Feedback on Hearts of the North questline

I'm going to keep it pretty simple. In the War in Kryta, it was somewhat acceptable (though I found it very frustrating using heroes unless I was using FS) for the sheer amount of resses the White Mantle have in their builds, but when we're doing solo quests where we have no FS available, it's not fun for the white mantle to keep spamming resses. While yes I know you have a fast recharging interrupt, when you have 3-4 targets to scan through all with resses available it can make things too difficult. Especially where I'm having trouble, where Keiran's healing/hex removal skill gets replaced with find their weakness. I'm then getting hexes I can't remove, and have no source of healing, while the white mantle res up their dead members that do happen to get killed with sniper shot.

If you're going to have forced solo quests as the main bulk of this storyline, tone down White Mantle res-spam please, especially "We Shall Return!". That's uninterruptable and resses multiple targets. No white mantle we fight alone as Keiran should carry that particular res.

This^ and please tone down their route,it's very annoying when you need to fight more than one mob, as it will result in death.

The healing/hex removal skill is still there in slot 6. The shout is added to slot 7, which was empty before that.

'where Keiran's healing/hex removal skill gets replaced with find their weakness'

huhlolwut?
Ive played trough all the mini missions so far, but this hasnt happened to me =/ i got that skill and the next one in the empty slots of skill 7 and 8..

Rlly had no problem at all completing them either, just make the most out of the sins targets and ur sniper shot, makes it really easy..

A little boring, vague some might say - but looking forward to the wedding! ;P

Maybe it's due to me rearranging the skills to a more natural feel for me, I don't like the default skill layout for Keiran. When I get find their weakness it replaces the healing skill.

But I wouldn't say it's easy, like I said, I'd kill something, and then both of the other targets would start using a resurrection skill, or worse, another group would patrol into the mob when I was down to the last one, White Mantle Champion shouts "We Shall Return!" 3 more enemies get ressed, and the Divine Peacekeeper then heals them to full and now I'm trying to fight 6.

Just the resurrections need to be toned down. I always found/find it frustrating in WIK bounties and quests as well when I can't find humans to group with, there's just so many resses to deal with. This is even worse because you don't have a full group to deal with the resses, or frozen soil, which is my usual way of dealing with their res spam.

First of all with a little skill you can pull the rezzers and let Miu use promise of death on them so they die first. Secondly if you have trouble with a group just run and hit, its reeeeeeeeeeealy hard to die in these missions to be honest. Plus people always complain about GW becoming too easy.

OK wow, these quests are easy, I know im used to playing ranger in PvP so interupting is kinda second nature, but I completed all these quests on ma laptop from my bed on wireless with a ping of like 700.

Let me give you some tips..... mobs contain 3 people. If your fighting more, its cos YOU over aggroed. Thats not a fault of the quest, thats a mistake by YOU. You only need 3 skills from your bar....
1) The one hit kill. WATCH your little sin friend, see who they call with 'Promise of death' and 1 hit kill them

Mob = 2.....

2) Your rupt skill.... RUPT THEIR RESSES, 2 second recharge RARELY they will get a res of but if they do OH NOES!!!!

3) (heal skill) No im kidding, use ur heal skill and ur basically invincible for 10 seconds.

By this point.... Promise of death will be called again, USE IT, and thats another 1 hit kill

4) Now they only have 1 res, keep that down, GG you beat the mob

5) rinse and repeat

ITS THAT SIMPLE, you can waltz through the first 3 with those skills alone

IF YOUR FINDING IT TO HARD - May i suggest, doing this, IF you still cant do it, then there is no more ANYONE can do for you. So probs just uninstall

As a principle, GAMES should be SLIGHTLY Challenging!!!!! Do you seriously want ANET to release new content that is simply WATCH THIS CINEMATIC AND GET REWARD! GG YOU COMPLETED THE BONUS CONTENT!

NO! It should be a challenge, if you can't beat it yet then to quote one of my favourite guilds Ascalon Is This Way [-->]

Whine Whine Whine Whine Whine THATS ALL I HEAR FROM GURU ABOUT THE NEW CONTENT!!!! WOW

From me Anet, THANK YOU for the new content. I enjoyed it, I thought it was the right difficulty, a breeze if you are pro, easy enough if your average, and ...... fill out the rest yourself. It was original, it had a nice story to it, good rewards, and was FUN! I enjoyed it, shame that so many people find anything in a game where they have to do something for themselves TO HARD. They cant rely on the other 7 party members or hero AI to carry them. Shucks after a game being out for 5 years.

Oh well, thats my 2 cents

Replaced? It fills one of the blank slots.
Keiran is a beast and it's easy enough the way it is, no need to tone this down because you have to kill several enemies two-three times due to ressing.

I enjoyed the Bonus Mission Pack, so for these quests to be similar was a breath of fresh air after the WiK stuff if I'm honest. I found these fun and enjoyable. They're not that difficult really. I died a few times during the first one as I didn't really know what I was doing (probably happened to a few people too) but that's expected.

Tips:
Patrol watch - if they are more then 1 group in a smallish area, stop and watch their routes. You will probably find that they wonder off far enough for you to dispose of a single group before they come back. Rinse, repeat till all gone.

Crtl button - use it to 'scan' the group you're about to take on. For example if there are firebrands, ritualists (the resto kind) champions, priests, they usually have the resses so try and get them first. I really didn't have a problem with these - my main is a ranger anyway so I'm pretty used to interrupting with a bow anyway.

Know your environment - If you are on higher ground then your opponent your arrows will shoot further. If they are on higher ground, you will have to get quite close to them for your arrows to reach. Be wary of rocks/branches/overhanging things. There really is no point using skill one (your instant kill 25% of the time) if there is a rock in the way. Move around it.

Persistence - Every now and again the last foe you'll meet is some sort of healer, be it the priest with WoH, LoD or resto rit. Just because they don't go down in the first 5 seconds of you getting to them, doesn't mean you won't get them at all. Keep at them. With you and Miku combined you'll do enough dmg for the foe to spam everything he's got and eventually he will run out of energy. Use skill 1 on recharge for these and skill 3 if for the extra deep wound if skill 1 didn't kill him first time around. Again try and interrupt key skills.

Retreat - If things really isn't going your way with a group or another group comes along, exercise the better part of valor and run. Miku will keep fighting (I haven't yet seen her retreat with me), and let her die, she'll res after a few mins. Its better to be alive and to be able to give it another go then having to start again.

That's all I can think of right now, but I'll edit if I think of more

these are very nice bonus quests
got the first two done though before understanding that the sniper shot has to be done with Miku's attack and not the second skill

Try spotting a person rezzing without clicking that person: the foe will shift his body towards the target, and most often the rez skill has a very obvious animation.

Click and press 3.

Now you can constantly keep your eyes on the battlefield, instead of camping the skill warm-ups of the foes. you can even follow your 'sin buddy and anticipate what foe is getting marked next.

Some skill animations are even documented on the wiki: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Guild...lls_animations. It pays off learning them by sight.

Well maybe I just get unlucky because for me it seems *every* white mantle has a res. If I'm lucky, it's res signet which results in only 1 res but they constantly spam it even as I interrupt it. I'f I'm unlucky, it's "We Shall Return!" which resses the whole group, and can't be interrupted. On a 2 mob pull it's not a big deal, on a 3 mob pull with 2 mobs trying to res the 3rd you just killed, interrupting both of them just doesn't happen. There are a few pulls in the third mission that have 4 targets in them. Either that, or they're 2 double target mobs that wouldn't patrol away from each other no matter how long I waited.

as for the snarkey "uninstall" comments, no thanks I did complete the questline. This is just feedback, as it is an important quest arc connecting Guild Wars to Guild Wars 2, it shouldn't be elite or masters difficulty or something reserved for people who plow through everything it should be pretty accessible.

On the other hand, the 4th mission was in fact very easy just because of all the respawning help.

It's primarily the 3rd mission that gave me any real problems, and that was due to some groups of 4, or a patrol wandering in from a distance that ressed the group, and well, the new skill he got replaced the healing skill because I like to put self heals on 7 and 8. There was at least one time that I had to flee off because a patrol wandered in, and as they chased me, they ressed mobs I ran past on my escape.

There's basically 3 resses I don't think White Mantle should have:
"We Shall Return" due to uninterruptability and the fact that it resses everything within earshot.
Flesh of my Flesh, due to it not having any cooldown, they will completely tie you up spamming it while the other white mantle in the group gets off their res chant or signet anyway.
Signet of Return, like FomF, it's basically spammable and will keep you occupied repeatedly interrupting it while another mob heals through your damage.

I'm borderline okay with Lively Was Naomi, just because it's such a long cast and has a significant cooldown.
Res signet gets spammed but at least it's only one possible res.

But key one that has to go is "We Shall Return!" You get that with an LoD Divine Peacekeeper and I'd have to say a lot of people would have problems.

Just wait for Miku to mark either the paragon or monk and snipe him, then proceed with pressing the other one. If Miku happens to focus on someone else or is dead, just snipe the paragon hoping you'll score 900 damage on him without the mark. Then it's easy-peasy.
Both SoR and FomF can be easily rupted, constantly, rendering no recharge on FomF meaningless. I actually found rangers the most irritating due to their blocking stances and ease at applying conditions - even after i removed them, i just got hit again and bam, 2-4 conditions on me.
If someone got that far to play as Keiran and didn't roll his face on the keyboard on the whole go, the new quests are easy. And enjoyable. They seem like the devs got into GW2 and they wanted to glimpse it somehow in GW1 - a single powerful hero having nice synergy with another char.

I can't really say I liked this new questline:

- Repetitive: the first 3 missions are pretty much coincident in terms of gameplay, only differing in setting. Mission 4 is "BLA's younger brother", Mission 5 is rather irrelevant.

- Boring: while some "novel" game mechanics implemented here are interesting at first, the interest soon wears off. These missions are as involving as playing some basic rail-shooter, you go from A to B and kill whatever you meet on your path. I soon ended up relying on the Sniper/Mark combo all the time and rolled through all the missions...

- Insignificant: so, wait, while everyone was risking their lives defending Lion's Arch, Keiran went roaming in the jungle - completely off-path - chasing random people, and finally getting some self-awareness because a just-met Assassins said so? So, what happened to Greywind and to the inhabitants of the north-side of the Ascalon Settlement they were supposed to evacuate? Gwen's character develpment toward enjoyment of life was rather convincing, yet, did Keiran really need to go THAT far to realize he was acting like a prick all the time?

- Replayability is rather unimpressive: solo quests in disguise are bad IMO. WiK at least allowed some diversity and motivated me to play the whole quest line with different professions just to try it out, not to mention grouping up with other players. No way I'm gonna be playing the same, fixed character with fixed stats and skills, in some repetitive and boring solo missions with all of my toons.

- Appalling quality of the update: nothing more than a rough-and-ready update with too little storytelling and too many, blatantly evident, bugs. Missing localization, spelling errors... 3 fixes that haven't really fixed much. And well, it took MONTHS to get content that obviously hasn't been tested extensively enough, if at all. Speaking personally, this sense of improvvisation really subtracts to the overall enjoyment.

Lore-wise, it's significant - first real step towards the existence of Logan in GW2. But i do agree, the story itself has many holes, some parts seem weird/illogical and the whole feeling is like from a children's book. Mr Bunnsy went into the dark forest and found the ultimate truths about him and his life.
It would be perfectly fine if Keiran's reshaping took a bit longer and had more depth. If his decision to wander into Maguuma rather than reporting back and helping old friends was backed better - my suspension of disbelief requires more in that better.

You meet them after BLA. How else do you find out about Kieran going missing . . .

OP, I've taken 5 chars completely through and can't say I've seen WSR once. The overwhelming majority are Vengeance/Death Pact/Signet of Return and standard Res Sig. Worst thing that can possibly happen is the WiK unit will go into an infinite loop on the standard Sig forcing you to spam your rupt...they are going to die either way.

I didn't have any problem with the mini-missions.
Finished all on first try without knowing where to go or what to do. True, the enemy resurrects are annoying, but thats what skill #3 is for (fast recharging interrupt)

Personally i thought it was fairly simple and easy to figure out what to do next. There was a little challenge only being one character with one support though it really made you think about what you doing and not rush in.
I don't class myself as a particularly skilled player and i still found it fairly easy, so im not sure why people are having that much trouble.
Though im still wondering what was going on with the Asura and the Seer...but i'm sure we'll get to that bit soon

Indeed. You meet them, but no one can explain how exactly Keiran's gone missing. What the eff he's doing at the Watchtower Coast? Taking a walk after lunch and showing off with girls doesn't really sound appropriate in this context.

I'm sorry. I must disagree with just about everything in this feedback.

The skills given to you are MORE than enough to roflstomp the missions. For crying out loud, you can take out Rotwing without breaking a sweat.

"We shall return" is only used by the peacekeeper mentor. If you have SO much trouble, then sniper shot the guy. If he doesn't immediately die......RUN FOR YOUR LIFE ZOMG!.....till you lose him. Then let sniper refresh and try again.

Also, the chance of any of the enemies having a rez is 17 out of 110. That's right. There are only 17 versions that have any rez at all, and 93 that don't have any. Out of those 17, only 1 is the scariest of all "We shall return" and about 5 are simply rez signet.

Just learn which enemies have resurrection. Snipe them to death. Try opening with Snipe, Terminal Velocity, Rain of arrows. If you don't kill them outright, they will have 1/2 - 1/3rd life left, and be suffering from bleeding and deep wound. Easy enough to follow through with their demise unless a healer can get em.

If you really and truly have ZERO skills whatsoever and are incapable of beating them. Snipe, and if it doesn't kill them. Run away till they stop chasing. Come back and snipe again till it does kill them. That way you only ever fight 2 at once. (The only time there is a group of 4 is when you fight the boss)

The only thing in this entire feedback that I can even remotely agree with is when you get a new skill, it should not overwrite skills that are moved to those slots. Though the simple solution for the player is to not put any skills in slot 7 or 8.

LOL @ this being hard. I admit I got myself killed badly the first two times, but once you learn the skillset it's anything but hard. However unlike most of the H/H game, the performance and activity of your character really matters, I.E. you actually need to watch what you are doing a little, and cannot ride AI or 1-2-3 to victory. This is completely out of line with most of GW PvE and thus arguably not appropriate for the established consumer base, but is really not an unreasonable expectation in most games, including GW2 where you aren't constantly outnumbered by AI helpers.

My only complaint here is the strong incentive to repeat on alts for 8 medals, yet alts experience completely identical gameplay due to becoming keiran. Doing it once is fine, doing this 8 or 9 times gets old fast.

The 4th mission could have been fun , however it's way too easy due to the fact that Krytan NPCS rez every 20 sec or so. On my second char i just afked it , 10mn later it was done so...
Aswell , an other criticize i would do is that it's too easy to farm vanguard pts and medal of honors. I hope that they won't add a very good reward in exchange of medals at end , cause i can imagine people who got close to a stack of medals thanks to sec accs.....

You can't farm medals, you can only farm war supplies for medals. It's 5 war supplies after first completion (8 medals are given for first completion).

Yes i know , it's just that you can get very easily 8 medals per char , so if you consider some people do have 6-7 accs ....

You cannot trade medals between accounts, but if you have many characters on your main account, you can use these quests to your advantage, sure.

I enjoyed them, though not enough to do on every single character.

Sure there were a couple irritating things - took a couple times dying before I figured out how to use the skills properly - but that was to be expected.

Enemies rezzing was a bit frustrating but easily overcome.

Clues to find the objects were a bit vague but it if you put them together with earlier information they were decent and I was easily able to locate the 1st and 4th with out checking wiki. (you had to remember that K. last known location was near a large lake) the "somewhere in Maguuma Jungle" was a tad too broad for the 2nd and 3rd.

I loved it in the last mission when a ritualist turned all the dead krytans into minions and then I one shot sniped the ritualist. His minions finished the mission for me with me having to lift a finger.

The only really irritating thing was that, once you figured out how to do it, it was impossible to lose. If you get overwhelmed just run away and wait till miku rezzes. As she runs to you she will spread the enemy out making them easy.

Well that and Gwen's sappy dialogue that made me want to barf.

Overall - decent 7.5/10

I enjoyed the quests, and found their difficulty just about right. I had little trouble finding the breadcrumbs for each quest -- worst one was the item by Ventari's, which seems rather randomly placed.

My only complaints: The dialog is PAINFUL. The cliches! Oh the cliches! And after all this "life changing experience", Gwen is still a little bitc... ahem, shrew. Some guys like women like that, I guess.

Oh! Why, again, does a hero/NPC get really cool armor I can't have for my characters? I want Miku's outfit for my assassin!

In the end, good fun, nice job, and I look forward to more.

I knew where he was going from, so i just went into Majesty's Rest and, eventually, Maguuma from ToA. The third item took me a while, but i used perma SF running Me/A build and just moved from outpost to outpost, ignoring borders and corners of locations.

But yeah, Gwen seems pretty... flat there. I think they tried to avoid romantic soap opera-like scenario, but now she's just a little emo b!tch.

For a quest line whose focus was the uniqueness of the interaction between the skills of the two characters, there sure was a lot of hex removal on those white mantle which made that mark of death kind of insignificant. Additionally, a lot of the time I just ignored my partner as she loved to tag enemies below 50% health and enjoyed targeting those with whirling defense/escape/etc. Could have done most of the quest without her except for those times when I had to let her die so I could run away and survive

This. I don't relate to people like Kieran and Gwen well. They remind me of many people's bad relationships. A relationship based on one person being strong and the other being psycho is a naive arrangement.

As for the quests, I thought they were alright, but the marked ability quickly becomes hard to use with hex removal. The ressing mobs were funny, you can interrupt them easily I found. Even overpulling or Miku dying getting me mobbed, I managed to run away by skin of my teeth when I needed to. I do wonder why Kieran has no actual run or defense stance skill though, that did feel like a strange thing for a ranger. Overall, it's a cute set of quests, but too easy. I found WiK more fun. I'd give these new quests a pretty low rating but I guess it's intended to only be cookie crumbs leading up to Cantha, so it is what it is. LOL @ the $15 wedding clothes though... what a cash grab.

The mobs don't need to be toned down. I think they are just about right in terms of size and difficulty.

If anything Keiran's bar is crazy OP'ed.

tbh I have found it all rather dull & boring, WiK was a lot more fun.

Keiran is a beast, his skills are very strong, and his heal is absolutely amazingly powerful. Skills 2-6 maybe what GW 2 skills will be like: Strong, independent, but have plenty of utility and can become stronger with allies around (Gravestone Marker causes KD to a weakened foe, but Keiran cannot cause weakness himself). Miku has her own set of powerful skills also, one makes her cause +80 damage if target has a Deep Wound... +80, that's crazy, and oh btw its a DUAL attack, so she's probably hitting for around 200 damage on one foe.

Having 20 in Expertise in my opinion is rather ridiculous. While I enjoyed casting 15 energy spells for 3 energy, it seems rather overpowered in the sense that some of the Peacekeeper/White Mantle builds have Energy Surge/Burn, Debilitating Shot, Spirit Shackles, skills that are supposed to render you useless. But because of 20 Expertise, when you come across those E-Denial builds, they are hardly a bother as you only need 3 energy at the most to use a skill.

Anyway, there's my two cents.

tried it half heartedly, didnt die once...overaggroed etc...was bored senseless. everything felt re-used. sniper shot -pve skill, nothing to fear, find their weakness etc..hated being an npc, losing my character whom I spent a lot of time on, looks and build etc..the self ressing npc crap from eotn, ruins any feeling of accomplishment or tension..it's just a ploy for selling costume crap, again.

The ressing and spirit spammers were annoying I guess but what I didn't like most was the way the missions were set out. You're a ranger, and she's an assassin. You'd think between the two of them they would be a bit more sneaky and finesse wise. Instead its follow the mantle mobs to your end goal, leaving a trail of dead behind.

Some trapping, or shadow stepping, or just being able to use your radar to dodge mobs till your target then 'Boom, headshot' and slip away in the shadows would have been nice. Instead you're pretty much rurik c spacing across the map.

Would have been funny too if gwen saw him with miku and was like "Hurry and drag him back. I've heard all sorts of stories from cynn about canthan girls... Not that I want him back or anything. Just he's a officer of the ebon vanguard so he should be here, with me rather than running around in the jungle with some strange hussy"

Still, apart from the looping dialogue, was a good addition on the whole.

Ok, Go to presearing and practice pulling again in the northlands. when the arrow flies off the bow.. RUN in the Opposite direction. By doing this you can turn the sin into a tank and she will attack the foe you just hit to start the agro.

Just mash all of your skills as they become available being careful not to hit #6 when the sin does. So just keep backing up and you will be fine.

i found it all allot of fun but when they did the update for the last few quests the assassin seemed more reluctant to attack shed sit behind not attacking till the first enemy i attacked was well below half health and whenever a mob was to far behind me to bother me she seemed to wait and aggro them

It was a pretty entertaining quest line and I hope we learn more about Miku.

As for the combat, I found it took a little time to adjust to the skills since they were proprietary and had a lot going on. Miku's AI was a bit wobbly and inconsistent, as well her aggro bubble was small. I generally felt she should be going after my targets rather than doing her own thing, too.

The enemies were a good difficulty but at times frustrating. Resurrections, hex/condition removing and offensively using plenty of conditions/hexes and spirit turrets added challenge, but can easily overwhelm some.

The bugs, well, what can you say? It happens, and I'm glad they issued quick fixes. I ran around a -lot- on my own trying to find the items myself, but unfortunately the aforementioned circumstances just ended up wasting my time. I'm over it, and mostly I just wish there was a singular quest (a la Eye of the North) that launched and encompassed progress in its entirety.