Guild Wars 2

Completely unbalanced if its not broken. My level 60 character dies in one hit. If the dungeons are supposed to be like this then why not make the rest of the game like this so I can respectfully stop playing because thats not fun.

I like the game and felt I got my moneys worth the first week. Seriously. I haven’t even played Skyrim as long or encountered more variety. But you are seriously attacking this goodwill that you created with a brilliant game, if there are such unbalanced dungeons in the game.

Make the dungeons fun too.

Hi, Lambros. It’d help us help you if you could be more specific about what exactly is causing your party problems. Which enemies, exactly, are oneshotting you? Is it keeping the party as a whole from progressing, or is your frustration that you keep dying?

If it would help, I recently finished a CM explorable video guide – the forum thread is linked in my sig. I’d be happy to answer questions, too. 99% of my dungeon runs are with pugs, so don’t worry – if I can do it, you probably can too. It’s just a matter of knowing how to handle the instance.

It’s possible you’re being oneshot by the “Bandit Rifleman” enemies. They have a sniping attack where they kneel, take aim at you, pause for a second or so, and then shoot, dealing massive damage (and likely oneshotting you) IF you’re moving when the shot connects. You can tell when you’re being targeted by Snipe because a flashing red reticle will show up at your feet.

When we (my guild) started running dungeons they seemed insanely hard, to the point we thought they were bugged. Now we have ALL dungeons compleated on story and the majority of paths on explore knocked out as well, including Arah. I wont lie, the dungeons are freaking hard but once we started to TRULY understand the mechanics of them we are now running them daily and compleating many in under an hour (explore) Dont give up and KNOW that you are going to die…a lot during this learning process = )

Trust me when I say I feel your frusteration, a number of us were ready to give up thinking that they were made impossible by poor design or simply bugged. Its just not the case, again…they are hard but its all about understanding the mechanics and taking it slow.

For as much as I dislike the current dungeon design, I actually think the story mode for Caudecus Manor is one of the more interesting and well-designed dungeons. Assuming it is story mode you have issues with, I can give you the tips that helped my guildmates and I burn it in around 50 minutes or so.

• For the bomber pack in the basement, drag them back up to the area where you fight the door guard. This makes the kegs more readily apparent and thus easier to dodge.

• Chain-control the snipers either via Blind, Weakness, or Reflects.

• Be wary of the two dog packs which have 5 second fear on short cooldowns

• Pull the next group of dudes around the tree to force LOS issues with the snipers

Basically this is an example of someone undergeared or not having enough knowledge about a dungeon.

I personally run about 6-7 various dungeon paths every day (paths that take 30 min or less with a dedicated group many times we hit DR after the 4th path doing things legit and get 45 tokens then have to wait a while which is another issue…) and have run almost every dungeon path at least once. I ran CM regularly because I wanted the 6 Noble runes for the dog proc, and it’s not hard at all if you know what you are doing, and I can’t imagine anything one shotting you except maybe rifleman while you are moving (i.e. your lack of knowledge) or standing directly in front of those mobs like at the first boss of path 3 where you get point blanked by their spread shot. There are other things like the barrel event in path 2 or the spike area after boss 2 in path 3 that seems hard until you figure it out, then it’s like a walk in the park.

There are more and more walkthrough videos and speed run videos up all the time, with plenty for CM. So I’m not sure how people can sit here 2 months into the game and say something like CM is unbalanced when there is tons of proof of people easily running paths in EM under 30 min.

Dungeons are the only challenging PvE content in this game, once you figure them out a majority aren’t challenging anymore. So yes, you are required to use your brain a little or have more then blues for your gear.

I respect what you guys said but I am not satisfied with your responses. There should be more easy difficulty options for all dungeons. I am not happy having my level 63 dual axe wielding ranger dying in one hit or even three. My weapons & armor are all rare so is my longbow. My area of effects spells include burning & poison. My elite skill is to rampage alongside my pet.

The level scaling really bites and is counter-intuitive to rpgs where you are supposed to be able to dominate lower level enemies. The whole point of grinding and seeing every nook in the world. Granted a veteran and a champion are allowed to be tougher. But ordinaries should not be bosses or mini-bosses.

Thats a very incoherent sado masochistic approach to accept this level of difficulty. Playing should be a reward not tedious, die and die again because an opponent is spamming some cheap move and built like a tank.

That honor should be reserved for the player only as this is a fictional, fantasy game to be enjoyed and played for fun.

Add easy, and super easy difficulty for all dungeons. And give an option to disable level scaling too. And get rid of the level cap if you want people to play longer.

I am whinging but I died six times before reaching the shooters and another three when half my party logged out because it was too ridiculous, too story breaking, to accept such a large number of deaths in such a short period. And when normal enemies take forever to whittle down thats the equivalent of chiseling a statue out of stone.

That was my first attempt at a “dungeon” in this game and it feels absolutely deflating.

It’s funny, I logged onto the dungeon forums to find a post just like this, because I too am INCREDIBLY dissappointed with the story mode dungeons. So far, I have cleared Caudecous Manor and Ascalonian Catacombs in story, and explorable.

In my opinion, something is terrible wrong with the balance in story mode encounters… Now I do understand that your lvl is scaled back to 40 for story mode, but a lvl 80 is still going to be more powerful than a true lvl 40 character. However, I joined a group for CM story, with 3 lvl 80’s, and 2 mid to high lvl 40’s. The run… was a complete disaster. I did not have fun ONE second once the fighting actually started taking place.

I kept saying to myself, “this is a story mode?” This is a complete joke, as we all kept dying, and dying, and dying. Now I understand that some coordination is required for dungeons, and we had none, but if your going to throw the holy trinity away, this kind of bull crap is not going to work for me.

The same thing happened to me for AC story mode… I am just baffled that for a dungeon that is played solely for expanding the story, it is this difficult, and provides you with bare bones minimum reward for completing.

Also, who the heck is going to rerun a story mode with the current reward system for them. I played story mode for two reasons, to have fun and learn more about gw2. I could care less about any of your tips for a second playthrough of “Story Mode”.

when i entered a ex dungeon at first, i thought they definetedly designed for 80s
whatever the dungeon req level is :p

@lambros
You’re not satisfied? I did CM story quite some time ago “at level” and I found it to be really well tuned (after AC story being hugely overtuned for a first dungeon). From my experience, I can say that the hints and information that were provided to you in this thread alone are to the point, crrect and sufficient to complete the instance and have fun doing so.

If you’re still not satisfied, I don’t know what else you could hope to take home from a forum that would make you satisfied.

Regarding downlevelling: It’s so that I can have fun in the dungeons at level 80, too. It’s so that I can help friends who want to do dungeons at their level (while levelling) even though I don’t have a char in that level range. Think of all the dungeons in WoW. How many are there? It must be dozends. But due to lack of downlevelling, all but a handful are boring, uninteresting, unplayed, dead content most of the time. You really want that?

Lambros Augustus.6594:

I respect what you guys said but I am not satisfied with your responses. There should be more easy difficulty options for all dungeons. I am not happy having my level 63 dual axe wielding ranger dying in one hit or even three. My weapons & armor are all rare so is my longbow. My area of effects spells include burning & poison. My elite skill is to rampage alongside my pet.

The level scaling really bites and is counter-intuitive to rpgs where you are supposed to be able to dominate lower level enemies. The whole point of grinding and seeing every nook in the world. Granted a veteran and a champion are allowed to be tougher. But ordinaries should not be bosses or mini-bosses.

Thats a very incoherent sado masochistic approach to accept this level of difficulty. Playing should be a reward not tedious, die and die again because an opponent is spamming some cheap move and built like a tank.

That honor should be reserved for the player only as this is a fictional, fantasy game to be enjoyed and played for fun.

Add easy, and super easy difficulty for all dungeons. And give an option to disable level scaling too. And get rid of the level cap if you want people to play longer.

I am whinging but I died six times before reaching the shooters and another three when half my party logged out because it was too ridiculous, too story breaking, to accept such a large number of deaths in such a short period. And when normal enemies take forever to whittle down thats the equivalent of chiseling a statue out of stone.

That was my first attempt at a “dungeon” in this game and it feels absolutely deflating.

This is not WoW, or any other game. Change your build, use dodge, control, support, survival; thats what you want in a dungeon. No need to make new posts about difficulty there are many….try harder and as my guild mates tell me “suck less”

Dungeons are not meant to be easy the first time (especially if you dont have an experienced dungeon runner) but they will get easier as you do them over and over again. I remember when I first runned AC story with my buddies it took about 4 hours to the point of having to send each other money for repairs because some of us were running out. Nowadays when we do the dungeon again (usually to help out a new guildie) we joke around a lot and it doesnt seem hard at all. We’re at the point that when someone goes down we will emote the /laugh @ at them before rezzing at the last second.

My point is that even a dungeon that is hard for you has probably been done by somebody way more experienced who considers it way too easy. The whole idea of a dungeon is to “challenge yourself” anyway and if you can cruise through them on the first try then it would just be a mindless grindfest for chests and tokens.

@ Aleiro

First I never compared the game but to heap praise on it. My build is a tank. Dodge only works twice with x amount of time. Support with four other members going in, ordinary enemies should be dropping like flies. Survival means being at a competent enough level where my stats overwhelm their stats, retreat then rebuff. “Suck less” but ordinaries have the HP of Jupiter and the ATTACK of the Sun while I’m still stuck at Earth mass.

imbalancedhero.3968:

Dungeons are not meant to be easy the first time (especially if you dont have an experienced dungeon runner) but they will get easier as you do them over and over again. I remember when I first runned AC story with my buddies it took about 4 hours to the point of having to send each other money for repairs because some of us were running out. Nowadays when we do the dungeon again (usually to help out a new guildie) we joke around a lot and it doesnt seem hard at all. We’re at the point that when someone goes down we will emote the /laugh @ at them before rezzing at the last second.

My point is that even a dungeon that is hard for you has probably been done by somebody way more experienced who considers it way too easy. The whole idea of a dungeon is to “challenge yourself” anyway and if you can cruise through them on the first try then it would just be a mindless grindfest for chests and tokens.

I think the problem here is they’ve already become mindless grindfests, which is why there’s now a diminishing return for tokens in explorables.

I mean, sure, the things someone considers hard is a thing another person will consider easy, but I think we can look at a lot of overall dissatisfaction with the dungeon design and say “Something is amiss.”

I personally haven’t done CM explorables but I think that CM story, AC story, and a fair portion of Twilight Arbor story and explorable are pretty well-balanced. I’d like to see more of this kind of dungeoneering, and less of the “hope you set aside an entire evening to bash your head against the wall” design.

Lambros Augustus.6594:

I respect what you guys said but I am not satisfied with your responses. There should be more easy difficulty options for all dungeons. I am not happy having my level 63 dual axe wielding ranger dying in one hit or even three. My weapons & armor are all rare so is my longbow. My area of effects spells include burning & poison. My elite skill is to rampage alongside my pet.

The level scaling really bites and is counter-intuitive to rpgs where you are supposed to be able to dominate lower level enemies. The whole point of grinding and seeing every nook in the world. Granted a veteran and a champion are allowed to be tougher. But ordinaries should not be bosses or mini-bosses.

Thats a very incoherent sado masochistic approach to accept this level of difficulty. Playing should be a reward not tedious, die and die again because an opponent is spamming some cheap move and built like a tank.

That honor should be reserved for the player only as this is a fictional, fantasy game to be enjoyed and played for fun.

Add easy, and super easy difficulty for all dungeons. And give an option to disable level scaling too. And get rid of the level cap if you want people to play longer.

I am whinging but I died six times before reaching the shooters and another three when half my party logged out because it was too ridiculous, too story breaking, to accept such a large number of deaths in such a short period. And when normal enemies take forever to whittle down thats the equivalent of chiseling a statue out of stone.

That was my first attempt at a “dungeon” in this game and it feels absolutely deflating.

Don’t expect to be awesome your first go around. Dungeons require strategy and practice. This isn’t the personal story where everything is handed to you on a silver platter. Read the dungeon strats and stop being so demanding. Very Easy Mode? Really? If you expect dungeons to be easy then I would advise playing a different game or improving your attitude / play style. The gear is all cosmetic anyway. If you can’t clear the dungeon then you arent entitled to wear the gear.

That…is such an awful attitude to have about the game because it pretty much will end up with people saying “the game isn’t fun” and not playing anymore. People who aren’t playing aren’t buying gems or expansions, and people who get stonewalled in their first dungeon will say “gosh these dungeons just aren’t fun,” and then they don’t do the dungeons.

When they don’t do the dungeons, and there’s nothing really for them to do at 80 if they have explored and don’t like PVP, why will they stay in the game? Why throw around this kind of caustic and abrasive mindset? It doesn’t help you, it doesn’t help the other player, and it certainly isn’t helping Arena Net.

I recently completed my first dungeon (Caudecus) on a lvl 50 ranger. I was with experienced guild mates (all but one at lvl 80). While we were successful in the end, it was a grindfest that cost us all dearly (repairs) that resulted in precious few rewards of any kind (drops) and a hat in the end. That was on story mode.

We had attempted Ascalonian Catacombs on explorable mode prior to that. Again, all except for me were knowledgeable and had been through this dungeon several times successfully. Our instance was bugged, apparently, and nothing seemed to go right. We persevered until it 1) became stupidly expensive for repairs (ok, so we were also a bit stubborn) and 2) it was abundantly evident that it really wasn’t ‘just’ us, the dungeon really was bugged.

If a solid group made of mostly experienced characters who know their professions have as much difficulty as we did, I shudder to think what the other dungeons hold or how a PuG manages.

Now, some of you come in and say “I ran that dungeon in my skivvies and didn’t have any trouble” or “you just need to either learn how to play or go home”. How is that helpful? How is that even relevant? There are those who are having difficulty, who believe that perhaps things are a bit unbalanced somehow. Personally I am in the first group and – having experienced GW for over 7 years already – I can well believe there is an imbalance that is exploitable by some professions and suffered through by others. Anet will never please everyone – and never should have tried. Unfortunately, they have once again tried to do so and though they have created a beautiful game, the mechanics are still skewed.

why don’t we explore exactly what you’re having problems with? on cm story, i can imagine where your frustrations are coming from. you’ve got a lot of tough pulls right off the bat. it’s not true that everything can kill you in one hit. but the first two bosses do have combos that can down exotically geared level 80’s of all professions. let’s examine them a little further, and you tell me how your experience compares with the strategies i’m explaining.

both fights require not only damage mitigation (not only dodges, but any skills that offer blocks/interrupts/invulns/protects/regens/etc etc that can be used as full or partial “dodges”) but terrain based tactics. for example, against the golem boss, you will HAVE to dodge away from his whirl, but it probably won’t do enough damage to you on the first strike to be an OHKO. the real pain is the rocket AOE, but your advantage here is the open courtyard. if you stay spread out, you can avoid mass death, because the rockets don’t last forever, and downed players can quickly be rezzed during the golems pauses. the door guard is tough too, as his lightning slash looking skill drops anyone in melee range. so – stay outa melee range. he doesn’t have projectiles, or a pull, if i recall correctly, so keeping him chilled and crippled and kited works wonders.

the hounds are hard too, but you gotta bring stun breaks. if someone has stun breaks + aoe condition removal, that’s ideal. fear is a kitten and a half.

i promise, i’ve run cm with everything from four of my experienced guildmates to four random kitten doods. as long as one player knows basic dungeon tactics (and maybe those strats i just described) and can politely inform others, there’s no reason to wipe horribly here. i personally find cm to be one of the easier stories (i may be beginning to see the point about story vs xplo difficulties, though), and i promise, from experience, it’s possible with random people, and random professions. you’ve just got to use the communication you have to the best of your ability and plan well.

also, what do you mean by a “tank” build? because if you mean a traditional damage sponge, i can tell you right now you’re being about as ineffectual in a dungeon as possible. since the threat mechanic works largely on past and current dps, if you’ve sacrificed dps for surviveability, you have no way of maintaining reliable aggros, and so the damage you’re mitigating is most likely splash runoff. you’re not contributing anything to the team if you’re not* contributing dps, support, or control.

*edit: that very critical not