Guild Wars 2

Hello guys,

Lately, been browsing these forums and have heard alot of complaining from players that dungeons are too hard, that they require zerging, etc. And people point to AC Explorable as the hardest one at the moment…

Heres a spoiler for you all out there: These dungeons are completely fine!
But they do require finesse and, hate to be the one to say this, you have to know your class inside and out, and know how to play. Lastly, you have to come prepared to accept the fact that your skills and weapons are going to change based on the needs of the fight as well as working with the group.

Just last night, my guild, all of us somewhat new, has been having a couple of players (including me) interested in doing dungeon explore modes. And last night, we started on AC Explorable.

Btw, I am a Human Guardian, who forgot to bring range weapons, so ended up with my Greatsword / Mace+Shield swaps during all this.

All of us had been here before once, in pugs, and a few had cleared one of the paths. Myself, I had been here before, and never got past the “protect the collectors” part of the Asura path. We kinda knew what we were facing, but nothing too major.

So Hint #1: You have to know what to expect. Be it from another person who has been here before, or an online guide. For us, we only knew how the first 2 bosses worked (Spider Queen, Lt. Koller) somewhat, and as such, we chose the Charr path (the easiest of the 3) and proceeded.

Facing the Spider Queen, we knew that the room she is in has the gargoyle placements, and that she has a devastating poison ability. So Hint #2: Learn what ALL your skills do, and use them accordingly. You have to, as a group, tactically know what you need. Myself, I brought 2 condition removals (1 of them a group type), and my skill that gives group Aegis (not counting my Virtues). So did everyone else as well.

And guess what? We cleared the queen with nary a problem. Granted there were a few who went into downed state, but, and heres Hint #3: You have to be quick to revive downed players, but leave dead players dead. We didnt die on the fight, but whenever we went down, someone was quick to help bring them back up. You learn that alot of these bosses abilities dont outright kill you, but many will outright put you in a downed state in one shot. Im starting to see the beauty of the downed state, in that it makes it devastating, and feel devastating to the player, but not actually knock you out of the fight. This is where teamwork is hugely important

And here I will end this, before it turns into a story. If you want to read more about our guilds run (btw, we ran it a second time, this time choosing the supremely hard Asura path, and still came out on top! We ended up doing the last 2 bosses without any guides, as none of us had beat the burrow event before. It was fresh and new!)

But the advice I can give you players, aside from the hints above, is the following:

You have to work as a team, and you HAVE to learn the play your character well (not perfect, but well).

We all maybe took a couple deaths here and there overall, and did, at one point, completely wipe and fail a boss fight, but overall I think, between both runs (the charr path and the asura path) I took 5 deaths. We all ended the night with about 1 gold, 130k XP, and 60 Ascalonian Tears.

These dungeons DO reward you, if you play them right!

People aren’t complaining that they’re impossible, They’re complaining that the obscene difficulty of the dungeon does not match the measly reward you get. And then the dread you feel when you realize you have to grind it if you decide you look the armor sets/a lot of the weapons.

Forgot to mention:

If you want to read a diary of our run (both Charr and Asura, with pictures!), you can read them here on our guild’s forum page

Painking.4703:

People aren’t complaining that they’re impossible, They’re complaining that the obscene difficulty of the dungeon does not match the measly reward you get. And then the dread you feel when you realize you have to grind it if you decide you look the armor sets/a lot of the weapons.

The rewards are quite nice if you do well. Like I mentioned, 1 gold is nothing to sneeze at in this game.

First run took about an hour and 10 minutes, the second run took about an hour and 25 minutes.

This pretty much sums up the reason people have trouble with dungeons.

Just wondering, what level would you suggest for doing this? i understand everyone gets downleveld to 35 but still the stats on weapons and armor stay the same right? And besides that you also gain more traitpoints when your higher level which can make things a whole lot easyer, right? ?

MadMossy.8715:

This pretty much sums up the reason people have trouble with dungeons.

^this

What do people find AC explore the hardest one to do?

Seriously just take the second path at the beginning and it will just take 18-23min with decent people. There is NO boss that you will die on if you just dodge and people know how to root & revive downed state.

Farmed this instance yesterday and I bought this for my 390 badges.

http://i49.tinypic.com/2cenr5x.jpg

RaZaC.1963:

Just wondering, what level would you suggest for doing this? i understand everyone gets downleveld to 35 but still the stats on weapons and armor stay the same right? And besides that you also gain more traitpoints when your higher level which can make things a whole lot easyer, right? ?

This is true, and we did have 1 level 80 with us. I did this at level 61, we had a level 53, and a level 42. While I can see that the level 80 may have more traits and skills to bring, his stats got reduced to level 35 gear. All of our stats did

axeN.7086:

What do people find AC explore the hardest one to do?

Seriously just take the second path at the beginning and it will just take 18-23min with decent people. There is NO boss that you will die on if you just dodge and people know how to root & revive downed state.

Farmed this instance yesterday and I bought this for my 390 badges.

http://i49.tinypic.com/2cenr5x.jpg

Agreed, but we have to say, our sense of accomplishment in completing the 3rd path, which I believe is the hardest, was immense!

I know tonight we are going to try the first path and get our achievement for completing all the paths + story mode

I’d like to know how the average player supposed to know their class inside and out by the level AC gets pushed to me by the game…. especially since a vast majority of the content up to that point only requires kiting/circle strafing and pushing 1.

And if I have to be carried by some veteran player to run level 30 content, content which barely rewards either the vet or myself, why should I bother?

EverythingXen.1835:

I’d like to know how the average player supposed to know their class inside and out by the level AC gets pushed to me by the game…. especially since a vast majority of the content up to that point only requires kiting/circle strafing and pushing 1.

And if I have to be carried by some veteran player to run level 30 content, content which barely rewards either the vet or myself, why should I bother?

The rewards thing is interesting. each run through AC story is about a level and a level worth of silver.

I think you are right that we have access to this content before we are mature enough to handle it. sort of like getting an EvE mission that take me into or through low security space before i know how to handle or avoid it.
I for one like that stuff. hell yeah.
well… i like it now. it took me a while to not get RQkitten off by my mistakes and blame the game or pirates.
But i learned.
Im learning here too. im learning that this is a much deeper game then swtor or DAOC or most of the other MMOs i have played.
and to me that is exciting.
last night i had a run through ac story in a PUG with less than 10 deaths.
no way point zerging.

People are getting better at this. PUGs are getting better.
after doing these dungeons I am getting better.
This is pretty important really as this also makes me better at PVP.

people are going to start talking in pugs when it isnt working right rather than just waypoint zerging. the groups will get better.
This will make the rewards better as the dungeon will be faster and not so expensive.

Echoing the OP a bit here…

The first time my dungeon group did all the explorable paths, each took over an hour. However, once we got used to our professions and playing together, we clear each path anywhere from 20-40 mins. Kholer used to be able to pull us in and tear us apart, but now, we know how to shut him down and no one even gets pulled in. We have a systematic way of killing graveling burrows quickly. We know how to prioritize targets without having to call them. I think, in general, dungeon explorables will take a long time until your group gets used to it. Eventually, you can reach a point where your repairs are minimal and your clear time is much faster than your initial clear.

I think that if you approach the explorable dungeons in such a way that you’re always rotating your party members, you probably won’t get anywhere. This is usually the case for people who don’t have guilds or have contacts that want to make this a regular thing. In this situation, you would have to constantly spam chat and other mediums to find or make your own group, usually unsure of how well your team will work together. This cycle just repeats itself and you’re stuck in a loop until you decide you want to move to a higher level of play involving more cohesive teamwork.

If you really want the dungeon experience to be more serious and efficient, you should consider creating a network among other frequent dungeon runners you play with. I do this with a few of my friends who are in different guilds, and we rotate between three different explorables daily, based on what tokens we need. In the time you play together you’ll learn how to complement each others’ strategies, you’ll learn more about your own profession, and you’ll be able to prepare for each of the dungeon stages more quickly.

TL;DR: Practice makes perfect. Form a network of friends for more efficient dungeon grouping and gameplay experience. Dungeon explorables are usually hard because of a lot of uncontrollable factors, so don’t let repeated grouping with more and more strangers be one of them — become friends with those strangers and practice runs together.

Couldnt have said it better myself lightrayne!

EverythingXen.1835:

I’d like to know how the average player supposed to know their class inside and out by the level AC gets pushed to me by the game…. especially since a vast majority of the content up to that point only requires kiting/circle strafing and pushing 1.

And if I have to be carried by some veteran player to run level 30 content, content which barely rewards either the vet or myself, why should I bother?

I wasnt carried, he was new to this dungeon completely. (Remember, there really is no huge difference in his gear or stats since they are downleveled).

Our veteran player? He was the 42 elementalist who had done this before

I admit, “carried” was a too strong.

Basically if I’m required to dedicate a spot on my group for someone who has done it before and tell us all exactly what to do and what skills to take (one less spot for a friend or guildmate), or alternately read a guide out of game just to have a reasonable expectation of success for content designed for level 30 characters… /shrug.

Its the kind of thing I avoid MMOs for.

EverythingXen.1835:

I admit, “carried” was a too strong.

Basically if I’m required to dedicate a spot on my group for someone who has done it before and tell us all exactly what to do and what skills to take (one less spot for a friend or guildmate), or alternately read a guide out of game just to have a reasonable expectation of success for content designed for level 30 characters… /shrug.

Its the kind of thing I avoid MMOs for.

And your correct in a way. It was a bit easier knowing what we were getting into before the fights, and could slot or skills accordingly. (mass condition removal for the spider, blocks and reflections for Kholer, etc.)

Most of our enjoyment did actually come from trying the fights we never did before, which the only time was when we did the Asura path and beat the graveling burrows event / protect the ecto collectors.

Both bosses after that event was all brand new to us, and it was a blast learning those bosses.

When everone did it back in BWEs, no one knew anything, and catacombs was significantly harder back then.

You do not need someone with prior knowledge. You need a dedicated group that isn’t afraid to get ran over and willing to experiment and improve.

When the group I ran with started TA 2 weeks ago with no prior knowledge, we didn’t know if we could effectively farm this dungeon after the first couple of runs. Now we clear it 30-40 minutes, route pending.

Also, do forward>forward. Highly recommended.

I’m kidding. Get completion and never touch that route again.

What do you mean by “forward>forward”?