Your thoughts on hard mode

Hmm...i play PvP mostly but in PvE hard mode makes me smile

Hard mode is terrible. They said it would have smarter AI and better builds for enemies. Unfortunately, they made no changes to the AI (just later dumbed down the AOE response of enemy AI in nm) and the only different skills are adding elite skills to enemies that didn't have them. Plus, the enemies just attack faster, hit harder, and have more HP. Just another typical lazy way of making a game harder.

As far as the spirit of this game goes (its co-op aspect), it fails even more. Just looking at towns, you can't find anybody to do things in hm. Seriously, whatever happened to "encouraging co-op" when you have next to nobody doing hm? Even within my alliance I don't see too many people interested in doing hm, leaving me to once again go on a borefest playing all by myself.....

While I can accept that hard mode shouldn't be for everybody, this game's main attraction is its co-op aspect. If I have to play by myself, then what's the point of hard mode? Across all 4 campaigns, I think I completed like 3 or 4 missions in hm with actual players... rest were alone.

Yeah like a lot of others I would have much prefered better AI, better enemy bars, better enemy groups etc
Rather than just making the numbers bigger.

If you had to face a proper group of enemies it would require you to counter them for example, not just punch them in the face and move on.

I only go into HM to farm. Once I beat Proph and Factions with my Ranger I will get Guardian and start Vanquishing. HM is pretty much the same as NM except with better drops. I like doing stuff in EoTN more than any of the campaigns. I have to actually think when I'm fighting! Of course one day it will be as dull as the other games but its great right now.

Agreed. Hard Mode was pretty much what we *didn't* want: bigger numbers. This'd be different if they updated the AI, but alas...

Hard Mode was harder so I can't complain. Hard mode dungeons were a bear as well as Elonia for guardian and Tyria for vanquishing It was a decent add on to the game. Considering it was originally part of NF update and they expanded it throughout the whole game it was a nice freebee. Theres tons of players who can't handle HM so I don't think making the AI too smart would be good. More players than not can't handle the game as it is.

HM is hard, but it's nicely hard. I really like it, it put challenge and replayability in PVE

For me HM was one of the single best updates in GW. But like some others stated, the implementation is a bit dumb at times.

I love hard mode, My arrow always deal less than 10 damage >..<

and 0 damage when I hit Kournan dervish >.>

"Set the marksmanship to 12 and use bow attacks" ever heard of that? It works really well against enemies in HM

But yeah i agree with ya, HM is only good for Torment Farming, where you get like double gemstones(but they're old, no one cares about them anymore ). Otherwise unless you're going for titles.......it is all pretty pointless, fight STRONGER enemies, only with a slightly higher drop rank.(dropping more gold/grapes instead of all blues for Ex.) And you get like 1k gold for killing 1000 enemies in Hard Mode, sounds like a "bargain" to me!!

I quite like HM.
Silly foe distribution of low areas - and they all of a sudden gain 20 more levels while still having the same stupid skill-bars - paradise!
My monk loves them outside of Bergen!

Ohh you mean for normal play?
You're joking right?

HM is live every other moronic concept of GW - it's there to be abused where abuse is possible. If the abuse is not possible - there is no reason to have anything to do with it.

I'm having fun doing things in hard mode. I'm a bit disappointed in the way they hit every enemy with the same brush - Boost primary attributes to X, Boost movement & attack speeds, etc. - because it created an imbalance in the difficulty level.

There are many areas where you can take a balanced group of H/H and have a good battle with one type of enemy mob in one spot, steamroll over a different mob type in another spot, and get waxed by a different type of mob in yet another (with no boss in sight).

Then again, that does make it a bit more challenging working out a party build that will work best in all situations an area will throw at you.

I find HM okay, but I'm vanquishing with H/H so consumables are a must-have. Watching them take a 453 damage spike from one hit of spirit rift because they're too stupid to move out of the way is just ....hilarious. But the blowback from Pain Inverter on that is even funnier.

Tender Wolf, if you're henching you're going to need consumables, which aren't really that expensive if your the sort of player who salvages mats a lot. I don't tend to bother with Essence of Celerity as I find it just burns too much energy with the reduced casting and recharge time, but Grail of Might and Armour of Salvation are your friends.

Hard Mode's something new to do (regardless of how long it's been out now - if you haven't seen it, it's new to you). When I was starting to get sort of bored with Guild Wars not more than a few months ago when I finished my Protector of Tyria title, I randomly decided to see if I could take Hard Mode in Ettin's Back (not sure of my reasoning for the choice). Shortly after I got my first real vanquish here, I got addicted for a while. Of course, I had a fair amount of failures, the most annoying of which being my three hour excursion through The Scar only to get whooped by the last few centaurs (damn hydra!). I have to say, that experience was one of the best morale killers I have ever witnessed. For a guy who doesn't come up with super team h/h builds (or use UB, though I didn't pay much attention to that and in fact wasn't even aware of it while I was vanquishing), Hard Mode can turn out to be traumatizing when it leaves you with the feeling of an enormous amount of wasted time.

Even with a variation in areas and some good money/bounty farming/etc., stuff like that and the overall length of time it takes to make any progress in the titles can make it incredibly tedious. I advise taking a break every so often and playing Touhou.

HM's a joke, with or without Ursan. I non UB'd Canthan Guardian in a day, yesterday with 2 friends easily mastered Dzagonur Bastion and Grand Court (4.5 minutes) both on first try.

All it takes is 2 decent players, and it's dmn easy then.

I enjoy hard mode, it's good fun to do with a friend+heros and it adds some new life into gw. True, it could of been so much more as emphasised in Racthoh's post, but it's still enjoyable and gives nice titles+drops

Yah Pve in nm so booring without hm i wouldnt probly do any Pve Unless helping mates/guildies.

What difference would it make? The majority of PvE players would still get rolled thorugh except Ursan users and the players that can make a decent/good team still get through. This would just lead to more threads like this, people whining because they can't do something while good players saying you should stop using firestorm which will eventually turn into a arguement of bad players talking about 'not having enough time' while throwing the word 'elitism' in there.

If they gave the enemies good bars then really, it would be the same as fighting HM EotN Stone Summit and Charr over and over again. And imagine the whining then

'omg the char firestorm uses aegis which makes my derv and war useless. the rangers also kill my casters so easily. nerf plz'

Parts of hard mode were really fun and the difficulty increase was very welcome. Other parts were just annoying (where loldamage becomes a factor). Overall it was a good addition to the game, though.