Why is normal mode hard?

So I'm a casual gamer, the bread and butter of the gaming industry! I have just spent 4 hours slogging away in the Realm of Torment in NORMAL mode and have got NO WHERE! Seriously, I would like to know why the hell they have made this so hard in normal mode? Its got to the point where I am not having FUN and will basically go play something else. Is this what the game designers intended?

Fair enough, if I was a hardcore gamer and want a challenge then I will go play hard mode. But really, I'm not a hard core gamer, and this game basically is very very unforgiving to casual gamers in normal mode once you progress towards end game. Its so unforgiving that its neither a challenge or fun, but rather a pointless exercise.

Realm of Torment. Ok so I'm near end game and expect the monsters to be a LITTLE more difficult than noob island. But to have things respawn once you kill them, and thats IF you can even kill them is just plain OP! Let alone the demons that not only respawn but respawn THREE more demons. WTF is this?

So after wasting close to 20k getting my heroes armour/health/eng buffs, not to mention elite skills, they are still pretty much useless. GREAT! So what is left for me to do. Can't make up the gold in RoT, spent 4 hours and only made 600g WOOOOT! What a waste of time!

So after having my rant, GAME DESIGNERS have some pitty on us casual gamers and TONE down normal mode just a smige plz! Otherwise its uninstall time and off to play something that is FUN for casual gamers!

end.

nm shouldn't be that hard and frustrating especially if you have access to heroes o.O post your build o.O

Dervish:
1. Ermite Attack 2.Mystic Sweep 3. AoB 4. Vatal Boon 5. Mystic Regen 6. Lightbringer Gaze 7. Balth Rage 8. Eternal Aura

realm of torment is relatively easy. i would recommend trying to find a guild with players who are experianced and learn from them (such as tactics, builds, ect). GW is not a hard game; it's just how you make of it and if you're willing to apply yourself and push your "limits" further than what you think they max out at.

It isn't hard, it just takes time.

I'll admit that the Gate of Pain [in the ass] was hard, but that was about it difficulty wise on NM in any campaign for me.

So the actual thread topic is "Why am I so bad and failing in normal mode RoT?"

Hint: If the monsters are kneeling down, they're using [wiki]Call to the Torment[/wiki]. Attacking them then might be very effective... who knows.

Also, Dervish should have Wild Blow.

Eh? The demons in Realm of Torment do not respawn. They just duplicate when they use "Call to the Torment". This area is definitely difficult if you don't plan out your party from the get go. However, it is not impossible.

When I was going through it the first time, I setup my three heroes (don't remember which ones) with shutdown (mainly interruption) builds and brought 2 healer, 1 motivation, and 1 random other henchmen. My idea was to have my heros shutdown my enemies while I mopped them up (I used a derv btw).
I pretty much breezed through the entire RoT with this same team setup.

I've always found, in this and other games, that area's that were overwhelming and seemed impossible at the first visit turned out to be not that impossible once I found a proper adaptation of skills, henchmen & heroes and tactics.

"GW is not a hard game; it's just how you make of it and if you're willing to apply yourself and push your "limits" further than what you think they max out at."

So this is my point, its not hard for hardcore gamers, thats no biggy. But its very unforgiving for CASUAL GAMERS!

" setup my three heroes (don't remember which ones) with shutdown "

I've got a ranger with pure interrupt skill including elite (broad arrow head thing), a Fire Ele and healer. Haven't tried the motivation henchie will give it a go. Thks for the tips

The Realm of Torment was hard for me as well at first, I hated nightfall for that soul reason.

Now? It's easy for me, I can steamroll the whole place and most likely handle it similar on hard mode.

It's all about finding what skills, team builds, and the likes that are most effective against the tormented monsters, there's plenty of things.

Also getting some Lightbringer rank can help you, just don't give up, giving up is for the weak!

be nice to have eternal aura up if your using an avatar, lyssa ftw good rank and aura of holy might is worth your while too :P

<<casual player. its not hard.

Hint: You're not the only casual gamer in the world (or the only one who plays GW).

Clue: Casual Gamers don't have to suck at a game. You can be casual and breeze through a game too (Personally I'd say I NEED TO BE GOOD at games because I'm casual and don't have much time to spend failing it).

It's the last area in NF, expect the enemies to be more then a little harder then at the start.

Seriously, it's not hard. Spec against your enemies, don't over aggro, bring good builds, get your lightbringer title up. If you do that and fail, it's because you're not that great at the game and you need to get better.

I'm sort of at a loss here. RoT is certainly hard for newer players, but it's the last area in the game. Shouldn't there be some challenge there? It's a pretty big stretch to call it impossible, as hundreds of thousands of other players have made do.

Like Savio said, the monsters there use a skill called "Call to the torment" that allows them to duplicate when you get their health low. However, they take double damage during the 10 or so seconds it takes to use this, so they shouldn't be that difficult to finish off.

The build you're running on yourself is somewhat weak. I don't know if your definition of casual gamer includes never changing your build (for many it does) but if it doesn't, check out the dervish forums on these boards. There's good advice there if you're willing to take it.

It's the same deal with your heroes. All that money spent on expensive weapons and runes is pretty much wasted if they're not running good bars. It may be simpler to just run henchman if you're not confident enough to set up your heroes.

Shazam! Go to the heros category and set them up with something nice and give yourself a better build.

http://www.pvxwiki.com/wiki/Main_Page

RoT is definitely the most difficult area in the game to handle until you hit late Eye of the North. I recall finding it not far off that either. At the same time, there are ways through it.

The most important bit of advice I can give is (as mentioned above actually): control how many enemies you're attacking at a time. Ideally you want ONE group unless your party build is awesome, and it probably isn't if you're casual.

I know this can be pretty difficult in RoT because stuff roams so much. Thankfully, the designers introduced H/H flagging for Nightfall, which means you can pull things much more effectively. Pull conservatively. Sometimes a patrol will come through where you don't expect it.

Finally, figuring out what enemy skills are causing you the most trouble and giving your heroes skills that deal with them may make it easier for you as well.

I don't think I'd find RoT that tricky any more on normal mode, but once you have quite some experience and a party build that pretty much mows everything, there ain't much that can stop you.

P.S. The Arms of Insanity like to have Whirling Defense up when they activate Call to the Torment. If you have Wild Blow on your character, you can break this and start hitting them again. Should spare you some trouble.

Maybe the OP is talking about the mission with Shiro, Lich and the room with all the respawning phantom and titan things.
I hate that room too. Ain't really fun at all. That room reminds me of Lockjaw's Lair from EQ2. A raid zone hated by many for it's frustrating respawns. Some people are okay with stuff like that and some people aren't. Like in some PvP games fighting a player group that uses rez/zerg rush tactics is not fun.
Just keep trying to get in a good group and you'll soon get it over with.

Fighting the lich and shiro isn't hard. Again, spec against your enemy. Shutdown shiro while you kill the lich, then kill shiro. If you get lucky, you can pull the lich from shiro. If you manage that, it's quite laughable. Even if you have to fight both, it's not that hard.

It's all about tactics. If you choose random builds and rush mobs, chances are you're going to fail. If you use builds that counter your enemies, pull, and kill key targets first, you should have no problem in normal mode.

Here's an idea to make it a bit easier.

Take Spinal Shivers (necro secondary) on your own bar and icy weps or any ele weps + winter. Target shutdown = win

Also, ele heroes with Savannah Heat. Enemies don't move while CoT is casting.

Hammer War hero = knockdown

Tip for monk heroes is to use the WoH Hybrid Prot bar. They make good use of it, but you'll need to have decent weps to boost energy. Or stick an e-management skill in there.

For pure healers, take the sabway/triple necro vanquish N/Rt healer.

And before you go insulting the members of this forum, maybe you wanna check yourself. Casual does not mean sucks, but if you can't even be bothered to acquire decent equipment or builds, please consider why you are bothering at all. Savio has a point about Wild Blow too. Just save it for CoT.

Melonni runs Wild Blow, Mystic Sweep, Eremite's Attack,Heart of Fury, Zealous Renewal, Conviction and Avatar of Lyssa. AKA Lyssa Attack Spammer.

Also, as a general tip, Rebirth on heroes is ftl, take sigs or another rez or even Flesh of my Flesh. Res Chant takes too long. Also, take a rez on your bar. Disable all hero rez's and use them manually.

And also remember that GW is basically an MMO hybrid, so the definition of casual is a bit different than for CoD4

Shiro is weak at full health, until he uses impossible odds. just kill the lich first, you can almost ignore shiro till he gets low HP

Same thing here.
I was actually stuck on the quest where you need to escort that chick (to reduce the spoilers) though the place that has reduced movement and activation speed for a few days or was it even weeks.
These days - Nightfall is the first campaign I take my wanna-be survivors though. And they make it though alive.
BUT I actually feel that Nightfall taught me something. Compared to GWEN where I just abused everything that I could and now I have no desire whatsoever to go back there!





Now for the tips:
1. I don't know if you are running any protection on - but it's VERY nice! Many guys (eles or necros mostly - that is if you don't want to invest into a monky hero) - can live perfectly fine with going monk secondary and raising protection up to 9 for the break point in [skill]Aegis[/skill]. Also [skill]Protective Spirit[/skill] is a must for those places. It's the result of bad PvE and that's one of the things that is keeping it in check.
2. Heavy physical teams are REALLY good! Running paragons and warriors just works! Add some monks and a necro - bloody one for stuff like [skill]dark Fury[/skill] and [skill]Order Of Pain[/skill] or (and) cursing one for [skill]Barbs[/skill] and [skill]Mark Of Pain[/skill] (you can run all those skills on one necro of course!). (Possibly even add the protection monky spells - they have the energy to spam it!)
Those guys not only do very nice damage - they also have very nice armour - which cause less strain on the monkies and so they can focus on less people.
Ohh and that means you need to build your team build around those guys! That means you need to have hex removal and condition removal (because there is NOTHING worse then a bunch of warrior that are all blinded or "blurred") and stance removal!
3. Take a moment before engaging a foe. Check out their patrols - and maybe you can actually sneak by!
4. Having tons of HP is good! Since the heros don't understand how to pre-protect - you need to be able to live though the first spike. And sometimes - that means getting hit for some 400 damage (bloody water eles ....) and living to tell the tale. My first time visiting there - one sup rune and one major one (or maybe it was two sup ones ...) and radiant insignias all the way. I pretty much had DP the moment I stepped out of an outpost.
5. Ohh and if you are stuck on the "wonderful" quest (the one listed above) - for the love of everything that is pink - go though the Shiroken and NOT go south. Going south is evil in that place!
EVIL EVIL EVIL!

Yes, he's weak at full health, but along with the lich he can get quite annoying.

Aggro both, shutdown shiro with anti-melee, kill lich. Run back, lose aggro, regain health/energy. Prot melee, get melee to pull and hold aggro, keep casters back. Running a warrior with dslash + brawling headbutt + steelfang slash is going to keep him knocked down indefinitely, making him quite useless.

Try not to take too many quests at the same time. Some quests you can get at the start, like this one and this one will cause a lot of creatures to spawn, making that particular harder then it should be. Try getting familiar with the area first, run to some outposts, and only then try to do those quests.

Good luck

The Realm of Torment seemed impossibly hard for me when I first went through there. Then again, so did the Fire Islands, later parts of Factions, and GW:EN. It all comes down to experience. I find those areas annoyingly hard, but I don't find them game breakingly hard anymore. Just give it time, learn what you're doing wrong, accentuate what you're doing right, and the RoT won't seem so hard anymore.

Protective Spirit is one the skills that breaks Guild Wars entirely. But without it, the game would be /fail. Other skills that fall into this catagory are...

[skill]Diversion[/skill]
[skill]Reversal of Fortune[/skill]
[skill]Frenzy[/skill]
[skill]Eviscerate[/skill]
[skill]Shock[/skill]
[skill]Gale[/skill]

Tone down normal mode? lawl. Normal mode is already so easy that i can not even pay full attention half the time with my hero/hench group and still easily win(even when monking). If it got any easier i could literally play in my sleep. perhaps you should practice and work out some better builds.

It's not so much that normal is HARD, it's that most people don't want to think about changing their builds and welp even in normal mode you HAVE to change your builds from time to time to meet the situations. One set of builds is not going to work 100% of the time at 100% efficiency. So, OP start learning your opponents, write down the skills they use and then create parties to counter them. It's as simple as that really.

Two skills that I have or my heroes have in some order are "Maelstrom" and "Shadow of Fear" I never travel without someone or two having one or both of those skills. Other skills to consider always bringing are "enchantment removers" at least one, and "rend enchantments" is probably one of the single best to use since it wipes ALL of them off. Even Maelstrom without ANY points into water gives you 10 seconds of disruption...that's more than worth the cost of the skill alone as you can do a lot of damage to npc mobs in 10 seconds especially those that can't cast. Spinal Shivers and a cold weapon can shutdown anyone an anything for as long as shivers lasts. For a caster a cold spear is best since it's faster than wanding or staffing. I shutdown rain of terrors with maelstrom or shivers and then fireballed the hell out of them and am relentless attacking them above all others except a healer type around them. I carry both fire and cold weapons with me. So, I can heat up Mark of Rodgort, switch to a cold weapon and shut down any casters after my necro has cast shivers on them. Mark of Rodgort is very useful since most all monks carry a fire weapon and thus keep the fires burning constantly.

Considering skills that will work almost anywhere is my top priority and then adding skills for specific areas and specific mobs afterwards. Synergizing yourself with your heroes works wonders when you can spike some mob(s) in a matter of seconds with some powerful damage. Jest like them rain of terrors do you. <grin>

That's highly questionable.
It would be an entirely different game without it - and in the case of PvE - I am not so sure that would be bad. Because frankly - I can not imagine what is worse then this or Molotovs greeting (aka one-shot-kills).

I would change a few of your skills here. Put in Victorious Sweep for Vital Boon. Radiant Scythe for Balth Rage. Elite wise AoB is okay but I'd use Avatar of Lyssa or Wounding Strike.

As a melee, you don't need to focus on healing yourself or defense. Let your monks do that.

I disagree since I think everyone should bring some form of self heal to take the pressure OFF of the monks. Monks are there as support, not as your sugar daddy/mama for heals.

I found RoT pretty easy... you just go through it and kill everything. The only tricky parts were some of the Master Quests from the Gate.

If you're failing, it's because you're not playing well, not because the game is too hard. Guild Wars is (supposedly) skill based, so if you don't develop as a player, you'll run into a wall.

Actually, that's their entire purpose. To keep people alive through prot and healing. If someone is being killed, the worst thing they can do is stand around to use selfheals. They should be kiting and mitigating damage as much as possible while the monks prot/heal them.

I think it has a lot to do with flag placements. If you're just running up the middle all the time you're sure to get setback every once inawhile. I just wish we had flags for ALL the henchies instead of 4 of them bunching up all the time. It would also be kewl if we could setup HOTKEY formations for the heroes/henchies to bo into like a circle or a square or a wedge or a general scatter feature. Like the Total War series has. <grin>

In which case - the monks should take some offence too.
I mean why waste 2 slots on characters that are designed to keep the players alive IF the players then need to take care of themselves?


Edit:
Curse you Avarre and your maxed FC!

Edit 2:
Wait that didn't make sense!
Edited my edit. :S

No, the monks are there because they are part of the team - the part that heals/protects. If you are the part that deals damage, you should have everything on your bar that helps you do only that. Personal heal is a waste of a slot.


EDIT: Damn this slow internetz... beaten by two different posts... argh.

What if the monk dies? Then what are you going to do? Next arguement comes everyone should bring a rez of some sort. <grin> It's all about how one wants to organize their team. You can put all the pressure on the monks and if the monks die then it's all their fault. I prefer everyone to have a self heal in case of emergencies since they do happen yah know. <grin> Rezes too.

See you people that depend totally on monks have no plan B. You're all about dps powergamer and forget "strategy & tactics". I always have someone bring rebirth an is the dedicated run away and rez us if things go bad player. In PVE only areas it's not so important, but, when you get to MISSIONS where it's a win or lose all situation it's important to have backup and plan B's. Just ask any military afficionardo and they will tell you they always orgainze for backup and plan B's.<grin>

Wants to see heroes skill bars

Yea rot is veyr difficult for a newer player, i remember i got stuck in GOM for a whole week because i was a dervish.

If ur having difficulties takin down the torment monsters, try using the SAB necro triad build im sure it will hold our ur party long rnuff to wipe them all out.

Normal Mode only felt hard when I sucked at Gw, aka when I was new.

Now it's just a lolfest. With some classes so is Hard Mode.

Play the game, practice, learn what works and what doesn't; and please, play some PvP, it's a great learning process for the game to prepare you for PvE.

Due to 'Call of Torment' skill, which activates when they have <50% health (or 25?), it is generally better to spike singular targets.
If you go for AoE damage from nukers for instance, you will weaken the foes to around 25%, they start scatter around the place and then start using CoT. Presto, 8 more foes to worry about.
Better to spike them 1 by 1, leaving Rangers and Paragons last, since they are the hardest but do least damage. Monks and Elementalists first ofcourse. Then mesmers and necros. Then Warriors and Dervishes.

If you are stuck at the beginning of Realm of Torment, maybe it is because you still have that quest open, which spawns like 6 groups of 8 Torment creatures. I suggest dropping all sidequests which could make stuff harder then neccesary.

last tip: dont ever go to Domain of Anguish if you think RoT is hard

Evidently you don't understand Guild Wars organization. There are three parts in a team - Frontline, Midline, and Backline. The frontline kills things. The Midline provides offensive support to the frontline and defensive support to the Backline, while the Backline prot/heals. The offense of the other areas removes pressure on the backline by killing/disrupting things, while the defense of the Midline (blinds, snares, partywide support like aegis/wards) help hold the Backline in place.

All three lines are held up in their roles by support from the others and passively reduce as much damage as possible through mitigation (disruption, prot, positioning, and mobility, among other things). Spread-out damage is cleaned up by party healing (which completely overlaps the role of selfheals).

Resses will most likely be present in the midline since you want the Backline at full functioning capacity and stopping to Res from the middle of the enemy team (Frontline) is highly vulnerable to disruption. Everyone bringing a res is a huge waste unless you plan on everyone dying, in which case you have bigger problems than ressing.

Having everyone die while you run to rebirth is not tactics. Correlating no other self heals with all pressure on monks is not tactics. Relying on straight healing in a full group to counter heavy damage and remove presure is not tactics (if anything, that's what a 'dps powergamer' would do).