Guild Wars Nightfall: Progress Update Two

If you'll recall from last time, I was still having problems with Apocrypha, the shape-changing boss of the second Nightfall mission. My first encounter with him on a trial account was a stalemate - I couldn't kill it because I lacked any sort of hate whatsoever with my very limited skill selection, it couldn't kill me because of my solid Paragon and Monk backline. My next encounter on my main account was a disaster – I loaded up on interrupts and enchantment hate but he nailed me with hexes and AoE.

Now, I'll admit, at the time I was pretty frustrated. I, simply put, hate losing. I'm sure a lot of people are the same but being bettered (When, of course, I think I shouldn't be) really gnaws at me. It's part of why, I think, I'm so competitive but it can be as much of a disadvantage as it can an advantage. I don't throw controllers or curse, but I do switch off the machine and walk away in disgust, so to speak. But, really, Apocrypha is exactly what I want out of PvE – a challenge. And an interesting one. I remember in the test that the developers made a lot of bosses but, for a few of them, they wanted them to be “special” and more memorable. The first boss like this I can remember was Justicar Hablion in the original (Now called Prophesies) campaign. He was the boss of the mission Bloodstone Fen, a great name just dripping with meaning, if you ask me, and a major turning point in the game's storyline. As it goes, Hablion has been helping the player and the player's been helping Hablion but at the end of this mission it's revealed that the players have been helping to lead innocents to the slaughter. They witness Hablion slaughter a group of captives on something called the Bloodstone, a massive magical artifact that traps souls and is linked to the gods and the origin of magic. After that, of course, Hablion has to go. And what follows is an epic battle to the death on top of the Bloodstone itself (Which, in a neat twist has an environmental effect that causes any resurrection skills to take four times as long to cast. Since those skills, as a general rule, take forever to cast it means that you'll be standing there waving your arms for at least half a minute – an eternity in Guild Wars times – should anyone be killed.). The first time I ran that mission as a tester and ran into Hablion he was a beast. A high level Warrior with AoE damage who could decimate a party all on his own who was backed up by several healers and ranged attackers. The difficulty level was tweaked up and down several times but what the developers told us was that they wanted that final encounter in the mission to be a bit different than the normal boss fight, a bit more meaningful. And, well, I've run that mission so many times that Hablion is a joke (The trick is to pull the patroling enemies on either side of him, then kill of his support first, once he's alone Hablion goes down quickly enough. Especially if you have any melee hate – Empathy just ruins him - and interrupts for his healsig.) and there are, of course, much tougher and menacing enemies down the road. But looking at it from the perspective of a first time player who stumbles into that fight for the first time, I think the developers succeeded. Hablion was, for that time, an excellent boss. He was big, he was bad, he had been built up by the storyline, and he was a bear to take down. Combined with the special effect on the area where the fight took place there's a palpable sense that that fight is different.

I'm usually critical of PvE design in general. Simply put, I think the developers cheat a bit too much when they could do better by sticking to the game's rules – which are, normally, the same for everything. The main exception being bosses. They “break” the normal rules for monsters – having built-in health regeneration, for example, making them harder to kill. Most also deal more damage than normal or have attributes that far exceed a player's limit of 16 (Well, 19 on a few if you get lucky with an item proc). And any sort of debuff lasts only half as long on most bosses. They'll also reward the player for killing them by letting them capture skills, gain a health bonus, and dropping rare if not unique items. I understand that they're supposed to be tougher and more rewarding than normal foes - and the standard boss fight is pretty ingrained in RPGs and MMOs - but I think this is a bit of a false path that the developers have gone down. If I had my druthers, PvE would be mirroring PvP and vice versa. The skills and techniques used by better players in PvP would be ghosted onto the AI of monsters. And high-level encounters should be planned out not as a party of players against a single boss but as one group against another – with all the interlocking skills and synergies that implies. In short, my ideal “boss” wouldn't be a boss at all but some sort of NPC guild team. And this can be done within the existing rules a lot better than fitting in overpowered, “elite” enemies that break the overall symmetry of the games ruleset – one point of damage is one point of damage no matter what skill you cast and where you're casting it and all that (There's no exceptions or alterations to skills when going from one playstate to another as there are in, say, City of Heroes that create, essentially, two separate games under one umbrella.).

You might think, then, that I'd be opposed to things like Hablion but you'd be wrong. What I'm opposed to is the casual tossing of the rulebook out the window. I don't mind a sharp twist or exception to the rules when it's serving a purpose. And, of course, if it works. With Hablion it works well and, so too, I think it works with Apocrypha. It, after all, “breaks” the rules much more than Hablion. It violates the idea that all monsters/AI enemies in Guild Wars have to be from a single profession (Which, by the way, is another really unnecessary limiting design constraint. Players don't have to abide by that so I don't see why monsters can be, say Ranger/Warriors, either. With the implementation of Heroes, the first NPCs who can dual class that might just have opened the door – as do some other monsters who use skills from more than one profession – but for the most part everything draws from a single skill list). However, rather than simply having two professions the way players do, Apocrypha is a shape changer who can alter form and, in doing so, switch between skill bars comprised of Mesmer, Dervisher, and Paragon skills. Each one effective in its own way. It's effectively three monsters in one which just flies in the face of the established conventions of the game. But it breaks the rules in a beautiful, exciting, and interesting way that creates a meaningful and memorable encounter. I have absolutely no problem with this – far to the contrary – as long as it's done rarely. Then, it's something special. If not, then it's just another cliché that quickly becomes boring. I reserve the right to change my opinion if, say, ten missions down the road I'm stumbling across pack after pack of shape changing critters but, for now, Apocrypha is an excellent boss and it's really made for some interesting play for me.

It beat me – twice, in fact – but that just meant that I had to get past it. The thing about Apocrypha, though, is that each of its skill sets provide a challenge in its own right. The Paragon has a lot of chants and shouts which are completely untouchable – once they're up they're up until the duration runs out – and those provide for massive healing. The Dervish side is heavy on enchantment-based AoE damage and melee hate so it just chews through teams relying on a lot of close-up fighters, like I am with a Warrior and two Dervishers of my own (And before you ask, no, I wasn't changing. Sure, I could have gone with some henchies but those are the Heroes I have and since I have much better control over them I wanted to stick with them. Plus, I was determined to beat Apocrypha with the team I had – to me, switching would have been admitting defeat. It's weird, I know, but for me sometimes limiting constraints create fun.). And the Mesmer facet is hex heavy, and also has some Warrior hate, as well as effective healing through some minor energy denial which, since my Monks at low level, is a lot more crippling than it would be if Dunk had his full attributes – if he gets tagged with Ether Feast too many times then it really stresses the healing base which I've been skimping on to frontload damage in my other characters and roll over enemies. So, to beat Apocrypha you need to not only overcome his powerful healing, you have to survive his offense, and at the same time clear any number of hexes, enchantments, and conditions that will cripple your team if you let them. That's a pretty tall order in a four person team especially with the limited skills available in the newbielands of Nightfall. I imagine non-melee teams would have a much easier time, especially if they had a Mesmer or a Necro with them because although Apocrypha can remove enchantments – which, by the way, my Dervishers hate – it has problems with hexes.

Fortunately, though, since I have all the skills from Factions on back, I don't have to rely on the limited selection in the early areas – not with my Heroes, anyway. Which helps Carson and Dunk but not so much Mel (since I want to use her to play around with alternate Dervish builds, I'm trying not to get too wacky with alternate skills just yet – everything from other campaigns is something I'll have to get for my Dervish eventually if I want to use them myself. Have I mentioned how much I hate that unlocking is character rather than account based? Being able to draw on 700+ skills for my Heroes and only about 30[1] for myself kinda hammers that home, you know.). Anyhow, I managed to level up during my ill-fated attempt to challenge Apocrypha so here's how I tweaked things to face him.

Oreon Rex (lv11)

Mysticism – 9
Scythe Mastery – 7+1
Earth Prayers – 3
Dead Points - 3

1. Rending Sweep
2. Pious Assault
3. Twin Moon Sweep
4. Aura of Thorns
5. Signet of Return
6. Heart of Holy Flames
7. Zealous Renewal
8. Mystic Vigor

Having hit lv11 the attribute points are starting to roll in so I have more to throw around which is nice, of course. I'm eventually going to be going for 12/12 with a focus on Scythes because, well, that's what you do when you're melee. Actually, it's going to be 12+2 Scythes (I don't like Superiors in PvE, especially not with the armor that a Dervish has), and 11+1 Mysticism (As I can't see a point in raising it past the sweet spot of 12 which will give me 4 energy back from every ended enchantment.) and that'll give me enough spare points to splash into another line if I want. As you might have noticed beyond raising my attributes the only change here is to swap out Eremite's Attack for Rending Sweep. They're both 4 second recharge attacks that don't rely on an enchantment – something I want in case I get stripped of enchantments left and right. The damage on Rending is lower but more reliable than Ermite since it doesn't rely on how many foes are nearby. My only reason for avoiding it before was that I didn't have any hexes to trigger the enchantment removal since I have no characters that are hexing but, well, keep reading and you'll see how I solved that little problem.

Koss

Strength – 2
Swordsmanship – 8
Tactics – 7
Dead Points - 2

1. Watch Yourself
2. Sever Artery
3. Gash
4. Final Thrust
5. Rebirth
6. Auspicious Parry {E}
7. Riposte
8. Distracting Blow

Now, when we last saw Koss he was loaded up heavy on the interrupts while being an offensive force. As I said earlier, I'm cheating on survivability in the hopes of being able to pave anything I run across relatively quickly. In case it's not readily apparent, I'm not such a big fan of the “Warrior as tank” school of thought and I like to go about giving them solid defense in as aggressive a way as possible. Here that's achieved through the twin nastiness of Auspicious Parry and Riposte. Anyone attacking Carson just makes him all the deadlier because they'll either supercharge his adrenaline or they'll take some pretty solid damage – while supercharging his adrenaline (Riposte is a skill, Parry a stance, they stack although I'm not sure what resolves first there). I toyed with the idea of giving Carson Bonetti's, too, but there's almost nothing he's spending energy on and it ends on a skill so unless I want him to be just standing there relying on his standard attack – something I'm not sure the AI will do, by the way – it's about the best non-elite stance (I saw a skill called Steady Stance on obs mode today and I'm drooling) I can see but it's not the best fit. So, having no real idea what to do with that last slot I went with Watch Yourself figuring at that level of Tactics it's not too bad and will help out my Dervishers a bit – and Carson's got the adren to spare for it. I stuck with the whole Sever+Gash+Final combo because, really, it's a classic and I haven't seen a better non-elite sword combo yet. And Distracting Blow's there because not only am I relying on Carson for my interrupts you'll be hard pressed to find a Warrior build of mine that doesn't include some sort of disruption – it drastically increases the threat of a Warrior and is often overlooked in favor of just flat offense, I feel (This, by the way, is why my favorite weapon is the hammer still.) - and Distracting Blow's the best option I can see.

Meloni

Mysticism – 6
Scythe Mastery – 9

1. Rending Sweep
2. Twin Moon Sweep
3. Eremite's Attack
4. Rending Touch
5. Rebirth
6. Intimidating Aura
7. Heart of Holy Flame
8. Vital Boon

Mel's lower attribute pool (She only has 70 points while my main character has 85 – apparently, the Heroes get the bonus 15 attribute points added in as they level. Oreon has both bonuses but Mel's missing the one still.) means her points work out exactly. She's also, as you might notice, less reliant on enchantments so I'm much more comfortable with her having a less powerful energy engine in favor of doing more damage (Which, I've noticed, she seems to do better at than Oreon even with similar equipment stats and attributes. I'm not sure why that is but it means that I'm giving her the best scythes I find and using them on my main character as hand-me downs. She's currently got a 9~22 scythe while I'm rocking a 9~18 one. Not much difference but since she does something like 150% of my damage, well, it matters. Better skills AND better weapons. This is, like, totally unfair to my newbie's esteem. Still, abuse 'em while you got 'em.). What you'll also notice here is that she's loaded up on the enchantment hate. Previously, I had Dunkoro doing that since his options are more reliable but, well, just wait. I suppose I could have gone crazy and made her a Dervish/Mesmer because with four pips of regen she could conceivable use the Inspired and Revealed enchantments among others. But, well, I'm a lazy, lazy person and I want her to stick as close to what I can actually use as possible (I know, I'm a horrid scrub. But this way she's something of a testbed and I can see how different skills work without having to try them myself.) but I stuck with what's available in the Dervish list. So, since I wasn't sure quite what would work I gave her three skills to remove enchantments. That's Intimidating Aura - which only triggers once and only if the target has lower health which is pretty hefty for a skill that cost 10 energy and takes 20 seconds to recharge but, eh, it doesn't have an attribute link and lasts roughly forever until it triggers so I can see why that was done. Rending Touch which for a low price strips off an enchantment on both you and your target – and since this is a Dervish we're talking about there's plenty of enchantments to get rent (It recharges perfectly in synch with Vital Boon so it's almost always available). And Rending Sweep I've previously talked about. Somewhere between those three I figured that Apocrypha wouldn't be able to keep his enchantments up for long. Heart of Holy Flames is here mostly as enchantment fodder – putting it on is almost as good as removing it so it works great for that, I think, especially at low levels where degen is brutal. Since I didn't expect many enchantments to stick on Mel, I gave her Eremite's Attack – pretty useless against Apocrypha but I could disable it for that fight and there was still a whole dungeon to crawl through before I got there where it would prove useful. Everything else was a bit too costly for my tastes although I probably could have stuck with Mystic Sweep. And Twin Moon Sweep's there mostly as a heal because Mel is still the most likely to die in my party. She just doesn't seem to have the survival instinct that I do (Or, I guess, know how to break agro) and enemies swarm on her like flies on honey.

Dunkoro

Divine Favor – 5
Healing Prayers – 8
Inspiration Magic – 5
Dead Points - 3

1. Healing Touch
2. Word of Healing {E}
3. Dwayna's Kiss
4. Draw Conditions
5. Rebirth
6. Inspired Hex
7. Revealed Hex
8. Power Drain

Those extra attribute points make a huuuge difference (His attribute layout from last time might have even been from a lv9 version instead of a lv10 like my main – my Heroes are ever so slightly behind my progression in terms of leveling. I don't feel sorry for the bastards because they get all those nice skills to play with.). With low level Monks I prefer to raise their main stat and Divine Favor at roughly equal amounts because the bonus from both is about equal. At a certain point, however, it makes much more sense to crank up that main stat because the DF bonus trails off in efficiency and the points can be better spent elsewhere. As you can see, Dunk just hit that point. Anyhow, as for skills the big change here was to swap out Inspired and Revealed Enchantment for the Hex versions. Not only are they just effective at handling hexes and the others are at handling enchantments, they're actually good in terms of energy – they only net Dunk 1 en per casting but anything that lets him do something as valuable as remove an enchantment at a profit is great – while the inspired/revealed enchantments were costing energy. Since Dunk's blasting out the healing making sure he has the energy to do so is important. And, not only that, but once he captures a hex, Dunk would be tossing it out there giving Mel and I a chance to use our Rending Sweeps, if need be. I love it when a plan comes together. I also swapped Orison of Healing for Healing Touch for a quick 70 point heal. That's not much more than Orison at this point, mind, (Which is...47 plus the 16 points from Divine Favor if they haven't changed the formula any. Let me check. Yep, still got it.) but it casts faster and Dunk seems to know that that's his self heal a lot better than with Orison. The other change is going with Draw Conditions over Mend Ailment. For one thing it's faster than Mend Ailment and although it doesn't help Dunk at all this one was really put in for the fight against Apocrypha since it would clean any conditions from any of my melee fighters in rapid order – and all those conditions like Blind don't really matter that much to Dunk. Like before Word of Healing and Dwayna's Kiss are the workhorses here. Both potentially heal for well above 100 and make short work of most damage – they don't work so well on Carson because he doesn't have any enchantments (Yet. Once I have another Monk in the party I'll make sure one is a Protection based enchanter for sure to make this sort of build that much more effective. I'm just not sure if there'll be a henchie available or if it would be better to switch Dunk to this. Hell, for a solid Monk line, I'll run two Hero monkeys if I can.) but he's got better armor and can take more punishment anyways – making each point of healing go that much further.

Anyhow, this team was primed and ready to take down Apocrypha, in my opinion. There might be better ways of doing it but this was going to be my way. I hit the mission zone and talked to the NPC to enter (It's interesting that instead of having a mission enter button there's now an NPC to talk to. I gather that's to make missions more like quests. That's not a bad idea, I'd just rather it went the other way around and quests were more like missions. But I'm not exactly the core of the PvE market, so to speak.) and, again, breezed through the mission. Saved the Sunspear ghosts to get the bonus and headed into the fight with Apocrypha with full morale bonuses. I carefully cleared out all the wandering enemies in the area before taking on the big boss. As I'm getting better – or at least, trying to – at controlling my Heroes, I sent Carson in first so that he'd absorb the agro and, hopefully, most of the blows. I tried to get him on one side of Apocrypha before chargin in on the opposite with Mel at my side so it's scythe or non-Mexican equivalent attacks while in Dervish mode wouldn't catch all of us. Mel, however, wasn't about to play that game so it didn't work out so well and Apocrypha was soon hammering us. Dunk was spamming the heals, though, and enchantments and hexes were rising and falling in rapid order – on both sides - so we were holding in there. Apocrypha's health was steadily chipped downwards. Lower and lower, and although he could get his Mending Refrain up for the regen (Pretty sure he has the default +3 regen that most bosses have so that was giving him something like 5 or 6 regen or 10 or 12 health a second.) he wasn't able to use must of anything else. Dunk started to run low on energy, though, just as Apocrypha switched back to Dervish and laid into us with the AoE. My Mystic Vigor had dropped and he caught me recasting it and Oreon went down. Apocrypha had about 10% health left at this point – so achingly close to being dead he just needed a bit more attacking to pop – but Carson immediately stopped attacking to cast Rebirth. I scrambled to open his command interface (I don't tend to keep it open as I do with Dunk – I like to monitor his energy – because it gets in the way too much and I haven't figured out a good place for it or how to retweak my interface for the Hero menus yet.) to disable the skill but it was too late. He wasn't using his primed Final – and he was going to lock his skills and burn all that adrenaline away to boot - and I was going to pop up right next to Apocrypha with low health to be caught in the next AoE wave. I was sure that I was about to get my party wiped and was about to order Dunk to move back out of range so he could survive and rez us up for another try. Fortunately, Mel chose right then to hit and hit hard and the boss died before I could even be revived. Mission completed.

I haven't done much more in terms of PvE beyond that since I've been drawn into the fleeting snowball scene (And, you know, writhing in pain from illness and unable to focus on the computer screen for very long which tends to limit my playtime.) except to get the last 10 or so Sunspear points to get my fifth rank. That's 500 beasties killed under a bounty, by the way. Hooray for grinding! Only halfway from being able to wear that title. Still, the one I'm interested in getting right now is the one that says I have skillz. So, if you'll excuse me, there's people who need a snowball or three in the face.

[1] – Huh, I just checked. I've spent 15 of 16 skill points I've earned – I'm saving the rest until I get to the next area where Dervish skills are available – but with the free skills from the beginning I do have exactly 31 skills. The extra one is the Sunspear Rebirth Signet which doesn't count for unlocking things for PvP so, man, that was a scary accurate guess.