Guild Wars 2

What is CoF path 3 you ask? It’s a dungeon path within the Citadel of Flame where you take on Tribune Burntclaw. He’s supposedly Baelfire’s successor. People think that HoTW or AC are the least run dungeons but then that’s because they know these dungeons actually exist. CoF path 3 on the other hand is never talked about and has faded from people’s memories. When you talk to that NPC every time you want to run path 1 you are actually given 3 choices. A lot of people have gotten so used to picking path 1 or sometimes path 2 that they actually don’t realize that CoF has 3 paths. I don’t want to make this sound like a conspiracy thread but the next time you run CoF look carefully at the choices and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

We know that with the upcoming patch all dungeons will see an increase in the gold rewarded for completion but bosses will no longer reward gold after being killed. The amount of gold rewarded will depend on how long the dungeon path takes and will range between 1 and 3 gold. Easy paths will likely only reward 1 gold while challenging ones will reward 3 gold. The rewards are also on a daily lockout so farming the same path over and over won’t be viable anymore. Instead, there is much more incentive to run other paths or other dungeons altogether.

The question is, what will be the fate of CoF path 3? Although I can only use anecdotal evidence, my experiences tell me that path 3 is the least run dungeon path in the game. I think that even all 4 paths of Arah get more love than CoF path 3. I’ve never run it myself so I don’t know if it’s really that hard or if it’s broken or not. It’s one of the few paths I need for my dungeon master achievement. I think one of the reasons for path 3 being seldom run is because path 1 pretty much gives the same rewards; you get the same tokens so there’s absolutely no reason to run path 3 unless you’re seeking a challenge. The hard part is finding 4 other like minded individuals. You would have better luck landing a job at Google or Microsoft.

With the upcoming patch will path 3 actually see more action? Let’s say that path 3 will reward 3 gold upon completion and that path 1 and 2 only reward 1 gold each. Will that actually entice more players to run path 3? I think it’s hard to say because human nature will always kick in. People will always choose the path of least resistance. The bigger question is, would we see an increase in story mode runs? I think ANet is on the right path with this new change to dungeon rewards but they could go one step further by giving an additional bonus reward for completing all paths.

CoF P3 is quite easy and fast, and then you hit the end boss. That end boss is the most frustrating encounter in the game. It’s not hard ,but he just constantly goes invulnerable over and over and over and over. It’s not fun. It’s just deliberately made slower for the sake of making it slower.

Though, I haven’t done the path in not only a long time, but with an optimized group. Maybe it’s not so annoying with a group with optimal DPS. hint Brazil

Tribune is annoying if people pull him away from middle.

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

CoF P3 is quite easy and fast, and then you hit the end boss. That end boss is the most frustrating encounter in the game. It’s not hard ,but he just constantly goes invulnerable over and over and over and over. It’s not fun. It’s just deliberately made slower for the sake of making it slower.

Though, I haven’t done the path in not only a long time, but with an optimized group. Maybe it’s not so annoying with a group with optimal DPS. hint Brazil

He didn’t seem too bad even without any sort of optimization. This is in comparison to Turmaine(the CM p2 boss) who does a similar thing with the invulnerability.

The more annoying bit of p3 is the fight where you have to defend a bunch of NPCs while killing silvers. Just knowing about the fight made it easier but the first run after not doing it for many months(haven’t done it since before they changed it from 5 torches to 3) was pretty brutal.

Khisanth.2948:

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

CoF P3 is quite easy and fast, and then you hit the end boss. That end boss is the most frustrating encounter in the game. It’s not hard ,but he just constantly goes invulnerable over and over and over and over. It’s not fun. It’s just deliberately made slower for the sake of making it slower.

Though, I haven’t done the path in not only a long time, but with an optimized group. Maybe it’s not so annoying with a group with optimal DPS. hint Brazil

He didn’t seem too bad even without any sort of optimization. This is in comparison to Turmaine(the CM p2 boss) who does a similar thing with the invulnerability.

Forgot about that boss, maybe my claim was a bit extreme I just remember the end boss of CoF3 was extremely boring^^

I’ve only done COF path 3 once. When I did it with 4 norn warriors (3 zerkers and a knight/Valkerie I think). This was after doing path 1 three times and path 2 twice we decided for laughs to try 3 since we had blitzed everything up till that point and even now is arguably the most fun I’ve ever had in a dungeon (I played the role of suicide tank to draw aggro away from the 4 warriors while they hulked smashed everything and droped protection/regen/blind to help keep them alive).

Once you get past the start and those slivers the dungeon path is actually quite easy until you reach the boss. Hes hard to kill but not undoable like many say Its a matter of working out the pattern and paying attention sort of like with lupi in arah and going all in once the invuln drops. Basically just doing a few things differently from what you normally do and you’ll kill him. Might Stacking, inflicting vulns and poisen helps immensely. Once we had that worked out we were good, we didn’t wipe a single time. Overall I think a lot of what is said about COF 3 is somewhat overblown tho you need to have a group thats good if you want to try it. Hard but it can be done

Had trouble with CoF P3 when I did it for dungeon master because, as you can guess, no one’s done it before so coordinating the torches with no voice communication was hell.

And then everyone brought their zerker warriors so it was just insta-fail for the 5 waves. Swapped out to guardian and it was just fine. The final boss is basically fought on a small island surrounded by lava and periodically he will run back to the centre and do this annoying shockwave thing, so it takes ages if your party opts to range from the narrow bridge.

I think it’s only a problem because people don’t run it so they don’t know when to disengage and retreat back to the little bridge thing, and then they get knocked into the lava and they’re like well OBVIOUSLY this means I must use my rifle. If more people run it and know what they’re doing, the path is actually not so bad.

The great hall is really easy with proper focus. Next wave appears when two enemies are left. If you kill last 3 enemies about at the same time you will get out of combat before next wave spawns (and don’t have to fight 2+4 Elites at the same time).

When Tribune raises to air just dodge through the shockwave thingy.

It’s nice to get insight into the actual path itself. It doesn’t sound so bad to run but I guess it’s just that path 1 is so easy there’s no reason to run path 3. The question is, would players ever do a CoF 1, 2, and 3? Would they after the next patch or does the path need to be revamped?

My suspicion is no. Once you frak up on the torches more than once, those who are used to ‘drop banner “FOR GREAAAT JUSTICEEEEE” 1112 swap to axe/mace 1111111111 swap to GS 1112 "OMG I can’t dodge, ENDURE PAAAAAIN" swap to axe/mace 111111111’ will ragequit.

I imagine a common dungeon rotation would be something like CoF P1/2, SE P1, HotW P1, AC P3/1, CoE P1/2/3. I don’t know about P2 and P3 for CoE though; all the PuGs I’ve been in play like they’ve never used the dodge button in their lives.

Well fortunately there are more than just warriors that play the game. You’re still going to see some Arah runs for those that are looking for a challenge. I think you’re right that people will still shy away from CoF path 3. Hopefully more people will give it a try even if they’re not intending on doing it for their farming runs.

CoF P3, Tonnelle F/U, Arah are pretty much the only dungeon I run because they are more fun than the other path imho.

And just for kicks 3 weeks ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLqEKQKgA7I … so not that hard

I believe that at a time it was not run much because people could not synch and count to 3 for the 5 torches (only 3 now). And they also were not learning which mob to focus / control in the capture event. Weird thing though, they have no problem doing it in CoE XD

Wethospu.6437:

The great hall is really easy with proper focus. Next wave appears when two enemies are left. If you kill last 3 enemies about at the same time you will get out of combat before next wave spawns (and don’t have to fight 2+4 Elites at the same time).

When Tribune raises to air just dodge through the shockwave thingy.

rather, dodge when you see first animations on ground

p3 is definitely a fun path, just long and has been inefficient for gold. However, new rewards system might help this one. I wouldn’t be surprised if this path receives gold in the 2-3g range, just because of time invested and moderate challenge involved i.e. gimicky parts, boss with mechanics you must respect.

Did COF p3 a few times with good players. It’s just not the reward-vs-time worth it compared to p1.

Chryzo.8906:

CoF P3, Tonnelle F/U, Arah are pretty much the only dungeon I run because they are more fun than the other path imho.

And just for kicks 3 weeks ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLqEKQKgA7I … so not that hard

I believe that at a time it was not run much because people could not synch and count to 3 for the 5 torches (only 3 now). And they also were not learning which mob to focus / control in the capture event. Weird thing though, they have no problem doing it in CoE XD

CoE doesn’t have things that can spawn while you are trying to do the sync thing. My memory is a bit fuzzy on this bit but doesn’t getting attacked while trying to sync the torches interrupt you as well?

CoF3 isn’t PUG friendly. It needs some coordination to light the torches (open the doors) and some weak players can make the whole group struggle. You then get lots of waves of mobs to kill and this ok. There’s a running past exploding beacons puzzle and although common knowledge of how to do it would eventually spread, PUG players would get furious as one mistake can drop fatal explosions onto everyone else nearby. The final boss is a quite funny at first but you quickly realize he has some of clumsiest boss mechanics in the game.

I wouldn’t actually fix much on this path except making the last boss less clunky. The time taken to run path 3 isn’t so bad, it’s just that other paths can be run so quickly that they wreck the balance of everything else.

So assuming that path 3 is a more challenging path I think many people would expect ArenaNet to assign a gold reward that is commensurate to the difficulty of this path. Of course, we know for certain that ArenaNet has plans to revamp many of the dungeons so it’s hard to say what will actually happen right now. I’m just perplexed as to how a dungeon can have paths that aren’t balanced against one another. It makes senses to have harder dungeons like Arah and high level fractals but for each path in the same dungeon to vary in difficulty doesn’t.

Khisanth.2948, sure, but it’s not like it’s hard to kill the mobs and then activate the torches they don’t repop instantly either ^^