Guild Wars 2

This is the first time ever in my life i make a topic on a forum, i had to do it after playing this new dungeon! omg i have never had so much fun in this game before i’m right now doing progression on the first boss still but i’m having such a great time!

anyways that was all i had to say i really hope you guys on arenanet will keep on doing dungeons like this!
take care!

Absolutely agree, this new dungeon is the business. Had an excellent time running through this one, best dungeon in GW2 to date and definitely one of the best PvE experiences available across any current MMORPG on the market.

Great work ANet and thanks for the great times!

What exactly is so much fun about it? The extremely high health pool of the boss together with his shield mechanics? The trashmobs who die within a few seconds even in non full parties? Waiting for the npc so he opens the next door?

IMO, together with the fact that it is temporary, a total fail.

Boss does not have a particularly large healthpool.

More anet staff making posts about the awful dungeon. Funny.

The dungeon is a challenge , is it fun though ?

Nope…..

Agreed, not really that fun or interesting. Luckily I got a monocle the first time through.

Fun dungeon for your first 5 runs, yes. I wouldn’t mind them replacing this dungeon with cliffside or dredge in FoTM tho

The first boss is quite fun if not a little frustrating with all the pulls/dazes, but the last boss is just tedious, boring, and hard in a cheap way.

The last boss reminds me of long winded version of the machine tyrant from secret world same type of fight mechanics.

Not a bad thing just tedious/long winded at the end.

Really? This is arguably the worst dungeon design in the game…

The dungeon is hardly a challenge (though maybe in comparison to the rest of the easy mode dungeons).. in our second run after figuring out what to do and running with a competent group, we finished in just under 30mins without any wipes. It’s certainly a better dungeon than the last few as it requires you to think a little bit.

Chopps.5047:

Really? This is arguably the worst dungeon design in the game…

Its also arguably the best. Care to back up your point of view with any actual facts?

Sure, Webba, thank you for asking.

1. Everyone exploits the first cannon battle by hiding in corner so no one learns the mechanic for the final fight
2. The bosses and golems are difficult to see in terms of animations with all of the energy walls, auras, particle effects, and small enemy models
3. This dungeon heavily favors professions with access to stability (stability means you don’t have to watch for the animation and dodge at the right time, trivializing the content)
4. This dungeon heavily favors slow attacking professions (confusion melts a thief or ranger). Ranger auto is so fast it’s unergonomic to take off the autoattack. For example, Crossfire must be spammed the entire dungeon so it’s either hurt your hand or accept a posssible confusion nuke
5. This dungeon puts minion/pet reliant professions at a huge disadvantage by killig pets in laser wall and barrage aoe

I don’t think you can honestly compare this to Arah, Molten Facility, or existing Fractals and consider it good design. You should play more of the game to see what good content looks like. Aetherblades is mildly entertaining and fun for a run or two but it doesn’t deserve it’s own Fractal.

Overall, the dungeon is OK, it’s nothing great. I think Frizz is a pretty good boss fight, although the golems pull is cheap. Other than that, the rest is rubbish. 5/10

Chopps.5047:

Sure, Webba, thank you for asking.

1. Everyone exploits the first cannon battle by hiding in corner so no one learns the mechanic for the final fight
2. The bosses and golems are difficult to see in terms of animations with all of the energy walls, auras, particle effects, and small enemy models
3. This dungeon heavily favors professions with access to stability (stability means you don’t have to watch for the animation and dodge at the right time, trivializing the content)
4. This dungeon heavily favors slow attacking professions (confusion melts a thief or ranger). Ranger auto is so fast it’s unergonomic to take off the autoattack. For example, Crossfire must be spammed the entire dungeon so it’s either hurt your hand or accept a posssible confusion nuke
5. This dungeon puts minion/pet reliant professions at a huge disadvantage by killig pets in laser wall and barrage aoe

I don’t think you can honestly compare this to Arah, Molten Facility, or existing Fractals and consider it good design. You should play more of the game to see what good content looks like. Aetherblades is mildly entertaining and fun for a run or two but it doesn’t deserve it’s own Fractal.

I’ve never exploited the first cannon battle, I’m not sure what bit you’re on about.

You can tab through enemies, but they really aren’t that hard to see.

Heavily favors, doesn’t mean it cannot be done without it. My parties build used near to no stability skills and we got through very well.

Confusion can be removed, or you can wait it out and it will take a few seconds longer.

Lastly, most people know minion builds and pet reliant builds aren’t exactly the strongest to be taking through a dungeon.

You told me nothing I don’t know…thanks for proving my point that it’s an awful dungeon though. I’m not going to waste time playing a game that doesn’t cater to their gamers. Pretty simple for me. You can play awful content all day long for all I care, have fun. Gw2 designers miss their design goals too often for me to defend them anymore. :P

Good luck, and have fun out there. I already got everything I wanted out of this game so I don’t feel bad ripping on it now. It’s just not very much fun anymore. But, so what, right? You lose one here but you gain one there. The world keeps spinning…

• By the way, there’s thousands of players that agree with me on points 2, 3, and 4. ANET advertised this as a game where you could play how you wanted. That’s not true for a large segment of the playerbase right now. You’re not oblidged to care or agree with them. Nonetheless, they exist and in large numbers too.

Yeah and opinions in the oposite direction also in exist in a large quantity too, what’s your point? I think the current standard of dungeons in the game is pretty poor, with the current state of dungeons being auto-attack, use a couple of skills, move on.. this one requires you to think a little bit (/gasp) (only a little bit of jumping and some other minor complex things) “Oh no!” you say, but do not fear, it takes no longer than 10 minutes to figure it out and do it easily.

You aren’t going to have an MMO where your build is fit for every challenge, that would be really stupid and boring.

Also not sure how I proved your point that it’s an awful dungeon? I think you have a bad case of the ‘I can’t play well, I don’t want to change, so I won’t play’

I do think it’s highly unbalanced if you don’t have the right profession/build. I’ve tried to complete this dungeon more than two dozen times, with three completely different groups. (One with all guild members using voice chat, one that was completely a PUG, and one that was some guild members with some PUG members.) I have five different characters, but my main character and the one I play all the time is my Human Elementalist. Even though I’ve been playing since the betas weekend events, only my Elementalist is at level 80 with good gear.

EVERY SINGLE TIME, my groups have been decimated by the third set of energy walls in the the lab. No matter how I’ve retraited, reequipped, or re-skilled my Elementalist, I get flattened by the third set of walls. I don’t have the time to bring up another, more robust character (like my Norn Warrior), to a decent level or standard of gear before the dungeon vanishes. Even then, members of my party haven’t done much better. We simply can’t get past the walls, because it favors (unfairly) the Guardian.

Were this a permanent dungeon, and I could spend my time cultivating a character to deal with these walls, it wouldn’t be an issue. But I only have a week. I’ve had and will have midterms and labs and regular classes in this time. Not to mention family obligations.

If we were going to have to be required to have a certain high-level profession or two, just to see this temporary content, we should have been given sufficient time and warning to prepare.

It’s awesome. And all proffesions suck there if player is dump, i mean not in game play type, are just got damaged brain.

And stop talking about how it’s done, or mechanics are not so good….COf p1 – is freaking piece of sh…and people still doing it, cause they are addicted to virtual profit)

U’re not getting enough gold/hour and u’re not getting fun – that’s the way the most players look at that.

I’m getting fun there. Fractals are cool and this one is cool for me.

All -have fun!

Chopps.5047:

Sure, Webba, thank you for asking.

1. Everyone exploits the first cannon battle by hiding in corner so no one learns the mechanic for the final fight
2. The bosses and golems are difficult to see in terms of animations with all of the energy walls, auras, particle effects, and small enemy models
3. This dungeon heavily favors professions with access to stability (stability means you don’t have to watch for the animation and dodge at the right time, trivializing the content)
4. This dungeon heavily favors slow attacking professions (confusion melts a thief or ranger). Ranger auto is so fast it’s unergonomic to take off the autoattack. For example, Crossfire must be spammed the entire dungeon so it’s either hurt your hand or accept a posssible confusion nuke
5. This dungeon puts minion/pet reliant professions at a huge disadvantage by killig pets in laser wall and barrage aoe

I don’t think you can honestly compare this to Arah, Molten Facility, or existing Fractals and consider it good design. You should play more of the game to see what good content looks like. Aetherblades is mildly entertaining and fun for a run or two but it doesn’t deserve it’s own Fractal.

Thanks for the reply Chopps, I must say I was expecting complaints about the final boss fight, your points are much more interesting and relevant.

1. This isn’t really a problem with the design of the dungeon so much as the implementation and or player attitudes. That fight is clearly intended to introduce players to what they will see during the boss fight and you are totally right, it is a shame that it doesn’t do that with the way most groups fight it. Again though, since that particular blind spot was surely not intended it is a bug issue, rather than a design one.

2. This is true, but hardly a unique problem to this dungeon. I would say the over use of particle affects plagues the entirety of the gw2 experience, imho its a relatively minor problem in dugeons because the number of players and mobs is much lower than in wvw or open world boss content, for example. I always call target on one of the golems in that fight so we can focus fire and get through it faster, and people can target a bit easier.

3. I have played a Guardian since before launch, so guilty as charged for not really noticing this. Both stability skills I use in that fight affect the whole group so everyone benefits. If this was a situation where it required the party to be composed all of one class, then I would see it as a failure of design, but Ive done it plenty of times where I am the only guardian (last run was 1 guard, 1 war, 1 thief, 1 engi and 1 ranger) and we got through it fine. I like to think I helped, but I definitely wasn’t carrying the party.

4. Ive gone down to confusion a few times in the dungeon though not so much anymore after properly arranging some condition removal (again group effect so its helping everyone out) I would suggest that gameplay which does not allow for spamming autoattack and or requires quick reaction times to stop attacking, remove conditions, then attack again, is a challenge to player skill levels, rather than poor design. Have not noticed thieves or rangers going down any faster than the rest of us.

5. This one, I definitely agree with you but again, its not a problem with just this dungeon but gw2 pet ai and pve gameplay in general. Its worse here though, and Im not going to defend anet on areas they failed. You are absolutely right.

Like I said, quite interesting that your thoughts weren’t focused on the boss fight since that is undeniably the hardest part (quite easy to wipe if even 1 person isn’t on the ball there) and I think you make some good points. I hope anet is reading.

I still feel it is a very good dungeon though. Maybe not the best they have made but certainly far from the worst. It is challenging but completable and the mechanics require thought, preparation, a degree of skill the willingness to try different things if one idea fails and the ability to adapt. It is very satisfying to have a smooth run through it.

If you would like to discuss Fractals or Arah, and how they compare to it (I missed MF so I cant speak to that one, but I hear it was good) I am very familiar with them and would be quite happy to hear your thoughts on why, for example, Lupicus is better than the cannon barrage, or how to make proper use of pets in the Cliffside and Harpy fractals.

The boss? I play ranger. Do you have any idea how many evades ranger has? Pfft, Mai. Try to solo Lupicus one time. That’s a real challenge.

Im glad we agree that difficulty is not the issue with AR. You misunderstand though, I meant to ask (and was purely choosing random examples, feel free to pick other ones) what your opinion is on the relative quality of the design of the game mechanics of the various dungeons and why you find AR to be so inferior to the examples you mentioned.
Grats on soloing Lupicus btw.

I never solo’d Lupicus.

My issue with the mechanics is that it relies on pulling aggro and aggro mechanics are sort of a black art in this game. I wish that there was risk/reward associated with the Mai fight for going range. Where the risk is you get 1 shot but the reward is that she loses a stack of Captain’s Defense or whatever it was called upon a successful evade. I felt like it was difficult getting a team to effectively pull her through aoe so the team resorts to stacking. Stacking again favors guardians due to aegis on her daggerstorm. So playing a mid range character ends up being difficult and unrewarding.

Regarding the laser walls, I feel like stability trivializes it because it makes you not have to worry about wasting endurance on dodging the pull. Now you can focus on other things. The fact that laser’s even do damage to pets doesn’t make sense, in my opinion. Why should I have to use an underleveled character that may or may not have stability just to play living story content? It’s just more fun with stability, period.

Maybe I’m idealistic, but in my opinion, good content is not dependent on group composition as strongly as this dungeon is. I hope that helps.

PS: I liked the Frog King in SAB because the boss model was huge, it was a throwback to old games—at least in terms of style and mechanics, and the tells were easy to catch onto once you got the hang of it. Other examples of good boss fights might be the Legendary Mining Suite where you have to dump lava on it to make it take damage…sort of like Mai but the aggro isn’t so weird to try and pull. I like Subject Alpha and Lupicus, of Course. I’m also a fan of Turmaine (caudecus manor) but I wish his player model was bigger. The Mossman is a fun fight. I think everyone likes Jade Maw. None of those fights make the player feel bad about taking a medium armor profession, though, at least not like AR. Except engi’s because engi’s rock. Of course, certain team comps can beat lupicus in 1 minute or less, but it took people a long time to figure that out. Eventually it will become “degenerate” but AR right off the bat makes many team comps look awful.

Chopps.5047:

I never solo’d Lupicus.

My issue with the mechanics is that it relies on pulling aggro and aggro mechanics are sort of a black art in this game. I wish that there was risk/reward associated with the Mai fight for going range. Where the risk is you get 1 shot but the reward is that she loses a stack of Captain’s Defense or whatever it was called. I felt like it was difficult getting a team to effectively pull her through aoe so the team resorts to stacking. Stacking again favors guardians due to aegis on her daggerstorm. So playing a mid range character ends up being difficult and unrewarding.

Maybe I’m idealistic, but in my opinion, good content is not dependent on group composition as strongly as this dungeon is. I hope that helps.

Aha, I see what you mean. A lot like how the dredge fractal final boss sometimes chases the player up the top pulling the levers even though they arent doing any dmg and dont have the highest toughness and aren’t the closest enemy. It would be nice to understand the agro mechanics more, I agree. I noticed in the mai fight she often seems to go for players who are rezzing others, I wonder if anet put that in on purpose to make it harder. The only class I saw range her effectively was mesmer, because they could use clones to escape the shadowstep dodge. It was very impressive to watch.

I think you are right, a decent reward mechanic for staying at range in the fight would be nice, to balance the massive risk it poses against her. I guess the intention was to make her hard to kite but with the teleport and the having to pull her though fields I think they went a bit overboard. I dont dislike the concept though, watching players behaviour in that fight the instinct to stay at max range seems to have become ingrained in a lot of people, even a friend of mine who is a much better player than me, had trouble adjusting to close range (not melee mind you) for it.

I agree that good content should not be depended on group composition (especially in gw2 where every class should be able to do every role to a greater or lesser extent) and I am quite worried that the pvp focus is seriously unbalancing the various classes in pve. It was nice to see necros get a boost and I really hope at some point soon pet ai and how pets work in general gets a good overhaul.

Having said that Im not sure this dungeon is much worse than others (particularly cof speed runs or 30+ fractals where its just guardians and warriors as far as the eye can see) with regard to requiring certain party compositions. A quick look at the wiki shows that for both condition removal and granting stability Guards are definitely well equipped but they are not the only ones, and all classes have at least some access. Im quite interested to try it out in a party without a guardian to see how different it is, I accept that my experience is limited in that respect.

Personally I like content which makes people think and adapt, stuff you have to concentrate on while playing. AR does achieve that, which is why Im happy to overlook thakittens a bit rough around the edges.

PS editing because I only just read your bit about the laser walls. AFAIK even with guard its impossible to have stability up 100%, certainly with my ah build anyway. I can get 20 seconds at best, and thats only if I dont move out of the area affect of one of the skills (a skill with a 90 sec cooldown no less) Its use has to be managed and timed just like the dodge rolls. It makes it easier and safer, certainly, but its not a brainless I win button either.

Agree that lasers shouldnt dmg pets (or at least should do less dmg to pets) though. Theres another issue you raise too which is about living story content. I completely agree that for temporary story content, AR is much too, inflexible is the best word I can think of. It shouldn’t be temporary and doing the basic story and getting the achievements for it should be something that any party with any combination of classes should be able to enjoy doing. It might be doable with any party composition (given skilled players) but I doubt it would be fun unless you’re choosing a pretty optimum group. Simple, it should be permanent. Thats an issue I have with the content delivery though, rather than the content itself.

PPS The other boss fights you mentioned, I do like them all. I did CM exp for the first time quite recently and now not sure what all the fuss is about. Its a quite fun dungeon.