Guild Wars 2

Spoiler alert

about an hour after logging off after finishing the dungeon, it struck me how good it was. The first half of the fight my team was takin’ care of business with the dredge boss, he was super easy and it seemed like the charr boss wasn’t really doing anything. So far so Good, and that cutscene with the Dredge boss’ death was pretty funny….then…Mr. Charr got his little upgrade in abilities and we spent a solid 10 minutes at least rotating revives and just desperately trying to stay alive, doing no damage. It was pretty intense, until I told my team the flame wave can only reach so far and then it was just pew-pew from 1200 range lol.

the dungeon as a whole had good fights, good mechanics, i really enjoyed it, though the rewards i got weren’t very good. I think the importance of this dungeon was more the experience of doing it, and the fact that it’s temporary helps keep it special when you go back and remember things that’ve happened over the years. that’s why i like the gauntlets and stuff- in 5 years you can look back and say Yeah, that was the end of the very first living story

Spoiler

if you down the berserker first the dredge makes a whirlwind along the outer edges cutting about half the plateform. nothing really new after, flys around throwing large and mini aoes. just in a really confined area now

I LOVED THESE BOSSES.

Is the loot affected depending on the order they go down?

I truly enjoyed the bosses, i did it 3 times, with some people went smooth and easy and with one of those groups..well..awful.

What i loved most was the presentation like if they were the bad guys from Power Rangers or some other old Japanese show XDD

PS: i would shorten the length of the dungeon, there is a point where fighting the trash mobs its boring

I agree, I love this whole dungeon, and the end bosses are just amazing.

I think ArenaNet finally found their way on how to create their dungeons and PvE encounters.

Guild Wars 2 don’t need tank and spank and such mechanic, they need bosses with small ’’puzzles’’ and fun mechanics like that, with some spanking added.

As a thief who was wearing a lot of berserker gear and likes to melee…ugh it was a rough time. Bring some condition removal so the constant burning doesn’t get ya.

I could have probably spammed SB from range but that’s pretty boring. Next time I’ll carry more vit/tough gear.

This dungeon is so much fun!

did this just under and hour ago with only 3 people, fantastic dungeon! my god i hope some of the boss weapons (particularly the charr flame gauntlets) become some kind of skin/legendary/anything!

No doubt this was the best boss encounter in the game thus far.

Really enjoyed this dungeon, especially the bosses at the end, well done!

Probably the most enjoyable 1st dungeon run ever, compared to all the other 1st dungeon runs in other dungeons…

A real shame its only around 2 weeks…

even though I have no time I had to try the dungeon… it’s one of the best in the game yet. I’d say on par with AC story. What I don’t get: is this correct that not the dungeon-team but the holiday-team is responsible for this? O_o

Two thumbs up, Paul.

I had a good time with this fight. The random group I was with failed on our first attempt, but I think we picked up the rhythm of the bosses after that.

Very well done and I definitely was not expecting what happened. After the fight ended the thought that immediately popped into my head was that the encounter designer must be a fan of Ornstein and Smough.

Yes, well done ANet. Very fun fight. Reminds me a bit of Ornstein and Smough from Dark Souls (although much, much easier while still providing a decent challenge).

Love how active you have to be during this fight; dodging red circles, jumping over kb waves — so much fun.

I also like the boss intro cutscene at the beginning, and these new cutscenes in general. It’s funny, usually for dungeons I skip the face-to-face dialogue sequences as soon as they start (even if I haven’t seen them before), but here I found myself watching the cutscenes even though I’d seen them already. Definitely the way to go forward in terms of cutscenes I’d say.

This has been one of my favorite dungeons thus far right next to CoF story mode. I really hope we see a whole lot more of this in the future! Very nicely done Anet team!

nmoral.3876:

I truly enjoyed the bosses, i did it 3 times, with some people went smooth and easy and with one of those groups..well..awful.

What i loved most was the presentation like if they were the bad guys from Power Rangers or some other old Japanese show XDD

PS: i would shorten the length of the dungeon, there is a point where fighting the trash mobs its boring

I agree this is how boss fights should be. There was no real way to tank them, berserker just when around randomly attacking people forcing them to kite/dodge him for a short while before he find a new friend. Firestorm just spit it around everywhere, he didn’t care who he hit so long as he got you.

There was no “stack and spam dps” you had to keep moving, pick your fights and pay attention to what was happening if you wanted to avoid being downed.

I didn’t even mind the length of the dungeon. sure we had alot of mobs to go through but it was fun, and they actually dropped real loot (least from what i’v been getting)
would have been nice if there was a bit less mobs and a few mini events instead. like defend the drill at the start, maybe stack bombs at a wall that drop off spawning enemies. give us more puzzles or challenges and a bit less standard dps fighting.

+1 from me too. This was hands down the most fun boss fight I’ve had on here. It’s a real challenge, not due to cheap mechanics like getting stunlocked &/or getting 1-shot by attacks you can barely even see. The fact that you need to pay attention to what’s going on while conserving your resources is just awesome. Plus the dialogue is icing on the cake! Great job guys!

I won’t call it the “best encounter” as it was quite punishing for a story mode encounter, but I’ll give it best introduced encounter. For once the bosses use something that has been seen before!

In other bosses that I saw so far in dungeons (and guild bounties!), it’s been:
“What’s that boss doing?”
<splat, rez>
“Okay… so that attack does…”
<dodge, dodge, splat, rez>
“AARGH now it does…”
<splat>
<insert profanity here>

“Oh! They’re using the same stuff that I saw before. Now how do I…”
<splat>
“Okay now I get it! Cool!”
<win>

Please continue to do this where some of the mechanics are introduced beforehand, specifically:

(bah spoiler tag’s not working properly you’ll figure it out)

while i do like the bosses (and their ornstein/smough moment when you kill one of them), there are a few issues i have with them:

-the berserker’s attack is a stunlock combo. if you get hit by the first attack, you’ll get hit by all attacks, because they all stun or knock you down somehow

-still on the berserker, it seemed that his teleport had a knockback tied to it, or at least on the second phase. this is particularly annoying because there’s no tell to where he’s going, he just pops next to you and bam, you’ve fallen all the way down and now you need to be rezzed.

-last comment on the berserker, while the “jump to dodge” thing is interesting, i found myself just rolling through it instead, because jumping was extremely unreliable, especially given that players have different pings, and things that require such finnicky timing are nigh impossible to pull 100% of the time with a higher ping.

-the flame AoEs are actually far bigger than they show. i’ve lost count of the amount of times i was being damaged by an AoE that was visibly out of range.

-i often got randomly damaged by seemingly invisible projectiles, since both enemies were far from me and there was no red circle anywhere in sight, nor did i see anything flying towards me when those random invisible attacks happened.

The F&F dungeon is what your other dungeons should aspire to be. The mechanics for even the trash pulls were spot on, let alone the interesting and technique based boss battles. The dungeon was innovative, the boss fights were the best you’ve done anywhere in the game so far, and it really shows. I think the most important factor is that it was fun. If it’s not fun, then having a high or low difficulty is pointless. I’d rather have dungeons like this with a difficulty scale, then the dungeons you currently offer us.

The sentinels gear introduction also deserves a big thank you ArenaNet. It’s about kitteny time.

I’ve ran this place twice now, and I personally love it. The first time we killed the charr first then rocket mole, and the second time we killed rocket mole first. I love how the second phase is a whole different type of fight depending on who goes down first. Perhaps my only complaint is that the two of them were displayed on the preview sight, rather than saved as a surprise. In the future, it would be nice to have a "Spoiler boss pics inside" tag or whatnot on said photographs.

My best experience actually came from the big death device thing with the core you beat up on. The first time I ran the dungeon, the mole guy driving the vehicle got upset and said something similar to Fine, Ill come take care of you myself!! Then he burrowed down, I went in to shield bash and start tanking him, and *donk* down he goes. We all had a good laugh at that, but then my second run he just was like nope, not doing it, and ran. Is it just random whether or not he comes down, or did we do something special that first time?

That fight reminded me of Ornstein and Smough from dark souls. Very well done.

To the team who made this dungeon, thank you.

If there is any reason for people to come back to pve or start up pve, it is because of things like this. This entire dungeon felt like a living story having the mechanics to back it up as a challenge, yet enjoyable. Ran it with pugs at first (1 guildie, 4 pugs to be more precise) and it was enjoyable up till the duo boss. Failed, wiped, got irritated and had to go anyways.

Came back with full guildies and breezed through. There should be more boss fights and events in instanced areas like these, where they feel epic even if it’s only 5 people. SE story mode boss at the end was also pretty fun, as was some of the exp mode bosses but thats only 1.

Wish all dungeons can be this much fun

Keep up the amazing work Anet, this is why I still play pve ^^

BTW bruno, the stunlock combo can be countered by stunbreaking the first hit, then dodge rolling. Worked for me most of the time, just was hard to time but it is possible.

Both the mid-dungeon cage fight, and endboss are perfectly balanced. You don’t have to push yourselves to your limits, but hard enough, to feel proud for completing them.

Both boss fights for this dungeons are amazingly fun. Please move whoever designed these great encounters to the main Dungeon design team!

Greate, after doing this long Living Story quest line i cant even finish the quest without doing another dungeon with a bunch of strangers, because most of my friends moved on to another games and i usually just play with 1 or 2 ppl. I apsolutley hate the dungeon system that is making me look for a kitten group spamming chat all day instead of just doing it with my wife and actually have some fun wihout having to have to deal with some random ppl.

Same goes for getting the end game items, I expected so much more after gw1, yet this game is just like every other mmo.

Yeah the bosses were great, their introduction was super awesome (that’s how badazzes presents themselves!) and it was cool seeing the armored dredge talking when we got the charr down, they had a lot of personality even if it was just a fight. Really fun one!!

About the other hard encounter the “survive all this we’re throwing you”… I’ mad at you!! But in a good way, I had to run a huge lot haha, thanks Lyssa for my Thief Shortbow #3 making me dodge everything when I screwed things badly hehe. I felt really stressed but I loved it when it ended. I don’t know how I didn’t break a single armor piece in that room!

ok that boss fight introduction reminded me of the old bebop and rock-steady from teenage mutant ninja turtles. and so far those 2 are the most memorable bosses and i would love anet to make a step into that direction make bosses that are memorable not because their tough or hard but are fun awesome and have personality. most legendary bosses i fight are blank faces.

more bosses like this please! great job!

Yeah, awesome dungeon. Really liked the way the boss fight differes based upon the order of defeating them. That’s definitely something that can be used more often in my opinion.

LOVED this dungeon, and I usually hate running dungeons. This was nice, fluid, cool story, cool mechanics and wonderful bosses.

My friends and I laughed pretty hard when the cut scene of the two bosses entering together. Their movements reminded me of how Power Rangers would enter a fight lulz.

NinjaEd.3946:

BTW bruno, the stunlock combo can be countered by stunbreaking the first hit, then dodge rolling. Worked for me most of the time, just was hard to time but it is possible.

thief stunbreaks, of the top of my head:

-signet, teleports you TOWARDS the enemy

-haste, burns all your endurance and makes it regen super slow

-roll for initiative, flings you backward, which in this particular case it’s very likely to send you to your doom (it’s the reason i don’t bring withdraw on PvE)

-shadowstep, which has no cons unless there is no spot within the 1200 range that you can teleport to (60 seconds cooldown)

-the sword’s shadow return, which must be placed within 10 seconds of the attack.

so you see, it was kind of a problem for me, because my stunbreak options were far from optimal, as the only two “real” options are shadowstep and a sword skill. it would’ve been fine if only the first attack stunned, but each subsequent attack added a new stun, and that meant spending more than 5 seconds just watching your character getting punched. and i thought Orr had taught the devs that no one enjoys having to wait 5 seconds before regaining control of your character.

Yay Arenanet! Great dungeon. So much interesting content these days! I have to applaud the improvements in cutscenes, storytelling, etc. that is going on. Very well done. Also, I thought the rewards were great, I made lots of money from my first run, with mining the ore and whatnot.

:)

I would particularly like to commend the fact that the dungeon doesn’t require fully geared level 80s, but rather common sense and good play. Even the trash pulls are made much easier if people understand the basics, like pulling the Protectors out of their invulnerability AoE.

The first boss is more of an environmental fight than it is a fight against actual enemies and as such is pretty cool, particularly how different classes can deal with the mobility requirements, as well as the multiple methods of avoiding damage (avoiding flaming tornadoes by hiding behind the core or dodging through them or blinking behind them).

The final boss battle is just great. Challenging, but not unfair. Everything can be avoided, there’s room for error, but slacking off means you’re going down. The second stage of the Charr boss was great fun in particular and once my group managed to get the patterns down, we barely took any damage, but it didn’t feel boring or easy. It felt like we were playing well and being rewarded for it.

Also, I very much appreciate that the dungeon can be done by almost any level. I cleared it on my level 50 Thief in full green gear. There was only one lvl 80 in the group and our lowest was 36. In fact, this was the first time I went into a dungeon in GW2, though I am a bit saddened by all the people agreeing that this is the best dungeon in the game…

I was worried when I saw that the finale of Flame and Frost was a limited time dungeon, since despite the fact that I’ve been playing for over a month I still have no level 80 characters (can’t stop rolling alts), but was happy to see my fears unfounded.

Now to decide which of my characters gets the cool gloves…

Yeah, it did work pretty well; I was in there with a group of mostly guildies who mostly (mostly) knew what they were doing so we didn’t end up wiping or even having individuals defeated a whole lot. There was one guy, and it proved a challenge to res him in the middle of that fight, but luckily having two guardians in the party makes it at least feasible.

I didn’t really get a whole lot of chance to notice the dialogue though. I was dimly aware that they were talking and slagging each other off, but that was about it. They kept me pretty busy watching for shockwaves and incoming fireballs and making sure I was in the right position and had a dodge ready (most of the time… three shockwaves in a row usually meant I was going to take some damage anyway).

On the whole, though, it worked. It’s not going to give you THAT much trouble if you… play the game the way it’s meant to be played. I’m not sure if it’s possible to cheese it but since you don’t actually have to, there’s been something accomplished here.

That weapons test was something else, too… although our NZ-based player had a lot more difficulty getting the dodges to work properly with it.

I’d also like to add my congrats to the developers of this boss fight. It was difficult, but not punishingly so. And it never seemed unfair.

Plus, it was a smart decision that when the party did defeat one boss, it didn’t come back if the party fell to the other part of the duo.

I had fun!

I played this dungeon with four of my friends last night and we all really enjoyed it. We were excited for the mid-dungeon boss fight but we were all especially impressed with the final bosses.

As a permanent dungeon this probably would have been too easy since most of the difficulty (and a lot of the fun) comes from learning how the mechanics work. As temporary content though, I think it is excellent.

Jandau.5349:

The final boss battle is just great. Challenging, but not unfair. Everything can be avoided, there’s room for error, but slacking off means you’re going down.

Bring the food that increases endurance regeneration (orrian truffle & meat stew) a ranged weapon, and some condition removal, and you could solo the fight.

I hope the team responsible for dungeon content is looking at how you made this dungeon. It’s enormously enjoyable, and really fits well in the GW2 combat(no real tanks, healers). More of this please!

Inspired by Smough and Orstein boss fight in Dark Souls

Offering an (apparently minority?) opinion…

Maybe I’m just not the target player for this content; I found the dungeon a lot of fun but the end bosses completely frustrating, to the point that they totally wiped out the “fun” feelings I had prior to them.

I went in with a very competent PUG (which should be doable, please no “then get a better guild” comments), and spent over an hour in it: about 20 mins for the dungeon itself and the remaining 40+ repeatedly wiping against the two bosses. We all knew about the whole enraged mechanic, got each boss down to a fraction of their health, and just couldn’t finish the job. Multiple times, multiple wipes. I don’t think it would’ve been so kitten frustrating if the bosses didn’t heal back to full health every time… At least make it seem like we’re making some progress without going back to square one each time.

So yeah. Loved the feel of the dungeon; so far absolutely hate the end bosses.

Just wanted to add my voice, I loved this dungeon! I’m really sad it’ll be gone in under two weeks, I hope more dungeons (permanent) are added with similar/new boss mechanics and story line.

I managed to run this today and have to say it was the most fun dungeon run in the game so far. Keep up the good work. Anet, if there’s any chance to upgrade this to a permanent real dungeon with explorables and all you should go for it.

For the time-limited people, you get a group at the entrance real quick currently so if you can spare the time to run it, finding the group shouldnt be the issue it is for the old dungeons.

I enjoyed it as well. I think future (and current) dungeons should be made with a combination of inspiration from SAB and this Molten Alliance dungeon. I actually feel like I’m on an adventure in both of those compared to the original dungeons in terms of pacing and mechanics.