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AC Ex 35 Run Video and Impressions
I quite appreciate the testing and find that it fits fairly well with my own experience. I do feel, however, that proving level 35ish characters can handle the content as well as downscaled level 80 characters is only one piece of the puzzle. Thus why we still have ongoing discussions about the issues found in the revamped AC.
I still don’t quite understand the “puzzle” that everybody keeps posting about. First they complain that it is impossible for anybody that’s level 35 to do it, and some even claimed near impossible for level 80s. Then when proven wrong, the people who were making the claims and complaints suddenly say “well that’s because your group is experienced with the dungeon! You knew what you were doing!” Well.. yeah. So what?
Apparently people think that when you know what you were doing, you’ve always known. Like they’re the only people that have to learn how to do the content for the first time. The people that are familiar with the content also had a first time through the dungeon.
My Guild ran the dungeon the first day it came out as revamped content. Ran every path. No wipes, no problems. Yes, we got lucky with Grast. But the rest of the dungeon did not stop us at all. We all feel like AC got a lot easier with the health nerfs to the mobs. The whining on the forums about AC being an “entry level dungeon” is ridiculous. So what if you couldn’t do it at exactly level 35? Go level up and come back to it. It’s not an issue at all.
Yeah, I think part of the issue is that people are taking the “level progression container” mentality of other dungeons/instances in other MMOs and trying to apply it to GW2. In some other MMOs, doing quests or anything not in an instance would take forever to level, but repeating a dungeon/instance would level you faster. I thought it was pretty quick to level in the open world, especially with things like crafting, so I don’t think you necessarily need to do dungeons to level — only if you feel like increasing the difficulty of the game (compared to open world), getting skins/gear/coin/etc, and/or if you want to start learning how to coordinate with a team.
Recent quote from Rob:
In the case that AC was made harder, that’s a matter of opinion. Having personally reduced numbers like HP and damage, and modifying the skills used to not do more devastating things, I know for certain that it is numerically easier than it was before, and more forgiving to mistakes.
However we increased team based difficulty. We designed things to require players to coordinate and work together more than before, since that is our original goal: To create challenging content build for 5 coordinated players. This is why we’re not allowing it to scale like the rest of the game does. It’s set and built for 5, so it doesn’t need scaling.
We all have our expectations for dungeons, but I selected the key points in the quote above to show what I think Anet’s expectations of dungeons are. I’ll agree that there’s a gap of difficulty between the open world and dungeons, so teaching new dungeon runners to work as a team may require some additional work on the designer’s part (since most players have probably only soloed up to this point). They can only do so much as far as teaching, and then, it’s up to the individual community members to decide whether or not they want to also assist the new dungeon runners.
I think people need to stop complaining by saying stuff like “AC is impossible!”. At the very least, they could put constructive criticism like “The spider queen’s special attack is hard to distinquish. <insert possible solution here>” or “Kholer’s pull attack is hard to distinguish because of his size and particle effects. <insert possible solution here>”. Instead, we get pointless posts threatening devs, flaming other players, or some other nonsense with no purpose. We want to help the game improve, right?
The devs read our posts, even though they don’t always reply. Make it easier for them to understand your frustration with specifics and not rants. You know they want you to work as a team, so what specifically is making an encounter difficult? What would encourage people to coordinate better? How do you think you would learn dungeon mechanics best?
I didn’t watch the video, but assuming the elementalist used ice bow. Then the whole video is moot. Ice bow as far as i’m concerned is a bug exploit, no different then sniping a mob that can’t hit you.
Had to go back and briefly skim through the fights to see what the group used… from what i saw, ice bow wasn’t used except for the burrows.
If that invalidates the entire run, well, ya got me. Could it have been done without it? To our Elementalist’s credit, I wouldn’t doubt it for a minute. To do so would not only discredit the Ele, but the rest of the group as well..
After briefly looking through your posts, you seem well versed enough to realize that a run wouldn’t hinge upon the use of a single skill in one part of the run. But hey, I’ve been wrong before. I’ll let those who watch the vid judge for themselves.
Edit: Actually, thinking it over a bit, it’s an ice bow of a level 35, not that of a level 80 Ele scaled down to level 35. I don’t know enough to say how much of a factor that is, but perhaps someone who does can chime in.
I was referring specifically about the burrows. If you use ice bow anywhere else your generally just hindering yourself. I skimmed through the video real quick. And you’ll notice she unslots mist form for the bow during the burrows. If you go to the 35th minute of the video watch as the ele solos the corner burrow in ~3 seconds thanks to the ice bow. The guardian simulataniously goes into the downed state and they fail because of it. The part of AC is nothing but a DPS race. Kill before u get overwhelmed and every second you waste killing a burrow is one more mob the guardian has to tank, or 1 more mob that will randomly aggro on hodgins. The ice bow makes this incredibly easy as its “4” 1 shots the burrows no matter what level u are.
I’m not trying to detract anything else from the run, although it did sound like it. (my bad) It was still impressive even if p1 is the easiest of the three. I just know from experience that the burrows take much much longer to kill without ice bow. Especially if you have a condition character (or god forbid 2) in your group. It can even be impossible at that point. They have way to much HP and are a complete pain in the kitten Especially now that they poop out KD mobs.
I quite appreciate the testing and find that it fits fairly well with my own experience. I do feel, however, that proving level 35ish characters can handle the content as well as downscaled level 80 characters is only one piece of the puzzle. Thus why we still have ongoing discussions about the issues found in the revamped AC.
I still don’t quite understand the “puzzle” that everybody keeps posting about. First they complain that it is impossible for anybody that’s level 35 to do it, and some even claimed near impossible for level 80s. Then when proven wrong, the people who were making the claims and complaints suddenly say “well that’s because your group is experienced with the dungeon! You knew what you were doing!” Well.. yeah. So what?
Apparently people think that when you know what you were doing, you’ve always known. Like they’re the only people that have to learn how to do the content for the first time. The people that are familiar with the content also had a first time through the dungeon.
My Guild ran the dungeon the first day it came out as revamped content. Ran every path. No wipes, no problems. Yes, we got lucky with Grast. But the rest of the dungeon did not stop us at all. We all feel like AC got a lot easier with the health nerfs to the mobs. The whining on the forums about AC being an “entry level dungeon” is ridiculous. So what if you couldn’t do it at exactly level 35? Go level up and come back to it. It’s not an issue at all.
The other aspects to the dungeon, as I see it, are the friendliness to new players and the overall level of challenge. You say “So what?” to questions about A.) your own personal experience (both in GW2 and in other games) and B.) your experience working with a coordinated group of players (who have their own pre achieved level of experience). That’s not really a “So what?” if you don’t already have that experience. It’s very easy to say “well, then go and get that experience” when you already have that experience but think for a moment what your current experience level is the summation of. I’d imagine it’s probably cumulative years, perhaps decades, of time.
Games these days need an on ramp of sorts, particularly when speaking of something that has the mass appeal of an MMO. This means nothing about the end game being easy. In fact, it can mean that the end game is even harder than before simply because you’re training the players the right way for your experience. Right now, AC EXP is a bit of a brick wall for those who don’t have that experience and aren’t lucky enough to run across those willing to teach them as the game doesn’t really do anything within itself to help them.
I quite appreciate the testing and find that it fits fairly well with my own experience. I do feel, however, that proving level 35ish characters can handle the content as well as downscaled level 80 characters is only one piece of the puzzle. Thus why we still have ongoing discussions about the issues found in the revamped AC.
I still don’t quite understand the “puzzle” that everybody keeps posting about. First they complain that it is impossible for anybody that’s level 35 to do it, and some even claimed near impossible for level 80s. Then when proven wrong, the people who were making the claims and complaints suddenly say “well that’s because your group is experienced with the dungeon! You knew what you were doing!” Well.. yeah. So what?
Apparently people think that when you know what you were doing, you’ve always known. Like they’re the only people that have to learn how to do the content for the first time. The people that are familiar with the content also had a first time through the dungeon.
My Guild ran the dungeon the first day it came out as revamped content. Ran every path. No wipes, no problems. Yes, we got lucky with Grast. But the rest of the dungeon did not stop us at all. We all feel like AC got a lot easier with the health nerfs to the mobs. The whining on the forums about AC being an “entry level dungeon” is ridiculous. So what if you couldn’t do it at exactly level 35? Go level up and come back to it. It’s not an issue at all.
The other aspects to the dungeon, as I see it, are the friendliness to new players and the overall level of challenge. You say “So what?” to questions about A.) your own personal experience (both in GW2 and in other games) and B.) your experience working with a coordinated group of players (who have their own pre achieved level of experience). That’s not really a “So what?” if you don’t already have that experience. It’s very easy to say “well, then go and get that experience” when you already have that experience but think for a moment what your current experience level is the summation of. I’d imagine it’s probably cumulative years, perhaps decades, of time.
Games these days need an on ramp of sorts, particularly when speaking of something that has the mass appeal of an MMO. This means nothing about the end game being easy. In fact, it can mean that the end game is even harder than before simply because you’re training the players the right way for your experience. Right now, AC EXP is a bit of a brick wall for those who don’t have that experience and aren’t lucky enough to run across those willing to teach them as the game doesn’t really do anything within itself to help them.
I don’t quite understand where you’re coming from. We are all pretty new to Guild Wars 2. It hasn’t been out for even a year yet. So because other people are slower learners, they need to nerf a dungeon that’s actually pretty fine the way it is? There’s nothing in the dungeon that’s difficult to understand or pull off.
The first time that my group ran AC during the beta weekend, we got mauled. It didn’t deter us at all. We finished the dungeon and came out with a happier experience having learned and dealt with the situations ourselves.
Yes, the first time you run through an explorable mode, it can be frustrating. But the instant you learn it, it’s ludicrously easy. There’s nothing challenging about any of the bosses almost. Even Lupicus is easy, and he’s widely considered the game’s best content (dungeon-wise) right now.
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I was referring specifically about the burrows. If you use ice bow anywhere else your generally just hindering yourself. I skimmed through the video real quick. And you’ll notice she unslots mist form for the bow during the burrows. If you go to the 35th minute of the video watch as the ele solos the corner burrow in ~3 seconds thanks to the ice bow. The guardian simulataniously goes into the downed state and they fail because of it. The part of AC is nothing but a DPS race. Kill before u get overwhelmed and every second you waste killing a burrow is one more mob the guardian has to tank, or 1 more mob that will randomly aggro on hodgins. The ice bow makes this incredibly easy as its “4” 1 shots the burrows no matter what level u are.
I think it feels like a DPS check just because people keep trying a 4-1 split.
A 3-2 split (or safety 2-2-1), focusing on 2 burrows at once, should aggro every graveling and keep Hodgins safe. You just need a bit of coordination in order to destroy burrows as close in time as possible.
Before the changes, the 4-1 split was easier to perform because hatchlings died with a couple of hits. It’s not probably the best approach right now unless you are really confident on the “tank”.