Elite areas - what makes them elite?

First of all, this s NOT a cryway/sf/sy w/e flame and defense thread. You're more than welcome to use examples of speedclears but please don't degenerate this into an I'm right and every who doesn't agree is an idiot thread.

Lots of people have been complaining about how fast so called elite areas can be cleared. So, what makes an area elite? Are these areas inherently broken if they can be cleared so fast? Are they elite it all?

Some possible points to consider:
1.Sheer size of the place ie. should it take at least 1 hour to run everywhere, never mind killing
2. Monster density ie. will there be 20 things attacking you at once ie. mobs
3. The total number of monsters that need to be killed
4. Automatic booting if a quest npc dies ie. FOW and UW
5. Playability as a team. should u have to be team to finish quests or like the uwsc should u be allowed to all separately do quests. doa,urgoz and the deep are some examples of needing the whole team
6. Random booting. ie. because it's an elite area should there be a 25% chance of failure no matter how good you are at it
7.Time to complete related to the number of foes, size etc.
8.Area aspects. doa implemented this badly but i think deep and urgoz did this well. they both effectively shut down soloing cos of the exhaustion(urgoz) and failure/shadows aspects in the deep
9. Monster agro. should they only follow u a short distance to prevent nuking things en masse? this means that you can agro them by mistake and get away with it cos they wont chase u far though ie. helps nub pugs

Let me know what you think

Elite Areas are Sorrow's Furnace, Tombs of the Primeval Kings, Underworld, Fissure of Woe, Urgoz's Warren, The Deep, Domain of Anguish, and Slavers' Exile

Each area has it's own thing that makes it elite. But most deal with harder foes.

Sorrow's Furnace - mobs, high level enemies, one of very few places to get greens in Prophecies, difficult quest chain, auto-boot if wipe or NPCs killed (if quest is active upon entering)

Tombs - requires Ascension, high level enemies, some areas with mobs, one of the very few places to get greens in Prophecies, auto-boot if wipe, one of two places to get Ectos

Underworld - Pay 1k to get in (or now scroll), requires Ascension (iirc), high level enemies, mobs, auto-boot if wipe or NPCs killed, one of two places to get Ectos

Fissure of Woe - Pay 1k to get in (or now scroll), requires Ascension (iirc), high level enemies, mobs, auto-boot if wipe or NPCs killed, holds Obsidian Armor and Obsidian Shards

Urgoz's Warren - High Party Sizes, high level enemies, mobs, holds gold version of end game greens, requires special way to get in (owning HzH or scroll)

The Deep - High Party Sizes, high level enemies, mobs, holds gold version of end game greens, requires special way to get in (owning Cavalon or scroll)

Domain of Anguish - Requires completion of Campaign, high level enemies, mobs, holds Tormented Weapons

Slavers' Exile - Requires completion of Expansion, high level enemies, balanced mobs, holds Destroyer Weapons


Titan Quests are considered Elite depending on the person, what would make them elite:

high level enemies, Requires completion of Campaign, auto-boot if NPCs killed, limited party size

However, due to Heroes and PvE-Only skills, people don't consider these elite because they are "too easy" - however they are just as easy as the others. I personally count them as elite.

Basically, the main thing that makes elite areas elite are higher numbers *some cases balanced* - i.e., harder enemies - and requirements to get to the elite areas, whether ascension, completion of a game, or holding a town, each one is different.

Of course, with scrolls, the requirements have been downsized.

They are elite because they are harder than regular areas because of the enemy skill bars , enemy composition and goals. In most cases the enemies are more powerful and numerous , backed up by monster skills and effects which increase the difficulty even more. There are also more objectives you mentioned and rules to follow other than "kill everything" , well at least in the older elite areas (FoW , UW).
If they are cleared in such a short time it means that either the developers missed a detail in the creation of the area and the players exploited it, or that the player base has improved it's "game".

I believe everything no longer elite first ursan then someone made pearma and sc...what comes next?

not areas, skills are. its just not hard anymore with skills like SF

If you compare any of those to a mission, you know why they are elite.

Yep, once you know how to beat them, they are just as hard/easy as everywhere else.

Although, HM DoA or slavers, if no PvE-skills, no consumables and no SF would be quite interesting. I really fancy perma 50% chance miss for balanced teams. :P

A last word for heroes - Heroes, while having "faster reflexes" and the ability to "see" all skills being used (which is what enemy AI have too) are worse than good human players, PvE skills or not.

Customization of their skill bars, equipment and the mentioned AI advantages make them superior to bad players. Also they don't mind having to fill the needed roles and/or cutting that offensive skill for a support skill or a rez, or "not being a warrior and being a necro" instead.

http://guildwarsguru.com/forum/showt...347384&page=13
obviously it can not only be the skills.

If you think of it, all elite areas lack hencmen, which means you need a team with real ppl of completion.
Every elite area also got a reward and an objective to complete.

I think it is mostly a mixture of what A-net wanted with the release of the area and what players commonly refer to the area as.

What I would surely call elite areas:
UW,
FoW,
DoA,
Slaver's exile,
Urgoz,
Deep,
Tombs,

Previous elite areas/ tough yet not tough enough to be elite:
Sorrows Furnace,
Frostmaws Burrows,
Some HM dungeons, notably: Frostmaws, Shards of Orr, Rragar's etc.

Sorrows Furnace used to be referred to as an elite area once. Now people hardly ever do it and certainly not in huge set-up special build groups

The areas used to be elite before PVE skills and consumables, but Anet chose to remove all difficulty and skill requirement from the game with those two features, so now everything in PVE is just a challengeless stroll in the park.

Now the definition for elite areas is the places in PVE where H/H teams arent allowed. They arent hard, but you are forced to play with others, which makes it more fun for <5% of the people that still play this game.

Hard mobs make elite areas elite. Anet ruined cooperative pve with dumb lolpve skills. When I wanna play with people I pvp, because people in pvp don't care about my Norn rank.

I think my definition of an elite area would be an area where it would be hard to succeed without an fairly organised team.
I don't really care if it's H&H or all human.

Now more to the problems with them.

Every so called elite area should be looked at by the time in GW it was introduced.

For example, when looking at UW and FoW and to a lesser extend ToPK look at skills and gameplay available only in Prophecies.
When looking at Deep and Urgoz's look at Proph and Factions.
DoA all chapters.
Slavers, all chapters and EotN expansion.

The main tricky thing in UW is knowing when to trigger a certain quest and having the ability to split a team. Knowledge about the area and the quests makes the difference.
FoW has besides the griffon quest (and don't kill the npc) no real quest that can screw a team. I think t used to be more difficult because of the fair amount of hexes and conditions which had fewer removals.
ToPK was introduced later and, besides the mesmer (I think), has a monster skill that hits every profession in a different way. Blind warriors, interrupt elementalist, remove monk enchantments. That kind of stuff.
It was difficult for unorganised groups (without B/P) because of those effects.
Sorrows, several different 'tasks' to complete, each requiring a somewhat different strategy.

Next Deep and Urgoz's.
The main thing I remember about Urgoz's is the huge amount of enemies that are at the start and some environmental effects. Failing to bring a NC/CC after the rebirt 'fix' made it depending on one specific skill type. Probably intended that way.
Deep's difficulty also came from environmental effects combined with hardhitting foes.
In both cases knowledge of the area and game mechanics helped to beat them.

DoA.....
Huge groups, stupid environmental effects even in Normal Mode.
Took people a while to find a team build that could beat the entire area (Kaiz' build). Mallyx was mainly beatable by some door glitch.
Again, knowledge of the area and game mechanics would help people beat.

Slavers....
Ressing foes that hit hard. Relatively balanced groups.
Knowing foes and counters helps a lot here.

As you see, knowledge helps a lot in all those areas. And some understanding of how PvE guildwars works.

Having said that, let's look at what also happened.
Most of the areas are easier now, not only because of the increase of knowledge, but because of the introduction of new skills and professions in later chapters.
Playing FoW or UW with prophecies-only skills is already completely different compared to having a full skillset of all chapter.
Furtermore, several skills received updates, disabling some, making others better.

I fully understand that increasing player skill and knowledge speeds up doing things.
Add to that the new (non-PvE) skills and it's understandable that teams are faster in doing stuff. Specially organised teams that play together a lot, like guild teams.
However, the time needed to clear an area is an indication of the enormous increase of power in GW.

A text "Elite mission" when you enter them.

Elite Skills used by monsters.

the fact that people have to resort to unbalanced builds to clear an elite area instead of normal teams shows that it is more difficult than normal areas. all anet has to do is balance the skills used to clear them, but they don't.

The introdcution of mechanics and skills hurt the "elite" status of these areas. I do believe that the only changes to these areas were ones that affected the reward.

It's not just one build style, all of them have characteristics which are so powerful that it pulls through with even lack of skill and just walk in and finish fast at the same time - I've played normal games not even built for the "elite" player that, on NORMAL mode, take at least 40 minutes to complete, whereas areas like these take, what, 20 minutes? 30 minutes?

It makes sense in a game where you can grind the shit out of your character and power them, otherwise, it's dumb.