Night of fires (story mission) - some design issues

So the new completely crazy aggro range of NPCs is causing issues in this story instance. Basically every time you engage a group of npcs, at least 2 others will join the fight, usually more. I don't mind some difficulty but obviously this isn't intended. The boss also spawning 30+ adds in less than a minute can't be intended either. Once again I don't mind a challenge, but the boss is already consuming a lot of survival resources (some heals and all the dodges) to avoid its mechanics, having 3+ elite soldiers pulling my character constantly and playing with it like it's a mere football ball is probably not intended either. I usually never die in story instances, not even in HoT, unless there are complicated mechanics to figure out, but this time, I had like 2 broken (as in: red) items at the end, and I'm definitely not the worst player in the game, far from it, so this mission probably needs to be looked at. I watched some youtube video of it and even vanilla necros are having a hard time with it so it's not just me.

I managed to not die at all in that story instance. Were you trying to melee the boss at the end?

This mission needs to be completely revamped. I saw over 100 adds at the final boss and died over 40 times in it. Still have not got it done.

So it's not just me that noticed the aggro range in general is like doubled. I am seeing dots in the distance run @ me because I hit something 10 yards away.

@Despond.2174 said:So it's not just me that noticed the aggro range in general is like doubled. I am seeing dots in the distance run @ me because I hit something 10 yards away.

Not doubled, it's at the very least x5.

not sure what you are doing wrong, but never saw that many enemies at once.

The aggro range on the mobs is crazy. The boss spawning is crazy.One thing that does work is you can just run away and your health with restore. Which is cheesy, but a way to do it.

Yeah, at one point they spawned over my spawn point and killed me instantly once before I could get a couple hits in myself. There are definitely a large number of adds in this one. More than necessary or comfortable.

Yeah, those adds were crazy. 30 seems like an exaggeration, but I can count a group of 12 mobbing me in one screenshot. And then they camped at the checkpoint. Rytlock went down easily, and so did my armor after that. The disjointed dialogue after beating the boss was pretty funny, though: Rytlock bragging that he's fought tougher children, even though he was downed multiple times in the battle.

And then an another boss afterwards. No refugees left alive by the end, had to let npcs handle it while I idled armorless.

Random thought: was it because I managed to kill all of the scouts, without raising alert? Maybe the game ported in all reinforcements at once.

Just play necro, we don't die.

I played on my Chronomancer (Sword/Torch and Greatsword) with some glass cannon build and gear. I had no issues. I moved from group to group killing everything I could. When the final mecha-boss spawned I just stayed mobile and worked on training the boss and mobs clockwise around the perimeter of the fight area. I'd move the boss into my wells, launch phantasms at him regularly, and hit with GS 1,2,3. When I needed to create distance I'd blink away.

I think people struggle with the boss because they neglect the adds and they don't move around enough. Mechanics are fine. I think some of you guys are just bad at ranged fighting while being mobile. /shrug

@Zaltys.7649 said:And then an another boss afterwards. No refugees left alive by the end, had to let npcs handle it while I idled armorless.You get some special ability to the top-left of your health bar to get the refugees to run to you. So you need to run to an area away from the Herald, call the refugees to you, then go back to distracting the Herald. Then the Herald starts to move again, get the Refugees to move to a new location. The idea is you need to manage their position while taking down the Herald.

Come on guys -- fighting armorless? Carry some instant repair canisters...

Yeah, the aggro range felt a bit off. On the NPCs, too, actually -- there were several times when the three just took off and aggroed something while I was moving in another direction, leaving me to wonder where the bleep they had gone while I was getting clobbered.

@Chickenooble.5014 said:I played on my Chronomancer (Sword/Torch and Greatsword) with some glass cannon build and gear. I had no issues. I moved from group to group killing everything I could. When the final mecha-boss spawned I just stayed mobile and worked on training the boss and mobs clockwise around the perimeter of the fight area. I'd move the boss into my wells, launch phantasms at him regularly, and hit with GS 1,2,3. When I needed to create distance I'd blink away.

I think people struggle with the boss because they neglect the adds and they don't move around enough. Mechanics are fine. I think some of you guys are just bad at ranged fighting while being mobile. /shrug

I have a mesmer too, you have no idea how tanky mesmer "dps" spells and traits make you compared to heavy armour professions. Besides the CC is real with these adds. At one point I had 3 elites with the pull spell spawned in less than 10s (I suspect that me burning the boss with my best dps rotation didn't help), I didn't see them coming and they were trading my character like kids playing ball. Beyond the hilarious factor and the fact that I did it it's just completely overtuned compared to the rest of the content.

Edit: not talking about the herald but about the robot. After that boss the rest of the story was extremely easy.

Actually, I don't think the boss here is that hard comparing to the Head of the Snake final boss, I actually died so many times there that my character is completely naked. While I only died 4-5 times on this boss.

You guys know that the explosives one-shot most of the reinforcements in that mission, right? Or at least they seriously damage them. They also take a nice chunk out of the big guy. Run for the explosives and toss away.

They may have changed it but when I did it today there were only a handful of adds for the final boss. Nothing to cause a problem.The aggro range was pretty large but they didn't do that much and my main concern were the sentries. Managed to get all of them in time but missed some normal mobs, so only one achievement.Couldn't load the map after the mission so no idea if the progress has registered yet.

I agree the aggro range was a bit off, but it's still doable. My issue is that even though I managed to stealth the mission it just throws a horde of enemies at you during the boss fight anyways. Seems like rather than being rewarded for my good judgement and patience I just got spat on.

@KalTaron.4961 said:They may have changed it but when I did it today there were only a handful of adds for the final boss. Nothing to cause a problem.

Tried it again, just to check. Nope, it was actually worse this time. Stopped counting after killing fourty reinforcements. Couldn't figure out any way to stop them from re-spawning, either.

I think this is either glitched (since some players don't seem to get as many adds) or we're meant to avoid the reinforcements and focus on the boss.

@Aurelian Omenkind.2470 said:You guys know that the explosives one-shot most of the reinforcements in that mission, right? Or at least they seriously damage them. They also take a nice chunk out of the big guy. Run for the explosives and toss away.

That tip did not work at all.As far as I can tell, the explosion only damages single forged no matter how clustered together they are (even though AoE would make more sense). And they kept re-spawning faster than I could lob explosives at them. Hardly effective. Not to mention that the explosives only did no more than 1% damage to the boss, which is definitely not 'a nice chunk'. It's far more effective to just kill it the old-fashioned way.

@Zaltys.7649 said:

@Aurelian Omenkind.2470 said:You guys know that the explosives one-shot most of the reinforcements in that mission, right? Or at least they seriously damage them. They also take a nice chunk out of the big guy. Run for the explosives and toss away.

I did this story segment on my Ranger, and the entire place was chock full of enemies. I engaged one and ended up with 6 dog piling me out of the blue. If we are supposed to be able to peel one or two troops off at a time, its not working. I never made it to the end. Getting tired of these not working for some specs while other specs have no problem. Why is my Ranger (even with new elite spec running) so under performing? I did not have this much trouble doing the stories in HoT. But these are extremely difficult.

It appeared as though an entire instance-worth of mobs showed up all at the same time on every single fight. I really would like the devs to go back and take a look at this, because if I am getting dog-piled so badly, I do not think it is working as intended. Many folks tend to solo much of the story instances (like I do), however, I think the aggro range for the mobs in this particular area, is the entire instance...which is wrong. This entire instance (as far as I was able to get) felt like a dungeon fight where you needed a group in order to accomplish it successfully. I don't always have the benefit of someone I know being online when I am so anyone telling me to group with a friend just doesn't understand that its not always possible to do so.

I never made it to the boss, and if the preliminary fighting is any indication, I may never complete this.

1. Over abundance of mobs with huge hit boxes,
2. Multiple mobs all at the same time using different stuns, yanks and skills that just roll over you and nail you to the ground. Impossible to dodge all or even the most damaging when you are also trying to kite them, they just ignore you.
3. The worst is, once you get downed as I did, its practically impossible to get back up before the mobs kill you because you can not dodge enough to get out of the way.

Even with bombs available, they do not do enough damage to help much. Its almost like once you use one, the entire garrison hears it and shows up. Rather worthless using those bombs if they do very little damage to make a difference.

I came out with a splitting headache after an hour of fighting.

I needed to get out for repairs but ended up buying a repair cannister because the run up was rather long and i wasn't going through that again.

I dread finishing this story and having to go against that fireguy :(

@Rennie.6750 said:So the new completely crazy aggro range of NPCs is causing issues in this story instance. Basically every time you engage a group of npcs, at least 2 others will join the fight, usually more. I don't mind some difficulty but obviously this isn't intended. The boss also spawning 30+ adds in less than a minute can't be intended either. Once again I don't mind a challenge, but the boss is already consuming a lot of survival resources (some heals and all the dodges) to avoid its mechanics, having 3+ elite soldiers pulling my character constantly and playing with it like it's a mere football ball is probably not intended either. I usually never die in story instances, not even in HoT, unless there are complicated mechanics to figure out, but this time, I had like 2 broken (as in: red) items at the end, and I'm definitely not the worst player in the game, far from it, so this mission probably needs to be looked at. I watched some youtube video of it and even vanilla necros are having a hard time with it so it's not just me.

Too many pull spell mobs are what made my ability to complete this a total failure. Did not matter what I did, once they started this "hot potato" activity, I never recovered.

I rarely if ever have my Guardian die, and he's constantly getting killed on this storyline. I've tried going to ranged with the longbow, melee with mace/shield, using explosives, running and using AOE on adds...I still can't complete this. Usually I can keep his health up with my rotations, but not against this zerg.