Serpent's Ire - An underrated Meta

I know this topic has been discussed a lot of times already but bear with me here, since I'm not going to complain about the Meta being impossible.

Today, last Sunday and plenty of times before Halloween (I didn't even bother trying to form it during Halloween. The 50+ Squads in LFG for Lab and the lack in other areas were a dead giveaway) I succesfully leaded a bunch of people through this event. Personally i like leading it a lot, especially if you can help people doing their achievements like that.

Sadly I already reached the point of my worry. Every player will have sooner or later their achievements done, who won't bother doing this again (bad experience, no fun doing it etc.), which leaves me with the ones who are doing it for fun like myself. I'm pretty sure that this number of people is really low though...

While I understand people complaining about the rewards, it's actually not THAT bad. The mosaik is worth more than a gemstone from HOT (if they stop dropping in price that is) and the unidentified gear yields gold if sold and ectoplasma if salvaged. It's doable in 20-30 minutes and so not that time consuming at all. The problem is when the event fails, since it leaves you with only the champ bags from the zealots (amount depends on how many you helped killing of course) which brings the reward down to a truely abyssmal level for the time spent.

I have some suggestions after 10+ leads which I would like to share:

To speed up Phase 1, since it is the most annoying part of it for 99% of the player base, there is one simple thing which could be done. If we could get a single ping on the map when it spawns, we have an indicator where to look for if we pay attention to it. This won't drop the difficulty, since it can just ping the location once.

Phase 2 is fine as it is in my opinion even if the cc requirements may seem harsh. I like the adrenaline rush if it looks like you fail but in the end you manage to finish it anyway. Also the relieve of people is always a nice thing to see.

Phase 3 could need some love too. While the mechanics are fine, the HP of the snake are absolutely not. It makes this meta, which was unique so far, ridicoulus dumb because it is just about spamming 1 again. The switch between melee and ranged immunity is fine. It forces the players to pay attention after all. Reduce the amount of HP by like 20% at least and add maybe 1 or 2 aoe attacks which you cant facetank, like blues on VG or anything really. Also the concept at 25% is actually a good idea but at the end it's just poorly made. There are not enough elementals spawning to make it even a bit challenging and so it is destroying the whole purpose of it while the players just wait for the AOE to go off so they can DPS the snake again. Buff the elementals, raise the number, improve their moving speed, add some AOE's to look out for. People will stay busy like that. I'm not really happy about the Hydra but I don't have any idea to improve it, since it does what it is supposed to do which is dealing a lot of damage to the players.

Also some other stuff which could be easily done:

• Shield the area of Phase 2 before it starts so players have an easier time to prepare for the 5 zealots.
• Shield the area after the Meta is done for like 5 minutes. The instant brand effects are totally unnecessary. Im pretty sure those two points would make it a lot more player friendly too.

And yes I know other areas will always have better loot (Tarir, istan, RIBA) but I'm doing it for the challenge, the fun and to help others since it is the hardest Meta next to DS (which never fails anymore really) in my eyes. The rewards are a nice extra but I wouldn't mind some buffs to them as well. It is the biggest factor to get more people to Vaabi after all apparently.

Sorry for the long rant but I truly hope you consider some rework. Leading this Meta is always a nice change between fractals and raids and it would be sad seeing it completely die for the LFG. The communities from EU and NA are doing a fine job because they run it too. This Meta is not something which should be limited to the plans of them though. We have Triple Trouble or high tier dry top for that after all.

Feel free to share your thoughts if you want and maybe, just maybe, Anet will read and do something about it this time :).....

You are right, the mechanics are fine and it just needs some tweaking (scaling or cc bar size or cd for eg) or at the very least some more attractive rewards. I'm not convinced it is healthy for open world to need such a meta. I think the sweet spot for challenge in open world seems to be Gerent and Marionette. Ultimately straightforward, but with a possibility of failure without some coordination. Dragon Stand too, since again it's fairly straightforward but without a bit of leadership in each lane, it gets messy at the towers. Serpents Ire is lucky to even get started let alone succeed and I don't think that is a good approach.

I don't think there will be any change though. They have moved on now and there really hasn't been much appetite for tweaking anything in PoF at all

@anbujackson.9564 said:Phase 3 could need some love too. While the mechanics are fine, the HP of the snake are absolutely not. It makes this meta, which was unique so far, ridicoulus dumb because it is just about spamming 1 again. The switch between melee and ranged immunity is fine. It forces the players to pay attention after all.

Is it fine? That statement makes me think you are not fully aware of how it actually works. Phase-shifted on bounties does a proper job of enforcing range/positioning. This does not.

I'm not really happy about the Hydra but I don't have any idea to improve it, since it does what it is supposed to do which is dealing a lot of damage to the players.

That is about half of what it does and probably the less important half.

And yes I know other areas will always have better loot (Tarir, istan, RIBA) but I'm doing it for the challenge, the fun and to help others since it is the hardest Meta next to DS (which never fails anymore really) in my eyes. The rewards are a nice extra but I wouldn't mind some buffs to them as well. It is the biggest factor to get more people to Vaabi after all apparently.

All of those are generally successfully completed because they offer enough rewards to build up a large enough foundation of people to have around that knows how to get the event done. SI only has a bunch of one time things.

For the most part the challenge is fighting your fellow players and their apathy towards doing what needs to be done despite wanting the event to be successful. The actual mechanics aren't particularly challenging.

Sorry for the long rant but I truly hope you consider some rework. Leading this Meta is always a nice change between fractals and raids and it would be sad seeing it completely die for the LFG. The communities from EU and NA are doing a fine job because they run it too. This Meta is not something which should be limited to the plans of them though. We have Triple Trouble or high tier dry top for that after all.

Feel free to share your thoughts if you want and maybe, just maybe, Anet will read and do something about it this time :).....

Most people have already said all they have to say about it in all the previous threads ...

and suck reward . the only reason people doing it is because of certain requirement for something i can't remember what it was....

@azizul.8469 said:and suck reward . the only reason people doing it is because of certain requirement for something i can't remember what it was....

Funerary armor and the backpack.

@Khisanth.2948 said:

@azizul.8469 said:and suck reward . the only reason people doing it is because of certain requirement for something i can't remember what it was....

ah yes... golem backpack...

Le bump, so that this issue is not being forgotten.

I personally don’t seen an issue with this meta as the only issue players are encountering is to use CC which isn’t all that complicated of a mechanic.

That said, if an adjustment were to be made to the CC phase of the meta, I suggest that it be to reduce the buff each of the zealots give to each other down to 25% from 33%. That should mechanic challenged players enough of an edge to succeed but not completely dumb it down like the Gerent nerf.

@"Ayrilana.1396" said:I personally don’t seen an issue with this meta as the only issue players are encountering is to use CC which isn’t all that complicated of a mechanic.

That said, if an adjustment were to be made to the CC phase of the meta, I suggest that it be to reduce the buff each of the zealots give to each other down to 25% from 33%. That should mechanic challenged players enough of an edge to succeed but not completely dumb it down like the Gerent nerf.

The problem with CC in this game is that you cant see what an impact you are having, ontop of that, not all skills work 100% of the time when it comes affecting the bar ive noticed, and the idiotic rate of scaling the CC bar has is another issue. So while its not "complicated" it is at the same time just for different reasons.

@Ayrilana.1396 said:I personally don’t seen an issue with this meta as the only issue players are encountering is to use CC which isn’t all that complicated of a mechanic.

That said, if an adjustment were to be made to the CC phase of the meta, I suggest that it be to reduce the buff each of the zealots give to each other down to 25% from 33%. That should mechanic challenged players enough of an edge to succeed but not completely dumb it down like the Gerent nerf.

The biggest issue about this meta is to even get players to do it. After that it is debatable if the CC is scaling too much or not.

@Dante.1763 said:

@"Ayrilana.1396" said:I personally don’t seen an issue with this meta as the only issue players are encountering is to use CC which isn’t all that complicated of a mechanic.

That said, if an adjustment were to be made to the CC phase of the meta, I suggest that it be to reduce the buff each of the zealots give to each other down to 25% from 33%. That should mechanic challenged players enough of an edge to succeed but not completely dumb it down like the Gerent nerf.

The scaling on the CC bar is just fine. I’m not aware of any CC skills that don’t work all the time and this is the first that I have heard about it too. Seeing an arbitrary number when you see CC isn’t going to make a player more than likely to use CC skills than they are to use attacks because they see damage numbers.

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@Dante.1763 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:I personally don’t seen an issue with this meta as the only issue players are encountering is to use CC which isn’t all that complicated of a mechanic.

That said, if an adjustment were to be made to the CC phase of the meta, I suggest that it be to reduce the buff each of the zealots give to each other down to 25% from 33%. That should mechanic challenged players enough of an edge to succeed but not completely dumb it down like the Gerent nerf.

I dont think it really is fine, its very easy to overscale a CC bar, just look at almost any of the world bosses that have them(Shatterer for instance), even in a group thats actively trying to break the bar on it ive only seen it done three times out of the 20 or so ive tried.

Ive noticed some oddities playing as an ele in how effective certain CC skills are, doing solo champs, where one champ will take a ton of CC damage from say air/earth combo 3(forget the name), another champ will not.

As to seeing numbers not making a player more likely to use it or not, no probably not, but showing that it will damage a break bar is information that could be displayed. I got into an discussion about CC skills in map chat out on the Crystal Oasis earlier this week, they where incredibly confused as to what CC even was in this game, as the game they came from CC was used to describe Taunts, which not every class in this game has access to, and they had no idea that cripple, launches, immobs, counted as CC in this game, which tells me that there needs to be an explanation somewhere to educate players at a bare minimum level.

@Dante.1763 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@Dante.1763 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:I personally don’t seen an issue with this meta as the only issue players are encountering is to use CC which isn’t all that complicated of a mechanic.

That said, if an adjustment were to be made to the CC phase of the meta, I suggest that it be to reduce the buff each of the zealots give to each other down to 25% from 33%. That should mechanic challenged players enough of an edge to succeed but not completely dumb it down like the Gerent nerf.

For Shatterer, it’s easy to break the bar via gliding and bombing it. The bars only seem like an issue because players who are scaling it up are not pulling their weight.

Ive noticed some oddities playing as an ele in how effective certain CC skills are, doing solo champs, where one champ will take a ton of CC damage from say air/earth combo 3(forget the name), another champ will not.

I’ll have to check that out.

As to seeing numbers not making a player more likely to use it or not, no probably not, but showing that it will damage a break bar is information that could be displayed. I got into an discussion about CC skills in map chat out on the Crystal Oasis earlier this week, they where incredibly confused as to what CC even was in this game, as the game they came from CC was used to describe Taunts, which not every class in this game has access to, and they had no idea that cripple, launches, immobs, counted as CC in this game, which tells me that there needs to be an explanation somewhere to educate players at a bare minimum level.

Some in game explanation on CC could definitely help.

There are a couple places where CC doesn't seem to behave consistently. The two frogs in VB is one I remember. Sometimes it works as expected, sometimes you hit it with a Signet of Humility and the bar moves a pixel or two.

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@Dante.1763 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@Dante.1763 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:I personally don’t seen an issue with this meta as the only issue players are encountering is to use CC which isn’t all that complicated of a mechanic.

That said, if an adjustment were to be made to the CC phase of the meta, I suggest that it be to reduce the buff each of the zealots give to each other down to 25% from 33%. That should mechanic challenged players enough of an edge to succeed but not completely dumb it down like the Gerent nerf.

Ive noticed some oddities playing as an ele in how effective certain CC skills are, doing solo champs, where one champ will take a ton of CC damage from say air/earth combo 3(forget the name), another champ will not.

As to seeing numbers not making a player more likely to use it or not, no probably not, but showing that it

will

damage a break bar is information that could be displayed. I got into an discussion about CC skills in map chat out on the Crystal Oasis earlier this week, they where incredibly confused as to what CC even was in this game, as the game they came from CC was used to describe Taunts, which not every class in this game has access to, and they had no idea that cripple, launches, immobs, counted as CC in this game, which tells me that there needs to be an explanation somewhere to educate players at a bare minimum level.

Yes, my point, players dont pull their weight and thus the scaling of the bars becomes a problem. This should be accounted for when making events, not every player id say roughly half dont bother learning the mechanics.

Id appreciate it if you did, for further information these are all against level 80 champions and hey if you prove me wrong and im just seeing things thats a good thing to.

As to ingame explanation(by players) me and two other people spent an hour trying to explain what CC in this game was to this person, they didnt understand it no matter which way stated it including "Any skill that affects the movement of an enemy" even listing the conditions and effects that caused it didnt help.

Wow. Someone actually runs this meta? I have never seen a large group attempt it...at all. Ever. I must not be logged into the game at the right times.

Hmm... this meta could easily become alot more active if it had a chance to drop the Crytal Infusion just like the Death Branded Shatterer in Jahai Bluffs. It would fit also, since both events are Kralkatorrik corruption based.

@misterman.1530 said:Wow. Someone actually runs this meta? I have never seen a large group attempt it...at all. Ever. I must not be logged into the game at the right times.

i have only seen a proper group for it once, and that was a looong time ago.

the meta really needs better additional rewards like what @Glider.5792 suggests or i dunno... lots of pieces of unidentified gear? → these alone may help spark some interest

@misterman.1530 said:Wow. Someone actually runs this meta? I have never seen a large group attempt it...at all. Ever. I must not be logged into the game at the right times.

If you are on NA and need this, TTS does the one 2 hours after reset on Monday, Friday(today), and Saturday.

The thing i've found the weirdest in the runs that i've been in is despite the massive need for CC in the second phase, in the third phase thus far the only pattern to sparks ive noticed is that the snake goes into determined and summons sparks after a defiance bar break, and considering every player should be doing more cc facerolling their keyboard than at any other point in the game, it makes it suck. a lot. since that's 1 minute or so of determined that we have nothing to do in except kill the sparks (boring, i just sit and see what my chat channels are up to in this phase always and hope an entertaining conversation is happening). to me, it feels like an arbitrary extension of the fight, as opposed to a fun fight mechanic.

@Glider.5792 said:Hmm... this meta could easily become alot more active if it had a chance to drop the Crytal Infusion just like the Death Branded Shatterer in Jahai Bluffs. It would fit also, since both events are Kralkatorrik corruption based.

You could make it literally drop 1million gold and i wouldn't go near it until they fix the very poor scaling issues when it comes to CC and the Event design that clearly wants you to spread out but forces you to group instead due to the stupid scaling.

@TexZero.7910 said:

@Glider.5792 said:Hmm... this meta could easily become alot more active if it had a chance to drop the Crytal Infusion just like the Death Branded Shatterer in Jahai Bluffs. It would fit also, since both events are Kralkatorrik corruption based.

The only thing it forces is people to not slack. If everyone would actualy CC there would be zero problems.

@Glider.5792 said:

@TexZero.7910 said:

@Glider.5792 said:Hmm... this meta could easily become alot more active if it had a chance to drop the Crytal Infusion just like the Death Branded Shatterer in Jahai Bluffs. It would fit also, since both events are Kralkatorrik corruption based.

Even with everyone CC'ing there's plenty of design flaws and Bugs that cause problems.