With End of Dragons, Guild Wars 2 revises the strike missions. These are intended to offer two difficulty levels in the future and will be challenging enough to be considered new raid bosses. This is to finally challenge the hardcore community again.
What has been announced? A new blog post introduced the “Strike Missions 2.0”. These are set to become particularly tough in the new expansion, End of Dragons, especially with the challenge mode.
So far, the strike missions have been somewhat of a shallow introduction to the group content of Guild Wars 2. With a total of 10 players, you fight against a boss from the story that offers various mechanics but can usually be defeated by any group.
However, with the new challenge mode, this is set to change. According to the developers, they should feel “like real raid bosses”. This is a significant change, as the hardcore players have been largely neglected in the last 16 months.
Fights are designed to be hard first and then made easier
What do the new strike missions look like? As before, you will specifically fight against a boss in the strike missions. In normal mode, this will still be easy to defeat.
In challenge mode, however, it is supposed to receive new mechanics and offer “surprises”. Furthermore, specific “damage thresholds” are expected from the players. So if you only moderately master your class, you will struggle with this mode.
To ensure the bosses become really challenging, they have been developed from top to bottom. So first, a hard version for the challenge mode was created, which was then toned down for the normal mode. However, the normal mode is supposed to retain the core abilities of the boss so that players can train there.
Will the challenge modes start immediately? No. The developers emphasize that players should first familiarize themselves with the world stories and the new elite specializations.
Only a few weeks after release will the higher difficulty level be introduced.
What about rewards? For completing strike missions in End of Dragons, there will only be one currency. You can use it to purchase unique rewards that will otherwise only be available as drops from the bosses. So those who have bad drop luck will eventually get their desired reward.
Additionally, you should be able to exchange the currency from the new strike missions for the currencies of the old missions from the Icebrood Saga if you prefer the new boss fights over the old ones.
The hardcore community has suffered greatly in recent years
Why is this change so important? Guild Wars 2 and its raid content have a complicated relationship:
- At launch, raids were completely omitted. However, the 5-player dungeons only offered a low level of difficulty.
- With the Heart of Thorns expansion, 3 raid wings for groups of 10 players were released, which were even quite well received. The bosses were challenging and demanding for the existing community.
- Unfortunately, ArenaNet has hardly kept up with the raid content. Guilt managed to complete the raids faster than the developers could keep up. Over time, the difficulty level of the raids also decreased a bit. The first raids were the hardest at the same time.
Since May 2019 – and thus for nearly 2.5 years now – no new raid has been released. Instead, the focus has been on the strike missions, which have been aimed more at “casuals”. The big raid guilds, however, quickly grew bored of this.
Now, with End of Dragons, something is finally coming that promises a real challenge. How hard the bosses will actually be and whether they will be rewarding enough will probably only be known after the release in February 2022.
What do you think about the new direction Guild Wars 2 is taking with the endgame content? How do you find the mix of normal and challenge modes in the strike missions?
More about the new expansion End of Dragons can be found here:
Guild Wars 2: Everything we know about the new expansion End of Dragons
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