Guild Wars 2

Seriously.

No problem to dodge if you’re not built for banners/summons/pets/clones.

But the moment you have one? Circles everywhere.

Fights should not favor builds. Or professions in general.

You don’t need to go out of the red circles, just dodge when they activate.

Yes, but I can normally otherwise walk out of the circles if I only have one circle to worry about. I don’t even have to move for the earth donuts. Which is important because he does the earth wave right after and need to save the dodge for that. But if I have to chain dodge multiple circles because I just so happen to have clones out it means I’m constantly eating earth waves.

I really hope we see changes like this in the November patch. It’s been two months since launch, a lot of things which are mere tweaks would greatly improve dungeon experiences for many classes and builds. Most of these tweaks are commonly known and discussed.

I have high hopes for the November updates. It’s been two months. It’s time.

If you walk inside of him, you can avoid his line of spikes without dodging. The hitbox for that move starts not from the middle of his hitbox, but from a small distance away.

omgwtflolbbl.7142:

If you walk inside of him, you can avoid his line of spikes without dodging. The hitbox for that move starts not from the middle of his hitbox, but from a small distance away.

Yea I kinda see that. Path 3 is where he does the wave instead of the nova, so point blank should be safer for that wave. But this goes back to the problem of extra circles. Once all of them are spammed I gotta get out one way or another.

Free tip: you can change your utility skills AND major traits any time.
If you’re built for summons, please change your build before fighting Alpha, change it back after the fight if you want – and that’s it. This mechanic has been introduced to use it when it’s needed or helpful, you know – and Alpha fights are one of those examples.

drkn.3429:

Free tip: you can change your utility skills AND major traits any time.
If you’re built for summons, please change your build before fighting Alpha, change it back after the fight if you want – and that’s it. This mechanic has been introduced to use it when it’s needed or helpful, you know – and Alpha fights are one of those examples.

You should never, NEVER have to change your traits because they make a fight MORE difficult. That’s absurd logic.
Any MMO that has punished players for using pets and minions in encounters has quickly fixed this, because it’d ridiculous and unfair.

And if you had to fight a boss that is resistant to bleeding, would you also refuse to change your bleeding build FOR THAT FIGHT and use some more direct damage?
If you were to fight a boss that has to be poisoned to deal him damage, and you COULD bring much more poison by simply changing major traits and utils, would you refuse to do so because ‘this is my build and i won’t change it’, even if it kittens everyone?

@Asagi
It’s only about major traits. When I’m going with engineer, I’m using trait V giving me 5% vitality to condition damage. But during alpha fights I’m changing it to II, giving 20% cooldown reduction on elixirs. Then I’m stowing my flamethrower and landmines to take 2 elixirs: 1st one gives 3 sec invulnerability (cooldown 60->48 sec), 2nd one refills my energy (cooldown 45->36 sec) and can revive downed players. Elixirs are not something I would prefer, but they’re simply the best choice at this stage. Lifesaver when I’m trapped in crystal, endurance when alpha spams AoE too much and I need to dodge more than usually. Changing 2 skills and 3 major traits (in this case only 1 is really important) takes few seconds before and after the fight, it’s not a big effort

Why I’m stowing 2 skills I really like:

• Landmines are not really useful during alpha fight, he’s not following certain players, so noone can force him to step on mines
• Flamethrower would be even useful if wasn’t be bugged, so far when I’m trying to destroy crystals/tentacles it’s missing the most of time

I know your minions are normally useful, but this is the special kind of encounter which is making them useless. Every single skill in this game is somehow situational. Sure, many of skills will work well in almost every encounter, but don’t get almost always mistaken with always

Asagi.1405:

You should never, NEVER have to change your traits because they make a fight MORE difficult. That’s absurd logic.

By that logic, whenever I have a focus out on my mesmer with Warden’s Feedback, all melee mob and bosses should all become ranged bow/pistol users.

I don’t see why you’re against cookie cutter builds, but are stubborn in changing your own? You’re basically making an inferior ‘cookie cutter’ build of your own. Cry all you want, dungeons aren’t built around you, you have to learn to adapt.

I mention that you should not be forced to change traits because those traits make the fight harder, and you’re all talking about changing traits for efficiency.
Tell me, are you all trying for the Olympic gold medal in missing the point?

I’m afraid we wouldn’t be able to beat you in such competition.
Please reread my previous post – if there was a boss immune to bleeding, would you still stick to your condition damage bleeding-based build, or would you maybe swap some traits, utilities and change your weapons to actually, you know, deal damage?

So you counter my assertion that you’re missing the point by… missing the point again.

Let me spell it out for you.
Having to change traits to make yourself more efficient at killing a boss is fine.
Having to change traits because those traits make the boss more likely to kill YOU is not.

This isn’t even getting into how some traits that affect fights like these, such as the necromancer jagged horrors are not interchangeable without a respec.

OK, have it your way – if you were a guardian in CM explorables, would you also refuse to slot Wall of Reflection and use Line of Warding, even though you are traited for greatsword and shouts and prefer that build?

Oh for god’s sake.
A Guardian not traiting those will not directly cause enemies to be MORE lethal than they already are. That’s my point.

This whole topic is kind of pointless since Alpha’s ground spike circles are 100% avoidable 100% of the time if you actually dodge roll them as opposed to ineffectively trying to run out of them.

Running out requires a lot more exact timing than dodging. Additionally, independent of banners/pets causing circles, if you’re in a group with several melee you’re going to get trapped between a mess of circles anyway, so running out becomes not much of an option there. Dodge roll gets it every time.

GW 2 dungeons are definitely the worst of any MMO I can remember. I think it boils down to a few things really.

1) Long term hardcore WoW raider experience was utilized to create the dungeons. So the AOEs, the boss attacks are all like end game raid mechanics. They one shot you or disolve your HP bar in a second. Just did TA explore and boy did the worm boss just suck. It is not that the content is not doable, it is just that its cheap and totally unfun. Having a plant spawn and do AOE poison puff that kills me in a second is garbage. And the pure volume of these AOE clouds and boss red circles make the game more about staring at the ground then strategizing your next round of attacks.

2) They removed the tank, DPS, support from the game. Probably the stupidest move I have ever seen happen. The game plays like WoW without a tank or healer, mobs just run all over the place and people are kiting for their lives. Utter chaos and it removes so much strategy and planning from the game. Its a mindless zergfest now. Having those intricate class roles and creating a viable team was a lot of what makes MMOs engrossing when grouping. Its like a football team with nothing but running backs, and no playbooks, and no designated player positions.

3) And I guess more of an offshoot of number 2, the dungeons are still copying the WoW model or typical MMO dungeon design. But in those games you have support, tank, and DPS roles. So we are playing dungeons that feel like we ought to have designated roles but we don’t. So its a lot of dying, a lot of annoying kiting, and the dungeons are tuned down just enough to make it viable. But the gameplay is horrible, no one wants to run around and kite as a melee character.

Also this game has that really uninspiring Korean MMO feel to it. The levelling in the beginning is so grindy, the mindlessly copied one shotting from other games end game raid content, the absurd implementation of a no class system. It all feels very Korean MMO to me. I have always thought that MMOs from Korea lack originality and tend to totally miss what makes a game fun or not, they simply copy X and Y from successful games like its a formula you can just reproduce.

As in most Korean games the artowrk and polish are top notch, but they really dont seem to get what makes RPGs and MMOs fun in my opinion.

@Cromx – your points 1) and 2), while valid, are coming not from a bad design of dungeons but from a bad team. Don’t be a glass cannon, gear up, learn the route, use all the tricks – and you won’t be spending all time looking on the ground – or getting killed by blossoms at all – and you won’t be kiting for your life all the time.

Asagi.1405:

Oh for god’s sake.
A Guardian not traiting those will not directly cause enemies to be MORE lethal than they already are. That’s my point.

Boss more lethal = group being more inefficient.
Boss less lethal = group being more efficient.

I think these people get your point. Or are you saying the boss’s lethality doesn’t affect the party’s efficiency in any way?

Good thread. OP wins one “No-Duh, Anet” award… what’s next, extra nukes spamming out at us if we also have Minipets out? This definitely favors some classes over others and needs to be fixed immediately before Rewards are.

One Dev (can’t remember where) also already addressed a side-issue similar to this with Lupi and Necro’s not having any control over additional Minions spawning b/c of a Trait or something. … People can try to argue that you shouldn’t be able to use the same build in every single fight, but that’s not what this is about. This is about the Scripters using the wrong darn Variable (entity counts instead of players adjacent quantity) to calculate Attack-scaling. No one who understands programming should be condoning this kind of discriminatory corner-cutting

I don’t think they are being cast on banners, and clones are in any way just another enemy for alpha. Your AoE attacks also hit clones and pets in WvW right?

Asagi.1405:

drkn.3429:

Free tip: you can change your utility skills AND major traits any time.
If you’re built for summons, please change your build before fighting Alpha, change it back after the fight if you want – and that’s it. This mechanic has been introduced to use it when it’s needed or helpful, you know – and Alpha fights are one of those examples.

You should never, NEVER have to change your traits because they make a fight MORE difficult. That’s absurd logic.
Any MMO that has punished players for using pets and minions in encounters has quickly fixed this, because it’d ridiculous and unfair.

Welcome to Guild Wars, where the majority of your skills ARE situational and should be used with awareness of the situation. As in, if you refuse to change your utilities and traits from dungeon to dungeon or even fight to fight to optimise the encounter, get out and don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

To start with, just go melee range during most fights with Alpha and ignore all his AoEs…

Ok, let’s try and cover these points one at a time since you make some pretty sweeping (and poor) generalizations:

Cromx.3941:

1) Long term hardcore WoW raider experience was utilized to create the dungeons. So the AOEs, the boss attacks are all like end game raid mechanics. They one shot you or disolve your HP bar in a second. Just did TA explore and boy did the worm boss just suck.

With the exception of a few fights (like Giganticus Lupicus), there is very little about the dungeon fights in this game that feels like a WoW raid. Bosses generally have a couple mechanics to deal with and once you figure them out they are pretty simple to handle. Just because they are not mechanics that YOU PERSONALLY are familiar with does not make them the realm of “hardcore raiding.”

Let’s take the wurm boss in TA as an example since you brought it up. The fight is very very simple. Poison AoEs – keep on the move (you do know every single ability in the game can be cast on the move, right?), dodge roll if you get in a bad spot, use heals liberally. If you’re melee, the wurm does a short-range sweeping knockback. He winds up for it, as most monsters that have that ability do, so dodge roll to avoid it. You also have to handle Volatile Blossoms respawning during the fight, and while I will agree with most people that these things are probably the most annoying aspect of TA, handling this is a matter of knowing where they are to begin with and them trying to avoid those areas.

Like a lot of dungeon fights, a good amount of doing well here requires forethought and/or experience. You may go down the first few times you do it. You may even die. Once you’ve gone through the fight a couple times, barring bad luck or mistakes, you’ll probably survive the whole fight.

2) They removed the tank, DPS, support from the game. Probably the stupidest move I have ever seen happen.

There are very few fights where I see the need to kite, and even if what you say were the case, why is this a problem? Again, ALL ABILITIES CAN BE CAST ON THE MOVE. The fact that you don’t get to stand in one spot and spam 2 abilities until everything’s dead should be a good thing. Do you not get how boring and unfun that is? Fights should feel like a challenge. The good ones should feel like controlled chaos. If that’s not fun for you then you’re certainly welcome to your opinion but you are definitely not part of some vast majority that prefers that style of combat/dungeoneering.

3) And I guess more of an offshoot of number 2, the dungeons are still copying the WoW model or typical MMO dungeon design. But in those games you have support, tank, and DPS roles. So we are playing dungeons that feel like we ought to have designated roles but we don’t. So its a lot of dying, a lot of annoying kiting, and the dungeons are tuned down just enough to make it viable. But the gameplay is horrible, no one wants to run around and kite as a melee character.

If you manage to come back to this thread and actually make this a discussion instead of a rant, I would very much like you to qualify what you’re talking about here. What dungeon fights have you done where you said to yourself, “There is no WAY we can do this without a dedicated tank and a healer. There’s just no way.” Because I would like to disprove you.

There are a staggering amount of support and control abilities available to ALL classes that supplant the need for a tank or a healer. Enemies can be slowed, rooted, knocked down. Classes can put out small amounts of group healing that, when combined with your own self-heals and with each other, really up the survivability of the group as a whole. Abilities are made to be dodged.

Are there fights that aren’t tuned well? Of course. This is release content, and there’s a lot of it. It’s never going to be perfect. Are there fights that don’t quite work? Definitely. I’m hoping ANet learns from some of the mistakes and not-great designs. Primarily, dungeons where the choice becomes “kill a WHOLE lot of trash” or “run blindly through all the trash as a group while hoping you all survive” (Arah and CM, I’m looking at you) aren’t the product of great design. There are certainly other ways to pace things out without throwing 12 pulls of stuff at a group.

The blanket statement that GW2 is doing WoW’s dungeons only worse, and that this game suffers from the lack of trinity roles, is just poorly thought out and ill-informed. To me, it seems like a knee-jerk reaction and an unwillingness to see things done a different way as new and interesting.

drkn.3429:

To start with, just go melee range during most fights with Alpha and ignore all his AoEs…

Uninformed much?
That only works on the Sub. He eats every group alive on Tele unless they’re bugging him up the steps first. (and that’s another thing… sick and tired of seeing puggers cheating on boss fights b/c they all agree the boss cheated first)

ilr.9675:

drkn.3429:

To start with, just go melee range during most fights with Alpha and ignore all his AoEs…

Uninformed much?
That only works on the Sub. He eats every group alive on Tele unless they’re bugging him up the steps first. (and that’s another thing… sick and tired of seeing puggers cheating on boss fights b/c they all agree the boss cheated first)

Bring some condition clears and a bit of healing for the Tele path, dodge roll every other attack. He’s easy as hell to melee in that path (every path, really…).

Tele is actually probably my favorite path. I dislike the hacking portion on sub and enjoy the Evolved Husk fight. It’s fun rifle butting golems into your teammates lol.

omgwtflolbbl.7142:

dodge roll every other attack. He’s easy as hell to melee in that path (every path, really…).

Ahem:

drkn.3429:

To start with, just go melee range during most fights with Alpha and ignore all his AoEs…

did you miss it?

…and ignore all his AoEs…

…you’re correcting the wrong person

And yes, I’ve “Mace & Shield” tanked him in Melee on Tele & Front. (I wouldn’t recommend it to novices)

Missed touching on something in my earlier post that I didn’t want to let slide.

But the gameplay is horrible, no one wants to run around and kite as a melee character.

Willfully labeling yourself as a “melee character” is not only shortsighted it’s completely against the design of the game. All classes have the ability to use both close-range/melee and long range abilities.

I’m guessing you are a warrior. You have a longbow for long-range AoE (and an immobilize). You have a rifle for long-range single target (and a snare). You also have about a million ways to “kite” (on the very few things that actually require this) – Stomp, Kick, Endure Pain to survive getting caught up to, Fear Me!, Whirlwind back through a group chasing you (you’ll evade all their attacks as you pass through and gain some distance), Shield offhand abilities. I’m probably missing more.

The biggest thing I’ve taken away from the professions and the way they’re set up and how dungeons are laid out is that you need to be versatile and a little creative. You need to consider different tactics.

If you don’t like this style of play, then that’s fine, but don’t ruin it for the rest of us who do.

You cannot turn off jagged horror by the way. The worst minor trait in the entire game making multiple dungeon paths harder because hes a minion we cant turn off and this game is for the most part against minion masters.

Asagi.1405:

drkn.3429:

Free tip: you can change your utility skills AND major traits any time.
If you’re built for summons, please change your build before fighting Alpha, change it back after the fight if you want – and that’s it. This mechanic has been introduced to use it when it’s needed or helpful, you know – and Alpha fights are one of those examples.

You should never, NEVER have to change your traits because they make a fight MORE difficult. That’s absurd logic.
Any MMO that has punished players for using pets and minions in encounters has quickly fixed this, because it’d ridiculous and unfair.

No, you change a trait to be more efficient. It’s an absurd argument you are posing here, if you traited to do lots of burning and you’re up against an enemy immune to burning, are you going to tell Arenanet to change the enemy’s attribute?

I change my traits for each specific battle in CoE, not because the traits I picked will bring me down, but there are better traits for that particular situation.

Its also in line with what Arenanet proposed: they dont force players out of dungeons after a wipe because they want players to switch tactics. SWITCH TACTICS.

Whos to say the clones are ‘punishing’ you. They give you extra DPS, the trade off is an extra nova boom. Risk vs reward. Totally fair.

ilr.9675:

drkn.3429:

To start with, just go melee range during most fights with Alpha and ignore all his AoEs…

Uninformed much?
That only works on the Sub. He eats every group alive on Tele unless they’re bugging him up the steps first. (and that’s another thing… sick and tired of seeing puggers cheating on boss fights b/c they all agree the boss cheated first)

He is not uninformed. Good teams will always melee Alpha on paths 2 and 3. Not only are you in closer proximity to each other such that GS warrior swings can destroy imprisonment crystals, its easier to sneak in a rez too. I melee Alpha on all paths, all the time. While you certainly can’t just ‘ignore’ his AoE, melee is actually really good against Alpha, especially if your attacks hit multiple targets.

Cromx.3941:

2) They removed the tank, DPS, support from the game. Probably the stupidest move I have ever seen happen. The game plays like WoW without a tank or healer, mobs just run all over the place and people are kiting for their lives. Utter chaos and it removes so much strategy and planning from the game. Its a mindless zergfest now. Having those intricate class roles and creating a viable team was a lot of what makes MMOs engrossing when grouping. Its like a football team with nothing but running backs, and no playbooks, and no designated player positions.

Not sure what you’re referring to, but tanking was replaced by Crowd Control.
Try playing Warrior Ball. It’s the lulziest build ever since even bosses are knocklocked….

And healing still exists, especially with a Water elementalist!

Well another thing I wanted to post about is how much should a player be required to change their build/gear/weapon/traits for a fight?

It’s relativly easy to change skills, unless they didn’t buy all the skills because really once you unlock all the skill boxes you don’t really need to change your build drastically while leveling. But players should have alternate skills ready to use, even if they’re untraited.

Trait points are fixed, and require a payment to reset. No one should be required to have to respec trait points for specific instances if their build is valid in every other fight in the game.

Major traits are variable, but depends on the trait points spent. Some are useless without certain skills or weapons, others can run against other traits. These can be changed, but usually with a given point spread there’s that one mix of traits that maximizes that point build.

Weapons require inventory space. Different weapons also require different stats to utilize. And that would require another set of armor and jewelry. At most I carry around a second set. I don’t think players should be required to carry too many pieces of other gear when going into a dungeon.

The boss is going for the people capable of dealing more damage as they summon allies to aid them, how truly unfair of alpha. Grow up.

Dolan.3071:

The boss is going for the people capable of dealing more damage as they summon allies to aid them, how truly unfair of alpha. Grow up.

I will never grow up, its boring to be an adult. Going to work, paying bills, cooking my own meals, mowing the grass, changing the oil, beating the AC with a baseball bat, more bills, work, etc. Yeah i dont want to grow, to much of a annoyance really.

Dolan.3071:

The boss is going for the people capable of dealing more damage as they summon allies to aid them, how truly unfair of alpha. Grow up.

The entire basis of the Mesmer class is having these summons aid me. If I run around pretty much ever other part of this game just fine and only have this special condition I have to completely change up how I play that works completely fine everywhere else, this is the grown up response.

Yea kinda sucks, i didn’t realize this happened until today, when i ran with a mesmer and a ranger. Its mildly annoying, can’t use stacking tactics with so many extra, non stacked circles.

Glad i carry a shield around though; buys me enough time to regen enough endurance to dodge everything.

Its even better when you have a Ranger and a couple of Necros that have 5 points in death and cannot remove that really bad pet in your party. I have no idea why they allow stuff to spawn on pets, it is the same with Lupi phase one grubs… just one huge over sight.

I can’t believe anyone can sit here and disagree with the idea of aoes shouldn’t target npcs. What is the logic behind that? You do not control them like you control yourself.

Lets get something straight, I clear submarine and teleport path daily with my static group. We successfully do this each night. First off, you can’t melee tank alpha in the teleport path, because he has the ice aoe. Which will kill most in one hit if they are caught in the middle of it. Which then leads to something else, if you start to rez them, he will target those rezing with more aoes.

The best way to fight alpha in teleport path is if you have ranged players, spaced out so circles do not overlap and melee stacked up on each other. This way it makes it easier to dodge when needed. Otherwise it becomes almost impossible to see if you should stand still for the earth aoe or dodge for the ice aoe.

The biggest issue with this fight is the fact that it forces players to take certain traits and skills. Mainly vigor related traits, since normally you can only dodge twice but with alpha he constantly does aoes making dodging constantly impossible unless you trait for some sort of endurance return. The next issue is how he targets pets, objects and npcs. This is a problem, since you do not directly control the movement of the two latter.

It causes unnecessary aoe and completely ruins any positioning and strategy you may have. And again, it forces the player not to use certain builds. So one begins to be forced into using a cookie cutter type build.

In fact, aggro, targeting should be completely removed from npcs. Even in TA, the npc was a problem. She would train spiders on the entire group on the spider path tree boss and for the bee puzzle she would pull bees upon the group who made it across.

Again, these type of problems need to be changed.

And why he targets banners! (not that it really matters)