Why did you nerf the Eater of Souls?

Is there a reason why ANET nerf this thing? Was it necessary? Didn't have the change to see what the fuss is about and bam. Nerf.

Eh, making the break bar a bit less 'blink and you miss it' is fine, it means more CC options are useful. Making him not snack on your (generally uncontrollable) minions/pets/etc is just good sense (the idea is to make the player dodge/react, not punish people for the actions of random dumb minions.) Making the health siphon weaker was unnecessary really. I really would have liked to see how people handled it with just the break bar and minion/pet changes.

Edit: So the kitten filter doesn't like d. e. r. p. y. as a word? That's not even vaguely vulgar.

This is the response from one of the devs: https://twitter.com/barefootmatthew/status/916132926240153600

Also, we already have a thread about this. No need to create new one.

I'd say Anet should bring back the Eater of Souls during Halloween but make the encounter harder.

The defiance bar really did require an unfair level of timing.

I remember doing this fight the first couple of times and being so confused by the mechanics, because I was so confident I was always breaking the bar on time because it happened so quickly.

It is of course now evident that my character simple couldn't get off the CC quickly enough.

A bit unfortunate to hear the health siphon was nerfed though. That should never be a problem when you can prevent it from doing that shit in the first place (which was of course very very difficult with some builds).

@SirDrygan.1823 said:Is there a reason why ANET nerf this thing? Was it necessary? Didn't have the change to see what the fuss is about and bam. Nerf.

Honestly, who the fuck cares? I don't follow the story, I just play through it so I can go on with the gaming that I like in this game. I wasn't even aware what I was fighting when I fought this mob the first time, I simply killed it and that's that. Later I see the forum rage about this mob, and about baddies having such a hard time, so fine - nerf it and be done with it. It's just story mode ffs, let everyone and their grandmother breeze through it, it's of no impact whatsoever to anyone.Put the challenging stuff out there in the 'real world', and let story mode be easy mode for all I care - it's never been hard anyway in this game, not a single encounter (not even that imfamous LS story fight, of which I have forgotten the name, where you fought in a small room, and there were cries for nerfs all over the place).

Ehhh to be completely fair I did it on several classes, and it was ridiculously difficult each time. Some people may enjoy that level of difficulty, but most do not, because if they did there wouldn't have been so many complaints about it, not just on the forums but it became a pretty notoriously annoying chapter to have to do, and even if you did it with a friend, they were just some little ghost thing that was overall pretty useless. Super challenging content can be found in raids, and perhaps some other content they come up with at some point, but I don't think it has a place in the personal story.

Because it was bugged. The life steal was meant to happen only if you were in the warning circle. So you could either move away from the circle or break its defiance bar.

The bug made the life steal go on regardless of the skill hitting you or not, forcing you to CC. But the time to CC is too short. So only rather hard and fast CCs work, and not all professions have that readily available.

Personally, Id would have removed the area of effect, made the breakbar a 'weak' one like with rolling devils, and added 1s to the delay between the first attack and the leeching. So you will still need to break the bar, but you'd be able to do it with a condition like crippled that everyone has.

We need more points in the story that can't be completed unless you learn mechanics. A boss invulnerable as long as you don't break the CC bar. Enemies that one-hit you unless you interrupt their skills, attacks that always kill unless evaded, etc.

@Ayakaru.6583 said:4 people complained on the forum it was too hardANet has metrics of what people do in the game. They can see how many people is stuck in that part. You see 4 people complaining in the forum and 40 explaining how to do it, they see 4000 people repeatedly killed by the boss and giving up, and fix the bug.

@Erulogos.2591 said:Making him not snack on your (generally uncontrollable) minions/pets/etc is just good sense

Not really. As a ranger, it encouraged you to use the Soulbeast pet-merge (which is highly efficient in general, plus Soulbeast is just the better condition ranger build than the previously used vanilla one), and as a Necromancer, it also encouranged those MM fanatics to finally try a decent Necromancer build for a change. That was a good thing.

@Shanna.4762 said:Some people may enjoy that level of difficulty, but most do not

What proof do you have regarding this statement? While I think you're right, since people want things for free with zero effort, you can't state this as a fact.

I found the original fight confusing, for about 2 minutes. Then I figured out the mechanics arenanet was trying to get me to use and I finished him 2 minutes after that.

It's not about the boss being challenging, it's at the point now that people can't and WILL NOT deal with enemy mechanics that go beyond pressing skill 1. Are you a necromancer with minions? Dont summon them for this fight. Are you a mesmer with clones? Time your shatters or avoid summoning clones. Are you a ranger? Use a ranged pet or put it on peaceful mode. No, having to do this for one fight is not a personal attack on your "play how you want" freedom, no matter how much you think it is.

GW2 is approaching yet another extreme when it comes to "balancing". The ONLY content that provides any sense of challenge is fractals/dungeons/raids. All group content. Anything solo, including just exploring the maps, is all watered down because people can't be bothered to learn.

really, ppl made a 4 page complain thread and now ppl complain that it got nerfed?it was unbalanced, i had to use glitches and cheats to kill the guy.

• the pull is to powerful even for a reaper
• minions don't distract him
• his feeding goes right trough walls
• there is no saving time
• depends way to much on DPS

to me it needs a nerf, maybe it needs a bigger nerf then what it already got.

@Snowywonders.1378 said:It's not about the boss being challenging, it's at the point now that people can't and WILL NOT deal with enemy mechanics that go beyond pressing skill 1. Are you a necromancer with minions? Dont summon them for this fight. Are you a mesmer with clones? Time your shatters or avoid summoning clones. Are you a ranger? Use a ranged pet or put it on peaceful mode. No, having to do this for one fight is not a personal attack on your "play how you want" freedom, no matter how much you think it is.

GW2 is approaching yet another extreme when it comes to "balancing". The ONLY content that provides any sense of challenge is fractals/dungeons/raids. All group content. Anything solo, including just exploring the maps, is all watered down because people can't be bothered to learn.

Please enlighten us on how pet/minion classes are supposed to have prior knowledge of a boss fight before they attempt it for the first time? Are we supposed to be waiting for dulfy guides for story missions now?

I died once on my main, and it was a little jarring, but overall a fun fight. The achievement for the instance was much worse. If you rush any of the flashbacks, even a little, you have to do it alllllll over again.

The fight was pretty easy IMO. Completely forgetable in how lacking it was in challenge. A nerf means very little if there wasnt really a significant challenge in the first place. Kind of like nerfing ambient creatures.

So, no harm, no foul.

@Castitalus.6359 said:

@Snowywonders.1378 said:It's not about the boss being challenging, it's at the point now that people can't and WILL NOT deal with enemy mechanics that go beyond pressing skill 1. Are you a necromancer with minions? Dont summon them for this fight. Are you a mesmer with clones? Time your shatters or avoid summoning clones. Are you a ranger? Use a ranged pet or put it on peaceful mode. No, having to do this for one fight is not a personal attack on your "play how you want" freedom, no matter how much you think it is.

GW2 is approaching yet another extreme when it comes to "balancing". The ONLY content that provides any sense of challenge is fractals/dungeons/raids. All group content. Anything solo, including just exploring the maps, is all watered down because people can't be bothered to learn.

You can change skills any time out of combat. I know right, wow.

It wasn't a surprise to me when I saw this got nerfed. Some people complain somethings hard because they can't do it, can't work out the mechanics, or just can't stand there pressing 1, and so it gets nerfed. Seems to be how a lot of things go in this game.

I did die on the first couple of attempts, but then just changed tactic and combat style and it was a pretty routine win after that.

Still I don't really care as the nerf isn't really going to effect me, I've done the story and I'm unlikely to replay that bit again as it wasn't the most exciting story instance in the world to me.

I made probably the largest complaint thread about this guy. I beat him solo two days later with the advice of the forum replies and my own sleuthing. This boss did not need to be nerfed into the ground. The defiance bar lasting longer and the nerf against pets/minions/elementals is a good thing because it allows those classes to use more of their strengths in combination with the cc.

I do not agree with nerfing how much health he steals, since that simply prolongs the inevitable--the boss's death--and prevents the player from having to learn how to fight a unique creature. It's one step too far and turned the Eater of Souls into a mere participation trophy.

@Ayakaru.6583 said:I swear, someone's gonna make a post that GW2 is the dark souls of online games...)

Someone actually did about 1-2 yeas ago. He made a topic saying that HoT is as hard as Dark Souls. XD

@MithranArkanere.8957 said:Because it was bugged. The life steal was meant to happen only if you were in the warning circle. So you could either move away from the circle or break its defiance bar.

The bug made the life steal go on regardless of the skill hitting you or not, forcing you to CC. But the time to CC is too short. So only rather hard and fast CCs work, and not all professions have that readily available.

Personally, Id would have removed the area of effect, made the breakbar a 'weak' one like with rolling devils, and added 1s to the delay between the first attack and the leeching. So you will still need to break the bar, but you'd be able to do it with a condition like crippled that everyone has.

We need more points in the story that can't be completed unless you learn mechanics. A boss invulnerable as long as you don't break the CC bar. Enemies that one-hit you unless you interrupt their skills, attacks that always kill unless evaded, etc.

@Ayakaru.6583 said:4 people complained on the forum it was too hardANet has metrics of what people do in the game. They can see how many people is stuck in that part. You see 4 people complaining in the forum and 40 explaining how to do it, they see 4000 people repeatedly killed by the boss and giving up, and fix the bug.

He jumps toward you and when he lands he grab you with ghostly link things which drags you towards him while leeching a bit of HP, then he jump on place to leech from everything around him. I play mesmer so he leeched from my phantasm but that only happened when I did the mission without using CC. When people posted video of themselves killing it, he wasn't healing. There was a video in particular of an ele never using CC and mouse clicked his skills throughout the fight and the eater of soul didn't heal at all.The actual leech break bar was about 2 second. The "link" break bar was 1 second. The link break bar appears as he starts his jump towards you and disappear when he land and the leech break bar appears as soon as the link is over and until he touches the ground.

see the time on the bar

I should have done it without phantasm but now there's no point anymore. Sadly none of my other characters are there yet so they will have to fight the infantile version instead of the already easy normal one.

@Kheldorn.5123 said:This is the response from one of the devs: https://twitter.com/barefootmatthew/status/916132926240153600

Also, we already have a thread about this. No need to create new one.

I did not notice him being hard at all. I pushed over that boss on first try without even noticing anything special . If this is considered hard already, raids must be hell mode tier (lol).

@Snowywonders.1378 said:

@Castitalus.6359 said:

@Snowywonders.1378 said:It's not about the boss being challenging, it's at the point now that people can't and WILL NOT deal with enemy mechanics that go beyond pressing skill 1. Are you a necromancer with minions? Dont summon them for this fight. Are you a mesmer with clones? Time your shatters or avoid summoning clones. Are you a ranger? Use a ranged pet or put it on peaceful mode. No, having to do this for one fight is not a personal attack on your "play how you want" freedom, no matter how much you think it is.

GW2 is approaching yet another extreme when it comes to "balancing". The ONLY content that provides any sense of challenge is fractals/dungeons/raids. All group content. Anything solo, including just exploring the maps, is all watered down because people can't be bothered to learn.

I suppose you missed the part where the boss is attacking you, but I suppose a trying to hard to be witty comment is the best you can manage for a reply.

The fight was tuned higher than Anet wanted, so they changed it. To the many who boasted about how super easy the encounter was and that they one-shot the boss and did a dance on its head...nothing has changed for you so it doesn't matter.

@Boysenberry.1869 said:The fight was tuned higher than Anet wanted, so they changed it. To the many who boasted about how super easy the encounter was and that they one-shot the boss and did a dance on its head...nothing has changed for you so it doesn't matter.

Well, no dancing on his head, and it took at least two attacks, but pretty much this^^^.

It was easy, so nerfing it means nothing to anyone who prefers any degree of noticeable challenge.