulls, which i think are the Orr equivalent.

If you are really, really are having trouble, you can try this.

Roll or find an ele friend. Only run p3. On the spider part, use FGS dash into the wall (don’t target) and bring it down in seconds. Use icebow on all the mounds (have one other person use the bow, trade off casting 4). Stack on the pillar for final boss, and dps. You can carry even the worst pugs this way. You’ll get more tokens if you can get p1 done, but this way is a near guarantee.

I think the anger mostly comes from denial – people want so badly to believe this game has good build variety in pve, they want to believe that the other armor sets have a purpose. They are frustrated facing the reality of the situation, and are shooting the messenger as it were. People also hate admitting they’re bad. I have a few knights pieces on my ele, and I realise that means I’m not playing my class to it’s fullest potential. I realise that means I’m not as skilled at my class as I could or should be, and maybe I’m “bad”, but I don’t get kitten about it. It works for me and the group I run with, and that’s what matters. Mostly, people just need to learn to read LFG post text and start their own if they want snails pace wear-what-you-want happy carebear runs (my sort of run :x).

No persistant checkpoint system

No counter for baubles

Still fun, needs work.

doctorfaust.9361:

And that’s why a smarter design decision would’ve been to NOT make the zones so freaking long. I just now painstakingly made my way through 2-3, avoiding bananas blah blah blah, when I had a sudden disconnect. Boom, all progress lost, checkpoints or otherwise. Now I have to do everything over again, including the climb up the vertical room inside the mountain, which is only artificially difficult because of bad camera.

He said he’s thinking of making the main route a lot shorter, with more alternate routes. This still doesn’t help if your, say, going for the bauble achievement and you’ve spent hours hunting them all down, and then get randomly DC’d. But, it’s a start.

It’s especially frustrating because it puts you at the checkpoint that will insta-kill you when you spawn on top of the spike trap. Also for some weird reason it started taking 2 lives on my death instead of 1. The only time I’ve come close to dying that many times was at the jump-dodge rock in w1z2.

According to Josh Foreman, the inability to resume at checkpoints is technical problem, not a design decision:

Josh Foreman.8250:

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

I can’t always dedicate hours at a time to GW2, and it would really, really, really help if we could start playing at unlocked checkpoints rather than the start of each zone, in all modes. That way I could focus on a smaller chunk at a time and progress in the SAB even when I “only” have an hour to play in the evening.

I would like this too. I think we don’t have a way to store that information on your character though.

Josh Foreman.8250:

The way things work in SAB is, like the engine compromises, are not the way I would design this thing if it wasn’t part of GW2. There are so many issues that come with building this in an MMO, the amount of logistics we have to deal with is a nightmare. I would love nothing more than to let you go back to your last check point.

Hopefully they will find a way around it in the future, but at least we know it wasn’t intended

TFMurphy.5136:

there is a suggestion we can make in the meantime: party up. You don’t need a full party of 5, but if at least one other player is in there with you (and doesn’t get kicked at the same time), then you can rejoin the instance pretty painlessly, straight back at the last checkpoint unlocked.

This unfortunately doesn’t work for trib mode, that was implemented on purpose to prevent piggy-backing (since a unique skin is tied to the completion of trib mode.) But for normal mode that is a solid suggestion.

Combat log changes are what have me most excited. Hopefully now I’ll be able to see how much I heal for. When I was trying to build a life steal necro a while back and I had 4 or 5 sources of of on hit/on crit healing, there was no real way for me to track all those tiny green numbers. I’m cautiously optimistic about bloodline trait changes, but “being improved” doesn’t really tell me anything, last time we were promised improvements we got terrible hp scaling on on trait. This is at least better than being in the dark until patch day. But I still want numbers! (Even just speculative numbers!)

She didn’t imply in her post that the way her group did it was the best or most efficient way. She was sharing what her team used to succesfully take down the boss. If her group decided they wanted to do it this slower way, because it felt safer to them, that seems ok. She even said she’d liked to try other strats in the future. The snide remark assuming she would be opposed to your suggestion of how she could do it different was, in my mind, unnecessary. I get that there is a history here and forum regulars are sick to death of this topic, but it seemed a bit harsh.

Congrats on finishing the path, Miaire. Good luck with your more optimized runs in the future.

Anet won’t respond for the simple fact that his video includes leaked, “speculative” patch notes. It’s the same reason all the leaked patch notes threads were closed. There may be some uncomfortable questions in that video, but they’re unwillingness to respond comes down to forum rules. If the video had been constructed in a way that did not include things that should not be publicly accessible, anet might respond. If his rant was well structured and less abrasive, a response would be much more likely.

Maybe something “melee zerker only, please know the path”.

We’ve tried to get a post stickied, but to no avail :/

The reflect method is definently doable in a pug. We did it with 2 mes / guard / 2 necros. With 2 time warps and chain reflects, we made it though by the skin of our teeth. Just make sure everyone is actually using their melee weapon and not just stacking in melee range, and decide before the boss in what order you’ll chain reflects/time warps. Remind everyone to stand inside wall of reflect, and you should be good to go. Eles and thieves in pugs sometimes don’t realize they have reflects, remind them and they can supplement the reflect rotation.

The real limiting factor I find with this method in pugs is not so much reflect rotation, but dps. You’ll get mesmers running defensive staff condi builds, rangers camping long bow (in one of my failed attempts we had a ranger refuse to use a melee weapon because. In his words, he’s a "range"r). You’ll need to judge the dps level of the group as your going through. If its a pretty fast and smooth run, attempt the reflect method If not, kite for your life.

I don’t know if speculative feedback was really wanted for this – and I expect it’s because they knew it would be controversial. The full details of the buff were released something like 3 weeks before its release? No time at all to make any substantive change. We will just have to see how it plays out – its less than a week before release, nothing will be altered at this point. If it does end up a disaster, we can all say “I told you so”, or maybe we’ll all be plesantly surprised. At this point, since the mechanic will go in regardless, it’s probably better to save our arguing till we see what the actual effects are, rather than what we guess they will be.

+1 to this. As far as we know, no-one has gotten the achievement, and it’s been a week and a half. It’s possible that there’s some hidden nook that has yet to be explored, but at this point it seems unlikely.

Even if we can’t convince him of the snowball argument, couldn’t we have the buff effect siege/npcs/towers, rather than players? To me that’s still a decent incentive to go for the points, and in puts the focus on structures rather than player kills, which is what this game mode is about…? If you buy into the snowball problem this will probably be just as bad, but assuming that Devon doesn’t this could be a potential solution – it provides a statistical/tactical advantage without sacrificing duels/fight clubs/gvgs.

I really wish there was a counter for the baubles – I can only imagine this is a technical limitation rather than a design decision. Added to the fact that the achievement won’t register until you kill the final boss, so you have to do the whole level over if you happen to miss one, it makes pinning down if this is a bug or user error much more difficult.

They probably don’t know if this is a bug yet – especially if the case that your number lists one short. It could be that one didn’t register (and they would need to figure out which of all those baubles aren’t registering), a bauble is unintentionally inaccessible, maybe there’s an issue with the final boss chest. Or, maybe everyone is just missing one. The feedback in this subforum has been really good so far, so I think we need to have a little faith that they are working to try and entangle a tough issue.

But yeah, it is really frustrating. :/

Maybe the pugs I run into have really poor dps then (I run zerker with rubies), and yeah, most of them are afraid to melee.

Out of curiosity, how did you set the traps solo? Did you kite the boss and then lift the slime when they were in the trap radius?

It’s a DPS check, in a sense. While I think it was part of the intended mechanic that you be able to set traps while the boss is aggro’d, it’s fully possible to kill him in 3 traps (which can be set without aggroing).

If you have a decent amount of dps, it should take no more than 4, maybe 5 traps. After the first 3, all you need is 1 other person pulling globs with you while the 3 others kite. Agree on who will do this before hand, and decide wo will pull and who will lift.

If he does reset, you can simply try again (he doesn’t reset in a state that makes it more difficult the the second time, like TAkitten) Explain what went wrong, if it wasn’t obvious, and give it another go. If you aren’t in voip it might take a second attempt to get use to pulling with the other person in a timely manner, but it’s definently not impossible.

It’s an uphill battle sometimes if your running with a group of 4 who’ve never done that path – but that goes for any non-face roll path. People expect it to be like part 3 where you just stack in a pillar and mindlessly dps. They get presented with an interesting mechanic that requires some thought, and they resent having to turn their brains on. And to be fair, setting traps can be kind of tedious. But with one other competent person and 3 other decent players who can dodge, this boss is totally doable.

If you are pugging, I think you’ll find it’s a small percentage of players who will kick you. Most players who are concerned about party composition will run with a guild group, or will ask specifically in the post which classes they want or don’t want. I’ve never been kicked from a party on my necro – that’s not to say it doesn’t happen, but I think it’s pretty rare.

When people say “I can never get a group for such and such” I just wonder, have you actually tried? Or have you read a few of the forum posts here and assumed its impossible? You can’t play as a condition necromancer and expect to get into a highly optimized speed running group, but you can easily find a pug group.

And the issue is not so much with the class, it’s the broken condi system and “unshakeable” on bosses. Until anet can make debuffing and condition damage relevant, necros will probably continue to be low man on the totem pole in a dungon setting.

Sometimes, I will spend a half hour or so justing running around mining nodes, getting pois on an alt, cooling down after a 5v20 battle.

If 20 people in my guild did that same thing over the course of a week, this would be the equivalent detriment to the sever of a GvG (potententially taking up que slots and not contributing to ppt). When we talk about the “huge impact” of GvGs, I think we need to keep it in perspective.

The only thing GvG players have asked for in terms of WvW is to not have the new orb mechanic include a stat bonus. Bare in mind it’s not just GvG players who are worried about this stat buff – there are legitimate concerns about snowballing, and the effect it could have on duels (a feature sorely lacking in pve). There have been many reasonable alternatives proposed, such as voluntary buff removal, or changing the buff to effect magic find/karma or Npcs/structures/siege.

GvG players would welcome their own map and game mode, but currently there seems to be no move on anet’s part to develop it. They also see wvw development preceding in a direction that discourages open field battles and encourages pvd. Some of the backlash has been a bit over the top, but the frustration comes from a genuine love and passion for the game. They dont want to see an exciting new community driven scene singlehanded squashed by the bloodlust change, if there might be a slightly different change that would be just as good for wvw.

Antediluvian.5169:

How did this thread reach 1k+ posts..
If you die for any reason other than technical problems/bugs it’s your own kitten ed fault. You don’t have skill. Get better at the game or suffer.
End of story.

There were a number of technical problems/bugs. (Josh admitted that the geysers were bugged and in his words were “terribad”.) Many posts are documenting bugged areas, or areas that are too unforgiving to any amount of latency. A lot of the posts complaining about “nerfs” have not looked at the changes in the context of the dialogue going on in this thread.

Watch video guides to the dungeons – Strife’s are the one’s I used. I also read the wiki guide, but that might have been overkill. If you have done other dungeons and understand the basics of PvE combat, you should be fine. Look for an LFG post that isn’t asking for experienced only. Disclaim at the beginning that this is your first time through. If you go in with a full knowledge of the path, are willing to listen closely and take advice, and know how to use you class in a dungeon setting, you’ll be better than 90% of first time pug Arah runners. I pugged my way through all 4 paths, and never had any issues keeping up. Most of the time, in fact, I wasn’t the only newbie.

It would “completely invalidate the whole point”… Can I ask (in a non sarcastic way, I know the tone is a little heated in here) what that point is? What is the point, that necessitates a manditory buff. Why does the buff become worthless If there was the option to temporarily disable it? Surely the point is simply to give an advantage to your server, but if I wouldn’t begrudge someone if they wanted to disable the buff for a quick duel. I fail to see how that would “completely invalidate” the purpose of the buff. Maybe I’m missing something.

The shortcut eagle is there for people who explore, and go off the beaten path. He’s actually a lot easier to find then the short cut worm.

To the ninjas – it took me a while to figure out but the hitbox on their sword is deceptively long, but also very narrow. They punish you for running away, but if you engage them head on, strafing to the side to dodge, you can usually get them down no problem. IIRC there are only a few places where you take on two at once, and never more than that. Many of them you can just run past.

There are a few dart traps that are obvious trolls (There’s one outside the toad room wedged right behind a pillar, which I guess is technically visible >_>) but in the places they are most present you have time to go very slowly and spot them all. The gong run was the only part that felt more like trib mode then normal, but they nerfed that in the last patch and you can still cheese it. (Kill yourself and wait for the gong at the bottom).

It is way to long for one sitting. Fortunently the developer has said that in future he will make the main routes shorter with more alternate routes for people who like to explore.

+1
easy solution, it would save a lot of informal pvp events and change nothing about the new mechanic.

Maybe this has been suggested before, but they NEED to make the buff something that you can claim, either at spawn or at the capture point, until/if ever they make a GvG dedicated game mode. It wouldn’t take anything away from the mechanic, and it would save GvGs. If the buff goes in as stated currently, I don’t see how GvG could continue to exist at all.

Softspoken.2410:

Kinda disappointed in how people are taking that comment. It was in response to the suggestion that they should add more profession keys to the Ranger. (Ostensibly to control the pet?) Super brought up Elementalists as an example of a profession that already deals with a lot of profession keys, and J Sharp pointed to beginning players (Which I think he was taking PvE as a short-hand for, which is fair enough considering beginners probably play in PvE more than any other mode) will stick to two elements and not use all four because the reward isn’t there for the difficulty of juggling those other attunements. It wasn’t a statement that that’s how you play an elementalist effectively, or even that that’s how an elementalist should play.

Again, this was about skill floor and UI clutter for the ranger. Given how much focus ArenaNet as a whole has put on keeping both of those down, you have to have an exceptionally good pitch to convince them to add more buttons to the UI for any profession.

[/whiteknight]

I think there is some amount of over-reaction going on, but I still don’t understand what he was trying to convey from that statement. (In a genuinely confused way, not a sarcastic wth was he thinking way). The argument seems goes something like this – Q: should rangers have more micro? There are already classes in the game that require this like elementalist. A: Beginner elementalist’s only use 2 attunments, it’s difficult for them to play with all 4.

So….what? Is he saying that elementalist’s skill floor is to high? If newbies can use 2 out of 4 attunments and still get good results, I don’t think that’s a fair assesment. Introducing levels of complexity is only a problem for skill floor if you must play in that complex way to be effective. Elementalist is actually a very good analogy for ranger – a newbie ranger in pve would still be effective without micro’ing the pet, but the truly skilled rangers would be rewarded for knowing their class inside and out.

The compelling argument for pet micro, in my mind, is that rangers at the moment are (at least perceived to be) rewarded to highly for passive play. Letting the “petting zoo” do a lot of the heavy lifting. If the pet could be more directly controlled, become more an extension of the ranger rather than just one more ai minion (more fitting to the class concept, I think), good rangers would have access to a much more active style of combat. This would require a lot of reworking, however, and might be a challenge to balance, which I think is the real reason rangers will not see this sort of change.

LeXtruX.9183:

… almost no groups can be found to actually run the kitten dungeon enough to get the needed tokens…

Give me twenty minutes and ill find you a group for at least 2 paths of any of the dungeons on gw2lfg. I don’t know where you got this impression, but it’s simply false.

Dungeon armor is a dungeon reward, not a themed skin. It’s one of the few things left in the game you have to actually do content to get. This is like asking if you could buy the fractal capacitor skin – obviously not, it’s there to represent the work put in to doing fractals. The dungeons are not the same level of work, but it’s the same idea.

…farming multiple dungeons over and over again to have the stats of, for example, Citadel of Flame for the beserker stats

No stat combination is dungeon exclusive, the only thing you “need” to farm for is the skins.

From this interview with Colin Johanson -

“How do you feel about the dungeons right now?” I ask slowly, glancing at the sprawling Reddit thread that came up earlier that day. “With the speed runs, the full berserker sets, people breaking the system and, well, y’know.”

“No matter what we do, there will always be a group of players who try to min-max any game that’s ever made and they try to find the fastest, most rewarding way to play it with the best composition of skills and party members that they can possibly get to acquire the most rewards possible.”

The shrug is almost physical. “And I don’t think you really can ever do anything to do that. It’s just the inherent nature of certain players in the game.”

Anet balances for pvp, and sometimes will arbitrarily assign a change to be pvp only. Consider that their most popular living story update is a mini game in which all of your class and weapon skills are removed – they just don’t know how to make pve interesting.

Can you salvage them? If I could get a few ectos out of it at least that’s something :/.

I totally agree with Lasur’s post above. Playing zone 2, I’m getting nostalgia for spyro. I remember there was this one jump you had to glide around a wall totally blind, and if you didn’t start the glide at the very top of your jump you fall in lava. I died over and over, but when I finally got it the feeling was amazing. I can’t count the number of times I got knocked off a cliff by all sorts of enemies. The trolling aspect was actually one of the most memorable and fun parts of the game – the egg thieves constantly taunting you, the wizards who would bait you into a charge and then raise the ground up from under them and then laugh their butts off. It was funny, you had to think to deal with enemies, and often you’d have to come back later when you actually had the tools to deal with them – but that made killing them so much more rewarding.

What I want to point out is this – these levels are bringing back some of the best memories I have of gaming – spyro, Zelda, etc. I get that vibe from it and its a ton of fun, such a breath of fresh air from the Zerg fest of the scarlet invasions. The only problems I have are related to the limitations of the game engine, and by and large those are small. With a few bug fixes, and hopefully a look at putting in more frequent resume points in the future, this is absolutely a great step forward for SAB. I hope that message is getting across

This has been stated before, I just wanted to put in my +1 i suppose – the big levels are great, but the lack of a proper checkpoint system (such that you can resume midway through a level) is problematic.

I just spent about 20 lives in the gong pagoda, most of my deaths were standing off a platform slightly (the way you have to do in the rapids level to hit some of the crocs) and dying to dart traps that are situated horizontally. Then, literally as i am standing next to the gong, I get DC’d. Hours of work, and I have to start again at ground zero. If you can’t save checkpoints on the character, then I think you’ve got to design the levels with that limitation in mind. This is probably not something that can be fixed for this SAB, but going forward I think there needs to be a better way to split up the levels, with more resume points.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Is this issue (dying randomly and getting pushed off rocks constantly) happening to you? If so, is it happening as frequently as this video shows? If this is anything more than an edge case than we have a serious problem that will necessitate some serious solution. Thanks for pointing it out.

I didn’t die randomly in Zorld 2, but I can confirm I was knocked back in exactly the same spots in zone one – every single one. I remember thinking at the time, I wish I was recording this to see what I was doing wrong, because at times I felt totally powerless to the RNG of the knockback.

Twice I was also knocked back behind the waterfall – once at the first waterfall (the one part that spills off into the abyss) and the second right under the crocodile. (See pictures below) Fortunetly I was able to get myself unstuck, but that combined with the random knockbacks and the flowers really soured an otherwise awesome level.

I really do appreciate you’re trying to get a rhino in a tutu here in terms of this engine, and I don’t want to point these things out just to harp on and on about it. I want to document instances that seemed a little funky, and figure out if they were player error, a bug, or just a quirk that we have to live with. But believe me when I say, the cool design of your level still shines through – I wouldn’t be here trying to fix the experience for others if I didn’t think it was worth fixing.

This issue is as old as fractals, and they’ve only implemented more time gating since then. Don’t expect it to change anytime soon.

anzenketh.3759:

rfdarko.4639:

So SOAC gaming threads – which are just links to the twitch streams – should be moved out of the class subforums and into links vile? That’s just one example – the rule is too vague, and is not enforced consistently enough to justify moving helseths thread for that reason alone.

I do think consistency is a problem. Not much they can do though they are outmanned.

Well, now that they have seen this specific example, will they move those threads to linksville? Those threads that have much less discussion then helseths threads, they are literally just ads for the soac gaming podcast, will they now get moved? I doubt it. Maybe that’s more an indication of the lack of moderation in the profession/ dungeon forums (which, mods, please stick your nose in the dungeon forums once in a while, the inmates are running the asylum over there). But I don’t really blame anyone for questioning the motives behind the move, when the excuse is a rule that is so infrequently enforced. Perhaps going forward they will be more consistent.

Arty.3261:

Never had issues with bugs or hitting targets. Get better at the game and enjoy challenging content for once.

This is a fallacy – “I didn’t encounter any bugs, so they must not exist.” take a look at lanser’s video above, and tell me if you still feel the same way. Overcoming a challenging puzzle is rewarding, but fighting with the game engine is not. If you were fortunate enough not to encounter any clipping/camera/lag issues, then that’s good for you. That doesn’t mean everyone else had the same experience.

So SOAC gaming threads – which are just links to the twitch streams – should be moved out of the class subforums and into links vile? That’s just one example – the rule is too vague, and is not enforced consistently enough to justify moving helseths thread for that reason alone.

Lanser.8520:

I have now documented the plethora of random and unjustified deaths.

Watch me die to literally nothing multiple times. I’m not sure if its lag or something else, but this is just ridiculous.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9-aUFHIt7c

90% of those deaths I have no idea what happened, but to the gysers specifically – it seems that if you are jumping off as the gyser disappears, it will knock you back. For the longest time i thought it was invisible fish, but after some testing I found that as long as you are not directly above the gyser when it disappears, it shouldn’t knock you back. Those deaths in zone 2 though… :/

That’s an interesting video by wooden potatoes, but it has nothing to do with the subject of this thread – which is the difficulty and/or glitchy nature of world 2 on normal mode, specifically zones 1 and 2. The merits of tribulation mode’s “trolling” level of difficulty is being discussed here – https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/sab-bts/Tribulation-Mode-I-am-ready/first

To further illustrate the point : http://youtu.be/J9-aUFHIt7c

It’s not difficulty, it’s not even lag, it’s terrible detection. If Josh can watch this and claim everything is fine with the hit detection and the player was at fault in each case, then I really don’t know what to say.

Let me describe 2 specific instances in zone one where I feel a mechanic did not fit with normal mode.

At the geysers, if you are jumping off one as it disappears, it will knock you back mid air. For a long time, I thought it was the flying fish that I just couldn’t see, but after 20 or so tries, I figures out what the real issue was. Even after that getting the timing right felt really random. Something this unituitive i only expected to find in tribulation mode. If you could make it so the only time you get knocked back was when you hit the “groundlevel” water, not mid air as the geyser disappears, I believe that would eliviate most of the frustration with this part of zone one.

Second, the flowers. Specifically the one right before the final boss. I only died twice to the boss himself, both of those were simply learning that I couldn’t single dodge through his lazers – fair enough. I died at least 10 times to the flowers – jumping very consistanly, but being thrown too far or too short. I remember there was some to-do when this mechanic was introduced in the aetherblade jumping puzzle, and I was surprised to see it here. It’s an interesting idea, but any amount of lag makes it unbelievably frustrating. I don’t know if it will ever work well in this game engine.

Overall I enjoyed zone one, but those two aspects specifically really colored the experience for me.

Fractals splinters people based on how much AR you have….

SAB has 3 modes. Dunno if that’s totally analogous but I don’t buy into the argument that providing a “super hard mode” would fracture the community that much. If anything we could use some separation. Right now we have clerics gear staff guardians running with zerker speed runners, because practically speaking there is one difficulty level – and both sides end up frustrated.

I suspect the real answer is they don’t have the man power to develop hard modes for the dungeons since the living story cannibalized the dungeon team. They’d rather spend their time making solo challenges for their massively multiplayer online game instead of developing group content. ie, guantlet, and SAB (“I imagine most Tribulation Mode play will happen solo.” – Josh Foreman) But that’s nothing we didn’t know already I guess.

I like it – I’m not a big fan of flashy footfalls or auras – there are plenty of legendaries that do that. This I think brought it up to standard while still keeping it understated.

Murth.5637:

They could’ve just kept the 3 they removed. But then again the early ppl wouldnt have gotten the essence of luick for completing the monthly.

So then just mail it to the people who already completed their monthly.

The issue is more the removal of progress for the monthly, with no warning. The fact that those who finished are getting double monthly rewards is just salt in the wound.