Guild Wars 2

So, I have been struggling to keep with my guardian now at level 80. I did some dungeons while leveling and though “Wow, im only good for dying”. But I stuck with it and tried some different builds. 3 groups later in dungeons and the groups keep breaking up after about 15 wipes (which cost me about 30 silver a run or so).

So I respecced into something for solo’ing and doing events. While in the same zone as the Arah dungeon, I got myself into an Arah exploration group.

Without going into a ton of detail it took us over 4 hours to get to the last boss, and the group fell apart at the last boss after 8 wipes (That run back from the closest teleport spot is ridiculously long btw). Our group was well synergized too. But come on Anet. As a guardian with decent gear (4 yellows and 2 exotics) and I am still getting 1 shot. Seriously? 1 shot? What the fk am I wearing plate for? I might as well go roll a ranged class because melee is gettingkitten bluntly put.

This crap needs to get scaled down, or come the 25th I wont have to “stick with” anything except my new class in another MMO we dare not speak of.

/rant

You’ve seen nothing dude, not a thing.
I’m fully geared, i mean, all my parts are exotic crafts, with the best gems, i have 3 sets of exotic weapons too, and i still get one shot

I was in arah exploration mode this afternoun, juts like you, and we were trying the 3rd boss when you pick pick Illyria, that bigkitten frankenstein’s monster thingy, just after the labyrinth.
And boy, was it disapoiting, even if the boss eats just 1 add, just 1, the most ridiculous things one shots you, melee hits, poison, random AOEs that cover half the map, charge (you can survive this one, but you get stunned for 4 seconds and die by the next aoe <.<) etc etc …

I had pretty much the same experience in every dungeon I did in exploration mode, the bosses are really basic, i mean you have to kill 1 add before it reaches the boss and don’t stand in the AOE, how hard can it be ? We’ve seen that in every single game, BUT, arenanet decided to remove tanks and healers, and punish the slightest mistakes by an instand death, everytime.

I’m personnaly done with PVE :
1) there is no fun involved in getting one shot by everything and running back from res pad 1 at a time to zerg the boss.
2) there is no REWARD, you are basicaly wiping in instances for nothing, exept some coins to buy skins .. well if you manage to collect 1200+ of them.

/whine off

Inb4 fanboys flood the thread and tell you dungeons are fine and you need to l2p.

Mercucial.6759:

Inb4 fanboys flood the thread and tell you dungeons are fine and you need to l2p.

lulz, I was wondering when the “l2p” troll would come out to play.

Because being in full exotic heavy armor with gems and getting 1 shot makes total sense. Better off being a caster because you die just as fast but at least you have more warning (generally speaking) to react to things and you can actually do some DPS.

Gezus, I think Mercurial agrees with you.
He was just wondering when the fanboys would come in, that would defend the current dungeon design. That indicates to me (by using the word fanboys), that he agrees with you.

So do I.
I only did AC on StoryMode. If that is the first dungeon in the game, and it’s only StoryMode, then I’m not sure I’ll bother with any more PvE dungeons. I don’t mind hard content. I do mind being 1-shotted randomly by stuff I couldn’t avoid. And after the fact I still don’t know what hit me. And I don’t like respawn-zergs to finish my dungeons either.

hm. Reading over that again he very well may have been agreeing with me lol. If thats the case. . . my bad But yeah, I just felt like I needed to rant after 4.5hours. I can understand dungeons being hard, but good god. I have a family and happened to have spare time today while they were gone (Work and kids were at grandma & grandpa’s house). From the looks of it, im gonna have cut PvE out. Shame really.

i am having this same problem! ive put my traits to 30 tough 30 vit 10 power getting one shotted one final boss.. not exactly what i wanted to be spending my time doing! i agree with you 100% mate something needs to be done.

Im just over the amount of money you need to even run a dungeon, story mode or not. You just don’t get enough with events and lets face it heart quests are only a 1 timer. Each boss you down and its loot chest, dont even cover repairs. I lost 50 silver yesterday, and its putting me off dungeons all together because I cant afford to do them. REALLY I dont care of your in exotic gear it still cost way too much. That by the end you dont even want to port anywhere cose its going to cost you 4 silver.

Giganticus lupicus is often the halfway point in some of the paths im not sure if you’ve tried the Randall path but we got to lupicus in around 3 hours beat him after 2 wipes and then spent another 2+ hours doing the next half of the dungeon. Im not in agreement with the boss being too hard but dungeons being too long is a vast understatement.

Dungeons need to basically follow this basic design philosphy.

Short < 1 hour
Interesting
Rewarding
Minimal trash

Bosses need: Interesting mechanics, avoidable spike damage and good rewards.

Would have to strongly disagree with the 1 hour statement made by Mad, i like my dungeons to remain a little longer than an hour.

Would agree with the rest though, keep them interesting and rewarding and possibly ramp up the tactics on bosses as currently some are just plain boring.

Arah is a fun dungeon though if the bloomin bosses would stop resetting to 100% health for no reason! :@

/Binit

Well, I guess I’m part of the “fanboy l2p” group here. But I’ve run two full paths in Arah explorable, all the AC paths, and one in CoE. I have NEVER encountered bullkitten oneshot mechanics that can’t be dodged or have no forewarning. There are plenty of bosses that can oneshot you, the Jotun stargazer is a good example here. He shoots homing projectiles that oneshot anyone they hit. And he does it constantly. It’s his standard attack. However, they can be reflected, and with swiftness, you can outrun them. So despite being a homing oneshot attack, which this thread claims should be absolute bullkitten, it can be countered with good play.

Another good example is Subject Alpha in CoE. He does constant, huge AoE that oneshots if it hits, but with proper movement, positioning and teamwork, you don’t get hit.

Oneshot mechanics are only bullkitten if you can’t avoid them, but that simply isn’t the case in GW2, if all else fails, you have invulnerability from dodging. They make encounters interesting, and keep you on your toes, because if you slack off, and think you can just stand there and dps the boss, you die.

About the dungeon length, it varies greatly between different explorable modes. I find 4 hours in Arah reasonable, considering it’s the equivalent of an endgame raid in other games. CoE for example was far shorter, I did it in about 2 hours, which I feel is a good time for a hard dungeon. I think less than an hour is too short for an instanced dungeon. I don’t really like running through a dungeon as fast as possible, and then redo it again and again just for the reward, which is what would happen with short dungeons.

There are two parts I feel need improvement: Certain trash hp, and rewards.

Some, not all, dungeon trash have too much hp. The best example here are the Champion risen abominations, that stack frenzy. They are not hard, very easily kited, but they have a ton of hp, which makes them tedious. Another example are champion icebrood colossi in HotW story mode.

Concerning rewards, a random rare item from finishing the dungeon, combined with a slight, like 10-20% increase in the number of tokens you get would be enough.

I have to agree with everyone else Brew, the dungeons are by FAR my least favorite part of GW2. I’ll even take this crazy 10-15 second lag im getting over them. The thing that draws me into the game is that it’s fun. But dungeons are not fun, at all.

The mechanics arent interesting save a select few,
The rewards are laughable,
Aggro is an absolute mess(especially since most classes dont even have a simple aggro dump),
Story modes are far too unforgiving considering most people are just going to stop by while leveling and pug it.

I play an ele, and I really know how to put out damage and stance dance to keep bleeds and burns up but going in to a dungeon I end up playing a boring 1 attunement rotation because anything more and I get aggro and spend half of the gd time laying on the ground bleeding out and the other half running back from dying.

Albrizz.5047:

The mechanics arent interesting save a select few,
The rewards are laughable,
Aggro is an absolute mess(especially since most classes dont even have a simple aggro dump),
Story modes are far too unforgiving considering most people are just going to stop by while leveling and pug it.

but going in to a dungeon I end up playing a boring 1 attunement rotation because anything more and I get aggro and spend half of the gd time laying on the ground bleeding out and the other half running back from dying.

Cut out some parts for brevity.

I’ve found plenty of interesting mechanics. The crusher pair in Arah, where one immobilizes and the other has a powerful charge up attack. Subject Alpha in CoE, where he freezes players in crystals and others have to get them out. Evolved Husk, where you have to walk bomb golems into the boss. Lt. Kohlers add control and pull-in ability. These are just a few examples, I can name many more.

On rewards, my thoughts are in the earlier post.

You don’t seem to be aware how aggro works. That’s fine, it’s quite complicated. The mob decides who to attack on a number of factors, such as armor, proximity and any boons or conditions that might be applied and more. Damage is not the sole component of who gets attacked. Aggro does not work the same as in most other MMOs, where whoever has the most threat is being attacked, and threat is either gained through abilities that taunt, or high damage. On the subject of aggro-dumping, sometimes, a simple backwards dodgeroll is enough to get rid of boss aggro, other times, you might have to LoS, or have a friend cc the boss to get it off you. Immobilize and cripples always work on bosses, and proper coordination to remove defiance stacks lets your group hit bosses with more powerful cc. Abilites that make you go invulnerable also helps immensely to get mobs of your back. Mist form is a good example here.

Also, based of your post, I’m guessing you run a full glass cannon build, with utilites picked for damage. This generally doesn’t work in dungeons, unless you have some really good support. Having at least one form of personal condition removal and at least one survivability utility such as mist form goes a very long way to making sure you stay alive.

Qtin.6940:

You’ve seen nothing dude, not a thing.
I’m fully geared, i mean, all my parts are exotic crafts, with the best gems, i have 3 sets of exotic weapons too, and i still get one shot

I was in arah exploration mode this afternoun, juts like you, and we were trying the 3rd boss when you pick pick Illyria, that bigkitten frankenstein’s monster thingy, just after the labyrinth.
And boy, was it disapoiting, even if the boss eats just 1 add, just 1, the most ridiculous things one shots you, melee hits, poison, random AOEs that cover half the map, charge (you can survive this one, but you get stunned for 4 seconds and die by the next aoe <.<) etc etc …

I had pretty much the same experience in every dungeon I did in exploration mode, the bosses are really basic, i mean you have to kill 1 add before it reaches the boss and don’t stand in the AOE, how hard can it be ? We’ve seen that in every single game, BUT, arenanet decided to remove tanks and healers, and punish the slightest mistakes by an instand death, everytime.

I’m personnaly done with PVE :
1) there is no fun involved in getting one shot by everything and running back from res pad 1 at a time to zerg the boss.
2) there is no REWARD, you are basicaly wiping in instances for nothing, exept some coins to buy skins .. well if you manage to collect 1200+ of them.

/whine off

Yeah it’s pretty stupid. I am also fully geared in yellow/exotic with full def and a shield (+90 toughness) every single item on my toon has toughness and it honestly seems to make little difference in dungeons.

Now it does seem to make a BIG difference running around high levels 80 open world areas so why doesn’t it matter in a 5 man? Honestly I don’t think a fully spec’d guardian such as myself should ever be ‘one shot’ if I start at full HP.

Because you’re right about one thing. Why even spec into toughness and talents when we should simply do what most others do – talent and gear into full dps and simply use dodge and self healing?

They need to add much support to fully talented toughness ‘tanks’ and ‘healers’

‘tanks’ and ‘healers’ huh? fully talented ‘tanks’ and ‘healers’? Look, I found your whole problem.

I promise you, the successful groups are not running with fully dps specced classes. And no, zergging from a waypoint is not ‘successful’.

MadMossy.8715:

Dungeons need to basically follow this basic design philosphy.

Short < 1 hour
Interesting
Rewarding
Minimal trash

Bosses need: Interesting mechanics, avoidable spike damage and good rewards.

No they dont.

Dungeons dont need to be confined to the simplistic post WoW models that has watered down most mmos since then. With explorable mode there plenty of chances for variety in both trash length and boss fights.

That being said i havent had a 4.5 hour dungeon run since the original WoW. I didnt think it was that bad but boss tuning and trash tuning was a bit harsh. We chose the Asura path and the second boss (the one you need to traq shot) took us way longer than we though it should. That being said we felt we MUST have been missing something. Turning still needs to be done on some of the trash and bosses it feels.

I dont understand your problem OP, i just did arah with a nice group via the lfg tool and one path took us only ~20-25min

Alex.9106:

I dont understand your problem OP, i just did arah with a nice group via the lfg tool and one path took us only ~20-25min

Necro suitable for an Arah thread.

Alex.9106:

I dont understand your problem OP, i just did arah with a nice group via the lfg tool and one path took us only ~20-25min

sum1 doesnt read timestamps. replying to a post from 2 years ago? back when arah was hard and no one had a kittening clue what was going on?

Everytime I need to read 3 or 4 posts before checking the timestamp, I’m easily baited.

Those were the good old days. Kappa.

Mercucial.6759:

Inb4 fanboys flood the thread and tell you dungeons are fine and you need to l2p.

dungeons are fine and you need to l2p.

Ahhhh, good times, good times.

Albrizz.5047:

…
I play an ele, and I really know how to put out damage and stance dance to keep bleeds and burns up but going in to a dungeon I end up playing a boring 1 attunement rotation because anything more and I get aggro and spend half of the gd time laying on the ground bleeding out and the other half running back from dying.
…

Added the bold type for emphasis