Bugged mission?

Alright, before you begin with the L2P comments, I've been playing since the betas and have only had this problem when ANet decided it was smarter to quadruple the number of mobs to stop botters instead of doing the common-sense thing and banning the botters. I am playing through Factions now, and I feel as though the game is fairly unplayable without a bot or other cheat. Whether I am with henchmen, public players, or guildmates, we're running into groups of four or five lv20 enemies (we're lv20 as well, with our max armor, though not all of us have prestige yet) and they're proving insanely difficult to defeat due to every single one managing to explode upon dying. Not only that, but it seems as though human players can almost never hit the mobs, while henchmen always hit them. This I assume is another bug. Oh and don't throw "Critical Defense" at me, because I have gone a solid minute or more against an assassain mob and never landed a single hit.

That however, is just overpowered mobs. What our real problem is, is the undercity missions. We're running into groups of 15+ mobs! This isn't a bunch of groups that are merely passing eachother by, but a true group of 15~20 mobs. You aggro a single one, and all of them are on you. After that it's generally a quick death. Now I honestly have no clue how a party of eight lv20 characters are supposed to down that number. We've tried waiting for up to 30min for the things to move, but they don't, and it's physically impossible to nail these guys without god-mode, so is this mission bugged for us? I mean if they were lv5 mobs it might be fair, but we're talking up to twenty lv20 mobs at once, and nobody can seem to complete it, even a few runners I was going to pay to get us though it.

So should I start looking for cheats or report this to ANet as a bug? I can provide screenshots to prove that there are insanely large groups preventing us from doing the mission if you think this is some fool just ranting. Thing is, I have been stuck here for a freaking week, and am getting pissed. There's no damn sense in having that many mobs in a group when a single lv20 mob is like two lv20 humans as it stands.

If you're talking about the Factions storyline related quest that leads up to Vizunah Square, then yes it has the tendency to be rather difficult, but it's also very possible with the correct builds.

Things like [Spirit Bond] and [Protective Spirit] are you friends. As well as [Splinter Weapon]. You may want to consider having a rit bring [Shelter] as it can save your party from a decent chunk of damage.

[Broad head Arrow] is great for disabling the healing ritualists, and annoying smite monks.

[Blinding Surge] works great against the melee since the necromancers use [Order of Apostasy].

The assassins also use [Shadow Form], so that may be why you're missing them.

No it's not bugged, the Afflicted are just annoying and at times rather difficult foes to face.

Errm If there mobs are hard for you, your builds must be subpar. If you cannot kill these it will only get harder with 15-20 mobs of lvl 24s+. Hell in NF there are mobs of 28+ that are 10 in size, and dont even get me started on HM. So to sum it up improve your builds, this is an easy mission and not bugged.

i don't think its a bug. keep playing and you'll be able to figure out how to beat it. i finished faction using my prophecy character and i finished it using h/h only. if you are playing using h/h, then you need to learn how to properly flag them before engaging in battle.

i'm not really good at faction and i admit its the most difficult campaign for me but everything is doable even with your h/h only.

the block is mainly because of critical defense+SF, the use of things like blind nd daze shall save you quite a bot of pain, other than things like Spirit Bond and Prot Spirit shall help you, keep in mind enchants wont help you too much because of OOA.

I found the secret was to sometimes run away and come back, the constant exploding corpses can do tremendous damage to close packed party members.
So you need space to recover before you kill more, killing faster is bad unless you have protection spells.

If I remember correctly too the main problem was you had a couple of ritualists and they keep casting spirits that res the mob members as well as direct flesh of my flesh rez skill use.
So it was important to get rid of the ritualists both of them then come back and total the mob.
So watch the position of the ritualists in the mob and attack when they are near you.

There is also at leat one area in the undercity that has 2 or 3 bridges with a mob above and Kappas below and that screws mightily with the ai party members.

Finally I am of the opinion that 2 humans with henchies is harder than 1 human with henchies.
Time and again I have seen the henchies respond to the movement or targeting of human one then two then one again.
They never do anything because they are always responding to new "commands.
So unless the humans always take the same target and move together it gets difficult.
Heroes are different they work ok

Critical defenses refreshes everytime they land a critical hit. On my sin, I have crit defenses up from the moment I enter combat till all enemies are dead, whether the fight lasts 5 seconds or 10minutes, its up.

You didnt mention whether you had heroes or not so im gonna assume you do.
I suggest using Sab's Tri necro build (if you have access to NF and EotN) and throw skills like rigor mortis on one of the necros. Also, having a good monk helps a lot. Try unlocking elite skills using balthazar faction and get your heroes some good skill bars.

I personally finished all of factions (except for Gayla Hatchery) with H/H so you shouldnt have any problems. The afflicted make minion masters own in factions, and a minion army can tank out most of the explosions the afflicted make when they die.

Also I usually use a MM with well of suffering and I micro manage the well, so they are doing more minions, but through in a well or two in the densely packed mob for -6HP degen on them.

Should have mentioned that most of us are playing with only Prophecies and Factions, not NF or EoTN. Therefore we have no heroes at this point. To top that off, two of my main members are out for a while, leaving myself and one other to attempt this crap with henchmen or public players. My preference is henchmen as 99% of the people I have pubbed with turned out to be childish and immature.

As for my current player, the build is far from sub-par and did insanely well up to this point. I was lv17 coming off the starting island and am now 18. On the starting island I usually soloed and only needed a healer, and for a few missions a fighter or two. Now I am using all eight slots and it feels like I am still against a brick wall. I mean unless my damage goes up to around 1k per hit in the next two levels, I don't foresee this becoming easier.

My build consists of builds that were recommended here on the assassin forum, and my third attack is death blossom. I carry unsuspecting attack, leaping mantis strike, I forget the second stage attack, death blossom, critical defense, critical eye, the healing spell that gives +24hp per crit, and the healing spell that gives +6 then some number when it ends. My stat-points are primarily in daggers (10 ranks), critical strikes (9 ranks, I think), and the rest are in shadow arts. I plan on maxing daggers and critical strikes when I am maxed out at 20 with the bonus points and all.

Still, when using critical eye and fighting, I notice very few critical strikes, which just seems odd and buggy considering my level and stats. I have the AL70 Canthan armor and some 7-17 sai weapons. I would think that with my stats, I should at least land as many crits as my warrior from prophecies, but to me it seems as though I have to max my critical strikes skill just to be on par with him, which doesn't make sense.

As for the protective skills, we have tried both healing and protection builds and we just can't keep the party up. The mobs deal WAY too much damage too quickly. If we could get +20 regen on the characters we might be able to keep them up a while, but they're hitting so hard and fast that most of us don't last very long.One of my guys made the comment that we needed four healers and four fighters, and some way to make the healers immune to drawing aggro, and I tend to agree.

So using a decent build, carrying at least two healers, and being cautious isn't working. How can we cut mob damage in half to balance it? I mean we can tear through the original game no problem, and we can tear through the starting island, but then it's like slamming into a brick wall and we either need double health, or a way to halve damage on the entire party. Ideas?

Er. I don't remember this being that hard on my assassin. Also, I know there are some mobs in the undercity that move if you don't get them fast (I think the Chan the Dragon Blooded boss group in particular moves, but it's been a long time), so that might be what you're encountering, along with any quests you took from Kaineng City.

Seriously though, have you tried Aegis and Prot Spirit?

We normally beat that guy before he gets a chance to move so that he won't attack while we're fighting others. We also dropped our extra quests to make sure that we weren't spawning in extras due to a quest, so I know that isn't the problem. We have tried various shielding and healing combos, but none appear to work for very long. They hit about twice as hard as we do, they can go into block-mode if they desire, and we generally just can't get more than half a group, sometimes less.

I am under the firm belief that this is a balancing issue. All those mobs at our level, plus the various bonuses they get for being mobs, making them even tougher, and apparently having high crit rates, versus a group of eight max players. That isn't balanced to begin with, and is one reason I stopped playing after they added tons of mobs to the original game (before Factions arrived) because it made it impossible for humans to play. Again, they did that in place of banning botters, and may have been before your time. I came back and have enjoyed Prophecies since they started un-nerfing things, so I got Factions and ordered NF, and now am wishing I hadn't. WoW was pay-to-play, but I never ran into problems with mobs outnumbering us by such an insane degree.

I also just did a few quick rounds of PvP to make sure that it wasn't me just not knowing the class, and I came out on top four of five rounds. I simply cannot take 20 versus eight odds without some form of god-mode or damage reduction. I am aggravated because aside from four or five deaths from PvP, this character is around 100 deaths now. Those deaths count against my ranking with this guy unless I am mistaken, and it is insanely inaccurate due to almost all of them being from these insanely large groups. That's what has me so fired up.

...that's really odd, hmm.

Tell you what, I'm a GMT+8 girl, which means this is insanely late, but feel free to add me if you need help, IGN is Iluryl Averne. If you've been using monk henchies, they sometimes don't prot properly, and Sister Tai is not exactly the most effective healer on earth, either. XD Until I experience this kind of crap for myself, I can't tell what's going on, really. I just don't remember this problem.

I'll be glad to take you along. We normally don't have many problems until we hit the area with the large groups. Sometimes we have trouble with the dragon blooded boss, but that is a large group as well. We naturally kill the healer first.

If you're +8, that's going to make things odd. I am -5, giving us what, 13hrs apart? How about I hop on tonight around midnight, making it noon or later at your location? If not, tell me when a good time would be, because I've had several "experienced" players try this with us, and so far we have always wiped repeatedly, and with a -30% or more DP, it makes it fairly impossible to continue!

That would be... 1 pm, so yeah, that's fine. I hope I manage to help!

It's 11:00pm here, and I should be getting on soon.

I have to say that I agree with most everyone else here. I am very, very FAR from a great player, and my builds SUCK (as I have been told by almost every human player I have teamed up with.) That said, I rarely join "LFG"s or "GLF"s, and slog it out on my own. I have gone beyond where you are, and if I can do it...

Now, I will not say that I haven't had my difficulties. Right now I am stuck in Villainy of Galrath in Prophecies, The Eternal Grove in Factions, and Kodonur Crossroads in Nightfall, not to mention all of the anguish I have suffered in EotN.

Here's another perspective. Think back to the hardest quest/mission you completed in this thing. Remember how damned difficult it was, or how many times it took to complete it?

Aren't you proud of yourself now? Even a little?

Play on, man. If it was too easy, you'd be bored by now.

Shane

You are mistaken, there are no downsides to dieing, except for the temporally Death Penalty. There is no such thing as a personal ranking influenced by deaths ...

That being said, that area is indeed rather dangerous when not handled with care. Pulling out a bit when you take too much damage and re-engaging when your monks have regained enough energy is a plus. Also, kill the ritualists straight away. Not only are they the main healers in an afflicted mob, they also carry a hardres ([[flesh of my flesh]).

As for not hitting a lot of critical hits : read this wiki article : http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Critical_hit

Since you only have 10 weapon mastery your critical hit rate will be pretty low. Even with the extra boosters it will still be rather low.

Get your extra attribute points as soon as possible and get 12 (14 with mask + minor rune) dagger mastery. You will notice the difference.

You see that's just it, you shouldn't have to be lv20 with maxed out armor, runes, and what-not just to make an assassin crit. My archer out-crits my assassin at the same levels with comparable armor, but the assassin is supposed to be the burst-damage/crit king. It shouldn't be like flipping a switch from off to on when you hit 20. Also, two to four points should not raise me from the very apparent low crit rating to 50% or so, and if it does then you cannot deny that is a huge bug in calculating crit chances.

Let's do some math! Now if I recall, every rank in critical strikes gives you 1% chance to crit. I am at r9 now, and r11 with dagger mastery. The r9 in critical strikes adds 9% chance to hit on top of my base chance, which I have no clue about. The r11 gives me a 22% chance to double-strike, and I am not sure how much it adds to crit chance, but it says it adds to it in the skill info. Let's assume it adds 0.5%, which will add 5.5% more crit chance, putting me at base chance plus 14.5%. To top that off, critical eye adds another 10%, which gives me 24.5%. This means that approximately one in four hits should be a critical hit. Add to this the base chance that any class has to land a crit and I should be somewhere between 25% and 30%. This means that at LEAST one in four hits should crit, correct? Thing is, I can go enter battles and only crit once or twice, which is probably one reason I am getting stuck so often. This indicates a large bug in the critical chance system or whatever they do to figure out if you crit. I also rarely manage to have that double-strike proc from my daggers skill. Something is broken in their system, especially if the max they allow you is 5% crit chance or something until the end of the freaking game when you're maxed out at lv20.

As for the mission, GlacialPhoenix showed up last night and due to a quest she had active, I didn't even have to fight until I got to the sewers, making things a TON easier. To top that off though, the sewers had a spawn I have NEVER seen before! Where I normally encounter the first HUGE group, there were five or six, which we whipped on fairly quickly. The second huge group was there and I died twice during the fighting, but we beat them. The third big group was also gone, replaced by absolutely NOTHING. I mean honestly, if I had managed that spawn at any point last week, I would have been able to do it with my guildmates or even henchies. We probably fought about half of what is normally in there. Granted, she had heroes along, but still, the only tough part was the one huge group in the middle. The rest was a cake-walk! My only quarrel now is with fighting to and through the sewers and finding the normal spawn, returning to town, and repeating until the good spawn happens again when I run my friends through.

Baratus, it must be your builds. I've been Vanquishing (Hard Mode clearing) that entire campaign recently with very few deaths, so to be screwing up against Normal Mode Afflicted means it's your build and not the mobs.

I'm GMT-8.

I'll help you out tonight and show you it's your builds and not the mobs.

And you should (unless you're a ranger) always have 12+ in your weapon mastery.

Well I did something stupid while running a mission earlier. I took enough out of shadow mastery to give myself one single point in critical strikes, raising it from r9 to r10. The difference was insane. I went from almost no critical strikes to every other hit. That should NOT happen with a single percent increase. I did the entire mission with ease, and am now at a new area.

It is this that brought me to perform a test. I dropped critical strikes to r9 again and will be testing it later. If that one percent makes me go back to suckageville, then their code is bugged somewhere. A single percent cannot physically up my crit chance the way this guy acted today. I mean I have never seen crits like this before, except by a select few assassins in PvP who really know their stuff. I'll be testing this later this evening and will post the results. If r9 means almost no crits and r10 means nothing but crits, I will be filing a bug report with ANet.

Bunny, I'd be happy to party up and show you my build. My secondary is ranger, but I have nothing in ranger skills and I only carry crit/dagger skills, with two shadow skills for healing if I need it. What time do you want to meet? I am eastern time and you're obviously western, so I am three hours ahead of you. I normally hop on around 10:30 or 11:00 my time.

*EDIT*

Looking at the wiki, I should be hitting like crazy with crits.

r11 daggers: 15.6%
r10 critical: 14.3%
total: 29.9%

r10 daggers: 14.3%
r9 critical: 13%
total: 27.3%

Now that's about 3% difference, rounding up. 3% shouldn't be the difference between almost always critting and almost never critting. Will test this myself tonight.

6 pm PST.
Do you have any other campaigns aside from Factions? If so, look into [critical agility]

NF came in yesterday, and is on my rack of games. I have not added the NF key to my account yet because I want to master Factions without the NF skills so that when I get those NF skills I will be that much better. That's how I did Prophecies also.

I don't think I'll be able to get on that early. Usually the earliest I get on is around 10:15 EST, or 7:15 PST. I can stay on all night if I want though. I have two weeks before college resumes.

Critical agility will make you wet yourself. Just get it!

so insanly true, i'm in absolute love with this skill.

Baratus:

When I did the quest with you, I think the first big group missing might have been due to luck - I saw some groups fighting each other earlier, so they probably cleared each other out for us.

The main big group, however, I think is partly due to Afflicted spawning from the holes in the ground. If I'm not wrong, they spawn if you go near them - I remember having to pull because of the spawns. As a melee, you'll definitely have to pull them away from that hole so you don't aggro it by mistake.

I can't explain the third, and the spawn you saw is normal for me. I've never had anything nearly as big as the group you describe, and I've gone into the Undercity several times - thrice on quests for Canthan characters, and a few more for capping.

Either way, I was glad to be done with it, and when I run my friends through, I'll be taking screenshots if we get the bad spawn.