Hi everyone,
We’re going to make some improvements to high-end rewards for the Drakkar fight soon, including adding an ascended version of the Illuminated Boreal weapon set with a unique color scheme. For now we hope you'll have fun learning the fight and collecting the current spoils of your victories.
ArenaNet Communications Team
Comments
Better rewards are great.
However, there's nothing to learn. It's a large HP sponge, mostly auto attack fight. At least go back and put some mechanics in and make it something to learn. This is an iconic GW boss. Please review the fight and make it like Gerent or the early days of revamped Teq or even Triple Trouble where we had to work together or fail.
Making the cave bigger would help and removing the visual pollution would assist you in this (I mean it should have been a fight where we are on top of the lake, with Drakkar popping up from under giving you space and a cool wide arena to fight in)
What sleep is here? What dreams there are in the unctuous coiling of the snakes mortal shuffling. weapon in my hand. My hand the arcing deathblow at the end of all things. The horror. The horror. I embrace it. . .
The fight is a joke and for that you want to give ascended weapon?
Whether you leave the mechanics as-is or spice them up a bit, it really does have quite a bit of HP. I'm fine with making it harder in exchange for reducing its HP pool. I'd rather fight smarter than longer. Intensity is generally preferable to tedium on a boss fight.
I would say that collectively, we as players are already quite good, everyone is equipped, everyone knows where to copy builds from, and so on....so of course things will feel to be easy compared to years ago when only few were on such tier of knowledge about the game. Especially when you have map full of people. Nowadays no boss fails with full maps, that's it.
However, I would like to see more dead bodies in this fight as well. Give like 3x more dps to Drakkar and then it will be fine as it is. If someone dies, give him respawn beacon to the cave where we met Wolf spirit.
However, please fix the bug where whole escort event fails because Jhavi gets teleported back into the village after portal sections, thanks.
as it currently stands, drakkar is far too simple, I'm surprised he'd be ascended loot worthy. He really needs some upscaling on his damage, and throwing in more mobs always helps. The 3 raven portal bosses are far too weak as well.
The problem with a straight up dps increase (although I am not entirely opposed to that solution), is that the playing area is very small and the visual pollution is enormous meaning players have no real way of telegraphing attacks because it is too difficult to see anything stacked together. Which means they will just take the damage and wait for rezzes. Which doesn't make the fight any more interesting.
What sleep is here? What dreams there are in the unctuous coiling of the snakes mortal shuffling. weapon in my hand. My hand the arcing deathblow at the end of all things. The horror. The horror. I embrace it. . .
PLEASE, Make this REPEATABLE so that "x#" Drakkar kills gets you a weapon. I'd suggest 25.
We're on it! Cameron gave a couple of updates to that issue in this thread earlier today.
ArenaNet Communications Team
In which he said he had identified a fix. Shortly thereafter, you put out a patch. It was natural to assume that included the fix that he said he had identified - even though it obviously wasn't.
Respectfully (and I mean that), surely you can see where your communication skills failed just a little here.
We would have loved to be able to say "in today's hotfix" instead of "as soon as we can". Unfortunately, that would not have been true–they're working as fast as they can on the fix, and "as soon as we can" is the most clear answer we have right now.
ArenaNet Communications Team
This is an iconic GW boss.
Since when was Drakkar a boss? Hes always been just an inanimate object. Outside of stripping away Joras bear ability he doesnt do anything in the first game. At least now he looks amazing and is -now- a boss.
The rest of what you said is pretty accurate, except im seeing loads of players dying to his attacks, so he may be difficult to the average player, have i seen an event fail yet? no, and thats a good thing, wasted time is not great either.
Amana Silentchild; My Main
Ember Wandertooth; The Kingslayer, Kianda Redpaw; The Blazing Light
Why GW is Called Guildwars
Definitely respect that. What you should have done is specifically said the patch did not include this fix. Im sure you can see why people would assume it did.
Im not criticizing the work or the delay - just the order of the communication in those two posts (and, again, with all respect - I understand days like today are likely crazy there). The way these two things were communicated, when taken together, created obvious - and logical - confusion that a single sentence could have avoided.
Why not let Drakkie drop legendary weapons instead?
Edit to iconic name. Drakkar is extremely important in lore and legend to the Norn and Jormag. In much the same way Kralkatorrik and Primordus were nothing before gw2, Drakkars name has transcended what it began as.
I’m a below average player and I don’t agree a major boss like this should be killed first time in an open world group. It took a week or two to get Tequatl sorted after the revamp and that was fun. Even Vinewrath was often 50/50 in the early days.
Big Group bosses should have decent failure mechanics and the best gw2 ones have it - Gerent, Marionette, Vinewrath, Tequatl, Wurm. I get the wasted time argument which admittedly has merit, but I feel the sense of accomplishment in taking down something that requires a bit of work other than mostly zerging is more important.
What sleep is here? What dreams there are in the unctuous coiling of the snakes mortal shuffling. weapon in my hand. My hand the arcing deathblow at the end of all things. The horror. The horror. I embrace it. . .
Drakkie two toes is basically a wack a mole at the moment
My arcdps says otherwise. Pretty much every meta I see has 20% of the people doing 80% of the work and the rest are just AAing on there kitten builds. The only thing that has change since all those years ago is that the 20% got better at doing what they do.
Just did Drakkar and I was a little disappointed, basically just a massive DPS sponge with very few interesting mechanics. I was hoping for a little more complexity. Even Shatterer is more interesting to fight and we've been killing him for 7 years.
When we killed it yesterday after 20:00 CET it was just a big HP sponge. ppl in map chat said there were supposed to be some mechanics, phases, breakbars or adds or sth (infos from their friends on other instances of the map) but we were having none of that, just grinding it down slowly from 100% to 0.
Probably bugged i guess.
After killing Drakkar we got achievements for killing it, but no loot. Like, no loot at all. All the fighting for nothing (aside from the achievs).
I sure hope that's getting fixed soon, or else this world boss (!) has no replay value at all.
I'm sorry, Primordus was nothing...? You're right, he wasn't INCLUDED in the EoTN expansion AND lore that killed EVERY Dwarf except Odgen Stonehealer who just happened to stroll on into GW2 randomly near the Priory then into the story with Living World Season... 2?
Edited: He personally didn't kill the Dwarfs, his minions did.
There’s a phase where Drakkar grabs Jhavi energy sphere and requires you to Cc it down. The phase also shift to sending players through portals to fight champions of the lost spirit of the wild.
My first group was in the 1 minute and 50 seconds of the boss running off, but that was just my experience
There was cc and phases, the problem was they were irrelevant. The cc went down quick and the portal champs died in seconds with a handful of players (the debuff preventing access actually made portals easier)
The area is far, far too small for mechanics like these and the visual pollution overwhelming to telegraph anything. So if they do add things or buff the boss, they absolutely have to redesign some of the environment because it is unsuitable for a boss fight of such scale.
The whole thing needs sending back to the drawing board in an ideal world to expand the area, add in proper mechanics that divide the Zerg (there shouldn’t be Zerg mechanics in 2020) and above all, remove the visual noise cluttering the screen.
What sleep is here? What dreams there are in the unctuous coiling of the snakes mortal shuffling. weapon in my hand. My hand the arcing deathblow at the end of all things. The horror. The horror. I embrace it. . .
I either was in the same fight as @Tyson.5160 or on a map that had the same effect, but the boss really did bug out, never have any cc phase, never have any adds, never even moved out from the first cave, and never did give any loot (at all). I did the fight again two hours later, and that time I was able to observe the different phases (and learn about the portal debuff, although judging from the way people ran aimlessly into the portal to be kicked back again and again, many did not even catch that part of the mechanics).
I'm still wondering if there are more bugs in the fight that make mechanics not appear or not work correctly, or if it's just a matter of patch day audience being too numerous to judge the true difficulty of the event.
yesterday i did it twice , once i had to look for a good map , and the other it just stopped , and i spent 30 minutes fighting endless monsters... well made 5 gold out of it xD
now i'll have to retry the strike mission
Honestly, I would give it a couple weeks and see how the fight is when there are not big zergs doing it and see how difficult the boss is to kill then.
Add Supreme Rune of Holding [&AgHSRQEA] for daily reward from this Boss and future new ones.
Drakkar is the embodiment of bad boss design - he's an HP sponge that takes 30 minutes to kill and you get nothing of note from it, so I can guarantee you've already lost a lot of casuals.
Can anyone report if the patch to fix phasing makes any difference to the fight?
What sleep is here? What dreams there are in the unctuous coiling of the snakes mortal shuffling. weapon in my hand. My hand the arcing deathblow at the end of all things. The horror. The horror. I embrace it. . .
It should have a chance to drop Amalgamated Draconic Lodestones in that fancy chest. Or at least a lot of the lodestones needed to make them. This map really lacks the resources needed to make those things considering its the map to make the new weapons.
Icebrood Saga weapon collections cost 10500 Gold to craft! Including new Fiery/Icy Weapons!
*Does not include Volcanic Stormcaller set.
Is there actually any way to get these from playing the map? If not, it's terrible design.
Its just another thing that drives the default lodestone price up, making all collections involving them even more expensive to complete.
Icebrood Saga weapon collections cost 10500 Gold to craft! Including new Fiery/Icy Weapons!
*Does not include Volcanic Stormcaller set.
I'm in favour of a slight boost, especially to justify better loots — although it's been quite a chore to get T3 masteries :P. However, please do have in mind that not everyone plays at the so-called "prime times". Around here, when apparently Australian players are struggling to stay awake, I'm just waking up and there are not that many players available for the meta. We're finishing the fights with literally a few seconds left.
I think a scaling based on the number of players fighting would be great, as long as it's not exaggerated as some past bosses/events that, for example, were easy with 3 players and almost impossible with 5.
Oh you and your realistic take on things.
The Commander will end you.
Do consider a token system for the reward, you've done it for fractals, raids and dungeons. I dont see a reason why that couldnt work for world boss drops as well.
There should be a daily choosey chest with an Amalgamated Draconic Lodestone as an option like the metas in PoF and HoT. They require far too many resources that are not obtainable on the map to craft.
It'd be good to see this addressed sooner rather than later.
Oh man, I can't believe they missed the mark on putting this new lodestone as a reward on a "do 5 things on this map" daily chest.
I'd have preferred a daily bag of lodestones or something. Getting the new lodestone outright every day would devalue them too much.
Icebrood Saga weapon collections cost 10500 Gold to craft! Including new Fiery/Icy Weapons!
*Does not include Volcanic Stormcaller set.
We don't even have a 'Do 5 things on this map' overall chest. Not sure why some maps have that, like Grothmar, and some do not, like Bjora.
Any chance you could also fix Drakkars hitboxes so that they remain permanent during damage phases?
I play a longbow Ranger with piercing arrows and found that my character was constantly swapping between Drakkars leg hitbox's due to them constantly vanishing while his legs moved between the floor and walls.
I have to manually target his distant leg constantly during the fight to make the most of my arrows hitting both legs for double damage which is a pretty tiresome process when it happens every few seconds.
I tried marking target on his legs too but when the leg hitbox vanishes for a few seconds it removes that target lock so I can't rely on it to quick switch back to the leg I want to target.
It's a small issue but it effects my character quite a bit as my weapons damage is dependant on how many hitboxes I can hit with the same arrows.
Are the reward tracks going to be updated so that pvp/wvw players can unlock the new stuff like they normally would be able to
This is the first story release in a long time that didnt come with a reward track for pvp and wvw.
Just wanting to point out not all players want to invest in completing a list of achievements when they dont mainly focus on pve or dont focus on pve much at all other than for the story / lore progress.
Bound by Blood had its emote in reward track
Whisper in the dark had the neat helm skin
This episode no reward track rewards emote/skin???
Me and a few other people are just assuming this was an oversight due to the map being expanded on rather than actually getting a new map can you possible check or confirm on this?
I think Drakkar rewards need to be better by giving more gold since it's a long meta. Also provide more mastery XP.
Better loot... nice, but what about better scaling?
Example right now: 15 to 20 people here, 18 minutes to go, Drakkar at 92%.
We know already it's useless...
So bailing out with 18 minutes to go...
That must be - BY FAR - the WORST Boss design ever.
Some ascended stuff won't make me more excited about Drakkar at all.
Nice to hear! I hope this means all ascended weapon chest drops are of the illuminated boreal weapon chest type. If it's a random type that would be sad. Also the fight is fine. We almost failed it when I tried, and you have to be good to adapting to the claw's movement.
I'm glad that someone else commented with fails because i've seen map chat messages about failures and all the elitists are like "Zomg too easy", and i'm like "probably because you carried"
Yeah and it's a gamble of luck. Because joining a different map is not possible.
Trust me I tried, but the minute it starts, you cannot swap maps to a different one.
it gets locked down.
On an empty map? Tough luck!
So:
So yeah change that, then talk about loot.
To whomever thought above was a great idea... It is the opposite: it is deliberately frustrating your player base. And you know it.
Who cares about ascended if it actually is one big gamble?!?!?!
I think better rewards are really good! And when it's ascended weapons, it shouldn't br too easy to win the fight. But that doesn't mean Drakkar needs to be a dps sponge. It would be better if it was difficult to stay alive - and not difficult to kill him in time.
Maybe it would be good to handle it like the meta in Tarir. You get really really good loot from winning. For Drakkar that would be a chance for the ascended weapons. Plus some other things and the Amalgamated Draconic Loadstone. "Some other things" include unidentified gear. It would be really nice when the loot outcome would be the same like in Tarir or Palawadan.
When the fight fails, then it should be like in Tarir as well. The players get loot. But not as much and no chance for ascended weapons and no Amalgamated Draconic Loadstones. Instead they get unidentified gear, some mats and so on. Maybe on the same level as the rewards now when winning the Drakkar fight.
At this time being, I'd have to agree on the health pool factor of the fight. Just because people can't skip out on the stacking to dps boss for green circle buffs to try to combat that and usually fail on not filled map instances, I wonder if there's a better way to bring a balance to this. Generally most players are more dps oriented up close, so they'll huddle the boss, but on the right arm of all places to do so, and won't budge the slightest even if the green circle is right next to them. Don't know if they just don't see it or just don't care. Then the ranged bunch tends to stay scattered up even with a lack of useful boons like quickness or alacrity. So I want to say if the boss had slightly MORE health pool and another mechanic or two to compensate and redirect how to make the fight work out. Could be more interesting and function out better with smaller groups doing the content.
More? Shouldn't it be less? So it becomes less of a dps sponge?
Looking forward to the Corrupted Weapons; kind of meh on the Winter's Heart Infusion and the Etched Weapons.
I'm not sure about the color (yellow) for the Illuminated Boreal Weapons (I'm guessing those will be the Ascended ones?)
@Fire Attunement.9835
Suggestions/ideas for consideration:
1) The fight is too long and players won't get any reward at all failing (even if its a close kill). Possible to get seperate rewards for each section/checkpoints for participation(?). Also as an incentive for players to stay for the whole fight instead of AFK/ coming at the end and get the full reward.
2) Players standing in the green circle gets a buff "Inspired Strength - Improve damage dealt and movement speed" but I can't find any info on this. Can we get a clarification on how it works (damage modifiers if theres any)?
3) Took years to collect Tequalt's Weapons and still uncompleted, the new skins are a good addition but it will be a pipe dream to get it fully collected. Probably will be salvaged as well like any other ascended weapons. Would be great if salvaging it gives Almagated or other useful materials to craft its series, instead of Vision Crystals (hoarding too many from ascended salvaging already).
Bugs encountered :
1) No rewards given after successfully finish the event. (Auto loot doesn't seem to work on the final reward "ice chest" either?)
2) Mobs got pushed into the wall stalling the event (into the tunnel behind because its hollow) when Jhavi was channeling to break the ice wall, to open the tunnel. (Suspect there are players parked/standing behind the wall/tunnel from map swapping/previous successful event and pulled the mobs agro).
Wandered back to the game; unless you have a full map the boss fails. And I mean FAILS. With roughly 20 folks, didn't even get to 50%. There appeared to be only one map actually succeeding and it was full. This may be due to: lack of rewards to pull folks in and, like Teq in the early days, people instinctively "know" that if there isn't a tag, and a zerg of folks, it isn't going to succeed, so even though at the beginning there were more like 50, since there was no tag, people left. I felt repeatedly that it was pointless to do anything. It has so many hit points and the fight takes so. long. and. drags. on. You can do an entire raid wing and then some in the time it takes to successfully kill this thing. Does it scale at all?
I agree with you about the yellow color. It doesn't seem to fit with the overall theme they've got going on. Maybe purple would be a better color? It's considered a cool color, like blue and green, so it should blend in better with the ice them. Yellow is a warm color, so maybe save it for a warmer theme.