HM made Guild Wars so boring

To me, it's PvP that's pointless. And HM is somewhere between boring and frustrating. Then again, I've been playing this game for ages now. I have no idea what to do once I've finished my second GWAMM.

PvP? LOL, seriously.

well maybe you should try it..seeing as this game completely thrives on it.

from what i read from the ops post, is that he does not have a problem with hard mode he has a problem with pve skills. and i think his main problem is he wants people to play classes exactly how he likes to play them in pve. notice how he does not say anything about a rit running a rit lighting spike or a ele ruining a earth build ect. so sadly for him that is not how the game is made its made to support many different types of game play. and i for one like Vampirism along with one of the best pve skills for a rit: Summon Spirits (though i think and thought that was how Draw Spirit was suppose to work this was way before summon spirits came out and tried it for my self and was disappointed in what i found, and wish thats how they would change draw sprit and then make summon spirits do like half cast time i have found that it just takes way to long for a spirit to be cast, and to be useful in pve ie everything is dead before it gets up...)

HM with 8-man could be a challenge no?
Or just play Pee Vee Pee, funny, cool, and no more nerf from what i see.

Don't worry. You are not alone in your plight. Many people managed same feat.

PvE skills make the game boring, i agree with that.

they're completely unbalanced and totally ruin the game. save yourselves? what the hell were arenanet thinking? hooray for the skill that reduces damage taken by 80% on the whole party and can be kept up forever unless the AI is smart enough to disrupt it (tee hee).

HM is really boring, it's not the pve skills , it's the design of HM itself. You are fighting the same mobs with the same skillbars , only twice as powerful. And if that is not enough you need to kill every single enemy on the map so that the game acknowledges you knowing how to play in HM.
I only play HM areas when I want to massacre stuff.

1: Titles only thing left to do? Glad you said for most people otherwise it's bullshit. Even there I think it's wrong because I know hell loada people who doesn't care about titles at all. I do plenty of things without titles to have fun myself. I kill random things (HM and NM), I do dungeons, I trade and chat, I farm, I PvP, I also get titles but even if they weren't there I wouldn't be bored at all.

2: He's saying it's boring BECAUSE it's too hard. He is saying that he would rather kill random things with heavy damage than play HM. He doesn't say anything about only fun things being the titles part.

3: Oh you can't do dungeons in other ways? Well then maybe it's more because you aren't a very inventive player isn't it? Don't blame HM for the things YOU fail at. If it's too tough play on NM.

4: I really can't see the problem. I can see that you want HARD mode to be A LITTLE HARDER THAN NORMAL MODE BUT ALMOST THE SAME mode.
Personally I think if anything there should be a HARDER mode. HM is fun, I don't have any troubles vanquishing, I use my own builds and I do just as well as any super perma build I've seen. Maybe I use 10-15 mins more with my own builds, but who cares? As long as I think it's fun. GW is a game to be played for fun and if you don't think it is then you clearly are missing the point of gaming in general. A lot of people likes a challenge and THAT'S what HM is for.

As a primary Ranger on my way to GWAMM I have to disagree with you. If its boring, change your build. Change how you approach it. Or don't do it. I must have tried about 15 different builds while doing Hard Mode, from the most retarded pet build that wasn't meant to work (except it did) to a nearly pure interrupting build (no BHA, was worried at how bad I'd gotten at dshotting stuff). Part of the fun was juggling the skills around to find different. Some worked, some didn't. I played on my own, with a full guild team, randoms and in between. The rep titles I ground like everyone else - but there really wasn't a lot to grind after having cleared everything vanquishing, doing the quests and generally exploring the game.

You can have fun in HM, just mucking about (for the record, vanquishing naked doesn't work :P ). If you're looking for the most efficient way of killing stuff then yeah thats boring, cos you're gonna be using the same build nearly every area (hi BHA).

I think you're also missing why people are saying "play NM". If HM isn't working out for you then there's nothing making you do it. Stick to NM if that gives you your kicks, or accept that it isn't something that you like doing but you want the titles so do it anyway. And thats an ok thing to do -I don't like playing Necro or Mesmer as they're not my thing, but I play them anyway cos they're different and its nice having an excuse for failing.

End of the day if you find something boring and you're choosing to spend your free time doing it, you're doing something wrong. Change it.

IMHO, overpowered HM monsters warrant the use of PvE-only skills.

To all those saying how the OP sucks and how he needs to get better at PVE... I have a Paragon and want to do Urgoz HM... What builds can I use? What about DoA? What builds for there? *Crowd responds: IMBAGON! What otehr builds? *Crowd responds: IMBAGON or roll a perma or cryer!

I think this is what the OP is getting at... HM has limited what people can play as with their chars... I think when it gets to elite missions tho, you're limited, but then again, are you doing DoA to have fun, or to make huge as money and wicked cool drops??? hmmmm... Most people are there for the drops, guarenteed!

I personally think HM is wicked cool, I love vanquishing and trying new H/H combinations to do it... I also alter my builds and run gimmicks like my axe paragon, or sword ranger, or spear warrior... I have no issues dealing damage, even running my axe on my paragon, and that's not the most "leet meta" combo for PVE gons...

See, you can make non-meta builds work and even have fun with them. Because they can work. You don't let yourself to be limited by preconception how character is supposed to play if you want to have fun.

OP Whines that can't use his (meta) NM build anymore in HM and that PvE only skills don't help him make it work. He basically wants "leet meta" not only to exist, but also to accommodate whatever he thinks about how eles are supposed to work.

I hope you see difference between yourself and him.

to all you wise guys out there: HM is not hard. There is major difference between hard and annoying. Hard implies competition, which HM NPCs do not provide. All they do is cheat you by having super high HP, AL, damage and cheat skills. All you do is cheat them back by using broken PvE skills and abusing their AI.
Don't give yourself too much credit for beating HM in the game of cheats, while OP refused to do so.

EDIT: o and before next forum troll decides to label me HM loser: FYI I was one of the very first people get Legendary Vanquisher after it came out... way before your PvE skills and consumables (i.e. handicap support).

I don't understand ... Exactly how is having more HP, AL, Dmg and higher skill levels cheating? How do you cheat them back by killing them? OMG YOU'RE STRONGER THAN ME! CHEATER!

Is that a new trend to ask questions that are also their own answer?

Play Anarchy Online + Notum Wars for free then. We all know GW1 is dead and boring, so, come on over to some new fun and I'll give you some weapons and stuff for free.

Fair enough, but the OP isn't complaining because PvE skills feel like cheating; he's complaining because the PvE skills available to his Ele don't let him feel like he's "cheating" enough, relative to the "cheating" he feels like other classes get to do.

He's not taking a noble stand against the dumbing down of the game or anything. He's wishing he could nuke stuff.

A HM that consisted of balanced fights against highly intelligent AI seems to be a nightmare scenario based on the OP's post.

I thought this was going to be a valid point and decent discussion. I guess my optimism proves useless in this respect.

I stand corrected... Get too excited playing devil's advocate at times

EDIT: Though you must agree eles are pretty weak in HM. I mean I don't mind whole support damage + support role, but it would've been nice if cost and usability of so called nukes reflected their real effect.

Heroes are extremely build-sensitive though. Changing just one skill on their bar can lead to success or failure. So many not-bad or even strong bars they simply do not have the intelligence to play correctly, and you need a lot of patience to experiment and get anything good going. For most people, these are half your team, and what build they run is therefore more important than whatever you're running.

Also, it's not really hard mode that is making monsters so much harder to kill compared to high-end normal. Well unless there are healer AIs around. It's more that their higher threat leaves less tolerance for inefficiency, and more need for defense.

While in your case this may have been true, I had to change my h/h setup more than a few times depending on the area I was in. (Although I'll note that I got Legendary Vanquisher before the advent of PVE-Only skills - so this may not be quite as true anymore.)

Case in point - at first I found it difficult to h/h Vanquish the Canthan city areas because of the Jade Brotherhood mobs and their wtfpwn Dragon Stomps. However, I eventually realized that there's quite a few narrow paths & bridges where I could lay traps, so I'd lay the traps myself, run up and get aggro, and poof - dead Brotherhood baddies

1) Sorry after 3 years, and 3 accounts (none banned, I might add), pretty much everything has been done as many times as it can be, except in HM. Thinking about it, that probably has a lot to do with why HM bores me. Weird, since HM missions didn't, just recently. Might have a lot to do with the dungeons being very samey and the length of time it takes to do a run. Not a particularly patient person and I do bore easily.

2) Maybe, but that's not how I read it.

3) A) You're making a massive assumption about my creativity and B)Invention requires time. I have a life and a company to run. If I have to retry a dungeon 3-4 times (we're talking getting past the first level) before first completion, it annoys me as it is a waste of my time. Skill> Time, that was the credo when I bought GW. Clearly not anymore.

4) You're missing the point, entirely. Challenging ISN'T having your whole team wipe in 2 seconds when encountering a group of fire ele's because you didn't micro the pre-prot...The point is that hard mode ISN'T actually hard, it's just slow and repetitive as a result of stat pumping. Everything is about defence, some interruption and grinding away at your enemies ridiculously high HP and AL. Given the right team composition, you can, more or less, c-space your way through most areas, it just takes longer. Which is BORING.

And it's cheating, because it's a quick, easy, dirty fix as opposed to an elegant solution which would actually increase difficulty while maintaining the usefulness of normal skills.

If you genuinely can't see why stat-pumping was a crude and ineffective method, then it's your inventiveness you should worry about, not mine. HM also uses a couple of gimmicks in places to make a decent balanced team almost unusable.

You like HM the way it is. Good for you. You have a right to your opinion, and I have a right to mine...


Pretty much always looking for the fastest way to kill things. I'm only VQ'ing/doing dungeons in HM because I need them for the silly title, and since I have neither LDoA or Survivor (my current main char was made around the time titles were introduced and is Canthan), I don't really have a lot of options open to get GWAMM.

I find VQ/HM Handbooks is alright, apart from the running around like madmen trying to find the last mob . Takes a while, but it's not terribly boring. It's really only dungeons I have a problem with, and I suspect that's because they're so dreary I get bored. Same happens in Kaineng areas and the Kurzick areas. Dark, boring "oops, fell asleep again.." areas. This is just me, I know. Many people love those areas.

I think hard mode is perfect the way it is because the game when it first came out was suppose to be a diablo/wow style in the sense that you had to team up with people to do quest and force alliances and such. when they started with the heros it aloud you to play alone which is nice but kinda takes away from the game. but thats just how i feel about it all.

HM is something that should've never been.

I have done most of HM with my ele, I know the ele PvE skills couldn't be worse and that's why you look at other stuff. When I do missions in HM I bring [Necrosis] 90% of the time, if I have a secondary to spare. Just focus on getting down 1 mob at a time. I also like [Technobabble] and [you are all weaklings!]. As for the rest of the bar, I used to run SF to help take down stuff through burning degen, but recently I've been using [Blinding Surge] because blind is just a total counter against half the mobs out there, really helps against damage ^^. So, if you want some fun, just try some overlooked skills because it's not about speed or quantity of cleared HM stuff, it's about getting the job done and feeling good about it, how you tackled an obstacle. That's what HM is about.

Hard Mode?

lol

Don't you mean Grind Mode?

Realistically that's all it is.

Possibly the worst contradiction I've seen on this forum.

Do explain, please.

PvP is pointless yet playing and endlessly repeating PvE content which is somewhere between boring and frustrating again and again and again and again again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again is....what exactly?

You've overlooked one crucial element.

People.

Then again, it is my fault for not stating the obvious the first time around. I apologize.

I've found that the vast majority of PvP players are terrible, horrible people. That's why I quit PvP a few years ago. Sure, a tiger emote would be nice to have, but the cost of my sanity is a price I'm not willing to pay.

As to why did I play through PvE content at least twice - nice and friendly bunch of people I've played with. And even though some content is boring (Kaineng maps) and frustrating (overpowered HM mobs) I have had fun playing through it.

Ofcourse, I've met some horrible people in PvE, but they can be ignored a lot easier than those in PvP. Chances are you're not going to bump into the same idiot* in PvE again, but you'll run into the same PvP morons* day after day, month after month.



*"Idiot" and "morons" are subjective inerpretations of the author and do not reflect opinions of other DVDF members or alliance as a whole.

Fair call right there, as a result I fully understand and agree with your motivations.

Good luck to you.

Edit:From my side the "Do it quickly, must use this build and never die...again....again....again!!!" put me off PvE.Then again I hate grind and I'm playing a game.If I want to socialize I'd rather log and go to the pub.

Each to their own.

Hard Mode has been the best update to the game IMO.=P It's so much more to fun to play than Easy Mode, where you can afk and let your H/H kill everything for you.
Although I will admit, some Dungeons on Hard Mode are a serious pain to do...>__>

@OP: You're saying: HM is too hard to beat with your regular builds. But then Anet introduced PvE skills to make it easier, but with those skills it's too boring.

So, to summarize, your opinion is:
-HM with "normal" skillbars = too hard so it's boring.
-HM with PvE skillbars = too easy/no variation so it's boring.

All right. I agree that in NM you're allowed more variety in skillbars to succeed. In HM you (and your heroes) have to have a good working skillbar or you're toast. This often includes PvE skills.
But the boring part is simply because you've played the game from A to Z already in NM, possibly multiple times, and now to achieve the same in HM, you have to do it all over again, with less variation in builds. (even though with practice, I'm convinced you can play oodles of fun builds in HM)

Well... That might be true, but if you find that boring, you should go play something else. HM is there if you want to do it again, but with tougher enemies. To beat the game again while it's more challenging. It's an option to keep you busy, if you enjoy doing so. If not, well, there's plenty of games out there. Go play them.

And the Bard also has a good point: Join a decent guild or play with friends and you'll see that it's fun again.

Ha, right, PvE is all rainbows and sunshines where no one spams, no one is abusive, no one curses anyone out, no one calls you a n00b for not running the build they want, no one is a dumbass who gets you killed intentionally, no one tries to scam you, no one is elitist, etc, etc.

Absurd, really. If you just turn off allchat when you PvP, you instantly ignore 50% of the trashtalk thrown at you. Put yourself on DnD, there goes the other 50%. Now find some friends to play with (guildies, or just nice random people like you say you find in PvE so often...) and go play. Oh, and most importantly: if your party leader tells you to change your build, change your build. A lot of the people I've seen who have this same attitude are also of the opinion that they know best what they should be running...but if you don't play PvP much, you probably don't.

I actually think hard mode is decent, some things are more annoying than hard, like mobs with 2 healers and 2 copies of rez chant in the charr areas or the dwarves in Vloxen.

Hard mode does reward build preparation but is a little too easy in most areas especially when using some of the insane PvE only skills.

I disagree with everything you said except that last sentence. We're just gonna have to agree to disagree on the subject, since arguing would really not get either of us anywhere ^^

So true............... Watch out for my Mesmer only [Discord] team

If anything made Guild Wars boring then it has to be the stale content. But I still play the game and have fun because:
1. I have a small guild of friends to play with. I know them for years.
2. I like the game because it is better than the most I have tried so far.
3. It has an active support structure in place.
4. And most importantly, it does not cost me a penny except my time and electricity.

That said, GW is a game that can be categorized as any of the following:

OSPG: Online Single Player Game -- Played mostly by people dealing w/ single person guilds etc. (Thanks to the heroes, henchies and other bothersome multi-person guild entities).

OFPG: Online Forum Player Game -- You play the game less but post more on the forums as you are mostly bored with the game in which you have spent 5000+ hours of your life.

OMFG: Online Massive Farming Game -- You play this game to farm BDS, Ectos, Obsi-Edge, VS and other goodies while being invinci all the time with a bunch of shrimps having human body-type (Thanks to Shadow Form)

And then, you can always play Guild Wars as it was meant to be:

OPAYLG: Online Play As You Like Game -- Chose a character class; experiment with established builds before trying to make a bar with your own expertise; then try some new variations in the skill bar with new skills; try different party setups; try approaching enemies in different fashion etc. etc. So stop QQ and get back to the game. While you are at it, try to have some fun. If it brings you grief, go do something else.

On a different subject...

Yes. Because "supposedly good" PvP Players maintain a very closed circle of interaction bringing the demise of PvP game aspect of GW.

I know what you mean and, believe me, when I say, I couldn't agree more as it is another ingredient of destruction of GW PvP. However, in JQ/FA/AB you will meet them again and again. But, they can be ignored.

I never found a reason to zone into HA after my friends quit that arena. It was impossible to stay on the vent with bunch of kids cussing out at Jews, Asians, Blacks and anything you can think of.

I've been having a lot of fun with hard mode with H/H, experimenting with various builds and trying to see what the minimum number of defensive skills/characters I can get away with, cramming in as much offense as possible, and trying to exploit more synergies. Also takes a while to figure out which skills heroes can use well.

I have a buddy who's just getting into GW, and I'm helping him through prophecies right now, but once he's able to do hard mode, we'll run some dungeons and experiment with gimmick builds.

I'm one of those people who finds creating a Magic deck more fun than playing it, and Guild Wars has always been appealing to me because of that deck building aspect.

Roll yourself a necro and learn to play it well, I promise things will blow up in HM.

You have either willingly chosen to ignore the point in my post or fail at basic reading comprehenshion.

He shoots. He scores... Not. The crowd doesn't go wild.