Too biased?

I can complete nearly every mission with henchmen, besides MAYBE aurora glade. Henchmen are FAR from useless, sometimes being smarter than regular people. They focus fire and always listen to you.

I've never had a problem with the scarabs, and not very many others have.

You should ONLY have level 20 characters. Anything less is just a joke for the group.

This is just really hilarious. You are obviously not infused, meaning you take 100 damage a hit from spectral agony. When infused you will only take 9 damage a hit. And it's not just the boss that can cast it. And you mention being interrupted, but I can't think of anything that interrupts you when defending the fort, save the jade bows which MIGHT have distracting shot. But even then, it isn't really that bad.

If you are constantly failing, try new strategies, not come here and bitch on the forums about how difficult the game is. If this game is too challenging, go try something easier. And to think, many people want the difficulty to increase.

You can't play. If you could, you would be infused.


And once again another problem only YOU seem to have. Sure, I get interrupted every now and then, especially with my elementalist, but there are ways to not get interrupted such as a glyph, or mantra of concentration. Even without these, the monsters don't spam interruptions all that much. Health draining skills are dangerous, but it's part of the game. Deal with it.

That would be a tremendous nerf to farming. There is a limited amount of areas that drop even anything decent as is, and with this change going out to kill anything would essentially become useless.

Just another pointless rant. The mission in Kryta are 30 minutes, 1 hour tops. As long as you have a competant team, it isn't that bad. And about the radar staying solid red, you must be playing a totally different game. It isn't that difficult.

Every mission a dozen times is a tremendous amount of time. Either you've made 12 different characters, (unlikely) or you constantly fail them, which is YOUR fault, considering I almost never have trouble with mission until the later ones.

Ever think about playing a different game? Games are meant for FUN, and it doesn't sound like you're having fun.

Then lets hear some suggestions, and what type of programs you would use to fix the problems. All you have now is bitch bitch bitch, moan, moan, whine. SUGGESTIONS.

It was a change to everyone. And from what you've said, I think you're just making stuff up to hate the game.

It's not as simple as you make it seem to ban a botter. First, you have to have solid evidence that the account is using a bot. This can be very difficult, as bots have some randomness to them, and could just be mistaken for a regular player. If you have some incredible idea to ban the botters, suggest it.

You aren't at the game as you think you are. In addition, all you have right now is a whine, and you provide no suggestions to improve or alter anything.

dargon i guess your right... but regarding monks later in the game- It is true they are tired of being treated like crap later in the game, which is why they go start a warrior or ele. But there definately is a shortage in the ring of fire chain. As for henchies, they are more skilled, key word skilled, than human players mainly because they listen to you and the healer monks have faster reaction time. But they can't adapt and they are only programmed to do waht they are programmed. They arent smart enough to coordinate with other players and AoE is the death of them. I solo'd hells precipace with hench because it is just straight up fighting. But I could not solo ring of fire because the hench would follow me right into the mursaat tower and get their energy drained to 0, then the party died. See what I mean? They are skilled but not smart.

I healed as monk primary ONCE in the fire islands. Only to get my monk through the Undead Lich and finished with the story line. I will not return there except as a part of a guild team skill capping group. I will not heal any more retarded PUGs. I just won't. I will turn my monk into a 105 build first. There are more useless players in the fire islands than I have found anywhere else in the game, including the Desert and Thunderhead. My mesmer finally got through Hell's Precipice by making a group because no one would party with a mes. I took my Mes, 2 Necros, 3 Rangers, 1 Monk and Mhenlo. It wasn't a cake walk, but we did it. With NO tanks and NO nukers. So much for those other folks' "perfectly balanced" parties.

Try overwriting the old rune....then you dont get 2 negative effects

rune traders have been fixed

i have never encountered any large groups that have not been the result of a very bad pull gone wrong (ie. barrage)

there are unbalanced skills....a few

and you do get stuff for exploring, those far out collectors have some nice items...very nice

Alright since the general concensus seems to be stuck-up idiots who don't get the picture, I have been playing for quit a while. Well before I ever came to the forum. Don't tell me I can't play and make dumbass assumptions about what In am or am not. By the time you reach the jungle, you are not infused. My character at Thunderhead IS, as was everybody else on the team. There are mobs that are too tough out there. Just because you have fissure armor and max-damage weapons doesn't mean everybody can beat the guy. When you have done close to fifty runs with humans and henchies and every run gets to this one goddamn mob, and ends there, SOMETHING IS WRONG. It's a little thing we like to call "common-sense".

Normally groups are not larger than 3~4 enemies. Now, stick 500 of these 3~4 groups in a 2ft x 2ft area and explain how to agr JUST one at a time. I am not being sarcastic and wish I had screenshots of the areas as of late. My radar stays almost solid red wherever I go. That's f***ing ridiculous! I mean you can literally tell where you've been because it's the only non-red area on the radar! Hell yesterday I went through an area I had been through a hundred times before. Normally there's three groups of four charr. They doubled it. They also added some hulking stone elementals tot he area immediatly before them. It's f***ing insane how much fighting I did. Normally you get throguh there in about twenty minutes. An hour in we realized we were about halfway there. That's f***ed up. They need to adjust the number of mobs based on human player-count if they want a mob every two feet.

As for collectors, you're trying to tell me there's armor better than Droknar's or Fissure somewhere out by exploring? No offense, but I find that to be BS. Prove me wrong though, it may rekindle some intrest in doing more than just going to become ascended.

On top fo the constant grind in fighting, there's a bug that has been in for quite a while. It's funny in pre-searing when a lv1~3 hits you and you lose 100+ hp. That's just retarded. Same goes for post-searing. I have been hit for over 300hp in a single blow from relativly weak monsters. Seen it happen to others also. No, it isn't lag and it isn't some uber-leet lv100 lying saying he's lv2, it's a bug. It happens, deal with it.

Finally, the thread was about the game's balance. If the rune-trader is fixed, fine. Still, it is wrong to not allow positive effect stacking. You take two superior runes to your armor and you're -150hp, but I can't use two superior vigors to get abck 100hp of that? BS. Henchies are too weak and stupid for most missions after Ascalon. Negatives stack and positives don't. I've seen enemies that drain at over 10hp/sec, yet have seen nothing to counter it aside from remove hex, if somebody has it. The continual addition of monsters is turning everything including exploration into a humongous grind. It is sad when you leave pre-searing at lv5, and when you reach Yak's by walking straight to Yak's, not doing the missions, you're lv16+. I'd say there are too many f***ing monsters. Oh and think that's BS? My brand-new two-day old character with about four hours on him is lv16 at Nolani and getting smacked down because of the insane number of mobs.

A common-sense suggestion would be to let us play the f***ing game. If I put all superior vigor ruens on my stuff, I will be +250hp, but my skills will be average. Now, the guy that puts all axe runes on his armor will be -250hp, but deal insane damage. That balances out perfectly. One of my hits worth 10hp may be one of his worth 20 or 30hp. It all balances out. It is unbalanced when you can continually get negative effects and cannot achieve anythign to counter them. Runes are almost useless at this point. It takes a freaking superior rune of vigor to coutner a measly major rune! Let the players do what they want! It would open up possibilities for some nice builds later in the game. And for the love of God, cut out some of the mobs! I am so sick of grinding to get two feet in the game. As it is, you may only have to go around the corner to get where you're going, but they make the trek insanely long every time, and you twist and wind through all kinds of BS. Now cut down on some of the mobs.

I don't quite know what to make out of all this..........it is kinda on the fringe of being believeable, but I don't know. The only reason I say on the fringe is a couple of my guildmates were running around the Bettlerun area, and fighting small groups of the area mobs. After awhile the radar turned red, and very large groups began to appear, and never stopped. By the time they died, they said they could not come close to counting how many they were being attacked by. That was one time, and one place that something similar to what you are claiming is happening to you on a regular basis. Screenshots of some of this would certainly help.

There are no other skills that can do as much damage as you are suggesting, besides spectral agony when you are not infused. If you can't beat it with people, use henchmen. They are MUCH more reliable.

I don't see how you can make it through the mission so easily but be stopped at the boss every time. Blatant lying or lack of competance.

You know you're lying, as does everyone else. So you can honestly say you've seen 1500-2000 enemies in a 2 foot by 2 foot area? The most scarabs I've probably seen at once is 20 or so, which is a challenge yes, but not impossible.

Funny how these kinds of problems are only happening to you.

I doubt "they" doubled it. You probably just don't remember it well, or you're lying again.

He was reffering to someone who was complaining about difficulty to get weapons and such.

NEVER seen it. And I doubt ANYONE ELSE has either.

Imagine an air elementalist, or a group of air elementalists with 28 attribute points into air. The damage done would be absurd. Yes, their health would be low, but it wouldn't matter because you would be doing such insane damage it wouldn't matter. To answer your question, balance is what is stopping it. I don't see what the problem with negative stacking of runes is. Just don't put 2 runes of the same type on.

Unfortunately, your maximum degeneration is 10 HP a second.

Healing breeze, or in fact, ANY spell that heals will counter the degeneration.

The last recent additions of monster I can remember were some hydras in the desert, and a change of monsters in Riverside.

That's funny, because with my ranger I did ALL the quests in ascalon, except for maybe a couple that I missed, as well as all the missions and was only level 12 when I reached Yak's Bend. Funny how the problems are still only happening for you.

Blatant lie.

Going by your logic, it would be fine to have a character that can deal 1000 damage but only have 1 HP, and another that does 1 damage, but has 1000 HP. Technically, it is fair, but who wants to play a game where the first person to hit another wins?

How so? Just don't put more than one rune of an attribute on yourself. If you're referring to the low HP monk build, all you need to counter it is enchantment removal.

Disagree.

Balance my friend. It is a trade-off, more attributes for less health. And despite the health loss, many people still use runes.

EDIT:

Someone had the quest "Undead Hordes" active, which would cause monsters to spawn and head up to beetletun.

You mean anyone with half a brain who can see through your lies is a stuck-up idiot? Then I am proud to be a stuck-up idiot!

Really, Baratus, you are just flat out lieing now. I have gone through the entire game many many times (with mostly just henchmen) including just recently and I have not run into the problems you have listed. Unless Anet made a special version of the game just for you, you are wrong.

Dont forget that the placement of mobs is random. The area where moss scarabs appears is random too. Sometimes they will be spaced perfectly for you, sometimes they might be crammed together. A good balanced group can send a warrior in there with some buffs and nuke the group to death and its over. But I find that henchmen sort of fail me in these circumstances since I am a warrior they will follow me in a little too close.

Comparing Guild Wars to Morrowind? that's just laughable. Nice one. Way to mute your posts credability.

No and yes. Placement of mobs in GW is not random, but has several variations. Go through the same area many times and you'll see the pattern. In missions the placement of mobs has even fewer variations than area outside towns/outposts. But you are right about the henchmen. It is easier to play with henches with certain classes and harder with others. Usually henches work well with any support class, and best with a monk secondary who can also resurrect them. Warrior player will find it harder to play with henches.

i like henchies cuz i get everything that drops

No you don't. Henches get their split of loot too. You just don't see the drop if the roll assigned it to the hench.

huh never knew that seeing as how i get 1 drop from almost every monster

LUCKY! But on topic: i think you should quit. Obviously this isnt much fun for you anymore. You dont need to come ehre and bring us down just because you no longer have FUN PLAYING a GAME. There is really no solution to youre problems, as in MOST cases, 1 person cant make all the difference.

I seriously have to agree with this point. There are some PvE areas with literal armies of foes in them, and that is just lazy, unispired, unfun, unorigional and just plain bad game design.

I mean, places like FoW and UW somehow manage to be challenging without 50 enemies all bunched together every 10 feet, why couldn't that same design theory be applied to these areas with massive armies of bad guys?!?

If there's one thing that makes me want to delete this game, it's this one issue. Then again, once i finish unlocking all the skills, I will *never* pve again, so screw it I guess.

[Go to Ice Caves of Sorrow, get a party full of henchies, leave the town through the portal, and attack the ice imps that were recently placed there. They will cast maelstrom on your casters and your whole party will be dead in 10 seconds without even killing one imp.]

Wrong I went through that mission with only henchies, tore those imps up and the mursaat as well. Sure SOME of the henchies died, but, I didn't W/Mo, I finished off the mobs and then rezzed the monks and completed the whole mission with henchies, even taking out the army of mursaat at the very end, but, I'm not going to tell you how, but, it was soooooo easy I just laughed at the way I did it. And my armor wasn't infused either. INTELLIGENCE makes all the difference whether you can win with henchies or not, obviously you don't have much.

wow. would you like some cheese with your whine, Baratus?

You know what, I know EXACTLY what mission you're talking about with the scarabs. It's The Wilds, fairly early on. And you know what? Yer an idiot, that's 3 seperate groups that like to swarm. Yes, each group of scarabs has anywhere from 5-8 in it, but if ya'd just learn to pull like the rest of us, you'd manage to take them out, even with a poorly constructed group of henchies. Only time I died on that mission was when our noble Warrior primary went a pulled a Leroy Jenkins and charged through the groups, agroing the whole bloody lot. Not even a pair of level 20's with Elite skills and tuned characters can fight 20 scarabs at once. See, that translates to "Don't be an idiot".

And another thing. Your "Too powerful groups" of monster that insta-counter? Yeah, why don't you try changing your tactics? Try a different approach, like sending everyone after the Ranger/Mesmer monsters that are giving you grief. And don't whine at me that that's all there is, they have the same skills you do, and the Ranger/Mesmer monsters are among the weakest in the game. Deal with it.

Finally, I'm gonna remind you about the concept of the game. "STRATIGICAL ROLE PLAYING GAME". Yep, a game where the chalenges CAN'T be beaten just by maxing out your level. Try using some of your grey matter by finding ways around the tough mobs rather than wasting it by spewing a huge load of worthless whining at us uncarring internet goers. I'm rubbing my fingers together, and playing the world's tiniest violin. The song? "My heart bleeds for you."

[I'm rubbing my fingers together, and playing the world's tiniest violin. The song? "My heart bleeds for you."]

ROFLMAO

I havent read this whole thing so sorry if this is a repost.

Can you imagine how much damage a level 12+1+3+3+3+3+3+1+1 chain lighting would do? Thats a level 30 chain lighting. Or can you imagine a level 30 spellbreaker combined with arcane echo? Skills that powerful would be ruined. I mean at level 30 expertise would make most eveything spammably cheap no matter its cost.

Glad ya' like it. My next hit is "Cry me a bloody river" :P

i have to say i love the RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO filter

Maybe I missed something, but I never encountered a massive group of enemies (as in more than 8) except in the Southern Shiverpeaks, and for the Monk's Path I think. Unless you decide to run and aggro everything, there isn't usually a problem with large groups of enemies. If you're fighting your way through, like UW and FoW, it's usually pretty easy.

Yeah the RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing swear filter is so RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing awesome.

All I can say to this and other posts of Baratus is that he definitely has played this game too long and should move on to something else. When you have played it too long, of course things become mundane and boring, and when every step you take still is a challenge of course you will become tired of it. If you've beaten the game with 4 characters, isn't it time to move on? Or wait for the expansion?

Regarding the difficulty of the game even at high level, I think it is great that Anet has made the game this way. That there are areas in the game which still require a lot of effort and good teamwork to get through, even if you are high level and have the best equipment. For me, the greatest pleasure I get out of this game (and at times the greatest disappointment) comes from the team effort (or lack thereof). It is fantastic when a group of formerly unknown party members really function well and the humor clicks. Its great when you get praised for a good effort, or when you can praise others. In other words, the game has been developed well for team play, and egoists/soloists therefore really have less to enjoy here. If the game was made much easier for high level chars, then this team effort would not be necessary.

Anyway, if some of the areas seem to difficult for your lvl 20 elite characters, then go back to earlier areas, like outside of Ascalon or Pikes Corner. You can be king there.

An example of how much fun (or not) team play can be: Tried to walk with a group from Agura Rock to Thirsty River. Half the group wanted to run past all monsters, causing us to attract too many at one time, turning the effort into one boring run-die-resurrect-run trip. Next trip with a different party was from Agura Rock to Elonas Reach. This group, however, worked as a team, played tactically (sneaking, luring and killing off smaller groups of monsters) and in fact the trip became quite an enjoyable adventure. Needless to say, most of the group continued on to do the missions.

[QUOTE=dansamy]I wasn't arguing the game is biased, and while the collector's items are nice, I've seen far nicer in random drops. [QUOTE]

Wait... are you joking? O.o
In fact random drops (even the gold ones) are almost always INFERIOR compared to collector's stuff.

You can unlock superior health rune with a pair of days of pvp... for ALL your pvp characters, you can buy a major health rune for your pve char, its not THAT sucky you know there is only a difference of 10 health.

That area just outside of Amnoon Oasis is a real bitch for Scarab spawns..unless you are VERY VERY slow moving forwards your whole party gets swamped by about 20 of them in a few seconds. The difficulty level when you first arrive in the Crystal Desert is ramped up massively from previous areas for sure.

Strangely, that little area just outside Amnoon Oasis seems tougher than the further in areas of the desert - it really screws up the 2 quests you pick up when you first arrive there. Pretty sure Arenanet have overdone the spawns of the bloody annoying Scarabs that pop out of the ground from nowhere. I prefer mobs you can see on the map, so that you can plan tactically rather then these annoying bugs that appear from under your feet in their thousands.

Im not talking about the mission, I solo'd that with henchies too without infused armor. I'm talking about the group of ice imps that replaced the stone summit howlers outside the city itself. And not everybody is going to conform and be a W/Mo either. As for my intelligence, I wish you would just leave that area alone. First of all, I got top honor grades in all my classes, so intelligence isnt an issue. Also, I work, so I may not have time to play the game 24/7 and perfect myself. Third, I never singled anybody out and put them down, so I would appreciate that others do the same. It was just a general statement from my experience as playing.

I agree with you. You did nothing wrong. You seem to be a well grounded young man. Don't let others throw you off. Just remember that they only feel superior when they are Flaming You! You see they have this super hungry Ego that needs feeding all the time in order for them to feel secure. Just don't allow them to take a bite out of you. Just keep plugging away at your grades and work. Someday people like that will be working under you. Blaming the rest of the world for their shortcomings...

i appreciate it warrior dood

First off, i must give a very heart-felt f*ck-you to those who simply posted and claimed they're right without backing shit. Same to the idiot who also just calls people liars without even investigating. Obviously this has happened to one or two other players, hence the posts supporting what I said. Just because you don't mind spending three and a half days going from Lion's to Divinity doesn't mean we're all game-addicted kids. Some of us have lives and can't sit for an hour doing nothing but swinging a sword because instead of providing challenges that require intelligence, we just get spammed with monsters.

This isn't all over. There are plenty of useless areas with virtually no monsters, but the oens you fight are challenging. I believe the first example of this was FoW. Those bastards are FUN to fight, but they're not spammed every two feet. Unfortunatly, the guys that designed some of the other areas made me feel like I was playing the last part of Half-Life again. Not much design or ingenuity at all, just hordes of monsters.

Look at it from the normal gamer's viewpoint. You work 8~10hrs a day, five or six days a week. That leaves about an hour a day, give or take thirty minutes, to play GW. if it takes an hour just to go from one town to the next, how are you ever going to have fun? The game gets boring when all you do is fight a horde, rest, fight a horde, rest, and repeat for hours at a time. That is grind, like it or not. Every other RPG and MMORPG I have ever played has always had some kind of ingenuity in the game to avoid this. Areas with few monsters, but puzzles that needed to be solved. Things that made you think. In GW you *NEVER* see that. It even gives you a damn compass with magical arrows to show you where to go for each quest! So instead of being a true RPG, it is more like, kill this horde and level so you can go to the next are and kill that horde. It's all repetitive. The entire game is nothing but hack and slash (or cast and heal if you're those classes). You never once have to do anything but click on monsters. Everything quest-wise is handed to you on a silver-platter.

One other thing I had to point out before I left. If you're so anal or idiotic that you can't catch a hint of sarcasm about 500 enemies in a 2'x2' area, you have no right to post on a public forum, ANYWHERE. I have never seen that many monsters in a single area, but I *HAVE* seen twelve or thirteen that group on the exact same spot, making it impossible to pull just one of their groups. That is the crap I was referring to.

If the rest of you have ten hours a day to play this game and can do so quite well, maybe you should look at what your lives are. Get a job, get a girlfriend or boyfriend, get a hobby, do something. I enjoy my games and have virtually every PC game ever released, dating back to the Atari and Commodore era, but I have never sat and played one for hours on end. The only game I could play for more than two hours was Daggerfall, and the only reason I could do that was that it was near-perfect. RPG with puzzles, battles, spell-creation, fatigue, everything. Too bad it was DOS and single-player only.

[First of all, I got top honor grades in all my classes, so intelligence isnt an issue.]

Making top honor grades in school doesn't mean you are "strategically or tactically" intelligent. This game has nothing to do with "grades" it has everything to do with strategy and tactics. And I've slaughtered those Imps outside of Caves of Sorrow as well. If you don't take charging ass henchies with you like the warriors, you won't have an overpull problem if you "figure out the best pulling technique like I have".

Something else I will comment on about "the working class" those that talk about working 8 to 10 hours a day 5 to 6 days a week. I think many of you forget most all games including this one are made and geared towards KIDS, not the working adult, so to come here and whine and complain because the game doesn't conform to your schedule of life is pretty stupid and silly in the first place. If you can't keep up, get out, it's that easy. They aren't going to tone the game down or make it easier just because of your lifes schedule. It's for a KIDS schedule who have many hours to play on the average. The working adult isn't supporting this product by a majority, it's the KIDS who have the free time and the money (probably from their working parents) who are supporting the majority of it and that's what they will continue to make the game for. It's also for those that make a living playing mmorpgs or mmo's and sell items and accounts for real life money. So, you working class just need to move along, go play Dungeon Siege II or Diablo 2 and Neverwinter Nights, those are the games that conform more to your lifestyle.

Nope. Not joking. I have seen the (albeit very rare) gold flame artifact that was much better than the 20/20 collector one. Since I know that at least one rare better than a collector's item exists, it follows that in random drops there is a chance for any rare drop to be better than the collector's item. The fact that most of them are not better does not mean that it is not possible for better ones to drop. Almost always does not equal always.

tl;dr

elder scrolls lol

RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO

For what travel (from what city to what city) do you need 1 hour?

It takes 1 hour for certain missions, that's true. But the only thing that takes really longer than 1 hour is UW and FoW. All other missions/quests are doable in at least 1 hour and a half. To travel takes much less time. At least if you go from town to the next town. From Ascalon to Yak's bend may take more than an hour...

I just went with my Mesmer (armor level 51 only) from Icecaves of Sorrow to Copperhammer mines with 7 henchmen. The iceimps are difficult. Travel like this (fighting, no running) is difficult and time consuming. My tactic is to go slowly and lure small groups when possible (more difficult with henchmen warriors, but they do retreat when you do and so it is possible to lure).

Twice on this trip I found I attracted too many creatures than the group would be able to handle and so I retreated. On one occasion only one other henchman made it back alive with me alive (my mesmer cannot heal or resurrect!). So after the enemy backed off a bit, my one surviving henchman could resurrect Alesia, who then resurrected the remainder, and we continued. Once on this trip I died, but was quickly resurrected.

My point is, this kind of travel can be done. I think only few areas are not possible to travel without running. It is tedious, and it is not what you want to do all the time, but it can be done. From my experiences playing with other human players, many of us do not know how to tackle this kind of travel. I see too many players try to sneak past groups of monsters that should be removed instead, and then wind up attracting too many to fight at once. I see too many players advance too quickly, take a stance, and fight to the death instead of retreating a bit and luring. And I see too many players "do their own thing" without regards to teamwork.

(Once when I advertised to form a group to fight/walk to another town, someone asked if I seriously thought I could do that. My answer was yes, why not? It was probably someone making money running people).

You should have done that traveling from iron mines of moldune. It is way shorter to go from there.

as I said: if you are going to skip certain cities/missions traveling can be awful long. but from iron mines of moladune to copperhammer mines take not more than 10-15 minutes. maybe longer if you fight everyone.

I once went from icecaves of sorrow to copperhammer mines and I have to agree: a really hard way that takes quite some time. But you don't need to go that way

You're right coolsti, not all mobs should be ignored because it can bite you in the butt. However, you should also not have to fight every last mob in an area to make it through. My gripe witht he mbos is simply that there are WAY too many, and half of the bosses or special mobs are too powerful. Hell every other game on the planet is realistic in the sense that if you stick to the main roads, you won't be attacked as often, while exploring places you into combat with many more enemies. That is what lures you into exploring. You can gain experience and you might find something useful. In GW however, you can step out of most any town and walk maybe twenty feet and there are at LEAST four or five mob-groups on the screen, with the exception of the early Ascalon areas.

They need to reduce the number of mobs period, but I'd settle for them just moving the damn things off the main roads. Just travelling from Ascalon to Piken today I went from level five to level eight! How the hell would a lv3~5 survive there if they're new to the game? It's beyond me. I know that if the mbos had been this thick when I started playing GW, I'd have quit right after post-searing. Hell I still enjoy pre-searing because of how efficiently the mobs are placed. The only real grouping of mobs is where the boss charr are, north of the wall, and I have taken them down many a time. And OT for a sec, if I kill all those bosses, shouldn't that stop the searing? Food for thought !

The only other gripes I ahve are the insane imbalance in runes. Superior anything takes 75hp, but superior vigor only gives 50hp. Not balanced. How you ask? Well think for a nano-second. I have five pieces of armor to use runes on. If I have to rune one piece with a superior vigor (assuming it was +75) to counter another superior rune, I just lost one piece I can do with another bonus rune. Right now it's so unbalanced you need a superior and minor rune to counter a single superior! That's WRONG.

That isn't my only gripe though. I also dislike the fact that negatives stack and positives don't. That is just RETARDED. Once again it takes common-sense to realize this though, and apparently those who go to college for years on end lose theirs. That's the ONLY reason the game is this way, because nothing else comes close to making sense.

You see, if we're both warriors and I rune all superior vigor and gain +250hp, but you do all superior hammer and get -250hp, it balances because while I don't do much damage to you, you do INSANE damage to me. Perfect balance there.

The other thing is that because only negatives stack, you cannot counter more than one negative. That is f***ing stupid and constantly pissing me off. If you get one superior rune of whatever, you ahve instantly lost 25hp permanently. That isn't fair. But let's pretend we have two major runes of whatever. Still, you lost 50hp. If negatives are allowed to stack, positives should. If I have two major runes of something, then damnit if I can cough up 2mil for two superior vigor they sure as hell should stack to counter it. Once again, that just removed two slots I could have used to further buff my character, thus further proving it balances.

These are my biggest two complaints with the game. Nobody can deny that the current rune setup is insanely unbalanced and biased towards the negative area, but the fact that the busiest roads in the damn game are swamped with monsters makes you wonder why the human race hasn't gone extinct on that world eons ago. I mean five feet from any town you find monsters galore. You're telling me a brick wall protects them? Yeah right! They need to at least move the monsters back from the main roads and possibly setup patrols along the roads so those of us who want to get somewhere don't have to fight 100 mobs to get two feet. They also need to seriously overhaul the rune setup. Either allow positives to stack right along with negatives, or don't allow negatives to stack. Hell I could deal with the very unbalanced -75 effect from superiors versus the +50 of superiors if you could stack the positives. Something needs to be done though.

I find the exact opposite. The game is too easy and you can run past/skip too much of it will little or no effort.

Did you completely ignore the Ascalon Ranger guy that leads you to Piken Square along a path that you only have to fight maybe 4 to 6 Charr? Or did you just decide to clear out the entire area and then go to Piken so that you could deliberately complain about fighting a bunch of mobs? I usually don't even gain one level going to Piken or fighting through Charr doing the quests around there.

Are they biased towards the negative? Yes. Is this a problem? No. The runes are fine as is. And 30 points in an attribute is way overpowered and would make PvE way too easy (and many would argue it already is way too easy).

OK since you failed to read the start of this thread, lv20 players need not respond. I too have a lv20 that can fly between Piken and Ascalon. However, almost every other class aside from warrior gets held up due to not being able to run/rush/charge away from bad fights if too many start seeing you. You are WRONG here, like it or not. There are a few builds that make fast work of most groups, but some of us prefer builds aside from the famed paladin. Some builds have a harder time healing while they can dish tons more damage. Still, if six or seven guy manage to agro while you're standing still fighting two or three, you're screwed, end of discussion. If you run you get hit slower, but still die. If you fight, you die. Only way out is mapping to town or logging out.

Travel between primary towns and such should not be so f***ing hard. It's a constant uphill battle which si nothing but grind. I don't give a damn if you have f***ing god-mode enabled, clicking on monster after monster is grind, win or lose. The only solution is to use common-sense. Clear the main roads somewhat (hey, if these are the main roads, what good are they to normal people in the game if they can't be used?) and leave the monsters off the roads so that when a player goes exploring he can enjoy the combat, but when it's time to go back to town or get on with whatever quest, you're not stuck fighting every three seconds.

ArenaNet advertised that the game would not become grind like other RPGs. They are right, it doesn't grind like others, it's a billion times worse. Hell even in Everquest you can leave town and find quiet areas to just sit and relax if you want. In GW there is not a single safe area outside the towns, and that's just flaky. Honestly, if there were that many monsters, humans could not survive there. Monsters need thinning, plain and simple. Even if you can take 500 lv50 enemies at ocne and come out without a scratch, having to fight them for no reason is grind. I am sick of the grind. First they ruined drops because botters were in the game. Finding items was a grind. Now they fixed drops but doubled monsters, again grinding. The game is not balanced, and if you're too damn stuck on your goddamn perfect built character to realize that not every class can take 500damage every three seconds, then don't bother replying.