Why is normal mode hard?

Cant understand how is it so hard. My first campaign was nightfall, i did quests with heros and hench except the realm of torment ones. I always found pug for them tho. Pugged mission also. And nm is easier now than it used to be before hm update. I didnt use wiki build or anything like that, made my own. so just use little time with your and your heros builds.

I laughed at the title.
Seriously...

Normal mode is not hard. If you think Normal is hard, please do your self a favor... Just quit the game...

game does have a steep learning curve... if you have any specific problems maybe i can show you the ropes.... feel free to pm me as long as i'm not busy i can show you around... Eternal Is Sektor

To the OP, there is some good advice in this thread, but don't be discouraged by "views" expressed in posts like what I quoted above. I just use it as an example of unhelpful commentary. There is plenty more like it on this thread.

The trajectory of GW PVE has been a subtle power creep. In the original campaign, the end areas were considered quite hard, especially Thunderhead keep. Each new campaign offered powerful new skills that made previously difficult areas in earlier campaigns become much easier. Nightfall added heroes, which made each of the two previous campaigns simple to complete without help from other players. The ultimate culmination of this trend has been EotN which added PVE-only skills that are more powerful than standard skills as they need not be balanced for PVP.

It was always the intended design that the end areas of each game be very challenging. The fact that many players no longer perceive these areas to be hard is because they own all games and have been along for the ride as this power creep occurred. You don't always notice change if it occurs gradually. If you do not own all of the chapters and have not unlocked most skills or don't have decently outfitted heroes, the end areas of all campaigns in normal mode can be quite challenging. RoT is probably one of the most difficult NM areas in all the chapters as it was designed toward the end of GW development cycle.

Hard mode was a kind of necessary outcome of Anet's business strategy. Because Anet wanted to create a reason for players to purchase all chapters, each game contains unique, very powerful skills not found anywhere else. For example Broadhead Arrow, Searing Flames, Spiteful Spirit are highly useful skills unique to a single chapter. Once these skills and others are combined across chapters, the "normal" game can start to seem easy. Thus, Hard Mode was born to provide continuing challenge to players in possession of all of those skills.

Bottom line, if you are a casual player, it is "normal" for endgame normal mode areas to be difficult. Use the advice on this forum and other places and ignore the "Learn to Play, Noob" commentary from players who have lost perspective.

Honestly, Guild Wars is far beyond the point where saying "LOL, I think X is easy" on the forums would make you look cool or give you any e-peen extensions. The OP didn't find the area as easy as you did, how about you offer concrete advice to him or just bugger off.

A couple of quick tips before more flames:
-Bring a longbow or a flatbow with you even if you are not a ranger. Flag heroes back and pull the enemies there in small groups.
-Take down Words of Madness first
-When the enemies use Call to the Torment, take them out ASAP, Lightbringer's Gaze is good for this.
-Hexes like empathy, spiteful spirit and insidious parasite (and pain inverter if you have GWEN) rip through the Scythes of Chaos and Arms of Insanity

No, because the majority of NM PvE should be doable with minimum dificulty.
Seriously...

Its not the game, its you. I beat Realm of Torment with a full hero/hench group.

Why ?

I normally go for the rain of terror first, their aoe can turn out to be quite nasty(+ I don't like blurred vision).
While those word of madness are nothing more than a sad excuse for a monk.

Quoted For Truth

Guild Wars PvE is only hard to people who take bad skills because "they like using those skills" or "the skills work well enough" instead of powergaming and creating the best build they can.

If you powergame, even if you only do it a little bit, Guild Wars is not a hard game... PvE OR PvP.

The lamest of the lame have come out in this thread

The OP, and any other reader, is not interested in anyone who gets on here to tell the world how great they are and how easy normal mode is. He is asking for help.

For those that offer the help, you are the true heroes of Guild Wars. Those who are seriously advanced players and who truly know how to play this game willl always offer help.

For those who get on to toot there shiny horns, or to describe how easy it is for them, or to tell the OP to just quit.........get a life.

We're here to tell him that he needs to start, y'know, researching skills and developing builds tailored for the areas, jackass. Because if he finds the Realm of Torment hard, he's obviously not doing this.

No he isn't. He's asking for nerfs:

I don't see him asking for help, all I see is whine whine whine why is normal mode so hard? So everyone comes in and tells him it isn't hard. Don't make such generalizations. I know how to play the game, I won't always offer help. If someone comes and asks for help sure, but if they whine about how hard it is and ask for nerfs then no.

And as someone else already said just because you are a casual gamer doesn't mean you have to be bad, it just means you don't play as much, so the only solution here is to stop sucking and blaming it on being casual, blame it on yourself.

Finsihed RoT and NF in 2 days with H/H, however I did have human had help with the last 2 missions. Thks for all those who gave great advice, it is much appreciated and put to good use. While the OP was a whinge, I should of been more careful in my wording and place this thread in the help and questions section. Live and learn as they say. To all the trolls, you can put away your e-penises and crawl back under your bridges now...Just for clarafication, I define casual gamer as someone who has limited time and dosen't want to spend half of it trawlling through a wiki in order to play the game. However, I guess that in hindsite it may in fact be alot quicker to finish the game by using wiki as well as playing (my 2 cents). Oh, in addition, I humbly retract my reqest for RoT to be toned downed, its not the game in this case it was the player

It is. I play dungeons off the wikis because I can't be bothered having to do a second pass.

That was a very gracious thing to say. I am impressed.

So the OP is no longer bad?

Awww congrats

I've seen alot of people say "Word of Madness first" and had the same question. Really, as far as monks go, they are pitiful. Barely any healing, and slow reaction times (Signet of Devotion, ech). Rain of Terror and Shadow of Fear are always my first target. Rains have annoying snares, as well as blurred vision, and painful AoE that really hurts H/H teams. Shadows are minion masters, which I always prefer to take down before they can get a little army going, plus the minion bomber setup they use causes more painful AoE damage and degen if you let them raise too many.

Just quoting your message so that it is read and read again by everyone. Sometimes it's good to see the perspective as clearly as you've written it. When we loose perspective (i.e. history), we loose a part of ourselves and become very arrogant people.

ALWAYS remember: there was a time when YOU were a newbie (even for RoT).

It's funny now I found prophecies difficult the first year of release. Now nm is easy for me, but I find certain areas in HM hard now with h/h. I'm still growing and that's the point I want to make. It takes time and practice to become better and better. This is different for every person.

Some tips maybe:
- you can find a lot of tips on wiki how to deal with a specific mission or creep or whatever. It saves time and time is always against you as a casual player.
- in this case, it's obvious to wear your lightbringer title and bring lightbringer gaze once you have it.
- basically you need to spike one down before he can use 'call to torment', go for word of madnesses first. Ranger spike is only one example to finish them off quick.
- try to make synergy builds and find the balance between offense and defense. You must be able to stand long enough but in the meantime do enough damage to quickly kill. All depends on the situation ofcourse.

There are some nice guides for every profession here on guru. It's interesting to read those pages as you'll have a better idea how to setup your heroes for example and it helps to expand your knowledge about the game in general. These guides save you time.

Imo mastering solo farm builds is a good exercise to boost your confidence and gameplay. As you can literaly feel the growing proces in a short time.

It's a learning proces. Don't worry too much about failing but see it as a growing opportunity. And take the time to grow, don't run in every fifteen minutes with the same failing build and h/h setup. Adjust. Try to figure out where things went wrong, how to counter an area.

I agree with the TC.

Realm of Torment is very unforgiving. You have to be on your toes ALL the time and it's a pain if you are H/H'ing it. I haven't been able to finish that campaign for that reason.

F

Maybe they should make a "beginner mode" for people just starting! Personally I hardly find HM challenging anymore, so I definitely wouldn't want them to make normal mode easier.

I'm one of the many who found Nightfall, in NM, to be the easiest campaign of all. It really isn't so difficult once you take the time to understand the workings of the missions and the behavior of the foes within... and it's not so time consuming to do that.

In general, Lightbringer's Gaze and some patience will get you pretty far.

When its' time to kill Shiro, make sure your party has these skills:

[skill]Spoil Victor[/skill], [skill]wild blow[/skill],& [skill]wild throw[/skill]. These take him out relatively quickly.

The final mission is a run in the park after you get through Gate of Madness.

GL.

They already reduced the difficulty since Nightfall's release.
If you have trouble , bring stance removal as mentioned above. Also drop warrior (and especially assassin) heroes and bring paragons instead since they will not aggro extra groups.

Necromancers w/ enfeebling blood, monks with prot or hybrid builds, eles with air magic and blinding surge, rangers with interrupts, mesmers with shutdown all help. Don't fall into tank-nuke-heal mentality and you'll be fine.

im gonna have to QFT

hard mode is easy mode and well normal mode is just a super easy mode

we need a ultra hard mode or a boss mode or a hell mode

It was really a quite bizarre move by ANet to first give us hardmode, then give us PvE skills (like Save Yourselves!, Pain Inverter, and of course Ursan Blessing) that make hardmode easy.

DOA was the 1st area that was actually meant to be a challenging area by design. Until section of GWEN, it was the only area designed like that.

Haha, when i saw the topic of this thread i thought this was about some other game and i went to the wrong forums...

All i can say is: LOL @ this thread!

...apart from Urgoz, the Deep, Underworld and Fissure of Woe, you mean?

That is one hell of a good point.

I agree totally. PvE NM or HM is easy enough as is they dont need to make it any easier.

Its like this. the hardcore players ask over and over for harder areas and something else to do that takes a couple of hours, but the casual player QQs about not being able to go to these areas, so Anet caves into the casual players demand and makes it so they can do these areas. same with hard mode and the PVE skills.

the thing you should ask is can we get some ultra hard things to do for us hardcore players and keep them away from all the casual players no matter how much they QQ about it? Anet is turning the game into a game for casual players.

In all fairness, Im almost positive that they did make normal mode easier, when they introduced hard mode. They made it easier than the "only mode" that was previously the only way to play.

But they could do these areas in the first place. All they had to do was switch it back to Normal mode.

Honestly, I never found RoT to be that hard. You can't be an idiot key smasher, especially if you're going to be h/hing everything, but if you go in with good builds and play smart you should be able to do it successfully. It's all about proper aggro, prioritizing targets (kill monks, then eles etc) focus on one target especially when they're using call to torment (which can't be interrupted I think?) Play smart. No it isn't noob island, but some areas should just be more challenging than others, and that's one of them. If you find you can't h/h it, get in a pug, or join a guild that will help.

i'll come find you and help you.

If HM is no longer challenging, try it with a PUG. 100% guaranteed increased 'challenge'.

In this instance, it is no longer the game that is challenging...

dude i coudltn disagree more. we should make the game easier for ppl lazy. while we are at it, lets make basketball accessible by people not coordinated! lets remove that silly small rim, add in a 1 yard wide one, and lower it so ppl who are 5 ft tall can dunk! and for any competition, we hand out gold medals to everyone like the special olympics so we can all feel like winners!