<spoilers> Is the LW 4 Ep 2 boss bugged or just poor design?

[Tirick.7042]

I am so glad I found this thread, as I thought I might be alone in this. Janky boss mechanics are just no fun for me. I agree with the sentiment repeated here a few times. Why bother getting my character leveled, and getting good at my skills, build, improving gear, etc, if all of that is thrown out with every new story boss? The constant AOE (and this with access to 5x dodges on my Weaver), plus difficult targeting mechanics and forced skill cooldowns/stuns/knockdowns, made it just punishingly difficult for me. Been playing since launch, and this, barring Caudecus, takes the absolute cake for garbage annoying fights. I forced myself to complete it as there is no other way to get to the new maps (absolutely terribly design choice btw, locking the new map behind three chained story steps). I'm not clear on who playtested that fight, but maybe get some of your average, or even new, players to try it before launch.

 

I will admit I'm getting older now, and my reflexes are maybe no longer up to par. That said, I too am a customer, and have spent a ton money on this game. I'm willing to bet more story stages like this will drive players like me away. Maybe that's by design.

[Healix.5819]

> @"Tirick.7042" said:

> Why bother getting my character leveled, and getting good at my skills, build, improving gear, etc, if all of that is thrown out with every new story boss?

 

This is endgame content. Throwing in a new mechanic is just giving you something different. If they never did anything different, they would simply be requiring quicker reaction times, awareness, strategy, etc. GW2 isn't like most RPGs where it's all about the progression of the character and the difficulty is just a numbers game. Here, being a gear leveled 80 is just a tool and you yourself are expected to improve.

 

As for the exterminator golem specifically, it sounds like some people are doing it horribly wrong, so here's a quick sample of just how simple it truly is:

 

[Kalarchis.8635]

> @"Healix.5819" said:

> As for the exterminator golem specifically, it sounds like some people are doing it horribly wrong, so here's a quick sample of just how simple it truly is:

>

>

 

Yeah this just confirms that we did NOT get the same boss. In my encounter:

 

- That arm swing he does with the aoes with a safe zone? For me that safe zone was always on the other side of the boss, and the swing itself went off much faster than that. He would swing almost immediately after the aoes appeared, every time. It was impossible to kite into safe zone. I'm running a weaver with enhanced swiftness who's always moving, usually I was already kiting around the boss as the attack appeared, and I still could not make it into safe zone in time. That swing in the video is like molasses compared to what I saw.

- I'm really not sure what all those nice downtimes of no aoes in the video are about. There was multiple times that much going on in the fight I got. There were aoes everywhere the whole time in that final phase. The adds in that video used their beam aoe and then disappeared; in my fight those adds were there _permanently_ and throwing stuff all over the place.

- I was not doing that kind of damage. Nowhere close. When I say I was smacking on that thing for near ten minutes in the final phase I'm not exaggerating. It's not a gearing issue; I'm not a zerker but I can deal damage just fine. Whatever damage buff got applied to the player in that video simply didn't get applied to me.

 

Compared to that video, it's like my boss had perma-quickness or something. If my fight had been like that there would have been no issue.

[OneYenShort.3189]

> @"Kalarchis.8635" said:

> Compared to that video, it's like my boss had perma-quickness or something. If my fight had been like that there would have been no issue.

So is it a question of is the boss buggy, or after the many "fixes" the boss may have changed? I haven't bothered to read when people did the boss, let alone what is current behavior as of the time of this posting.

 

 

[Ayrilana.1396]

> @"OneYenShort.3189" said:

> > @"Kalarchis.8635" said:

> > Compared to that video, it's like my boss had perma-quickness or something. If my fight had been like that there would have been no issue.

> So is it a question of is the boss buggy, or after the many "fixes" the boss may have changed? I haven't bothered to read when people did the boss, let alone what is current behavior as of the time of this posting.

>

>

 

I’m seeing it as a “it’s the boss that’s the issue and can’t possibly be me” kind of thing.

[blackmac.2685]

Ya most annoying fight ever in the GW2 storyline. Not a hard fight, just so tedious , not fun at all and long as FRICK!!!

I just auto attacked, went for a smoke, made a sandwich, washed the dinner dishes, came back and it was at 50%, cause i couldn't die to quit, but not enough damage despite tactics to give a crud anymore.

This is the kind of story boss that kills GW2 for me. I love all the other parts of the game, but this is by far the worst boss ANET has come up with. All good with puzzles, difficulty, etc, etc, but a useless fight that just needs an auto attack, and come back half an hour later????? WTF is that!

Whatever, it is done for me. Moved on, but I hope this isn't the trend for the new GW2 story. Worst one this far IMO.

[Mahou.3924]

> @"Ayrilana.1396" said:

> > @"OneYenShort.3189" said:

> > > @"Kalarchis.8635" said:

> > > Compared to that video, it's like my boss had perma-quickness or something. If my fight had been like that there would have been no issue.

> > So is it a question of is the boss buggy, or after the many "fixes" the boss may have changed? I haven't bothered to read when people did the boss, let alone what is current behavior as of the time of this posting.

> >

> >

>

> I’m seeing it as a “it’s the boss that’s the issue and can’t possibly be me” kind of thing.

 

That sounds more like the standard excuse of the "If it's fine for me, it should and must be fine for everyone else lolololgitgutscrublololll" players. I'm not applying it to you and/or "good players" who actually provide useful input.

[Sithis.3564]

> @"Healix.5819" said:

> > @"Tirick.7042" said:

> > Why bother getting my character leveled, and getting good at my skills, build, improving gear, etc, if all of that is thrown out with every new story boss?

>

> This is endgame content. Throwing in a new mechanic is just giving you something different. If they never did anything different, they would simply be requiring quicker reaction times, awareness, strategy, etc. GW2 isn't like most RPGs where it's all about the progression of the character and the difficulty is just a numbers game. Here, being a gear leveled 80 is just a tool and you yourself are expected to improve.

>

> As for the exterminator golem specifically, it sounds like some people are doing it horribly wrong, so here's a quick sample of just how simple it truly is:

>

>

 

I really enjoyed watching this :D . My encounters mostly looked like a total chaos but You did it like a boss! Can't touch this.. pew pew :D .

[La Sirena.6873]

While I didn`t find the fight too difficult I don`t like the design of Bossfights since raid was a thing.

They insert Raid and fractal mechanics in Ls and always more timegating (or wasting) and annoying somehow.

While the older episodes where interesting in story and fun to play, we now have tedious annoying fights and the story is very superficial and boring.

I finished the episode the fastest of all, while these stretched out fights are there to compensate, because of lack of content.

Also the aproach on joko is just too much, wheres the big dragon worldboss fight with Kralkatorrik. THat would be epic.

The bosses here are very anonymous and just have aoe spam, big hp and some collectible stuff to get down a shield or smth else.

All in all in think this episode is just a mixed copy of content we had before, while I don`t disapprove of the inquest asura.

There should be more about the char tribe which was a nice approach but not enough to make it interesting.

Also theres just junkdrops again no nice skins and the rewards of the story are nothing to work towards.

In the older episodes I nearly played them with all my 12 chars, with these episodes 1x and then I lost interest.

Hf

[Zappix.7928]

> @"Healix.5819" said:

> > @"Tirick.7042" said:

> > Why bother getting my character leveled, and getting good at my skills, build, improving gear, etc, if all of that is thrown out with every new story boss?

>

> This is endgame content. Throwing in a new mechanic is just giving you something different. If they never did anything different, they would simply be requiring quicker reaction times, awareness, strategy, etc. GW2 isn't like most RPGs where it's all about the progression of the character and the difficulty is just a numbers game. Here, being a gear leveled 80 is just a tool and you yourself are expected to improve.

>

> As for the exterminator golem specifically, it sounds like some people are doing it horribly wrong, so here's a quick sample of just how simple it truly is:

>

>

 

Your video, I did exactly as you did. Killing the power cores that popped out of the golem like that. When they disappear, the golems health doesn't go down at all, it stays the same as it was before the core pops out. Glad to see my encounter was indeed bugged.

[Healix.5819]

> @"Kalarchis.8635" said:

> For me that safe zone was always on the other side of the boss, and the swing itself went off much faster than that.

 

That sounds like you have a very high latency / packet loss, or the server was lagging. In either case, the telegraphed area will last a fraction of what it's supposed to, or the hit will go off earlier than expected while continuing to show the telegraph for the expected duration.

 

> @"Kalarchis.8635" said:

> There were aoes everywhere the whole time in that final phase. The adds in that video used their beam aoe and then disappeared; in my fight those adds were there _permanently_ and throwing stuff all over the place.

 

The large circles around the room happen randomly during the final phase and there can be 8 of them at once to create a full circle around the boss (they're always aimed at the middle ring). The boss is anti-ranged during this phase, so just like the rapid fire attack, you can entirely avoid them by simply staying in melee range.

 

The adds despawn once you pull out the core, and they only come back when the boss shoots out more, which may not happen at all during the final phase. They will also self destruct after a time. Since all they do is the beam attack, they're really no threat.

 

> @"Kalarchis.8635" said:

> I was not doing that kind of damage. Nowhere close. When I say I was smacking on that thing for near ten minutes in the final phase I'm not exaggerating.

 

If you rush to the boss room while the NPCs are still setting up outside, the encounter will bug and you won't receive the 100% increased damage buff at the end, which in my case makes it take an extra minute. When Rox comes to the end of the escort and Braham runs off with her, follow them, but don't head to the boss. One of the Charr will tell you to head in, then Braham will tell you to go. Kill the enemies outside first, then head in. It has bugged every time I didn't wait for that dialogue to finish (you don't actually need to kill the enemies).

 

When it does bug like this, the boss tends to not use its other attacks and ends up just shooting the orbs during the final phase. Once in a while it may use a different attack however; it's very buggy like that. There's an attack for example where it pounds the ground 3 times, creating shock waves like at the start, but it's been very rare to see. Some people have also said that the boss can get stuck with the 75% damage reduction.

 

Try doing it again and you'll likely get a much different experience. If you're replaying it, you can start from the point where you fight the cubs, which you can intentionally lose to skip. When fighting the golems, kill the power golems for the energy first, then immediately kill the shielded golem, which causes the others to despawn. Just don't go rushing ahead, since killing the shielded golems before Braham stops will bug him. For whatever reason, killing the shielded golems first causes more power golems to spawn throughout the escort, which is why there's excess energy all over in the video. It takes about 5 minutes to get to the boss.

 

> @"Kalarchis.8635" said:

> Compared to that video, it's like my boss had perma-quickness or something. If my fight had been like that there would have been no issue.

 

It does go into overdrive every so often. Watch it shoot the orbs for example and you'll notice it shoot at twice the speed for several seconds at a time.

[Kalarchis.8635]

So it sounds like I had the perfect storm of high latency and bugs. That ground pound attack you say is rare? I saw that like seven times at the end. He was also spawning adds often enough that I had multiple groups of them on the field at a time. Sometimes when he spawned them he would fire them _outside_ of the arena. I see a lot of cooldown in that video; my boss was launching his attacks one after another with no cooldowns. Or maybe it just looked that way because of the latency/packet loss issue.

 

Sounds like this fight needs some major bug fixing. One day I'll redo it and probably have a normal experience. Today is not that day.

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

I'm honestly surprised that my Deadeye wrecked its kitten. My Guardian had trouble because its a melee only build.

[Tirick.7042]

> @"Kalarchis.8635" said:

>

> Yeah this just confirms that we did NOT get the same boss. In my encounter:

>

> - That arm swing he does with the aoes with a safe zone? For me that safe zone was always on the other side of the boss, and the swing itself went off much faster than that. He would swing almost immediately after the aoes appeared, every time. It was impossible to kite into safe zone. I'm running a weaver with enhanced swiftness who's always moving, usually I was already kiting around the boss as the attack appeared, and I still could not make it into safe zone in time. That swing in the video is like molasses compared to what I saw.

> - I'm really not sure what all those nice downtimes of no aoes in the video are about. There was multiple times that much going on in the fight I got. There were aoes everywhere the whole time in that final phase. The adds in that video used their beam aoe and then disappeared; in my fight those adds were there _permanently_ and throwing stuff all over the place.

> - I was not doing that kind of damage. Nowhere close. When I say I was smacking on that thing for near ten minutes in the final phase I'm not exaggerating. It's not a gearing issue; I'm not a zerker but I can deal damage just fine. Whatever damage buff got applied to the player in that video simply didn't get applied to me.

>

> Compared to that video, it's like my boss had perma-quickness or something. If my fight had been like that there would have been no issue.

 

You describe almost exactly what I was experiencing, so maybe it was just a bugged encounter.

[Tirick.7042]

 

 

> @"Healix.5819" said:

> > @"Tirick.7042" said:

> As for the exterminator golem specifically, it sounds like some people are doing it horribly wrong, so here's a quick sample of just how simple it truly is:

>

>

 

Thank you for the video; it is clear you and I had very different encounters. First, I was using a sword/dagger weaver, and could not avoid the AOE at all to get the volatile ley line energy, and needed to play chase the core in the end phase. The fact that you are never 'down' meant I could not even correct this build 'oversight' during the encounter. Second, the final phase of the encounter was full of overlapping AOE fields constantly pulsing. There were very few 'safe' zones, and for a melee build, nowhere was safe if I actually wanted to do damage. It also took a good 5-10 min of beating on the main golem before the core popped. It certainly may have been bugged.

 

I do get your point, but I disagree, in my mind end game content is more about raids and fractals. Those are designed as a challenge, with repeat attempts and good planning and tricky mechanics to overcome for success. Story content should be just that, the story. Shoehorning in odd one-off combat mechanics works for players already in that mindset, but does nothing but frustrate and alienate the casual PvE players.

 

[scory.5678]

Arenanet is a business. To add or keep customers they must compete against many, many other gaming companies. Aggravating their customers, making aspects of the game long, tedious and boring or overly complicated will not help them in this endeavor. Maybe all the hotshots stay and preen but how about those casual players who give up and leave because they just don't like what is offered? What percentage of market share might that be?

[kratan.4619]

> @"Healix.5819" said:

> > @"Tirick.7042" said:

> > Why bother getting my character leveled, and getting good at my skills, build, improving gear, etc, if all of that is thrown out with every new story boss?

>

> This is endgame content. Throwing in a new mechanic is just giving you something different. If they never did anything different, they would simply be requiring quicker reaction times, awareness, strategy, etc. GW2 isn't like most RPGs where it's all about the progression of the character and the difficulty is just a numbers game. Here, being a gear leveled 80 is just a tool and you yourself are expected to improve.

>

> As for the exterminator golem specifically, it sounds like some people are doing it horribly wrong, so here's a quick sample of just how simple it truly is:

>

>

 

The mechanic is fine, when it is bugged for over an hour it is not ok. I have had it at 25% for an hour now and it will no longer drop the core.

[Healix.5819]

> @"kratan.4619" said:

> I have had it at 25% for an hour now and it will no longer drop the core.

 

You're supposed to attack it normally once it switches to attack mode at 35%. The final core doesn't pop out until you take it down to 10%.

[Patchup.1053]

I have no problem with the mechanic of the boss fight. But having viewed the video in this forum, I can say the fight is definitely different now and it does seem like it might be a bit bugged.

When the first power core popped, I attacked it and the health bar dropped to 80% not 30%, I assumed this was going to take 4-5 power cores. But then the golem healed to 100%.

I repeated. The Golem went to 80% again, I took down the adds faster and used only 4 stack special attacks. But the Golem went back to 100%.

I repeated and spammed the special attack as much as I could. The Golem went to 30% health. Then healed back to 100% again.

I repeated and this time he stayed at 30% but I did little damage. I kept at it and then he started taking more damage. The final core popped and it was over.

That was the buggy part. Maybe I didn't kill the power core 100% and that meant he would heal or not go down to 30%? It looked like I did though.

 

The different fight mechanic is that the Golem would use an AOE wave that knocked you back if you didn't jump it (3 waves) or he would emit an expanding circle that DPS'd you quickly. In other words you couldn't just casually stay behind him, up close in melee area, and avoid 50% of the attacks. You were forced back to the ranged area. That mechanic in the video looked like a cake walk in comparison.

 

Again, I have no problem with the mechanic. I just think it was not clear if I was doing something wrong or it was buggy.

[Oldirtbeard.9834]

Glad I've been working on an alt, hopefully by the time I get to it there will be a simple guide.

[Blocki.4931]

This was one of the easiest fights ever, you can't fail it either. The hell? "too many mechanics" like what, throwing energy at him so his core flies out while you deal 200% increased damage? Yeah really hard to understand that you use the mechanics the entire instance taught you

[ImTasty.2163]

> @"scory.5678" said:

> Arenanet is a business. To add or keep customers they must compete against many, many other gaming companies. Aggravating their customers, making aspects of the game long, tedious and boring or overly complicated will not help them in this endeavor. Maybe all the hotshots stay and preen but how about those casual players who give up and leave because they just don't like what is offered? What percentage of market share might that be?

 

Except the majority of the time it's just people complaining because the boss is not an afk auto attack boss. The boss itself is fine and the mechanics are not hard. The mechanics are similar to just about any RPG where the build up to the boss teaches you how to fight the boss. If people actually paid the slightest bit of attention they would notice that the red orb attacks have no red fields appear near the boss so it's easier to range down the cores and then run and snag them then head back to the safe zone.

 

Granted, bugs can make it more difficult but they are bugs and not intended. If the fight is big you should submit a bug report in game. Outside of that though the boss is fine. Someone even posted a video showing how this boss fight plays down if you chose not to pay attention in game.

[Alek Seven.2374]

When I destroyed its face with my Zerk Power DH, 4x in a row, the core that you need to "extract" DID NOT SPAWNED AT ALL. I still got it the 5th time.