Althea's Ashes - Game Creators Hypocrits?

One of the creators main design in the game is balanced, all seems good and fine but in post world there is no balance whatsoever. Im doing altheanas ashes quest and seriously where the **** is the balance there. With the ascalon strikers and 3 other members we just barley survived and the strikers were almost all dead. The next group we died and cannot get past it. The difficulty is ridiculous they make diablo 2 yet they dont realize how crazy unbalanced monster/ human player is. They need to either make less enemies grouped together or something I mean cmon 6 is hard but 10 enemies in a group? Just an opinion post yours.

If you have a good healer, a good tank, compentant people and you're not too low level... You'll be fine.

Obviously one of those things is wrong.

There is a difference between an area being unbalanced and an area requiring strategy. If you fail the first time, try figuring out what you did wrong rather than coming to the forums to scream unbalance. Maybe you caught the group when two patrols merged. Maybe you didnt bring a (good enough) healer. Maybe your party simply sucked. You cant expect every single quest or mission to be a walk in the park, can you?

So much strategy is involved in this game, i love it.

All im gonna do is "laugh my ass off"

it's people like this in which i love to watch get murdered when those patrols come... i back off slowly, as the party gets slaughtered... and low and behold im the last one alive on alot of instances. People think they can just run in and kill anything, and it's actually something that makes me keep playing, it adds its own humor to the game. Thanks Anet, keep it up.

Quote: Originally Posted by Wolf89

I made the mistake of running head first into a pack of monsters 4 levels higher than me last night. Upon respawn (it really couldn't go any other way), I found a different route past, and I think that "sneaking" through the dried out river bed was probably one of my most exciting gaming moments ever. This game is so cool that way. Not like say Diablo 2, where if you can't get past an area, you go level up in an easier place for a few hours and go back.

Quote: Originally Posted by tkn

Quote: Originally Posted by Dreamsmith

Theres a difference between "balance" and "challenging". This game is supposed to be challenging, not something you can walk through easily. However, it is balanced in that there are no uber skills, items, or character builds.

For the Althea's Ashes quest, it is supposed to be quite difficult- look at the experience reward for the quest. That quest alone gives as much bonus experience as doing an entire mission. If you're failing, try looking at what could be done to improve your chances of success- did you have enough healing, or need another warrior to help tank? Maybe some AoE damage, or more ranged damage to take out the enemies without getting in close enough to aggro another group of mobs? Try the mission with a few different party compositions, and see what you can do to improve. If there are never difficult places to get through in a game, it quickly becomes boring.

Edge of Extinction placed on the bridge towards the main body of the Charr forces can trigger a full wipeout if set up properly; alternatively you can use that bridge as a chokepoint to get the most love out of area of effect spells. It just requires teamwork and some planning.

another option is to find highground that either they can't get to or it takes a long time for them to get to. then just rain death on them from a distance...that works well.

can't shake this feeling that I read that rangers get more damage if they attack from higher ground as well...think it was one of those ingame popups or something.

Uh, from his description, it sounds like he went where the quest description tells you to, which is the wrong place, and which has ridiculously hard groups of 8-12 mobs standing INSIDE EACH OTHER. I went there myself, and I can imagine the horror of his experience because I was level 16.

The actual place you want to go is just south of town. You don't even go past the tar pits.

Many times those large groups can be coaxed out of the group to follow u into a party ambush. do that a few times and walla group down... Archers are good for that... Hit a distance so others do not see em and the one hit follows u...

I think timing is very important, later in the game you will see patrols of around 5 enemies, attacking at the wrong time will lead to another group seeing you and taking up the chase = ded

Team should stay close at all times, retreat together to draw off enemies when there are large groups. Just make sure you work together and don't do things on your own or bring enemies from other groups into the fight, and keep your healers alive! I never got to the stage where I was completely annoyed at the difficulty, often with groups I could tell that we wouldn't do well in that co-op mission. I repeated many many co-op missions because I suck

The quest is balanced enough, I managed to do it with 3 henchmen.

I hope the original poster stuck around long enough to read past all those insensitive replies to find the solution to his problem.

To restate: there is a zone called the flame temple corridor, which the quest description seems to point you to. The quest does not show up on your map. The flame temple corridor has groups of 2-12 mobs, sometimes standing inside each other. They don't move until they see you. They just vaporize your healer in 2 volleys and go from there.

The quest objective is actually south of town. Still lots of enemies, but spread out and pullable.

Heh, not on that quest, but it's been fun to watch some with Elementalists or Rangers (like my own) and they run HEAD FIRST into a swarm of ANYTHING and just die....

If you're characters main attacks are at a range, then use them... at a range.

Let the tanks draw them out and get them into a group and either AOE them or pick them off one at a time.

And the ones who just go off half ****ed as it is and run into everything... and die, then get rezed, die, then get rezed, then call it 'gay' and log off, they're even funnier.

Know your character and what you're after. I made it on the quest to Yak's bend with an E/R 10 and took no damage, in fact the party took almost no damage other then the 'fodder/tanks' that drew everything for the big punch.

Yeah... strategy is a good thing in this game.

Its not patrols its just that I would rather have foes as henchmen than the current they are so dumb its unbelivable. If I run away they wont start running till Im a screen or 2 away they are so stupid they made great enemy ai but stupid allys this is unfair.

Hm.. I'm going to back up Wolf's claim, and my previous claim, that henchmen are useless. They COULD be useful, if we had any kind of control over them. But I've just whiped 4 times in the same mission for just terrible reasons. First, the idea of "pulling" a patrol is just a waste of time with henchmen. They're great at charging what you attack, not so great at running when you run. Every time I (ranger) try, my fighter henchman charges in, pulls everything under the sun, and dies while I'm still high-tailing it out in an attempt to draw the fight away. The second whipe was funny, but not really a "whipe". The healer made it out because he was stuck on a sign halfway between us and the previous battle. Not so good at healing then. The third and fourth time we lost were both because the healer was standing in the middle of us, instead of behind us, where he would've been safely around the corner from the barrage of arrows raining down on him.

So.. in short.. grouping with other people works good when they're the right people and not l337 h4x0rs, but more often than not I can't get a group for my side quests. And the henchmen are sorely incapable of being anything more than punching bags for a short time before they get me killed. =(

EDIT: After my post I went on a 5th run and while I didn't whipe because of it, I got almost back to where I last died and realized my healer - who apparently is logistically challenged - is yet again missing.. no doubt stuck behind a tree stump or some other unimaginable horror.