Claw of Jormag needs an update desperately

[Boogiepop Void.6473]

The three big base game dragon fights are Tequatl, Shatterer, and Claw of Jormag. 2 of these got updates a long time ago that greatly improved them, while the other has been left to rot.

The main issue isn't what you are doing, but if what you are doing is meaningful. In Shatterer and Tequatl you are always doing something that advances the boss. Not so for Claw. The design of the event is bad, and has been for a long time. The first part is nothing but ability spam (and tends to lag out so badly you can't even see what you are doing, due to a lack of optimization) and the second part is several minutes of standing around waiting for the boss to go prone from the golems, which you can neither speed up by succeeding nor slow down by failing. Some have pointed out that there are items (bombs, blowtorches, etc.) that are supposed to be used to speed up the fight. However, if these once did that, they don't any longer, as after numerous balance changes and 2 set of elite specializations, using those items actually slows down the fight, rather than speeds it up, due to damage being far behind what classes can now put out. At he very least, a resemblance (and advertisement; I literally did the event hundreds of times before I noticed the items existed) is needed.

The measure of a good event is if it's interesting and your presence is impactful. Claw of Jormag is currently not interesting, and unless you are in a practically empty map, your presence has zero impact on event progress. Please update Claw as you did Tequatl and Shatterer.

[Blocki.4931]

You're wrong in saying that you can't speed up the second phase. You NEED to use the flamethrowers to melt the icicles on the ground, because golems are coded to run into them and immediately die. It's not something you'd notice unless you actively did it yourself because they die so quickly using the fire & you often have a bunch of people doing that anyway, as they cannot contribute via long range attacks themselves.

Phase 1 is absolutely awful though. Stacking in one spot to shoot a rocket launcher at a wall of ice COULD be really cool and impactful, but in reality it is simply... standing in one spot, pressing 1 and using a stunbreak whenever you get feared off. Having to use the fire shield sometimes is cool at least. Thematically it could be this ice barrier that is created upon landing in that position that we have to melt through as ice enemies are thrown at us to defend it. Maybe even do it on the right and left side of the ramp leading up to split players a little more.

I'm sure the new-ish content team for open world is looking into this soon enough at least.

[Boogiepop Void.6473]

@Blocki.4931 said:You're wrong in saying that you can't speed up the second phase. You NEED to use the flamethrowers to melt the icicles on the ground, because golems are coded to run into them and immediately die. It's not something you'd notice unless you actively did it yourself because they die so quickly using the fire & you often have a bunch of people doing that anyway, as they cannot contribute via long range attacks themselves.

If this is accurate then I have never seen it. I don't think I have even seen flamethowers being used in years. if this does work, then my earlier comment about advertising comes in, because people don't KNOW it works, and don't use it, and thus it functionally doesn't work because it's going unused. Yes I realize that argument is tautological.

[Blocki.4931]

@Boogiepop Void.6473 said:

@Blocki.4931 said:You're wrong in saying that you can't speed up the second phase. You NEED to use the flamethrowers to melt the icicles on the ground, because golems are coded to run into them and immediately die. It's not something you'd notice unless you actively did it yourself because they die so quickly using the fire & you often have a bunch of people doing that anyway, as they cannot contribute via long range attacks themselves.

If this is accurate then I have never seen it. I don't think I have even seen flamethowers being used in years. if this does work, then my earlier comment about advertising comes in, because people don't KNOW it works, and don't use it, and thus it functionally doesn't work because it's going unused. Yes I realize that argument is tautological.

I don't think it's ever explicitly stated (like in the top right event description), but you can notice it when he never enters that damaged state. The flamethrower itself is fairly visible, but I guess they are also among the most likely to be culled since they have to venture pretty deep into the field and stack up the damage debuff rather quickly.

[Randulf.7614]

The flamethrowers aren’t needed since you can dps the ice, but they are powerful against them.

[Khisanth.2948]

The pacing of phase two is based on how well the group keeps the golems alive. You are free to achieve that however you like.

People used to do it correctly but either they have stopped playing or no longer bothers with that event or they have simply given up even trying since most people there don't. No reason to work much harder than everyone else.

The mechanics already exist. People ignoring the mechanics is what makes it a drag.

With people actually protecting the golems it goes quickly but most people are content with plinking at it for 1/4 damage and waiting.

Oh and don't bother trying to fix this, you'll probably just get accused of being a toxic elitist because that is the wonderful community we have here. :)

@Blocki.4931 said:Stacking in one spot to shoot a rocket launcher at a wall of ice COULD be really cool and impactful, but in reality it is simply... standing in one spot, pressing 1 and using a stunbreak whenever you get feared off. Having to use the fire shield sometimes is cool at least.

The fire shield was more interesting before they nerfed it.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@Boogiepop Void.6473 wroteClaw of Jormag needs an upstate [sic] desperatelyNeeds? Hardly. Desperately? not in the least.

I'd like to see it revamped, given some of the work ANet has done recently (DF and Jahai metas). I just can't agree it's that important or urgent.The game can manage just fine with a few old-school, dull events.

---

@Boogiepop Void.6473 said:I don't think I have even seen flamethowers being used in years. if this does work, then my earlier comment about advertising comes in, because people don't KNOW it works, and don't use it, and thus it functionally doesn't work because it's going unused. Yes I realize that argument is tautological.

I used to explain how to speed up phase 1 and phase 2, and ... people aren't interested. People don't pay much attention to mechanics. That's even true of Tequatl and especially of Shattererererererer: for the first, damage is so good now that groups don't really have to worry about failing phase 1. For the latter, people still complain that "no fly" isn't possible, even though it's a simple strategy, because it's easier to attack from the ground and still "win."

@Khisanth.2948 wrote:The fire shield was more interesting before they nerfed it.Agreed.

[Khisanth.2948]

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:For the latter, people still complain that "no fly" isn't possible, even though it's a simple strategy, because it's easier to attack from the ground and still "win."

So basically the exact same situation as claw. I guess there is something to be said about having mechanics with more dire consequences which basically means the event needs to fail.

Part of this also has to do with power creep. Back when claw actually required multiple stuns it was much more important to do it.

[Ayrilana.1396]

The Claw of Jormag fight seems like a slog because the players as a whole choose to do the bare minimum. The state it is in where it takes forever is largely due to the players. The claw fight itself can be done in about 6 min as was shown

before the power creep and elite specs. That said, I wouldn't mind seeing an update to it as a part of a future current event.

[Khisanth.2948]

Forgot to mention ... no matter how long it is at least it is faster than that time we did a 3 man run of it way back in the day. That took forever. x_x

@"Ayrilana.1396" said:The Claw of Jormag fight seems like a slog because the players as a whole choose to do the bare minimum. The state it is in where it takes forever is largely due to the players. The claw fight itself can be done in about 6 min as was shown

before the power creep and elite specs. That said, I wouldn't mind seeing an update to it as a part of a future current event.

This means we should be able to do it in 3minutes now :P

It wasn't 3 minutes but I think one of the Claw event I was at when the boss rush was up went by pretty quick as well

[Ayrilana.1396]

@Khisanth.2948 said:Forgot to mention ... no matter how long it is at least it is faster than that time we did a 3 man run of it way back in the day. That took forever. x_x

@"Ayrilana.1396" said:The Claw of Jormag fight seems like a slog because the players as a whole choose to do the bare minimum. The state it is in where it takes forever is largely due to the players. The claw fight itself can be done in about 6 min as was shown

before the power creep and elite specs. That said, I wouldn't mind seeing an update to it as a part of a future current event.

This means we should be able to do it in 3minutes now :P

It wasn't 3 minutes but I think one of the Claw event I was at when the boss rush was up went by pretty quick as well

Yeah. I remember hearing people talking about it going faster than it usually does too.

@thread: How about we come up with suggestions on how the encounter itself can be improved if they were to revamp it? What would you like to see specifically?

[ChronoPinoyX.7923]

The only thing I would want changed is mechanic being mandatory for second phase by actually making it not take damage unless the golems bomb it. That way people are inclined to actually get those golems through rather than just relying on twig hits that barely scratch it.

[Poormany.4507]

@thread: How about we come up with suggestions on how the encounter itself can be improved if they were to revamp it? What would you like to see specifically?

Whenever I've done Claw of Jormag, it almost always is a large group of people stacking in one spot (usually on the side just outside of his breath attack), DPSing the crystals for the golems, and then rushing the boss, running back to the same spot, and repeating (I've never used nor seen anyone use the flamethrowers). Some of the main changes I would make would be to add more mobs/boss attacks on the sides where the stacking usually occurs to split players up or at least force them to move during the fight and/or to add an aerial fight phase, similar to the Shatterer and Tequatl fights, but with some unique twist for the Claw, since right now, it just feels cheap whenever the NPCs just shoot him out of the air for players with little effort.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@Ayrilana.1396 said:@thread: How about we come up with suggestions on how the encounter itself can be improved if they were to revamp it? What would you like to see specifically?

There are two types of revamps:

• Reboots (Tequatl & Shatterer)
• Updates (Cliffside, Swampland)

As an "ordinary" World Boss (in the 4-per-hour rotation), I'd rather see the latter type. I think most "15 minute bosses" should be 'normalized" to ~10 minute fights (if people do it correctly).

For that to happen, I'd like to see the community taking responsibility for the fight over from the NPCsPre-events: same; no change.

Phase 1: Six siege weapons operated by players, to destroy the ice wall. Roughly the same foes attacking (near invulnerable Veteran Ice Elementals plus trash) and the Claw's fear + frozen ground + ice waves. Everyone else can attack the trash and/or protect the siege operators: the "guns" push foes away (without damaging); a new 'shield' prevents fear/icewave from hitting operators. Phase 1 ends the same way: inflict 50% damage on the dragon.

Phase 2: no changes, except that players have to carry the bombs. If they drop them (due to getting downed, knock down, or too slow), splosions doing damage to allies. This gives major incentive to bring flamethrower support: to keep carriers from getting frozed or slowed. It provides some incentive to avoid unnecessary aggro.

Speed up the first phase by keeping the siege operators in place, without interruption. Speed up the second phase by keeping the ice pillars down, the bombs moving, and foe aggro to a minimum.

[Cyninja.2954]

@Ayrilana.1396 said:The Claw of Jormag fight seems like a slog because the players as a whole choose to do the bare minimum.

This. If people wanted to be efficient and complete the fight with proper mechanic use, they could.

While I wouldn't be opposed to reworks of some vanilla world bosses, I have to ask: to what end? More mechanics people can ignore? The vast majority of the open world crowd only wants their loot while dealing with as little as possible mechanics.

Reworking the fight would result in one of 3 possibilities:

• an interesting, fun, challenging and rewarding fight... yeah who are we kidding, very unlikely.
• a just as easily farm-able fight as is now
• a way to mechanic heavy fight which requires to much mechanics

It's also important to remember that The Claw of Jormag specifically is gating some materials required for legendary crafting. Not necessary the best fight to beef up and make less farm-able.

[starlinvf.1358]

@"Blocki.4931" said:Phase 1 is absolutely awful though. Stacking in one spot to shoot a rocket launcher at a wall of ice COULD be really cool and impactful, but in reality it is simply... standing in one spot, pressing 1 and using a stunbreak whenever you get feared off. Having to use the fire shield sometimes is cool at least. Thematically it could be this ice barrier that is created upon landing in that position that we have to melt through as ice enemies are thrown at us to defend it. Maybe even do it on the right and left side of the ramp leading up to split players a little more.

I'm sure the new-ish content team for open world is looking into this soon enough at least.

That fight is a LOT harder if you do it the "right way". Its just, like a lot of other things about open world maps, is that players found ways to cheese the terrain to bypass mechanics. ALL of the World boss fights had (or still have) the same problem, because players will always find a away around everything except the mostly tightly controlled play spaces. Even in many revamped fights, players just found newer safe spaces to stand in and just do lazy DPS.

The only real solution to this is to make the WHOLE play field a massive, unyielding hazard. That forces players to leverage the mechanics of the fight just to participate. But the knock on effect of that is player avoidance. Make something too much effort (and lets face it... that bar is very low right now), then they'll ignore it all together. Serpent's Ire is not a hard fight..... if everyone is playing into the Mechanics. But they don't, so it fails, so people think its impossible, so they bypass it unless someone else does the hard parts for them.

[Khisanth.2948]

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:@thread: How about we come up with suggestions on how the encounter itself can be improved if they were to revamp it? What would you like to see specifically?

There are two types of revamps:

• Reboots (Tequatl & Shatterer)
• Updates (Cliffside, Swampland)

As an "ordinary" World Boss (in the 4-per-hour rotation), I'd rather see the latter type. I think most "15 minute bosses" should be 'normalized" to ~10 minute fights (if people do it correctly).

For that to happen, I'd like to see the community taking responsibility for the fight over from the NPCs

Pre-events:

same; no change.

Phase 1:

Six siege weapons operated by players, to destroy the ice wall. Roughly the same foes attacking (near invulnerable Veteran Ice Elementals plus trash) and the Claw's fear + frozen ground + ice waves. Everyone else can attack the trash and/or protect the siege operators: the "guns" push foes away (without damaging); a new 'shield' prevents fear/icewave from hitting operators. Phase 1 ends the same way: inflict 50% damage on the dragon.

That reminds me. It always annoyed me how much a deal the NPCs make about protecting the cannons when they don't contribute much to the fight. They are "used" during the phase transition but it is not very impactful.

Phase 2: no changes, except that players have to carry the bombs. If they drop them (due to getting downed, knock down, or too slow), splosions doing damage to allies. This gives major incentive to bring flamethrower support: to keep carriers from getting frozed or slowed. It provides some incentive to avoid unnecessary aggro.

Speed up the first phase by keeping the siege operators in place, without interruption. Speed up the second phase by keeping the ice pillars down, the bombs moving, and foe aggro to a minimum.

In phase 2 you are supposed to be able to carry the bombs over to claw in place of the golems ... in all the years I've played I have never tried that approach although I have seen other people do it long ago. The risk vs reward vs effort just didn't look appealing. However all that was before mounts and position rewinder but that still leaves the effort vs reward issue.

[Astralporing.1957]

@Blocki.4931 said:You're wrong in saying that you can't speed up the second phase. You NEED to use the flamethrowers to melt the icicles on the ground, because golems are coded to run into them and immediately die.While you do have to destroy the icicles, i haven't seen any advantage of using flamethrowers over normal dps.

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:I used to explain how to speed up phase 1 and phase 2, and ... people aren't interested. People don't pay much attention to mechanics. That's even true of Tequatl and especially of Shattererererererer: for the first, damage is so good now that groups don't really have to worry about failing phase 1. For the latter, people still complain that "no fly" isn't possible, even though it's a simple strategy, because it's easier to attack from the ground and still "win."Because the strategy is only simple in theory. In practice it's not easily available to unorganized pugs you usually have at those events. Every time i've seen it succeed, it was a voice-comm coordinated group behind it.

The window for cc is simply too short to make people react to it. You need to be prepared before breakbar shows up.

[Khisanth.2948]

@starlinvf.1358 said:

@"Blocki.4931" said:Phase 1 is absolutely awful though. Stacking in one spot to shoot a rocket launcher at a wall of ice COULD be really cool and impactful, but in reality it is simply... standing in one spot, pressing 1 and using a stunbreak whenever you get feared off. Having to use the fire shield sometimes is cool at least. Thematically it could be this ice barrier that is created upon landing in that position that we have to melt through as ice enemies are thrown at us to defend it. Maybe even do it on the right and left side of the ramp leading up to split players a little more.

I'm sure the new-ish content team for open world is looking into this soon enough at least.

That fight is a LOT harder if you do it the "right way". Its just, like a lot of other things about open world maps, is that players found ways to cheese the terrain to bypass mechanics. ALL of the World boss fights had (or still have) the same problem, because players will always find a away around everything except the mostly tightly controlled play spaces. Even in many revamped fights, players just found newer safe spaces to stand in and just do lazy DPS.

Unless your "right way" is to run up and attack the crystal while taking heavy damage from icy ground(could probably be countered with enough healers). There is no other alternative that is any more "right". People stack in one spot but it doesn't have much of an advantage beyond the fact that having everyone stacked up makes it much easier to support each other with boons, ress, heal, etc. Moving while using the bazooka is also outright wrong since that screws up the projectile's path.

[casualkenny.9817]

(It's not really true that phase 1 requires press-spamming '1'... cntrl-rightclick 1... )

But when I do do jormag, I do protect the golems...

Well, if you want to spice up jormag, it must come with improved rewards k... Making it more 'interesting' with the current rewards, I dunno abt that...

If rewards get improved (to teq-standard) , then you could

change cannons to be useable like someone already mentioned, with the following functions:1) shoot to smash icicles2) shoot lavaballs to damage the minions and create small firefields3) shoot something at jormag to slowdown his recovery (he was supposedly shot down, that's the premise for him obediently standing there for ppl to poke his toes. Or shoot some kinda glue to keep him grounded4) shoot something at his face to disrupt his ice breath attacks

Ledges:1) get rid of those crazy champ tanks that are not worth killing...2) create vet shamans that do their typical summoning (ala frozen maw) and need to be killed

Players1) create player-useable mortar kits that we can setup, with similar functions to turrets2) mine/grenade-packs using special action key. You can use catapult mechanics to lob deployable mines into the ice field3) jormag spawns minions from where he is, the mines kill them4) set an npc to tell ppl to pick these up and use them5) lob flashbangs to ministun jormag

With repeated emphasis that if there are changes, it should be in the direction of teq, not ire.

[mtpelion.4562]

My only request for a change to the Jormag's Claw fight is to make the collectible drop rate substantially higher. Crafting all the Corrupted weapons is expensive enough as it is, making the collection start item an impossible drop was just a bad idea and should be fixed.

[Khalisto.5780]

wait, shattered cant be killed by ppl autoattacking from uphill anymore?

[kratan.4619]

It had a minor change, in phase two people just stacked in one spot to kill it and ignored the mechanics totally. They made this spot also affected by the freezing dot.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

tl;dr maybe it's as simple as showing how many bombs are needed in phrase 2 and where to drop them...

@"Khisanth.2948" said:In phase 2 you are supposed to be able to carry the bombs over to claw in place of the golems ... in all the years I've played I have never tried that approach although I have seen other people do it long ago. The risk vs reward vs effort just didn't look appealing.

You know, I entirely forgot about that. I've tried that in the past and it was all-but-impossible given the timer on the bombs, how much you get slowed, and the rate of health loss. (Most people don't seem to be able survive at all just walking down there, without the handicap of a bundle.)

However all that was before mounts and position rewinder but that still leaves the effort vs reward issue.Yes

---

I think the biggest problem is that it's a black box. To this day, I have no idea how many bombs (walked by golems or players) need to reach the Claw. The game doesn't have a counter. So maybe it's just that simple: show the number of bombs required, show how many have been dropped, and show the drop-off location(s) (the way we have with e.g. dropping salvage for bridge-building in Dragonfall).

That wouldn't require any changes to the event, "just" to the UI. (That might be costly anyhow, given that it's an event created with the older scripting tools. Maybe not?)

[Khisanth.2948]

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:tl;dr maybe it's as simple as showing how many bombs are needed in phrase 2 and where to drop them...

@"Khisanth.2948" said:In phase 2 you are supposed to be able to carry the bombs over to claw in place of the golems ... in all the years I've played I have never tried that approach although I have seen other people do it long ago. The risk vs reward vs effort just didn't look appealing.

You know, I entirely forgot about that. I've tried that in the past and it was all-but-impossible given the timer on the bombs, how much you get slowed, and the rate of health loss. (Most people don't seem to be able survive at all just walking down there, without the handicap of a bundle.)

However all that was before mounts and position rewinder but that still leaves the effort vs reward issue.Yes

---

I think the biggest problem is that it's a black box. To this day, I have no idea how many bombs (walked by golems or players) need to reach the Claw. The game doesn't have a counter. So maybe it's just that simple: show the number of bombs required, show how many have been dropped, and show the drop-off location(s) (the way we have with e.g. dropping salvage for bridge-building in Dragonfall).

That wouldn't require any changes to the event, "just" to the UI. (That might be costly anyhow, given that it's an event created with the older scripting tools. Maybe not?)

Where to place the bombs would definitely be a great start because hitboxes can be weird