Factions.. A lot harder?

I've been henching due to the fact I'm rather far ahead of my guild and most of the players, But I've noticed.. That I'm make tactical moves more often then not, no longer am I just charging through the ranks. But now I'm having to chip away at large mobs, avoid conflict when ever possible, etc etc.

The AI seems greatly improved, but then again the size of mobs seems to have doubled... What do you guys think?

I've done all Marketplace-Center quests now, and up to 2nd mainland mission.. I reeeaally hate Jade Brotherhood, especially at the docks just west from Marketplace. Lots of patrols with overlapping routes etc, need to stalk out a patrol one by one with careful pulls and hope you aren't on the way of another patrol..

Would be much easier if henchies had a 'halt' button and the stupid healer wouldn't run all the way out to rez a stupid assassin henchy..

Assassin henchies seem to suck a lot anyways, they use the teleports, usually teleporting to another patrol and pulling it in.. Oh the hate. (yes it's some shadow step skill, haven't bothered to oogle what it is. Just hate when they do it )

It is a lot harder, but i think it makes it more fun, anet has said before most of the content is for higher levels so they wanna get you ready for it.

Is this a suggestion?

Agreed, some mobs overpowered me and my henchies until I brought out my barrage.

uhh, i was able to solo the Jade Brotherhood groups outside of Kaineng last night when I first got into Cantha...I'm hoping it gets harder.

Only did the first quest or so in Kaineng, but I found it to be much easier than most high-level Tyria quests so far. Running a mixed fighting/running build (I was running a low-level around before going to Cantha, didn't bother changing it) on a W/Mo, using henchies, haven't had any problems just bashing through the Jade Brotherhood. *shrug*

The quests aren't too difficult, but the missions are harder, primarily because the henchmen skill sets are even worse than Prophecies and also because the monsters are overall (in the missions I've played so far, anyway) somewhat weaker but greater in number which the henchmen AI has more trouble with.

It doesn't help when the henchies get stuck on a group of people standing around. Even more fun when you die and ONE hench is stuck and you have to remap.

I wouldn't call that solo, as there are 6 or so NPCs with you there.

But yeah I did that part with a level 13 monk and no one else in my party.

This is probably one of my biggest gripes about Factions so far. Henchies were getting stuck on the random NPCs every time I went anywhere and I'd have to constantly keep an eye out to make sure they were all with me. Such a pain to deal with.

Jade Brotherhood make the buff mobs in Tyria look like pansies.

so? how many rips on Brother Tosai quest and his lil curse?

Wait until you guys get to Unwaking Waters... and then the Raisu Palace. I barely managed to Unwaking Waters with henchmen - the only thing that sucked was that I lagged out so I didn't get any credit for doing it (I still got to Harvest Temple though)

Raisu Palace is just insane though. Tons of enemies...

I think they could ease up a little bit

My opinion is, although henchmen are greatly improved, Factions is way to overpowerd if your using a henchmen group. Take the aflicted in the undercity for example. It is easly 3x as difficult as Hell's Precipice. The last three times I cleared undercity, I ended up with 60% dp every time - something that happened no more than 15 or so times through my entire Prophecies play (been playing Prophecies sence beta).
My biggest problem with it is that there is an extreamly large number of pop-ups. Even worse, they dont come up untill after innitate combat with the group that was alraedy there.
Example: A group of 6 aflicted is easy, however, by the time you kill the first two, another ten have come out to join the fight. Pulling is nearly imposable with henchmen, because as soon as you attack anything (bow pulling), they all charge in. As soon as you get attacked by anything (agrobubble pulling), the henchmen usualy, once again, charge in. I am also having the problem that now the henchmen will not break combat, even if you run away. Once they start fighting, they stay there untill they win or die.

The difficulty level of this area needs to be knocked down a notch, and if any other areas are like this that I have not seen yet, they need to be decreased as well.

On a side note, ArenaNet should realy implement the /bug command again - there is currently a shitlode of them, and due to horrible past experiance, I will NOT submit a bug report through there current method.

I agree that the current bug system is a pain, I found a few bugs myself.

but not an easy simple in-game way of submitting a bugged quest, and there were quite a few...

Easier way to submit bugs might flood them with a lot of non-bugs, but it might also help to get the real ones

I guess I was expecting more from factions, the story line is short, at least better than the first one, I still dont know if we destroyed all the chars or not...

Yeah, Factions does seem significantly harder.

I cant say I dislike it, although I cant say I completely like it either; it can get frustrating.

Everytime an enemy rit 2-hit kills me, I burn. 2 fscking hits? That's garbage. Especially since [Healer Henchmen] must be Canthan for [Lazy Piece of ----].

In responce to my previous post, I have completed the game and have come to like the difficulty increase. It effectivly keeps anyone who qualifies for the term "noob" from reaching end-game missions. This means that pugs are acualy valid now. It also means that judging people by the armor they are wering is now acualy valid, as you do not gain access to 15k canthan armor untill you beat the game. Although the entire game can be done with henchmen, it is exceedingly difficult to do so, and end-game pugs that I have been in are acualy full of skilled players. Further, I doubt cookie-cutter builds will work for most of these missions, although having a minion master does make them much easier.

My only complaint now is the last mission - it is by far the shortest and easiest mission on the mainland. I also like the idea of the end-game greens as rewards, but do not like the fact that other than being un-farm-able and acualy quite rare, they remain the same as all other greens. I already posted on this once, and what I thought would be an improvment - people seemed to misunderstand how those greens worked altogether and the post died down rather quick. I will likely be reposting it soon, after updating it to try and clear up any misunderstanding about the green items and how you get them.