Guild Wars 2

So this post is not a rage post, or anything in that regard. It is just information and comments regarding Anet’s Arah Dungeon design

So me and my team started around 7pm arah p4. My team wasn’t a pug, its just they were not all Zerk warriors or Guardians. We had 2 heavies, 2 mediums and one light. We didn’t wipe on any of the bosses. (Pretty good considering that it was our first time doing Arah p4) My team is one of those teams that hate to skip content. There were some mobs we just had to skip. Imagine, killing all those trash mobs? You would last hours doing that! Does Anet wants us to stealth it out and move that way through the mobs? Or are all those Mobs there for us to kill ( Good luck with that ) So why all the trash mobs? Is there really any reason to have them there, considering the length of that dungeon?

Now i know you might say this dungeon is the last one and should be hard and challenging. But this dungeon makes players feel like skipping and just speed running it. The length of this dungeon makes this dungeon bad. How is it that we started at 7 pm and last to 11 pm?(Not a pug group, just balenced) How is that Fun and Challenging Content?(We killed a lot of trash mobs, not all) Dwayna did it for us however. She kept healing faster than what we can drop her. I think her healing is exaggerated. So if we are not warriors with good dps we cant kill her fast enough? During this fight you have to worry about a couple of things

1. DPS
2. Being Petrified(cant fight while your petrified can you?)
3. Dragging the mobs to the seal. (not such a hard task)

By the time you get to Dwayna, you just want to finish and get out of the dungeon(or maybe before Dwayna). Is this what you what your players to be thinking while running your dungeon? I didnt get to finish p4 because while were fighting Dwayna one member had to drop. I hear that there was even more to do after Dwayna.

I think that Arah(ENTIRELY) needs a to be resigned. This dungeon goes against one of the mayor ideas of gw2. New players to this dungeon almost will never find a party to do Arah. Players will never want to unite with other players to do Arah(experienced and the not experienced). Arah story mode is a BIG DISAPOINTMENT to many players. The thing is, Dungeons once completed should leave that Yay we did it feeling. We accomplished something. Not the, OMG were still not done with this dungeon. Theres no way Anet wanted players to fight all those mobs and figure that length of this dungeon is ok. Lets not even discuss the length of cof.(super short)

Anet please give these comments some taught. We love your game, we just feel many of your Dungeons are broken.

Sincerly,
Genesis Vanguard[GV]

Grenth needs to be redesigned but that’s it. This path was put into the game as the last final hurdle before someone would be able to get their dungeon master title. That being said, if you coordinate your group, you can speed through arah p4 a lot faster than what you stated.

I had done p4 before but not my other 4 guildies so I decided to guide them through. We were 2 thieves, a support guardian (mace shield, full healing, terrible build I know), shout warrior, and bleed warrior. We were a terrible team comp for speed clearing. We finished the entire path in 40 minutes… and I got lost trying to guild them to the confusion boss. The path really isn’t long as long as you work as a team, don’t die on any of the bosses, and don’t waste time on the majority of the trash. As you found out, there’s just too much to be worth dealing with. Killing trash mobs takes the fun out of a dungeon and wastes everybody’s time.

Hey zabriel,

I would like to start by first saying that I love Arah, it is personally my favourite explorable dungeon along with HoTW, Lupi is also my favourite boss. I have done Arah many times but never p4, one day a friend asked if I wanted to join him so I said yes. The party included experienced Arah explorable players with classes; 1 healing guardian, 3 berserker warriors and a thief (not sure which build), we smashed p4 out easily and didn’t have much trouble with dwayna because of our dps. Not saying it wasn’t difficult but in the end it all comes down to players in the party, classes and skill of those players.

I will also have to disagree with you about difficulty to find a party/newbies finding a party. On gw2lfg (I play on Europe) there are frequently many Arah posts some calling for experience some not, personally I have no problem with running Arah with inexperienced players as long as they follow one rule; listen to the party, don’t rush into things and play to the best of your ability.

I think of Arah as the opposite of CoF, can be difficult, long and exciting, sometimes even frustrating. At the end of the day it is nice to have a good contrast in the dungeons from super short to super long and bosses from easy to bosses that require work from the whole team.

Anyway I enjoyed reading your post and I do encourage you try and run Arah p4 again as I found it both rewarding and enjoyable. If you need a party I am always up for the run :P

Sincierely, The Prince.

There’s so many enemies because it makes sense for where you are.

btw this path was already significantly nerfed, you used to be able to get people to pay you for an arah p4 completion for their dungeon master title

http://forums.d2jsp.org/topic.php?t=66488340&f=206
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/160el8/arah_running_service/
I could link others that a google search brought up but they’re RMT sites

If at least that dwayna boss could be changed so that even low dps characters can still defeat her and some trash mobs get their hp reduced it would be great, but I think she is bugged, since she heals so fast at 50% of her health its lunacrisp to go without heavy classes.

the dungeon itself looks beautiful but it is as zabriel said, path 4 on lfg site is almost non existent, u need to go with ur guild and is far too long for a lot of people so they don’t bother.

I went with a group the other night to path 2. The party leader just said: thank God finally never returning here again! I understood his frustration, too many repeated enemies with sooo much hp, is as if anet intended to be a trial and error dungeon.

I also agree that lupicus is the saving grace of that dungeon, I just love that fight.

The Dwayna fight really needs to be re-evaluated. We went into P4 this evening 5-6 hours ago and we struggled through the dungeon but had fun too. We’re all good players who know our classes very well and aren’t just screwing around. None of us had been through p4 before so we were trying to figure out what to do as we went. We had 2 rangers, a mesmer, a warrior, and an elementalist. With the exception of one player, we all have high dps. If Anet’s goal is really to create a game that you can play however you want, then I should be able to bring that group into P4 and down Dwayna. We could not get her past 50% and everything we looked up basically said you have to have beserker guards, thieves, and wars to get past it. I shouldn’t have to bring a special composition to any dungeon when we have dedicated players who know their classes and do good dps. If our players can play their classes and work well together and do the fight properly and Anet’s goal is for us to be able to play the way we want, then we should be able to down this boss without a problem.

Please seriously reconsider this boss fight and recreate it so that any group composition with solid dps is capable of downing this fight. I don’t care if that means that a full beserker guard, thief, and war group can down it easier. In keeping with Anet’s declared goal, this fight must be made completable with any solid dps group composition. I’m not saying that 5 support specced characters should be able to down it. I’m saying 5 high dps specced characters of any class should be able to down it.

This boss fight was already nerfed once because people kept crying over it.

We killed Dwayna in 2 tries the first time I did it. And do note, there were 2 people in the entire team that had done p4 before.

Obviously your DPS wasn’t as good as you thought it was.

Bright.9160:

This boss fight was already nerfed once because people kept crying over it.

We killed Dwayna in 2 tries the first time I did it. And do note, there were 2 people in the entire team that had done p4 before.

Obviously your DPS wasn’t as good as you thought it was.

What was your composition?

It is easy to say “Your DPS wasn’t as good as you think it was”, yet you avoided the comment entirely. The DPS is good, the players all know their builds. The boss cannot be done with just any party makeup. That is the point they were trying to make. If you can show that you did it with a mixed party, POST patching (Not when she was vulnerable when stealthed) then please post a dated screenshot of her downed, with your party composition, from that moment. If not, then anyone, including I, can make a smart remark about their DPS too.

Support your claim with proof, and don’t troll.

FxDelusional.8624:

It is easy to say “Your DPS wasn’t as good as you think it was”, yet you avoided the comment entirely. The DPS is good, the players all know their builds. The boss cannot be done with just any party makeup. That is the point they were trying to make. If you can show that you did it with a mixed party, POST patching (Not when she was vulnerable when stealthed) then please post a dated screenshot of her downed, with your party composition, from that moment. If not, then anyone, including I, can make a smart remark about their DPS too.

Support your claim with proof, and don’t troll.

I’m sorry that I don’t screenshot everything I do in the offchance someone might ask for it in the future.

We were running a W/G/M setup though, with 3 warriors, 1 non-DPS guardian and 1 DPS mesmer.

Since all the classes have certain builds that give you pretty solid DPS, I do think it’s possible with any team setup. Ele can bring LH builds, and throw in a Fiery Greatsword and put her against a wall and you’ll be taking her to town, Thieves are hard to get high DPS on, but they can diss out some good numbers, Ranger has a somewhat decent DPS build I saw on guru somewhere, etc. You might not do it in 2 tries like we did, it might take you 4 or 5, because your DPS is less than ours, but you should still be able to do it if you run a DPS build.

Obviously, your DPS wasn’t as good as you thought it was.

I think I have to mention when I did with haviz. I don’t remember exact details but we had two Necromancers (one with 700 ach points and blue/green gear). And I think that was even before her healing got nerfed.
I was obviously on Warrior, he was maybe on Guardian and no idea about last one.

We know how to run sparks efficiently so she barely healed at all. 700 ach Necromancer was throwing tears (he did that better than any “pro” pug I have seen so far).

Obviously DPS helps a lot but you don’t need much if you know what you are doing (like really know what you are doing, not that usual pug crap).

Bright.9160:

We were running a W/G/M setup though, with 3 warriors, 1 non-DPS guardian and 1 DPS mesmer.

Since all the classes have certain builds that give you pretty solid DPS, I do think it’s possible with any team setup. Ele can bring LH builds, and throw in a Fiery Greatsword and put her against a wall and you’ll be taking her to town, Thieves are hard to get high DPS on, but they can diss out some good numbers, Ranger has a somewhat decent DPS build I saw on guru somewhere, etc. You might not do it in 2 tries like we did, it might take you 4 or 5, because your DPS is less than ours, but you should still be able to do it if you run a DPS build.

Obviously, your DPS wasn’t as good as you thought it was.

You assume our DPS was the problem but if it was there is no way we could’ve gotten through the rest of it. As I stated, all of us have dedicated hours of time into our characters and researching strong builds, testing, tweaking, and practicing. All but one (who was running tears) are fully and properly geared. Assuming DPS was the problem and not some rumored bug, it was not the fault of the players but rather a deficit in the class itself or an unreasonable requirement from the boss which is precisely what my first post stated.

Your group was 3/5’s the typical/recommended set up for this fight. I don’t think you can fairly point to that and say any group can do it.

zabriel.4852:

My team wasn’t a pug, its just they were not all Zerk warriors or Guardians.

zabriel.4852:

(Not a pug group, just balenced)

Pug stands for Pick Up Group. It is not the all encompassing term for groups with bad players. You can get the same by just running with people in your guild.

In regards to new players to the dungeon not being able to find a group; that’s incorrect. Just advertise that you’re new, but willing to LISTEN, and people will likely invite you. You can also just group with other players new to the dungeon.

That path is the longest one. It averages around 2 hours. It’ll take less with an experienced DPS group and will take longer with an inexperienced group with random classes. All players should expect and allocate at least 3 hours for the dungeon. I’m not going to get into details but you can guesstimate how long it will take at the start by looking at what classes (including how many of each class) you have in your party.

Simin is not the bad; not even for a group of random classes. Your group was likely slow on getting the the elementals to their spot or your group was more on the defensive that offensive when it comes to damage. You do need DPS for her but you do not need the absolute best. She was also nerfed months ago so is vastly easier now.