Dungeon Difficulty seems random
My own, very limited, experience with dungeons – which consists of one run of AC story mode at 35ish, is that dungeons aren’t “fun”. A lot of people I talk to tend to agree.
Now that being said, my story AC run was with a full PUG, none of us had been there before, and one guy DC’d/left after the first boss was down (and we had no idea if we could recruit a replacement for him without losing our progress, so we four-manned the rest of the dungeon).
But that noob experience was, in no way, “fun”.
Granted, chatting with guildmates that run dungeons often, they say that AC story may be one of the “worst” dungeons in the game (which is entirely subjective, I know), but..that’s not a good introduction to GW 2 dungeons at all.
I’m 80 now, with all gear green 80 or higher (3 exotic pieces, though 1 of these is a 78), and I’m, overall, having a blast in GW 2, but I have felt no desire at all to enter another dungeon.
And that’s not because I don’t like running dungeons with others in MMOs (there is nothing fun, to me, about playing an online game “solo”).
The Orr zones are also pretty lacking in events, so the fun I’m having in the game is running lower levels for completion. Too much in Orr feels broken, and the one impression I have of dungeons is that 5 man grouping is very…chaotic and unfocused.
I’m sure I’d do quite a bit better now, especially after knowing my class a lot better, but that first impression will always linger – I plan on starting to run dungeons this weekend as I’m finding Orr pretty lacking in content.
I didnt see it listed, but sorrows embrace is quite fun. With the exception of 1 boss fight in story mode (broken into 6 phases, all of them pretty terrible)
The orr zones are not lacking in events. Start up some of the statue chains.
This should be separated by paths rather than dungeons.
My own, very limited, experience with dungeons – which consists of one run of AC story mode at 35ish, is that dungeons aren’t “fun”. A lot of people I talk to tend to agree.
Now that being said, my story AC run was with a full PUG, none of us had been there before, and one guy DC’d/left after the first boss was down (and we had no idea if we could recruit a replacement for him without losing our progress, so we four-manned the rest of the dungeon).
But that noob experience was, in no way, “fun”.
I had to do AC (which was my first dungeon) twice before starting to enjoy it and dungeons in general.
They are very different from the leveling experience (which you most likely did solo) and require different thinking and gamestyle.
Some of them are broken as hell though.
For your sanity, I’d suggest you to avoid these dungeons:
Sorrow’ Embrace Story mode
One of the bosses is actually 4 bosses and he’s is pretty hard. You and your teammates will need a specific skillset for this boss only, something people tend to not understand (I’m looking at you, 5 signet warriors), switching tactics on the fly . and some others are too lazy to run back when they die.
Caudecus Manor Explorable mode
At least to of the paths (haven’t done seraph yet) are full of traps and small rooms/corridors with lot of elite mobs. Such a pain to go through this.
Ascalon Catacombs Explorable mode
At least two of the paths have an event where you must destroy burrows while defending a npc, this is pretty hard and impossible withkitten teammates. Add to that that burrows don’t take conditions and from time to time can’t be hit in melee and you’ve got a very frustrating experience. Don’t do this in pug.
Now for the interesting and working ones:
Ascalon Catacombs Story mode
Hard but interesting encounters, The Lovers are definitely the hardest bosses of the dungeon and require some thinking.
Citadel of Flame Story Mode
Fun dungeon with cool bossfights, the hardest boss would be that guy with the spinning blades, final boss is fun as hell.
Crucible of Eternity Story Mode
Another fun dungeon very story/event driven, my only gripe is that the bosse have WAY too much hp.
Honor of the waves Story Mode
This dungeon is gorgeous and all the bosses in it are very doable by almost any group.
The Ruins of Arah Story mode
Very story driven, first part is very balanced from a difficulty point and fun to do while the second part, while very entertaining can be frustrating depending on how well you do. You can’t loose in the second part, just die a lot.
(edited by Krag.6210)
Interesting thread, I did AC last night, my first instance. Now, I’ve played probably every major MMO for two decades and I’d heard AC was hard, but that didn’t prepare me for what happened. On the one hand, it really did show the positive side of humans playing together in a bad situation. On the other hand we unanimously called it after 2 hours as the fun factor was gone.
Don’t get me wrong, I am all for hard. However, hard has to be tempered with fun / reward and AC, or the bits I saw of it, were not.
We were lucky enough to have 2 players who had completed it previously, and so knew the pulls and trap and so on. I can only imagine how much worse it would have been for 5 newcomers to stumble through.
Although I greatly applaud the loss of the trinity, AC made me wish for a tank.
Sorrows embrace is not hard you just need to put in your condition removal skills/traits.
Sorrows embrace is not hard you just need to put in your condition removal skills/traits.
The second golem F-4 in story mode is a right son of a…
Fire auto attack that gets shot at everyone in the room? Check
Spewing fire in melee range making certain classes feel useless the whole fight? Check
Spawning AOE death ontop of downed players so that they sit there miserably until they die because there’s no possibly chance of a rally or someone being able to revive them? Check
Maybe they changed him recently. But when I slogged through it he was probably the worst boss I had done at that point. Every auto attack he did was aimed at all of us. And you cant dodge forever (roll twice, arcane shield, mist form, take the hit, roll twice again, heal, roll once more and finally take 3 more hits and die) and when you did go down he would drop some lovely AOE on your face and laugh at your teammates sad attempts to rez you.
Also I felt worse for my warrior friend who couldnt even engage him with his primary weapon. Anytime he got close, WHOOSH FIRE RING. and suddenly there was nothing that could be done.
Basically SE story mode is 90% awesome and 10% terrible F-4 golem fighting.
Sorrows embrace is not hard you just need to put in your condition removal skills/traits.
The second golem F-4 in story mode is a right son of a…
Fire auto attack that gets shot at everyone in the room? Check
Spewing fire in melee range making certain classes feel useless the whole fight? Check
Spawning AOE death ontop of downed players so that they sit there miserably until they die because there’s no possibly chance of a rally or someone being able to revive them? CheckMaybe they changed him recently. But when I slogged through it he was probably the worst boss I had done at that point. Every auto attack he did was aimed at all of us. And you cant dodge forever (roll twice, arcane shield, mist form, take the hit, roll twice again, heal, roll once more and finally take 3 more hits and die) and when you did go down he would drop some lovely AOE on your face and laugh at your teammates sad attempts to rez you.
Also I felt worse for my warrior friend who couldnt even engage him with his primary weapon. Anytime he got close, WHOOSH FIRE RING. and suddenly there was nothing that could be done.
Basically SE story mode is 90% awesome and 10% terrible F-4 golem fighting.
Everything he does cause burning, it’s not hard to survive with condition removal.
As an elementalist i only had my healing skill with condition removal (i could have 2 of my slot skills with condition removal and didn’t do it) and i just got downed a few times.
Done it in first try. (also was in the first week i think)
Also I felt worse for my warrior friend who couldnt even engage him with his primary weapon. Anytime he got close, WHOOSH FIRE RING. and suddenly there was nothing that could be done.
Some of the bosses aren’t made for melees but hey, that’s why we can swap weapons and be almost as effective with one or the other set.
It’s also a pretty good tactic to have one melee guys to force the boss to use his spinning attack instead of fireballs on players, he just have to go melee then roll back when the spinning attack starts.
Everything he does cause burning, it’s not hard to survive with condition removal.
As an elementalist i only had my healing skill with condition removal (i could have 2 of my slot skills with condition removal and didn’t do it) and i just got downed a few times.
Done it in first try. (also was in the first week i think)
The burning isnt really what was killing us. Even dodging every auto attack we could he would still usually down one of us simply because he had too much damage, then that person would be dead because there’s no way to revive anyone (he’d drop a lava font thing right ontop of them as soon as they went down)
It’s certainly a doable fight. But it’s not a fun fight. It’s not an interesting fight. There’s no mechanic that works well besides heal conditions and attempt not to die.
If we still had a trinity I would lump him in the “tank and spank” pile in a second. He’s just boring to fight against.
I mean, check the first golem you face in that same encounter. Living lightning damages your allies when you stand near them. That’s a new mechanic compared to most fights. You have to read the buff, understand it, then communicate with your teammates to not get each other killed. It’s an interesting fight.
Then consider the final boss who has a set attack pattern, as well as an environment you use to combat him (the steel plates that block his fire breath thing)
Basically it’s just not a fun fight compared to the entire rest of sorrows embrace (including the explorables) which made me sad.
Meh, I felt the same way as most of you a little bit ago.
Then I crafted a full set of Berserker’s Draconic armor, and a Mystic Claymore (Still have a decent Exotic Longbow as well).
And without my accessories even being specced for DPS my group and I can burst through most dungeons (Granted we do have 1 person playing support most of the time-usually our necro).
Did 2 runs of CM Story yesterday with 2 different groups and pretty much everything in there died like it was no big deal. Did a run of CM Explore and it was the same deal on the Asura path. There were a few parts where I was nerfed into using my bow so we went a little slow however. The only other part that was frustrating was the boss that drops bombs and has his goon squad up top of the barnkittenyour party. We ended up just having our Engi slowly kill him from range with bombs an spawned a mortar for us to use as well. We all just boon’d him up and the boss went down in 15 minutes. I’d like to say the whole Explore run took about an hour and a half. These dungeons are 100x easier when you have a group of 5 level 80s decked out in 80 exotic gear.
Dotimus Prime
High Grade Gaming
Guild Master
High Grade Gaming
Guild Master
Sigil of superior energy~ I’ll just leave that there.
Yep dungeons are a method of getting oranges. You really should be at least all yellow in your party when you go in. Blues and greens will make them very hard.
ive had nothing but problems in all dungeons beside Arah story mode and CoF path 1.
AC is so buggy full of stupid events and tons of mobs there will 1 shot you regardless of Dodge or shields.
CM exploration was the worst expierience i have ever had since the dungeon is setup for a TRINITY mmo but there is no kittening way to do that in GW2 making that dungeon allmost imposseble for even full cordinated Groups. lots of AOE packs that deal about 1000 dmg per shot and there is about 5-30 each pack so there is no other way to deal with it but to run pass it and hope you wont get stunlocked to death.
fix dungeons Jesus. if you make AOE packs reduce the freaking dmg so its douable
Why are you necroing this?
AC is so buggy full of stupid events and tons of mobs there will 1 shot you regardless of Dodge or shields.
CM exploration was the worst expierience i have ever had since the dungeon is setup for a TRINITY mmo but there is no kittening way to do that in GW2 making that dungeon allmost imposseble for even full cordinated Groups. lots of AOE packs that deal about 1000 dmg per shot and there is about 5-30 each pack so there is no other way to deal with it but to run pass it and hope you wont get stunlocked to death.
I have done each path of CM several times with pug groups. There isn´t anything you would need coordination for. The only important thing is that you have people with skills that block or reflect projectiles and condition removal.
If there are really enemies in AC that can oneshot you it might be better to change your build.
Brandar – Kodash [DE]
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Why are you necroing this?
Have you seen what a necro can do to mobs?
Tin Foil Hat Hearer »—> Ranger Extraordinaire »—> “Be like water…”
Why are you necroing this?
Have you seen what a necro can do to mobs?
They do things besides bring back threads from September 14th?