Guild Wars 2

I don’t hate CoF p1, I really don’t. It’s great for some quick cash.
But I think the problem for me is that it is too easy. It’s not a challenging enough dungeon.
And having a dungeon so easily run in over 10 min, and <10 with the Dream team! Yeah, you know what I’m talking about: Warriors, Guards and Mesmers.
What CoF does is that it not only promotes speed running, but also does two terrible things:
1. Makes the aforementioned classes (and the zerker builds) seems like THE best classes and builds in the game and pulls away from variety.
2. Pulls away incentives from doing other dungeons. e.g: Look at LFG, it’s CoF all day.

I’m not saying CoF is a bad dungeon, an average group can clear it in appx. 15min, which is an okay time for a dungeon. The problem I think is that you can clear it in <10min, which is bad.

Now, how would you nerf CoF to prevent speed clearing?

My idea is:
-that you can increase the distance in which the mobs on the bridge (after the Salve driver) can be pulled, so that it gives an incentive to kill them instead of skipping.
-Another method is to cause the regen crystals around the boss to cause additionally cause a condition to players (weakness, cripple, chilled, etc.) so that we have to destroy them.
-Improve the bosses AoE burn, which also causes knockdown or stun alongside a higher damage to promote dodging and use of range. (I’m talking about you hundred blades!)
-Make the boss hit harder

Now, this may not neccesarily make CoF immune to speedclearing, but it does make it more Challenging! I think that is what this dungeon needs, a good challenge!

What do you guys think? I know that CoF is a box of worms to open, but I’m interested in it. I’m also looking forward to how Anet themselves make it more challenging!

Sidenote: Maybe running a dungeon can give a guaranteed rare (for the first run per day) to give incentives to run in general?

Zul.1506:

I don’t hate CoF p1, I really don’t. It’s great for some quick cash.
But I think the problem for me is that it is too easy. It’s not a challenging enough dungeon.
And having a dungeon so easily run in over 10 min, and <10 with the Dream team! Yeah, you know what I’m talking about: Warriors, Guards and Mesmers.
What CoF does is that it not only promotes speed running, but also does two terrible things:
1. Makes the aforementioned classes (and the zerker builds) seems like THE best classes and builds in the game and pulls away from variety.
2. Pulls away incentives from doing other dungeons. e.g: Look at LFG, it’s CoF all day.

I’m not saying CoF is a bad dungeon, an average group can clear it in appx. 15min, which is an okay time for a dungeon. The problem I think is that you can clear it in <10min, which is bad.

Now, how would you nerf CoF to prevent speed clearing?

My idea is:
-that you can increase the distance in which the mobs on the bridge (after the Salve driver) can be pulled, so that it gives an incentive to kill them instead of skipping.
-Another method is to cause the regen crystals around the boss to cause additionally cause a condition to players (weakness, cripple, chilled, etc.) so that we have to destroy them.
-Improve the bosses AoE burn, which also causes knockdown or stun alongside a higher damage to promote dodging and use of range. (I’m talking about you hundred blades!)
-Make the boss hit harder

Now, this may not neccesarily make CoF immune to speedclearing, but it does make it more Challenging! I think that is what this dungeon needs, a good challenge!

What do you guys think? I know that CoF is a box of worms to open, but I’m interested in it. I’m also looking forward to how Anet themselves make it more challenging!

Sidenote: Maybe running a dungeon can give a guaranteed rare (for the first run per day) to give incentives to run in general?

Balancing is pointless. People would just abandon cof p1 and farm some other dungeon/path.

How can this be fixed?
Random dungeon + great reword mechanic. It doesn’t even need Dungeon Finder. It could be handled just like daily achievements.

I think dungeons should be appropriate to its level, that means low level dungeon like AC / CM should be shorter / easier then higher level one like COF.
Current situation is that every one start dungeon only after lv 80 cause high level dungeon it much more easier.

Players can run only once per account per day each paths of each dungeons.

Titan.3472:

Players can run only once per account per day each paths of each dungeons.

Not really, you can run it as many times as you want and still get a lot of gold and it’s really starting to hurt the overall economy, there’s no real system from stopping you farming gold in CoF P1 at the moment, even diminishing returns is too small at the moment. People get 1 gold in less than 10 minutes, which means about 6 gold every hour, and some farm this more than 3 hours a day, and they get 15 gold each single day, a guild mate of mine got 400 gold in CoF p1 in the last few months.

This needs to be fixed asap, not only is it boring and destroys the economy but like others said it discourages playing any other dungeon. The way to fix CoF is to make mobs unskippable, either make them follow players all the way through or simply add doors-walls-barriers in each room which open only after the mobs have been killed. Another way is to simply decrease silver dropped by bosses.

@Skyblue: The problem with that solution is that people will them begin to farm the lower lvl dungeons, like CM and AC even more. I believe that AC used to be the speedrun dungeon before the patch a few months back.

@HiddenNick: I know that feel. People will always begin to find tricks to speedrun any other dungeon. But there’s a different between efficient runs and an easy dungeon. CoF p1 is just plain easy, an average team can easily clear it in under 15 minutes!

I don’t mind efficient clears, but when it gets to the point where teams can do it repeatedly in under 10 minutes, then there’s a problem. You could always prevent speedrunning by say… nerfing the damage output or functionality of Hundred Blades.

A great reward mechanic is always a good incentive for people to play dungeons. But the thing is, that reward mechanic is present in Dragon Champs and major world events.
I mean, a dungeon run (not coF) will take an average of 20min, but a dragon champion can take as fast as 5 min to kill with a guaranteed rare and a possible exotic/precursor and a decent drop rate! Look at Final Rest and Shadow Behemoth for example!

@Doom: I think he meant that as a suggestion :P
And GW2 economy… that’s a whole ’nother can of worms mate!

Fixing all dungeons at the same time:
- trash doesn’t drop agro
- trash loot is increased substantially
- nerf warrior damage, buff ranger/necro/engi
- boss damage should be nerfed so that OHKO is only so for zerkers, not for people with safer gear.
- make perfect play more difficult by having the OHKO cooldowns slightly longer than endurance recharche. One false dodge will kill a zerker while a non-zerker can survive better. Also makes support more important
- buff evading conditions (blind, weakness …) and remove defiance from dungeons. Make support more valid.
- buff combo fields to be more noticeable

There’s no magic one solution fixes all. It has to be a mixture of small changes that move the meta towards support over dps.

marnick.4305:

Fixing all dungeons at the same time:
- trash doesn’t drop agro

As good as that sounds it could make matters even worse…

Instead of skipping enemies you would get exploiting enemies inability to move to some spots.

HiddenNick.7206:

marnick.4305:

Fixing all dungeons at the same time:
- trash doesn’t drop agro

As good as that sounds it could make matters even worse…

Instead of skipping enemies you would get exploiting enemies inability to move to some spots.

I don’t see how that makes matters worse?

A potential exploit does not warrant leaving broken mechanics in place.

No! You don’t nerf cof! You should buff other dungeons instead.

Cof P1 is the king of all dungeons holding about 85% of all dungeon runs. How about a system that brings a dynamic balance to all dungeons at once? If a dungeon is neglected, the drop rates become very high and if one is overrun, the opposite.

Of course COF will still remain the nr.1 choice for fast runs and Zerker gear. But trust me you will see more people in Arah and Sorrows Embrace than ever before.

JubeiTM.5763:

No! You don’t nerf cof! You should buff other dungeons instead.

Cof P1 is the king of all dungeons holding about 85% of all dungeon runs. How about a system that brings a dynamic balance to all dungeons at once? If a dungeon is neglected, the drop rates become very high and if one is overrun, the opposite.

Of course COF will still remain the nr.1 choice for fast runs and Zerker gear. But trust me you will see more people in Arah and Sorrows Embrace than ever before.

would work

Players SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO run only ONCE per account per day each paths of each dungeons. Overall game content and activities balance preventing farm and then more efficient than DR. If you consider a 24h activity than it has no sense to farm hundreds times the same event if you consider that you beated said boss it has really no sense to be able to do it again and again the same day at least. Once you killed said ennemy it has sense that you go to next step in frame.
Then players would have to have a mix of dungeons/events activity to gather what they need and not farm only one aspect of the game over and over that’s the best way to solve any problem with no need to rework everything all the time. As a counter part that each dungeons path can be run only once per day per account, then each of these dungeons path would reward, like world event does, a chest with 100% chance of rare item or above.
Not only it would push players to play all different pve content everyday but it would be better for game itself and for the less played contents. Also such set up would make the lenght of path/dungeon a non issue as you wouldn’t be able to bot-like act the said game aspect.

No brainer: make the final boss way tougher. Short dungeons should hold tough content.
Another one I like is a change to the execution room with the acolytes.
Current situation: +- 5 silver mobs spawn and attempt to harass players. They wont succeed at that cuz you can run away far enough to make em reset. Kill acolytes asap, wait til respawn, kill asap etc.
Suggestion: For each acolyte killed, an additional 2 silver mobs spawn. This forces players to make a decision: kill silver mobs, or risk being overwhelmed by killing just the acolytes and not the silvers.

Agree with making both the acolytes and the final boss harder. One idea might be to make the crystals apply stackable retaliation on the boss a set time after spawning, maybe even more than the 5 stacks commonly used, that way groups must also kill the crystals, and check on the boss and maybe even stop DPS altogether and focus on crystals if he got too many stacks on himself, until they run out.

Also, one idea I’d implement (and sorry if I got it from the dreaded two-Ws game) is daily dungeons. Make a separate dungeon category for extra laurels or something like that for a daily dungeon, each day a different dungeon where you can run a random path of explorable or story for an extra reward.

Actually I have a solution that’s even easier. Change the way Defiant works. The more critical hits and raw damage a boss takes in a short period of time, the more power they gain. Eventually they should get to the point of one-hit KOs.

The balance of this would using conditions and condition damage to lower Defiant to the point where bosses become Vigilant. In this state, they are more susceptible to conditions and condition damage but gain toughness.

This will allow players to decide if they want to try killing a boss before it kills them or go for the more slow and controlled route. Better yet, some may try to keep the boss in balance to maximize all types of damage while keeping the risk relatively low.

Crossplay.2067:

Actually I have a solution that’s even easier. Change the way Defiant works. The more critical hits and raw damage a boss takes in a short period of time, the more power they gain. Eventually they should get to the point of one-hit KOs.

The balance of this would using conditions and condition damage to lower Defiant to the point where bosses become Vigilant. In this state, they are more susceptible to conditions and condition damage but gain toughness.

This will allow players to decide if they want to try killing a boss before it kills them or go for the more slow and controlled route. Better yet, some may try to keep the boss in balance to maximize all types of damage while keeping the risk relatively low.

What a terrible idea. This would go completely against ArenaNet’s philosophy to allow players to “play how you want to play”. Forcing players to use conditions or forcing them to slow down their raw dmg/crit hits, is completely ludicrous and is a cheap solution to bigger problem.

Not to mention…so many complain about the fact that you see too many ‘War/Mesmer only’ groups….well, in your scenario, you’d end up seeing the same, if not more class-specific groups forming, where players who aren’t running the perfect build for the boss fight aren’t accepted into groups.

No one is forcing you to do/not to do CoF p1. If you want to make some quick cash compared to some other aspects of the game, then do it. If it seems too easy to you and you love complaining about it, they dont do it. Changing CoF p1 with the intention of curbing/stopping gold farming in CoF p1, will funnel players into yet another aspect of the game which will yield quick cash, although probably a little less than CoF p1. Or will force people to play the TP more….YAY! Fun.

Play the game for yourself and stop worrying about how other people are playing it.

The way to fix CoF is easy…. Just like Spider Queen in AC, make the Bridge unskippable, and Next, Close that little hiding spot at the next event so they cant just run there and have to actualy clear mobs ( Harder for 5 Zerkers to tank 8+ mobs) .

Instead of Nerfing, reward players for exploring all of the dungeon and killing all of the trash.

Some Dungeon Suggestions

@Mario: Yeah, but the problem is not about freedom of choice, it’s that CoF p1 pulls away from the experience of other dungeons. I know a few people I’ve pugged for in CoF who has only played CoF (and AC). It just retracts from the whole experience.
And ‘play how you want to play’ is a problem in itself, cause people will always play for the most rewards in a short time rather than challenging ones!

I wouldn’t. I’d make everything else equally facerollable, and bring back the City of Heroes glory days.

I actually like a bit of frustration in my games
Doing dungeons that just makes you shout ‘BULLKITTEN!’ every once in a while, hard and fun to do, and rewarding in the end.

Kinda like those old Zelda and Mario (esp. Super Mario Bos. 2!) games, and Dark/ Demon Souls. It was hard, make you rack your brains over, but fun

I know that not all players are like this, but I hardly get that feel with CoF, or most dungeons. The new AC gave me a bit of that feeling, which was a nice

Put all boss fights on platforms. Give the boss spammable knockback skills and have the platform high enough it is instant death. Don’t forget the red circles of massive degen, and some strong CC for the boss’s minions. Is that what you are looking for xD

Zul.1506:

I actually like a bit of frustration in my games
Doing dungeons that just makes you shout ‘BULLKITTEN!’ every once in a while, hard and fun to do, and rewarding in the end.

Kinda like those old Zelda and Mario (esp. Super Mario Bos. 2!) games, and Dark/ Demon Souls. It was hard, make you rack your brains over, but fun

I know that not all players are like this, but I hardly get that feel with CoF, or most dungeons. The new AC gave me a bit of that feeling, which was a nice

Lol, THAT sounds like overkill! xD

The best way to nerf CoF path 1 and p2 is how ArenaNet changed Ascalonian Catacombs. Change mob skills to more intense and more damaging skills. Give the end boss and sub-bosses special attacks/ combos that require the party to coordinate their attacks so it won’t be a 1-minute spam DPS battle. Dungeon will be the same; just requires team coordination to defeat end bosses like the new Ascalonian Catacombs.

Limit skipping in the dungeons? Atm it is insane, sometimes people just run from boss to boss, or skip a whole boss, or skip 90% of trash mobs.

If it’s not challenging to you, run another dungeon. Every dungeon run doesn’t have to be really hard just to make “elite” dungeon runners happy.

danbuter.2314:

If it’s not challenging to you, run another dungeon. Every dungeon run doesn’t have to be really hard just to make “elite” dungeon runners happy.

Problem isn’t elitism of hard dungeons… the problem here is the “farmability” of the dungeon. If one dungeon path is so much easier and faster than others it becomes the only one most people are doing, with the added problem that if it adds so much gold into the economy causes inflation over time.

The general idea is to get people to do other dungeons so it becomes more balanced, and limit the speed at which gold is introduced into the economy.

I would “nerf” CoF by buffing the rewards of other dungeons.

locoman.1974:

The general idea is to get people to do other dungeons so it becomes more balanced, and limit the speed at which gold is introduced into the economy.

They did that with AC a month ago. Now there is hardly anyone running it. Many of us want easier dungeons. I wouldn’t mind them cutting rewards a bit, if the dungeon was an “easy mode” one. Have selectable difficulties, with rewards scaling to them.

why would i want to do arah p4 and get a bunch of whites and blues when i can do all of CoF or SE or HotW paths and get better rewards in a fraction of the time it would take me to finish just that one path of arah?

Change the Acolytes part so that you can’t run into the room to break aggro.

It would be funny if an enemy could force one of the characters to attack the rest of the party. That might stop some of the bezerk builds.

declan.3968:

Change the Acolytes part so that you can’t run into the room to break aggro.

that part is intentional have you actually tried killing one of those mobs that spawn there? they have ridiculous stats even as glass cannon it takes forever and i hit for 4.5k-6k damage with grenades (except for blind and poison nades) nade barrage hits up for 2k (rarely with the use of food consumables sigil and luck as i sacrificed some crit for damage) hp each nade and needless to say thats 8 hits wich =16k hp

P2 is about right, honestly. 15-20 min is reasonable for a quick dungeon path, and it has a good mix of mechanics in the various rooms.

For P1…

Slave Driver – Make it so you can’t ignore the effigies. Increase the time it takes for them to respawn, but make it so the Slave Driver is invulnerable while they’re alive. Right now, there is no point to them even spawning.

Bridge Event – Why is this optional? Make it part of the dungeon path, with the main guy as a boss.

Boulder Trap – Make the boulders block teleport skills and force players to learn the mechanic.

Final Boss – ANet ‘fixed’ the crystals in the last update, but they still do next to nothing except with the lowest DPS group setups (I’ve only ever had one group that had issues out-DPS’ing the crystals’ healing, and that was because we realized we were all spec’ed for support). Make the crystals effective enough at healing the boss that you have to break them as they spawn. It’s an interesting mechanic that is generally ignored.

Another possible mechanic for the final boss that I think would be fun: He has a radial shockwave attack that sends a KD projectile toward each player and pet. It would be a lot of fun if the same crystals that heal him could reflect those back at him if you dodged behind them. The projectile should break the crystal when it is reflected.

I think those changes would make P1 more interesting without ruining the path for people.

“nerf”

Why would you call it a nerf in the first place? It is a dull and boring path. Adding more mechanics that require groupcoordination shouldn’t be called nerfing.