Hard Mode - Thumbs Up/Down? (First Impressions and more)

I don't see how people could exactly consider this "too hard". All you have to do is find your own good build (Cookie cutters from Normal Mode DO NOT WORK). I've already made Mission+Bonus from Northern Wall to Aurora Glade on HM with only heroes/hench. Even got amazing drops.

I'm running 3 monks in the 6-max-party areas, I'm just patient. Yes I can kill things (quite fast, actually) and I regularly bring Mes/Rit/Para (they are quite good in hard mode). I have not once brought an MM (Yes, ok, I brought an SF a few times..).

Solo Farming: Personally, I feel it is better than ever. From the start of Hard Mode I have gotten ~25-35 or so gold items (including my first gold max Dead Sword [Yeah, I know, but I only dead sword farm one run a week]). If you can't make money from selling drops, you might want to find a new place to farm. And, If you don't already, I suggest having more than one farming spot, just to keep things interesting.

For those who think people who say "Thumbs Up" are blindly following ArenaNet: So because Anet didn't fulfil your every want with Hard Mode, everyone who enjoys it is mindlessly praising them? I don't think so.

Or maybe the areas that I've tried so far just happened to have few improvements that way (Ascalon area mostly ^^). I'll keep an eye out for skill bar improvements elsewhere. I am skeptical though, in view of the crude shortcuts they took with the +xx% speed buff (at least get rid of skill activation boosts! interrupting = big joy of the game and you're killing it!).

Perhaps the bonuses are a little overboard some of the places. With a GREAT hero setup and among the best players in the guild, along with a balanced team and exceptional builds, we cannot clear raisu palace explorable. Lv 30 shiroken mobs... with the huge bonuses... = PWNAGE. the monks can't kite and the ritualist shiroken throw up their rits at amazing speeds.

Sometimes I think that someone at ANet loves Necromancer and tries everything to not nerf them. Two years to see that soul reaping is flawed? And now a hard mode with boni for monsters that favours necromancers?

I wouldn't exactly say it favors necros. Yes increased attack speed greatly buffs SS but you are forgetting that on the players side nothing else has changed. It still has a decent length SR and CT, even using a Modti's it still takes longer to get it on than the mobs take to remove it. Anet loves necros...nah..but we don't need another massive thread on that.

First of all, on behalf of my guild, and myself [of course], we would like to thank Anet for Hard Mode, which after a few days of playing we have become infatuated with beyond measure.

Statistically hard-mode is phenomenal in terms of both droprates and regular loot. We've not been able to get absolute numerics, but we come up with approximated percentile increases in "good shiz that drops".

6 groups of 8 went and did separate areas throughout Tyria in hard mode with a variety of results.

I personally was in a group that did Sorrow's Furnace and other areas of the Shiverpeak mountains. Our first run ended up with these results:
__________________________________________________ ________
(Based on a complete clearing of Sorrow's Furnace WITHOUT Quests)

1)12 Gold Items
~ We were simply amazed. Though this may not be indicative of the average, it certainly says something for loot scaling and its importance to players like [us]. None of the golds were "exceptional" necessarily, but the increase is nice.
(Note: This does NOT include chest drops)

2) 5 Green Weapons:
1) Grognar's Blade
2) Bortak's Bone Claw
3) Drago's Vampiric Flatbow
4) Razorstone
5) The Stoneheart
~ We found this surprising, since they are not affected by loot scaling.
(I got the Razorstone :>)

3) 2 Tomes
~ Both non-elite, one monk and one necro.

4) An average of about 7k in whites/blues and gold.
~ Based on average income between all 8 players. We've decided that this was twice (if not more) the normal income for this run.

5) Other things:
-One Scroll to Fissure.
-Two XP scrolls from bosses.
__________________________________________________ __________

We found this to be a good average based on all the groups we had playing on Friday (some groups were playing in Missions, others on other continents).
(Note: VERY few elite tomes were dropped.)

We were definitely impressed with the increase in loot for people like us who play the game normally, and enjoy 8-man farming. Though some of us do actually enjoy solo farming, most of us do not and appreciate Hard Mode for what it brings us.

Here are a list of some other pros stated specifically from members of my guild:
1) Soloing and 8man in Hard Mode offers GREAT exp. We love the 50% increase.
2) The difficulty is great, offering a challenge and not just a point-and-click adventure with Winamp blaring in the background while eating Pizza, watching TV, and not really paying attention to the game.
3) Vanquisher is AWESOME. We already have a couple guild members who have accomplished Tyrian Vanquisher, no Canthan or Elonian vanqs yet. :P
4) Guardian of [continent] is cool, we have some Canthan, Elonian, and Tyrian guardians in our guild already.
(My necro currently has Guardian of both Tyria and Cantha. )
5) Lockpicks are neat, even if pricey.
6) Solo-farming still works, few complaints from our guilds' dedicated farmers.
(most of them are actually quite pleased with hardmode, as soloing in hardmode tends to bring up significantly more amounts of good stuff (golds, e.t.c.), though overall gold income has lowered.)

Now, I don't mean to be a pain in the ass, but we have a list of cons too.
1) Henchmen and Hero AI is (generally) far too incompetent for Hard Mode.
2) For people unlike the people in my guild, finding a team of 8 may be hard... if not impossible. (This coming from a couple friends of mine who own their own guilds, who both can't find 8-man teams, and on top of that are victims of poor Henchie AI.)
3) Gold items (generally) kinda stink. We may get a lot more now, but they still tend to be very poor quality. Most of us are bothered by the fact that any gold items drop with a requirement over 10, and the fact that Tyria and Cantha have been left in the "inscription-less" dark ages for this long. (Note: This does not reflect the majority of people involved in this evaluation. we're pretty much split on whether we want inscriptions in previous games.)
4) Tomes are a problem. 100% of the people involved in our global Hard-Mode playtime (about 50 people) concur that tomes just do not drop enough. We think that they are excellent additions to the game, no doubt... however we were under the impression (previous to HM release) that they would be easily attainable. Soloing for them is completely useless, and we barely see them on normal runs. It is the official request of my guild that tome droprates increase significantly, as we felt our expectations of these new items was grossly under-met.
(We also like the idea of Tome-Traders usable by characters who meet the requirements to enter hard-mode (level20, completed game))


Overall, we give Hard Mode two gigantic, ass-kicking thumbs up, and want to thank everyone at ArenaNet for it!!! We'd also like to encourage more people to pug for Hard Mode, as it is extraordinarily fun, and I hope people with reservations about it will give it a chance, at the very least.
And though we did have a few grumbles from some of our friends that solo-farm, the overall concept is well taken, and the balance between farmers and normal players means a lot to us.

Hugs and kisses,
[HaCK]

I think you're right about the drops - they're MUCH better. My brother and I are slowly completing Vanquisher of Cantha with heroes, just tyring 1 or 2 zones per night...damn Raisu was HARD! 2 hours 10 mins of CONTINUAL rangers. Meh, got there in the end. Definitely noticed an increase in drops quality with some *gasp* perfect gold drops for me! This is a concept I'm not familiar with.

I've not tried playing with Henchmen but Heroes are fine. Sure, sometimes you need to tell them what to do, for example I manually set up spirits with Razah before each fight...which neutralises most spikes (especially from those shiroken eles - starburst = OUCH) and takes the pressure off the monks at the very beginning. One complaint I dop have is that yesterday Dunkoro appeared to be on strike. We did Sunjiang Explorable no trouble...then we went to do Haiju Lagoon...no matter what we did we couldn't kill the Crimson Skull Rit Boss because he's surrounded by monks who outheal us...this wasn't made any easier by Dunkoro just refusing to heal.

Golds is one thing I don't have too much of a problem with. I've been playing the game for a year and only had ONE 15^50 Canthan/Tyrian skin weapon...yesterday I had 2.

Right back at'cha.

Not to get too far off-track, but HM is probably as much a nerf to MM (if not all heroes) as anything, so I wouldn't hold my breath on hero AI fixes. Interesting info though. I'm having fun, myself.

I love being able to send my typically useless toons after various new worthwhile solo farming expeditions.

Edit: To add, I love measuring a big fish every 10th catch over fish sticks anyday. :P

Heh, you do that, too, huh?

Wow, good job on your very accomplished guildmates! I have only gone through the first mission in Tyria on HM, but really, I think I had more fun doing that than I did for all of NF . . . I have an odd attachment to playing the old stomping grounds at a competitive level, since the level design and art from Prophecies was simply so much better than the often repetitive nature of the other continents. for me, one of the largest strengths of HM you might add to the pros is the ability to play old favorite places in entirely new and challenging ways. GJ and good luck in the future!

I agree on the golds. The stats on them are woeful at best, usually. You would think "better drops in hard mode" wouldn't mean, "more rare crap," but "wow, something I might keep?"

I also agree on the tomes. I've been playing quite a bit since the update, and I've still never seen one. I mean literally never seen one. I have not seen one drop and I have not seen anyone that has one. I have seen people waning to BUY them, but no sellers. They're not even that special. They're just items of convenience. Just make the things drop like they should already. There's no reason for them to be as rare in occurrence as ectos.

And yes, finding people that actually play hard mode is... very hard. I was surprised that there was no attempt to make this easier. I guess ANet wants us to start using the party search function that no one ever uses.

lol. I've seen plenty of ecto since the nerf, and only one (non-elite) tome. On the other hand, one of my alliance members had a couple of elites and sold them to be for 3k each (this price will never be reasonable unless droprates increase/trader is introduced.

I f*cking love that axe!!! Sell it to me!!!



This is a good thread. For once it's not a b*tch thread with several-hundred people whining about the solo nerf. This thread actually tries to get people to go play hard mode, which there are NEVER enough pugs for.
I hereby give this thread a:
WiN.

My two cents

Whines:
-I actually got purple mesmer gear for 75% of the time coming from chests. A lockpick costs 1.5k and I get nothing but crap, its pretty lame.
-Some boss damage is a bit over the top, bosses doing double damage are a bit too much in hard mode.
-Nerfing the difficulty in normal mode makes the game either too easy or too hard for many people.
-Please make hard mode items inscribable

Cheers:
-Overall monster drops are quite good, happy with that, at least I make decent money out of runs
-Tomes own, they will save me lots of cash in the long run (they actually drop quite often for me)
-Hard mode actually makes it possible for underrated classes to prove themselves
-The intelligent monster AI actually requires me to use my brain when playing, and it encourages solid teamwork
-PUGing is back where it belongs, and vacant spots can be easily occupied by heroes

Overall rating for HM is big thumbs up, playability is smooth and fun. I'm happy to PvE again, and I'm even happier to do that with rather competent people. currently on 8/13 on canthan mission completion ^^.

Hard mode is excellent, vanquisher was just what the game needed to get everyone playing. For Tyria, in particular, there was simply no reason to visit large areas of the game, Kryta in particular.

There are Tengu in kryta

Are you implying that people don't like Tengu

that's not very nice

Tengu have feelings too

Tengu will rise up and rally against this injustice.

Everyone who doesn't like the feeling of getting owned by oversized parrots hates tengu. Even if they're with me they're annoying, Talon shouldnt smoke so much, his constant coughing is tiresome.
And then I didn't even mention bird flu, Tengu are the root of all evil, now be silent woman! :P

I love hard mode. I am taking it slowly, trying out different builds for different areas. HM is fun.

As to loot, I have no complaints. In Normal Mode, I have gotten perhaps two gold drops in a year that were worth the trouble of selling instead of merch. So, while HM isn't giving better drops, it's certainly giving more of them.

And now I get tomes in addition to normal loot; think that is great.

Lockpicks are keys that might be reusable. Lockpicks are keys that might be reusable. - I have to keep repeating that to myself.

Years of playing RPG with lockpicks means my brain doesn't easily connect lockpick with one-use key. A guildmate lectured me (10 minutes) on the ANet concept that a GW lockpick is just a key, that has a very slight chance of being reusable if you've opened a lot of chests and are very lucky. So I am rewiring my brain to think of Lockpick as a key name and to have no expectations of retaining it for another use.

(I do have levels in Treasure Hunter, but none in Lucky.)