Manijin.3428

<- Did the fight on a Carrion Geared Ele, Sword/Focus, with 0 hard CC, first time. Has a slow computer that plays the game only with the lowest settings, not great internet. It's a L2P issue. GW1 was designed around being group content, and had the frequent issue of having to worry about overpulls, spike damage, condition lockdown, and lots of other problems just from random wandering packs of PvE mobs. If one member of your party went down, it was a massive loss and could lead to a wipe. Escort missions? Frequently could lead to a wipe. Timed missions? Wipe. Some missions were just intensely difficult in their own right, regardless of party comp. GW1 was a hard game that required you to change your builds around on a mission by mission basis, and frequently wiping or failing was just a way that you learned your build was deficient in some way. But no. All of a sudden GW2 can't do that. It's terrible game design to encourage your players to learn and understand the depth of your game system. The fight isn't hard. Players are bad.

The content IS soloable for everyone. Just gotta learn how to do it. This is GW style stuff right here. If you think this one solo story instance is bad, I strongly recommend not playing GW1. Learning from your failures is part of getting better at the game, and I'm glad ANet has taken some steps over the years to encourage their player base to become more skilled. Yeah, it's frustrating sometimes, but the great thing about learning is that it opens up new horizons for your experience. I remember back when GW2 launched, and doing dungeons with undergeared, level-appropriate groups, before specializations, when people hadn't even unlocked their elite skills, etc. What the experience taught me was that 1) Dying was a natural part of the game experience, and 2) You needed to be flexible in your approach to solving problems. Now, at level 80 that all kinda fell apart, but those lessons stuck with me, so I've resisted all the calls to go pure Zerk, etc., because I learned early on that having survivability through traits and gear made the game MUCH more palatable, and really made it quite easy, but that you also can't go too tanky if you're doing solo content because it takes FOREVER. People just need to learn the game better, swap some stuff around, and find something works. If you're failing at a fight like this, it's possible you've been carried by some meta build that suddenly doesn't work anymore, or by a tanky build that lives through most content, but has numbed you to specific content that requires timelier counters. But GW has always been, since GW1, about being adaptable and flexible, so you just gotta adapt. Hopefully, you'll get past it, because the story really only gets better after this instance. :P

I didn't even realize people were having a problem. Ran through the story on my Carrion Sw/F Fire-Earth-Weaver and didn't even realize he had a healing mechanic. Between invuln.'s, extra leaps, and just paying attention to AoEs and circles, I fought him like any other boss. If you're struggling, consider changing your traits and skills around a bit. I can't imagine anyone having a hard time with this guy, and I've never done raids or high-end fractals.

Wonderful expansion. Much better than HoT, in all respects save for a few. To start, the storytelling, and instances in particular, are excellent. Your writing and story direction feels much more organic, and you seem to be leading the story in a direction that feels more like a sequel to GW1, rather than some totally new, irreverent thing, which is awesome. Special props for including character creation/story decisions in the story itself. My Kormir-blessed human having unique dialogue during SPOILERS was a breath of fresh air, as was Rytlock commenting specifically on elementalists, and then referencing my specific profession! Truly excellent work. I haven't played every elite spec, but I've spent some time with Spellbreaker, Weaver, and Scourge, and I love them all. They all feel engaging, powerful, flavorful, but not overly so in any way (well, Scourge seems ridiculous, lol). I want to give a specific shout out to your excellent, and I mean really excellent, storytelling through mechanics. The spellbreaker, a spec themed on being related to the sunspears opposing Palawa Joko, has tons of boon rip... and the Awakened have the highest boon application, making spellbreakers uniquely great against them. It's great! It explains the choices you made, and really makes spellbreaker feel unique. Major props. The mounts are fun, and I found progression for the mounts to be really balanced overall. The secret mount... costs too much gold. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but the maps themselves are not terribly conducive to farming gold, which means that getting the mount means that players aren't encouraged to play the content the mount is supposedly based in. I would suggest changing the cost to be lots, and LOTS, of trade contracts. Make it really hard to get, sure, but make it reward playing affiliated content rather than just using generic gold. While the story was great, the ending really fun, the sequel-baiting is strong, and it's really frustrating to see the obvious continuation of the story and NOT be able to just go do it. Having a little hint of something leading to the next Living World Season is fine, but you should finish the story you have presented to the players, not go halfway and then cut it off. Overall, though, it's great. I've had a lot of fun moving around, exploring, playing my elite specs, and encountering new enemy and instance types that stretch the boundaries of GW2 to make it feel more like the original game in tone. Overall, 8/10.