Guild Wars 2

This is not a rant thread, it actually ends on a happy note. I just want to make that clear now.

Also, this post contains many minor spoilers. I’m not trying to spoil the plot, but I do have to mention basic information about the layout and enemies you face in Caudecus’ (sp?) Manor.

I’m a Sylvari guardian. Level 80. I have 3 kids, the youngest being 2. I find time to play when I should be doing other, more important things, but I have difficulty committing to something like a dungeon. With a toddler, I have to run AFK frequently, and this is something I just have to accept, yet I feel it is unfair for me to impose this on a group of random strangers. Yesterday, I happened to be near CM at the same time that the little one fell asleep for her afternoon nap… and a group was looking for more for story mode. It doesn’t get much better than that right? Fate was telling me to go, I had to leap at the opportunity.

The group fills up and we set in. Most of us haven’t been here before, but at least one has.

During the first boss I am downed once, but not killed. Others are not so lucky. Why was I downed? I took a rocket barrage to the face while helping the rest of the group get back on their feet. Again. This wasn’t the first time; I had spent most of that fight helping people get back up, noting at one point that I was the only non-downed player.

I died during the second boss. I died several times to the zerg rush of sepratists that followed. I stayed up until just before the exit from the tunnel, where we all died.

Total cost to repair: 16s
Total cash on hand: 11s

The engineer leaves the party.
The necromancer (also group organizer) leaves the party.

I have broken armor and cannot afford to take a waypoint out of here. I wilt a little on the inside.

At this point, we talk amongst ourselves. We’re not done, lets get 2 more and keep going. A warrior friend of mine (that has done the dungeon) comes online and asks if I’d want to run it again with him after we’re done. I invite him to join us and he accepts.

We need one more, but can only find pairs. The 35 Thief offers to leave, being under-leveled for the dungeon. We tell her to stay, since she didn’t wimp out and had been giving it her all—we respect that and would rather keep her than take a chance on somebody else. At this point I mention that I may have a solution, but it might not be a good one. My warrior friend knows what I am thinking and responds with a firm ‘no.’ In guildchat I promise to pay his repair bills if this goes poorly. He relents, and I explain the idea to the group. My son (age 12) has a low-40s guardian. He isn’t a great player, but he will try hard—he might not get it right, but he will try. They agree. I have no idea how this will go or how I will pay for two repair bills.

We restart the dungeon. Fast forward to the end: we talked more this time, setting up some basic strategy. My friend called out what we should know and we focused on marked targets. My son died a few times, as did other people. I think everybody had at least one death but I don’t think anyone had more than 3. Mistakes were made all around, but we never had a full wipe—we always recovered. It was pretty smooth. I made back enough money to do a full repair and travel to Orr, my son got to do his first non-trivial content (in any game), and I finally got to do a GW2 dungeon. We were all happy.

Moral of the story: You don’t need a lot of skill or over-powered group members, just a little leadership, clear communication, and hard work.

d(^_^d) Thumbs up!

Never give up, never surrender.
Feels good, eh?

It confirmed what I’ve suspected for a long time: the people that complain about the insane difficulty* are primarily whiners that want handouts—they have preconceived notions of what rewards one should obtain for completing dungeons, but do not want to actully be bothered by that pesky content that is the dungeon.

*Obviously my very limited experience does not extend to Explorable mode or other dungeons. I accept that there are legitimate balance issues that are likely to be out there, and the content that I experienced was fairly easy on the grand scale. I am not dismissing all complints outright. However, I have heard people claim that the first boss in CM story mode is impossible without a graveyard zerg or a highly-synergized team of 80s in full exotics. As is often the case, the middle ground seems to be more accurate than the extremes.

I was not expecting you to say what you said at the bottom. I smiled. Good job!

To be fair, they had two guardians. While I’m not saying this to excuse the people who are unwilling to persevere, the OPs group composition isn’t normal.

I am not exactly positive, but I’m quite certain a group without any guardians would have a much different time.

I did CM last night with the composition of:

Thief
Mesmer
Warrior
Ranger
Engineer

We did struggle a little and had to respawn a few times but it was our first time for most.

miya.5160:

To be fair, they had two guardians. While I’m not saying this to excuse the people who are unwilling to persevere, the OPs group composition isn’t normal.

I am not exactly positive, but I’m quite certain a group without any guardians would have a much different time.

This is more of a self-fulfilling prophecy, to be honest. In the idea of people who go in playing Guardians with some kind of knowledge of the profession knows they’re good for support, so tries to play as such. Most other professions go in with power compositions and play that way. If you want to say that heavy armor classes are best for soaking damage, it might be plausible, but definitely not the only class that can take damage and support.

Note: I’m a Guardian and have always tried to play support (utilities+traits) over power/damage because I KNOW there will almost always be enough damage being dished out (even from me in my trait/skill direction!).

I think Daboris is on to something…

My son views guardian as a damage-dealing whirlwind (he loves his greatsword). He has some decent utilities but doesn’t use them often. He has a very damage-centric build.

The warrior involved is a tank. That is all he ever specs, in any game. This didn’t stop him from being killed in 5 seconds in one pull gone wrong, but he specs tank, not glass cannon.

At the time, I was specced tank/support. It was a blind-heavy build, with protection and regen for all. In retrospect, I should have swapped to some stability skills.

I have no idea how the elementalist and thief were traited.

I often play a support role, my friend often plays a tank role and, while everyone has shared responsbility for all the roles, we probably found a nice balance of everything that last time.

That said, I see no reason why the same feat could not have been performed by Thief / Guardian / Necromancer / Elementalist / Engineer.

You have the guardian in the group composition again.

The utility guardians bring to a group is amazing. I know my Mesmer class inside and out, and while I was farming for my armor set, I learned which skills to swap in and out for each and every encounter.

I tried to make it as easy on PUGs as possible by controlling fights, but you could instantly FEEL when there was a guardian present.

Again, I’m not saying that it’s impossible for people to complete current content with whatever group. I’m simply stating that your experience might be more unique than you might think.

Also, I’m making a guardian for this reason.

miya.5160:

You have the guardian in the group composition again.

The utility guardians bring to a group is amazing. I know my Mesmer class inside and out, and while I was farming for my armor set, I learned which skills to swap in and out for each and every encounter.

I tried to make it as easy on PUGs as possible by controlling fights, but you could instantly FEEL when there was a guardian present.

Again, I’m not saying that it’s impossible for people to complete current content with whatever group. I’m simply stating that your experience might be more unique than you might think.

Also, I’m making a guardian for this reason.

I’ve only been a Guardian, so I can’t say honestly. But, people may need to develop their profession or look into trait/skill combinations more. I’m traited for a certain style of Guardian at the moment, trying the build I made up.

I am starting to see a trend in this thread. lol

I don’t mean to diminish anyone’s achievement, of course. I love dungeons, so I’ve run them a lot pre-diminishing returns patch. I’ve run them with plenty of PUGs and plenty of guild groups and plenty of groups with friends. I’ve run them with a variety of class combinations, but I can’t emphasize how much easier groups feel with a guardian.

I am not saying that guardians are mandatory. I’ve completed just as many dungeons without guardians as I have with them. However, guardians help with bonding groups together as a cohesive unit with their vast amount of AoE support abilities. Otherwise, you have the chicken with its head cut off feeling. While everyone in such groups knows their purpose, it is much more chaotic and, generally, slower.

Not to knock the class (I play it myself) but you guys are giving guardians too much credit. I would argue that a necro’s plague form chain blind is ways better than almost anything a guardian brings.

The point is, the dungeon ‘difficulty’ seems to be artificially inflated by vast hordes of unnecessarily difficult trash.

Dungeons are meant to be HARD also you need lot of team communication is not like PvE Exploration where u can zerg most of the enemies without a strategy my advice is to bring 50s at least before entering a dungeon for repair purposes also wait till one of your armor parts is broken, in my experience all 6 armor parts gets damaged and then it breaks 1 by 1 with each death, so dont spam repair with just 1 armor damaged.

From what I understand story mode is not supposed to require vent and a guild team, or is this wrong? I’d like to be able to see content in PuG teams since I can’t always find a guild group or have 4 friends willing to do a run at any given time.

Also there is a difference between a fun, challenging fight (due to mechanics, not untelegraphed oneshots) and trying to kill 6 mobs with a billion HP each that can 2 shot you while chain knocking you around. That’s just irritating.

Disconnected.9253:

From what I understand story mode is not supposed to require vent and a guild team, or is this wrong? I’d like to be able to see content in PuG teams since I can’t always find a guild group or have 4 friends willing to do a run at any given time.

Also there is a difference between a fun, challenging fight (due to mechanics, not untelegraphed oneshots) and trying to kill 6 mobs with a billion HP each that can 2 shot you while chain knocking you around. That’s just irritating.

You know those mobs? Your party can use their skills to make even this fight easy. If everyone does their job well, they’re all keeping busy being effective and important, and everyone is happy. If you still hate being targeted, play dps ranger and just sit back and shoot.

In fact, with a guardian, mesmer/ele and necro, the rest of your party can just sit back and dps just like people are used to from other mmos.

Story mode is completely PuG-able; that is effectively what we did and the point I wanted to make. The attitudes of the players, builds, and coordination between attempt #1 and attempt #2 were the difference between catastrophic failure and success.

With a little more preparation, we could have avoided even more hardship—two guardians in the group and neither had any stability skills equipped. I did it once without—I know better for next time.

There were no untelegraphed one-shots. Stability skills would have solved the knockdown issue—but even lacking stability, we still did it.

I may have called in two guildmates (friend and son) but there was no special coordination between us. No voice chat (my son was in the same room but I didn’t say much to him during the run, just a couple directions so he didn’t get lost). No build synergies—the warrior specced the way he wanted, I specced how I wanted, my son specced to his tastes. Three completely arbitrary and uncoordinated builds.

The cost to repair armor is based on level/how many/which pieces are broken. Repairing one at a time or all at once costs the same. Also, a back slot item makes for 7 breakables.

I actually never dungeon run with voice chat, and I clear all routes of Arah, CoE, CoF every day. I run CM exp in my spare time with guildies or pugs I am interested in recruiting because they show competence every day, that dungeon is seriously easy with just a few basic tactics.

that’s a great experience and i agree that dungeons are hard,BUT!!it’s not impossible..it’s actually very very very doable

wanna share a bit about CM EM (i think it’s the 3rd path (no spoilers)

we head out with 5 players and of course died many times as the path was not that hard yet it’s a bit tricky to handle…

halfway thru one person (necro) went offline so we continue with only 4 people…we kept pushing evento we kept dying from zergs,traps+zergs and other malicious stuffs that ANet puts in it :p

not long,the 2nd member of our group was offline too and leaves us with only 3 person..and at this point we’re nearly done and the final boss are in front of us..

there’s no quiting at this point and no trying..we have to finished it!!

at last…20 minutes passed and we downed the final boss..Vollag..

moral of the story..don’t ever surrender,3 person can clear the dungeon EM..5 should even the odds

it’s hard,but there’s always a way to get it done..good luck and good hunting

Yep, once people grow accustomed to how dungeons are meant to be run you will find you die less and less. I don’t think it’s possible not to at least go into downed state once, although I don’t believe I have actually died in one recently, if you actually communicate the dungeons are a strong breeze. ;-)