If strike missions in Guild Wars 2 are your jam, you’re going to want to take a peek at the dev blog ArenaNet’s Encounters Design Team Lead Cameron Rich has posted today in the midst of the ongoing End of Dragons elite spec beta. Rich reiterates that strike missions are meant to be an “entry point into the world of 10-player content” in the game. End of Dragons will amp that up with “Strikes 2.0” – essentially, a challenge mode difficulty for this 10-person content, on par with other challenge modes already in the MMO.
“Challenge Mode takes the normal difficulty Strike Missions and further expands on their mechanics, remixing them further to create even greater challenges while introducing new surprises that keep players on their toes,” Rich explains. “Each Challenge Mode Strike Mission is designed with a specific level of challenge in mind, creating a clear difficulty ramp that will push you forward and continually test your coordination and mastery over the combat system. You’ll need to work with your allies to form and execute a plan of action and be quick to react to overcome these toughened-up encounters. More succinctly, these encounters will feel like proper raid bosses.”
ArenaNet notes that this mode won’t be enabled at launch, merely “in the weeks” after launch, to give folks time to practice with normal modes and sort out their new elite spec builds. The studio also promises a revamp for the strike mission rewards, one that will simplify the currency bloat.
“Strike Missions in End of Dragons will award a single currency. Any End of Dragons Strike Missions you complete will reward currency to be spent on Strike Mission-specific rewards, including any unique drops from the Strike Missions. You won’t be beholden to the fickle fate of random number generation to get what you want. Additionally, we’ll be consolidating the Strike Mission currencies introduced in The Icebrood Saga into one currency with no weekly cycle. You’ll be able to trade in your End of Dragons Strike Mission currency for The Icebrood Saga Strike Mission currency, so you can easily go back for older rewards you may have missed while still being able to play the latest and greatest challenges.”
