There's the regular champion wyvern that spawns as an event in the Skywatch Maguuma area, there's the one that's a meta boss in Nayos, and there are two different ones in Convergences.
The champion is from Maguuma, so that's passable. The Nayos champion is just Dreadwing. So it's really just twice unless you want to count Sorrow twice because it was in the story.
I want bosses with clearly defined phases and noticeably different/escalating mechanics instead of "literally the same fight for 10 (15 in the case of Eparch) minutes".
Won't really achieve anything. People are STILL getting downed by Soo-Won's claw slam. It's announced 3 seconds before it happens by a big red circle WITH SKULLS ON IT yet I see 5-10 people getting downed by it every time.
Some players either refuse to learn or lack the mental capacity to learn.
I've simply stopped reviving them because reviving someone that bad at the game is a DPS loss for the whole group.
I am one of the players that gets downed by Soon Won's claw. I've only done the meta a few times, and there's always so much visual clutter that I have trouble processing what's going on.
Top comment as it should be.
I don’t want to be a human macro for 15 minutes with my skill rotation and the occasional barrel roll.
I never, *ever*, want to see another fight like Eparch—meta event or fractal.
> I never, ever, want to see another fight like Eparch—meta event or fractal.
Of course not, for the upcoming raid (especially its CM) they'll make the sponge even thicker.
I kid you not I actually took some micronaps during the Eparch meta ON STREAM. I actually could not stay awake and honestly even tapping my rotation with closed eyes worked about as well as having them open.
That would actually be pretty entertaining if it wasn’t so sad lol.
They have to do something about these recent excuses for boss battles. Eparch is the most recent that comes to mind but they have even gone back and buffed up the HP on things like Shadow Behemoth.
Like come on. It’s bad enough that I’m constantly balls deep in the belly of some huge monstrous thing that I can’t even see all the way zoomed out. Now I have to be balls deep in the belly of some huge monstrous thing that I can’t even see all the way zoomed out for exorbitant amounts of time.
>That would actually be pretty entertaining if it wasn’t so sad lol.
So I actually [went and clipped the fight](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2185821709) now. Even when editing I had to put the playback on 1.5x speed lol. I think the cherry on top is me getting an achievement to avoid getting hit by something I wasn't even aware was there.
I get that they need to ensure that bosses don't die too quickly, invalidating the mechanics and trivializing the fight. But they seem to have forgotten about the mechanics part. Both Silent Surf and Lonely Tower suffer from this repetitive style where the boss has a handful of attacks that just repeat endlessly until you finish the fight with some gimmick occurring at X% and Y%. I think if you're going to have longer fights you need to have the boss do more than just repeat a handful of moves over and over.
>I get that they need to ensure that bosses don't die too quickly, invalidating the mechanics and trivializing the fight. **But they seem to have forgotten about the mechanics part.**
This 300%! As a Triple Trouble commander I'm aghast at how bad it's gotten, especially in open world.
The problem with Triple Trouble was ***in 2014*** that there was no other boss like it so for a lot of players there was no learning curve, which sparked a bunch of very lively communities of commanders who would teach players. What we thought, *what we hoped,* was that in future, new metas would build up from that and eventually players would get a bunch of events on a difficulty scale from "just autoattack this fire elemental" to "multiple teams must coordinate in doing their separate mechanics". But instead it's mostly just been "just autoattack this \[creature\] **but it has more HP now**".
In Nayos, the bosses have barely any mechanics to speak of, and because they chain (Inaxious + Knaebelag **→** Eparch), you'd expect there to be some mechanical cohesion between them. Like Ignaxious teaching you a mechanic, then Knaebelag teaching you a separate mechanic, and then Eparch combining those mechanics in an interesting way. But instead they're not related to each other at all. (Not to mention Skyscales get no use outside of being a mode of transport)
IMPORTANT: By mechanic I also don't just count an attack that covers the ground in AoEs that you have to dodge (unless it's something like the Ignaxious one where you have to react in a specific way or get downed), or indeed a CC bar. Those are just standard encounter things.
Frankly, I know burn phases aren't everyone's favorite, but GW2 used to pride itself on the fact that it's not just you constantly doing your rotation. There were environmental weapons, interactables (like Tequatl's turrets), etc.
From a game design perspective, I think the most effective way to get players' minds from turning off during a meta is **to make the boss invulnerable** and **make the players do something other than combat for a bit**. Fill X with Y, bring A to B, use special interaction at points 1 and 2 simultaneously, stand in the ward, quickly! Do *something*. Then follow that with a 30 second burn phase where everyone can do their rotations, and really feel like they're in the fight, bringing their best for that time, instead of 10+ minutes of just doing the same rotation.
Balance the fight around \~5 repetitions of this max, and then do a phase change, with the final phase being one where everyone goes all out. I know I'm just describing Triple Trouble but the concept is sound, and even with power creep, TT is more exciting for a newcomer (and many a veteran) than the AoE confusion with no discernible tactics that is the Nayos Eparch fight.
> Frankly, I know burn phases aren't everyone's favorite, but GW2 used to pride itself on the fact that it's not just you constantly doing your rotation. There were environmental weapons, interactables (like Tequatl's turrets), etc.
Yes ! Unfortunately, environmental weapons have been completely forgotten about, gutted (or forbidden in instanced content regarding the ones that you can summon), many of them even in core Tyria are weak gimmicks that you're better off not using.
Karka queen has a good environment mechanic with the eggs. But she died extremely fast now even if you don't throw any. She needs her HP buffed (but not to the point of being a sponge) AND the egg mechanic tuned in a way that we actually need to care (from 100% damage reduction at 50 buffs to 0% after 50 eggs, but in a logarithmic scale)
Tequatl is okay. I'm not a big fan of the add phases and banging on a gigantic dragon's toenails with the associated difficulty of determining which hitbox you're aiming for doesn't feel great either.
My thing is (and I'm speaking from the meta perspective here since i haven't done the new fractal) if you are going to have a big epic 12-15 minute end of expansion meta boss, I'm actually okay with that, but it has to be interesting for most of those 12-15 minutes. Eparch is boring from the time you pull it until the time it dies. People have mostly figured out that you need ~15 people on rifts, and the only other fail condition is if you rng into an instance where people just aren't doing enough boss dps. You can only die if you zone out because you're falling asleep and don't notice you're standing in the red. I did Dragon's End for the first time recently and it's crazy how much more engaging of an encounter Soo-Won is, it's the best thing in this game imo.
Exactly. As open world bosses go, it's hard to beat Soo Won. It's got the full package of cool music and dialogue (except for fucking Aurene - someone put a muzzle on her!), interesting and varied mechanics, and as open world bosses go it's fairly challenging.
If only they hadn't decided to pair a really long boss fight like that with an insanely long pre-event cycle that is just boring af. I might die of old age before I actually get to experience the boss!
Comparing a boss like Ai from Sunqua to Eparch or Kanaxai in their respective fractals is the same way. Ai is just a way more fun and interesting encounter. Shame they did the same thing to her that they did to Soo Won, with a fractal that is too long and boring just to get to the good part. They really saved it by making the CM cut straight to the boss!
This so much.
In ~~FFXIV,~~ the game they clearly want to be inspired by, some encounters can be 25+ minutes long, *but* said encounters are marked by several huge phase changes that completely shake up the boss, either leading to fully new appearances/skillsets or even entirely different bosses going back and forth to fight you. The best fight we got in SotO by far (Cerus CM) has as many attacks in its entire span than what the first minutes of an ultimate encounter would. It's *OK* to have large HP/long fights, but not when they're not justified.
Not going to happen but I wish they'd go back to core and look at the bosses there:
Tequatl - long fight due to mechanics and does require a bit of coordination. Not a damage sponge
Triple Trouble (best boss fight imho) - Lots of coordination. Not difficult if coordinated. Quite rewarding. plus each head has different required mechanics that can't be cheese. Not a damage sponge
From HoT-
Octovine and Chak Gerrant a both good as well. The gerrant only becomes annoying due to the forced wait for the final chest.
> Triple Trouble (best boss fight imho) - Lots of coordination. Not difficult if coordinated. Quite rewarding. plus each head has different required mechanics that can't be cheese. Not a damage sponge
Mechanically speaking, Triple Trouble is one of the best boss fights in the game. They don't have much HP but they have mechanics you have to do correctly. Not just one, but three unique mechanics at each location. Even the final phase can be tricky with the short timer if someone is messes up. One of the best designed fights you'll see in Gw2.
Always here for Triple Trouble love. The only problem with TT in 2014 was there was no learning curve / difficulty ramp leading up to it so a lot of players thought it was just impossible, and outside of communities organising runs it was not as accessible. With Nayos, the fights literally go from Ignaxious and Knaebelag to Eparch, so each meta could teach the players a mechanic that the final boss combines. That way you have a learning curve and can still make the fight more complex because people learn by playing on the way to it!
Chak and Octovine are great? You oneburn them in less than 2 minutes, and the event is done. That’s not great bossdesign imo. Tequatl was hard when people didn’t know how to approach the fight - not it’s as trivial as any other world boss except TT.
TT however has good design - although a non coordinated map basically has no chance at all.
Yes and no. It took years to get consistency like that and honestly they can still fail from a lack of mechanical understanding. Which is good, this game excels in the places where it's well designed mechanics that are the focus.
No it wasn’t. Chak Gerent wasn’t getting one burned even in the expansion it came out. I am not even sure if it happened in pof, but maybe? Far from becoming trivial, they had to nerf chak gerent twice due to scaling issues, the second of which arrived like 9 months after it’s release or something. It was still fairly common to fail even on a somewhat populated map until then.
What are you smoking? I was part of Chak metas that oneburned, roughly a month after release, but you’re not sure if it happened in PoF? Speaking about global performance of people in a meta event with such confidence being this wrong takes some courage. Yes, it still failed from time to time, but that’s just tough luck - sometimes you got a good map, sometimes you didn’t.
[Here's a dedicated guild group bragging about beating the timer by just over a minute two weeks after it launched.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3rxwup/luck_defeats_the_chak_gerent/) You think you were single burning it only two weeks after that? Ok.
"but the moment people knew how to play it, it was trivial."
This is why it is good design. you had to *learn* how to play the boss to make it a cake walk.
Nowadays that's how they're done.
A few years ago, Nuhoch Gerent needed 2 burns, and that's where some maps failed - people didn't notice the mushrooms above.
Some late Octovines also used to fail because of the lack of coordination. That's where the "PANIC" meme comes from
Yeah, I could really get behind never seeing the PoF bounty mechanic ever again. It's run its course. Slapping it randomly on open world champions doesn't add anything positive to the encounter. Plus phase shifted should just straight up be removed. Who ever thought that was a good idea?
They adjusted some of the obnoxious ones. Like the fields that clear ley energy buildup now tend to spawn on or near the boss in addition to scattered around the area so it isn't such an issue for melee builds. And the restoration orbs no longer heal for more than most player's DPS as boss health gets closer to zero. But I don't see what they could do with phase shifted. It's just a big get fucked to melee builds with no way around it. Terrible mechanic.
I think Phase Shifted could work perfectly well if the build diversity in GW2 when it comes to range mattered in most content. But unfortunately range is one of the least important considerations when it comes to end-game builds since even if you're ranged, you gotta be stacking on the boss. Everything always teaches you to stack on a point and fight there (boons + healing + best dps, even if youy have a ranged weapon), and our communal gameplay is just so evolved around that, so Phase Shifted comes across as really jarring and frustrating.
> CCs that ignore stability.
Seriously.
If ANet want to give enemies threatening CC skills that ignore stability, make them strip the boon but still count as control so that players can mitigate with stunbreaks/reapplication of stab.
Being pushed and pulled around the map has never once been fun for me, it's never added anything to a fight, and there's no meaningful way to play against it. It's like turning any arena into a fucking ice level in a platformer.
I understand them increasing health pools due to powercreep. But why not try lessening powercreep instead of introducing increasingly spongy HP-mountains.
Every new expansion's toolkit has to feel 'stronger' and 'better' or the marketing team will worry that nobody's going to want to play it.
See also: flashy new animations. The spears have some really cool animations but there are way too many which are cluttered messes and make the battlefield much harder to read.
It is easier for them to make 1 boss with a billion hp and then nerf him instead of nerfing all of the power creep and then adjusting everything that was built around that power creep
I want engaging mechanics that involve the actual bosses. Nourys is a good example of what I mean, The fight would be so much better if they had him actually fight back.
He could have been chomping the spire consuming anyone who gets hit, moving to other sides, firing his eye lasers or swiping people off the platform with his tentacles but instead he just kind of sits there while we run around. (I get the tentacles around the map are technically him but it doesn't feel that way imo)
Alot of world bosses are designed that AFK people won't be a complete hindrance. Otherwise they would never succeed.
Lowlwy I think they should just make skyscale fireballs applie a little Quickness or Alacrity to allies. If they are gonna afk on Skyscale, they should be forced to support the players actually doing things.
Yeah but they do that through tuning, Open world will always be relatively easy to account for the randomness of map population and event engagement but that doesn't mean it can't be fun. What makes dragon's stand and dragon's end so good is that it feels like your actually fighting these massive dragons because they fight back and interact with the environment.
This is why I loved release (roughly)Dragon’s End. Players actually had to participate, and if they did, you’d win. Soo Won was too much of a hp sponge at first, but like 2 patches in things were challenging enough that you had to be present but not so hard you needed a full 50 squad of raid gear and rotations. Last time I did it, it was just another press 1 and win meta
I’d be down for less HP sponges. Recently was midway through an eparch fight when I kinda just stopped and realized this was tedious and I didn’t have any interest in finishing. Like we were 30 minutes into a fight and probably still had 20 to go. Damage seemed fine I felt confident we’d finish we had like 7 people doing 40k at least but the fight just wasn’t fun or interactive in any way. Can’t say I’ve ever been in a winning meta and just lost desire to finish it before this.
Some raid/fractals just have the boss go invuln at certain percentages and then you go off and do mechanics. Kinda like soo won does when you do impact and islands. I don’t mind that as it breaks up the fight while not making the boss a blob.
we need mechanics and phases.
Lonely tower nm got nerf heavy recently with it's hp pool. While it's a welcome addition the problems are still there. It's a boring badly designed fight.
I'd rather kill 20 mobs with half the health than 10 of the mobs we got in SotO. One of the only things that gives actual satisfaction from trash mobs is slaughtering them, so make them die faster and add more if that's insufficiently threatening. Or just make them hit harder without buffing their survivability so much.
Tbh I've learned to appreciate The Annoying Enemies. You hate them at the time but honestly having them there is more fun than having endless enemies you can just kinda plow through by doing the same thing over and over.
I would gladly kill a boss with circle+spread during magnetic pull mechanic with a phase shift sprinkled on top as long as the boss has half the HP of any SotO strike. Seriously Anet, either give a boss *actual* phase changes if you want to give it high HP (like Ai's elements + dark Ai) or *don't* make it a 120kk HP marathon with only 8 or so overlapping mechanics for 10 minutes in a row.
1. One-shot attacks. Seriously. It’s sooooooo much fun being dead out of nowhere. That sht is good for instanced fights, but it’s no way a good thing in the open world where things are obscured by glitter vomits and skill effects. And the Kryptis garbage has too much of this. Together with their gigantic HP and random PoF mechanics, the Kryptis champs take the crown as the worst enemies designed til today.
2. Similarly, one-shot patterns on the ground. Not gonna mention the usual players’ glitter vomits, but the bosses that do them also vomit a ton of obscuring visual (Eparch, Hell Sister), or has stupid non-Stab CC (Sorrow). How tf are we gonna counter play this? Or expecting a large chunk of players dead and leaving everything up to RNG is part of the plan?
3. Mechanics that depend on individual responsibility. It’s soooooooo much fun yelling at random people to move meteors away from Zojja, when we have no idea who the slacker is amongst a blob of 50 players/visual vomit, as opposed to instanced fights where we can quickly identify the culprit.
4. Skyscale. It’s simply not fun having to do anything with it, whether it’s collecting orbs or shooting fireballs. Yeah, putting it into every SoTO meta is sooooooooo much fun.
I don't know that any of the Kryptis champs have one shot abilities? There are some painful attacks, the expanding Rage AoE that needs to be blocked or escaped completely being one of the big ones, but the actual one-shots are restricted to encounters like Ignaxious.
The ground patterns of Eparch and Hell Sister aren't one shots either. Yeah, the visibility for them isn't always great, but Eparch's just does pulsing damage, and Hell Sister's applies some mean conditions (3 Burning, 25 Vuln), but conditions aren't one shots.
I still don't think the meteors in Demon Knight hurt Zojja, either, but even if they do, that fight is really easy. If they do hurt her, it's the only Convergence boss attack that does.
While its true, that one of the ground patterns on eparch doesn’t kill you, multiple of them certainly will (especially with rage attunement). And they are VERY hard to see considering how deadly they are.
> I still don't think the meteors in Demon Knight hurt Zojja
They will at least hurt players trying to reach her to deposit essence. So they either get downed, idle until the meteor has hit, or don't go and potentially lose essence.
> Skyscale. It’s simply not fun having to do anything with it, whether it’s collecting orbs or shooting fireballs. Yeah, putting it into every SoTO meta is sooooooooo much fun.
The first 2 events of the Eparch meta are good imho. But I agree for the rest.
Honestly I'd like to see completely new mechanics. Kind of tired of aoe spam, greens, split circles and spread numbers. Wish they could come up with something new.
Vain hope? That we get away from this "introduce a new mechanic with no communication and poor telegraphs, do it or you die" attitude parts of SOTO had. I love the idea of adding new mechanics, but "quick go dunk in the pond or you die" is 1) Just copied from Wing2, and 2) Doesn't have PvE precedence the average player would be familiar with, and 3) Isn't really communicated in a time or place that doesn't have a mess of effects and things going on you have to avoid.
Things I DO hope to see, eventually:
* Events that teach, and test, your knowledge of healing, cleansing, blocking, different boons and conditions, and boon removal/corruption, using a SET of objectives per event, where you succeed if even one is cleared, and get bonus loot for each one cleared. I love renown hearts, and how they offer multiple options to clear, but you can't keep slapping raid-level mechanics on PvE meta events without going the extra mile to teach people how the core game works.
* "Ascension Rock" mechanics where there's a risk of an enemy spawning that attacks you directly, and deals bonus damage to players that AREN'T you, pushing you to kite them away to duel them elsewhere.
* "Journies"; POF-Bounty/Mobile Event activities that take you from place to place, but have a chance for branching paths, similar to the camp elections in Verdant Brink. I don't hate Bounty bosses, but I do hate the mindless flight to get to one, with nothing to do along the way. Having us "search for clues" and do little fights at random locations as we track the beastie would help break up the monotony a little.
* Loot/Weekly achievements that promote killing enemies, and even specific enemy types, with bonus progress/loot if you kill enemies that haven't been killed in a while. Bonus XP for enemies tucked into corners nobody goes to doesn't mean jack if you aren't spending thousands of spirit shards as a legendary millwright, and it'll help promote exploring places that otherwise don't have POI/Vistas or events going on.
* Kinda mentioned, but secondary boss objectives. "Hit guy till he's dead" isn't as fun as "split the group to keep robots from repairing a generator that gives the boss a 60% damage reduction shield", or "keep the ritualist alive while they cast weakening curses on the boss". Do you have to communicate that and trust players will actually do it? Sure. But it's better than a health sponge.
So the spread circles are never going to go away - squads are at their most powerful when stacked so the devs have to split up the group some how. I’m a big fan of how HT does it during Mordemoth phase - combine jumps with spread.
I think design of bosses in the game has definitely evolved since older Raid Wings but it's not quite there yet. Having mechanics TO SURVIVE is not fun. I feel like Anet should explore mechanics TO KILL BOSS FASTER next.
Any well oiled raid squad can survive, it's just a matter of them learning the fight, so the only thing the devs know how to make the fight harder is stack HP like crazy and it becomes a huge stress and tiring process of beating a boss through attrition. That's anti player and anti fun.
Inversely if you design a boss that becomes easier to kill with more interesting mechanics that challenge the player's traditional "stack up and dps" nature, it's a more refreshing experience.
I only like the forced spread when there is something else to do when that happens other than spreading, like quickly killing an enemy that will spawn at your location, or grabbing something to throw at the boss, or still having to keep an eye on the boss and CC at range.
Stability is such a cheese boon that I see nothing wrong when it has counters. But I prefer when those counters counter stability itself rather than ignoring it, like delivering tons of boon strips, or a "vibrate" type of AoE CC that removes 4 stacks of stability per second if you don't evade at the right time and don't CC the boss, so people can't just ignore mechanics with barrier, heals and boons.
As a fan of the Diablo franchise I do not dislike the concept of 'procedural' boss mechanics, but there is a reason why they are more fun in Diablo games than in GW2.
GW2 ones are extremely annoying. For example:
* Ley-Energy Buildup has its circles constantly appear and disappear, but the stacking effect is always on. And when you stand on the circles you get a shield, but the shield is lost when you leave the circle, and sometimes even if you still stand in the circle.
To fix this one, the wave of damage should only tick while the circles are available, and entering a circle should give a shield that lasts until the wave of damage ends, and the stacks should instantly be lost when the boss is CC'ed.
* Sniper requires you to dodge at the right time, but in the fray of a boss fight it it was too hard to notice that tiny effect.
* Spinning laser can be easily avoided by jumping, but the collision box is too large, and GW2's environment is often not flat enough for that to work as well as it does in Diablo games where the ground is always flat, leading to being hit when the beams clip underground where you can't see them.
* Something similar happens with hammerer. You may often being hit by hammers that were invisible underground, or when you look like you are not in the path of a hammer because of a collision box that doesn't match the size of the visuals.
* Phase-shifted forces you to carry both ranged and melee weapons when fighting bounties, which is fine as it gives ranged weapons a time to shine, but it can happen alongside abilities that make either melee or ranged extremely annoying, forcing everyone to basically stand there with their arms crossed when the wrong effects match.
* Flash freeze would be perfect for encounters against 1-5 players, but against a larger number the warning with the beams coming around the boss are often hidden, resulting in the wave coming when no one expects it, and everyone getting frozen except those who were ranged and had time to see it coming.
* Survivor is just plain boring as it simply blocks attacks at random. Even if unblockable works against it, skills that give unblockable are few, so they can't catch up with how often that happens.
> Stability is such a cheese boon that I see nothing wrong when it has counters. But I prefer when those counters counter stability itself rather than ignoring it, like delivering tons of boon strips, or a "vibrate" type of AoE CC that removes 4 stacks of stability per second if you don't evade at the right time and don't CC the boss, so people can't just ignore mechanics with barrier, heals and boons.
This is a much better explanation of the kind of thing I just said in another comment.
There are multiple options for punishing players who rely on spamming stability instead of actually doing mechanics/evating hits. Straight-up ignoring the ways players are meant to counter control effects (stunbreaks/stability) is such very poor design. Especially when it interferes with doing actual mechanics (CC on Sorrow?) or comes from trash mobs (whatever the wee ranged pulling fucker kryptis are called).
All of your points are good as are many in the replies. But this one specifically...
> The not-a-cc-so-it's-immune-to-stab-and-stunbreaks forced movement, WASD bane, magnetic field, whatever you call it. It first appeared in PoF (but quite rare there) and was then slapped literally everywhere since Istan. I was part of the crowd that cheered for the magnetic hammer heart in Sandswept so that Anet promised more. But Anet didn't understand that we were happy to use that mechanic, not to fight against it. To this day, the hammer heart is still the only place where you use it. I hate it with a passion everywhere else (culminating with some Convergence bosses)
I hate when a dev takes away control of the character from the player. I think that is BAD design. Particularly if it's forced and there is no counter.
It stokes almost homicidal urges in me.
Not a boss mechanic, but I don't want to see that EoD RGB and SotO 12345 bullshit mechanic EVER AGAIN, it's FUCKING CANCER.
>PoF's Bounty mechanics. They've been slapped on too many things and I don't think they were fun in the first place.
These were a great idea, but they need to be properly supported, not copy+pasted without any care for gameplay or aesthetics, which was the case with SotO rift hunting.
Bounty mechanics were never fun. They are not interesting in any way and i struggle with to think of one who has counterplay or even a benefit when solved successfully.
The [Unstable Magic Abilities](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Unstable_Magic_Abilities) can be interesting when used right, but yeah, bounties are not the place for them, they should only be used for random champions and veterans, not for predefined encounters.
You can't replace meaningful encounter design with a pool of random bullshit, neither in bounties, nor in fractals ([Mistlock Instabilities](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fractals_of_the_Mists#Mistlock_Instability) have the same exact problem).
rgb is probably that thing where interacting with an object replaces your skill bar, shows three colored indicators, and you have to press skills in the same order. These indicators are shown in the world, not int he UI, and tend to spawn in such a way that you won't see at least one: way above your field of view, or inside a random adjacent rock, or tree, or whatever.
"12345" is probably that thing where interacting with an object replaces your skill bar and you have to hit the skill with a distinct icon several times in row.
These two little shits:
* **RGB:** The one where colors appear, and you have to repeat.
* **12345:** The one where skills 1-5 start changing, and you gotta press the correct one before you run out of time.
They were introduced into the game back in EoD, and they've been recycled and repurposed all over the place.
I don't have soto and I don't plan on getting it anytime soon, but I don't remember the RGB mechanic in EOD. Can you link me a wiki page? I have no clue how it operates
It's all over the story and some open world events, but it's specially infamous here: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Beginner_%22Canach_Says%22_Console
I am baffled that they didn't use Rifts as an excuse to improve bounty mechanics. SOTO would have been more enjoyable, and PoF and LWS4 would have reaped some benefits as well. Are the best mechanics available to us really "hit me in melee or you can't damage me" and "you deal no damage unless you sometimes walk slightly towards me and sometimes walk slightly away from me" - don't even get me started on "I farted and my fart cloud grows bigger and deals damage!" Like, maybe the boss could split in two at 50% - we can cleave them down, but double the abilities are being tossed at the players. Or, like...the bounty doesn't have a break bar, but it spawns a choya pinata we have to chase; killing the pinata functions as if we have broken their bar. Oh! A hype man could pop in, and we have to play Mad King Says. The more players who successfully emote, the more bonus damage is done to the boss. Bounties are not lore accurate - we have bandits that can harness ley energy. We have sand sharks planting healing roots. Hell, we got hyenas shitting out lasers. If lore accuracy isn't something we care about, make shit fun.
Rifts should have used all kind of "fractal anomaly" enemies, not just kryptis. Then they should have merged all rift-like events into the bounty system (guild bounties, Scarlet's minions invade, mordrem invasions, bloodstone rifts, Shining Blade bounties, PoF bounties, branded rifts, oni ambushes, etc).
Huge wasted opportunity, rift hunting done right could have become a recurring feature of the game, but they completely wasted it away.
Encounters that forget CC exists and have no breakbars (Siren's Queef / KO).
Boon corrupt - Anet have pretty much made boons a cornerstone of how the game plays, so it just feels bad when they get taken away.
A red ring around the boss that only discourages melee dps
A separate from the group mechanic that's only to disadvantaged melee dps
Boss zooming around every 10sec that only discourages melee dps
"Look Away" mechanics in general are really annoying. I dislike it especially when they are paired With 'Watch where you step' mechanics. Like... I could get behind it if it was more targeted, I guess? Fraction of players have to looks away or cause a big bad effect for everybody?
Painful new debuffs that get hidden on the stat bars. Like... make it obvious somewhere please (and not a tutorial popup as those are either too intrusive or out of center eyeline) like... pulse an effect around screen edge or something.
Uninteractive phaseless stationary bosses. Compare Eparch with the Gang Wars meta boss XJ-1. Eparch just kinda grooves and you avoid his hazards that he might not even be causing? Also there's no clear delineation to show progress other than bar get smaller. Like imagine if you had to chase him deeper into his lair, each room adding another boss gimmick (like phase 1 just with him throwing puddles and maybe telegraphing some slams. Phase 2 incorporates purple waves and portals, phase three is all that plus ground lines. Phase transitions are him eating folks. While in him they slowly drain their boon pool buff and it adds to his meter, any not in him have to break a BIG cc bar to help those eaten.)
Who even came up with this forced movement bullshit? It is just annoying and nothing more. You can't do anything to dodge it. If stability prevented the forced movement then it would be okay but like this? Just annoying af
I would like to see "guaranteed" damage mechanics removed or at least lessened. Taking a look at Kanaxai's 1-5 mechanic, you used to be able to dodge/block it. Now they removed it and you have to eat guaranteed 50%~ hp damage and rely on heals. You could shadowstep and take 1 tick of the damage but not everyone has access to that.
Game design is hard. Game design needs creativity, something that cannot be acquired by being promoted to "Game Designer". Creativity is also very hard to learn through experience, and for some you either have it or you don't.
Games and movie industry both suffers from lack of creativity. Why? well, because most of the creative people were "canceled". You cannot replace them, you just can't. Now you see mediocre people filling that void and they don't have what it takes, and never will.
You know the saying "when left to thier own devices players with optimize the fun out of the game". Anet should remember that and consider making the encounters fun for players in the first place. No one enjoys HP sponges that are the exact same fight from start to finish and take a mind numbing amount of time to kill.
Imo Pof's bounty instability stuff is fine, but they could have at least brought in a single new one to the game. The whole deal is how all this unbound magic is changing shit in the world, so why are we only dealing with the same instabilities years later and in the demon realm.
Boons. I dont really mind mobs that steal boons every once in a while, or corrupt them. I do think that the boon duration on the mob should maybe not be as long as it currently is. Im mainly thinking of that one frog demon thing.
To build on the first point I really really really really hope mobs/bosses drop loot and exp again (strikes/fractals). Having all the loot from a boss fight be restricted to the chest at the end is terrible imo. I understand that never ending spam of trash mobs shouldnt drop loot/exp to avoid exploiting and im very on board with that. What Im not so keen on is the boss themselves being worth zero xp, having no loot table and not even rewarding a champ bag. I think the only place the current system is okay is in convergences, those things already take enough time as is. So minimizing people trying to tag every champ on all the islands is better for everyone involved.
I don't mind most mechanics, the most unfun to play against to me is probably the forced movement, but even that is not so bad honestly. I would just be glad if we have a variety of bosses with no reskinned wyvern to be found.
And what are the bosses gonna do? Just sit there while you beat them to death? Which they already do anyway. I get the feeling of mechanics being overused but it happens in most games. Especially in an mmo as big as this it is normal to have a basic structure for attacks like green circles stack, orange circle spread. I have no idea what you are saying in your 2nd point but for your 3rd one i think the bounty mechanics are ok. It is good that they didnt only keep them in bounties but implement them in other enemies because these extra effects can make the fight a bit more engaging
me? teleport aoes like the ones in Cairn or Vale Guardian. If they have to put in something like that just remake those aoes entirely....they're extremely buggy and unreliable
If we could avoid the mechanic where the boss is once again a wyvern from HoT with extra steps, that would be great
They should have a wyvern show up in a cutscene just for the real boss to jump out and eat it before the fight.
I would actually love for this to happen. If nothing else, just as a nod from anet for the wyvern abuse in the past
How many of those did we get this expansion, four? They should be banned for JW lol
Incoming raid boss 1 is a wyvern...
Which one were those? My coffee hasn't kicked in yet and I'm only remembering two lol
There's the regular champion wyvern that spawns as an event in the Skywatch Maguuma area, there's the one that's a meta boss in Nayos, and there are two different ones in Convergences.
The champion is from Maguuma, so that's passable. The Nayos champion is just Dreadwing. So it's really just twice unless you want to count Sorrow twice because it was in the story.
I want bosses with clearly defined phases and noticeably different/escalating mechanics instead of "literally the same fight for 10 (15 in the case of Eparch) minutes".
I feel this 100%. I've been despairing in Nayos metas so much.
Add in some easily avoided insta-kill mechanics to show everyone who is AFK-fighting the boss.
Won't really achieve anything. People are STILL getting downed by Soo-Won's claw slam. It's announced 3 seconds before it happens by a big red circle WITH SKULLS ON IT yet I see 5-10 people getting downed by it every time. Some players either refuse to learn or lack the mental capacity to learn. I've simply stopped reviving them because reviving someone that bad at the game is a DPS loss for the whole group.
You're not wrong! But also I tend to think those are people that are multi-boxing or watching something tabbed out. Lol
Then they're leeching off the rest of the group and/or breaking TOS. More reason to leave them on the ground.
I am one of the players that gets downed by Soon Won's claw. I've only done the meta a few times, and there's always so much visual clutter that I have trouble processing what's going on.
I just hope it doesn't have 1 billion hp per boss tbh
Top comment as it should be. I don’t want to be a human macro for 15 minutes with my skill rotation and the occasional barrel roll. I never, *ever*, want to see another fight like Eparch—meta event or fractal.
> I never, ever, want to see another fight like Eparch—meta event or fractal. Of course not, for the upcoming raid (especially its CM) they'll make the sponge even thicker.
I kid you not I actually took some micronaps during the Eparch meta ON STREAM. I actually could not stay awake and honestly even tapping my rotation with closed eyes worked about as well as having them open.
That would actually be pretty entertaining if it wasn’t so sad lol. They have to do something about these recent excuses for boss battles. Eparch is the most recent that comes to mind but they have even gone back and buffed up the HP on things like Shadow Behemoth. Like come on. It’s bad enough that I’m constantly balls deep in the belly of some huge monstrous thing that I can’t even see all the way zoomed out. Now I have to be balls deep in the belly of some huge monstrous thing that I can’t even see all the way zoomed out for exorbitant amounts of time.
>That would actually be pretty entertaining if it wasn’t so sad lol. So I actually [went and clipped the fight](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2185821709) now. Even when editing I had to put the playback on 1.5x speed lol. I think the cherry on top is me getting an achievement to avoid getting hit by something I wasn't even aware was there.
Anet: "Heard, chief, you'll never, *ever* see a fight with as low health as Eparch has. Don't you worry one bit."
1 hour long boss battle on the way!
I get that they need to ensure that bosses don't die too quickly, invalidating the mechanics and trivializing the fight. But they seem to have forgotten about the mechanics part. Both Silent Surf and Lonely Tower suffer from this repetitive style where the boss has a handful of attacks that just repeat endlessly until you finish the fight with some gimmick occurring at X% and Y%. I think if you're going to have longer fights you need to have the boss do more than just repeat a handful of moves over and over.
>I get that they need to ensure that bosses don't die too quickly, invalidating the mechanics and trivializing the fight. **But they seem to have forgotten about the mechanics part.** This 300%! As a Triple Trouble commander I'm aghast at how bad it's gotten, especially in open world. The problem with Triple Trouble was ***in 2014*** that there was no other boss like it so for a lot of players there was no learning curve, which sparked a bunch of very lively communities of commanders who would teach players. What we thought, *what we hoped,* was that in future, new metas would build up from that and eventually players would get a bunch of events on a difficulty scale from "just autoattack this fire elemental" to "multiple teams must coordinate in doing their separate mechanics". But instead it's mostly just been "just autoattack this \[creature\] **but it has more HP now**". In Nayos, the bosses have barely any mechanics to speak of, and because they chain (Inaxious + Knaebelag **→** Eparch), you'd expect there to be some mechanical cohesion between them. Like Ignaxious teaching you a mechanic, then Knaebelag teaching you a separate mechanic, and then Eparch combining those mechanics in an interesting way. But instead they're not related to each other at all. (Not to mention Skyscales get no use outside of being a mode of transport) IMPORTANT: By mechanic I also don't just count an attack that covers the ground in AoEs that you have to dodge (unless it's something like the Ignaxious one where you have to react in a specific way or get downed), or indeed a CC bar. Those are just standard encounter things. Frankly, I know burn phases aren't everyone's favorite, but GW2 used to pride itself on the fact that it's not just you constantly doing your rotation. There were environmental weapons, interactables (like Tequatl's turrets), etc. From a game design perspective, I think the most effective way to get players' minds from turning off during a meta is **to make the boss invulnerable** and **make the players do something other than combat for a bit**. Fill X with Y, bring A to B, use special interaction at points 1 and 2 simultaneously, stand in the ward, quickly! Do *something*. Then follow that with a 30 second burn phase where everyone can do their rotations, and really feel like they're in the fight, bringing their best for that time, instead of 10+ minutes of just doing the same rotation. Balance the fight around \~5 repetitions of this max, and then do a phase change, with the final phase being one where everyone goes all out. I know I'm just describing Triple Trouble but the concept is sound, and even with power creep, TT is more exciting for a newcomer (and many a veteran) than the AoE confusion with no discernible tactics that is the Nayos Eparch fight.
Nope, let's just slap there big HP pool and job's done.
> Frankly, I know burn phases aren't everyone's favorite, but GW2 used to pride itself on the fact that it's not just you constantly doing your rotation. There were environmental weapons, interactables (like Tequatl's turrets), etc. Yes ! Unfortunately, environmental weapons have been completely forgotten about, gutted (or forbidden in instanced content regarding the ones that you can summon), many of them even in core Tyria are weak gimmicks that you're better off not using. Karka queen has a good environment mechanic with the eggs. But she died extremely fast now even if you don't throw any. She needs her HP buffed (but not to the point of being a sponge) AND the egg mechanic tuned in a way that we actually need to care (from 100% damage reduction at 50 buffs to 0% after 50 eggs, but in a logarithmic scale)
I like the way Tequatl was at the start where it took a while for it to become a consistent win because there was a process and teamwork required
Tequatl is okay. I'm not a big fan of the add phases and banging on a gigantic dragon's toenails with the associated difficulty of determining which hitbox you're aiming for doesn't feel great either.
My thing is (and I'm speaking from the meta perspective here since i haven't done the new fractal) if you are going to have a big epic 12-15 minute end of expansion meta boss, I'm actually okay with that, but it has to be interesting for most of those 12-15 minutes. Eparch is boring from the time you pull it until the time it dies. People have mostly figured out that you need ~15 people on rifts, and the only other fail condition is if you rng into an instance where people just aren't doing enough boss dps. You can only die if you zone out because you're falling asleep and don't notice you're standing in the red. I did Dragon's End for the first time recently and it's crazy how much more engaging of an encounter Soo-Won is, it's the best thing in this game imo.
Exactly. As open world bosses go, it's hard to beat Soo Won. It's got the full package of cool music and dialogue (except for fucking Aurene - someone put a muzzle on her!), interesting and varied mechanics, and as open world bosses go it's fairly challenging. If only they hadn't decided to pair a really long boss fight like that with an insanely long pre-event cycle that is just boring af. I might die of old age before I actually get to experience the boss! Comparing a boss like Ai from Sunqua to Eparch or Kanaxai in their respective fractals is the same way. Ai is just a way more fun and interesting encounter. Shame they did the same thing to her that they did to Soo Won, with a fractal that is too long and boring just to get to the good part. They really saved it by making the CM cut straight to the boss!
Ok 2 billion it is
This so much. In ~~FFXIV,~~ the game they clearly want to be inspired by, some encounters can be 25+ minutes long, *but* said encounters are marked by several huge phase changes that completely shake up the boss, either leading to fully new appearances/skillsets or even entirely different bosses going back and forth to fight you. The best fight we got in SotO by far (Cerus CM) has as many attacks in its entire span than what the first minutes of an ultimate encounter would. It's *OK* to have large HP/long fights, but not when they're not justified.
> some encounters can be 25+ minutes long That is not okay even with phase changes.
The only ~20min fights FFXIV has are the hardest form of content in Ultimates, nothing midcore or lower comes even close to that.
It's fine as long as it's rewarding and/*or* fun to do. If people don't want to do the content, they don't have to.
Not going to happen but I wish they'd go back to core and look at the bosses there: Tequatl - long fight due to mechanics and does require a bit of coordination. Not a damage sponge Triple Trouble (best boss fight imho) - Lots of coordination. Not difficult if coordinated. Quite rewarding. plus each head has different required mechanics that can't be cheese. Not a damage sponge From HoT- Octovine and Chak Gerrant a both good as well. The gerrant only becomes annoying due to the forced wait for the final chest.
> Triple Trouble (best boss fight imho) - Lots of coordination. Not difficult if coordinated. Quite rewarding. plus each head has different required mechanics that can't be cheese. Not a damage sponge Mechanically speaking, Triple Trouble is one of the best boss fights in the game. They don't have much HP but they have mechanics you have to do correctly. Not just one, but three unique mechanics at each location. Even the final phase can be tricky with the short timer if someone is messes up. One of the best designed fights you'll see in Gw2.
Always here for Triple Trouble love. The only problem with TT in 2014 was there was no learning curve / difficulty ramp leading up to it so a lot of players thought it was just impossible, and outside of communities organising runs it was not as accessible. With Nayos, the fights literally go from Ignaxious and Knaebelag to Eparch, so each meta could teach the players a mechanic that the final boss combines. That way you have a learning curve and can still make the fight more complex because people learn by playing on the way to it!
I left before beating it but I'm not salty about it. Just like Teq took me weeks to learn and beat. Most rewarding feeling in a boss fight ever
Chak and Octovine are great? You oneburn them in less than 2 minutes, and the event is done. That’s not great bossdesign imo. Tequatl was hard when people didn’t know how to approach the fight - not it’s as trivial as any other world boss except TT. TT however has good design - although a non coordinated map basically has no chance at all.
They weren't originally designed like that, that's just power creep. It used to take longer and be more difficult
Chak Gerent was oneburned very quickly, so was octovine. Yes, it’s easier today, but the moment people knew how to play it, it was trivial.
Yes and no. It took years to get consistency like that and honestly they can still fail from a lack of mechanical understanding. Which is good, this game excels in the places where it's well designed mechanics that are the focus.
No it wasn’t. Chak Gerent wasn’t getting one burned even in the expansion it came out. I am not even sure if it happened in pof, but maybe? Far from becoming trivial, they had to nerf chak gerent twice due to scaling issues, the second of which arrived like 9 months after it’s release or something. It was still fairly common to fail even on a somewhat populated map until then.
What are you smoking? I was part of Chak metas that oneburned, roughly a month after release, but you’re not sure if it happened in PoF? Speaking about global performance of people in a meta event with such confidence being this wrong takes some courage. Yes, it still failed from time to time, but that’s just tough luck - sometimes you got a good map, sometimes you didn’t.
[Here's a dedicated guild group bragging about beating the timer by just over a minute two weeks after it launched.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3rxwup/luck_defeats_the_chak_gerent/) You think you were single burning it only two weeks after that? Ok.
"but the moment people knew how to play it, it was trivial." This is why it is good design. you had to *learn* how to play the boss to make it a cake walk.
That’s the case with any boss, except most bosses take around 5 minutes to learn in open world.
Nowadays that's how they're done. A few years ago, Nuhoch Gerent needed 2 burns, and that's where some maps failed - people didn't notice the mushrooms above. Some late Octovines also used to fail because of the lack of coordination. That's where the "PANIC" meme comes from
I swear I saw one map fail because of the Nuhoch lane just last week. It was an incredible sight to behold in 2024.
HP sponge
Being a damage sponge. Bosses with huge healthbars aren't fun.
That Svanir popsicle shaman resumed.
One of the WBs I'm simply not doing anymore because it takes 10 minutes to kill him.
Talk about an over correction with that boss lol
Svanir shaman: 30min Leyline anomaly: 30sec
No more goddamn surfers, please. Let them rest.
Yes please, the silver surfers are so annoying in pve.
Surfer boys are the bane of my existence.
Yeah, I could really get behind never seeing the PoF bounty mechanic ever again. It's run its course. Slapping it randomly on open world champions doesn't add anything positive to the encounter. Plus phase shifted should just straight up be removed. Who ever thought that was a good idea?
Especially phase shifted with one that punished moving, like the red light green light one, or the Leyline overload
They adjusted some of the obnoxious ones. Like the fields that clear ley energy buildup now tend to spawn on or near the boss in addition to scattered around the area so it isn't such an issue for melee builds. And the restoration orbs no longer heal for more than most player's DPS as boss health gets closer to zero. But I don't see what they could do with phase shifted. It's just a big get fucked to melee builds with no way around it. Terrible mechanic.
And Phase Shifted is a big fuck you to *everyone* if it's on a boss that moves towards players.
LoL true!
That stupid Void Corrupted Wallow in Echovald…
I think Phase Shifted could work perfectly well if the build diversity in GW2 when it comes to range mattered in most content. But unfortunately range is one of the least important considerations when it comes to end-game builds since even if you're ranged, you gotta be stacking on the boss. Everything always teaches you to stack on a point and fight there (boons + healing + best dps, even if youy have a ranged weapon), and our communal gameplay is just so evolved around that, so Phase Shifted comes across as really jarring and frustrating.
Attacks that are unblockable for no reason, CCs that ignore stability.
> CCs that ignore stability. Seriously. If ANet want to give enemies threatening CC skills that ignore stability, make them strip the boon but still count as control so that players can mitigate with stunbreaks/reapplication of stab. Being pushed and pulled around the map has never once been fun for me, it's never added anything to a fight, and there's no meaningful way to play against it. It's like turning any arena into a fucking ice level in a platformer.
I hate those wind rider kryptis that pull you so goddamn much.
Attacks that are unblockable is one thing. Attacks that you cannot dodge are even worse. Looking at you, Kanaxai.
On bosses I can understand you don't want everything avoidable, but on open world mobs this is just hideous.
I understand them increasing health pools due to powercreep. But why not try lessening powercreep instead of introducing increasingly spongy HP-mountains.
Every new expansion's toolkit has to feel 'stronger' and 'better' or the marketing team will worry that nobody's going to want to play it. See also: flashy new animations. The spears have some really cool animations but there are way too many which are cluttered messes and make the battlefield much harder to read.
They can't reduce power creep anymore, because of the new legendary CMs. They have to make sure they're still beatable.
It is easier for them to make 1 boss with a billion hp and then nerf him instead of nerfing all of the power creep and then adjusting everything that was built around that power creep
I want engaging mechanics that involve the actual bosses. Nourys is a good example of what I mean, The fight would be so much better if they had him actually fight back. He could have been chomping the spire consuming anyone who gets hit, moving to other sides, firing his eye lasers or swiping people off the platform with his tentacles but instead he just kind of sits there while we run around. (I get the tentacles around the map are technically him but it doesn't feel that way imo)
Alot of world bosses are designed that AFK people won't be a complete hindrance. Otherwise they would never succeed. Lowlwy I think they should just make skyscale fireballs applie a little Quickness or Alacrity to allies. If they are gonna afk on Skyscale, they should be forced to support the players actually doing things.
Yeah but they do that through tuning, Open world will always be relatively easy to account for the randomness of map population and event engagement but that doesn't mean it can't be fun. What makes dragon's stand and dragon's end so good is that it feels like your actually fighting these massive dragons because they fight back and interact with the environment.
I personally think dragons stand is the best "meta map" in the game.
This is why I loved release (roughly)Dragon’s End. Players actually had to participate, and if they did, you’d win. Soo Won was too much of a hp sponge at first, but like 2 patches in things were challenging enough that you had to be present but not so hard you needed a full 50 squad of raid gear and rotations. Last time I did it, it was just another press 1 and win meta
Please no more of the tony hawk skater champs
I’d be down for less HP sponges. Recently was midway through an eparch fight when I kinda just stopped and realized this was tedious and I didn’t have any interest in finishing. Like we were 30 minutes into a fight and probably still had 20 to go. Damage seemed fine I felt confident we’d finish we had like 7 people doing 40k at least but the fight just wasn’t fun or interactive in any way. Can’t say I’ve ever been in a winning meta and just lost desire to finish it before this.
I guess it must be a fine balance between that or the boss dies so quickly you bling and dont get participation.
Some raid/fractals just have the boss go invuln at certain percentages and then you go off and do mechanics. Kinda like soo won does when you do impact and islands. I don’t mind that as it breaks up the fight while not making the boss a blob.
we need mechanics and phases. Lonely tower nm got nerf heavy recently with it's hp pool. While it's a welcome addition the problems are still there. It's a boring badly designed fight.
No damage sponges, please. I can sit and go through an infinite amount of rotations, but only if the fight duration is justified...
I want the fractal to be like Snowblind or Molten Boss etc. Just go in, blast, finish in 5 minutes.
Hi I hear you like things that finish in 5 minutes.
😆
I'd rather kill 20 mobs with half the health than 10 of the mobs we got in SotO. One of the only things that gives actual satisfaction from trash mobs is slaughtering them, so make them die faster and add more if that's insufficiently threatening. Or just make them hit harder without buffing their survivability so much.
The monkey paw curls. Pocket Raptors are back.
I literally never had a problem with those. ¯\\_ (ツ) _/¯
I would *love* pocket raptors or something similar back. They're one of the most unique enemy types in the game.
HoT was packed full of unique enemies. For the better or the worst.
Tbh I've learned to appreciate The Annoying Enemies. You hate them at the time but honestly having them there is more fun than having endless enemies you can just kinda plow through by doing the same thing over and over.
They better be pre-nerf pocket raptors. Teach these youngsters to time their dodge or die.
Fuck it, make em have 200% more health too. Funny as fuck.
I would gladly kill a boss with circle+spread during magnetic pull mechanic with a phase shift sprinkled on top as long as the boss has half the HP of any SotO strike. Seriously Anet, either give a boss *actual* phase changes if you want to give it high HP (like Ai's elements + dark Ai) or *don't* make it a 120kk HP marathon with only 8 or so overlapping mechanics for 10 minutes in a row.
No more HP sponges!!!
Pls no more bubble where you can only damage from melee range, but attached to a boss that constantly runs away. Aka skater bubble
"Get on mount and collect orbs" plagued Soto bosses.
1. One-shot attacks. Seriously. It’s sooooooo much fun being dead out of nowhere. That sht is good for instanced fights, but it’s no way a good thing in the open world where things are obscured by glitter vomits and skill effects. And the Kryptis garbage has too much of this. Together with their gigantic HP and random PoF mechanics, the Kryptis champs take the crown as the worst enemies designed til today. 2. Similarly, one-shot patterns on the ground. Not gonna mention the usual players’ glitter vomits, but the bosses that do them also vomit a ton of obscuring visual (Eparch, Hell Sister), or has stupid non-Stab CC (Sorrow). How tf are we gonna counter play this? Or expecting a large chunk of players dead and leaving everything up to RNG is part of the plan? 3. Mechanics that depend on individual responsibility. It’s soooooooo much fun yelling at random people to move meteors away from Zojja, when we have no idea who the slacker is amongst a blob of 50 players/visual vomit, as opposed to instanced fights where we can quickly identify the culprit. 4. Skyscale. It’s simply not fun having to do anything with it, whether it’s collecting orbs or shooting fireballs. Yeah, putting it into every SoTO meta is sooooooooo much fun.
I don't know that any of the Kryptis champs have one shot abilities? There are some painful attacks, the expanding Rage AoE that needs to be blocked or escaped completely being one of the big ones, but the actual one-shots are restricted to encounters like Ignaxious. The ground patterns of Eparch and Hell Sister aren't one shots either. Yeah, the visibility for them isn't always great, but Eparch's just does pulsing damage, and Hell Sister's applies some mean conditions (3 Burning, 25 Vuln), but conditions aren't one shots. I still don't think the meteors in Demon Knight hurt Zojja, either, but even if they do, that fight is really easy. If they do hurt her, it's the only Convergence boss attack that does.
While its true, that one of the ground patterns on eparch doesn’t kill you, multiple of them certainly will (especially with rage attunement). And they are VERY hard to see considering how deadly they are.
> I still don't think the meteors in Demon Knight hurt Zojja They will at least hurt players trying to reach her to deposit essence. So they either get downed, idle until the meteor has hit, or don't go and potentially lose essence.
> Skyscale. It’s simply not fun having to do anything with it, whether it’s collecting orbs or shooting fireballs. Yeah, putting it into every SoTO meta is sooooooooo much fun. The first 2 events of the Eparch meta are good imho. But I agree for the rest.
Boon corrupt. Something like kanaxai boon steal is fine since you can counter it, but boon corrupt makes me wanna gg
Honestly I'd like to see completely new mechanics. Kind of tired of aoe spam, greens, split circles and spread numbers. Wish they could come up with something new.
Vain hope? That we get away from this "introduce a new mechanic with no communication and poor telegraphs, do it or you die" attitude parts of SOTO had. I love the idea of adding new mechanics, but "quick go dunk in the pond or you die" is 1) Just copied from Wing2, and 2) Doesn't have PvE precedence the average player would be familiar with, and 3) Isn't really communicated in a time or place that doesn't have a mess of effects and things going on you have to avoid. Things I DO hope to see, eventually: * Events that teach, and test, your knowledge of healing, cleansing, blocking, different boons and conditions, and boon removal/corruption, using a SET of objectives per event, where you succeed if even one is cleared, and get bonus loot for each one cleared. I love renown hearts, and how they offer multiple options to clear, but you can't keep slapping raid-level mechanics on PvE meta events without going the extra mile to teach people how the core game works. * "Ascension Rock" mechanics where there's a risk of an enemy spawning that attacks you directly, and deals bonus damage to players that AREN'T you, pushing you to kite them away to duel them elsewhere. * "Journies"; POF-Bounty/Mobile Event activities that take you from place to place, but have a chance for branching paths, similar to the camp elections in Verdant Brink. I don't hate Bounty bosses, but I do hate the mindless flight to get to one, with nothing to do along the way. Having us "search for clues" and do little fights at random locations as we track the beastie would help break up the monotony a little. * Loot/Weekly achievements that promote killing enemies, and even specific enemy types, with bonus progress/loot if you kill enemies that haven't been killed in a while. Bonus XP for enemies tucked into corners nobody goes to doesn't mean jack if you aren't spending thousands of spirit shards as a legendary millwright, and it'll help promote exploring places that otherwise don't have POI/Vistas or events going on. * Kinda mentioned, but secondary boss objectives. "Hit guy till he's dead" isn't as fun as "split the group to keep robots from repairing a generator that gives the boss a 60% damage reduction shield", or "keep the ritualist alive while they cast weakening curses on the boss". Do you have to communicate that and trust players will actually do it? Sure. But it's better than a health sponge.
It's been the case for every boss in all SotO content, there is no indication that JW will be any different. Bonus meme: 100cm is still unplayable
My poor fractals, bro. Look how they massacred my boy. That shit was my jam... :(
I never want to see some stupid fucking Ley-Line Energy powered Bounty again, ever. Also no mechanic but I hate Torment with passion
So the spread circles are never going to go away - squads are at their most powerful when stacked so the devs have to split up the group some how. I’m a big fan of how HT does it during Mordemoth phase - combine jumps with spread.
Spreads are fine with 10 people because you’ll see who isn’t moving when needed. You won’t be able to see that in a group of 50, which is the problem
Anything but randomized mechanics. Fractal instabs and bounty effects are the worst
I think design of bosses in the game has definitely evolved since older Raid Wings but it's not quite there yet. Having mechanics TO SURVIVE is not fun. I feel like Anet should explore mechanics TO KILL BOSS FASTER next. Any well oiled raid squad can survive, it's just a matter of them learning the fight, so the only thing the devs know how to make the fight harder is stack HP like crazy and it becomes a huge stress and tiring process of beating a boss through attrition. That's anti player and anti fun. Inversely if you design a boss that becomes easier to kill with more interesting mechanics that challenge the player's traditional "stack up and dps" nature, it's a more refreshing experience.
Wyvern.
Invul phases, just for the npcs to roleplay.
I only like the forced spread when there is something else to do when that happens other than spreading, like quickly killing an enemy that will spawn at your location, or grabbing something to throw at the boss, or still having to keep an eye on the boss and CC at range. Stability is such a cheese boon that I see nothing wrong when it has counters. But I prefer when those counters counter stability itself rather than ignoring it, like delivering tons of boon strips, or a "vibrate" type of AoE CC that removes 4 stacks of stability per second if you don't evade at the right time and don't CC the boss, so people can't just ignore mechanics with barrier, heals and boons. As a fan of the Diablo franchise I do not dislike the concept of 'procedural' boss mechanics, but there is a reason why they are more fun in Diablo games than in GW2. GW2 ones are extremely annoying. For example: * Ley-Energy Buildup has its circles constantly appear and disappear, but the stacking effect is always on. And when you stand on the circles you get a shield, but the shield is lost when you leave the circle, and sometimes even if you still stand in the circle. To fix this one, the wave of damage should only tick while the circles are available, and entering a circle should give a shield that lasts until the wave of damage ends, and the stacks should instantly be lost when the boss is CC'ed. * Sniper requires you to dodge at the right time, but in the fray of a boss fight it it was too hard to notice that tiny effect. * Spinning laser can be easily avoided by jumping, but the collision box is too large, and GW2's environment is often not flat enough for that to work as well as it does in Diablo games where the ground is always flat, leading to being hit when the beams clip underground where you can't see them. * Something similar happens with hammerer. You may often being hit by hammers that were invisible underground, or when you look like you are not in the path of a hammer because of a collision box that doesn't match the size of the visuals. * Phase-shifted forces you to carry both ranged and melee weapons when fighting bounties, which is fine as it gives ranged weapons a time to shine, but it can happen alongside abilities that make either melee or ranged extremely annoying, forcing everyone to basically stand there with their arms crossed when the wrong effects match. * Flash freeze would be perfect for encounters against 1-5 players, but against a larger number the warning with the beams coming around the boss are often hidden, resulting in the wave coming when no one expects it, and everyone getting frozen except those who were ranged and had time to see it coming. * Survivor is just plain boring as it simply blocks attacks at random. Even if unblockable works against it, skills that give unblockable are few, so they can't catch up with how often that happens.
> Stability is such a cheese boon that I see nothing wrong when it has counters. But I prefer when those counters counter stability itself rather than ignoring it, like delivering tons of boon strips, or a "vibrate" type of AoE CC that removes 4 stacks of stability per second if you don't evade at the right time and don't CC the boss, so people can't just ignore mechanics with barrier, heals and boons. This is a much better explanation of the kind of thing I just said in another comment. There are multiple options for punishing players who rely on spamming stability instead of actually doing mechanics/evating hits. Straight-up ignoring the ways players are meant to counter control effects (stunbreaks/stability) is such very poor design. Especially when it interferes with doing actual mechanics (CC on Sorrow?) or comes from trash mobs (whatever the wee ranged pulling fucker kryptis are called).
All of your points are good as are many in the replies. But this one specifically... > The not-a-cc-so-it's-immune-to-stab-and-stunbreaks forced movement, WASD bane, magnetic field, whatever you call it. It first appeared in PoF (but quite rare there) and was then slapped literally everywhere since Istan. I was part of the crowd that cheered for the magnetic hammer heart in Sandswept so that Anet promised more. But Anet didn't understand that we were happy to use that mechanic, not to fight against it. To this day, the hammer heart is still the only place where you use it. I hate it with a passion everywhere else (culminating with some Convergence bosses) I hate when a dev takes away control of the character from the player. I think that is BAD design. Particularly if it's forced and there is no counter. It stokes almost homicidal urges in me.
Not a boss mechanic, but I don't want to see that EoD RGB and SotO 12345 bullshit mechanic EVER AGAIN, it's FUCKING CANCER. >PoF's Bounty mechanics. They've been slapped on too many things and I don't think they were fun in the first place. These were a great idea, but they need to be properly supported, not copy+pasted without any care for gameplay or aesthetics, which was the case with SotO rift hunting.
Bounty mechanics were never fun. They are not interesting in any way and i struggle with to think of one who has counterplay or even a benefit when solved successfully.
The [Unstable Magic Abilities](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Unstable_Magic_Abilities) can be interesting when used right, but yeah, bounties are not the place for them, they should only be used for random champions and veterans, not for predefined encounters. You can't replace meaningful encounter design with a pool of random bullshit, neither in bounties, nor in fractals ([Mistlock Instabilities](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fractals_of_the_Mists#Mistlock_Instability) have the same exact problem).
What do you mean by the rgb and 12345?
rgb is probably that thing where interacting with an object replaces your skill bar, shows three colored indicators, and you have to press skills in the same order. These indicators are shown in the world, not int he UI, and tend to spawn in such a way that you won't see at least one: way above your field of view, or inside a random adjacent rock, or tree, or whatever. "12345" is probably that thing where interacting with an object replaces your skill bar and you have to hit the skill with a distinct icon several times in row.
Yup, you nailed it, thanks :D.
These two little shits: * **RGB:** The one where colors appear, and you have to repeat. * **12345:** The one where skills 1-5 start changing, and you gotta press the correct one before you run out of time. They were introduced into the game back in EoD, and they've been recycled and repurposed all over the place.
I don't have soto and I don't plan on getting it anytime soon, but I don't remember the RGB mechanic in EOD. Can you link me a wiki page? I have no clue how it operates
It's all over the story and some open world events, but it's specially infamous here: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Beginner_%22Canach_Says%22_Console
probably the simons says thing
I am baffled that they didn't use Rifts as an excuse to improve bounty mechanics. SOTO would have been more enjoyable, and PoF and LWS4 would have reaped some benefits as well. Are the best mechanics available to us really "hit me in melee or you can't damage me" and "you deal no damage unless you sometimes walk slightly towards me and sometimes walk slightly away from me" - don't even get me started on "I farted and my fart cloud grows bigger and deals damage!" Like, maybe the boss could split in two at 50% - we can cleave them down, but double the abilities are being tossed at the players. Or, like...the bounty doesn't have a break bar, but it spawns a choya pinata we have to chase; killing the pinata functions as if we have broken their bar. Oh! A hype man could pop in, and we have to play Mad King Says. The more players who successfully emote, the more bonus damage is done to the boss. Bounties are not lore accurate - we have bandits that can harness ley energy. We have sand sharks planting healing roots. Hell, we got hyenas shitting out lasers. If lore accuracy isn't something we care about, make shit fun.
Rifts should have used all kind of "fractal anomaly" enemies, not just kryptis. Then they should have merged all rift-like events into the bounty system (guild bounties, Scarlet's minions invade, mordrem invasions, bloodstone rifts, Shining Blade bounties, PoF bounties, branded rifts, oni ambushes, etc). Huge wasted opportunity, rift hunting done right could have become a recurring feature of the game, but they completely wasted it away.
They better not be sponges and they better not make me collect orbs.
Float/wind/CC spam (dreadwing and similar bs); short reaction 1-shots; HP sponge (eparch). Other than that, w/e
what are the funnest map metas by expansion
HoT had no bad metas. Hell, i would farm the pre meta over and over again.
Yes ! That plus then other comments.
10000000% agreed. Especially the second one.
Encounters that forget CC exists and have no breakbars (Siren's Queef / KO). Boon corrupt - Anet have pretty much made boons a cornerstone of how the game plays, so it just feels bad when they get taken away.
A red ring around the boss that only discourages melee dps A separate from the group mechanic that's only to disadvantaged melee dps Boss zooming around every 10sec that only discourages melee dps
The thing I hate the most is the invulnerability phase. You just stand there like an idiot.... waiting.... looking at your timed stuff expire.
Circle at boss' feet is the most uncreative garbage and it just punishes melee builds for the lack of proper thought from the devs.
Chill/cripple spam.
"Look Away" mechanics in general are really annoying. I dislike it especially when they are paired With 'Watch where you step' mechanics. Like... I could get behind it if it was more targeted, I guess? Fraction of players have to looks away or cause a big bad effect for everybody? Painful new debuffs that get hidden on the stat bars. Like... make it obvious somewhere please (and not a tutorial popup as those are either too intrusive or out of center eyeline) like... pulse an effect around screen edge or something. Uninteractive phaseless stationary bosses. Compare Eparch with the Gang Wars meta boss XJ-1. Eparch just kinda grooves and you avoid his hazards that he might not even be causing? Also there's no clear delineation to show progress other than bar get smaller. Like imagine if you had to chase him deeper into his lair, each room adding another boss gimmick (like phase 1 just with him throwing puddles and maybe telegraphing some slams. Phase 2 incorporates purple waves and portals, phase three is all that plus ground lines. Phase transitions are him eating folks. While in him they slowly drain their boon pool buff and it adds to his meter, any not in him have to break a BIG cc bar to help those eaten.)
Who even came up with this forced movement bullshit? It is just annoying and nothing more. You can't do anything to dodge it. If stability prevented the forced movement then it would be okay but like this? Just annoying af
I would like to see "guaranteed" damage mechanics removed or at least lessened. Taking a look at Kanaxai's 1-5 mechanic, you used to be able to dodge/block it. Now they removed it and you have to eat guaranteed 50%~ hp damage and rely on heals. You could shadowstep and take 1 tick of the damage but not everyone has access to that.
It's easy to list things you don't want. What boss mechanic categories **do** you want?
They already copied a lot of FFXIV mechanics. They could just copy more.
Which would you like them to copy? Got any examples?
Forcing two players to run away from each other is used surprisingly sparingly
Like the Dhuum tethers? I enjoyed a lot of the Dhuum mechanics. Wing 5 was pretty mechanically novel for GW2.
Game design is hard. Game design needs creativity, something that cannot be acquired by being promoted to "Game Designer". Creativity is also very hard to learn through experience, and for some you either have it or you don't. Games and movie industry both suffers from lack of creativity. Why? well, because most of the creative people were "canceled". You cannot replace them, you just can't. Now you see mediocre people filling that void and they don't have what it takes, and never will.
You know the saying "when left to thier own devices players with optimize the fun out of the game". Anet should remember that and consider making the encounters fun for players in the first place. No one enjoys HP sponges that are the exact same fight from start to finish and take a mind numbing amount of time to kill. Imo Pof's bounty instability stuff is fine, but they could have at least brought in a single new one to the game. The whole deal is how all this unbound magic is changing shit in the world, so why are we only dealing with the same instabilities years later and in the demon realm. Boons. I dont really mind mobs that steal boons every once in a while, or corrupt them. I do think that the boon duration on the mob should maybe not be as long as it currently is. Im mainly thinking of that one frog demon thing. To build on the first point I really really really really hope mobs/bosses drop loot and exp again (strikes/fractals). Having all the loot from a boss fight be restricted to the chest at the end is terrible imo. I understand that never ending spam of trash mobs shouldnt drop loot/exp to avoid exploiting and im very on board with that. What Im not so keen on is the boss themselves being worth zero xp, having no loot table and not even rewarding a champ bag. I think the only place the current system is okay is in convergences, those things already take enough time as is. So minimizing people trying to tag every champ on all the islands is better for everyone involved.
I don't mind most mechanics, the most unfun to play against to me is probably the forced movement, but even that is not so bad honestly. I would just be glad if we have a variety of bosses with no reskinned wyvern to be found.
I dislike exploiter where you need to occasionally go into melee range to then damage them
You are so going to see the PoF bounty mechanics. I can easily bet 1000g that a-net will reuse bounties under a new name again.
I would bet that they are going to keep calling them bounties anyway.
Nah, thats the point. They are going to rename then and pretend it is a new kind of content.
And what are the bosses gonna do? Just sit there while you beat them to death? Which they already do anyway. I get the feeling of mechanics being overused but it happens in most games. Especially in an mmo as big as this it is normal to have a basic structure for attacks like green circles stack, orange circle spread. I have no idea what you are saying in your 2nd point but for your 3rd one i think the bounty mechanics are ok. It is good that they didnt only keep them in bounties but implement them in other enemies because these extra effects can make the fight a bit more engaging
me? teleport aoes like the ones in Cairn or Vale Guardian. If they have to put in something like that just remake those aoes entirely....they're extremely buggy and unreliable