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No, HoT should not be further nerfed. It is not meant to be the regular power fantasy.


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The fact that you can use mounts all over HoT has already nerfed it to the point of being trivially easy.

Having been in this game since beta...

I've seen this "that is too hard and needs to be nerfed" argument for... basically everything.

I remember when it was being made about Champion mobs in Orr.I remember when it was being made about the Story Mode Ascalonina dungeon. I remember when Story Mode of Twilight Arbor was "needing a nerf".I remember when the event to defeat the Giant in the Town of Nagaling in Diessa plains was seen as unfairly difficult...

  • these things are all seen as trivial content these days.

When World of Warcraft put out WoW Classic they were accused of having nerfed it to be easier. They ran the numbers to make sure they hadn't made a mistake and found that no - they had done it right. What had occurred was nearly 15 years of player skill.

Everything gets easier once you learn how to use the skills of your character, learning about dodging, learn about so many things...

And with HoT - the one thing that truly made it harder than pre-HoT, the dense maps and hard to reach spots, is a moot point with mounts and gliding...

I'd almost argue it doesn't need a nerf, it needs a buff.

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Bristlebacks. There seems to be no cooldown on their barrage. I burn through my dodge and projectile defense, and they're still hurling wave after wave of spikes at me. I've read people say that if you strafe they can't turn fast enough to keep the barrage on you, but that is not my experience. Is there a trick to them?

Pocket raptors. I tend to play AoE or cleave type builds, which makes these not such a big deal. But they seem to really take out people who don't play AoE builds. Is the answer that you have to pick AoE to survive HoT?

AoE ground skills. HoT designers really had a thing for this. There are times where a handful of foes can cover the area so thoroughly that there literally is no place to not "stand in the fire".

Those are the specific issues I can think of that I've consistently run across in HoT. Would love pointers on dealing with them.

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@Gibson.4036 said:Pocket raptors. I tend to play AoE or cleave type builds, which makes these not such a big deal. But they seem to really take out people who don't play AoE builds. Is the answer that you have to pick AoE to survive HoT?

any damage output while blocking melts those raptors, also taking the initiative helps a lot: if you kill off 2-3 before they hit you, the pack is a lot easier.

pocket raptors are a natural counter to single-target dps builds, so in that you just came to the wrong neighborhood and have to run. running however works fairly well, pocket raptors always walk straight away from you after biting, no matter if it hit or not and they only apply bleeding, no cripple, so they help you run away by running themselves and don't obstruct you.

i have to say i never had problems against them but i played a rather defensive build on my mesmer (sword 2 in the old long evade ... need i say more how to deal with them back then?) when i started HoT and later came the chrono with shield double block + wells and the rev with shield + glint aoe (which quite literally burns through pocket raptors), so i haven't really experienced the squishy side. i can imagine ranged weapons being clearly inferior as they lack the AoE in auto-attacks. auto-attacks might not be the most damaging thing but they never lock you in active frames and against pocket raptors mobility helps a lot.no AoE and ranged? you can only hope being a ranger that can send his pet first but ... a ranged ranger does have AoE, so there isn't that problem in the first place ...

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@WorldofBay.8160 said:

@Gibson.4036 said:Pocket raptors. I tend to play AoE or cleave type builds, which makes these not such a big deal. But they seem to really take out people who don't play AoE builds. Is the answer that you have to pick AoE to survive HoT?

any damage output while blocking melts those raptors, also taking the initiative helps a lot: if you kill off 2-3 before they hit you, the pack is a lot easier.

pocket raptors are a natural counter to single-target dps builds, so in that you just came to the wrong neighborhood and have to run. running however works fairly well, pocket raptors always walk straight away from you after biting, no matter if it hit or not and they only apply bleeding, no cripple, so they help you run away by running themselves and don't obstruct you.

That's good info, thanks. I've never had much problem with them as I tend to prefer AoE builds. Bounding Staff DD, Axe Mirage, and Holosmith are my main characters, and they all take out groups of pocket raptors easily. I've seen others get messed up by them, though, so I thought I'd ask.

Now that I think about it, one of the issues with them for players is probably that they are tiny and hard to notice until they are surrounding you, which keeps ranged players from taking them out at a distance before getting swarmed.

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@"Gibson.4036" said:Bristlebacks. There seems to be no cooldown on their barrage. I burn through my dodge and projectile defense, and they're still hurling wave after wave of spikes at me. I've read people say that if you strafe they can't turn fast enough to keep the barrage on you, but that is not my experience. Is there a trick to them?

Pocket raptors. I tend to play AoE or cleave type builds, which makes these not such a big deal. But they seem to really take out people who don't play AoE builds. Is the answer that you have to pick AoE to survive HoT?

AoE ground skills. HoT designers really had a thing for this. There are times where a handful of foes can cover the area so thoroughly that there literally is no place to not "stand in the fire".

Those are the specific issues I can think of that I've consistently run across in HoT. Would love pointers on dealing with them.

The trick to bristlebacks is that they force many players to play defensively, which is exactly the wrong way to handle these guys. As you note, you have a limited amount of projectile defense, evasion, etc. If you exhaust all of these defenses along with CC for the breakbar and the bristleback still isn't dead because you're too busy dancing around and not dealing damage, it's going to be trouble. You don't want to keep these guys around any longer than you have to!

I utilize projectile defense here (swirling winds and magnetic wave) to protect myself from their barrage, ignore the breakbar, and just go for the fast burn. There is no way I can survive two of these guys at once for long, so ideally I want to have at least one of them down before the second barrage. If you're out of steam and need to buy some time playing defensively after that, it's manageable when there is only one. But you still need to deal some damage eventually or you'll likely be overwhelmed.

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It seems that noone has a clear idea of what "difficult" or "hard" means for others and even for themselves.Maybe we should try to clarify the terms.There is a consensus that newer players will hit a cliff edge once beginning HoT.Climbing the cliff is difficult.Once that's done, experience players seem to say they are on a cozy plateau that offer no challenge at all.Since it is a discussion about game difficulty, we might want to focus on what the cliff is made of, and maybe extend it ad vitam eternam for those who want hard content.IMO, the main thing that makes the game difficult for new players, is that they completely lack information so everything is random to them.

  • Attacks pattern are unknown. You don't know what the attacks are, how often or in what circumstance they occurs; the condition in which they are annoying, dangerous or fatal; how to mitigate or avoid them.
  • Mob resistance: you have no idea which mobs must be burst to death and which will resist your burst, leaving you helpless. Especially in mixed group.
  • Spawn points: you have no idea where/when a group of mobs will suddenly pop to ruin your day. Also invisible mobs.
  • Misleading UI: marking on the soil is non indicative of the dangers of attacks. Some will kill you, some mark the only safe spot. They might be hidden under leafs. Also unbreakable break-bar.
  • Confusing map: every branch is a gamble. Every path is randomly a straight path, quarter circle or half circle of random curvature. Anyway they are always looping on themselves unless you happen to notice the hidden "escape the loop" hidden somewhere on one of the way. The typical mission will be to follow a convoluted sequence of unspecified unmarked locations.
  • Inventory death. Thinking of getting rid of that 8cp useless item? Well, good luck. Be prepared to get ambushed and killed while doing so. May involve a random (re)spawn or a random patrol of stun-locking crowd.
  • Crowded space: random aggro range will ensure that you will more often than not be facing 2 or 3 pack of mobs. Be sure to pair that with very large deadly AoEs on the mob side.
  • No escape route: mounts, gliders, mushrooms are for casuals. Jumping of a cliff should always be a gambit between certain death and mostly certain death. Sometime you will add an invisible wall or an irregularity in the soil that will either block you or sending you off the ledge. For tradition sake, bats should also do that as a free attack.
  • No niceness like merchants. Those QoL elements do not apply in hard mode. It also could rob you of inventory death.

Feel free to add to your wishlist of things to add for hard content. I think all these could be implemented in a dungeon randomly regenerated each week.

I don't think knowledge of your build factors much in the difficulty faced by new players.My experience is that1) moving speed is very important;2) range build gives you a better view on the battlefield which gives you a better ability to learn attack patterns. You will still die a lot (melee range is sometime safer).

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That is a good list, Adiabatik.

One thing I've noticed is aggro distances and ranged mobs can create seemingly endless chains if you are playing a melee build. You end up in a fight with a melee mob that moves a bit, and in the process of killing it trigger one or two ranged mobs who stand on their spots and pewpew from a distance. Once you've dealth with the melee, you move over to the ranged to defeat it, but it stands in the aggro radius of yet another mob, ad infinitum. Areas like this mean a new player who manages to deal will be facing a matter of time until they slip up. There's very little breathing space.

As to lacking information, there are definitely portions of the game where all you can do is go google things after you die. Not HoT, but an example for me was Ley-Energy Buildup. It took me several bounties to figure out that if I got glowing orbs around my character I needed to, very counterintuitively, go find a glowing orb to stand next to in order to not quickly die. It took a wiki search to figure out what this mechanic atually is and how it works. By the number of people I see dropping in bountie events, this still mistifies people. Some things the game explains well, others, not so much.

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@"Adiabatik.6714" said:It seems that noone has a clear idea of what "difficult" or "hard" means for others and even for themselves.Maybe we should try to clarify the terms.There is a consensus that newer players will hit a cliff edge once beginning HoT.Climbing the cliff is difficult.Once that's done, experience players seem to say they are on a cozy plateau that offer no challenge at all.Since it is a discussion about game difficulty, we might want to focus on what the cliff is made of, and maybe extend it ad vitam eternam for those who want hard content.IMO, the main thing that makes the game difficult for new players, is that they completely lack information so everything is random to them.

  • Attacks pattern are unknown. You don't know what the attacks are, how often or in what circumstance they occurs; the condition in which they are annoying, dangerous or fatal; how to mitigate or avoid them.
  • Mob resistance: you have no idea which mobs must be burst to death and which will resist your burst, leaving you helpless. Especially in mixed group.
  • Spawn points: you have no idea where/when a group of mobs will suddenly pop to ruin your day. Also invisible mobs.
  • Misleading UI: marking on the soil is non indicative of the dangers of attacks. Some will kill you, some mark the only safe spot. They might be hidden under leafs. Also unbreakable break-bar.
  • Confusing map: every branch is a gamble. Every path is randomly a straight path, quarter circle or half circle of random curvature. Anyway they are always looping on themselves unless you happen to notice the hidden "escape the loop" hidden somewhere on one of the way. The typical mission will be to follow a convoluted sequence of unspecified unmarked locations.
  • Inventory death. Thinking of getting rid of that 8cp useless item? Well, good luck. Be prepared to get ambushed and killed while doing so. May involve a random (re)spawn or a random patrol of stun-locking crowd.
  • Crowded space: random aggro range will ensure that you will more often than not be facing 2 or 3 pack of mobs. Be sure to pair that with very large deadly AoEs on the mob side.
  • No escape route: mounts, gliders, mushrooms are for casuals. Jumping of a cliff should always be a gambit between certain death and mostly certain death. Sometime you will add an invisible wall or an irregularity in the soil that will either block you or sending you off the ledge. For tradition sake, bats should also do that as a free attack.
  • No niceness like merchants. Those QoL elements do not apply in hard mode. It also could rob you of inventory death.

Feel free to add to your wishlist of things to add for hard content. I think all these could be implemented in a dungeon randomly regenerated each week.

I don't think knowledge of your build factors much in the difficulty faced by new players.My experience is that1) moving speed is very important;2) range build gives you a better view on the battlefield which gives you a better ability to learn attack patterns. You will still die a lot (melee range is sometime safer).

most people take one look at the cliff, and say "nope". good luck in finding someone to pay for all this. unless you find a buried treasure, it aint happening

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I don't know if challenging bosses should necessarily be in solo story instances, but I would not like to see difficult bosses removed from the open world. In fact I would like to see more of them as long as they are optional to defeat. It always brings a smile to my face when a large group fights the ley-infused champion hydra in Melandru's Lost Domain in Dragonfall and the hydra downs three quarters of the group in three seconds if we miss a dodge. Same for the ley-infused champion shadow elemental that can heal from 30% health to full health if no one kills the monk adds that spawn. It reminds me that some enemies can actually be dangerous and down you if you become complacent.

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@battledrone.8315 said:

@"Adiabatik.6714" said:It seems that noone has a clear idea of what "difficult" or "hard" means for others and even for themselves.Maybe we should try to clarify the terms.There is a consensus that newer players will hit a cliff edge once beginning HoT.Climbing the cliff is difficult.Once that's done, experience players seem to say they are on a cozy plateau that offer no challenge at all.Since it is a discussion about game difficulty, we might want to focus on what the cliff is made of, and maybe extend it ad vitam eternam for those who want hard content.IMO, the main thing that makes the game difficult for new players, is that they completely lack information so everything is random to them.
  • Attacks pattern are unknown. You don't know what the attacks are, how often or in what circumstance they occurs; the condition in which they are annoying, dangerous or fatal; how to mitigate or avoid them.
  • Mob resistance: you have no idea which mobs must be burst to death and which will resist your burst, leaving you helpless. Especially in mixed group.
  • Spawn points: you have no idea where/when a group of mobs will suddenly pop to ruin your day. Also invisible mobs.
  • Misleading UI: marking on the soil is non indicative of the dangers of attacks. Some will kill you, some mark the only safe spot. They might be hidden under leafs. Also unbreakable break-bar.
  • Confusing map: every branch is a gamble. Every path is randomly a straight path, quarter circle or half circle of random curvature. Anyway they are always looping on themselves unless you happen to notice the hidden "escape the loop" hidden somewhere on one of the way. The typical mission will be to follow a convoluted sequence of unspecified unmarked locations.
  • Inventory death. Thinking of getting rid of that 8cp useless item? Well, good luck. Be prepared to get ambushed and killed while doing so. May involve a random (re)spawn or a random patrol of stun-locking crowd.
  • Crowded space: random aggro range will ensure that you will more often than not be facing 2 or 3 pack of mobs. Be sure to pair that with very large deadly AoEs on the mob side.
  • No escape route: mounts, gliders, mushrooms are for casuals. Jumping of a cliff should always be a gambit between certain death and mostly certain death. Sometime you will add an invisible wall or an irregularity in the soil that will either block you or sending you off the ledge. For tradition sake, bats should also do that as a free attack.
  • No niceness like merchants. Those QoL elements do not apply in hard mode. It also could rob you of inventory death.

Feel free to add to your wishlist of things to add for hard content. I think all these could be implemented in a dungeon randomly regenerated each week.

I don't think knowledge of your build factors much in the difficulty faced by new players.My experience is that1) moving speed is very important;2) range build gives you a better view on the battlefield which gives you a better ability to learn attack patterns. You will still die a lot (melee range is sometime safer).

most people take one look at the cliff, and say "nope". good luck in finding someone to pay for all this. unless you find a buried treasure, it aint happening

You (and I) are not "most" people. It's obvious that you strongly believe that you are representative of the average player. As a player who spends a great deal of time escorting new players through HoT, I can say that most of the players I assist have nowhere near as visceral a reaction to HoT as you do. In fact, most of them seem to appreciate the challenge (the combat if not the navigation!) but recognize that they need to tweak their build, familiarize themselves with effective strategy, and practice in order to feel comfortable on these maps. I believe that was the intent of the design as well.

You're welcome to your opinion, but you don't speak for the average player. "Most" people aren't looking at the cliff and seeing what you see. A lot of them are rising to a challenge that the core game sorely lacks. I would know because I was one of them and I meet others every day. You don't because you don't even spend any time in HoT. How can you claim to speak for "most" players in an area you don't even venture into?

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@Atomos.7593 said:It reminds me that some enemies can actually be dangerous and down you if you become complacent.

you'd actually appreciate bosses that can pose a threat if not taken seriously like Drakkar where you can actually get downed/die if you ignore aoe markers or mechanics (and even then it's not even a hard boss, just a lot of health, phases and mechanics that can punish you if you ignore them)

compare it to something like shadow behemoth which is quite a joke. you can't even die if you eat the big circle aoe (you just get knocked back) it occasionally throws at your spot where you sit and spam 1 with a ranged weapon.

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@Astyrah.4015 said:

@Atomos.7593 said:It reminds me that some enemies can actually be dangerous and down you if you become complacent.

you'd actually appreciate bosses that can pose a threat if not taken seriously like Drakkar where you can actually get downed/die if you ignore aoe markers or mechanics (and even then it's not even a hard boss, just a lot of health, phases and mechanics that can punish you if you ignore them)

compare it to something like shadow behemoth which is quite a joke. you can't even die if you eat the big circle aoe (you just get knocked back) it occasionally throws at your spot where you sit and spam 1 with a ranged weapon.

Sadly I haven't been able to join a Bjora Marches meta event with Drakkar. The map seems empty every time I go there. Yeah from the GW2 Wiki it seems like there is a lot of different phases and adds that must be killed. The fight does sound fun.

The thing I particularly liked about the two bosses I mentioned before are that you can't just use a massive group to kill the boss and ignore all individual player skill. Individually all the players will need to be able to dodge the crystals and charge from the hydra to not be cc'ed and die quickly. Similarly with the elemental the individual players need to watch for and quickly attack specific priority targets that spawn in the middle of the chaos to avoid failing.

In HoT specifically, the hardest bosses I found were the legendary wyvern and mushroom kings, but I was able to outheal most of their damage on my rev so it wasn't too tough. Maybe those fights were harder before the HoT nerf.

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@AliamRationem.5172 said:

@"Adiabatik.6714" said:It seems that noone has a clear idea of what "difficult" or "hard" means for others and even for themselves.Maybe we should try to clarify the terms.There is a consensus that newer players will hit a cliff edge once beginning HoT.Climbing the cliff is difficult.Once that's done, experience players seem to say they are on a cozy plateau that offer no challenge at all.Since it is a discussion about game difficulty, we might want to focus on what the cliff is made of, and maybe extend it ad vitam eternam for those who want hard content.IMO, the main thing that makes the game difficult for new players, is that they completely lack information so everything is random to them.
  • Attacks pattern are unknown. You don't know what the attacks are, how often or in what circumstance they occurs; the condition in which they are annoying, dangerous or fatal; how to mitigate or avoid them.
  • Mob resistance: you have no idea which mobs must be burst to death and which will resist your burst, leaving you helpless. Especially in mixed group.
  • Spawn points: you have no idea where/when a group of mobs will suddenly pop to ruin your day. Also invisible mobs.
  • Misleading UI: marking on the soil is non indicative of the dangers of attacks. Some will kill you, some mark the only safe spot. They might be hidden under leafs. Also unbreakable break-bar.
  • Confusing map: every branch is a gamble. Every path is randomly a straight path, quarter circle or half circle of random curvature. Anyway they are always looping on themselves unless you happen to notice the hidden "escape the loop" hidden somewhere on one of the way. The typical mission will be to follow a convoluted sequence of unspecified unmarked locations.
  • Inventory death. Thinking of getting rid of that 8cp useless item? Well, good luck. Be prepared to get ambushed and killed while doing so. May involve a random (re)spawn or a random patrol of stun-locking crowd.
  • Crowded space: random aggro range will ensure that you will more often than not be facing 2 or 3 pack of mobs. Be sure to pair that with very large deadly AoEs on the mob side.
  • No escape route: mounts, gliders, mushrooms are for casuals. Jumping of a cliff should always be a gambit between certain death and mostly certain death. Sometime you will add an invisible wall or an irregularity in the soil that will either block you or sending you off the ledge. For tradition sake, bats should also do that as a free attack.
  • No niceness like merchants. Those QoL elements do not apply in hard mode. It also could rob you of inventory death.

Feel free to add to your wishlist of things to add for hard content. I think all these could be implemented in a dungeon randomly regenerated each week.

I don't think knowledge of your build factors much in the difficulty faced by new players.My experience is that1) moving speed is very important;2) range build gives you a better view on the battlefield which gives you a better ability to learn attack patterns. You will still die a lot (melee range is sometime safer).

most people take one look at the cliff, and say "nope". good luck in finding someone to pay for all this. unless you find a buried treasure, it aint happening

You (and I) are not "most" people. It's obvious that you strongly believe that you are representative of the average player. As a player who spends a great deal of time escorting new players through HoT, I can say that most of the players I assist have nowhere near as visceral a reaction to HoT as you do. In fact, most of them seem to appreciate the challenge (the combat if not the navigation!) but recognize that they need to tweak their build, familiarize themselves with effective strategy, and practice in order to feel comfortable on these maps. I believe that was the intent of the design as well.

You're welcome to your opinion, but you don't speak for the average player. "Most" people aren't looking at the cliff and seeing what you see. A lot of them are rising to a challenge that the core game sorely lacks. I would know because I was one of them and I meet others every day. You don't because you don't even spend any time in HoT. How can you claim to speak for "most" players in an area you don't even venture into?

Perhaps the experience of being escorted through versus the experience of not being escorted through are different.

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@"Gibson.4036" said:As to lacking information, there are definitely portions of the game where all you can do is go google things after you die. Not HoT, but an example for me was Ley-Energy Buildup. It took me several bounties to figure out that if I got glowing orbs around my character I needed to, very counterintuitively, go find a glowing orb to stand next to in order to not quickly die. It took a wiki search to figure out what this mechanic atually is and how it works. By the number of people I see dropping in bountie events, this still mistifies people. Some things the game explains well, others, not so much.

it took a wiki search for you but you might've just looked at the corresponding effect on the bounty and read the solution ingame:Find ley-energy orbs to discharge damaging buildup.or you could've looked at that new effect on your end:Find an active ley-energy orb to discharge.

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@"Hesione.9412" said:Perhaps the experience of being escorted through versus the experience of not being escorted through are different.

I made a friend playing WvW who's been doing PvE as well. Started like three weeks ago, bought the expansion last week. We did a but if PoF together to fast-track some espec unlocks. Their response to starting HoT (alone) was "Hey, this is a lot harder than the other zones!" —100% surprise and 0% complaint, as far as I could tell. They're a well-rounded player who also likes Fractals, WvW, and SPvP; HoT seems to fit just into that.

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@AliamRationem.5172 said:

@"Adiabatik.6714" said:It seems that noone has a clear idea of what "difficult" or "hard" means for others and even for themselves.Maybe we should try to clarify the terms.There is a consensus that newer players will hit a cliff edge once beginning HoT.Climbing the cliff is difficult.Once that's done, experience players seem to say they are on a cozy plateau that offer no challenge at all.Since it is a discussion about game difficulty, we might want to focus on what the cliff is made of, and maybe extend it ad vitam eternam for those who want hard content.IMO, the main thing that makes the game difficult for new players, is that they completely lack information so everything is random to them.
  • Attacks pattern are unknown. You don't know what the attacks are, how often or in what circumstance they occurs; the condition in which they are annoying, dangerous or fatal; how to mitigate or avoid them.
  • Mob resistance: you have no idea which mobs must be burst to death and which will resist your burst, leaving you helpless. Especially in mixed group.
  • Spawn points: you have no idea where/when a group of mobs will suddenly pop to ruin your day. Also invisible mobs.
  • Misleading UI: marking on the soil is non indicative of the dangers of attacks. Some will kill you, some mark the only safe spot. They might be hidden under leafs. Also unbreakable break-bar.
  • Confusing map: every branch is a gamble. Every path is randomly a straight path, quarter circle or half circle of random curvature. Anyway they are always looping on themselves unless you happen to notice the hidden "escape the loop" hidden somewhere on one of the way. The typical mission will be to follow a convoluted sequence of unspecified unmarked locations.
  • Inventory death. Thinking of getting rid of that 8cp useless item? Well, good luck. Be prepared to get ambushed and killed while doing so. May involve a random (re)spawn or a random patrol of stun-locking crowd.
  • Crowded space: random aggro range will ensure that you will more often than not be facing 2 or 3 pack of mobs. Be sure to pair that with very large deadly AoEs on the mob side.
  • No escape route: mounts, gliders, mushrooms are for casuals. Jumping of a cliff should always be a gambit between certain death and mostly certain death. Sometime you will add an invisible wall or an irregularity in the soil that will either block you or sending you off the ledge. For tradition sake, bats should also do that as a free attack.
  • No niceness like merchants. Those QoL elements do not apply in hard mode. It also could rob you of inventory death.

Feel free to add to your wishlist of things to add for hard content. I think all these could be implemented in a dungeon randomly regenerated each week.

I don't think knowledge of your build factors much in the difficulty faced by new players.My experience is that1) moving speed is very important;2) range build gives you a better view on the battlefield which gives you a better ability to learn attack patterns. You will still die a lot (melee range is sometime safer).

most people take one look at the cliff, and say "nope". good luck in finding someone to pay for all this. unless you find a buried treasure, it aint happening

You (and I) are not "most" people. It's obvious that you strongly believe that you are representative of the average player. As a player who spends a great deal of time escorting new players through HoT, I can say that most of the players I assist have nowhere near as visceral a reaction to HoT as you do. In fact, most of them seem to appreciate the challenge (the combat if not the navigation!) but recognize that they need to tweak their build, familiarize themselves with effective strategy, and practice in order to feel comfortable on these maps. I believe that was the intent of the design as well.

You're welcome to your opinion, but you don't speak for the average player. "Most" people aren't looking at the cliff and seeing what you see. A lot of them are rising to a challenge that the core game sorely lacks. I would know because I was one of them and I meet others every day. You don't because you don't even spend any time in HoT. How can you claim to speak for "most" players in an area you don't even venture into?

turns out i am actually BETTER than average (in this game at least) . i am STILL in the top 10 % APs.how do you explain THAT one? if all those happy players had done hot and beyond, that wouldnt be the case, would it?

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@battledrone.8315 said:

@"Adiabatik.6714" said:It seems that noone has a clear idea of what "difficult" or "hard" means for others and even for themselves.Maybe we should try to clarify the terms.There is a consensus that newer players will hit a cliff edge once beginning HoT.Climbing the cliff is difficult.Once that's done, experience players seem to say they are on a cozy plateau that offer no challenge at all.Since it is a discussion about game difficulty, we might want to focus on what the cliff is made of, and maybe extend it ad vitam eternam for those who want hard content.IMO, the main thing that makes the game difficult for new players, is that they completely lack information so everything is random to them.
  • Attacks pattern are unknown. You don't know what the attacks are, how often or in what circumstance they occurs; the condition in which they are annoying, dangerous or fatal; how to mitigate or avoid them.
  • Mob resistance: you have no idea which mobs must be burst to death and which will resist your burst, leaving you helpless. Especially in mixed group.
  • Spawn points: you have no idea where/when a group of mobs will suddenly pop to ruin your day. Also invisible mobs.
  • Misleading UI: marking on the soil is non indicative of the dangers of attacks. Some will kill you, some mark the only safe spot. They might be hidden under leafs. Also unbreakable break-bar.
  • Confusing map: every branch is a gamble. Every path is randomly a straight path, quarter circle or half circle of random curvature. Anyway they are always looping on themselves unless you happen to notice the hidden "escape the loop" hidden somewhere on one of the way. The typical mission will be to follow a convoluted sequence of unspecified unmarked locations.
  • Inventory death. Thinking of getting rid of that 8cp useless item? Well, good luck. Be prepared to get ambushed and killed while doing so. May involve a random (re)spawn or a random patrol of stun-locking crowd.
  • Crowded space: random aggro range will ensure that you will more often than not be facing 2 or 3 pack of mobs. Be sure to pair that with very large deadly AoEs on the mob side.
  • No escape route: mounts, gliders, mushrooms are for casuals. Jumping of a cliff should always be a gambit between certain death and mostly certain death. Sometime you will add an invisible wall or an irregularity in the soil that will either block you or sending you off the ledge. For tradition sake, bats should also do that as a free attack.
  • No niceness like merchants. Those QoL elements do not apply in hard mode. It also could rob you of inventory death.

Feel free to add to your wishlist of things to add for hard content. I think all these could be implemented in a dungeon randomly regenerated each week.

I don't think knowledge of your build factors much in the difficulty faced by new players.My experience is that1) moving speed is very important;2) range build gives you a better view on the battlefield which gives you a better ability to learn attack patterns. You will still die a lot (melee range is sometime safer).

most people take one look at the cliff, and say "nope". good luck in finding someone to pay for all this. unless you find a buried treasure, it aint happening

You (and I) are not "most" people. It's obvious that you strongly believe that you are representative of the average player. As a player who spends a great deal of time escorting new players through HoT, I can say that most of the players I assist have nowhere near as visceral a reaction to HoT as you do. In fact, most of them seem to appreciate the challenge (the combat if not the navigation!) but recognize that they need to tweak their build, familiarize themselves with effective strategy, and practice in order to feel comfortable on these maps. I believe that was the intent of the design as well.

You're welcome to your opinion, but you don't speak for the average player. "Most" people aren't looking at the cliff and seeing what you see. A lot of them are rising to a challenge that the core game sorely lacks. I would know because I was one of them and I meet others every day. You don't because you don't even spend any time in HoT. How can you claim to speak for "most" players in an area you don't even venture into?

turns out i am actually BETTER than average (in this game at least) . i am STILL in the top 10 % APs.how do you explain THAT one? if all those happy players had done hot and beyond, that wouldnt be the case, would it?

Ap dont mean anything tho as you can gain high ap without ever touching harder content. Before hot ap meant something in dungeons unless you played necro or ranger so no ap dont merit skill . You think you are right most ppl actually want to play a game not click and wait to win . You want a game wich is easy there is many others. Ppl who enjoyed core also got bored as there was no incentive of improvement as you only ever needed to use one skill your auto. But diffrence you dont want to improve you want everything else to be made easy so game can hold your hand more. You dont represent avrage player. As the avrage player would learn eventually you quited the second it got demanding and shouts its impossible. Dark souls isnt hard its a game there you learn from mistakes and get better. In core everything was same in difficulty orr was no harder than queensdale so game had no challenge to overcome just same enemies with diffrent skins and sounds to drone away by auto attacking

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@"WorldofBay.8160" said:

it took a wiki search for you but you might've just looked at the corresponding effect on the bounty and read the solution ingame:Find ley-energy orbs to discharge damaging buildup.or you could've looked at that new effect on your end:Find an active ley-energy orb to discharge.

I take it you mean by doing mouseovers for the effect icons?

I've tried to do a little of that in some places, but it's quite the challenge to find the right icon in a sea of effect icons while also dancing around the markings on the groung in the middle of a cloud of fireworks. If someone is having trouble with an event, "mouse over the icons and read the tooltips" is about the most awkward communication the game could provide.

There are many visual effects in the game that are designed with clarity even in the heat of the battle. Others, not so much.

Granted, it seems there are a significant amount of players that don't even understand "circle with arrows in" versus "circle with arrows out", which is one of the biggest, simplest neon signs in the game, but there are some like Ley Energ Buildup that I still think are designed counterintuitive. The design seems inconsistent.

Even with written out tips, sometimes they are unmissable, big words across the upper middle of your screen, sometimes it's small text off to the upper right you need to know to watch for in order to get instructions on what is happening.

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I also find the disco balls to be a muddled mechanic visually:

  1. The screen effect doesn't really communicate your level of "buildup" very clearly, imo -- you don't actually need to dive into the energy sink right away, but it can sorta feel like you do. (Compare to the Bjora Marches ice-over effect, which has a much clearer "oh no this is escalating" visual style.)

  2. The energy sink itself doesn't really look like anything. To me, the static floaty orbs don't communicate "energy is moving here, this is the place to go," and because they're white and the screen effect is white, it's actually harder to notice them when you really need them.

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@Gibson.4036 said:

@"WorldofBay.8160" said:

it took a wiki search for you but you might've just looked at the corresponding effect on the bounty and read the solution ingame:
or you could've looked at that new effect on your end:

I take it you mean by doing mouseovers for the effect icons?

I've tried to do a little of that in some places, but it's quite the challenge to find the right icon in a sea of effect icons while also dancing around the markings on the groung in the middle of a cloud of fireworks. If someone is having trouble with an event, "mouse over the icons and read the tooltips" is about the most awkward communication the game could provide.

you can post those effects in any chat. if you know you have trouble reading these kinds of effects in a battle try the following: open a whisper with yourself. ctrl + left click any icon you don't recognize immediately to post them all in your superprivate whisper. now you have those effects all in your chat, easily visible and readable (mouseover ofc still needed) and can read them mid-battle.i do that quite often, though i use guild chat as i have a rather empty guild where it doesn't bother others.

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"battledrone.8315" said:how do you explain THAT one? if all those happy players had done hot and beyond, that wouldnt be the case, would it?

It simply means the vast majority of players that bought this game, and those that tried it since it got free, quit it a very very long time before reaching your "level".

but if so many players, as you claim , had done hot and beyond, they would had earned more APS than me , right?i should be WAY further down the list, specially since i havent played for so long now.what happened to them? did they hurry up and uninstall the game before the achievement got registered?i also note, that your response validates the blizzard ratios even more.and its quite funny, that a filthy casual, like me, still did more, than the majority of players in this game

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@Laila Lightness.8742 said:

@"Adiabatik.6714" said:It seems that noone has a clear idea of what "difficult" or "hard" means for others and even for themselves.Maybe we should try to clarify the terms.There is a consensus that newer players will hit a cliff edge once beginning HoT.Climbing the cliff is difficult.Once that's done, experience players seem to say they are on a cozy plateau that offer no challenge at all.Since it is a discussion about game difficulty, we might want to focus on what the cliff is made of, and maybe extend it ad vitam eternam for those who want hard content.IMO, the main thing that makes the game difficult for new players, is that they completely lack information so everything is random to them.
  • Attacks pattern are unknown. You don't know what the attacks are, how often or in what circumstance they occurs; the condition in which they are annoying, dangerous or fatal; how to mitigate or avoid them.
  • Mob resistance: you have no idea which mobs must be burst to death and which will resist your burst, leaving you helpless. Especially in mixed group.
  • Spawn points: you have no idea where/when a group of mobs will suddenly pop to ruin your day. Also invisible mobs.
  • Misleading UI: marking on the soil is non indicative of the dangers of attacks. Some will kill you, some mark the only safe spot. They might be hidden under leafs. Also unbreakable break-bar.
  • Confusing map: every branch is a gamble. Every path is randomly a straight path, quarter circle or half circle of random curvature. Anyway they are always looping on themselves unless you happen to notice the hidden "escape the loop" hidden somewhere on one of the way. The typical mission will be to follow a convoluted sequence of unspecified unmarked locations.
  • Inventory death. Thinking of getting rid of that 8cp useless item? Well, good luck. Be prepared to get ambushed and killed while doing so. May involve a random (re)spawn or a random patrol of stun-locking crowd.
  • Crowded space: random aggro range will ensure that you will more often than not be facing 2 or 3 pack of mobs. Be sure to pair that with very large deadly AoEs on the mob side.
  • No escape route: mounts, gliders, mushrooms are for casuals. Jumping of a cliff should always be a gambit between certain death and mostly certain death. Sometime you will add an invisible wall or an irregularity in the soil that will either block you or sending you off the ledge. For tradition sake, bats should also do that as a free attack.
  • No niceness like merchants. Those QoL elements do not apply in hard mode. It also could rob you of inventory death.

Feel free to add to your wishlist of things to add for hard content. I think all these could be implemented in a dungeon randomly regenerated each week.

I don't think knowledge of your build factors much in the difficulty faced by new players.My experience is that1) moving speed is very important;2) range build gives you a better view on the battlefield which gives you a better ability to learn attack patterns. You will still die a lot (melee range is sometime safer).

most people take one look at the cliff, and say "nope". good luck in finding someone to pay for all this. unless you find a buried treasure, it aint happening

You (and I) are not "most" people. It's obvious that you strongly believe that you are representative of the average player. As a player who spends a great deal of time escorting new players through HoT, I can say that most of the players I assist have nowhere near as visceral a reaction to HoT as you do. In fact, most of them seem to appreciate the challenge (the combat if not the navigation!) but recognize that they need to tweak their build, familiarize themselves with effective strategy, and practice in order to feel comfortable on these maps. I believe that was the intent of the design as well.

You're welcome to your opinion, but you don't speak for the average player. "Most" people aren't looking at the cliff and seeing what you see. A lot of them are rising to a challenge that the core game sorely lacks. I would know because I was one of them and I meet others every day. You don't because you don't even spend any time in HoT. How can you claim to speak for "most" players in an area you don't even venture into?

turns out i am actually BETTER than average (in this game at least) . i am STILL in the top 10 % APs.how do you explain THAT one? if all those happy players had done hot and beyond, that wouldnt be the case, would it?

Ap dont mean anything tho as you can gain high ap without ever touching harder content. Before hot ap meant something in dungeons unless you played necro or ranger so no ap dont merit skill . You think you are right most ppl actually want to play a game not click and wait to win . You want a game wich is easy there is many others. Ppl who enjoyed core also got bored as there was no incentive of improvement as you only ever needed to use one skill your auto. But diffrence you dont want to improve you want everything else to be made easy so game can hold your hand more. You dont represent avrage player. As the avrage player would learn eventually you quited the second it got demanding and shouts its impossible. Dark souls isnt hard its a game there you learn from mistakes and get better. In core everything was same in difficulty orr was no harder than queensdale so game had no challenge to overcome just same enemies with diffrent skins and sounds to drone away by auto attacking

but you cant finish story content WITHOUT getting APs, and that means, that active players should had pushed me way further down the list.and if you believe, that orr has same difficulty, as queensdale, i have nothing more to say to you

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