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

[Lexi.1398]

While it was a pretty boring fight - especially because none of my characters are equipped for more than 8k dps (shameful, i know) especially not the one i do all stories on - its mechanics are simple.

 

Fight the small bots its spawns for ley energy, collect until 4 stack (note the grey shield icon on boss = magnetic shield, itll always have 4 stacks at the start of each round so thats how much ley enegry you need), go to golem and spam special action key until the unstable power core pops out, dps the hay out of it, rinse and repeat until it gets to what, 30%? health, then you don't need to collect ley energy more and just murder murder until its dead.

[Prime Greek.1092]

Adds nothing to the story.

 

Are we doing Raid bosses in the story now with auto Rez ?

 

What is the purpose of dying over and over and over, and then rezing over and over an over ?

 

I would really like to know exactly what the programmers had in mind here ?

 

Maybe we are missing something ....

[eldrjth.7384]

Apart from the boss fight I thought the lead up was too **mechanic heavy** rather than simply focusing on combat. It seems like that for most of the new content is going that way. Why bother building your character up and picking certain skills etc when every new encounter attempts to circumvent it some way and instead of using brute force you instead work around game mechanics. In this case it was the stealth activation parts at the beginning which were super annoying.

[usnedward.9023]

> @"Daroon.1736" said:

> The lack of in game information to try and help you work out the mechanics is even worse than usual in this fight.

 

The point of new content in MMOs is to figure it out. Figure out the mechanics and beat it. Knowing ahead of time is pointless..... "Just gimme the loot and APs".... \sigh

[FrizzFreston.5290]

I thought it was fine, then again I'm not too obsessed with having a new map and more with the story. I was more interested in the charr tribe, waiting until Braham and Rox got to certain points in the village and just enjoying the experience. The Asura Lab with stealth mechanics was really sneaky, though it might be just that much easier with a second person there. And the boss was literally down in a little longer than 3 minutes first try. *shrug*

 

Personally I really loved the storysteps. I don't care if it's a bit longer if the story is fun. But I tend to figure out stuff really quickly, even with boss fights.

 

If I would change anything is to place those green sword icons on the adds during the boss fight, so that it's clear that those are the ones giving volatile energy bomb whatever they where. I wasn't sure at first either, but I saw there was a shield, figured I had to get more SOMEWHERE, which just automatically lead me to frantically killing any side-mobs. CC and such I barely had to deal with as I ,well, just ran out of the circles and squares and I dunno whats, as long as this shape isn't right over my character, you know. I don't wanna die, so I gotta keep moving, and I always bring something that breaks a bar, I hate it when I don't have a stunbreaker or stability, because it literally ruins alot of the encounters if you don't. So I guess I do come prepared.

 

 

[supa suop.8026]

People had trouble with this boss? I thought it was pretty easy, in fact I got the under 3 min achievement on the first try. the one mechanic that the boss had was introduced way before you even fight him, so other than that if felt like I was fight another slightly tougher NPC.

 

The design for the boss looked awesome by the way, good work Anet!

[Felipe.1807]

In my opinion this boss was much harder then both Balthazar and Scruffy 2.0, his energy balls or whatever is the name of that are way to spammy and leave little window to dodge and also hit like a truck, doing 8K damage on my warrior...gotta be honest here, if it wanst for the auto rez I probably would be stuck on this boss for a while, Anet is trying to put some Dark Souls level stuff on the game or something lol(I did played Dark Souls 1 and 2 on NG+7, and honestly, Dark Souls wasnt so annoying as this)

[Sharen Graves.1276]

Horrible boss mechanics

Stupid puzzles that get's so frustrating you lose whats going on in the story.

Oh look another currency for no reason

Oh look another mastery for no reason

 

This episode is so bad I alt+f4 and loaded outlook and started replying to work emails at 9pm.

 

I used to be a player that looked forward to new episodes and what they bring. Now I dread them with the stupid mechanics and the rinse and repeat of currency wars.

 

 

[DeadTreeJig.6714]

What a tedious, uninspiring, complete waste of my time boss fight.

[Doctor Hide.6345]

Are people seriously complaining about the golem fight? It's easy as pie to figure out if you know anything about mechanics in any MMO. Not to mention they told us how when we had to use the energy blast on the pathway up to there, so it shouldn't be much of a surprise when we have to use the same mechanics the game showed us previous on the fight. The Taimi fight from the previous episode was a lot hard than this.

[Solaris.2489]

Took me a few min. to get the mechanics and that you have stand right on the boss to avoid 90% of the dmg, then it was pretty simple. spellbreaker ftw

[DarcShriek.5829]

I think the fight is bugged. The ley line energy quit working for me. It didn't even register that I was using it. hen I had three units and clicked the icon it would then switch to say that I had four units. It looks bugged to me. Oh look, while I was writing this message, the power core popped out. I have no idea why.

[Tsakhi.8124]

If we're talking about the boss in the Charr camp, this was my strategy.

 

Kill those cubes and pick up the Ley Energy they drop, I found it easier to stock up on energies and keep attacking the golem.

You'll notice that the golem has a shield icon underneath it, stating 4 stacks of protection.

 

In this case, it goes like this:

4-100%

3-75%

2-50%

1-25%

 

Every time you use ley energy, that shield goes down by one. Be aware that it does regenerate, which is why I stocked up on the energies.

It's a tedious battle, so make sure you go in with fresh eyes. I hope this helps.

[DeadTreeJig.6714]

> @"Doctor Hide.6345" said:

> Are people seriously complaining about the golem fight? It's easy as pie to figure out if you know anything about mechanics in any MMO. Not to mention they told us how when we had to use the energy blast on the pathway up to there, so it shouldn't be much of a surprise when we have to use the same mechanics the game showed us previous on the fight. The Taimi fight from the previous episode was a lot hard than this.

 

At least the the Scruffy 2.0 fight was fun.

[Faaris.8013]

I fucking knew people would complain and ask for a nerf, it's always the same after every episode Anet creates. It doesn't matter how hard a boss really is, some people expect to beat them like they beat the Great Jungle Wurm in Caldeon Forest.

 

You were given plenty opportunity to learn what the special key does in the escort event before. I think the whole fight took me less than 2 minutes with my thief, and mechanics were no problem at all. I entered the fight with 3 charges on my special key (leftovers from the escort), only had to pick up one ley item and he was debuffed.

 

The boss is just fine, you practice what you have to do and the AoEs can easily be avoided. You had to kill adds in the escort to get the special key items, no surprise there. All the other mobs in this chapter are just trash and you cleave them down like fractal T1 trash.

 

edit: just checked gw2efficiency. 877 players have the "X-T3R-M1N-8" achievement at this point, means they killed the golem in under 3 minutes. And it's not even a day since patch...More than 7000 players have the "A Kindness Repaid" achievement, means they finished that chapter successfully.

 

> @"Countess Aire.9410" said:

> ...every time you get ready to attack the little golems target you so yo have to time to damage the big golem.

 

Well, it sounds like you are trying to fight more than one mob with your longbow. Guess it's time to unsheathe your cleave weapons. You do have cleave weapons, right?

[Briolase.7306]

> @"DarcShriek.5829" said:

> I think the fight is bugged. The ley line energy quit working for me. It didn't even register that I was using it. hen I had three units and clicked the icon it would then switch to say that I had four units. It looks bugged to me. Oh look, while I was writing this message, the power core popped out. I have no idea why.

 

The exact same thing happened to me. Managed to kill it anyway but... yeah, it was very confusing when the ley energy stopped working and fluctuated between 3 and 4.

[Briolase.7306]

> @"Faaris.8013" said:

> I kitten knew people would complain and ask for a nerf, it's always the same after every episode Anet creates. It doesn't matter how hard a boss really is, some people expect to beat them like they beat the Great Jungle Wurm in Caldeon Forest.

>

> You were given plenty opportunity to learn what the special key does in the escort event before. I think the whole fight took me less than 2 minutes with my thief, and mechanics were no problem at all. I entered the fight with 3 charges on my special key (leftovers from the escort), only had to pick up one ley item and he was debuffed.

>

> The boss is just fine, you practice what you have to do and the AoEs can easily be avoided. You had to kill adds in the escort to get the special key items, no surprise there. All the other mobs in this chapter are just trash and you cleave them down like fractal T1 trash.

>

> edit: just checked gw2efficiency. 877 players have the "X-T3R-M1N-8" achievement at this point, means they killed the golem in under 3 minutes. And it's not even a day since patch...More than 7000 players have the "A Kindness Repaid" achievement, means they finished that chapter successfully.

>

> > @"Countess Aire.9410" said:

> > ...every time you get ready to attack the little golems target you so yo have to time to damage the big golem.

>

> Well, it sounds like you are trying to fight more than one mob with your longbow. Guess it's time to unsheathe your cleave weapons. You do have cleave weapons, right?

 

Yes, people ask for story boss nerfs quite frequently. Story mode should be story focused. Boss fights should be challenging, I agree, but not tedious or frustrating. Oh, and I kitten knew that at least one person would show up, talk about how quickly they killed it and how easy it was, and tell everyone else to "git gud". There's always at least one. How about taking the average, story-focused, player into consideration. I'm glad you are such a fabulous player that you can kill a boss solo in 2 minutes, but I'm old and slow and I enjoy story and open world content. I would like this kind of content to remain accessible to all players without being overly frustrating. Can't you hardcore players allow at least one mode of play to be enjoyable by everyone?

[Tiny Doom.4380]

The real issue here isn't whether this particular boss is too difficult or takes too long or isn't well-enough explained. It's that this happens Every. Single. Time.

Every LS chapter spawns at least one thread of complaints that basically say players who are interested primarily in the story do not enjoy the same gameplay as players who are primarily interested in Boss fights. With the addition of a new map to each chapter there's also another group who has no interest in the story or the boss fights but just want to get to the new map to begin exploring and/or farming.

 

These activities need to be disconnected. The story should be just that - a story, where any comnbat is at basic solo level and all puzzles have an auto-complete option. The map should be just that - a new map, with a means of transport from an existing map, be that asuran gate, airship or some widget in the mail. The Boss fights should be instanced separately and available as additions to the story, not compulsory steps in linear progression going through it. As for rewards (which are minimal and largely meaningless anyway) appropriate rewards can be assigned to each, separate element, so that the Story gives nothing more than the satisfaction of its plot and dialog and the Boss fights can have something more substantial.

 

It's never going to be possible to please everyone but it would be entirely possible to please an awful lot more people than are being pleased with the current LS design, which has become not just repetitive but rote. Split the elements up and provide content that the player can access by taste and playstyle instead of putt ing everything into lockstep.

[Faaris.8013]

> @"Briolase.7306" said:

> Oh, and I kitten knew that at least one person would show up, talk about how quickly they killed it and how easy it was, and tell everyone else to "git gud".

 

To avoid that impression, I checked gw2efficiency to see if I'm really that "unique" and superior. Turns out I'm not, since within half a day, more than 7k players have beaten the golem, and 877 (at this point) of them in under 3 minutes.

 

edit: Looks like the API wasn't working for some hours, that's why the numbers didn't change. Now it shows that 13k players have beaten the golem, and 1576 of them in under 3 minutes. 12% of those who beat him do it quickly and therefore easily.

[Lord Trejgon.2809]

my only issue with this boss fight is how heavily it was biased against melee characters. I'm pretty sure I'd be able to kill it much faster with a ranged character than in took on my melee-only warrior.

 

please bear in mind on the last phase tapping the boss with special action key refunds the charge and applies full stack of vulnerability which amps your damage to it by alot.

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

> @"Daroon.1736" said:

> The lack of in game information to try and help you work out the mechanics is even worse than usual in this fight.

 

It's not in the fight, it's in the enemies you had to kill on your way to the boss. Every so often, you would have to pick up ley energy and use your special action key to hit a shielded golem on your way over, then kill the ejected core. The only difference is in the number of times you had to do it on the boss.

[Turin.6921]

Here we go again. The fight seems fine. It is a bit longer than it should maybe but please stop comparing it to a raid boss. It has very clear, fair difficulty for a story.

 

BTW if you find it that difficult why not just take a friend with you. It make the fight miles easier and it is really enjoyable to do the story with others.

[Nayaru.4716]

To fight the boss:

1) Note when he has a shield buff under his health bar - the number of stacks shows how many times you need to hit him with ley line energy collected from the additional mobs.

 

2) Once shield buff stacks are gone a power core pops out for you to do the actual damage to the boss - any damage directly to the boss is going to take a while.

 

I didn't find the boss mechanics hard to understand since the entire lead up to the fight was preparation for the boss fight. My issues are with the achievement to beat in in under 3 minutes.

 

1) My first issue is there is no checkpoint for this encounter - if you restart the instance it takes you all the way back to the beginning of the phase of defending the pups with Braham. With the solidly high amount of checkpoints between encounters leading up to this point this seems a little strange. Just annoyingly time consuming to do this over to retry the achievement. A retry mote would be most appreciated.

 

2)Sometimes it will take the shield buff some time to apply on the boss. One time it was almost immediately ready to have ley line energy shot at it, another time I had to wait.

 

3)The reapplication of the shield buff seems inconsistent. This last time after I had removed his shield buffs and fought the power core once I then had to wait a while before his shield buff came back - it didn't come back - but at around 10% the power core just popped out of its own accord.

 

4) Incoming damage is perhaps a little too high for a solo run through especially when the power core is out and the main boss seems disabled - something took me from full health to downed during this phase and I don't know what - forgiving of course playing a glass cannon character and maybe I'm just bad. It was nice not to have to go through the whole downed state and possible retry, though.

[Professor Sprout.1560]

I'll second a great number of these complaints, and add another one that applies more generally to these "red zone spam" encounter designs: if you take the gaze of a player who is attempting to avoid damage away from the enemy character models (where they can distinguish between boss attacks and trash attacks as well as light/heavy attack animations from the same enemy) and towards the red zones on the ground (which usually look the same for all attacks) it becomes hard for the player to tell which attacks are most important to dodge.

 

My case in point for the boss at the end of this mission: the ball projectile attacks and mini golem lasers are moderately damaging and as far as I could tell have no CC element. But hidden somewhere amongst these attacks were CC skills (I know the AoE when the core relocates was a CC skill, but I also know there was at least one additional CC effect in the mix somewhere) and one attack from the golem that dealt my Marauder/Durability ranger something in the region of 10-18k damage. I'm sure that if I went back to the fight and replayed it a few times I could figure out the patterns in more detail, but I feel that the level of dedication required here is more than I expected or was hoping for - are not these pre-map story instances supposed to be warm-up content?

 

Rather than jobbing with a fractal boss fight that has no story buildup or payoff I think that the story should have given the player access to the new map after the commander's leap from the exploding base. The "tribal charr lore immersion" (or whatever it was they were hoping to achieve with that mission) could have been handled by the open world map or by an optional instance.

[Healix.5819]

The orbs it shoots are actually very easy to avoid. The boss is essentially a turret, shooting in a straight line from one hand, then the other. It's not actually aiming for you, it's shooting to your sides, so you end up running into it. If you watch which side it's shooting from, avoiding it is as simple as not running in that direction. Since you are immortal however, it doesn't really matter, so just focus on killing the adds for the charges. A DPS build can push its final phase in a single turn, taking about 2 minutes in total.