Hard Mode complaints

I personally liked the addition of HM and the challenges the creatures added due to it. Obviously the AI wasnt improved drastically, and they obviously did just make them ress and heal better and do more damage. Nothing astounding.

But it worked!

Now look at GWEN and creatures now have 2 professions in HM!! Now that is a pain, because you have NO idea what your facing. I tried to fight an elemental creature in HM and he pulled out mesma abilities and healed himself within seconds.

I couldnt take him down because I was expecting an elemental.

I think if you had a higher drawf rank, you'd have been okay, since you get the drawf bonus. Then again, you could have looked it up on wiki and seen exactly what you were fighting, then brought things to kill it. It is 'hard mode' after all, and you do need SOME preparationh.

Back to the OP, it's not that Anet can't create a good build for monsters. It's that the AI allows for pulling, etc so that monsters have to fight 1 vs 8 all the time.

If you fight 8 level 20 monsters at one time, it's relatively challenging. If they have decent builds, party members can easily drop.

So don't blame Anet for resorting to level 28 monsters. If anything, blame them for bad AI.

Yep I don't find HM fun at all. Maybe if the mobs were smarter, not with more health or doing more damage or faster casting or buffs at all to anything except their skill bars and AI in general. Maybe some mobs are dumber than others, maybe a group of 5 has 1-2 folks that are smart and the rest aren't and stand in MS.

Sorry was that in reponse to my post?

If so, I am rank 9 drawf and I dont see how that would have helped me kill some creaturse in HM in GWEN?

I wasnt even aware that wiki listed the secondary professions for creatures in HM for GWEN. But until that point I hadnt even realised creaturse had secondaries in HM. That was when I first noticed.

I dont think ive tried HM in gwen since. Mostly because NO one seems to be doing HM in gwen.

Im not complaining that its a bad thing, because I like a challenge and secondaries for creaturse is a good thing. But it was just unexpected and a huge jump up from just making creatures ress each other.

If HM was the new normal mode, then we would have more people playing HM throughout the game and we dont. Especially in GWEN where pugs levels seem to be really low anyway.

OMG there is no pleasing some people...
Thats all i can possibly say
EDIT: freakedoutfish i seem to be following you around. It's scaring me

hey this is my rock go hide under your own. LOL

Grrr, Hermits always stealin' mah rox...

On topic: Thank you to the people who posted three pages of enlightening information. My question has been answered. <3

Hard mode simply ditched the concept of balance and everything there was behind GW's original gameplay.

This is why necros and mesmers dominate it - their skills are completely unbalanced given the increased attack and movement speeds. Mob eles and rits however, are also completely broken. Not to mention the bosses.

Mesmers dominate PvE, wow :P Give these poor buggers a break once will you?

The only problems I have in HM is excessive healing by some monsters, and some that already hit to hard in NM are over the top in HM

Sometimes the healing is so bad you are at a stand still, you can't kill them and they can't kill you and you just have to walk a way from the fight.

Some mobs particularly ones that have a majority or all casters like the ones in Shards of Orr for example that already did excessive AOE damage are flat out instant team wipers in HM.

On the loot side, I notice very little difference between HM and NM except for maybe 10-20 more coin in the bags.

I vanquished and did all the of the missions for all three campaigns in hard mode before I bought Eye of the North (didn't feel like jumping into something new before finishing up the old stuff).

I did the majority of it h/h, or with just my brother and I and our heroes. The challenging spots were mainly those that were elementalist heavy, or a supped up boss. Despite some frustration from time to time, it wasn't so bad.

I was not prepared for Eye of the North though. What had been "not so bad" in the other three had suddenly become annoying. I don't ever remember to bring consumables with me, so I have nothing to rely on other than myself and my heroes and henchmen performing to the best of their abilities. No ursan's blessing for me, and no devourer farming. With some build tweaking though the game has become fun again and what had at first seemed impossible and unbearable has become much easier (and with less frustration comes more fun).

My problem is that a lot of the time it feels like "work" and not "play". I mean, I seek to escape the monotony of real life by immersing myself in a game so I can relax and forget about things for a while, and not have that same tediousness follow me into the virtual world.

Funny how most of the people I know we're saying "Oh boy I can't wait for HM! But I hope they just don't boost everything up." Then HM came: "...Oh."

Nonetheless, I wish a little more thought went into it since it was mostly all the things we didn't want. At least you had to configure your build a little.

Hard Mode should have done what GW:EN did. Give monsters a secondary, and skills to balance a build with. Charr Dominators can destroy casters with 1 skill, their elite (Power Block). However, they also fast cast Rez Chant. The Charr Elems will use Meteor Shower, and Aegis. These are the types of things I find more challenging than higher level and faster movement/attack speed.

I wouldn't claim hard mode is too easy, but the AI and build improvements (which are the principle way it should be made harder) are very slight. By and large things are just faster and higher level.

Just cover it with Breeze son

Anyways, I think HM was a good addition to GW, gave new challenges and more variation for players, got no complaints at all here.

- Ganni

Would deffinately have been better, in my opinion of course, to have rather than just increased numbers. Improved the groups.

You just dont run into many well balanced AI groups, which can counter multiple builds and require you to counter them. For the most part the game remains about putting out as much damage as you can to kill them before they kill you.

Thats not to say its bad, I just feel it couldnt have been implemented better.

you sir, win the thread

What hard mode really requires to raise the level of play is some quests designed around it. These would be multi level quests requiring more thought to complete rather than just go kill target X and return for reward.

As to the actual difficutly of Hard Mode you still Have to keep it managble for those with only hench in their parties. I would sugest the number of mobs be set by the number of live players. More live players equals more foes to kill, and these foes would have a higher number of rare items to drop, same chance of the drops occuring.

And sadly, still just as stupid : (. After the HM update I finally came to terms that we can never have true, tactical combat in PvE. At least I've got Dawn of War.