Hunter's Insight – A Guild Wars 2 Blog

Big Chests and Ample Booty

One of the great improvements to Guild Wars 2 over the past month was the update to several world boss chests. Completing a world boss now means you’re guaranteed at least one rare and as many as 3. This is an improvement over dungeon chests, personal story rewards, or just about any other loot in the game. Fractals had been one of the most profitable activity for me on a daily basis, now it’s going to world boss events.

And it’s not just the high level temple events in Orr either. World bosses in low level zones are also very generous. Here’s a list on reddit detailing which chests have the improved drop rates. Everything from The Maw meta event in Wayfarer to Taidha Covington in Bloodtide Coast.

And of course these new drop rates have created huge shifts in what people in Guild Wars 2 are doing. Dragon bosses in particular have gone from something done occasionally for some, to a must for virtually everyone playing. Overflow servers for Frostgorge Sound, Blazeridge Steppes, and Queensdale are now a regular occurrence. I haven’t seen this many overflow servers outside of Lion’s Arch since launch. And where Lion’s Arch has had overflow servers since the introduction of Fractals of the Mists, suddenly I can visit my own servers Lion’s Arch with ease.

But with change always comes discontent. Some of the more populous servers have extensive overflow issues with native server populations unable to get in on their own dragon spawns. A lot of blame for this has gone to guests. Using sites like Guild Wars Temple, with its very useful dragon timers, guests have the ability to show up to dragons in advance of their spawn. While I admit that guesting may contribute to the problem, I’m certain the actual cause of overflow servers for most is that their own populations recognize the potential for loot and are showing up en masse.

There are more legitimate concerns, in my opinion, than guests.

For instance the poor mechanics of many major world boss events. Several bosses are so quick and easy to kill as to make the whole endeavour laughable.

The Shadow Behemoth (finally available, thank you for that) lasts at most two stages before being killed. He barely uses some of his special skills, his adds die in moments, his big red circles barely hit anyone. Didn’t he used to do a thing where he sticks his fingers into the ground and they come out and attack people? Haven’t seen that in a while.

The Maw also takes only moments to kill. One of the events is to kill a totem which does not take long or have any kind of return attack, or maybe it does and is killed too quickly. The other events take mere moments and you have to struggle to tag each event. The final boss also dies in moments, despite the cool as hell ice tornado.

The Shatner works great, if you’re on the right side of him. If you’re on the left he does not attack you or significantly damage you in any way. He dies very quickly.

Tequatl has never been very interesting, but it’s not as big of a joke as some other events. It still works the way it did before huge numbers of people started showing up, but it never felt like it worked the way it should. The big laser should be required to defeat him, the poison spread over a wider area, with more bloated risen, fears, and other attacks.

Jormag probably works best out of all the dragons. On my low population server he still requires at least two rounds to get him to move to the secondary location. People still need to work together, at least somewhat. There is a spot at the 2nd location where a lot of people just stand and fire at him. Kind of wish that was gone. He can still be overwhelmed with numbers, just not as bad as some of the other bosses.

I think out of all the buffed chests the Orr temples probably work the best, despite a few problems. Malchor could probably put up more of a fight. I wish you couldn’t push the final fight with Dwayna into a wall. Lyssa goes down way too fast without her daze. The transform Melandru has could be reworked I think. But generally speaking Balthazar and Grenth work pretty well with a few good chances for failure, unlike Dwayna.

Of course all of this has had a major impact on the economy. The price of ectos has gone from about 38s before the patch to about 24s yesterday. I’m sure the major sigil and major runes markets are in a bit of disarray as well.

Altogether I’d say it’s way too easy to complete most of the events tied to these new buffed chests. I hate to say it, but I smell a nerf incoming. Whether that nerf is to the loot itself or a reworking of mechanics, difficulty, timing, or limit to how often you can participate is hard to say. A nerf to loot would be super easy and super effective. But in the long run a rework of mechanics would be much healthier for the game. Unfortunately that would probably be quite a bit of work.

I guess we’ll see what happens.