Secret Lair of the Snowmen

I don't remember this group event being so hard last year, but I just tried it with a public group for the first time this year and everything was okay until we got to Freezie at the end. He was practically unkillable. My squad kept dying, he reset twice, I don't think we were able to heal his frozen heart to even 50%. He was going to reset a third time, again becoming Enraged and practically unkillable when I decided I didn't want to stick around any longer, but there was no button to leave the instance or even leave the squad. I let myself die and was teleported Defeated to near the entrance while the squad kept fighting until they finally were Defeated and ran back in to try to kill him a third time, while I used a gizmo to portal myself to a lounge, because I was tired of wasting my time. Anyone else have an experience like this in Secret Lair of the Snowmen?

Yes as have many others I’ve spoken to. But the instance hasn’t changed. I had 6 back to back fails yesterday followed by one victory with a minute to spare and one with 4 mins to spare. Launch day was smooth sailing as previous years.

I’m noticing time of day seems to be a factor and it really boils down to players ignoring the mechanics.

I think the change of public/squad has also segregated players a bit as well. The lower skilled players are likely more encouraged to only join a public instance because of ease of access and thus many new players or those unused to mechanics are getting involved.

So yeah it is an issue I didn’t encounter in previous years, but it is a team player driven problem rather than anything else

I didn't even know this existed last year.It's too hard for me to even try to enjoy it.The lack of a 'leave' button also is a bad idea.

I'm not going to try it again.

@"Fueki.4753" said:I didn't even know this existed last year.It's too hard for me to even try to enjoy it.The lack of a 'leave' button also is a bad idea.

I'm not going to try it again.

It wasn't a "public" mission last year you had to form a squad to enter. Which is probably the cause of all the troubles this year.Commanders used to form squads and took care of mechanics/explained them, meaning even newer players had an easier time.Now in the public version it's a simple lottery on what kind of players you'll get and if they are competent enough.

My guild went in as a five man team. I was the only one who had done this last year and the only part of the mechanics I recalled was throwing snowballs. We still got it on our second try. I went in later by joining a squad and we finished with several minutes left. So I doubt it is any harder than last year. I would say if you go into a public instance be sure to let others in the group know the mechanics of the final fight - especially what to avoid, like stepping on the ice lines.

Most simple explanation is as follows:

The event was not a public strike mission last year. As such only players already interested or semi interested in instanced content did the lair (and even then some groups had issues).

This year, with instant access and advertisement as public strike, a far greater pool of players are attempting the lair, especially some who might usually not play instanced content. Which has the unfortunate side effect of reducing overall group strength.

As such a fight which was considered not that difficult last year (and even had great many supporters and praise on the forums) is perceived as significantly more difficult this year. The same fight mind you.

TL;DR:This is a perfect example of how far apart even basic group performance and adequate players are from some open world players with no class understanding (I could have phrased this more diplomatic, but let's get real, a part of this player base is just not in touch with even the most basic understanding of the game mechanics).

@Calanthe.3857 said:I don't remember this group event being so hard last year, but I just tried it with a public group for the first time this year and everything was okay until we got to Freezie at the end. He was practically unkillable.

I killed him twice yesterday within minutes. Guess your public teammates were just pretty bad or didn't know the mechanics. The difficulty has not been altered. If you want a better performance, explain the instance to your teammates before you enter the lair as they might be new to it. Most common mistakes: people standing on the frost markings on the ground, people targeted by the snowball not leading it away from the group, people not moving behind Freezie to avoid getting hit by the beam.

We had several tries last year that were just as lousy as what you've encountered this year, to the point where I ended up bringing my healing druid in full raid setup to public (lfg) runs. As everybody above said, it's not a case of changing difficulty but just of people not knowing what to do. Explain the mechanics and bring a build that can carry a bit, and things will (often) run smoothly again.

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"Fueki.4753" said:I didn't even know this existed last year.It's too hard for me to even try to enjoy it.The lack of a 'leave' button also is a bad idea.

I'm not going to try it again.

This is likely the case, as this is what I've seen and heard happen with the other strike missions. The public instance concept was a nice idea, but it's a full out lottery for whether you win or lose - with typical lottery chances of winning.

@"Calanthe.3857" said:I don't remember this group event being so hard last year, but I just tried it with a public group for the first time this year and everything was okay until we got to Freezie at the end. He was practically unkillable. My squad kept dying, he reset twice, I don't think we were able to heal his frozen heart to even 50%. He was going to reset a third time, again becoming Enraged and practically unkillable when I decided I didn't want to stick around any longer, but there was no button to leave the instance or even leave the squad. I let myself die and was teleported Defeated to near the entrance while the squad kept fighting until they finally were Defeated and ran back in to try to kill him a third time, while I used a gizmo to portal myself to a lounge, because I was tired of wasting my time. Anyone else have an experience like this in Secret Lair of the Snowmen?

It's the exact same instance from last year the only difference is the "Public" option.If you've been doing strikes you know there has been a very big difference in the players who join via Public and those who join via LFG into Squad. This has pretty much been the case since Grothmar.I started doing Freezie the moment it went live this year. Not one successful (before the timer run out) run in 6 attempts, two complete wipes.Doing Publics you get some of the absolute worst clown fiesta playing you could expect in this game. Druids who don't heal or buff, pistol/pistol engineers who only autoattack, ragequitting and longbow rangers.... lots and lots of longbow rangers.Publics are a sobering look into just how low-effort the average player is. I watched one person who, while actively attempting to save themselves from the snowball, managed to drag it over the group three times in one go. And when I attempted to explain without rancor that they were making mistakes, they of course ragequit.

After talking with my girl about it and feeling a little down, I decided to form a squad, list on LFG with "Freezie Strike. No Longbow Rangers please" And after explaining a couple of basics and calling targets on the protectors ran it through flawlessly on time.The real problem is the same as has been the case since Strikes were introduced in the prologue. The Public option maybe be nice and convenient but it attracts a singularly low-effort style player who drags down the team with their poor performance. When you couple this with the fact that the Freezie strike actually has more mechanics than Vale Guardian you get the rather predictable results.

Short answer is "use Squad/lfg"The long answer involves the exact same observations said a thousand times on these forums about how a significant portion of this playerbase is lead astray by poor tutorialization and powered by self-enitltement expects victory/loot with zero effort....and when they don't get it will happily screw over 9 other people and leave a team to go find their shinies elsewhere.

Doing stuff with randoms where said randoms don't read chat, or even worse, don't understand English can be one of the worst GW2 experiences ._.I mean, I'm meeting people in T2 fractals who won't /gg a single time, even after a dozen or more messages by everyone in the party, explanations included... Expecting such people to understand boss mechanics is nothing but wishful thinking and a nightmare to the rest of us when we are forced to rely on them.

Tuesday did the event with full pugs and no one knew the mechanics and it ended in a wipe. Day 2 knowing the mechanics and using say to state them when people didn't see them and resulted in a victory. Bringing a toon and planning that you have to get people back up made differences as well. I think this will smooth out, let people learn or remember the mechanics and I think you will see a lot more successes.

Well you also have the public run where the players who are somewhat familiar just start immediately with zero communication the entire fight. Even if someone tries to explain the mechanics they just charge along. The brand new players push along to keep up, next thing you know its a wipe.

If some1 has trouble with snowman, feel free to message me and i can gather a squad for us, explain it and we can kill it.

^same for every other strike mission aswell :)

I just get the impression that raid-style content is a bit lame. It always feels like your being battered, ENDURING the content rather than winning it. The end always feels like a relief not glorious victory.

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"Fueki.4753" said:I didn't even know this existed last year.It's too hard for me to even try to enjoy it.The lack of a 'leave' button also is a bad idea.

I'm not going to try it again.

This.The mission is exactly the same as last year and the only time i've had difficulty in it is when running with a public group.This was mostly down to players in the public group having very little experience with this kind of content.Like we had Freeize down to about 40% on the last phase and 2 of us were reviving a dowed player on one of the ice veins and the player with aggro pulled the kitten beam onto us and the player attacking in melee range and wiped what was left of our party.. XDWhat were you thinking guy.. lol

He did that twice during the whole two runs we had but we killed it the second time regardless.. the bigger sin was that most of the melee guys in the party just ignored the ice veins and did the typical yolo zerker facetanking stuff that downed them constantly.. you'd think they would learn not to stand directly on Freezies toes after being downed several times by the same mechanic but nope XDCome on guys you have big long greatswords etc you don't need to be in inside your enemy to deal your damage, melee weapons have range for a reason.. use it lol.

Yeah it was chaos, fun sure but chaos XDI think I was the only member of the party that could tank the beam though despite being a glass canon Heal as One and Signet of Stone ftw right, don't think anyone else survived it but for the most part people did pull each other up most of the time.

I've only been in 2 groups that failed once, because people didn't know the mechanics (mostly not avoiding the cracks). With a druid and healbrand as part of the group, it is pretty simple. In fact, it's getting me tempted to start learning raids with my healbrand. If the person with the beam stays near center, they can outrun it. Go clockwise and everyone else can easily avoid it as well.

Of many party I participated in this raid, we failed and the boss ends up restarting. It even seems that the boss is programmed to kill all players (somehow) just to spend more time fighting against him and spending time playing. (Because if we just killed the boss on the first try it would be a fast and easy farm, right!)

Just to follow up, I tried it again, with a public group again, but using a tanky Cleric Druid build (as opposed to a Rabid Soulbeast build the first time). The group got it done pretty fast that time.

Perhaps my Druid's healing made some substantial difference. But I think it was just a more competent group overall somehow. I suppose the group composition really does matter.

I'm surprised people are having issues at all really. I have done it 4 times now, every time using the public option, and every time succeeding easily. On one run we even did it with only 7 people. I played minion master reaper the first time and, though we won, it went pretty slow. Next two times I used my fractal / raid build, and it was much better. The last time I ran my heal scourge and it was even easier.

I don't know, maybe I'm just really lucky and get great groups?

I have done it several times now on public, with non-meta characters. Not had any problems. It can be slow if people don't watch their feet or get the "kill minions for snowballs to throw at his heart" part of it, but we got through it after a little pushing.

@Svarty.8019 said:I just get the impression that raid-style content is a bit lame. It always feels like your being battered, ENDURING the content rather than winning it. The end always feels like a relief not glorious victory.

Then you're playing the content sub optimally. A good run where everyone has good positioning and good dps is always very controlled and barely any damage is taken. If you feel like you're being battered, you're not handling the boss mechanics well and getting hit by things you shouldnt be

@Shikaru.7618 said:

@Svarty.8019 said:I just get the impression that raid-style content is a bit lame. It always feels like your being battered, ENDURING the content rather than winning it. The end always feels like a relief not glorious victory.

This is true, people should not expect to go into this and get a kill on the first shot esp if you dont know what to expect. I hate to be the one to say but someone has to, the bar should never be lowered all that accomplishes is make people play worse. Does no one want to play well? You cant learn to play well if there is no challenge and everything is a gimme. Practice, learn , actually try thats whats rewarding, knowing you beat a difficult objective on your own merit.

Took me 3 tries. Then again, this is the first time I've tried to do it. First group I had was terrible. No buffs, everyone else had terrible DPS, players just ran around frantically auto-attacking with ranged weapons. So, I swapped over to a chronobuffer, formed my own squad, and then beat it on the first try with that group.

A commander tag pays for itself.

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:Took me 3 tries. Then again, this is the first time I've tried to do it. First group I had was terrible. No buffs, everyone else had terrible DPS, players just ran around frantically auto-attacking with ranged weapons. So, I swapped over to a chronobuffer, formed my own squad, and then beat it on the first try with that group.

A commander tag pays for itself.

I agree, Commander tag is one of the best things you can get if you like instanced 10men content.