Argh! This game is hard!

Warning ahead of time, this will be an extremely angst ridden post due to having spent a few days (literal) trying to figure out how to prevent the following issues.


I have a Rit who has a full part of heros. I am in EotN and trying to track down the bear, but every time we head out from an outpost and I attempt to attack a group of ANYTHING I am singled out and insta-killed and then my group also dies.
I played wow where aggro was controlled in a superior way compared to this game. In this game it feels like luck if I ever get out of a fight without half my heros and/or myself dying.

So what am I to do? I have tried flagging my group in place and then using a bow to hit an enemy and then run behind said group, I still get wasted the moment I try to help by casting a spell at any point in the fight after that. I have tried sending MOX in ahead to attract the mobs attention and then have the group move in, but nope, same thing as soon as I try to help at all I am pick blasted to death. Friggen aggro rules seem to be made by third graders.

How does combat work exactly? I have read the wiki, I have read tons of posts but nothing works. Hell spamming the ctrl+space doesn't even work right, if a hero has already started attacking something other than what I am signaling to attack they rarely ever change who they are attacking until what they are attacking is dead first... exasperating.

So how do you all do it, because I am only a few more attempts away at this point from trashing this game and personally labeling it the worst piece of shit ever! Dying should not be this easy, why is this game so unintuitive...

The heros are; Koss, Dunkoro, Olias, Ogden Stonehealer, Vekk, Gwen, and MOX. Koss is 17, Dunkoro is 18, the rest are 20.

First, stop being the obvious target and upgrade your armor.

GW aggro is simply different. You can't manipulate it quite into forcing enemies into attacking your well protected heroes and leaving you alone - as soon as you enter the combat by attacking or supporting allies, you become an eligible target, AI will target the weaker party members first, considering armor and HP.

So, you'll have to use use some protective measures. Boost your armor, get Protective spirit on yourself and similar.

There are ways to get the enemies to attack only one character, but that's only worth it in terms of setting up a tank and then spiking the grouped up foes. Stuff for coordinated groups, not regular play.

My First question to you would be what level armor are you wearing? is it max armor? what level are you? what builds do you and your heroes have? Giving us your voice of fustration doesn't solve the problem we need to know what you have as far as skills, armor, heroes, their skills...etc....in order to help

We've all been where you are Craven. It seems that you probably need to upgrade your armor first. Second, builds don't matter much in NM, much less missions. Only a few times is there an exception to this. As long as your heroes have something related to their profession, and proper attributes respective to their skills, you won't have trouble. It's frustrating just starting out, everyone here knows that. Just keep at it, ask people in towns, some may very well assist you. However, in order to find the exact help you are probably wanting, like the two above me said, we need more information.

This. As a caster, your max base armor rating is 60. Dervishes, Assassins and Rangers get 70. Warriors and Paragons get 80.

So things will run past MOX and Koss to target the squishies most of the time.

You need to make sure you have max armor (available in Kaineng Center) and you should consider putting appropriate runes and insignias on it. The choice is yours between HP-boosters or armor-boosters. Either will help you become less of a target, if you have more armor and hitpoints than your heroes.

Additionally, if you're healing your party, I'm pretty sure the AI will try to prioritize you as a target.

Lastly, AoE foes love clumps. When you run to the back line of your group, make sure you're away from them a little bit so you don't get hit by an area bomb.

As said, Protective Spirit is a valuable skill to have on one of your heroes. As you get more familiar with the game, you can recognize the bigger threats and micro pre-protting yourself before you engage. (You are outfitting your heroes with skills other than their defaults, right? Apologies for stating the obvious, but a lot of new players miss this important step.)

I am an old EQ player and personally don't mind the lack of needing a taunting tank. Besides what people have already suggested to you (get the best rating armor and increase your health with runes), I see that you are running with Olias; a Necromancer. I would suggest that if he is not already a minion master to make him into one as minions tend to be a great body block and agro distractor.

Additionally, Guild Wars has the best wiki I have ever seen for an MMO, which is located here. It may be of some help.

Good luck.

If you are getting instagibbed, my guess is that your armor is not a maxed set (which you should have by the time you become level 20).

Heroes will attack whatever you "call" (by holding CTRL+action) and will focus only on that target.


EDIT: Forgot to ask how much HP do you have? As a possible cause, I hope you are not equipped with a lot of Superior or Major runes.

I play a rit so I know where you are coming from. There are a few things you can do to help yourself survive.

1. Upgrade your armor with the best vigor rune you can afford. Then upgrade your armor insignias with mystic or stalwart, as they both increase armor and are affordable. Try to not have more than one superior skill rune on you. Keep your health in the 450 and up range.

2. When you get ready to attack do a little prep work. Target the enemy, but don't move in yet, lock Koss and MOX on it by using the target icon their hero bar.

3. Try to avoid being a target by not getting to close to the enemy so that they leave koss and start attacking you, try to stay as far back as you can and still cast spells.

4. When you attack a new target hold the ctrl button as you do it, that will cause the hero AI to select it as a priority.

@ OP:

As others have mentioned, you may want to check to make sure you have max and runed armor for your toon.

A few other questions:

- What skills are you using? Post your skillbar and ppl can help you out there. You'll get skills following the storyline in Factions, but they can be rather mixed. It's best to not try to spread your attribute points too thin until you get the hang of the game. General rule of thumb: your attribute points should ideally be spread amongst no more than 2-3 attributes. And one of those should be Spawning Power, which is a rit's primary attribute.

- Does your toon have a max damage weapon? Or at least one better suited to the level they're at? And does it complement their skillbar?

- What skills are your heroes using? They come with a partial default skill bar, but it's up to you to pick and choose which skills they use to make them more effective. Same rules for spreading attribute points applies to heroes.

- Heroes come with default weapons and armor. The armor scales as their level goes up, the weapons don't for the most part. Are your NF heroes still using their "noob" weapons? Are your heroes runed? Heroes are part of your team and should be given better gear as it becomes available.

- You may also want to check the "behavior" settings for all your heroes. Wiki article here explains the mechanics. Some come by default set to "attack anything that moves". Personally, I also set my healers to "Avoid Combat". If your healers are fighting...they're not healing or protecting the party.

- Additionally, have you done the two quests on the starter island to get your character their last 30 attribute points? This will give you a full 200 points to spread out and helps a lot in powering your skillbar.

In addition to what everyone has said here, I'd advise against superior runes (other than vigor), since they're just not needed in PVE for general usage builds. Another tip is to always keep your maximum health slightly higher than your heroes.

It's not a bad idea to go back to Nightfall and complete it now you have the EoTN heroes, or at least enough to make a decent team build more workable. Also make sure you have some level of (or epic levels of, your choice) mitigation in your build.

For instance, Vekk as a Sandstorm Earth warder, Ogden as a WoH Hybrid prot. Minion masters and spirit spammers are also good options. Even as a Rit, and even if you're spamming spirits yourself, a second spammer with an alternate bar is a huge boon. If you haven't got a rit hero to use, you can use a ranger hero, since Rit spirits are affected by Expertise.

Also, if you're really new, your heroes are going to probably be gimped to hell by the skills you have unlocked. So, you can either buy the PVP skill unlock packs, or be very frugal with which skills you choose to unlock.

well a lot of things seem to be covered by others here.One thing is eye of the north the expansion was made even tho you get a buff if under 20 was ment to be for chars that have completed respective campaigns.

Iwould disagree on some things you have said wow is gear orientated not skill orientated like gw1

You have to think more in this game as the party has to have synergy with one another.
you should have a look at pvx for an idea of team builds get max armour and rune them I do think you feel you can just wear what you want thats the reason you bite the dust as Rit in itself is strong so head back over and get some skills for you and your heros.

Make a pvp char do the challange missions for faction to buy skills for heros then you can delete it when done if so desired
yes I know everyones playstyle is different but think you are jumping to far ahead of yourself without learning the game as you go. you are hoping for the best as you enter an area to be honest you should read up in the campfire section to prepare for a better gameplay

Whew ok I have cooled down (played mindless hack and smash in Dungeon Defenders, worked wonders) and start again.

Well somehow I did overlook the armor thing... I was focused on what to do in the fight, not before it.
Most guides I have been reading tell me to do EotN first, then NF>factions>Proph. But none of these guides mentioned more than a footnote about armor, they just said "go do teh quests!".

I'll still say this game is seriously not intuitive.
I'll also say thank you to all who replied and are giving me some insight.
I am a big "Point A" to "Point B" person.
So when a game doesn't tell me what I need to do to stop failing, I am at a loss. A game should not need me to read the entire wiki just to figure out what to do right?

I mean I will read the wiki, and have a bit, but I have not found the section (if there is one) that lays out the step by step progression to learning how to play this game. And again the game should seriously do this but so far it feels more like the game gives me some options as to what I do next but then doesn't explain them (like which armor set to get, there are apparently many? and the only difference is a name and the look but they are the same grade?"


So to describe myself, Silly noob is frustrated.

Upgrading armor isnt something you need to read.. it's something you need to think of yourself it's basic knowledge in these kind of games.
nonetheless, good luck on your adventure.

Another thing to do is join a helpful guild. Having real people able to answer questions and help you in real time will eliminate much of your frustration.

Any guide that says that is seriously whacked. The foes in EotN are generally tougher than those in any of the campaigns, with a more-balanced mix of professions in most groups, using a mix of skills from all the campaigns. An experienced GW player trying to rush a new character through the game might go to EotN to level, but this is not advisable for someone completely new to Guild Wars who does not yet have many skills unlocked and has little experience with the core mechanics and strategies involved. Jumping directly into one of the harder parts of the game is not a recipe for success.

I would suggest that you return to either Factions or Nightfall and play through at least one campaign before tackling EotN. EotN is just not a newbie-friendly learning environment, and was not meant to be, which is why you can't create a character there.

Yeah, the guides you're reading are probably suggesting that order because it's the most efficient method for completing the games.... but it's intended to be used primarily for your subsequent characters, not your first playthrough.

Personally, I'd say getting a few EoTN heroes is a sensible step, but the thing to remember is that EoTN is, by far, the hardest content in the "standard" game (ie. not GW : Beyond content), and EoTN itself is intended as end game content so the learning curve is basically non-existent.

And just to clarify about the armor (because the wiki is pretty piss poor when it comes to armor, both the official wiki and guildwiki), once you've got maximum armor (60AL for a Rit) the differences between the sets are entirely cosmetic. Some sets cost a lot more than others because they're the prestige armor art, but they're identical to the first max armor you get in terms of functionality.

Similarly, you might find some weapons are ridiculously expensive.... this is entirely to do with their look (and the rarity of the skin), and nothing at all to do with functionality (for the most part anyway).

Might help you to go back to either factions or nightfall I agree with BrettM on that. For most part I didn't use wiki on my very first playthrough, I used it only when I was in doubt and could usually find what I needed. Ofc. I have been stuck at places too and been frustrated... isn't that what happens in these kinda games? Prophesies, factions and nightfall is where the learning curve is, in eotn you are expected to already have learned most there is to know.

I hope you'll go back to one of the campaigns, get the slightly slower learning curve and perhaps find this game as enjoyable as others here do
Finding a good guild can be helpful too, (if you haven't already) not all guilds are newb friendly, but others are.

BrettM is correct, the best one to start with (my opinion feel free to disagree) is NF cause its very learner friendly and you get the Heroes which are of course awesome. But if you do an actual story mode, it DOES remind you to do things like Armor and Skills. Also joining a guild is very beneficial, specifically open guilds like raven (yes thats an endorsement sue me). Good Luck and I hope you continue to play with us.

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LOL Dew and I posted basically the same message without meaning to, goes to show you it was good advice than.

EotN is an expansion so it's like reading a second part of a book. You can't understand the basics mechanics of the game/story if u didn't play/read the intro...

If u skip much of the tutorial areas no wonder why you can't figure out how to play.

Walkthrough for campaigns don't mention upgrading your armor.

Tutorial about character development do tough:

Keywords being "minimum" and "starter" here. Off course you should then be able to draw conclusions by yourself, and deduce that you should upgrade your "minimum" armor during the development of your character.

Even before than that, there are a couple of things named "game manual" and "common sense" that might be well worth using.

Just to say.