Worst Missions

The missions I dislike the most :-

Aurora Glade: A long run to the end that is easy, but you lose with the taking of pedestals. If the run in was shorter then the mission would be alright.

Thunderhead Keep: Another of those long running missions which you can fail at the last moment.

Gate of Madness: This is just an evil mission, excessively hard and long. Also one of those that you fail at the last moment. It is quite a lucrative mission though. Cannot seem to get my Ranger through this one.

Vizunah Square, because you are pretty dependant on a Canthan team joining, which isn't all that common. None are hard enough for me to bitch about.

GoM was tough on my Ranger. I used the hero flagging trick from Wiki and ran a conditions build. No bonus, but with constant burning, poison and bleeding on Shiro, he went down.

As for missions I hate, I'll go along with Aurora Glade, and I died twice at the end of Dasha Vestibule to the Searing Flames boss. Finally took a Broad Head Arrow hero to quiet that bugger.

The ones where you have to prevent some suicidal NPC from killing themselves are the worst imo. Getting pummeled by waves of monsters or whatever else, meanwhile Danika, or whoever you're protecting, runs off to go kill themselves. Mission over if they succeed.

Not that they're hard to do, but I've often wondered if those NPC's are infused, have max armor, or if they're possibly bugged sometimes. Plus, the whole "Save Me!" routine gets a little old sometimes.

And who's bright idea is it to keep A GHOST alive????

I agree with the OP on all Aurora Glade.

Thoughts on Aurora Glade:

I appreciate that the devs tried challenging us with this. But unless you’ve played through AG before, you have ZERO idea what’s going on when capturing the pedestals. This is problematic because you have to slog through the whole mission again just to retry strategies. Perhaps if there was some sort of briefing beforehand ("The enemy will use runners, deployed from the main camp, to capture the pedestals...")

Trial and error is fine, to a certain extent. But this mission is out of hand.

VIsnah Squae and Unwaking waters. Its tedious having to keep quitting and rejoining in order to get a hench team on the other side.

Dasha Vestibule FTL.... Worst mission. Especially with a suicidal Goren....

Arborstone, Gate of Pain, Gate of Madness, Gate of Fear. - Environmental effects in GW are simply lazy design. If they were truly GLOBAL, and not just always against he players, they might be interesting.

"Guard the NPC" missions- Annoying when the NPC AI sometimes does screwy things, sprinting ahead and aggroing multiple groups, then dying and the mission fails.

In order, though...
1: Arborstone. I can't say how much I hate this mission.

2: Gates of Madness: a close second, and the only mission ever to take me and my guildmate more than a dozen tries to get through. I seriously recommended against getting Nightfall to my brother and a few friends just because of this stupid mission.

3: Eternal Grove: I had enough of seeing how stupidly powerful Seige Turtles are in FA, thanks. I don't need to see them again and get slammed by them from nearly off the screen while trying to protect NPCs.

4: Vizunah Square (Foreign): Mhenloooooooo Jenkins!

5: Gyala Hatchery: Protect the little, easily-killed turtles. Great. This would be higher on the list, but I have NEVER gone through it the normal way, instead using the back way every time I have to deal with it.

I have no problems with Thunderhead Keep except when idiot players go off and do stupid things.

The simple tactic is this...once you are in the keep and you have to defend, the whole team stays upstairs and defends together. Rangers can even trap the stair cases.
You can have one or two people use the catapults from time to time but it's not really needed.
Just let the groups come and defend as one group. Always kill bosses last except if boss is a monk.
I never failed THK with this tactic unless some idiots go run downstairs and think they need to tank the gates and die or something. Splitting up here in 2 teams is risky, not impossible but very risky.

Aurora Glade with the pedestals is easy too. MAke sure you have one player with at least one running skill like sprint. There are 3 pedestals: bottom, left and right. The whole team except the guy with running skill defends the left one and STAYS there....the attackting teams will always attack the left one as long as it has a white crystal in it.
The guy with the running skill is the runner. He puts a crystal in the bottom pedestal right away and then keeps going back and forth to maintain the left one...the enemy may capture it from time to time even when you defend it but your runner will be faster than theirs and you will keep putting a crystal back.
After a little while their forces will be depleted...go kill the Demagogue who is left on his own and then do the right pedestal.....easy peasy

Gate of Madness is actually tough. However a good team against him has an MM, SS, Domination Mesmer and as much blinding as you can find and ca n do it. It's easy enough to do the bonus then anyway.
Kill the lich first and leave Shiro alone....he will attack the weakest first, which means the minions. In capping the shrines for the bonus your M can create new minions and they will keep shiro busy till you have all shrines.
Then fight shiro...SS works great together with insidious parasite and empathy from the mesmer...Keep stacking the hexes because when Shiro uses a specific power he loses a hex too. But you will see loads of damage being done by those 3 skills on him. Conditions help too...Then keep blinding him as much as you can. He still takes damage from the hexes but hardly ever hits and so you stay alive. Melee players should have wild blow to kill his stances.
It's still a tough fight but like this you can win it.

Arborstone is not that hard but mostly annoying. The constant knock overs are a pain. Take an MM and 2 monks and go through the middle or the left...leave the right alone.

Eternal Grove....easy actually. A party should be 2 teams of four. Each group should have 1 monk, 1 MM one with interrupts and one other.
First part you go out and take out the luxons and turtles...turtle siege is easily interrupted as it is a skill with long casting times. There will be 1 turtle in the middle, 2 on each side and one in the middle again. So keep an eye on your side and on the middle. After movie stay upstairs...do not leave the gates. Keep MMs back a bit so they will not aggro with minions too quickly. Defend the 2 gates untill all groups are destroyed. With this team build it's easy.

Vizunah, like Unwaking waters have the 2 team issue...noobs on the other team can kill it...not a good plan. A Henchie team is better...again take an MM.

Gyala is a pain and the best way to do this, especially with bonus is the circle around to the back of where you need to go and start killing all the kurzicks before you talk to the guy to take turtles with you. So stay clear of the turtle group initially. Work your way back carefully and you wil lonly have a couple of pop up groups to kill ot bring in the turtles.

Wellll.. Up until last week I would've said Eternal Grove and Viz Square, having to rely on the other team not consisting of leavers was always a pain. But over the last two days I've gone in with just myself and my hubby + full hero team and made mincemeat of both of them.

Viz - we got hench on the local side so no probs there, plus we took two MM heroes.

Eternal Grove ... Planted Olias on one side and Master of Whispers on the other (both with Flesh Golem), monks in the middle.... not one afflicted got close to the gate without being fried or shredded. Got masters on both with ease.

Aurora Glade was a pain when we first did it, but pin down + running works. Protect the one crystal as someone's already pointed out and just wait for everything else to come and get pummelled.

Currently trying to get my Necro through the Crystal Desert missions, she walked Thirsty River but Dunes of Despair is seriously getting on my nerves. I don't remember the siege wurms being able to cover every last inch of the 'courtyard' map before.

The most annoying mission I found was Divinity Coast. It's not a hard mission. It's not really a hard bonus. Except for that one Chosen who stands right in the middle of an Ettin patrol, and gets killed too quickly for you to save him (at least, this is what happened to me). The only way I got this bonus was when, for some reason, the patrol didn't spawn, or spawned in a different spot. I don't remember.

However, this was way before heroes and hench control. I wanna try it again sometime, since it should be a lot easier just ordering the henches and heroes to the spot well before you get there, so the monsters spawn too late to reach him before my heroes do.

I agree - all those missions with easy and long way there and only challenging end are quite anoying. If you have to repeat em, easy and long way becomes boring and pointless.

Thunderhead is fine example, Dunes of Despair (only if you do bonus, otherwise its boring all the way till end),to some extent Aurora and Sanctum if you are newbie.

At NF got some too (Drought, Dashas, Madness ...) but they at least got some missions where its allright (Grand Count, Morah, Abadon) - they challenge you right away and if you fail them you are ready to redo fast without "geeez, i wasted hour on it already" feeling.

Factions missions, even thou they had lame bonuses, got dificulty right - there is never easy & boring part in it.

1) Nahpui quarter- A long mission, you get to the end and then get pwned by all the esscences+star tengu things ><
2) Thunderhead Keep- Again, long mission, everything seems to be going ok and then the annoying bit where you defend the fort and it all messes up
3) Arborstone- Long, boring+hard. Enough said v.v

Huh? eh? *has small heart attack*

no no, don't get up I'll be ok soon....

*5 mins later*

HOW can you not like THK? It's the greatest mission ever! It's great to do for fun now and again. I'm also a fan of the Gate of Madness too.

Personally, my most loathed mission is Jennur's Horde. *shudders*...doing just the mission os tolerable, but when I needed the bonus for Protector...that was SO frustrating.

Ok, since nobody else has mentioned it yet, I'll nominate The Wilds for the worst mission. Especially after the weekend I just spent there!!!

This is not a difficult mission. The fighting is pretty easy all the way thru. However I've just spent an entire weekend pugging this mission with IDIOTS. All I need is the bonus here and no matter how many times you repeat "do not kill the centaurs", "do not kill the centaurs", "do not kill the centaurs"
"Do NOT kill the centaurs!", some jerk will inevitably kill the centaurs.

This is one mission that you are way better off just henching.

Oh, I'll also nominate Ruins of Surmia for the same reason.

Oh god yes. I never played GW until Factions was released...what I want to know is how on earth people worked out how to do some of these bonuses in the first place...for example, WHEN did someone decide to stop and wait at those two centaurs to see if something would happen? There have been a lot of occaisions when some stupid wammo runs in and kills what you're supposed to leave alone...then has the audacity to not understand what he's gone and done...and starts to spam "We do bonus?" several hundred times.

Hmm, i've got two ones that i spent some time with.

Jennur's Horde & Grand Court of Sebelkeh - While both arent technically very difficult but very unforgiving, easy to wipe at. I disliked the capture & hold mission more than the other and those little balls of destruction can quickly overwhelm everyone X). Jennur's HORDE was really that, i think i killed 1000's of margonites before i beat it, wiped alot too. Felt really good when it was done.

Realm of Torment missions didn't make similar expressions, they weren't very bad. Slight offtopic, of all Torment areas Domain of Pain is my least favourite..yes i like getting ganked by Shadows after coming out of portal :O

I found pretty much all of the Factions missions to be rather frustrating, almost every one of them involves protecting someone. I've said this before but, I don't mind failing a mission due to lack of foresight or because I screwed something up, but failing because an NPC got stuck on something and was killed just gets depressing, especially those missions which are quite long and difficult.

I just done the Ring of Fire with my Warrior yesterday too, and although it's a fairly straight forward mission it is so hard to find a decent team there. I guess up to that point it's very easy for new players to just get some help and run right through the game, but once you get to that point, the people who don't really know what they're doing really stick out. Almost everyone there is a Whammo, and it took me three attempts just to find a Ranger that actually knew how to lure out the enemies. I try not to get frustrated at beginers, but geez.. Some of these people need to go back and start again.

I did however really enjoy pretty much all of the Nightfall missions, even the ones that were really hard. Unlike Factions, they weren't frustratingly difficult, but instead made you think about what you were doing, requiring good timing and tactics. I hope the next chapter manages to keep that up.