Guild Wars 2

I thought i share my opinions regarding the current state of dungeons in GW 2.I want to set aside the bugs or technical problems the dungeons have,those are things that arenanet is or should be aware off and fix asap.I used an ele,a warrior and a guardian in this span of time.

Ascalonian Catacombs
Good starting dungeons,presents a lot of game mechanic persistent in all dungeons,good in terms of length and reward.Path 3 could use a more difficult boss.Overall a good dungeon where stability,stun breakers and condition removal are required to succeed.Koller is prob one of the best learning bosses in the game,requiring dodge at a certain movement and smart agro control.

Caudecus Manor
Very badly designed dungeon.The setting is extremely interesting,a giant manor,but most of the paths take place underground,spoiling a lot of the beautiful artwork and design.The silver mobs in CM are THE MOST POWERFUL in all dungeons,they do too much damage,they put to many conditions up too fast,creating an unbalance to other dungeons.Not very interesting bosses(except for the frost one),coupled with a armor set that no one wants,make this dungeon dead in terms of player interest.
Suggestions:cut the number of trash and silver mobs,nerf the silver mobs a bit,and introduce more bosses,that are challenging and have an interesting mechanic.

Twilight Arbor
Another fiasco.Very interesting starting boss,Giant Vine,the boss is really easy if the players understand the agro mechanic vines have.Now,there is a very serious issue with this boss.If you wipe,the encounter does not reset,making progress impossible(if you wiped at the boss with a few wines up,there is no way you will defeat him with all the wines up),therefore requiring a dungeon reset.

The blossoms are generally a bad idea,they are very unresponsive to dmg.The other bosses are either to easy,or too hard.The mesmer boss(can’t remember her name)is one of the most frustrating bosses,she goes invis every 5 sec,puts down chaos storm in a very small room,making it very hard to avoid,resulting in an encounter that no one enjoys.

Another problem are the uber knights.Ok,they cc the kitten out of you from miles away(stability solves that problem),but why do they do a million damage?Even with my dungeon dedicated group,we still have to reset them and try to hold only one of them because they do to much damage(the champion they have with them also puts down necro marks to make things more “fun”).

The last thing is on my mind is the end bosses.Who designed them?Awful noises for 10 min,awful animations.First boss is super easy,just ranged dps,avoiding some very delayed red circles,he puts down some lame turrets from time to time.Snorfest.The second one is the stupid spider boss.You spend 80% of the time attacking spiders,and while you do that,guess what?The boss resets?!How fun is that?I have to put a party member up a branch just to avoid him reseting while we deal with the spiders.The third boss is the one who summons spirits,again a 5 min snorfest.There is only one really nice hero in TA,Malrona,i like her,very fast exploding aoes,a way of killing her fast by getting buffed by the poison spray,etc

Sorrow’s Embrace

Probably the one dungeon where i enjoy all 3 paths.Strong bosses,that are made easy by understanding their mechanic,fast paths(Path 2 is a bit longer,but still doable in 30-45 min).The end boss in path 2(the one with 2 golems) is one of my favorite,requiring teamwork in able to defeat him.A few problems:

Path 2:There is an event where you need to protect one of the communist moles while he openes a gate.Wave after wave after wave of mobs,and this after you cleared 5 champions.Not challenging,just LONG and BORING.Reduce the number of champions,reduce the number of waves,and make the remaining ones harder to kill(as in interesting mechanic,not add more hp).

Path1:The reason for a lot of crying on this forums,the fastest to complete path in the game,10-15 minutes.There is thou a problem with it.It requires a group that is set up for that path.While i have no prob with that,i can understand how someone with a random composition party or a pug group would fail miserably and decide the path is broken.

Citadel of Flame

Along with TA and AC,the most PUGed dungeon.Very fast dungeon(15 to 30 min depending on path).

A few problems:
Path 1: First boss,the champion slave driver,he just sits there and does damage,no interesting mechanic,nothing.BORING.Last boss(i remember he used to be really hard to do,did he get nerfed?).Just dps for 3 minutes,ignore all fight mechanic,dodge from time to time.SNORFEST

Path 2:The infamous million times patched and exploited Mag the f%g path.Noob pug heaven.The cross the lava field event is still very poorly designed,we just run on the other side and hope mag doesn’t go rambo “assistance needed” attacking everything.Does he have to be so stupid?!Why does he sits in lava?!If he agroes mobs,we just pull the mobs to the mineral and kill them there,he will trigger the waypoint after that.
The defend magg event:the biggest proof of imbecility of pugs,they corpse zerg the encounter,spending 10 s on repairs,because they are incapable of understanding that you can kill the mobs.Solution:CLOSE THE DOOR behind them,let me see how they will corpse zerg now

Path 3:Easy fast path,2 puzzles that are hard first,but after a few runs become 5 min events,decent final boss

A small addition:The single most stupid mob in all dungeons is the flamethrower mob.Constant,very hard to avoid damage and nonstop burn.I hate going range on warrior or guard,so i just tank him,the amount of protection and regeneration to keep me alive is incredible.Do something about him,he is just lazy designed

Crucible of Eternity

My favorite dungeon.You can go full glass cannon,because most of the damage is avoidable.Alpha,second only to lupicus on fun factor.Why can’t you do more bosses like him?Cool events,cool bosses.

Now the problems:
The wolves do double damage for some reason.i don’t know if it’s intended or not,but you take a huge chunk of dmg,you look at the combat log and see 2 separate instances of dmg executed at one(can’t remember the name of the skill,something with leap in it).Now if i do this with my party,cc/spam blind/stability make the encounter trivial,but when i go with randoms

The last problem is the boss in path 3.,destroyer i think he’s called.He’s just badly designed,i don’t care some people do him in 5 minutes,he is just badly designed.We do him pretty fast now,by using ranged attacks from the platforms,but still,i don’t like him.Also the NPC is supposed to be escaping from the facility,does she have to take 5 minute to reach the path selecting console?

Honor of the Waves

Bad.Bad.Bad
Easy mobs.Easy bosses.But the HP!!!15 minute of attacking while watching TV,Ginva in path1,even without his boons,he still takes forever to kill,we have to bring our heavy condi chars just for that boss,the 2 legendary mobs in path 2,no mechanic whatsoever,just dps for 15 minutes(resulting in me skipping the first one).The guy with the 2 quaggans,another pain encounter,huge amount of hp,then we have the wolf boss,nothing difficult,just kite around and attack for 15 minutes.And then,to top it all off,2 of the path have the last part under water.WATER combat,really?after 2 axis of playing all day,you want me to delve into 3d combat?Not hard,not enjoyable,just boring,worse dungeon in the game,no wonder people exploit it so much

Arah

Giganticus Lupicus.Give a raise to the guy that designed him.Superb boss,superb encounter,why can’t all bosses be like that?The camera zooms out,the fight seems epic,low hp boss,with multiple mechanics and behavior,just fun,fun,fun.You suck,you are going to wipe,you know what you are doing,no one is even getting downed,he dies fast and you loot the chest.

A few problems with the dungeon.It’s too long,and yet you still get 60 tokens.Now if the
weapons and armor looked epic,i would understand,but the armor looks no more special than the other ones,and the weapons look pretty dodgy.What happened to the beta female armor?why did it get censored?because of a hand on the left kitten LOL,what a double standard world we live in…

Korga,the last boss in path 1 and 2 are way to easy,buff them.
Simin…what can i say,can’t decide if she is the worst designed boss or second worse…Try to do that boss with average dps,without using the “put 4 in and reset her” method.Fix the kitten sparks so they are easy to get into the pens,buff her damage,make her move around,give her more abilities,stop focusing the encounter on warriors dpsing ,and me hoping the sparks don’t bug out,while i run like a headless chicken trying to lock them in.Overall,a nice dungeon.

Arenanet tried to do something for the hardcore raiding community by creating fractals.I have to say,setting aside all the RNG crap,and technical issues,this “level increasing difficulty” is an old and ineffective system of progression.People want hard mode for dungeons,with cool looking gear to distinguish their efforts,they want time races,with ladders,people play MMO’s to compete with one another.There is no competitive structure for PvE in GW2,please address this issue.

I haven’t played WoW in 4 years,but i still enjoy watching the leveling races after an expansion,the struggle of the guild to kill a boss world first,it’s that competitive feeling that make the difference in a multiplayer game.Make something that rewards players that do dungeons,why should i be proud to wear an armor set,when almost all the dungeons have been exploited-farmed for months,and people with no skill whatsoever have them?

Make bosses epic interesting fights,requiring coordination and synergy between party members,not boring “just dps” fights.Make a special armor set and weapons,requiring the dungeon master title and 500 tokens from every dungeon in order to acquire it,or something like that,you are certainly more creative than me,i hope someone from arenanet reads this,have a nice day.

Whilst I’m sure a lot of your points are valid and are indeed problems Arenanet should seriously look into, it would have perhaps been better to make the posts look more presentable grammar and punctuation wise, or it just sort of looks like a rambling mess.

I do agree with most of the points above though.

KrazyKhris.3195:

Whilst I’m sure a lot of your points are valid and are indeed problems Arenanet should seriously look into, it would have perhaps been better to make the posts look more presentable grammar and punctuation wise, or it just sort of looks like a rambling mess.

I do agree with most of the points above though.

i’m sorry my third best foreign speaking language is not good enough for this academic gathering.oh wait…we are on the forums of a VIDEO GAME.I think i used correctly enough sentences for someone to understand what i mean.Being a grammar gestapo on forums doesn’t add anything to the discussion,and just makes you look like an kitten

AusterlitZ.7941:

KrazyKhris.3195:

Whilst I’m sure a lot of your points are valid and are indeed problems Arenanet should seriously look into, it would have perhaps been better to make the posts look more presentable grammar and punctuation wise, or it just sort of looks like a rambling mess.

I do agree with most of the points above though.

i’m sorry my third best foreign speaking language is not good enough for this academic gathering.oh wait…we are on the forums of a VIDEO GAME.I think i used correctly enough sentences for someone to understand what i mean.Being a grammar gestapo on forums doesn’t add anything to the discussion,and just makes you look like an kitten

There was no need to get upset over his comment. It is fine to not have perfect grammar for a language that isn’t your primary language he was just saying you should try and neaten it up. You can still do this by using the edit feature, however you getting mad has sort of diminished whatever points you were making.

By the way, I do agree with a lot of your points about the state of these dungeons. The only thing I would add is what I’ve posted elsewhere on these forums. We are in dire need of a Hard Mode., something along the lines of Guild Wars 1. Let the party decide on which type they want(normal or hard) and as for rewards either let hard modes reward more gold and tokens(well this should be a given and there regardless) but the major thing is add new tokens for hard modes that let us buy very nice armor skins(almost like a legendary equivalent meaning people know we worked hard for this) The new armors should not be better stats and when ArenaNet adds ascended armor/weapons to the game they should not be only obtainable from running hard modes.

Nice thread here and many good arguments
I quite agree with most of them, if not all.
Maybe I would add for Lupicus, P1 is boring as hell and not fun, maybe having it shorter by reducing armor would help. P2 and P3 are very interesting, but P1 is boring.

It feels so good to see someone thinks like I do in respect to dungeons. Everyone these days is saying that dungeons are too HARD. Which is rediculous. Personally, I found most dungeons – even the infamous Arah – to be too easy with a decent group. I think the biggest problem is the damage sponge bosses and the poorly thought out encounters, as well as the amount of fights that you can just skip.

Here are a few what I think are highlights of your post: the “worst offenders” in the current dungeon lineup.

AusterlitZ.7941:

The defend magg event:the biggest proof of imbecility of pugs,they corpse zerg the encounter,spending 10 s on repairs,because they are incapable of understanding that you can kill the mobs.Solution:CLOSE THE DOOR behind them,let me see how they will corpse zerg now

CoF is just made of sections which are so close to being awesome but are let down by a simple exploit or trick that just makes them stupid. This is one of them. Also whats with pugs never doing P3? Everyone afraid of a little co-operation?

AusterlitZ.7941:

Path1:The reason for a lot of crying on this forums,the fastest to complete path in the game,10-15 minutes.There is thou a problem with it.It requires a group that is set up for that path.While i have no prob with that,i can understand how someone with a random composition party or a pug group would fail miserably and decide the path is broken.

Nah, you don’t need a specialized group, just good co-operation. We had to take a few tries to get it but we managed to get it because someone would call a target, then me (the warrior) and an engineer would hit that target with 25 stacks of vuln, then the necro would spread that via epidemic. Odd however that one of the hardest parts of all dungeons is in such an otherwise easy path.

AusterlitZ.7941:

Overall a good dungeon where stability,stun breakers and condition removal are required to succeed.Koller is prob one of the best learning bosses in the game,requiring dodge at a certain movement and smart agro control.

Kholer is an amazing boss and there needs to be more bosses like him. Less damage sponge, more of a threat to you. He’s still too easy though. You know what would be a fun challenge? a room with two kholers. Imagine it.

AusterlitZ.7941:

My favorite dungeon.You can go full glass cannon,because most of the damage is avoidable.Alpha,second only to lupicus on fun factor.Why can’t you do more bosses like him?Cool events,cool bosses.

I love CoE. It’s so well designed, apart from a few of the bosses like the destoryer (pointless fight) and the golem. Still really exploitable though, like how easy alpha can be when you stack on him (More of a strat than an exploit) as well as having multiple people take the consoles in P1. What is the ugliest thing she has seen though?

AusterlitZ.7941:

Honor of the Waves

Bad.Bad.Bad
Easy mobs.Easy bosses.But the HP!!!15 minute of attacking while watching TV

The hardest part of HotW is staying awake. So bad.

AusterlitZ.7941:

Giganticus Lupicus.Give a raise to the guy that designed him.Superb boss,superb encounter,why can’t all bosses be like that?The camera zooms out,the fight seems epic,low hp boss,with multiple mechanics and behavior,just fun,fun,fun.You suck,you are going to wipe,you know what you are doing,no one is even getting downed,he dies fast and you loot the chest.

Truely another one of the rare skill based bosses. Need more like him and Kholer, less like Simin and Jinva. Why is a big pool of HP supposed to be fun anyway? Aren’t games meant to be fun? Where is the fun in autoattacking for hours? Right now half the bosses are “how fast can we kill them to get to the loot” instead of “can we kill this because if we do we deserve the loot”, which is stupid. Rewarding parties which have lots of warriors, instead of parties who are skillful. Generally things need to be more “Dynamic”. Take the burrows in P3 AC. Potential to be difficult, but even if you can’t control the breeders you can just remember where the burrows spawn because someone decided the burrows need static spawns instead of random ones.

Disagree with you on the flamethrowers in CoF though. I like those guys. They move slow and give you a chance to move out of the way. They’re like area denial. I might be biased because I’m soldiers build and can just ignore them, though.

TL;DR min/max bad, skill good.

Writetyper.1985:

It feels so good to see someone thinks like I do in respect to dungeons. Everyone these days is saying that dungeons are too HARD. Which is rediculous. Personally, I found most dungeons – even the infamous Arah – to be too easy with a decent group. I think the biggest problem is the damage sponge bosses and the poorly thought out encounters, as well as the amount of fights that you can just skip.

No one is saying the dungeons are too hard, except for the array of people posting about Simin or Arah in general every week. These people get shot down rather quickly though, and should not be mistaken for people that reflect the actual difficulty of explorable mode.

Writetyper.1985:

CoF is just made of sections which are so close to being awesome but are let down by a simple exploit or trick that just makes them stupid. This is one of them. Also whats with pugs never doing P3? Everyone afraid of a little co-operation?

Actually, that specific part of CoF is so out of tune with the rest of the dungeon it’s ridiculous. It’s kind of like facerolling TA until you reach Leurent and you are the one getting facerolled instead. Difficulty is fine, as long as it’s the same across the whole path / dungeon.

Writetyper.1985:

I love CoE. It’s so well designed, apart from a few of the bosses like the destoryer (pointless fight) and the golem. Still really exploitable though, like how easy alpha can be when you stack on him (More of a strat than an exploit) as well as having multiple people take the consoles in P1. What is the ugliest thing she has seen though?

You need to separate “exploits” from poorly coded encounters. CoE is fine, except for the Destroyer like you mention.

Writetyper.1985:

The hardest part of HotW is staying awake. So bad.

Agree on this part. Since the exploits were fixed no one is doing this anymore. Uninteresting boss fights with too much HP. Thank Balthazar most of the trash can be skipped.

Why would you skip in HotW? Good loot from trash mobs.

Malediktus.9250:

Why would you skip in HotW? Good loot from trash mobs.

Because staying awake during bosses’ fights is already way too much for some people.

Agreed OP. That’s the problem (I just made a post about explorable dungeons as well) .. 90% of the fights are just SNOREFESTS.

DPS the boss, run around. Boring.

Subject Alpha and Lupicus look like they actually had game designers working on them. Other bosses are just horsekitten; nothing unique, memorable, worthy of a game like this.

If ANet is actively looking for dungeon designers, give me a shout. I’ll gladly work with the person who constructed alpha & lupi bosses and we’ll come up with something quality (with adequate salary, of course).

Agree for the most part, although I don’t find TA that bad. The vine could be a problem for a bad group that wipes until you find out you can just stand on the wood root and range the boss down with the other 6 silver vines up because nothing can hit you if you stand in the right spot. But yes, I absolutely hate SE2 and most of HotW because it has non-challenging mobs that take forever to kill. Subject Alpha and GL are also really good bosses as well. They need more bosses that change patterns from path to path or phase to phase rather then stacking tons of health on something and giving it like 2 unique skills.

Also I don’t think there is anything wrong with the flamethrower mob in CoF. It introduces a easy counterable move that requires the use of something other then auto attack. Like any skill, if you interrupt it after it starts the cooldown timer kicks in so you have plenty of time to burst it down until it recasts flamethrower. If you want to stay in melee use one of the many interrupt skills that every class. You can also use things like retaliation + protection to just tank it and “reflect” a bunch of damage back since retaliation is just a flat damage amount based on your power.

Strifey.7215:

Agree for the most part, although I don’t find TA that bad. The vine could be a problem for a bad group that wipes until you find out you can just stand on the wood root and range the boss down with the other 6 silver vines up because nothing can hit you if you stand in the right spot. But yes, I absolutely hate SE2 and most of HotW because it has non-challenging mobs that take forever to kill. Subject Alpha and GL are also really good bosses as well. They need more bosses that change patterns from path to path or phase to phase rather then stacking tons of health on something and giving it like 2 unique skills.

Also I don’t think there is anything wrong with the flamethrower mob in CoF. It introduces a easy counterable move that requires the use of something other then auto attack. Like any skill, if you interrupt it after it starts the cooldown timer kicks in so you have plenty of time to burst it down until it recasts flamethrower. If you want to stay in melee use one of the many interrupt skills that every class. You can also use things like retaliation + protection to just tank it and “reflect” a bunch of damage back since retaliation is just a flat damage amount based on your power.

The flamethrower mobs i was referring to are the champion ones,much harder to cc,because you need to remove indignant first,the silver flamethrower mobs are very easy to do.
By referring to the TA vine boss,i meant that the encounter does not have a reset point,causing problems for parties that wipe there(except if you use the exploit you mentioned).If people understood the way the vines hold agro,no one would wipe there,the boss is very easy to kill,we even did it with 1 guard and 2 warriors.

In the original post i was referring to the wolves in CoE,i managed to get a screenshot,i want to ask a dev if the damage you see (that is taken in one damage instance,not 3 like the combat log says) is intended or a bug.

AusterlitZ.7941:

In the original post i was referring to the wolves in CoE,i managed to get a screenshot,i want to ask a dev if the damage you see (that is taken in one damage instance,not 3 like the combat log says) is intended or a bug.

Interesting – always assumed that damage came from a single thing. I’d not mind that amount of damage from a single attack, but it needs some telegraphing. As-is, you can guess they’ll use it at the start, but after that it’s a big surprise.

As to OP, a lot of very good points.
For CM, the bosses aren’t so bad (for the most part), the main problem is you get situations where a roomful of trash counts as a boss.

On TA, I’m assuming “they are very unresponsive to dmg” for the blossoms is the Miss/Obstructed on many of the weapon types? I do like the blossoms in general – they make you stay aware of your surroundings, but they really need fixed LoD.

For HotW, I quite like the P1 final boss. It provides a decent amount of threat, and doesn’t take all that long. P2 boss needs less health, and for his “mine spread” attack needs to do more damage. The P3 boss needs to have less health and the self-destructing jellyfish need to be at the forefront of this fight.

On CoE, I think the destroyer crab in P3 needs to be removed entirely. There’s little point to the boss, it’s not even slightly interesting, it gives no reward, and so every single group just runs past.

they probably should disable HotW. too much work to be done there.

Agree 100% on Alpha and Lupicus, they are the most fun and simply challenging bosses.

Agree, CoE is my favorite dungeon.