Curse

Baba_Beast · May 08, 2007, 08:31 PM // 20:31

I think HM is just for some specifical things like farming LB/SS.

lets see:

capping= NM
beating game for the first time or for masters= NM
farming= NM (since ectos drops are the same, its easier in NM)
farming LB/SS points=HM cause you get the double

HM is just for people who have beat the 3 campaigns with 2-3 char and want a new challenge. If you want titles, you can achieve 9 or more in NM pretty much easier than vanquisher and guardian in HM.

Swift Thief · May 08, 2007, 08:56 PM // 20:56

For farming, and soon, the vanquisher title (Cantha).

reetkever · May 08, 2007, 08:58 PM // 20:58

Hmmm I only play Hard Mode when helping a Guildy with vanquishing an area/doing mission.

Hard Mode isn't interesting for me: I did every mission 16 times, don't want to do them again, even in Hard Mode. And drops suck in Hard Mode as well. I did some vanquishing in the beginning, clearing Plains of Jarin netted me 600 gold (and 1 goldy).

After that I did Cliffs of Dohjok AND Zehlon Reach, and BOTH got me 500 gold. Yes, even less than Plains of Jarin. (also got 0 golds this time).

Well, and I've been farming Zehlon for a while, but since A-Net screwed Colossals over, there's no challenge in getting one. After like my 5th Colossal, I really thought 'Why am I doing this?', and stopped.

Ohh, and since I don't have any cash left, I don't really care about titles. Not about Sunspear/LB either.

Evilsod · May 08, 2007, 09:02 PM // 21:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by SotiCoto

Not only that but the idea of Vanquishing somewhere like Melandru's Hope honestly scares me.... My full AI party, totally competant elsewhere.... has about a 10% success probability against Salke Fur Friend's hoarde... [and I'm not even going to consider [wiki]Mungri Magicbox[/wiki] in Ferndale]...

Hard Mode is all about line of sight and/or bodyblocking. Moment you get them in a position where the strongest attacks from them can't hit you but your strongest attacks can still hit them its an easy win. Its why i scraped BHA and went for Smoke Trapping. Trap up the edge of his patrol path, put the odd trap near the wall above the Rit boss, hex the crap out of the melee till they commit suicide (helps if 1 of the healers has dazed/backfire) then just finish off the others. Barely got scratched. Was much better than my first attempt when he floored us without a single casualty when i tried to lure onto the bridge into traps.

Edit: Wow, Mungri died faster than he ever did in NM... took less than 2 minutes to flatten his mob.

LouAl · May 08, 2007, 09:16 PM // 21:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by reetkever

Hmmm I only play Hard Mode when helping a Guildy with vanquishing an area/doing mission.

Hard Mode isn't interesting for me: I did every mission 16 times, don't want to do them again, even in Hard Mode. And drops suck in Hard Mode as well. I did some vanquishing in the beginning, clearing Plains of Jarin netted me 600 gold (and 1 goldy).

After that I did Cliffs of Dohjok AND Zehlon Reach, and BOTH got me 500 gold. Yes, even less than Plains of Jarin. (also got 0 golds this time).

Well, and I've been farming Zehlon for a while, but since A-Net screwed Colossals over, there's no challenge in getting one. After like my 5th Colossal, I really thought 'Why am I doing this?', and stopped.

Ohh, and since I don't have any cash left, I don't really care about titles. Not about Sunspear/LB either.

so what the hell do you do in the game? Do you do the missions again on normal? Do you get even crappier drops from clearing normal zones? Just down to helping others?

Griff Mon · May 08, 2007, 09:31 PM // 21:31

Vanquished one area but am not pursuing it at this point.

I went into worm mode and started to do Hard Mode as a worm for a number of reasons:

Lightbringer and Spearmarshall points come very fast.

Lockpicks yield Wisdom, Treasure Hunter, Lucky, and Unlucky points.

It is almost a total cakewalk regardless of what you are facing when you have a full party of eight worms.

So if you want to farm and rack up multiple title points (which I do) then this is the big plus of Hard Mode for me.

Now that I got one character maxed out on Spearmarshall and Lightbringer titles, I am working on another.

reetkever · May 08, 2007, 09:39 PM // 21:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by LouAl

so what the hell do you do in the game? Do you do the missions again on normal? Do you get even crappier drops from clearing normal zones? Just down to helping others?

I usually only come on to talk to others and help. Also chest run, but also out of keys...

And Normal Mode DOES give me better drops than hard mode. (seeing how I can do things in easy mode twice as fast, I also get twice as much drops during the same time). For the rest, I spend my time farming Underworld.

Well not much else to do in the game, when having no cash and being bored of missions/quest, right?

Saraphim · May 08, 2007, 10:13 PM // 22:13

As I've beaten all three campaigns now I'm doing Hard Mode for the below reasons:

Grabbing the old worms and farming LB and SS points, I was too busy at work and missed the double points weekend.

Vanquisher titles, but I'm jumping around continents so I don't get bored with it

Mapping... I'm annoying close to GMC on all three (Cantha 98.2, Elona 98.5 and not so clever on Tyria with 94. something or other) so I'm using Vanquishing to mark off all the areas I'm re-scraping, if it's a yellow helmet I'm done.

Not doing missions as I really don't feel like it.

Quote:

This hardmode player certainly isn't pugging though, so you won't see me in LFG anywhere. I imagine this is true for the vast majority of hard mode players, which is probably why you think there aren't any.

Ditto. Plus I doubt that many pugs would put up with me trying to squeeze my ass into every crack on the map as I go round.

Oh yeh, and I don't really do it for the drops. I get golds but they're usually merch food. But the sheer amount of killing and merch crap I've been flogging has netted me a fair bit of cash thus far so if nothing else I'll probably be able to afford to buy something nice eventually. But I don't care that much about rare skins anyway.

Evilsod · May 08, 2007, 10:34 PM // 22:34

Just a random off topic question because its not worth making a thread about.

Does Diversion actually work in HM? I got Norgu to hex Mungri Magicbox with it several times... and he just carried on spamming like it didn't exist.

kumarshah · May 08, 2007, 10:49 PM // 22:49

I am playing Hard Mode since ANet decided to kill Normal Mode farming.

I would love to do HM missions and Vanquisher titles, but there aren't enough people playing to form PUGs for the same.

dargon · May 08, 2007, 11:47 PM // 23:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nexus Icon

And yes, Dreadnought's Drift was a RIGHT bitch. We had to hop in and out a few times just to get the right spawn; the first time we went in, we were faced with a huge mob containing 4 Dolyak Masters. That really wasn't going to happen :E

Heh, a few people from my guild also did that a few days after HM was first added, they got the same spawn as you, and they beat it, they didn't bother zoning in and out till it was friendly

shirosae · May 09, 2007, 12:10 AM // 00:10

So are you playing Hard Mode?

LB/Farming. Aside from that, no. Once i'm done with LB, i'll probably not touch Hard Mode for a long time.

If not, why not.

It's normal mode with silly DoA boosts. What's the point? I could easily just take lower damage weapons, take illusion of haste to cripple myself, not use any IAS/shutdowns/interrupts/snares/runskills, take all the skills off my monks (set to aggressive), and recreate the Hard Mode experience in Normal Mode.

I can't think of any good reason to bother with hard mode other than farming, titles or novelty value.

Because your not bothered?

It seems very much a waste of time (and not in a good way). I might eventually need to get involved to take KOABD track up further, but i have other titles i can grind before i need to go there, and even then i'm not sure i'm desperate enough for higher end KOABD to bother.

Because your cant yet?

I can access Hard Mode.

Have you not completed any campaigns?

Protector x3, Grand Master Cartographer x3. One of each profession, although most haven't finished half of what my ranger has.

Is it not what you expected?

I was hoping for proper enemy group composition, proper skillbars, mob parties requiring tactical play and some genuine difficulty. I was kinda hoping that Anet would do what they did to the solo farming spots, Drok's run etc; observe what people were doing and change the mob positioning and skillbar composition to make it harder. A Hard Mode with mobs that slowly changed over time to make it more difficult and prevent the same set of builds working from zone to zone? Where Anet actually set out to consciously make the game harder over time? A huge effort, but such good potential.

I expected silly DoA-style mob buffs.

Envious · May 09, 2007, 01:00 AM // 01:00

I mainly use HM for farming and vanquishing when my guildies and friends need help, other than that, I haven't tried any mission areas yet.

ValaOfTheFens · May 09, 2007, 01:15 AM // 01:15

I'm still in Normal Mode. I haven't beat any of the campaigns yet(I'm closest to beating NF) and truthfully I'd probably only use my Ranger, Warrior, and Necro in HM. I'm too poor to do anything but do Vanquisher in HM right now anyway. Also, I need to get my Wisdom and Treasure Hunter titles up to at least track 3 before trying any chests.

My beef with HM is that its now impossible for me to go to areas like FoW and UW because I don't have HM. Even Tomb is pretty much HM and the NM pugs are W/Mo's and Ele's, who were always passed over in the past, gloating and sucking really bad. Loot scaling has more than halfed my income and I need to do some higher level content in order to bankroll my titles and of course weapons and armor. Since I don't have HM I have to wait 2 hours to make a complete pug who'll die after 2 seconds!! Only 1 in 3 Tomb runs is a success(its a statistic I can live with) and now I have to wait hours for a failed run.

I'm not a leet player who farms Dead Swords and Totem Axes all day and has piles and piles of platinum. I'm an average player trying to become financially secure so I can actually play the game w/o too much grind.

Cowboy Nastyman · May 09, 2007, 01:22 AM // 01:22

vanquishing all the way, has made the game much more enjoyable to me 54/54 22/33 12/34 currently some areas are reeeeealy mean to fight and to an extent i like that

Kook~NBK~ · May 09, 2007, 02:03 AM // 02:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by freekedoutfish

So are you playing Hard Mode?

Yes, I've been dabbling in it.

Quote:

Are you doing it for the better drops?

Nope, Don't need them or care.

Quote:

Are you doing it for the hard missions? Are you doing it for the guardian title? Are you doing it for the Vanquisher title?

I've been just dabbling in it, I haven't decided whether I'm going to go for the titles or if they're too much of a time-consuming pain (vanquisher) to bother with.

Quote:

Which campaign are you doing hard mode in?

Elona & Tyria

As for where all the HM players are, they're scattered out over the 3 continents. Think about it, when the individual campaigns came out, everyone flocked to the new one. So getting into a group wasn't that hard. Now, nobody is flocking to any campaign, everyone is going to their favorite campaign and doing that one first.

ChyldeOfTheLotus · May 09, 2007, 03:40 AM // 03:40

I haven't played Guild Wars in days. I wanted to do hard mode, but the lack of competent groups just kills it for me.

Alleji · May 09, 2007, 03:56 AM // 03:56

I'm doing Tyrian Vanquisher, but I do most of the areas with heroes and hard ones with friendlist, so if you're wondering why nobody ever spams "LFG to vanquish Ice Floe", that's why.

HM isn't designed for the average player, because the "average player" is really, really bad. Thus, it's almost pointless trying to put together a pug because chances are you'll get a bunch of bad players and fail.

Really, most of the areas are doable with heroes. I'd say about 48/54 in Tyria are doable with 2 good players + 6 heroes (or however many you need to fill up the group). If your impressions are different, maybe HM isn't for you.

applejacks · May 09, 2007, 04:00 AM // 04:00

Quote:

Does Diversion actually work in HM?

I don't think diversion works on bosses.... at least not in hard mode.

SuperDave · May 09, 2007, 05:57 AM // 05:57

I've only been doing HM since it's release. Only in Prophecies (haven't been to Cantha or Elona yet)
I've pretty much been doing missions (need 5 more). Still need the last 2 on the RoF and 3 in the Maguuma Jungle.

I've been vanquishing too. The order in which I do this depends on how much time I have. If I have more then 2 hours I'd go for one of the areas with 200+ enemies. And playing for the gold drops (although I haven't seen any lately apart from in Locked Chests). Oh yeah, and I'm exploring while im vanquishing (might as well try for cartographer too). All of this pretty much on my monk. But yea, HM seems really quiet. The hardest mission to do imo has been The Wilds. Those damn scarabs had my number, even harder then THK or the desert missions