The hardest area in Guild Wars

Very solvable with just one skill - Frozen Soil. It's the skill that made it possible for me to vanquish the desolation in the end. I don't think the Awakened mobs are too overpowered once you stop them ressing, and they fall down fast.

There were quite a few difficult areas in each campaign, but some things were just far worse.

Tyria (proph) had FoW, UW and Tombs. FoW was relatively easy out of those; Tombs slightly trickier and UW was genuinely quite hard - but could be done by the proficient. Yes, even with heroes.

Factions had Raisu Palace and the Sanctum. Those were near obscene. The Factions endboss is probably the hardest in the game, with the Great Destroyer coming a close second.

Nightfall... yeah. A few. Ruins of Morah takes the cake for the worst mission in the game, from memory... I don't think there was any that was tougher to finish than that one. Then there was the Realm of Torment, which was ... very very nasty.

EotN - dungeons were the worst parts. Although I must mention Cyndr the Mountain Heart, which has stopped plenty of people dead in their tracks as well. Not I, for some reason... but anyway. Frostmaw was nasty, Vloxen was nasty, Slaver's was EXCEPTIONALLY nasty (that said I still managed to H/H Forgewight on NM, albeit going 60 DP most of the way because I didn't bother to cart in anti-burning).

But the one that takes the cake would have to be Domain of Anguish, Hard Mode. Even on NM it was giving the XoP group I was with several false starts, and those guys can handle almost anything... even Vloxen Excavations on Hard Mode, barely missing a beat. I think I'll put it down to unfamiliarity with how to beat it though, since it looked like we were just brickwalling ourselves there. Given that, I have to believe HM DoA is an entirely new level of difficult.

If I had to decide on the hardest challenge I ever faced, I would have to say completion of the Foundry of Failed Creations pre-nerf and pre-Ursan... and pre-PvE skill Paragon zzz fest. I recall being stuck on that for days, just after DoA was put in the game, and one night the planets aligned and a whole lot of really good players were available to come play, and so I was able to form up a retardedly pro group to take it... so retardedly pro that I still happen to have the screenshot hosted:



Dralspire was there too, and so was Mark, but they left just before I took that picture.

I hate to sound elitist, but looking at that party list, I would say that it should be safe to assume that any challenge could be overcome with that group of players. Frankly, that's basically dream-team status.

We failed to complete the area that night, and failing that area with that group really drove home how completely broken DoA was right at release. Honestly... a team of players who are all well known to be very good at what they do come together and are unable to win... what chance could ANet have possibly thought that any even semi-hardcore player would have, let alone a casual player?

Since that night I haven't ever felt as pressured to overcome a daunting GW challenge.

Shards of Orr - Hard and annoying
Joko's Domain vanq - extremely annoying, one of the worst things I have ever done in a game.

Ice Dome STUPID respawn on top of the mob
Beacons to Drocks OMG please spread the mobs out further from each other
Trying to vanquish all that forget it unless you have hours and hours and lots of death removal stuff
I have given up.

I just though I'd post me views on some aspects of the game. I completed my Legendary Guardian without much bother, had some good hard mode buddies so wasn't too bad, granted real players helped a lot.

The main thing that I really dislike about the game and I must stress this is the ridiculous period of time required to complete some hard mode dungeons in Eye of the North. Up to this point you could easily complete most missions/quests in 1-2 hours this includes vanquishing. With Eotn some dungeons such as Shards of Orr, Frostmaws, Vloxen Excavations can take up to 4 hours to complete on hard mode.

I Think NO area should be made to take longer than 1 hour per session with out some short of save system since people with busy real lives can not always be tied to the computer for such long periods of time in one go.

I have managed to compete these , only need 1 more now but the length required is most off putting, not to mention having other people with you that will also commit and not leave mid-way through.

No flaming 'I did it faster h/h are ok blah blah...' we all know some of these places take ages least with DoA each zone could be done in 1-2 hours with only the Foundry being the exception unless you Ursanway it.

This only became an issue for me with Eye of the North. The reason many of this areas take a very long time is the sheer volume of enemies packed into the zones. Perhaps for GW2 or future updates, lesser foes would be better, mid-dungeon outpost or add challenging puzzles to the game rather than another 100 foes to a zone.

Anyone else share my thoughts on the time required to undertake some of the dungeons/missions in the game?

Definately Realm of Torment. Margonites aren't so bad but add them with the level 28 Shadow monsters who won't die (3 eles and a rapid healing monk in one group) and you've got a bloody mess (if there was actual blood that you saw hehe).

Eeerrrm... Id love to say UW or FoW, but with Ursan its a walk. HM is a little harder (as to be expected) but not the hardest.

Ive heard DoA is still pretty tough in HM.

Slavers dungeons can be solid if you don't anticipate the resing capabilities of the Dwarves. tiny little res-chanting bar stewards!

I've been reading some of the areas people think are hardest in Factions, and they seem to be omitting Urgoz's Warren and The Deep.

I have nothing but hate for Shards of Orr

Nonstop Blind, interrupts, massive AoE, = H+H Nightmare...

Was a cakewalk for me with AoM and Aura of Holy Might
I think I had ONE death on the party because of bad pulling, lmao.

No area in GW is really "hard" its more or less the time you need to devote, and the organization and prep time prior to committing your party.

I had something similar happen. Back when I was a bigger noob than I was now, I was asking my friend for help to do Hell's Precipice on my necro. He's in WASD and was able to get Avarre, Ensign and a whole bunch of other 1337toor players and they basically steamrolled through the titans even when one my friend couldn't make it. They didn't talk to me though because I was too noob

Still it was good to see what a pro group of players can do (and not heroes with good skills) when co-ordinated. The only death was mine (twice) because I was wearing dual sups (yes, you can laugh) and was aggro happy (I tanked two Fists!)

The Snowball Arenas.

Reasons:

~Random Team Generations, many don't know how to play.
~Grenth being totally unbalenced from Dwayna.
~Set Skill Bars
~Many abused Bugs, IE, Jack Frost on the Respawn point.
~Many 3 on 4 matches, no punishment to leavers and no replacements.
~Unbalenced Class Abilities.
~Smurfing


Challenging or Too Hard?

Neither.

Well my situation is better because I got them to help me with something easier!

Hardmode Vloxen ... Nuff said :-(

It so much depend on circumstances...
(Do never belittle someone who had a hard time doing an area for the first time. )

Today, for an experienced team, having all skills, knowing all tricks and abusing the monster AI fully, no area is too hard.
However, for a team only using skills that was available when the area was introduced, and not knowing anything about the area, it is a totally different thing.

- Two newbie lvl 7 players stumbling into the charr shrine in Pre-sear. That is hard!
- The first teams into UW and FoW probably also had a really tough experience.

Today there are more skills and a lot more experienced players, so new "elite areas" are conquered faster and made "public domain" not very long afterwards. One main reason is the "predictability" of the areas. A new elite area very soon breaks down to "stand at point A and use skill 1, then move to point B and repeat". Making "area loads" choose a random combination of several predefined monster spawns would have changed that a lot.

My hardest one was doing the Deep for the first time.
We had a balanced team where no one had done the area before or really knew what was coming. We had heard that knockdown was required so one of us had that. Of course only the knockdown team managed to get out of the first room, but they managed to save the rest. A few times when we got stuck (like the "stand on marked spots to open door"), one of the player checked the wiki and gave hints. We really struggled through the scorpion room, had those teleport-knockdowns every 5-10s, but finally made it through. The rest went really great up to Mallyx. He gave us a really hard time since we only had a single necro enchant removal with too long recharge time. When we finally used the knock down and got the massive spawn we almost wiped, only the bipper survived (me). I had to solo a couple of shadows to rebirth a ranger so we could take out the rest and ress the whole party. When we tried once more with the same result we gave up after almost 5 hours, declaring Mallyx as a "really tough cookie".
But that is also the hardest area, and longest trip I have done with an "on sight" team (not counting pretty short first trips into UW/DoA).


My deepest respect to all who do an elite area without any knowledge before hand!


Some notes for developers:
Biggest adrenaline rush: First time at Chaos Plains UW, with an unprepared balanced team. That interrupt/hex fest was a blast! How we survived it is an enigma, but it felt really good afterwards.
Biggest letdown. Killed by the massive spawn when whole party entered the room in Urzog's Warrens (after 3 hours of struggle).
Most boring: Pull and kill loads of almost identical groups in Urzog's.
Most fun: Central plain in FoW with tankless balanced party using kiting to a combat trapper (oath shot, barbed+dust trap, throw dirt) to get rid of melee.
My biggest dislike: The exclusive team builds needed for DoA. To do that area with different kinds of balanced teams is really, really hard.
Most retries before finishing: Mirror fight in desert. Had no clue of any tricks. Tried to out-damage with a necro blood build. Did it in 7-8 tries.
Biggest struggle before knowing the trick: Flame djinns in Sorrows Furnace.
Best added game feature for elite missions: Reconnect!
I will always remember: First time through all areas of UW with an at the end rather reduced (damagewise) party - 2Mo, 2Me and a bip-necro, after an 11 hour ordeal, 4 hours to get the party together and 7 for the actual trip.


Regards,
Cloudbunny

well thought out and written and couldnt agree more.

Tyria: Surmia HM I agree - Rurick was designed to do that mission in NM, but in HM it's just a pain to try and keep up with him. Maybe his AI can be changed so he auto-rezzes in HM like the dungeon NPC's in EOTN? Also Ice Floe in HM is pretty nasty in that one area where you seem to always aggro 2+ grps of mursaat.

Cantha: I'd have to say it is pretty balanced, I've done a lot in HM but I would say unwaking is pretty nasty.

Elona: Domain of Secrets. Isn't it enough that the env condition is 40% more energy for skills? Why do we have to have the arm of insanities throwing up quickening zephyr as well? That's way too taxing on the energy. Also, capping sandstorm is pretty rough in HM - it's only a few guys but that group is horribly powerful.

EOTN: Grothmar/Sacnoth in HM are insane. The groups of charr with 2 flameshielders, a mender and a prophet are very difficult. I can't condone any complaints against the shards of orr, most people are probably missing the required amount of holy damage.

Sacnoth Valley is a bit much in normal mode, I don't want to think about hard mode. Probably RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing rediculous. It wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't so dark and all the red dots so clumped together. Lovely scenery really, just not worth the effort of going back there.

[QUOTE=Chthon]I'd say there's 4 things that annoy me more than any others:

1. Mobs that exploit the stupidity of H+H.

2. Over-buffed Mobs.

Mobs with super stats are no fun to fight + and I don't enjoy being forced into a very small number of options -- PS, obsidian tank, ursan, SY/TNtF spammer, seed bonder -- to have any hope of surviving more than 3 sec.

3. Super-healing mobs (less annoying for me than for Chthon but he has a point generaly)

4. Cheesy Environmental Effects (This can be fun and challenging when used sparingly and in innovative ways but too much of it like they have been doing is very unpleasant, not challenging and for me a almost automatic "no attempt" on my part. It's like salt, some recipes need some, but too often people put way too much)

I don't like them. They feel "cheap" and "unfair." I agree

Random comments on my part : I find that some areas or battles are allowing us less flexibility and freedom in team compositions. Too often I end up either playing with skills I don't like or enjoy simply to be able to beat a mission, only to not get any satisfaction completing it !

Do not get me wrong, I surely do not want everyone to be able to finish game with only the same 2 skills for all missions and attribute points set on "who cares" but it's happening too much imo.

I would rather have a long loosing battle that I can learn from my mistakes than slug it out .5 seconds with a overpowered mob 58 times, only to learn 1 thing to get past to the next half second and do that another 58 times to see what I should of brought as skills.

My experience of non-elite areas:

NM:
Tyria: Ice Flow and Ice Dome was the areas I struggled most with before I got the hang of it. But I would not call them frustrating, only "kind of hard".

Cantha: Pretty good. The well balanced Jade Brotherhood teams were a nice addition. Maybe minion masters had a bit too big overall advantage in most areas.

Nightfall: The torment area was hard but still doable with H&H and several different team builds. But some quests/missions were very hard unless you had a decent, mostly human team (like "Troubled Keeper").

EotN: Many challenging well balanced monster groups that need different approaches. It is hard to go through all areas with one single team build (3 Searing Flames heroes are not the answer to all questions ). However, in every area you can use a range of different team builds with good results. My favorite area for PVE.

HM:
Tyria: Some Ascalon areas are pretty hard to vanquish for a team of 4. Also some "help npc" missions can be pretty frustrating. Most high level areas are not very different from NM in difficulty. But with a decent H&H almost all areas are vanquishable (for me the only exception was Rotscale and I am not a very good player.)

Cantha: Some mega-damage bosses have to be handled with care and a few missions can be hard (eternal grove).

Elona: Was actually a tiny bit disappointed that HM was "not that much harder". Joko's domain vanquish was long and rather hard without consumables. Torment area was very much like in NM. My favorite mission, Gate of Madness, felt almost identical.

EotN: Some areas are pretty hard, but then it should be so! This is HM of the final expansion, I want it to involve some "struggle". Most difficulties are reduced a lot by changing builds.

Regards,
Cloudbunny

You know, I might have to say that completion of the Four Horsemen in the Chaos Planes pre-Factions might actually be harder than the completion of Foundry upon its release. Making a build using only Prophecies skills that completes everything up until the Chaos Planes and then doesn't die on them was intensely difficult and took a great deal more time than Foundry... however it's hard to say if that's because of actual difficulty or because of the lack of reward offered for completion of UW back in the day. Was it harder because there was nothing there and no one really cared?

I've been playing since the early days of Proph. Pugging is dead, and the nail in the coffin for me were areas where people felt compelled to only bring cookie-cutter party configs. I don't have the time nor inclination to wait for a party for hours only to have them get frustrated and disband at the first failure (DoA).

So, in general I would say that any areas that cannot be done with a variety of party configs = negative enjoyment factor. I'm not saying they aren't possible, just not fun.

More specifically, I would say that I love the Elite missions, but I think they are too long. I'm sure some people reading this will say, 'well then don't play', and I do avoid them. But that's not to say I wouldn't like to finish them. For example, I prefer the approach of GWEN and Sorrow's because the missions are split up into manageable chunks. I don't have hours to dedicate to one instance that can't be paused and picked up the next day (ala Urgotz or the Deep) - totally kills replayability for me.

Just my take.

Hands down a 4 in 1 run of slavers with heroes and hench only in hm. No zoning between bosses to change or tweak builds. Took me all day to do it ... had to do it so I could say I had done everything in all 4 chapters with heroes and hench.

shards of orr is hard in that it is wildly stupid. the form 1 kill then kill 2 form 2 is an interesting and creative boss design, but the fact that he has over 9000!!!!!!!!!!!(just an estimate) hp in HM makes it horrible. everytime he spawns, u get ritualist spiked or ranger spiked so it means u basically have to rez spawn charge over and over to get him. it doesnt help that the nearest rez shrine is like 3 rooms away.

the hardest legit challenge would be imperial sanctum hm / vloxen excavation (2nd lvl). the mm boss starting with corpses from the dredges is really nasty as ull get death nova / jagged bones combo'ed over and over.

After vanquishing everything, I find these places a bit annoying:

1. Tyria, Eastern Frontier (Hard to kill Grawls)
2. Tyria, Majesty's rest (Rotscale & Co)
3. Nightfall, Joko's Domain (Undead mobs that rez fast and can't be reached with junundu siege attacks)

Most other areas are beatable with heros/henchmen.


GW:EN HM+dungeons:
Nice balance over all IF you employ high ranked PvE skills (such as Ursan Blessing)

Urgoz/Kanaxai:
Never done HM there, environmental effects can be nasty.

Domain of Anguish:Its fine now.


^ IMO, playing a wammo

/ Jinx

Vloxen Excavations HM (lvl2) has some nasty groups (the jagged bones boss and the 2 precedent groups). Imo one of the hardest places in the game

From Beacon's Perch to Droknars Forge

One of the designers must have thought it would be fun to create a place where all the mobs of GW can come together.

You get hexed, KD, beaten up, burned, poisoned, stumped, eaten, res, hexed, KD, beaten up, burned, poisoned, stumped, eaten, res, hexed, KD, beaten up, burned, poisoned, stumped, eaten, **OUT OF RES GG**.

Wurms, Avicara, Grawls, Imps, Stone summit, Pine souls, Trolls. Did i miss something?

forgot the giants :P

anyway, i recently found that the holiday quest "Straight to the heart" was a nice challenge, and ive been working almost nonstop to beat it. it may be easier with a different profession, but as a ranger, i find it quite challenging. probably the most irritating part of it would be the fact that you need to run straight into a HUGE (and i mean HUGELY HUGE) group of 50-damage-per-hit snowmen just to make the grentches any help whatsoever. and by the end, i dont have enough grentches left to even have a chance of beating freezie and his incredibly large gang of snowmen bodyguards. its a great challenge anet, but maybe removing a few snowmen here and there would be desirable.

yeah wammo solves everything doesn't it lol

only if u bring mending, frenzy, heal sig, and healing hands.

You forgot Echo

On topic:

In my opinion, the hardest area in Guild Wars has to be DoA, more specifically Mallyx. The very amount of crying that Mallyx has produced on these forums - from being initially beatable through a glitch, to the introduction of overpowered skills that some say the playtesters used - is a testament to that.

Personally, though, I have still not set foot in DoA. RoT was enough of a taste for me, and I simply did not feel masochistic enough to subject myself to the punishment that the game designers were calling "an elite challenge." Yes, anything can be beaten with the right setup, but in a game where rewards can't really be unique because of PvP balance there just isn't enough motivation for me to do something I won't enjoy. To me, the rewards themselves do not justify the difficulty, but I'm also probably not looking for a challenge as much as I am looking to - a shock of shocks! - have fun in a game.

dont use pugs there

Ice dome back when it was prof. only... god that was hard xD

anyone ever tried ice dome on hard mode?

pre searing ascalon!

if u have truble with this mission pm me ingame(lord nowe,if im online il help u)did this mission more tan 10 times sucesfully and it isnt hard,it might be hard in hm but in normal mode its easy just requires some tactic ,spoil victor necro(not ss),warior or tank with wild blow(i did it good with sin to).That is the basic of what u need ,can use heroes ofc because i only went with pug once or twice,it is also posible(done it several times )to pull shiro solo(i alwyas kill him first) kill him ,than take care of the lich(for bonus i sugest killing te lich first snce he hits harder than shiro) also for the lich fre is very god against him he has 50 al against fire i think,it is actually harder to get to the end bosses tan to actually kill tem

warror in urgoz? well he normay could tank but the rits have disenchantement(spirit) so that one cuts trough all the defences of the warrior,unless u got shadow form which will not be removed by the spirit.
A continual shadow form tank could also be a solution ,but people use rit to make spirit walls in front of the mob while eles nuke them ,it doesnt last long need to last enough for the first mobs to die than eoe does the job

I did. Jagged Bones MM + SS + SF heroes made everything seem easier than when I crawled over the whole zone mapping it (before titles were introduced - I simply loved Prophecies and wanted to see every corner of every zone lit up on my map ). Only wiped once - when I accidentally pressed the space bar while tabbing through targets, and the overzealous Stefan ran into a different mob, doubling the party's aggro.

If we're talking Prophecies as it was released, Lornar's Pass should actually be much higher on the list than Ice Dome. I still remember the "Oh $h!t" feeling of having a wurm pop up under a party of henchies, and how hard they seemed to take down back then. That, and the deadly Ice Imp slowdown + Maelstrom combo, and the usual huge Stone Summit mobs with healers on the east side... yeah, had fun mapping that one

While it may be the hardest to get through, I honestly hope it stays that way.

I can't stand Unwaking Waters Explorable...