Guild Wars 2

Not a “dungeons are bad” feedback. Instead, I’ll point out two dungeons that my guild generally considers as really fun and nicely-balanced with good mechanics, versus two dungeons that we universally feel are examples of really bad design and mechanics.

First, the good stuff that we’d like to see more of, and why:

Citadel of Flame – Story mode

Just perfect for a “story” mode difficulty. The trash mobs had no hard-to-see telegraphs for one-shot attacks, and no too-fast overlapping AOE or perma-KD mechanics or anything like that. Also, the trash encounters could be cleared in 2-3 minutes or sooner, with only a few downs here and there. Best of all, every single boss encounter was perfectly tuned. Every single boss encounter had clearly visible telegraphs that lasted long enough to prepare and react to the imminent threat. Even the hardest boss (the one with two ghost blades/hammers/etc) took only about 5 wipes (for first timers) to figure out. Once we realized that we all needed to fight from extreme range with 1200 range attacks, spread out in a wide circle with lots of distance between us, and watch for his obvious tell that he was about to charge you and be ready to dodge roll when he did so, we executed perfectly on that try with only one player getting defeated during that try.

Twilight Arbor – Story mode

Again, every trash encounter was clean and doable within 2-3 minutes at most, with no cheap overlapping perma-CC or DOT circles being printed too fast. No one-shot mechanics with too-quick telegraphs. All the bosses were interesting (except for the underwater fish, which was just a big high-HP target dummy with no real threat or mechanics at all).

Everyone universally loved those two specific dungeon paths, and thought they were “very fun”. Especially that final boss in CoF: great mechanics and something different than the usual dungeon boss encounter.

Now for the BAD. And it’s too bad that these are typically the first dungeons that most players see, which sets a bad tone and bad impressions.

Ascalonian Catacombs – both story mode and Detha’s path (and probably all paths)

We’ve done only story mode and Detha’s path so far. The main thing that makes this dungeon NOT fun and totally a PITA are:

1. Scavenger gravelings have a 1-shot attack (especially if there’s a pair of them) with a telegraph that is FAR too difficult to see and FAR too short to react to. If you do see it, many classes don’t have an interrupt that is A) fast enough, and B) long-range enough to stop them from doing their 1-shot pounce. Their telegraph is nearly impossible to see in the the confusion of a fight with other gravelings jumping all around too.

2. Lt Kohler suffers from the same problem as the scavenger gravelings: his 1-shot gimmick has a tell that is a little easier to see (but not much) than the scavengers, but not nearly long enough in duration to respond to. I tried every single weapon attack and skill that a guardian has available to interrupt him and failed every single attempt even when knowing exactly what to watch for. Other members likewise swore up and down that they tried to interrupt immediately upon seeing the tell, and they likewise all failed. On every attempt. ait doesn’t help that when he fights near a wall, half the time his tell arm clips into the wall and you don’t know whether it’s a normal backswing or his tell. But that’s not the really bad part, as bad as it in fact is. The worst part is that A) he uses his gimmick attack far too often, and B) his yank range is longer than the longest ranged weapon attack, so even if you’re non-melee, it is nearly impossible to see how far you need to get away from him, or it’s impossible to get far enough away given the small confines of the fighting area.

All in all Kohler is the single worst, crappiest, cheapest boss encounter I’ve ever seen in any game. Not challenging, not fun. Just cheap and messy. No wonder everyone just skips him. Even if you we’re to make his chest drop something desirable, I think most people would still choose to skip him entirely as he stands today.

3. Story mode has at least one trash encounter with too many rangers who have fast-printing and overlapping AOE circles that hurt extremely bad. A smaller quantity that printed less frequently would be fine and fun, but in the current state it’s just a field of death with no way to move out of it. And no, the typical response to rangers (use reflect shields!) is no good here because these are ground-based spike traps.

(continued in next post)

(continued from first post)

Cadecus’s Manor – story mode

Just a mess of dreary trash encounters with A) too many ranged foes in one encounter, and B) too many trash foes in general in each trash encounter. Yes, I know you can abuse reflect shields against ranged foes but lets be honest: not every class has good ranged reflect damage or absorb damage screens/walls/domes. And even if you’re lucky enough to have those classes in your group, they don’t refresh quickly enough to deal with this level of overtuned onslaught. There should never be more than two ranged foes in any one trash pull: more than that you can’t deal with unless you’re a group full of mesmers and guardians and thieves.

I know people complain about the trash encounter with the two rifle snipers in the treehouse, but honestly that one’s not bad once you realize you can LOS the snipers with the tree trunk and they won’t come down with the other trash. That is in fact a well-tuned trash encounter, IMO.

2. However, the final encounter just past that sniper trash one is total kitten. There are just way too many adds with that boss, and between the boss and the hard-hitting ranged adds and no real boss mechanics other than a cheap near-one-shot with NO real visible telegraph and NO time to react to it even if you see it, that final encounter is just a mess of cheap overtuned waypoint zerging. Terrible that a bunch of level 40s are thrown up against this.

3. The first rocket golem boss? a terribad encounter. Great idea, but terrible execution, primarily because there is no visible tell when he’s about to shoot a rocket at YOU. Oh sure, you can see the rockets just fine from the side when he’s shooting at a player far away from you, but when he’s facing you directly, the rocket is invisible. No warning, just dead.

4. The guy in the living room? Again, his really bad near-one-shot has no visible tell and even if you do know it’s coming, it’s nearly impossible to react to.

Overall, you could improve the perception and “fun” of problem dungeons like AC and CM by ensuring that all gimmick attacks on both trash and bosses have A) extremely visible telegraphs, and B) you should add literally 2-3 seconds longer (or more) to plan and react to those tells before the gimmick executes. This type of change is minor in that its just an animation re skin and changing some timer values in a table or function. It’s not a major redesign overhaul.

You can also make drastic improvements for some of the overtuned trash encounters by simply lowering the number of mobs in some of them, particularly looking at the multiple ranged mobs or multiple mobs with gimmick one-shots such as the scavenger gravelings that come in pairs. again, this is simple triage by changing a value in a table or function here and there

The rocket-golem boss in Sorrow’s Embrace really is a disaster. Often he’ll fire a cluster of rockets aimed at multiple players, and you can never quite tell if you are one of his targets until it is too late. So, you dodge in advance. But then he fires a second barrage of rockets straight away, so you had better dodge a second time just to be sure. And then all of the rockets leave burning areas of effect, which instantly drop you if you step (or roll) into them. GG.

The recharge on condition removal is just too long. Even if I pack all condition removal skills I can bring, I still find myself dying due to burning damage with that boss encounter.

I wish the damage on his burning attacks wasn’t so ludicrous, and I wish he would target one player at a time, and that there would be a clear indication that the rockets were heading your way. I also wish the area of effects that his rockets leave weren’t so deadly. Its just painful fighting this boss, and the waypoint is so far away as well. There is no point helping people up, because that will just get you killed faster. Plus he seems to have priority in killing downed players. If you are trying to get back up, you are his primary target!

One other fix that would go a long way, although I suspect this is more difficult to implement. The “downed” mechanic in this game is obviously meant to provide an additional emergency decision/goal to encounters of all sorts, but perhaps especially so for dungeon encounters:

“Can I—and should I—get to that downed player and get him back up so that he can get back into the action? Otherwise we risk missing a DPS check or even wiping entirely and resetting the boss.”

It’s a nice mechanic. It’s a great idea. But right now, the execution of this great idea is BAD. Primarily because 70% of the time—possibly more—it is futile to even attempt to revive a downed player, because of the poor AI behavior of bosses after they down a player:

1. Often the boss just stands there and keeps prioritizing the downed player as a damage target. Your aggro code should INSTANTLY wipe a downed player off the boss’s aggro table. And add a 10-second immunity to being moved to the top of the aggro table.

2. Even if other players are attempting to drag the boss away from the downed player so that one team member can somewhat safely attempt to get to and revive that player, half the time the boss will just stand there and switch to ranged mode, right on top of the downed player. So the player that comes near to try and revive risks moving to the top of the hate table because your aggro code so strongly relies on proximity rather than true “hate point accumulation”.

3. Even if neither of the above two mechanics come into play, it also seems that boss’s AI tends to prioritize a player who is actively in the process of reviving another player. So literally 70% of the time when I go to revive a downed teammate who is otherwise clear and free to be revived, the boss will nearly instantly switch his aggro to start shooting at me, and I have to dodge roll away because I cannot stand there and take the onslaught even with the 2x revive speed of me and the downed guy both mashing the revive button. Remember, not every group has a pet thief or two with Shadow Refuge. Most classes have no revive-immunity skills/traits, and even if they do very few people will choose to give up a precious skill slot for them. Theives are about the only exception because Shadow Refuge doubles as an emergency play-dead skill. Or as a useful “stealth run the entire group past this trash encounter towards the next boss” skill, lol.

The end result of all these poorly-implemented revive/down mechanics is that roughly half of the boss encounters I’ve seen so far are clearly declared “every man for himself” encounters, where the team understands that it risks a wipe to even attempt to revive someone who is seemingly in the clear. We do better on those encounters when the downed player is totally ignored and knows they should just suicide as fast as possible (by mashing damage attacks instead of attempting to heal themselves) and run back from the waypoint as fast as possible.

There should be ZERO incentive to declare an encounter “every man for himself—don’t get downed and if you do, just speed your defeat and run back ASAP”.

Yes, that is a really good point. The whole point of being downed, is that your team is able to help you up. But with several of these boss encounters, downed = death. It just is really frustrating to be downed because the boss is spamming insane fire condition damage every second, even after you just removed it. And the moment you go down, the boss starts spamming his rockets on you, while you are lying there helpless.

And there could be plenty of other high priority targets wailing on the boss, but every attack he’ll still send a rocket your way, until you are dead. Have fun running all the way back through the entire dungeon. Maybe his health will have reset to max by the time you return to the boss room.

Yes, fun times.

I can see your arguments as to why you want to change these encounters. The problem is however, that you are essentially complaining about the core combat mechanics of GW2. While in other MMO’s you might read a guide, watch videos, learn how a boss telegraphs his abilities, and then make sure you are prepared for the boss accordingly, that is, to a greater extent, not the case in GW2. You have the dodge mechanic for a reason. You are expected, especially as you go higher up in the dungeon tiers, to be able to play a lot more reactively instead of proactively.

Take for example Lupicus in Arah. While the general outburst on the forum towards him has died off a bit, you can still see threads pop up weekly about how hard he is. If you read these threads, you will see that most of these posts stems from the fact that the OP cannot dodge the green bolts which have no telegraphing at all, not the red circles or the shadowstepping.

In the end it’s an attitude change towards MMO combat that you have to make (I had to make this change myself, as have many others, if not everyone who does GW2 dungeons).

I’m not sure if its the combat mechanics as a whole, or just the targeting priorities of bosses. There’s a lot of bosses that spam attacks, and often I find that 2 dodge rolls are simply not enough to dodge the onslaught of a boss. But when a boss also doesn’t allow you to get up, that just gets to me.

I’m one of the players that did manage to defeat Lupicus, but I have to agree that he is either too hard, or just not well designed. I think his mechanics are interesting, but boss attacks should always be telegraphed well, and a battle should never boil down to a waypoint marathon.

For the record, I had no issues at all with some of the insta-kill bosses in the game Demons Souls. Attacks were always telegraphed well, and it never felt unfair when a boss smashed your character into a messy bloody pulp. It always felt that you were failing on a strategic level, and once you understood the mechanics, victory felt very rewarding. With GW2’s bosses on the other hand, it often feels like the end of a long chore. It feels like work, possibly because the fights take too long. I often feel I die not due to an error in strategy on my part, but due to unfair gimmicks and spamming of red rings of death. Wether that feeling is justified or not, it simply feels like the fights are unfair.

At the end of a lot of GW2’s boss fights, I just feel tired and annoyed, when I should be feeling proud and victorious. The armor repair costs don’t help in that regard.

Gab Superstar.4059:

I can see your arguments as to why you want to change these encounters. The problem is however, that you are essentially complaining about the core combat mechanics of GW2. While in other MMO’s you might read a guide, watch videos, learn how a boss telegraphs his abilities, and then make sure you are prepared for the boss accordingly, that is, to a greater extent, not the case in GW2. You have the dodge mechanic for a reason. You are expected, especially as you go higher up in the dungeon tiers, to be able to play a lot more reactively instead of proactively.

Take for example Lupicus in Arah. While the general outburst on the forum towards him has died off a bit, you can still see threads pop up weekly about how hard he is. If you read these threads, you will see that most of these posts stems from the fact that the OP cannot dodge the green bolts which have no telegraphing at all, not the red circles or the shadowstepping.

In the end it’s an attitude change towards MMO combat that you have to make (I had to make this change myself, as have many others, if not everyone who does GW2 dungeons).

I understand what you’re saying, but I disagree with a fundamental part of it. MMO players deal with some degree of lag. When there is significant lag, twitch-based gaming reflexes are impossible to execute. Therefore, MMO encounters cannot be tuned for twitch the same way a standalone console or PC FPS game might be.

In MMO group content, a one-shot attack must have a highly visible telegraph, and it must provide adequate reaction time for players to plan and execute their response given the natural delay time of typical MMO lag.

Again, Lt. Kohler and the Scavenger Gravelings are prime examples of two mob types that are overtuned in this regard, with tells that are too easily obscured (too small and hard to see on the gravelings, and if Kohlers arm is in a wall), and with not enough time between the tell and the initiation of the one-shot.

And I’m not complaining. The OP is only saying:here is the primary tuning issue, and here are examples of well-tuned bosses versus some examples of bosses that exemplify the tuning issue.

shaktiboi.5194:

Gab Superstar.4059:

I can see your arguments as to why you want to change these encounters. The problem is however, that you are essentially complaining about the core combat mechanics of GW2. While in other MMO’s you might read a guide, watch videos, learn how a boss telegraphs his abilities, and then make sure you are prepared for the boss accordingly, that is, to a greater extent, not the case in GW2. You have the dodge mechanic for a reason. You are expected, especially as you go higher up in the dungeon tiers, to be able to play a lot more reactively instead of proactively.

Take for example Lupicus in Arah. While the general outburst on the forum towards him has died off a bit, you can still see threads pop up weekly about how hard he is. If you read these threads, you will see that most of these posts stems from the fact that the OP cannot dodge the green bolts which have no telegraphing at all, not the red circles or the shadowstepping.

In the end it’s an attitude change towards MMO combat that you have to make (I had to make this change myself, as have many others, if not everyone who does GW2 dungeons).

I understand what you’re saying, but I disagree with a fundamental part of it. MMO players deal with some degree of lag. When there is significant lag, twitch-based gaming reflexes are impossible to execute. Therefore, MMO encounters cannot be tuned for twitch the same way a standalone console or PC FPS game might be.

In MMO group content, a one-shot attack must have a highly visible telegraph, and it must provide adequate reaction time for players to plan and execute their response given the natural delay time of typical MMO lag.

Again, Lt. Kohler and the Scavenger Gravelings are prime examples of two mob types that are overtuned in this regard, with tells that are too easily obscured (too small and hard to see on the gravelings, and if Kohlers arm is in a wall), and with not enough time between the tell and the initiation of the one-shot.

And I’m not complaining. The OP is only saying:here is the primary tuning issue, and here are examples of well-tuned bosses versus some examples of bosses that exemplify the tuning issue.

But you are forgetting that multitudes of people are not experiencing the same problems as you are.

The Gravelings can be easily countered by dodging away as they leap for you. You know when they will leap by how their front starts “glowing”. If you do get knocked down a lot, have a member of your party pop aegis right before you enter the battle, or have someone utilize a group wide stability ability that lets you get back on your feet should you get knocked down. Remember to move away from them as well, as they will continue to channel their ability, sort of like Hundred Blades.

I do not in any way agree that Lt. Kohler is a hard or cheap boss. After the first few runs I never have a problem dodging his pull which has a very clear telegraph. I’m sorry but as I said, there are multitudes of players who are facing these mechanics and blaze through them by utilizing their dodge and the proper spells. If you can’t then you clearly have a L2P issue (don’t take this as an offense).

Some of these special attacks might be a lot easier to spot if they also had a loud and unique sound effect. Just an idea.

Gab Superstar.4059:

But you are forgetting that multitudes of people are not experiencing the same problems as you are.

The Gravelings can be easily countered by dodging away as they leap for you. You know when they will leap by how their front starts “glowing”. If you do get knocked down a lot, have a member of your party pop aegis right before you enter the battle, or have someone utilize a group wide stability ability that lets you get back on your feet should you get knocked down. Remember to move away from them as well, as they will continue to channel their ability, sort of like Hundred Blades.

I do not in any way agree that Lt. Kohler is a hard or cheap boss. After the first few runs I never have a problem dodging his pull which has a very clear telegraph. I’m sorry but as I said, there are multitudes of players who are facing these mechanics and blaze through them by utilizing their dodge and the proper spells. If you can’t then you clearly have a L2P issue (don’t take this as an offense).

No offense taken, but you are missing my point. Even when you know exactly what tells to look for and exactly how to respond to them, the core problem these two specific foes exemplify is that the tell is NOT visible enough and does not last long enough to react to for many players. And it’s not a L2P issue.

Again, there’s a difference between strategy and learning how to fight a given mob/boss, and sheer twitch reflexes. MMOs are no place for twitch reflexes. MMOS are for challenging mechanics and learning the strategy to beat boss X or whatever.

The early boss in CoF story mode that has the two ghostly swords (in his Phase 1) is a perfect example of a GREAT boss fight that is properly tuned for an MMO environment with its lag and inability for many players to execute at twitch-level speeds. That boss will wipe entire groups quite a few times until they figure out why they’re getting wiped. And then it clicks: “Hey, I take no damage if I dodge when he comes at me”. “Let’s spread out in a wide circle at extreme 1200 range so you have time to see that he’s thinking about charging at you: save your dodges up.” And then they execute on that strategy and it’s still challenging. That boss’s “tell” is that he stands there and clearly looks right at you for a few seconds. When he does that, you know kitten well his next hugely long charge is aimed at you, but you’re 1200 away and actually have time to see him start the charge and to execute your dodge to avoid the hit.

That is a PERFECTLY tuned MMO boss.

Kohler? Please: he’s CHEAP. The fight takes place in an area where you can’t pull off those same types of tactics I described above. And half the time he’s pressed against a wall and you can’t even see the sparkle tell. And even if you DO see the tell, his actuall yank range is larger than 1200, for one, and for two there’s not enough delay between the tell and the initiation of his yank. And you can’t even LOS his yank.

As for the scavenger gravelings, their sparkly head effect is far too small and subtle to see clearly in the fracas of 4-5 gravelings leaping all over the place and players being likely turned away from the scavengers to deal with one of the other gravelings trying to eat their face. And again, even if you -do- ignore all the other gravelings and watch those scavengers as closely as possible, half the time there is simply not enough TIME between their tell and the initiation of their leap to react.

TWITCH is for consoles and FPS games. STRATEGY and MECHANICS that account for the effects of LAG on 5 or more different players all streaming data to each other’s clients is for MMOs.

I obviously can’t convince you. Remember though that if you don’t change your attitude you will never be a part of the large player base that actually don’t have any trouble with these dungeon mechanics.

If you want a bad enemy that’s first Wolf Champion in CoE exp. Two non-telegraphed special attacks with 10-15k damage (which it may use in row).
Seriously only thing I have issues with.

Gab Superstar.4059:

I obviously can’t convince you. Remember though that if you don’t change your attitude you will never be a part of the large player base that actually don’t have any trouble with these dungeon mechanics.

I skip Kohler (problem solved) and just deal with the scavengers. Sometimes my twitch-fu is strong, sometimes it’s weak. Same for my guildmates.

Again, I’m not complaining and crying. We like challenge; we learn, we overcome.

My OP in this thread, and every reply in it, is feeback to the dungeon designers. You can call my casual guildmates weak or “bads”. We don’t care. We know what we can do. We overcome for those (fortunately very few) dungeons that are the only route to a specific piece of gear we can’t get any other way.

And we know which dungeons are FUN and seem well-tuned to be challenging without requiring an excellent connection, an excellent computer, and console twitch reflexes.

And we know which dungeons and which specific encounters are a DRAG and NOT FUN because of the simple tuning issues I mention in the OP.

It’s Anet’s call (and Hrouda and team’s call) to decide what to do with my feedback to them. I’m not here to convince you of anything. My responses to you are counterpoints to (good, thank you, yes they’re good) arguments against my viewpoint and my feedback. Between you, me and everyone else weighing in on this thread, Anet has more datapoints about player perception to work with. That’s good for all of us.

But here’s the important thing, right now the player perception of roughly 20 people I know pretty well is simple: some dungeons and some encounters are really really terribad. And some other dungeons are hella fun and we cheered and laughed and enjoyed the kitten out of them. And for the most part, we prefer running around in Orr’s wonderful dynamic and ever-changing environment to doing dungeons at all, because even the good ones still give out terrible rewards overall compared to spending the same amount of time running around outside in the world.

One other thing about the downed state is that so many attacks have condition damage attached to them that getting downed without having a damaging condition on one is not likely. This means that even if the boss leaves you alone, you can do little to help yourself. Other players healing you can usually out-heal the condition, but you cannot heal yourself using the 4 skill since it cancels on any damage. Since the middle 2 skills are often on CD when you go down, this leaves you with number 1. Not actually very engaging or fun.

Yeah the wolf is a good example… Every now and then it looks like a regular attack except that it depletes nearly all my life. Kohler isn’t too too bad, but his telegraph move can be hard to judge because there’s actually things that shoot out to grab you. It’s easier to anticipate and dodge it the further away you are from him, much harder to do if you’re closer… the part that annoys me is that you can’t interrupt him while he’s telegraphing the move which kinda defeats the point of interrupts (which you’d think you’d wanna use when the boss i doing his/her “big attack”).

Last night Subject Zero just annoyed the hell out of me and my team. He just spams red circles all over the place, and often way more than any player has dodges. Unless you are playing a class that can some how regain stamina faster, some of his moves are a death sentence. Its worse when he casts a prison on you, which doesn´t seem to be telegraphed at all. Constantly he would hit us with the combo imprisonment, followed by zillions of red circles all over the place, thus instantly downing the person in the prison. If you were lucky, a party member could help you up, or free you from the prison in time. But more often the timing of his red circle spam made those things impossible for my team. I can only dodge twice!

Couple comments for the OP to make AC a much better place. My guild and I steamroll all explorable paths of this dungeon and we don’t skip packs or bosses.

Kohler: His “cheese” 1 shot attack is very noticeable, he raises is sword and the “channeling” graphic shows up, wait a second and dodge or have a guardian put up agies(sp? the block buff). After that hes a joke, bring a stun breaker if you’re bad at dodging and you can usually stun break and roll out before you die. Lots of groups skip him but we don’t and when Anet make boss and chest loot better killing him will be even more worth it.

Gravelings One shot:
Actually only Graveling Scavagers have this ability so focus them first, bring a stun breaker or have a someone with stun breakers take the first jump. The tell is, they hunch back and do the channeling animation. Also a really good way to do it is have a guardian pull them and put his wall up so they jump into it instead of on to you. Keep in mind that if you stun break it the Scavager still continues to channel and its a cone AoE so get behind him and get free shots in for the duration, but stay away from their mouth.