Guild Wars 2

So after being 80 for awhile and running around exploring / personal story and wvw for weeks on end I decided to investigate the dungeon system.

I had heard from forums that people do speed runs but figured they would be either clearly marked or the group would require of me certain build/gear so not to burden them. With that I figured I just simply wouldn’t have to worry about these well geared farming groups because I could avoid them for now on gw2lfg or they wouldn’t invite me anyways.

So I started experimenting with gw2lfg and ran sparrows & caudecus with a pug….but I really wanted to start to get my hands on some cof flaming gear so I tuned in my focus to just getting into some cof grps.

First pug grp failed misreably after 2nd boss on story mode and fell apart. 2nd grp was in explorable p1 and fell apart within minutes.

So I was determined to get through this darn dungeon at least once.

Then I got invited to the grp in the video below, and my mind exploded with confusion as I tried desperately to figure out why my grp wasn’t attacking anything and running circuits.

Please enjoy my nOObhood

To be honest, it really wasn’t that bad if you didn’t have a clue. It would have been better if you said to your group it was your first time at the start so they could have told you the basics, but I think you got lucky with your group anyway.

Few tips from me. You forgot to loot the Slave Driver’s body (the mini boss near the start), he drops ~10s and some other goodies. The reason why your group kept on going out of combat up on the ledge is because you only have to kill the acolytes on that part. The other mobs there are just a nuisance and actually hit quite hard, as you got shown. So it is easiest to get out of combat and wait for the 4 acolytes to respawn, then your group goes back up, kills them and then gets out of combat again. You also forgot to loot the chest at the end of that part.

The brazier part is perhaps the most confusing if you don’t know what you’re doing. Luckily your team were sympathetic. You stayed in there too long though, when you here ‘get your tails in gear’ then you can move out of it.

I would have been happy for you to be in my group though, at least you showed you had a brain and actually listened to people. I’ve seen people where they’ve said it’s their first run and then they start shouting at me because I’m supposedly doing it wrong, even though I’m not.

CoF P1 is easy anyway, now that you’ve done it once you should be able to do it again and know exactly what you’re doing.

I won’t lie, that actually hurt to watch.

Why didn’t you tell them you were new when you joined the party?

Thanks Joe.8142,

I have still been a little thrown off from how these have been going down….I’ve had a lot of experience with WoW instances and they are surely a different breed. I noticed right off the bat with caudecus that these dungeons seem to be going at lightning speed. Perhaps it is mostly due to everyone else having experience and this being year old content. I’m used to slowly moving through dungeons/instances and having a slight per camp feel to each engagement. I will have to do some cursory research before my next dive in as well. Would love to find a group at some point to actually sit through the cut scenes as well. but is the nature of the beast and cof is a high farmed dungeon from what I’m told.

Additionally, thanks for the pointers Joe.8142, seems like a fun dungeon to mess around with….as I mentioned above, I had a group at least partially for story mode, and even a third the way through Rozgar The Forge I had figured out how to do damage and dodge him without being super kitten….so I am a fairly quick study. Same with the end of Sarrows Embrace, I had done the mass majority of the damage to the final boss compared to the rest of my group (though the guy providing heals was by far more pivotal to our success) once I had figured out how the battle worked.

colesy.8490 , sorry for the torture….I have learned a lot from these early runs….It is all do to my assumptions, I assumed I was getting invited into story mode, I assumed since people do story mode first that it was for inexperienced players mostly and I assumed because of that that the pace would be a whole ton slower…..So solely my fault….I will have to be more forward upfront as I go along, I’m sure that will either allow me better assistance from other players or for them to drop me until I am able to meet their speed, had to be a detriment to a group. Thanks for feedback

Yea. if you want a casual dungeon run don’t do CoF P1. Everyone joins that expecting SPEED SPEED SPEED.

If you want to just have a casual dungeon run I suggest joining a guild if you’re not in one and look there. Or see if there are like minded people on the forums.

you nab! :D
Alright, alright, you did great actually! Were you in my group, i wouldn’t even be able to tell that was your first time if it wasn’t for braziers where you got a little confused. Actually i remember doing my first couple of runs a bit blurry too aaaaaand as embarrassing as it sounds it actually took me a while to finnaly figure out the acolyte part where i always died.. well, people at that time didnt know that little trick but still.
And also, congragulations! Now you’re fully prepared for cofp1 farming! o/
While i got to say that i wouldnt recommend using the shortbow that much but well thats a different issue for another topic C;

I agree, I think that went quite well for a first timer! It’s good someone posts videos like this every now and then, instead of it always being “Lupicus in 21 seconds” or something like that. Really liked the video.

Usually you notice someone is a first timer at the braziers. I’ve had it happen a couple of times, it’s quite funny when they run around and everyone tries to explain what to do. Once we had some guy who apparently didn’t speak english and he ended up just leaving after 5 mins of us trying to explain. xD

The only feedback I wanna say is try to get rid of the “clicker” habit. Try to use the hotkeys for the buttons instead of clicking on them. It’s gonna make your play so much smoother. And next step is to use fast ground targeting.

Wesnoth.1705 , I agree with your assessment. I find it hard to jump into melee from the safety of range while being sooo squishy. My gear is very glasscannon for wvw and I am still not fully geared out plus my traits are setup semi-glass cannon. I suppose its mostly a confidence thing and knowing how the mobs attack for proper dodging.

Do you have any suggestions?

I by far do more damage at melee but I’m also so used to zerg tagging in wvw with sb that I have probably formed a bad habit, especially since I very rarely use sb in pve….something about seeing masses of mobs and wanting aoe. Aoe probably is causing me to catch too much agro.

OP (right after killing the Effigy): “Wow! Take down a boss in melee with thief…that never happens…”

I’m not gonna lie, I cringed…

Joe.8142:

Yea. if you want a casual dungeon run don’t do CoF P1. Everyone joins that expecting SPEED SPEED SPEED.

If you want to just have a casual dungeon run I suggest joining a guild if you’re not in one and look there. Or see if there are like minded people on the forums.

OR you could state specifically on your gw2lfg.com post something like “COF p1 LFM. Casual group. NOT a speed run. All classes welcome.”

The group should fill up quickly enough. And if some illiterate person joins and expects a speed run, kick him.

if you want you can add me and i’ll give you some thief pointers and we can run a dungeon or two and i’ll help you out

that was quite the enjoybale watch, personally. : )) the commentary made the video for me though lol.

it’s all a learning experience and everyone starts somewhere. glad your group was patient enough to explain and not blow up at you. just let the group know if you’re ever doing a path for the first time. heck, i still let people know i’m not familiar with certain encounters cause some groups i’ve been in the past don’t teach, they just lead. it’s easy enough to follow, but if you don’t treally learn why you do things a certain way, then you can’t teach the next group you’re in, which may have people who are new as well. and this is all based on if you want to have the “smoothest” run possible.

so like others mentioned, you can always post in gw2lfg and ask specifically for a casual run, wanting to watch all cut scenes, etc. am sure there are like-minded people out there. : )))

and good luck with your future dungeoneering!

I have to admit, I’d probably have ragequitted with you in the group ;-)

gw2lfg offers the ‘newbie’ post option, in every other group its simple:
people are only doing a dungeon for the first time once, they’ll repeat it multiple times after (if they like it). that means, being new to a dungeon is the EXCEPTION, not the rule. if something is an exception, warn the group about it so they take the time to stop and explain.

I don’t mind giving out pointers/instructions in pug runs without any special constraints. Though I hate it if everybody follows through as if they know what they’re doing without saying anything only to screw up because they actually don’t have a clue.

apart from that, have fun doing dungeons. if you can, look for an all-newbie group for the first time in each path. figuring stuff out together is a lot more fun than just getting everything explained by someone. it takes forever but feels a lot more like an accomplishment.

Darthaemos.6370:

OP (right after killing the Effigy): “Wow! Take down a boss in melee with thief…that never happens…”

I’m not gonna lie, I cringed…

Yeah i chuckled a little bit, but remember he is new. Take some time to get the dodge timing down and learn mob mechanics to feel safe doing melee. Unless of course you are like me and just charge head first and hope you don’t die. Zerg surfing in wvw is fun.

haha fun video!
idk if is just me, but your camera seems to be a little too zoomed in, which imo make things hard, try to zoom out, so you’ll have a greater vision of the combat/mobs/party

Thanks for posting that, very entertaining! I wish I had videos of my first dungeons, I’m sure they were much worse.

While mechanically you definitely did many things incorrectly, the only thing you truly did wrong was not telling the team your were new to the dungeon.

Worst thing is having a shortbow. Rather afk on daggers than attack with shortbow.

Darthaemos.6370:

OP (right after killing the Effigy): “Wow! Take down a boss in melee with thief…that never happens…”

I’m not gonna lie, I cringed…

I’m not gonna lie, I LOL~~ This is actually the only funny part.

But honestly OP, this is by no means a bad first blind run.

If you are not use to dodging, in PvE at least, you can try a sword main hand instead of dagger main hand. You can Shadow Step to attack and Shadow Return when you are done attacking or when you get hit. That way you can explore melee with a little bit of extra insurance.

Once you get comfy with melee & dodges, you can switch back to dagger for rapid damage. Shortbow has bounce attack >.< I hate it in PvE

Dub.1273:

Worst thing is having a shortbow. Rather afk on daggers than attack with shortbow.

I just did a run yesterday with a thief that just used shortbow…. the whole run. That was also a run where another warrior asked me why i go mostly zerker in CoF. I have to be honest after that run i got full zerker armor (had knights and some zerker trinkets) to just do speed runs.