Your thoughts on the Titan Hard Mode quests

A nice challenge, although it takes some time it is still pretty easy with heroes if you have proper builds and equipment.
And all those quests have a fail-proof way to do them anyway, I enjoyed it when a titan suddenly wiped a few heroes with that smash attack, I was like: "what??? die!!!"
Shit got real when Panic was used against me, loved it!

When I did all the quests I had no chance of failure, not exaggerating. The Titans do enough damage to wipe you if you aggro two groups at the same time and / or they come from two sides at the same time, but not otherwise.

About the micro argument: if you could bring a 9th skill on heroes but it's one which the hero will not use on his own (i.e. you need to micro to make him use it), would you bring it? If you are completely against micro, then you will have to answer "no".

If you're too lazy to micro / flag your heroes then it's your fault for finding the quests hard. The solution's already known, you're just refusing to use it. It's not that the quests are hard, it's that the players are bad - and bad players should get better, not complain about the game. Oh and it doesn't take 4s to flag. I regularly flag all my heroes in <2s. I know, because that's the amount of time it takes for me to cast Chain Lightning.

@KUM - no comment.

obligatory link in any thread discussing input speed


Really, though, there exist hotkeys to issue order commands to heroes, right? Why not use those?

You misinterpret what I said. When I said that 90% of parties fail horribly, I mean that as 90% of reasonable and effective builds that you could run simply don't work, because they don't include the necessary imba skills. Not that the average PvE player is shitty (though that is true).

The complaint is that simply boosting monster levels doesn't make PvE harder, it just restricts me to using more and more imba skills. If Anet wanted to introduce difficulty into PvE they would just nerf those skills so we could maintain build variety and still have semi-difficult areas.

So.. regardless of the other quests, how about the Titan Source? Anyone done that yet? That's the one in particular I'm concerned with. 3 bosses? Eww.

For some odd reason, the HM version seems easier to me then the normal one (might be because I got alot better since then). If you get stuck on it, you may want to start at ToA for an 8 player party, makes it even easier. Be carefull and clear everything around the bosses in a wide area before pulling them and try pulling one at a time.

The bosses are the easy part. If you can manage some of those tight spawns of upgraded charr in flame corridor on the way, then you are basically set, just keep doing the same thing to win. It's doable with 4-man so again, bring 6 if you are concerned.

Tbh, the thing i dislike most of this quest is that anet haven't understood yet that "Hard" doesn't mean necessarily "12010+ Armor, 100% IAS & IMS & Cast time, 30 att points".
They did it when introducing HM, and they keep doing it.
Sure, makes titans really annoying, but isn't what i want to see as interpretation of "Hard"...better mobs build/AI is.
Also, the other thing is that "lock" your build choiches. ST Rit to survive. Armor ignoring dmg to kill. And so on. The fact that those quest are set thinking to use the most gimmick builds in your team to succeed in other words.

Then they aren't reasonable, effective builds. You cannot expect a random collection of skills to achieve what you want. And there is no list of 'must-have'* skills that you require to finish 90% of Hard Mode content.

*I could trivially draw up a list of skills that you must include some of but it would include a lot of redundancy and would clearly be silly since it would be a list of all skills in the game.


It's worth noting that, no matter how good the game's AI was, the player has two distinct advantages:
1. He's human. Assuming that player is remotely competent then he is better than the AI at almost every task. Then the team with a human has a distinct advantage.
2. The enemy groups are static and known. They do not change and if necessary, you can build more specifically to deal with them.
Overall, if the enemy groups were made to work within the same rules as humans then the team with a human in it can simply never fail assuming a minimum standard of competence; the player has got to be better than the AI which is a low standard indeed.

A few flaws follow this design though, but many could be rectified. The massive increases in armour is one and some of the monster skills given are a little absurd; but we are given PvE skills.
Still; AFAIK these quests can be done without Soul Twisting on defensive spirits and without Save Yourselves.

Edit: The result of a few select builds being desirable comes as a result of them being leagues above everything else. When you design content to be challenging (as has been done here) it has got to take these builds into account and so it is not surprising that when something is designed to be a challenge when using these builds, it is very difficult when using anything else.

It's definitely possible without a ST rit, I didn't use one because I prefer the SoGM build.
Shelter + Panic/Stolen Speed + armor ignoring damage from rits and mesmers, makes hard mode go into normal mode.
The increase of things like armor is only really bad for Elementalists.

I mentioned ST cause most ppl here and in game runs it, but you get the point.
Also...yes. That was what i mean. This HM quests are designed to be even harder then regular HM (Dg, VQ, mish), and this is ok. But again Anet fails at increase difficulty...simply buffing mobs as hell, as did when introduce the "Regular" HM.
Which means, no ele around for damage, apart PvE skills abuse from players using AP.

I can confirm that - I did all the quests without ST, without Shelter and without Save Yourselves.

Here's something to think about. If you were given the chance, how would you design a difficult mission? Without going into anti-hero mechanics like UW 4H, or by artificially making an area where you cannot retreat from (Gloom HM, Foundry HM), or maybe force a constricted area vs. Fire Eles (Forgewight HM, this is vulnerable to ST / SY though), I don't see how it can be done. It's not hard to make a quest impossible, but difficult?

If you assume the AI enemies were given all the advantages they currently are (i.e. energy is of little concern) then the only way I can think of is to stack a lot of hard counters; tons of hex and enchantment removal and plenty of anti summon stuff then give them loads of damage to boot. Hard to do in one 8 man group however.
Ultimately it might have to come down to extreme variety but even then...
Everything A.Net have tried so far as been dealt with by simple brute force.

Consider this, however; there's only a small live team working on this content, and the balance of it. Previously, there was a full team that could make engine changes, AI changes, etc. Since GW2 was started, however, it very well may be that the live team doesn't have the resources, knowledge, or access to the core AI settings (

If my understanding is correct, the way skills and etc work is relatively simple. Notice that it's been a long while since the AI has been changed. There's a lot of skills in which the AI thinks a skill is different than it actually is, and play with it as the old version had been. While type changes could be possible (ie, it might be possible to flag skills as 'hexes', 'interrupt', 'use on enemies', 'protection', 'healing', etc - don't quote, I don't know), it's unlikely that they have access or abilities to core AI changes.

So in return, they try to counter the meta's with a couple new skills, and use high levels to make it more difficult, as that's significantly more accessible than anything else.

They are reasonable builds. Elite content is based on requiring imba builds. Take a well developed PvP build, run it in PvE and you will lose. This is the opposite of what guild wars was like pre-nightfall. PvE is now dependant on exploiting imba.

Yes, which is why Anet needs to stop screwing around trying to make things hard for teams using SY/ST/ER/etc, and just go ahead and nerf the imba crap in the first place. Trying to make guild wars challenging with the amount of bullshit the players can stack up to make themselves invincible deathdealing machines is futile, and doing so only degrades gameplay for every other build in existence.

I agree with Killed u man: this is not my idea of challenge either. A simple tankspank team (or runners) could probably steamroll these quests. Not saying it was easy with a balanced team, but it is not different from the usual HM content. The reward is a joke.

Doing zv quests with the daily codex skills for a bit of extra reward would be more interesting than this.

Oh that's a fun idea. I like.

What definition are you using for a reasonable build now? If something fails in HM PvE (you never specified elite areas but if you do, explicitly define elite area. Besides, you did say 'everything in PvE') how can it possibly be a reasonable build? And the PvP build argument is ridiculous:
Take a strong GvG build and go to HA. You cannot necessarily expect to win. Why?
It's strange you say this though; 8 man PvP teams typically have all the tools you require in PvE (bar a few areas where I don't expect general things to work so well) excluding perhaps Protective Spirit, but you can normally work without that (it is just at times ill-advised).

PvE before NF was easier than it was now; for one, Hard Mode did not exist.
PvE is still largely straight forward enough that you never really need to exploit the most ridiculous of skills and builds, but these things are here to be exploited and not doing so when you want to achieve something would be insane.

Yes, that too is a viable alternative and would appear to be the more sane option but it seems to generate a lot of complaints.
The only skills that really blow things out of the water defensively are Ether Renewal, Soul Twisting+Shelter and Save Yourselves. Of those, two can be hit with rather specific counters leaving only Ether Renewal - mass enchantment removal is horrible to play against, period, but Well of the Profane I think is a fair skill to put on the odd enemy.

Foes behave like raging bulls, only to be led to slaughter. Until there are either limitations on players or more intelligent enemies, I don't see a non-gimmicky way to invoke true difficulty. I could go on about power creep ruining the need for so many mechanics that creatively counter foes, but it's been beaten to death for years. Too much to nerf, so many would ragequit.

Just finished the titan quest, H/H, I see some ppl say it was easy and some say it wasn't

Well for me I was not easy by any means. I really enjoyed them. Thanks to anet for the hm quest. rattled my brain a bit.

Amber