First off – the group does not have full exotics. We just recently started doing explorer modes. In fact this was our second one ever.
Did CoF Explorer Path 2 for the first time last night against the warning of multiple people standing around outside the dungeon swearing up and down it was now un-doable. We finished it in about an hour or so but did have two problems throughout the dungeon that we feel Anet might need to take a look at.
Forgive me for not knowing names of npc and mobs and such as this was our groups first time running CoF on explorer mode, however I will do my best to explain in detail.
Issue 1
The part were you have to escort the npc across the river of lava and use the fire extinguisher to put out the flames so you don’t become a bbq burger. Getting across the river to the red blob on the other side and back to the side we came from was no problem. We just spray lots of blue stuff with our extinguishers (it’s spammable) there and back and ignore the mobs till we are safe on either side then dps down whatever follows us. we moved as a group keeping the fire down and healing anyone who was getting beat on while crossing the river.
The issue arises with thekitten npc who is also trying to cross the river. If he were a real person he would have to ride the short bus to school and would probably be walking around with drool hanging out of his mouth stabbing himself in the chest. After we finally managed to get the idiot to the other and discover the blob of orange stuff on the other side we had crossed it back and forth probably 20 times and killed about 10 or 15 of those blobs that take forever to kill. The npc was constantly just standing around in fire and dying while we were all safe out of the fire due to our extinguishers. He seems to try to follow at a long distance which would be fine if there wasn’t lava and fire everywhere but since there is he dies over and over and we have to make multiple trips out to rezz him, escort him over to the other side, then the idiot runs back out to the middle, dies, has to be rezzed again then re-escorted back to the other side. this cycle happened about 20 times – him running out to the middle by himself and standing in fire until he died while were all standing on the banks thinking what an idiot he is.
That npc needs to stay closer to the group and needs to not be so dumb that he keeps running out the middle on his own while were all chilling and drinking corona’s on the other side.
Issue 2
The fight where you have to defend the npc who is building a bomb or working on a bomb or some such and the room fills up with char’s wrecking everyone’s day. After numerous death’s we found a way to get past it but it just seemed cheesy and cheatish. We had 2 people in the room and three people outside the room. The two in the room ran around whacking them and generally staying away from the ones they were whacking around with slows and snares, in the beginning, while the three on the outside stayed out until more spawned. When more spawned one of the three on the outside would pick up one or two and kite them between the room and the hallway on the outside. The mobs will only follow you a short distance outside the room so you shoot them a few times and they follow for about 10 ft then turn around and go to run back in, snare them when they turn back, whack them some more and they come after you again. the three on the outside are constantly pulling two mobs out of the room so thats 6 mobs running back and forth for three players on the outside and 4 mobs chasing our pals on the inside. Its total pandemonium but as long as everyone has thier two mobs we had no problems keeping the bomb repairer/builder alive and getting past the event.
The issue here is that the mobs spawn so fast and have so much health that we just could not dps them down fast enough. Granted most of us are in mish-mash gear as we were all just starting out in explorer’s but even if we were all pimped out in oranges I don’t see how we would have the dps to focus fire them down anyways. They need less health so they can be killed as they spawn. Unless of course this is the way the event is supposed to be done which is possible since there is no door preventing you from running out of the room?
Those are the two issues that we think need to be looked at? Some feedback from Anet would be fantastic if this is “as intended” or if it is inf act a “bug”?
PS… Everyone got 60 tokens for the dungeon so that appears to be working.