Abaddon's Gate ~ increased difficulty?

Well i used to do this mission all the time, when buying books,and echanging them for green weapons, and buying armor so on and so forth...

HOWEVER, this mission never used to be too difficult, and now i find it near impossible. Im using the same old build and hench party that i used to (the same that i got masters with) and its so damn frustrating.

Is it just me, A.I, or do i just suck all of a sudden

I just did this mission two days ago with henches, it seems the same as usual....

The last time i did it was about 2 weeks ago. I thought i noticed increased knockdowns. I could be wrong, but it just seemed like everytime we would kill 2 Monoliths we would get knocked down. Don't seem to remember that when i did it on my warrior.

It took me about 3 or 4 tries to hench Abaddon's Gate (got masters handily once I managed it). This was a few weeks ago.

I don't think Anet deliberately upped the difficulty here; rather, there is a considerable element of luck in this mission. If things don't go wrong, you have an easy Masters. But there's a lot of ways for things to go wrong -

* Things can go wrong if your monks get dazed or knocked down. Dazed also makes life difficult if (as was the case for me) you're a caster character yourself. They get a lot easier if you bring all 4 possible monks (4 assuming that you are not also one yourself), along with Sogolon. (BTW, also because of dazed, despite the apparent usefulness of degen against Abby, I prefer to bring Gehraz instead of Odurra ... normal attacks are just more reliable here)

* Things can go wrong if you aren't paying the most careful attention because of the Torment Claws spawning. The mission difficulty can vary a lot depending on how many of these you get (sometimes he spams them like crazy and other times he only summons a few over the course of the mission). Be especially careful when you see one, either kill it quickly or flag your heroes back so you can concentrate on the Gravens (as you probably know, Claws cannot move, nor attack at range, so as long as you stay out of their melee you're safe).

* Things can go wrong if someone gets knocked down at an inopportune moment. This was the main reason for my failures. Each time Abby goes back to being invulnerable you have a very short amount of time to get out of Dodge before you over-aggro the Graven Monoliths. Six Graven Monoliths are not normally a problem but with Abaddon's attacks and the random Torment Claws they are - you really want to take these 2 at a time only. The way things go wrong here is if someone gets knocked down too soon after Abby's shields go back up, as they may not get up before the Gravens respawn, causing you to have an over-aggro situation.

All in all the mission isn't too hard, though you really can't do it quickly like you could the last mission in Factions (which is for instance why endgame greens in NF run a more or less steady 40K - much of that value is for the time and effort it takes to kill Abby to reach the Throne of Secrets to redeem the Books ... Shiro goes out like a light with the right party on the other hand so no one really worries about effort in getting through Imperial Sanctum to redeem an Amulet), it's pretty easy to get Masters here as long as you get a clean run.

Did it last night jan 25th and seemed to be the same to me. Hero henched it with no issue at all. SS and remove conditions ftw...

i never noticed any change, did it last night also. me and 2 guild mate's for primeval armour,rest were hero's. the tormented claw thingy's can make a difference if you dont spot them in time.

Ya same, every time I went to get my armor again ( total 4 times), well everytime I got under like 13mins which is masters, so this quest is really easy to get masters, just need a good party.

This mission can vary in difficulty by quite a bit. With the same main character and what ever heros/henches I happened to pick, Ive had wildly different scenarios.

One time I swear at least 30 claws popped. Every time I went to kill a monolith, 1-2 would come out. Another time, I had maybe 2 claws the whole time.

My impression is similar to the OP. The last time, knock downs were much more of a problem and there were many more nuisance Torment Claws.

Here are a couple of suggestions, of which you may be well aware: timing Abaddon's period of vulnerability with Lightbringer's Gaze enables you to run back early enough to miss most, if not all, of the knock-downs. Essentially, you can launch it twice, then honor is allowed to run. Also, a strong SS necro can nicely hasten his demise. Good luck.

This mission isn't hard at all, i beat it twice with masters. once with Ranger, once with Warrior. all you need is two Monk Heros, 1 Ranger Hero with interrupt. Both Monk Heros should have Blessed Light to get rid of that annoying Daze when you all get KDed. then 1 more Monk Hench, either prot or healing depends on you. do as much damage as you can, kill off the Claws when they appear, make sure your Ranger Hero interrupts it, or you can do it yourself. it isn't hard if you know what you are doing.

I've done it a handful of times recently and haven't noticed any widely varying difficulty. FWIW, I typically bring Morgahn with Mantra of Inscriptions + Cautery Signet, and both monks healing specced with Light of Deliverance - rest of the team consisting of nothing special.

As for torment claws, I just keep a sharp eye out for them, and be sure an interrupt is on my bar and/or on multiple heroes.

oh well, maybe its just me :P

5 tormet claws popping up in the same small area in 5 seconds = party wipeout, and abaddon has like...1 hit to die -__-'

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Got so many Torment Claws last night (on my 'sin) that I would've done well to bring a Minion Master!

...I've concluded it's just really, really random. My elementalist bummed out twice to quintuple-consecutive Words of Madness, then waltzed through without a hitch.

I did this weekend using my mesmer with henchies and heroes and it was very easy. I kept spamming wastrel's Worry to abaddon and shelling out 68 damage every other second. I finished in less than 13 minutes.

The domination mesmer is the best class to use to kill abaddon.

Me and a guildie got the mission two days ago. We got masters, but it did feel a bit more work than the last time. I think there were just a few monoliths more, and maybe some claws more, so the mission took longer.

It's more difficult. At least, a little.

Some things have changed, for example, there are now 4 pairs of Graven Monoliths, instead of 3. At the very least, this makes the mission longer since you are now fighting a total of 8 Monoliths instead of 6 each round. This is the only change that I am certain of (at least I think I'm certain--see last sentence in post).

Other changes that I suspect are increased Torment Claw spawns, and increased use of Word of Madness.

I did the mission twice this weekend. The first time I did it on Friday 2/9 and didn't have any problems. It took 10 minutes with heroes and hench. 10 minutes is a little longer than my average time with heroes and hench, but it's still in the ball park.

The second time was on Sunday 2/11. I joined with 1 other person, a Dervish. The rest of the party was made up of heroes, except for 1 hench. We attempted it twice. The first time, we died. When we went back to the outpost, my teammate noticed that his Dunkoro's skills weren't set right, so he adjusted them, and we restarted the mission. We completed it in 15 minutes.

The difficulty I had on Sunday could be partially explained by the fact that I had a teammate who may have been running sketchy skill bars (I never asked him to ping, because I usually beat Abaddon in less than 10 minutes with full heores & hench). However, I asked him after the mission if there was an additional group of Monolith's that we were fighting. He said yes.

Am I on drugs, or did the Monolith groups increase from 3 to 4? How about Torment Claw spawns and Word of Madness usage? I've done this mission around 10-15 times, but have never really paid much attention to it since it's so straight forward.

Anna

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