To those skeptical of long-winded Dragon fights (no spoilers)

Marrra and I went into the Story Mode of Arah today (courtesy of Kitasha's Novice Dungeon Run) and I've heard from Kalastraer that it is a boring fight but I kid you not, they could not be further from the truth!

Claw of Jormag for one is very dull, too long or at least too many hitpoints and not enough mechanics to spice it up but Arah's story mode is a perfect mix all round.

If you are afraid of going into Arah's story mode because of the open world dragons - Don't be :D

I cannot wait to do it again because for once, someone got an epic fight feeling right (as Marrra put it when we went AFK: How can bows and arrows do damage to a dragon like WoW raids?)

Actually, I don't 100% like the one's before Zhaitan. ANet has mentioned they know the epic fights need to feel epic and are fixing them in a future patch though. The issue with big bosses is it is semi like how Star Wars Old Republic hit the nail on the head: It is not epic to have many players attacking one mob. They instead went the path of one player versus multiple mobs to make you feel more epic. ANet had planned or at least gave the concept of a dragon fight pre-release as a multi-aspect fight where you can be doing any number of things to help the fight but the be-all-end-all would not necessarily be going toe-to-toe with the dragon. The Lieutenants look pretty but the fights themselves are not epic. What they need is something like the Zhaitan fight where not only are you fighting the dragon but fighting off minions to break up the monotony of just doing the same thing over and over. Claw of Jormag attempts this with the Lieutenant itself as well as all the other mobs but it didn't feel the same (probably cause those are Champions and they feel like delaying the inevitable, which I believe is the idea). In World of Warcraft and other MMOs before it, you fight the big bad guys in melee or ranged by fighting the boss toe-to-toe. There are some mechanics to make sure you are moving but that is generally is: You fight a boss, watch the ground to see if there is any crap there, yet still just try and pull off numbers. In Guild Wars 2, what ANet needs to try and work out is that sometimes a boss is too big for us, no matter how many people there are, that we ourselves can't take it out. Take for instance Tequatl the Sunless in Sparkfly Fen. You could split it up into multiple facets that are ALL needed to succeed. Now, these fights I believe they say you need at least 10 people, so it would still be doable at that many (or scales down so some steps not needed). - Attacking the Dragon - Using, Protecting & Repairing the Cannon - Using, Protecting & Repairing the Turrets Now, you're probably thinking those already happen. The turrets we can man, we can help up a NPC who fixes it and then we can use the turret. What I mean there though is that if the population attending are low, the NPC would use the turret. Same goes for the cannon, protect it or help get supplies from nearby to repair it. The catch really would be that going toe-to-toe in an epic fight should be the LAST thing you do since that part alone can make a fight seem un-epic with how you take them down and in a rich fantasy world of magic and technology, it would be the least efficient with the genius minds in the lore or the magical artifacts to be discovered. --- Phew. Sorry. That was massively long-winded, even for me. Apologies if any of that is confusing. To come back to one aspect you said though, I agree that most of the dungeon isn't about Zhaitan and the fight itself was shorter than it maybe should have been but if you look at the personal storyline that we go through up to finally facing Zhaitan: We've done our research to hit Zhaitan hard with what we know will hurt it.

» Edited on: 2013-01-27 22:53:46

I haven't done the dungeons - but I have fought dragons. I don't feel all that epic when fighting the dragons and don't really feel like a hero. I feel like one of so many "ants" and the reason for this is the Dragons in GW2 are beyond.... way beyond... "Epic". I feel much more the "hero" saving a fort from Centaurs. With any of the Dragons I feel more like one of the army guys in the streets of Tokyo attempting to take on Godzilla - a tad insignificant. I do it because of the big chest at the end... but I have gotten more "epic" loot from a player in WvWvW and a chest dropped by the "burglar" event. So it makes me wonder "why"? Why fight a dragon? So hopefully they will fix these big fights.

I really enjoyed the dungeon as a whole. There was a lot to do and it was over quick enough that I didn't get tired of it. Every bit of it made sense. As for being disappointed in the end fight because you couldn't run up and whack at Zhaitan - really? Because I loved that. I've always felt it was really, really stupid that a HUGE creature could be killed by a bunch of people hacking into it's toes. Use of the big, improved ship with it's multiple cannons was great, and of course he'd try to stop us doing that by spawning creatures on the ship to try and take us down. It just made sense. Admittedly I found the first part of that fight a little dull because we were only firing at him and not fighting, but the second half was great. All the bits leading up to that fight fight were awesome - lots of variety but nothing thrown in 'just because'. As for world dragons, they definitely bore the hell out of me. Shatterer you could pretty much sit back and auto-attack most of the time. Jormag is so boring and frustrating in the first stage now I don't even want to go. Teqatl is the most exciting, because there are multiple things to do - but you don't HAVE to do them, so it's just easier and safer to sit under his chest and shoot at him. I'd really like to see these dragons require or have the option to do different things - have boxes of arrow carts or some kind of seige you can take and build and use. Protecting NPCs nearby and making it a requirement that if they all die it's a failure. The possibility of failure makes events much more interesting and attractive. Lately I just tag along for the kill and grab the chest of crap loot just because I have nothing more interesting to do. I would love to see these fights MEAN something and give an appropriate risk reward. *shrugs*

Um, because he was shot and lost half his body? He was clinging to that tower for dear life.

In response to your "Why not have another dragon attack us while we are fighting Zitian that would have made sense as you can see their were other dragons around. Why did he just stay their and take the beating from the ship ?" I answer that with: How many Elder Dragons, that we know of, have been killed by the 'lesser' (Everyone is lesser to a dragon) races? Dragons in general in 99% of situations are in the "I am the top of the food chain" stance when it comes to other races around them. Zhaitan is the first to be attacked and killed (Never saw a body, still skeptical at that :P) by us lesser races and hence he could have well been VERY stubborn and not believing till the very end that he could, or ever would, be defeated. I am happy with the stance they took with their first Elder Dragon fight for Guild Wars 2 and that they didn't try and follow in WoW's footsteps. MMOs do not need to follow in other MMOs footsteps to succeed and heck, most don't if they try to. We all have differing opinions on what is fun and what is epic and that is what makes us all unique but I believe with how indoctrinated we all are with MMOs (epic = 25 people attacking 1 big boss with our weapons) of aspects we expect are the norm. I mean at one point, all MMOs had death penalties and they moved away from it (most did, not all) because the majority didn't enjoy it. Whose to say that where Guild Wars 2 could go with being innovative with large scale monster fights that would take it into the forefront of fantasy MMOs. I mean, heck, any good GM for D&D or tabletop RPGs knows it is much more satisfying to down a bigger foe with unexpected methods. I know the thought on it now of someone doing something COMPLETELY unexpected is making me grin.