Guild Wars 2

Hi,

Yes, one more complaint But this time it seriously kitten me off so I ll vent a bit of anger on the forum. And ask for some help too.

Today I did 2 Caudecus C1 run.

• Team 1: 1 war full berserker, 1 guardian, 1 engineer (yes 3 people only)
• Team 2: 2 rangers, 2 engineers, 1 necro

With Team 1 we finished the run in 30 minutes.

With Team 2 we never got past the packs after victoria and we were in a lot of hurt for the first packs too even though we were pulling them upstaires. Even with engineers trying to magnet the monsters one by one or using Elixir U to protect us from the bombs and with rangers full rooting the monsters in place.

So, Anet, when you actually run the dungeons do you try to run them with pretty much every kind of setup ?

And for other players, how would you go about killing the monsters with Team 2 composition ?

Regards

Well, I assume team 1 just sat behind a reflect bubble mashing their 1 key while team 2 got AoE owned by mobs with stability?

Engineers come with 2 handy tricks for avoiding that, one is in the flamethrower (blind) and the other is in the pistol (blind) / X setup.

So, in answer, corner pull, CC, AoE, win. In that order.

The trick with a corner pull, and where most PuGs fail, comes from the fact that a ranged mob that can see anyone from the party will stop and use ranged attacks. Then again, why shouldn´t it?

So, when doing CM (or really, ANY dungeon anywhere) its always better to pull mobs in then to rush at them or, god forbid, fire at them while standing around like 5 drooling sacks of not so free repair bills.
The sad part in any PuG is that 1 person standing in the open is enough for all of the above to fail. Especially in CM where quite a few mobs are capable of blinding you / knocking you / putting oodles of vulnerability on you from a distance.

BUT, if everyone hugs the wall like it was their first born child and 1 person shoots 1 shot from a good distance before going V / V to dodge backwards and then you start letting loose on the mobs when they close in, I assure you that you will win these fights in a nice, timely fashion without needing a reflect bubble for hiding behind.

Infact, I promise you that if you stop relying on the crutch that is pressing keys behind a bubble and just learn how to outthink the rather dumb AI, you would see a lot less teams wanting only warriors / mesmers / guards.
Easymode is all good and whatnot, but hardly required anywhere, and certainly not in CM.

“2 rangers, 2 engineers, 1 necro” doesn’t really tell us anything. What were their weapon sets? Kits? Pets? Utilities? Traits? I don’t expect anyone to completely respec their trait for each dungeon but even within whatever you have allocated there could be better ones for a particular encounter, even if it isn’t the optimal for the build.

Khaolic,

Thanks for the input but here are complementaries:

• Team 1, meleed pretty much everything, no bubble only wall sometimes and condition removal (but 2 engineers can get you walls too, be it reflective or blinding or stealth and remove conditions way better) and guardian was packing every packs as neatly as he could. But when you have a warrior zerker in the team for exemple, thugs go down in 15 seconds even less sometimes and hooligans in 30.
• While when you have condition damage necros, rangers and engineers… well monsters stay up a lot more longer since condition damage, though higly effective takes a bit more time to actually take effect.

Another exemple is normal monsters (not the lieutenants). With my ranger it takes me 3 to 4 times longer to kill monsters than with the warrior or the guardian and it is way more squishy.

Also, do you actually have a technique for the packs after Victoria where you have 5 lieutenants AND 20 small ones ?

• With first team, the small ones go down instantaneously since they are so nicely packed with the LOS around the corner and the guardian number 5 staff / hammer ^^. So they pretty much do no damage and you are left with a bit harder monsters that don’t take long to kill either.
• With team 2… you have no way to control the timing at which they come or pack them nicely to do tons of damage even with piercing rounds / arrows.

In the end, even if I had to go back to Caudecus C1 with the same team 2 composition. I would go 100% direct damage since it is, in my eyes, way more effective for group survival than condition damage. The faster monsters go down, the less time they have to hit your group.

Yep, my technique is to run by them and not waste my time.

Well, I knew it was that room you meant, they are just as vulnerable for corner pulling as everything else in this game.

If the issue was multiple cond builds in the same group, then yeah, that won´t fly sadly (I also wanted to be a cond build, they rock solo but the way conds work now they are utterly wasted in PvE even if they are the only cond build in any given group) but its hard to belive that there were 2 cond built engies in the same group.
Sadly, doing a war of attrition against AoE heavy silver mobs in a dungeon enviroment where they also have acess to stability, thats not going to fly in CM or in Arah (where you again meet AoE happy packs with stability) sadly, the only way to go is frontloaded damage and using conditions as a back up.
See, what your saying is that you were able to destroy the groups easy with 1 warrior 1 engineer and 1 guardian. If you cant outperform that 1 warrior / 1 guardians AoE damage using 4 toons + what I assume to be the same engineer as in the above scenario, then something is wrong with those 4 toons.

Sure, a warrior does more AoE DPS then my engineer, but he doesn´t do 4 times more. I rarerly skip those groups, when I do it´s cos of lacking AoE power along with the feeling I often get in PuGs (that people aren´t up to snuff plain and simple) and so skip those two packs. But if people are performing, there is no reason ever to skip them. Corner pull > “shut down damage” > AoE > destroyed

The only time your group is vulnerable, is the moment you open up and before you have spread out a bit, after that its cake and free loot galore.
Try it and see.

Before the second boss (the one in the barn) you don’t have to kill a single enemy so that shouldn’t give you too much trouble.

I assume C1 is the asura path and tbh not sure why you had problems. Every group I’ve been with runs through the room with all the people and stops short of the next room. I’ve never been in a group that tried to clear that room.

A good tactic is to run into the small area on the right side of the room right before the next room (I know this was worded badly). In this little room within the room you can pull the enemies from the next room and can clear it pretty easily.

Also this dungeon can be soloed (not by playing the intended way just so you know) so any team composition can beat it.

Khisanth.2948:

“2 rangers, 2 engineers, 1 necro” doesn’t really tell us anything. What were their weapon sets? Kits? Pets? Utilities? Traits? I don’t expect anyone to completely respec their trait for each dungeon but even within whatever you have allocated there could be better ones for a particular encounter, even if it isn’t the optimal for the build.

This. Team 1 was probably fully direct-damage. What about Team 2? Were you applying the same tactics?

Team1 full direct damage, Team 2 was pretty much 4 conditions damages dealers.

What really killed us on these packs are the AoE bombers (there was more than one that is for sure). But next time I go i’ll look over the area because to me, you have to run pretty far to get “space” to fight, or you gotta fight in their room

As for the technique of running we tried it. But those frigging ranger pets (mine too) would just not keep stowed and would simply run back to me aggroing pretty much everything along the way so we had 8 riflemans going for us in the room below where everybody hides We even had some monsters coming through the walls. I should really film stuff more often

And I’ll try to get a more damage build oriented ranger too rather than a pet oriented one. It had been a while since I had done a dungeon with it, but the pets even spiders and the like just get down way to fast imho.