ToPk, FoW, DoA update

Tomb of the Primeval Kings

Fingers of Chaos Update (Hinder all-out Perma group Speed Clearing & solo farming effectiveness)

Stance. (monster only)Initial effect: remove one paragon shout from each foe within earshot. For 5 seconds, you are immune to assassins’ critical hits, you cannot be interrupted by mesmer spells, you have 50% chance to block dervish attacks, and your attacks: cannot miss rangers; remove enchantments from monks; cause conditions on warriors; interrupt elementalists; lose a hex when attacking necromancers; and steal health from binding rituals.

Honor: Bronze Statue of the three "The Darknesses" unlocked for the Hall of Monuments to dedicate upon completion of ToPk.

Commander Kuro (Collector):
Exchanges 25 Copper Zaishen Coins for each Essence of Dwayna's Light. (Drops from chest)

Chest of Chaos
Timer set to count down from 2:30 before zoning all players in the instance.
(Remove all green drops from The Darknesses and have them drop from the Chest of Chaos instead)
NM: 1 Unique Rare or an Inscribable Rare including a chance of the following skins: (Ghostly Staff/Eternal Bow/Eternal Shield/ Storm Bow/Fellblade)
1 of the following: (Onyx Gemstone/Diamond)
Chaos Summoning Stone (Grasp of Insanity)
Phantom Key
Essence of Dwayna's Light

HM: 1 Unique Rare or an Inscribable Rare including a chance of the following skins: (Ghostly Staff/Eternal Bow/Eternal Shield/ Storm Bow/Fellblade)
1 of the following: (Onyx Gemstone/Diamond)
+ 1 of the following: (Ruby/Sapphire/Obsidian Shard/Glob of Ectoplasm) – 25% chance of receiving target rare material.
Chaos Summoning Stone (Grasp of Insanity)
Lockpick
Essence of Dwayna's Light x2

Grasp of Insanity (ally) (nerf movement speed to player’s base speed)
“Fear Me!”
“To the Limit!”
Disrupting Chop
Eviscerate (Elite)
Fingers of Chaos (monster skill)

Fissure of Woe
Additional Chest of Woe drop in NM and HM: Obsidian Summoning Stone (Abyssal)
Abyssal (ally)
Berserker Stance
Crushing Blow
Earth Shaker (Elite)
Stun on Critical Hit (monster skill)

Domain of Anguish
Additional Citadel Chest drop in NM and HM: Diamond Summoning Stone (Diamond Djinn)
Diamond Djinn (ally)
Angelic Bond (Elite)
Anthem of Flame
Leaders Comfort
Merciless Spear
Spear of Lightning

This is an idea i had for balancing and reinvigorating the ToPk because ever since the A/ME wastrel's ledge farm was countered by lvl 1 Dryder/Rider nerf the place has been empty. Currently the A/D perma critical sycthe build can effectively clear level 1 in 3 minutes flat +- 5 seconds generally with one full mob ball. In hardmode it can be done in 4 minutes.

On level two, the first small terror/banished group and the patrol coming from the main chamber can be aggroed without having to deal with the grasps of insanity in the middle and can be balled together on the left corner where you spawn at the beginning of the level. The group can be melee'd and degenerated down before hitting the 3 minute mark. The group size is always 4 dryders and 4-6 riders with both groups combined. Ecto farming wasn't killed for non botters, only slowed a bit.

My Build set up: Attributes w/ runes - 15 shadow, 13 crit strikes, 9 sycthe mastery, 3 deadly arts

Wep: Deldrimor Shear(zealous sycthe of enchanting)

Skills:
Unseen Fury
Deadly Paradox
Shadow Form
Shroud of Distress
Way of the Master
Critical Agility
Critical Defenses
Radiation Field

I think those kinds of additions for the monster skill FoC would be enough to make even the a/d crit build difficult to maintain energy or enough crits to maintain enchant buffs due to blocking and crit immunity.

I listed out the builds that each of the normal pve enemies of the summoning stones to save time checking on gww. None of the builds seemed too broken for pve and all were still inferior to the banished dreamrider ghastly summoning stone as far as an efficient dps/self sustaining summon is concerned.

Considering that the ToPk is still easier the DoA and the core gw dungeons, to avoid making it a broken place for sc'ing for ectos, allow for a wider range of raremats so that you won't be able to out speed clear FoW or UW for shards or ectos.

I thought it would sweeten the deal to be able to get some inscribable golds with cool skins that are usually oldschool and most of the time you have to get lucky from a locked chest to acquire.

Having a repeatable quest would give the ToPk a little bit more purpose and considering that the Zaishen Order are stationed at the ToPk, it only seems fitting that you can earn Copper Zaishen Coins for aiding them in their struggle to maintain the Chaos Rift. This would highly motivate players to come to this dead area because they can now farm for Copper Coins whenever they want.

With a guaranteed gold drop, rare material, and summoning stone from the Chest of Chaos, a HoM statue to dedicate, and some balance brought in through a monster buff, the ToPk may be worth completing on a regular basis.
This is my first post so its kind of sloppy. Sorry o.0 ~Cerealkiller I

At this point anything that'll hinder SF helps. Most of the elite areas are basically blocked off for most players unless they're really adapt with heroes. Speed clear and balanced times differ far too greatly.

Hindering shadowform won't stop speedclears, its too easy to adapt to obby flesh tactics

Fingers of Chaos is sort of meant to make the current most effective tank for topk (a/d) harder by making crits fail and block dervish attacks. It doesn't really need to do much to shadow form because nobody other than an a/d, d/a, or a/me can really tank for an extended period of time. The tough part about grasp mobbing is massive energy removal, high damage that requires many assassin enchants to reduce, and worst of all is disrupting chop which still manages to sneak passed 90% to miss and 75% chance to be blocked. o.o

If you run obby flesh that would count you as an ele which at the moment any enemy using fingers of chaos will already interrupt you on hit. You might be able to pull it off with a bonder but you would have to role mesmer as well to use that mantra of resolve and some really high energy storage to tank even half decent in normal mode let alone hardmode. At double attack rate those grasps build adrenaline so fast that they'll spam "Fear Me!" and make your life miserable.

An assassin could still of course tank in the topk with at least a balthazar's aura bond, but the method to sc'ing would be much different than it was back when shadow form essentially let you dodge every attack. Level two and three pretty much have two split paths that someone would have to come up with a way to quickly clear both at the same time. It could probably be done best with two bonders but on level two the entire team would have to work together in the middle chamber before working on the splits.

The A/D build i posted really is only effective in normal mode for farming. In hardmode, Terrorwebs and Dreamriders have +6 health regeneration and balling them up is much more difficult. Plus, Shadow Form nerfs caps your sycthe attacks at 25. The reason level 1 takes an additional minute to kill in hardmode isn't really because the grasps have more health, its because their programming tells them not to all mob at once for some reason which makes it take longer to degen them all in one sitting. So these pesky guys make it difficult to mob and spike cleanly. I couldn't imagine a perfect, consistent speedclear for topk even now.

Obviously there will be a speed clear in some sort of form. Just slow hopefully enough for other players can make groups that aren't speed clears. Also I'm sure other spell immunity would be hit if there were nerfs. Your smile icons suggests you seem to think having nearly dead elite areas is a good thing.

Well i guess he has a point; there will probably be an e/mo bonder and a perma tank in the picture most likely, but the heal and spike party composition aught to be pretty flexible. Grasps just don't ball up nicely for strictly aoe spike and there will need to be some versatility in the builds used to handle stray enemies that don't want to be balled up.

i dont see any points being made here

Don't worry about it, you were both right; someone is going to make a speedclear obviously, however the composition will probably be pretty loose or flexible.

Has anyone else got any ideas on ways to bring more balance out of topk?

i couldnt make it cuz of alot of overaggro
and i dont think making the game harder would do much good now, mostly newbies play GW more, and veterans leave, so at one point, all those nerfs in pve will get alot of people stuck one day

and the ones using pvx (seen it alot) will get sick of the game, as they dont make own builds anyways, and do the same alot

this might be an old discussion, but i've seen the truth alot now

but i think anet has seen the light before their last few updates already, so doubt any harder making changes will come, unless its HM only, that wont hurt that many people

(i mean HM is HARD Mode, so dont make NM a HM, and HM a HM2)

i dont like people all being forced into a harder game only cuz several have done everything and cant even make own challenges (i even made a topic with such ideas for people) (plus most people refuse to help others.... i said "MOST", not "ALL")

so i'd keep it like it is, or at least make it a lil easier on the 4th level in NM, as i cant even lure, cuz they dont die so easily and when a few died, we get alot of patrols joining

plz anet, dont touch NM, as its supposed to be NORMAL, not HARD, thats why we have HM

The changes i added to the Fingers of Chaos skill were only crit immunity, block chance from dervish attacks, paragon shout removal, lifesteal against binding rituals, and interrupt immunity from mesmer spells.

Keep in mind this stance only lasts a mere 5 seconds and is only powerful when fighting against incredibly large mobs.

The problem with ToPk is that it lacks any commendable rewards. If you buff the rewards and leave the enemies as they are, it will be speed cleared very easily by full on perma teams.

I'm not trying to buff damage or group sizes; only adding some more utility to a monster skill that currently only applies to 5 out of 10 classes which appears quite half finished.

This is an elite area but it's hardly treated like one.

so what if they sc stuff? they can sc UW, one of the hardest areas in GW, they say (i'm bad at it by default)

but i dont want topk to get harder if many already cant get the help these days..... not counting paid runs, i'm talking about getting help, not paying runs

i have seen many guilds where they dont even bother to help, unless they want to do it themselves (mostly for endgame stuff like chests), even if someone needs help on istan (which i helped, and got angry about, that noone helped)

i rather have everything to be soloable for example, than everything hard enough to let people ignore people who need help with easier stuff, disgusting part of the GW community, bah

I agree that everything should be soloable with heroes as well, but if topk were made any easier i dont think any of the additions to the rewards i listed in my first post would be on scale with the decreased difficulty.

You have to understand Ayuhmii Shanbwa wants everything easy and does not see any value in a challenge.

i never said it has to be easier, but if anet would listen to all the "make everything harder, cuz i completed it now" people will leave and way less people would buy the game, cuz it only gets harder, even for new players

read Cuilan, read

you know what, since people here (NOT ALL PEOPLE) only take posts like mine in their own different way (me saying the game shouldnt get harder only cuz a group of people have done everything, but they take it as "the game should get easier cuz of me") its no use to try to explain

guess why guru has such bad name(still, yes)..... cuz many people some time ago were like that, only taking everything in another way, cuz they want the game to get harder each time they have done it

its not from me that guru is an elitist site, many people said that before, so i'm just saying its like that to some people

anyway, i explain once more (hope this is enough)

dont make the game harder for EVERYONE only cuz A FEW have done everything
make your own guildwars and do it that way, see how many people would like or leave it
GW is online, so that people can teamup when needed, and have fun alone with heroes if they cant find anyone (which happens alot now)

also, guess why HM was made..... FOR A CHALLENGE TO THOSE WHO THINK NM IS TOO EASY
i hope you can read it

if anet would listen to stuff like this, NM would become the current HM, and HM would be extreme mode, which leaves out the newer people, and those who cant do much (especially with the few people who would help people for free..... FOR FUN, and TO BE NICE)

we dont want NM to become HM right? cuz then there wont be a NORMAL mode to play in anymore

also: you can make challenges
some people get cartographer on HM, just for the challenge, or dont use maxed stuff, or upgrades in any way (runes, insignia's, and weapon mods)
but some people still need anet to make the game harder for them, so that they have their challenge, and others are forced to do the same challenge, whether they like it or not

*in case you didnt notice, i repeated the fact that i think we shouldnt ALL get a harder game, only cuz SOME want it, just to show you that it'd be a bad thing to the freedom we have now (choosing between NM and HM)*

heck, why dont you add "HM" to the title? that way in HM it'd be more challenging, while people who still do NM, can have their own.... or just have an easy time

ps. i forgot to note that some people who got HM as their challenge, also are greedy enough to say "we also want a bigger reward fior what we do in HM"

anyway, this is the last i'll say in this topic, just dont expect anet to be that stupid, to make people angry by "removing" the purpose of NormalMode

Hey man calm down a bit i get what you are saying. Underworld is a perfect example of how anet scaled up the difficulty to compensate for speedclear comps making it extremely difficult.

Even my approach to balancing the ToPk was essentially to nerf an 8 man perma speed clear by buffing fingers of chaos. I know you don't believe in using pvx hero builds but if your current don't seem to be doing the trick, and you want to complete the topk, you aught to use a stronger team comp even if it isn't original.

My ideas for the rewards for completing topk are pretty generous by comparison to what it currently has in store and if nothing is done about the invulnerable capabilities of the Assassin/Dervish, it will be exploited and nobody will be allowed to come other than permas which leads us back to square one. (specific meta speedclear team comps)

like it happens anyway, pugs will decide who they take and who not(which is the meta teams only), if thats what you mean

also, i used sabway before, but couldnt even do NM eotn stuff, then discord was used by me, and even that didnt do as much as my own current heroes do now (did more than sabway for me, and i didnt even use assassin's promise)
heck, even alot of wanteds (from wik) can be done with my heroes on HM

if discord would run me through anything like people say it would, i'd be done with alot of stuff now..... guess why i made my own heroes

*thought i'd say this to make clear why i only use own heroes*
and of course when you nerf something (or anet would) people would find another meta, and then newbies and other people would be forced even more to use meta's, only cuz people want perfection, even when someone asks for help......

If you are worried about the difficulty getting harder let me ask this. Does your current team comp use an sos, panic mesmer, shout heavy paragon, or any melee at all? Because those are the only extra utility buffs i placed on the fingers of chaos.

Really it makes some of the most cliche builds much less effective like Imbagon, SoS, Panic mes, VoS derv, normal assassins will only notice less dps output; perma sins (the ones that need to be hindered most) will not be able to solo and will require a bonder to sustain.

I've done hardmode with my personal heroes (not sabway) at topk without a perma and it's really a matter of how many enemies you're trying to fight at once. Most group sizes are only 3-6. (more if you don't watch for popups) If you use a longbow and pull to a safer area, you should be able to beat the topk; it'll just take a while.

my problem was that i did use a longbow, but when i walked back too much, they walked back to their patrols, and when i lured them a little less far, i got overaggro (was on NM)

my thing is: people are enjoying GW as it is, without any good or bad updates
why kill their builds, cuz are there actually people doing topk? i never see anyone in the guilds i've been in lately.... and those were alot

but then why kill their kind of fun? if we have barely anyone doing tombs now, how bad will it be after your idea?

note: i know CAP and when i was in their allies, i never saw topk either, not in the whole allies and not in any allies i've been in
reason i joined many other guilds and allies is cuz they either died, or ent faction farm and urgoz based.... and sc-only
nearly noone helped others even with easier stuff which are done in 30 minutes (in total)

i mentioned CAP cuz you are in it now (says your profile, so took it as example of 1 of the many guilds i have seen who didnt do stuff other than faction based or a very few sc's (many sc's, but a very few different ones)

also, now i notice, why change a skill which isnt just in topk, but also alot in elona?

anyway, what i mean is: barely anyone does nice NORMAL stuff with others, just sc's and faction stuff, so why nerf an area people dont even do much anymore? (maybe sometimes you see guilds doing it as guildevent, but thats the only activity i see which does more than that.....)

also, as not many do those areas anymore, plz dont nerf them for meta's, in case i want some help with it.... or else i'll NEVER find anyone to help me through
thats for all 3 afreas you mentioned

many people (many as in "most people who still play GW") only use meta's, so my best chance of getting help with those areas is meta people in GW these days....

You're right nobody in CAP or our ally, or anyone for that matter bothers to do ToPk because the drops are terrible. The ecto drop rate appears to be far lower there than at UW so unless you are good at perma farming, you won't even reap that benefit. It is an elite area with difficulty outweighing the reward.

My idea for getting people back into the ToPk is simply adding a quest and a chest both providing a generous reward. This will motivate players whom can't UW or FoW to turn their attention to this dungeon because there is a chance for high end rarematerials and copper zaishen coins.

But, if only the reward at the end of the dungeon is the only thing that is changed, people are free to exploit the dungeon. One perma sin can solo the entire ToPk in hardmode. (Takes forever but it can be done)

The only enemies that use fingers of chaos are Infectious Nightmare, Grasp of Insanity, Lesser Grasp, Scythe of Chaos, Torment Claw, Wrathful Storm, The Darkness, The Darkness (boss), The Fury, and The Black Beast of Arrgh.

The skill buff really isn't that considerable and is only a 5 second utility enhancement. Nothing will have more health and nothing will deal more damage. It's not going to break any of the enemies that use it in NF either.
I also suggested a (Diamond Djinn) summoning stone from the citadel chest which is plenty enough compensation for the slightly increased inconvenience of dealing with a few extra percs added to a stance that only temporarily increases the versatility of the user.

It's not going to kill DoAsc, and it has absolutely no impact on FoWsc.
There is no meta for ToPk. That's how dead it is. I just know what people would use if they did start going there often. You will have players showing up with heroes to do the dungeon for quite a while until somebody figures out a speedclear meta for it, and that meta probably won't be nearly as strict as it is for other sc's.