The Serpent’s Ire meta event could use some improvements

[Erasculio.2914]

The meta events in HoT were, in my opinion, very well designed. They dealt nicely with something we learned in the “vanilla” GW2 – that an entire map’s worth of players trying to kill a single enemy simply does not work under the GW2 engine. It quickly devolves into a mass of particle effects and character models in which it’s not possible to see what’s happening or to actually have any kind of strategy. It becomes basically a matter of spamming attacks at a big damage sponge.

The meta events in HoT dealt with this in some interesting ways. Most of them required players to split in multiple groups (the four gates to Tarir, the five lanes in Tangled Depths, and so on). Most had some kind of activity other than a fight, usually a different one for each group (such as each of the ways to remove the octovine’s shell, the different ways of drawing the chak gerents, and so on). In Auric Basin, fighting isn’t even the most important part of the event.

In Path of Fire, the meta events feel like a big downgrade in comparison to those in HoT. Serpent’s Ire, the big meta event in the eastern side of Vabbi, is IMO the one in most need of some changes. Right now, it’s made of four phases:

1. Slay veterans around the branded area.

This part is nice – it asks players to split through the whole section of the map looking for veterans to kill, instead of everyone ganging up against a single enemy. IMO, it’s incredibly annoying to fight under the “Fury of the Brand” effect, but I doubt ArenaNet would be willing to remove it or tone it down.

Suggestions for this phase: nothing, really.

2. Slay the Branded Zealots.

Here, we’re asked to find and kill the Branded Zealots. It’s nice that they usually spawn near one of the djinn’s protective bubbles, and that the djinns actually move closer to the fight. However, often everyone doing the event just flocks to kill a zealot at a time, so we end with dozens of players trying to kill a single enemy.

Suggestions for this phase: try to split players into groups, instead of a big zerg killing one zealot at a time. This would allow the fight to be more strategic than just spamming attacks against the big damage sponge, would improve performance for players and would reduce visual pollution in the fights.

I suggest doing so by greatly reducing the time between the Zealot’s spawn, so there are usually three in the map at the same time, and greatly reducing the time available for this phase of the event. Players would thus be forced to seek the Zealots out and split to kill them in time.

3. Kill the Branded Forgotten Zealots before the crystal detonates.

This is my favourite part of the event – players have to split in groups to deal with each of the five zealots in time, and it’s as much a matter of removing their break bar as of doing enough damage. However, it’s a very passive “fight” – the Zealots don’t really fight back, and the enemies that spawn nearby are basically killed in the AoE effects against the Zealots themselves. Also, the Zealots are the same – they are indistinguishable from each other, so the five groups of players are doing the same thing.

Suggestions for this phase: IMO, it mostly works. It would have also been nice if each of the five Zealots were different from each other, so each group of players would have to do something different to kill them. But this is something with a very low priority, in my opinion.

4. Defeat Ysshi Hessani and Pek Rakt Grag

Ok, this is the phase with the most issues. We have the entire map’s population in the same place trying to fight two big enemies that spawn basically on top of each other. The result is a massive mess of particle effects that severely hurts performance and makes any kind of strategy nearly impossible. The hydra’s big purple fire breath is very impressive, but it’s also waaaaaaaaaaay over the top – it showers the entire scream in purple.

It’s not that the fight is hard – I think the only phase with a significant chance of failure is the one to kill the Zealots before the crystal explodes – but that it’s too crowded, with too many particle effects. The way the different stages are signalized is also very poor – Ysshi becomes periodically invulnerable to melee or ranged attacks, but this is signalized only by a small icon appearing on his status bar, and said status bar is already filled with condition effects. It’s possible that something in his animations changes to indicate if he’s invulnerable to range or to melee, but if so I honestly haven’t been able to see it in the mess of that fight.

When he’s low on health, Ysshi will become invulnerable and players have to kill Branded Sparks. This phase could use some work, too – there’s nothing indicating how many sparks we have to kill and they do not spawn all at once, so it’s common for players to just run around wondering if there will be more sparks or if it’s time to go back to the boss.

Suggestions for this phase: again, split players into groups. I know I keep repeating this, but so many players against a single enemy do not work. I suggest:

• Make Ysshi appear on one place, the hydra in other, and the Branded Sparks in a third one. Players would have to split in three groups to deal with all of them at the same time.

• Remove the mechanic in which, if Ysshi dies first, he will resurrect the hydra. Instead, add a timer so both Ysshi and the hydra have to be killed at the same time (with a couple minutes at most of leeway), otherwise the one who has been killed will resurrect.

• Remove the mechanic of Ysshi becoming invulnerable when he’s on low health. Instead, the Branded Spark will spawn continuously, and players have to kill them before their reach their target (for example, they would spawn inside the building at the Grand Court and try to reach a glowing area at the sourth side of the building). Failure to do so would make the sparks power up both Ysshi and the hydra, giving them a stack of a buff. Once they have enough stacks, both enemies would do an unavoidable area of effect attack that kills all players within range (save the hydra’s big purple breath attack for this). This would not be a fail condition, just a big loss of time. The team killing the sparks would then be important, but they would not be responsible for everyone failing the event instantly if some sparks do break through.

Bonus: after the fight.

So, when the event is over, the djinns basically say, “Thank you, our heroes! You have defeated the brand’s champions! Now go back to frying under the brand storm”. It would be polite if they could keep the protective dome over the event area for a few minutes, so players have time to open the reward chest, sort their inventory and then leave the area. Ideally, defeating the branded would remove the “Fury of the Brand” environment effect for a few minutes – like the pause in Mordrem attack we have in Tarir after the event there is successful – so players have a nice denouement for the meta.

[Microundeas.4530]

This totally this :DI have done the event a few times now and the boss fight is just a mess... (this is also a problem when you zerg bouties but that's other topic)Right now hydra is just there to mess with us it adds nothing to the fight, + most of the time we can't even see the atk animations so we can dodge in time.I also agree 100% with the temporary pause of the fury of the brand, i think 10 to 20 min would be enough.

[Silmar Alech.4305]

@Erasculio.2914 said:

3. Kill the Branded Forgotten Zealots before the crystal detonates.

This is my favourite part of the eventNot mine. I never saw this succeed. I was never successful with this meta event. Even in maps with commanders who collected a full map and who very eagerly explained every detail of each fight in chat. After about 5 to 10 fails (I didn't count them), I will not attend to this meta again until I see something in the patch notes that addresses this meta event. Whatever it may be. The break bars of the enemies are too strong. I see it going down from 100% to about 50% very fast, but then everyone who knows about cc used up their cc skills and it is on cooldown for them, and the crystal finally detonates every time.

[jwaz.1908]

I haven't done this meta event yet, but all of your ideas sound like improvements. I especially think removing fury of the brand after the meta finishes for like 5-15 minutes would be good, this could give players the chance to explore the area more. They could even do something similar to dragons stand and put hidden chests throughout the region, since there isn't a good reason to go there.

[LeSavage.1359]

@Silmar Alech.4305 said:

@Erasculio.2914 said:

3. Kill the Branded Forgotten Zealots before the crystal detonates.

This is my favourite part of the eventNot mine. I never saw this succeed. I was never successful with this meta event. Even in maps with commanders who collected a full map and who very eagerly explained every detail of each fight in chat. After about 5 to 10 fails (I didn't count them), I will not attend to this meta again until I see something in the patch notes that addresses this meta event. Whatever it may be. The break bars of the enemies are too strong. I see it going down from 100% to about 50% very fast, but then everyone who knows about cc used up their cc skills and it is on cooldown for them, and the crystal finally detonates every time.

Wierd, i went first time to do this event today. Did it three times, all succeded, zealots had always at least 10mins left. Whole event was very easy, beside the fireworks festival at 2 bosses fight when u cant see a shit

[Ahlen.7591]

@Silmar Alech.4305 said:

@Erasculio.2914 said:

3. Kill the Branded Forgotten Zealots before the crystal detonates.

This is my favourite part of the eventNot mine. I never saw this succeed. I was never successful with this meta event. Even in maps with commanders who collected a full map and who very eagerly explained every detail of each fight in chat. After about 5 to 10 fails (I didn't count them), I will not attend to this meta again until I see something in the patch notes that addresses this meta event. Whatever it may be. The break bars of the enemies are too strong. I see it going down from 100% to about 50% very fast, but then everyone who knows about cc used up their cc skills and it is on cooldown for them, and the crystal finally detonates every time.

Because this part requires massive amounts of breakbar if a lot of people show up, and the general GW2 populace doesn't bring breakbar damage or potentially even know what a breakbar does.

[TexZero.7910]

Part 2 needs to mark the branded zealots on the map.Part 3 needs to have like 30% less breakbar health. It's absurd.Last part needs to dissipate fury of the brand for at least 20 minutes

[Lexi.1398]

"The hydra’s big purple fire breath is very impressive, but it’s also waaaaaaaaaaay over the top – it showers the entire scream in purple." THIS THIS THIS PLEASE. My computer isn't great, but it ain't bad either - this not only blinds me but kilsl my fps so damn hard. Please make the effect less...all of that. Please. (I pull this out seperately because it's the one thing i'm not gonna debate on, lol).

Stage 2- If players aren't splitting up that's their own fault, and commanders should actively encourage splitting up into groups of around 10 only to kill the zealots.Spawn is dependent on veterans killed, so really the only way to improve spawn time and retain that mechanic would be to reduce veterans needed. I don't agree with the timer purely because the timer is already harsh enough, IMO.

Stage 3- Agree here, I wish there were extra ways to CC them tbh, especially for the classes which don't get much cc overall- especially as usually a large amount of people straight up don't listen and never employ half of their ccs for some reason. An actual mechanic that contributed to cc would make this fight way less stressful (it's almost always where groups fail), and would provide some degree of diversity potentially.

Stage 4- "Remove the mechanic in which, if Ysshi dies first, he will resurrect the hydra. Instead, add a timer so both Ysshi and the hydra have to be killed at the same time (with a couple minutes at most of leeway), otherwise the one who has been killed will resurrect."Currently, I tend to see that the hydra takes a lot of damage from AoE/being so close to serpent anyway, and has much less health than the serpent so usually dies first or almost dies fisrt...that, or the groups i've done the meta in never listen to commander telling to kill serpent first. If a timer were to be added, this disparity in health/armor should be altered so they have roughly similar stats here, or make them spawn in two locations further enough apart the groups can never collide (esp as hydra moves around a lot).

"Make Ysshi appear on one place, the hydra in other, and the Branded Sparks in a third one. Players would have to split in three groups to deal with all of them at the same time."I feel this would be incredibly boring for the branded spark team if its too far away from the fight, unless a third spark boss/distinct enemy with a lot of health were added with it's own distinct mechanics to kill it/them.

"Remove the mechanic of Ysshi becoming invulnerable when he’s on low health. Instead, the Branded Spark will spawn continuously, and players have to kill them before their reach their target .... Failure to do so would make the sparks power up both Ysshi and the hydra, giving them a stack of a buff. Once they have enough stacks, both enemies would do an unavoidable area of effect attack that kills all players within range .... This would not be a fail condition, just a big loss of time...."
Again, killing sparks all the time is boring, but if that bore is dealt with, then it would definitely make it interesting!

EDIT: OH YEAH on making the serpents melee/range buff more visible - DEFINITELY TO THIS TOO. Also- it would be nice if ranged weapons for elementalist counted as melee in melee range, this fight seriously punishes us ele mains- we're literally useless half of the fight one way or another :/ (other classes weapon switch can easily deal with this).

[Kiza.5630]

@TexZero.7910 said:Part 2 needs to mark the branded zealots on the map.

They are once attacked. I don't mind the hunt really. If they are revealed automatically a large 50-man blob will just mow them down one after another.

[LONGA.1652]

This meta is too long with only reward at the end. Maybe some Leyline sand between phase
And believe it or not despite 3 year since breakbar introduced. There still many people who just keep auto attack in meta events because they don't know whats CC is. Proper break bar tooltip should be introduced during 1 st time people doing events that require those.

On 2nd phase could use some other mechanic to counter the fail bar cause not everyone packed with Strong CC and good timing on their rotation.

Snake and Hydra fight could use Particle effect tuning as well They are just too hard too see telegraph with whole map pouring all the AoE on the boss.

[cyndelaq.7148]

This event definitely needs to be looked at. I don't think it needs a massive rework, but I do think it needs to be tweaked.

[Ayrilana.1396]

The only adjustment that is needed is to reduce the defiance bar. If they want that phase to be difficult then they can make it up in another way. I’ve been in a couple groups where we all had CC and that wasn’t enough to break its bar. It’s bar should be like muckracker or whatever the bounty that heals is called in northern Desolation. Players still have to coordinate enough CC’s frequently but it’s not over the top.