Guild Wars 2

It is probably the worst part of any dungeon in the game. Not because it is hard. But because it is so mind-numbingly stupid.

Take turns running around in circles and try to survive as long as possible and inevitably die. Even if done correctly, everyone has to have died once, with the people that started earlier dying at least twice.

There is not a lot of coordination involved. There is no strategy either. And you are essentially required to die.

Everything about it is not fun.

Seriously, who the hell designed that? Its wrong in every single way.

This needs to be remade, I doubt they intended players to do this. I tried it myself and it is frustrating and nearly impossible to do unless you kite the enemies around.

They spawn too quickly, way too quickly. You get over run in a matter of seconds.

Perhaps try the encounter the intended way?

The fight is a lot easier just by killing the mobs. There is even down time for out of combat regeneration if you are doing the encounter correctly. No idea why people feel its necessary to suicide their repair money away.

I’d like to see you post a video of you DPSing the whole event Kevin because you kitten can’t. The last guy to post a video here of his group trying ended up kiting most of the spawns past the 80 second mark.

Haha Kevin you troll. I totally agree with you Dynamite. There is no way you can kill them or survive in that area for the whole duration. So i’m guessing the way to do it is taking turns to die and trying to survive long enough for the others to res and run back to die again. If this is not the way to do it please someone tell me and the community with proof of your success or results. If this is intended then this is lazy, no effort very bland and very boring design.

Event starts at 10:40
Comp: ele/necro/warrior/guardian(PoV)/mesmer

Here’s one of our OK attempts. Yea we kite the last spawn or 2 but i think its suppose to be that close, gives a sense of urgency. Sometimes we do better some times much worse and we have to fall back on the kite line strat.

They very well may end up tweaking the encounter eventually. The sample size of like, 10 people who had ever TRIED doing it legitimately didn’t give them much data to go by, what with all the exploiters =P Though its not THAT hard, and while its more reliable to send people one by one, if you send everyone in at the same time and help raise each other and stuff, you can make it with very few deaths.

Kevin: even focusing mobs down one by one with 5 people in full min-maxed exotics I’ve never seen mobs go down anywhere close to fast enough for that. Maybe I’m doing it wrong, but I feel lucky to be able to kill 3 before it becomes overwhelming.

Edit: Didn’t see the video before posting. Ill be d….. Ok, so its doable, and doesn’t even seem that hard. No need for tweaking.

@rickets.1386

And this is with your overgeared super organized group that is built to run instances. If you can’t completely demolish the encounter with that much on your side then it is overtuned. This isn’t supposed to be some super endgame raid encounter, it’s a friggin dungeon run for 5 people.

@ vicwolf
three things.

1. We are by no means super hardcore, we don’t respec specifically for dungeons, we all use a general build for all stuff(WvW, DE’s, Farming, Dungeons are all the same spec). Not everyone is in full exotics, our mesmer was actually in 90% yellows, and many of us only have yellow jewelery. You can buy a full yellow set for about 20s per piece of gear, they are generally 3 to 10 stats lower then exotics.

2. It’s an endgame dungeon. Explorable Dungeons are designed to be the hardest content in the game, think of explorable modes as raids in other MMO’s if you like(im not saying all explorable modes are created equally). Assuming you could do them in blues with a random pug of players with no plan/strat what so ever is silly.

3. I’m not saying the event isn’t overtuned, but you stated it couldn’t be done, which simply isn’t true.

Edit: I will add that a lot of encounters became a bit easier when our guardian noticed that reflect wall really owns ranged mobs, especially the spiders in AC and the Stalkers(rangers) in the maggs bomb event.

rickets.1386:

@ vicwolf
three things.

1. We are by no means super hardcore, we don’t respec specifically for dungeons, we all use a general build for all stuff(WvW, DE’s, Farming, Dungeons are all the same spec). Not everyone is in full exotics, our mesmer was actually in 90% yellows, and many of us only have yellow jewelery. You can buy a full yellow set for about 20s per piece of gear, they are generally 3 to 10 stats lower then exotics.

2. It’s an endgame dungeon. Explorable Dungeons are designed to be the hardest content in the game, think of explorable modes as raids in other MMO’s if you like(im not saying all explorable modes are created equally). Assuming you could do them in blues with a random pug of players with no plan/strat what so ever is silly.

3. I’m not saying the event isn’t overtuned, but you stated it couldn’t be done, which simply isn’t true.

Edit: I will add that a lot of encounters became a bit easier when our guardian noticed that reflect wall really owns ranged mobs, especially the spiders in AC and the Stalkers(rangers) in the maggs bomb event.

1. that still belies the point that it is content that people at the level you get downgraded to should be able to clear.

2. at most they are like heroics from WoW, by no measure of the experience are they supposed to be (nor could they be) at the difficulty and time consumption of raids.

3. I stated that you cannot do the event the way that it is intended to be done (by fighting and defeating all of the mobs that spawn) and asserted that you certainly cannot do it this way if you are not already in optimal or near optimal gear and max level.

Yea Magg planting bomb part is stupid and just ridiculous. I wonder how Anet will fix this. The idea that only way to do it is to kite and die is stupid and I guess that Anet made a mistake. Let’s see how they will fix it.

The group I run with just did this for the first time since the easy days. We got past this part in one try. We were able to kill everything up till about 73-74%, then we had a couple of mistakes and downs, which killed our dps timing. We then kited for the last 25% without issue.

This is basically a slightly harder version of Tsark in Catacombs. I don’ treally think that you can make this any easier without making it a snooze-fest. I’m pretty confident if we had dodged a little better and got a better compression, we could have killed everything to 100%. We were not prepared for that second smoke lord and didn’t see the bomb.

TJL

That video shows group well equipped (if the lowest equipped one is at least full rare as he stated, most of them have exotic armor anyway) that ended up completing the event without killing all the mobs, starting to run around near the end, with one death (funny: the guardian) and at least 2 of them with many near-death moments.

I don’t really think it shows that the event is doable as intended (killing the mobs instead of kiting them) ….

There’s no real feasible to do this encounter “by its design.”

You basically just have to run around as long as you can and hope somebody runs back by the time the last person is dead.

That video shows that lol. A not entirely geared or hardcore group, but one who was organized and played very well, did the event using MOSTLY a kill strategy except for the very last bit.

This is what the developers have been talking about. Explorable modes are HARD. You need to be organized. You need to communicate. You can’t be going in in crappy leveling blues/greens that aren’t even level 80. Sometimes, you might need to switch a few skills around for a given fight(as was shown in the video).

We have not had access to the dungeons for long enough to know every trick, every strategy, etc. What you need is more time to study and come up with effective strategies, rather than giving up right away and complaining about it.

vicwolf.7862:

I’d like to see you post a video of you DPSing the whole event Kevin because you kitten can’t. The last guy to post a video here of his group trying ended up kiting most of the spawns past the 80 second mark.

NothaPlayer.2793:

Haha Kevin you troll. I totally agree with you Dynamite. There is no way you can kill them or survive in that area for the whole duration. So i’m guessing the way to do it is taking turns to die and trying to survive long enough for the others to res and run back to die again. If this is not the way to do it please someone tell me and the community with proof of your success or results. If this is intended then this is lazy, no effort very bland and very boring design.

Sure, here is the video of our first time doing this.

Our warrior at the time barely hit 80 few days before, and I’m sure not a lot of people in the party were “best in slot”.

There is a reason why Anet made this encounter the way it is, there is another encounter in this zone that is similar to it but spawns slightly more mobs. The DPS output of this encounter is even less than some trash packs in Arah.

Gordunk.7289:

That video shows that lol. A not entirely geared or hardcore group, but one who was organized and played very well, did the event using MOSTLY a kill strategy except for the very last bit.

This is what the developers have been talking about. Explorable modes are HARD. You need to be organized. You need to communicate. You can’t be going in in crappy leveling blues/greens that aren’t even level 80. Sometimes, you might need to switch a few skills around for a given fight(as was shown in the video).

We have not had access to the dungeons for long enough to know every trick, every strategy, etc. What you need is more time to study and come up with effective strategies, rather than giving up right away and complaining about it.

Really it comes down to VOIP, but who wants to voice chat with pugs?

I hit 80 and farmed my butt off and didn’t even go into a dungeon without 6 piece exotic armor set.

The encounter in path 3 is longer, and a lot tougher, however it’s doable. My normal group that runs path 3 (having no problems on the mob wave part) cannot kill all the mobs in path 2 when Magg is planting the bomb. We can kill everything until about 70% before we actually have to start kiting, it’s fun, however it’s become very old very fast.

LOL @ rickets! Dude go troll other ppl ok! Do I see exo armors?
Ohh yeah, I do, dont I? ;-)

These dungeons are so you can get them (exo gears) in the first place. Secondly: You can clearly see that even with the exo gears you down a whole lot. Gear yourself in some weaker gears and try singing the same tune buddy.
Or do you agree that gears does matter when discussing how YOU cleared it?

@ryokoalways:
You say 2 things which kinda gives me the idea you wear a good exo set atm.
Not every1 has them (or had the idea to exploit some tokens when it was still possible).
Most ppl dont even want non FULL exo geared players in CoF even before the update.
Its nearly impossible without exo gears, especially for elementist (and other light armor users also I’ve heard).
Ppl just rage quit at the bombing part while others are trying their best.

And uhh just for the record man.
Exo gears would be pointless if it didn’t make the game (lots or even a bit) easier.
So its only logic that It would ultimately becomes a snooz.
Effective lvl (stat based) can also be used in a dungeon 2 nerf if you want a challenge.
Or a better idea: just take your gears off and go in starters gear.
Problem easily solved for you, not for those who can’t
compleet it trying to get higher up.

Back to the topic: Even with a group that was half exo and rares it was impossible without using the so called “ROLES” (tank/healer/etc which this game shouldn’t be based on as Anet said before launch and still when promoting their “Fine work” after) to even get near 90%.

Defense/health/DPS isn’t nearly high enough without using combo attack/boons.
Maybe it was the fail party is have been on.
But I doubt it if outta 20 tries all failed, being over run by mobs which kill ya in 3~4 hits.

There are other means to obtain exotic gear.

You can easily make up the stat difference between rares (which are extremely cheap and very obtainable) and exotics with just a food buff. A potion of that respective mob type would grant you close to enough stats increase than two additional pieces of exotic gear.

We had two people down total during our first attempt at this strategy (even with a good amount of downtime in the middle), while majority of our group isn’t close enough to be in full BIS. I can for certain see this encounter as doable with lesser gear.

I’ll throw my two cents in on this one:

My guild has attempted this part of the dungeon with a marked target for the kill, every time. We’ll generally get one down by the time the second group goes up, and kite continuously while dealing DPS to attempt to take more down. Ultimately, it comes down to a slaughter fest with us cycling in players to keep them off Magg. On the successful runs through that section, I will have died around 4 times. On the unsuccessful encounters, we will have to repeat the chain 3-4 times to succeed, much to the disdain of my armor repair costs.

I feel the trouble with the room is the fact that we’re encountering 3 elite level foes right off, notably difficult to take down. This is an appreciable challenge, but the snowball effect is what really kills it. There could be a number of ways to keep the viability of the challenge in this room, while making it more feasible to do.
For example, as opposed to 3 elite foes, one elite and two veterans would provide a sufficiently possible challenge with the current pace of enemy spawns.
Alternately, keep the 3 elite spawns, but give the party more time to defeat them.

The room doesn’t have to be so frustrating for so many people, nor does it have to be particularly easier. Just a different approach to this would make it more reasonable.

Invertation.4293:

There could be a number of ways to keep the viability of the challenge in this room, while making it more feasible to do.
For example, as opposed to 3 elite foes, one elite and two veterans would provide a sufficiently possible challenge with the current pace of enemy spawns.
Alternately, keep the 3 elite spawns, but give the party more time to defeat them.

How do you maintain the viability of the challenge, while nerfing the challenge. What you just suggested is just to make the encounter easier (which probably will happen due to the sheer amount of complaints).

Like you said snowball effect is the biggest part of this encounter, party damage taken is exponentially increasing if the party fails to tackle each pack at its designated rate. What you suggested might seem small in change but will severely reduce the difficulty.

The difficulty is more of a simulated difficulty than an actual difficulty. I idolize the design of Kohler’s battle in AC because there is a reasonable way to adapt to the challenge. What we’ve seen in this route of CoF is countless exploits trying to avoid it because that artificial difficulty.
I don’t want to remove the challenge from dungeons—I love the thrill and the heat of battle, but at the same time, I want there to be a challenge that’s less dependent on a stream of party members using the nearest waypoint to keep agro off of Magg the instant they die.

Encounter doesn’t complete unless all mobs are dead by the time timer runs out, extend timer by extra 20 seconds. No more running around, you either can do it or you can’t.

Its a design flaw due to such a circumventable objective. All you really need is a more concrete goal to fulfill that original design intention.

Enrage timers/doors are also an amazing thing to prevent waypoint zerging bosses. At this point I’m just assuming they intent the waypoint running back to be a part of it.

Drozac.4268:

LOL @ rickets! Dude go troll other ppl ok! Do I see exo armors?
Ohh yeah, I do, dont I? ;-)

These dungeons are so you can get them (exo gears) in the first place. Secondly: You can clearly see that even with the exo gears you down a whole lot. Gear yourself in some weaker gears and try singing the same tune buddy.
Or do you agree that gears does matter when discussing how YOU cleared it?

@ryokoalways:
You say 2 things which kinda gives me the idea you wear a good exo set atm.
Not every1 has them (or had the idea to exploit some tokens when it was still possible).
Most ppl dont even want non FULL exo geared players in CoF even before the update.
Its nearly impossible without exo gears, especially for elementist (and other light armor users also I’ve heard).
Ppl just rage quit at the bombing part while others are trying their best.

And uhh just for the record man.
Exo gears would be pointless if it didn’t make the game (lots or even a bit) easier.
So its only logic that It would ultimately becomes a snooz.
Effective lvl (stat based) can also be used in a dungeon 2 nerf if you want a challenge.
Or a better idea: just take your gears off and go in starters gear.
Problem easily solved for you, not for those who can’t
compleet it trying to get higher up.

Back to the topic: Even with a group that was half exo and rares it was impossible without using the so called “ROLES” (tank/healer/etc which this game shouldn’t be based on as Anet said before launch and still when promoting their “Fine work” after) to even get near 90%.

Defense/health/DPS isn’t nearly high enough without using combo attack/boons.
Maybe it was the fail party is have been on.
But I doubt it if outta 20 tries all failed, being over run by mobs which kill ya in 3~4 hits.

Are you serious? Is he serious?…oh …he is…well then.

Yes you do see exotics, i said not all of us have FULL exotics, you see shoulders and helms, because thats what shows the most so thats what people buy first, honestly the guardian in our group is the most geared and many of us are crafters and we craft eachother gear for cheap. Exotics are not hard to obtain. Yes exotics are better then yellows but look at the stats on armor its 3 to 10 stats per piece difference max, i really can’t make that up cuz you can go check in game.

Don’t insult us and try to make yourself feel better by saying “we must have exploited” to get exotics, do you see a reason why we would need to exploit?…no you don’t.

As for your “roles” and using combo boon/attacks comment. Are you suggesting that you should be able to zerg that place down without using half of your abilities or half of the games mechanics? I was the ele, i dropped some healing rain and such but i am dps speced, as is the guardian, yes i call out when my heal fields are down so people blast combo them, its not magic, its called being smart. If you don’t want to use your classes utility and beneficial game mechanics then you shouldn’t be surprised if content is too hard for you.

As i said this was an ok run for us, probably one of the better ones. The biggest factor on doing that well or better is honestly if we have our warrior in the group, their dps is crazy high, i couldn’t imagine how easy this event would be with 2 or more warriors(and no i don’t think that should be the case as class stacking is dumb and shows imbalance, but it is the case for now).

We burn the flame thrower guys, the fire line guys, and the archers first so that if it goes south we can kite. Some nights we have to death run just like everyone else but thats usually because we screw up, why shouldn’t i be punished for screwing up? I even said the place was over tuned in an earlier post, but its a high level explorable dungeon, it should be challenging if you don’t use everything available to you.

@Kevin Hats of to you, your a very good player and showed me and the community I will trust this video is from the lastest patch.

The only problem I had with your tactic was that when most people who do these runs, does it with people they just pick up from outside. It is doable your way I see now, but with the people from outside the dungeon it probably faster to take turns dieing than attempting to kill them so people will choose dieing. I get it maybe it wasn’t design as so but still if the majority picks to take turns dieing cause it is more efficient it speak for itself.

Drozac.4268:

LOL @ rickets! Dude go troll other ppl ok! Do I see exo armors?
Ohh yeah, I do, dont I? ;-)

These dungeons are so you can get them (exo gears) in the first place. Secondly: You can clearly see that even with the exo gears you down a whole lot. Gear yourself in some weaker gears and try singing the same tune buddy.
Or do you agree that gears does matter when discussing how YOU cleared it?

@ryokoalways:
You say 2 things which kinda gives me the idea you wear a good exo set atm.
Not every1 has them (or had the idea to exploit some tokens when it was still possible).
Most ppl dont even want non FULL exo geared players in CoF even before the update.
Its nearly impossible without exo gears, especially for elementist (and other light armor users also I’ve heard).
Ppl just rage quit at the bombing part while others are trying their best.

And uhh just for the record man.
Exo gears would be pointless if it didn’t make the game (lots or even a bit) easier.
So its only logic that It would ultimately becomes a snooz.
Effective lvl (stat based) can also be used in a dungeon 2 nerf if you want a challenge.
Or a better idea: just take your gears off and go in starters gear.
Problem easily solved for you, not for those who can’t
compleet it trying to get higher up.

Back to the topic: Even with a group that was half exo and rares it was impossible without using the so called “ROLES” (tank/healer/etc which this game shouldn’t be based on as Anet said before launch and still when promoting their “Fine work” after) to even get near 90%.

Defense/health/DPS isn’t nearly high enough without using combo attack/boons.
Maybe it was the fail party is have been on.
But I doubt it if outta 20 tries all failed, being over run by mobs which kill ya in 3~4 hits.

Just to clarify, we have 3 that were more or less in full exotics and 2 had basically no exotics.

I do not agree that full exotics would make the difference of being able to clear any given path. That has always been the argument for a particular path or component being too difficult, and it is simply not true. People have complained about AC not being doable without proper gear: I personally ran that dungeon at 35 in 35 green with 0 issues, and majority of the people are experiencing the same thing because they now understand the proper approach to a dungeon. People have complained about various things in Twilight Arbor; I’ve cleared that in 50 green, and similarly people now have little to no problem against blossoms, vines, knights, etc.

Just because the first half a dozen tries seems to be cutting it close does not mean it’s difficult. As long there is progress made, then the “difficulty” is acceptable and will become easier through practice. When I first did Essense collection in AC, I thought it was extremely hard. Now the group I run with consistenly finishes the last burrow at 86%. I expect the same will happen with bomb room, as it is just a harder variation of essense collection.

Additionally, if you noted my assessment of our run, it has nothing to do with roles. It has everything to do with maximizing damage with proper control compression and limit the need of support by using dodge effectively so it does not hinder our dps. We lost our dps precisely because we failed at control, leading to players down and being unable to keep up with spawn killing. This has nothing to do with composition. It has everything to do with playing better.

My thief right now is lv72. It is currently in full 65 green armor, 65 green jewelry, and 65 yellow weapons. I should be 75 withint a day or two, and I expect to do just fine in that setup. Exotic gear has benefits for sure, but it’s not the difference between being able or unable to clear a path. Exotic gear is only a necessity for under 25-30 minute clears. It is not a necessity to simply complete any given path.

vicwolf.7862:

I’d like to see you post a video of you DPSing the whole event Kevin because you kitten can’t. The last guy to post a video here of his group trying ended up kiting most of the spawns past the 80 second mark.

Wanna bet a gold that we can kill em?:)

The problem I see here is people that might have been good at other easier mmo so when they can’t do something anyone else that can is exploiting or saying people have overpowered gear( lol op gear in this game)

What I don’t like is that the bomb room is easily the hardest part of the path. Make it too easy and you’ll get the 15 minute exploit Magg runs that we’ve seen for so long. Sure, nerf that content but make the other parts actually challenging. I’ve been able to 3-4 man this room and that is just plain stupid. Maybe make the bombs in the grab-the-bomb event spawn in random locations in the room. Or you can try to find some way to make the lava room something more than “I sure hope Magg doesn’t bug out somewhere along the way”. Or you can make the devourer boss actually a challenge (the pet is there at the start). Magg runs are annoying because you’re essentially on auto pilot until the bomb room.