Shadow Form meets the end

Too bad. It's still not the fault of the game that you choose to play with bad players.

I don't CHOOSE to play with bad players...I'm FORCED to play with bad players whenever my guild/friend teams are not available, get this through your head. And don't bother saying "its your fault your guild/friend is not on at the same time as you, it just make you look like an idiot"

Bladed Aatxe are not hard; there are any number of counters to them. Yes, they will kill you quickly if you are not prepared, but Shadow Form is not the only way to beat them. If a PuG can't find any means other than Shadow Form to defeat so simple a foe, they deserve to fail. Helpful hint: UW was possible to complete before Factions or Shadow Form ever existed.

You choose to play with the people you play with. There are a lot of people out there, and you have a choice between them. You are not forced to play with anyone, you have the option of picking Monk A or Monk B, or not playing at all. You choose, yourself, to join teams that are incapable of completing content. You choose, on your own, to repeatedly subject yourself to problems, because you choose to not find better people to play with.

Don't play with scrub Monks if you don't want to die. That's all there is to it. Make more friends, and keep a list of people who don't suck at easy content. Or, bring a hero, because they are perfectly capable of completing the content you seem to think needs nerfed to cater to the terribads you choose to play with.

Did you read my post? Or did you have reading comprehension problems? I specifically said I do have a list of people that are GOOD the game. Therefore, I didn't CHOOSE to be with bad people. When the guild only has 6 people wanting to do UW runs and the rest are in FoW or PvP, then you are forced to rely on friend list.

Guess what, if a monk is good enough to be in my friendlist, he is good enough to be in other people's friendlist and in other good guild as well...chances are he is already doing the UW run with other people. The number of guilds that actually schedule a UW run on specific dates are few and far between, and players shouldn't have to rely on something like that to do UW.

At that point I'm FORCED to rely on pugs or wait an indefinite amount of time for other members of the guilds or friendlist people who might not want to do UW run.

Sorry bro, but you're still choosing to play with shitters, no matter how you try and spin it to look like some plot by ArenaNet to shoehorn you into playing with bad people and dying to easy shit that people who don't suck have been clearing since the day the content was released.

Aatxes aren't hard, your Monks just suck. Enjoy your /deaths.

I didn't choose because I don't know people's skill before I enter any area. Its more like I'm forced to gamble with groups. In grindy games like WoW I can have some sort of idea of how "good" they are by looking at their equip. In strategy game, I have an idea based on the automatic record pairing system (like those in Warcraft 3). In FPS, its nearly completely random, and there's usually a system to force the good players onto the other team with the bad players to even things out.

You do know that to actually have a good guild/build a long good friend list that I have now I pretty much HAVE to go through all the crappy groups/guilds...that's FORCED. Maybe this is why GW2 seems to be designed in such a way that allows soloing all the way through, because apparently "find good players to play, and if you can't its your fault" is not that popular.

And to think I actually didn't like the 7 heroes concept...with people like you now I understand why people want it so much.

So you want the game to be balanced around shit players? :\

PvE should be balanced around decent players (HM good players), not shitty players.

I think it should be balanced around above average players. As in balanced in such a way where good groups can still have challenge, BUT isn't instant fail and frustrating to the majority of non-good guild groups.

Bladed aatxe is an example of memorizing gimmicks to win, NOT promoting skills, it just force people to staple prot spirit on monks and according to theocrat "find good monks to play with". The combination skill sets in slaver's exile is an example of monsters that promotes challenge, for example. Those monsters are hard to kill but the group won't instant wipe due to a single mistake.

Having monsters spawn on top of important NPC just for grabbing a quest is another gimmick. Most of the time its not even possible to tell what the heck went wrong. Its just "erm, I grabbed these few quests, and somehow one of them caused the group to wipe" Stuff like the eotn insta kill rocks/snowballs, on the other hand, is something that is implemented correctly because its possible to know its coming (screen shaking), and actually promote people to have good position.

The easiest way for them to do something about it without drastic measures is to just split the bladed aatxe into two forms...the ones in the first room should be weaker (bladed aatxe jr.? ), while later on there's a more difficult form...this reduces the instant wipes and encourages pugs to actually learn the area in a progressing manner. Then make it so that once you grab a quest, the other quest locks themselves. And then maybe have a separate quest saving system like DoA? (other people had suggested that before).

Many many ways to retain the challenge while remaining accessible. Out of all of the end game areas I think Slavers' Exile is the one where its done to perfection, too bad it is probably too difficult to translate that to UW.

PVE can't be balance
But since people wants it, it should be balanced around EVERYONE!

Bladed Aatxe: How to beat.

Body block against a corner, a wall, stairs, a gate, etc. and prot the party member who's blocking.

Protection or armor skills.

Blind it: Elementalists, Mesmers, Rangers, Ritualists, Dervishes, Assassins, and Warriors(Belly Smash is Awesome!) can all blind a foe.

Make it miss or attack slower. Blocking is also effective.

Snare it. If it can't get to melee range, it can't touch you.

Knock it down.

Just kill it, i.e. spike.



There is nothing wrong from a game design point of view with putting a foe who swiftly punishes you for making mistakes right at the beginning of an area that is supposed to present a challenge. The solution is to overcome the challenge or not play, not dumb it down to the point where any challenge and fun is lost.

Pumpkin pie speaks the truth!

But they can still get a bit closer to balancing for everyone just by just reducing the "epic fails" to plain "fails". just make it harder to instant wipe (die in first room), or fail after 3 hrs+ (die in last room). The loot can easily be adjusted to match the difficulty and the area would still remain "elite" as they call it.

Pug skill level != above average player.

Prot spirit isn't a staple because of aatxes, it's a staple because it's an amazing prot skill. Every monk should carry it.

How exactly is it a gimmick? It just makes it so your group should know what they're doing and not pick up a quest too early. Teamwork ftw.

There's no need. If people can't make it past the chamber because of aatxes, chances are they're going to fail somewhere else. Chamber is easy, it consists of protting your frontline and getting your frontline to hold aggro. Very, very simple.

As for a quest system like DoA, no. UW isn't long or hard enough to deserve that.

It's impossible to please everyone.

hopefully the just pick at the deadly damage part of SF so that perma can still act as a harmless tank.

I had a bit of problem explaining what I meant. Difficulty should be balanced around above average players. Accessibility should be balanced around pug players. Its basically the concept of splitting up a difficult area into may parts, allowing pugs to learn the entire area without being forced to repeat the entire thing over and over, and reduce the need of everyone needing to have a team build that can clear the entire area. Basically a pug can go in with a build for a specific area of UW, and switch builds (wasting time) for each different area. Good groups can just have one perfect team build and blast through the entire area in less than 2 hours.

Its a gimmick precisely because it doesn't really promote any real skillful "teamwork" gameplay.

Gimmick build: a build that relys on a few skills to win, break the skill and the build falls apart, but Don't break the skill and the build wins with flying color.

Gimmick UW challenge: relys on a few tricks to make it a challenge, memorize all the tricks and break them to win with flying color, but if you don't it doesn't how skillful you are, your team fail.

As long as you find people who know it before hand, its great. But in a scenario where you don't have people you know, the chance of utter failure is extremely high. It boils down to whether or not you know people who already grinded through each area beforehand. (or spam in the chat a hundred time hoping everyone would listen)

Its not just UW either, the factions end game areas had even more gimmicks in the form of weird environmental effects.

Agreed. The question is who portion of the player base to please....

You attempt to please all of them, and this is where difficulty settings come into light.

If the player wants to see the area and the lore, set it to Easy mode.

If the player wants to be challenged and rewarded for his efforts, set it to the Hard mode.

Pleasing both ends of the spectrum - casual and highend - is a difficult task. But ANet's simply not even trying at this point, even though they have a system in place to cater to two separate difficulty groups.

Bingo, anyway this have always happened, after SF change maybe it will happen more often. At least now we have the option of "ping" the build , bad thing is that it means nothing and it can be faked ( yes , there are ppl that do that stuff ) so a lot of ppl go gimmicks but .... lets see what happens when there are not "so easy" gimmicks around like SF .

People like me (i.e. people who know how to press buttons and not die) are the reason we don't need 7 heroes."Prot vs huge damage" is not a gimmick. "Suck less" is not a gimmick. "Ele stand way behind Obsidian Flesh / SF tank and nuke shit to death" is a gimmick.

I'm starting to think you were the monk in your story.

True, true, and true.

But the huge damage is.