Guild Wars 2

The way people run dungeons right now is clearly not intended and is flat out boring.

Lets start with the issue most new players will face “kicked for not 80” using the LFG system it’s very rare to find a party that isn’t 80 only I know it’s not impossible to find a party but the fact is it’s an issue and it’s there.

But lets move on to my biggest gripe and why the dungeons are boring, This is how a dungeon will always go…

Run pasts all the mobs, hide in a corner, lose aggro, stack in a corner of the arena, pull the boss, kill the boss, rinse and repeat.

Consultations you win, hero of the galaxy!

This is so fundamentally broken it’s silly and that fact like this for so long is even more silly, what is the point of these huge arenas with bosses throwing traps all over that place if NONE OF IT CAN TOUCH YOU?

The current dungeon system can best be compared to “rock em sock em robots” it’s just two little robots facing off on each other and the winner is who ever can hit their buttons the fasted. :/

Good master Top,

It would behoove you to search the forum for a thread called " players against stacking skipping/stuff [PASS}

While you are doing that. I would politely ask that you refrain from trying to fix what is not broken. The Pits of Tyria have offered many of us hours upon hours of wonderfull times and comadrie. Some great stories of utter failures and grand triumphs.

please.

STOP TELLING ME HOW TO PLAY MY GAME!

thank you, Best of luck to you in your dungeon touring.

I agree with the OP. and i agree with Rope everyone should play how he want.

and there is a very easy fix for that.
remove mob leash in instances.
once you aggroed a mob it should pursue you until it is dead.

fixed…
no more blind skipping ( smart skipping by experienced players without aggroing is fine)

an even better fix for it is increase fine mats drops from trash in dungeons, just like the dredge fractal run gives you 25-30 loot bags for a run, same should be in all dungeons.
so people will have incentive to farm dungeons.
full run of Arah should give you 30+ bags of tier6 mats.

also the last change will force Anet to remove infinite spawn mobs from their dungeons, which is also a good thing.

Another ex-WoW player has discovered dungeons in gw2 I see. Bloated egos of people who believe they are good players getting kicked because in truth they don’t know basics of running dungeons in gw2. Guardians who think they can tank everything, rangers who think they can just camp longbow ect. There are so many misconceptions from other games in people’s minds it’s no surprise they react this way when they finally are faced with the truth, that they in fact are not great gw2 players, but in fact are regular newbs

Its’ no different than Guild Wars 1

• Learn how everything moves
• Learn what needs to be killed, what doesn’t
• Create a quick route through the dungeon so that it can be repeated quickly

Every game is like this
If AI is boring to you, go try some pvp

I bet it would irritate people like OP to know the Mario 64 120-star world record is less than 110 minutes.

“No! Stop skipping enemies! You have to kill everything! Stop running straight for the star! You’re playing WRONG!” pls go

oh wow, my post got trash’d cause i said.
Leave The Hall Topbadge!
there i said it again, DELETE ME BR0

OP, I’m willing to bet your the kind of player that favors the “afk-while-safe-spot-ranging-a-boss” method. Fortunately for us all, skipping has an 8 year precedent. Deal with it.

Longbows are exploits because they directly prevent Spider Queen from using her Bite attack on you.

Don’cha know!

OldSomalia.6180:

I bet it would irritate people like OP to know the Mario 64 120-star world record is less than 110 minutes.

Probably give them a heartattack too when they find out you can complete the game with 0 stars.

Future anger might as well be redirected to http://quake.speeddemosarchive.com/quake/qdq/

edit: then again 0 stars uses damage, FGS, and skip… err. I mean exploits.

RemiRome.8495:

OldSomalia.6180:

I bet it would irritate people like OP to know the Mario 64 120-star world record is less than 110 minutes.

Probably give them a heartattack too when they find out you can complete the game with 0 stars.

Future anger might as well be redirected to http://quake.speeddemosarchive.com/quake/qdq/

but those fish man, THOSE FISH HAVE AI!

I agree with the OP.

I have no experience in dungeons in any other game and my first dungeon runs where disappointing.

It just was not what I expected and I do not think I will be able to do it enough times to get any of the dungeon items.

OldSomalia.6180:

I bet it would irritate people like OP to know the Mario 64 120-star world record is less than 110 minutes.

“No! Stop skipping enemies! You have to kill everything! Stop running straight for the star! You’re playing WRONG!” pls go

You know, I can actually see them saying this and literally freaking out at the screen
So low they’ve gone, so low…

Hey OP, I agree with your post, but I also understand that some people just prefer to stack. I want to point out a few things:

1) GW2 was advertised as an action oriented, fast paced MMORPG, where skills and constant movement is a must in order to survive (take a look at old commercials for GW2 before release). I sincerely doubt that stacking was intended in this game. In reality, mob AI is simply not good enough in this game, and would gather up easily in a corner only to get butchered quickly. How do I know stacking was not intended? think about how the camera goes ABSOLUTELY BONKERS when stacking in a wall. YOU CAN BARELY SEE WHAT YOU ARE FIGHTING!!!!

2) Players will ALWAYS search for the easiest way to obtain what they want. That includes skipping/stacking on mobs. While it is fine to skip trash mobs (albeit, trash mobs in this game are almost POINTLESS to kill) Im not sure stacking was one of the approved methods. However, in a post made by an ANET employee a while back, they DID mention they are neither FOR or AGAINST stacking. The reason he/she may have said this was because they would make a LOT of people angry if they approved either method.

3) Stacking has (in my humble opinion) dumbed down player skill. I have been in countless COE runs, and every time alpha moves a slight bit away from his corner, the party I am with wipes, leaving me to face alpha alone and usually just solo it. People feel spider queen is super strong if not dragged to her usual corner, yet with skills, proper dodges, and condition removals this fight is so easy I solo her for breakfast.

4) Is not a good idea to post against people that do stack. Those that prefer to stack are usually offended with comments like these, and is only natural, after all you ARE judging their preferred methods of playing. I understand that in some ways they feel that they are being told how to play, and you will not change their mindset the same way you wont change yours. At the end of the day, is up to ANET to decide what is the method of fighting they truly envisioned in their game: whether it is a stack infested game (where corners and walls are the ONLY method to win a fight) or a action and movement oriented game.

I have no experience in dungeons in any other game and my first dungeon runs where disappointing.

Oh god, that breaks my heart.
I promise you, this genre is not normally like this. This game’s dungeons have easily the worst case of ham and cheese I’ve seen since people were making their own text-based massively multiplayer games in the 90’s.

Lalangamena.3694:

I agree with the OP. and i agree with Rope everyone should play how he want.

and there is a very easy fix for that.
remove mob leash in instances.
once you aggroed a mob it should pursue you until it is dead.

fixed…
no more blind skipping ( smart skipping by experienced players without aggroing is fine)

an even better fix for it is increase fine mats drops from trash in dungeons, just like the dredge fractal run gives you 25-30 loot bags for a run, same should be in all dungeons.
so people will have incentive to farm dungeons.
full run of Arah should give you 30+ bags of tier6 mats.

also the last change will force Anet to remove infinite spawn mobs from their dungeons, which is also a good thing.

Everquest did the no tether system for mob agro. It works… but I can’t help but feel that it’d be closing the pandora box with the lid from a can of worms.

In that, in EQ, we were able to do some rediculous things on the level of say pulling collosus rumbles to the entrance of AC so that the group didn’t have to do anything at all.

Now the toolsets in EQ were much more massive, but I can’t help but feel that it’d just open up alternate exploits.

If you left it as is, normal open world stuff could become a massive pain. That one mob that catches up to you that you didn’t realize you agroed back all the way across the zone, you afk a minute, come back, dead. Lots of quality of life issues it could present. So you fix them with more stealth/agro drop type abilities, which then just allows more exploits, etc. That’s what happened in EQ.

It doesn’t surprise me that most games now use the tether systems. I know I abused the heck out of the EQ ones.

I do really like your second suggestion though. I know in CoE there are 2 skips we don’t do because we can get a ton of mats by killing instead. If there were more areas like that I think there’d be less skipping.

To the OP though Stacking is not going anywhere. Again, we did the same thing in EQ all the way back in ‘99, mob in corner and beat him to death. The idea of it trivializing this game is funny… people do realize that puts all AEs on the entire group right? So its’ high risk/high reward, you’re putting yourself in the most danger you can, but in a well managed way where if you act correctly you can survive. Just look at Subject Alpha or the new Icebrood Troll in HoTW, stack on those and tell me it’s rockem sockem robots. Almost every time I pug in CoE it’s me and my friends alive while the pugs are dead after the first AE lol.

The only way to get rid of skipping is the CoE solution, as has been pointed out. When mobs are rewarding to kill, they’ll get killed.

@Jerus

I generally think Train to Zone is less a problem in a game that isn’t about Camping.

But, just within the dungeons themselves, I agree leashing might be problematic. I think there’s a few good scripted sequences where they stall your movement or force you to doubleback over an area within a time limit, where leashable mobs are serving as a great source of tension. I’m not sure it’s a good idea to take that design option off the table.

Leashing in dungeons made sense in WoW, Anet definitely needs to figure out a solution that makes sense for their own needs as a game.

I can’t say I agree with your take on Stacking, though.
You can’t compare an MMORPG pure breed, versus a supposed action hybrid. We need to hold them to different standards, because this game lacks RPG fundamentals like resource management to drive interest in static play.

@Vox (love the name!)

Not about training, more about just general PITAness. More, “do I really need to stop and kill that wolf?”, Or when say exploring a zone, just dipping in to get that POI, suddenly you have to kill your way into the room… maybe something they want us to do, but it’d make exploration a much bigger pain than it currently is.

As for trains, World Bosses, can you imagine the trains coming into the Orr events? Don’t see it being a big issue as far as difficulty goes, but it’s just more lag and more of a mess at those things.

WvW, just train all the NPC guards away, never have to kill them. OR greifing, one team agros as many of the tower bosses as they can and trains them away into their bases where they just hold them down. If they took from team1, they are team2, now team3 can’t possibly capture those towers.

Point being, it has just as many issues as the tether system if not more. Personally I spent 14 years exploiting the crap out of that system =).

As for dungeon specific, I’m sure people would find more safespots, and be able to pull things to those safespots and kill where they may have previously tethered.

Now, I’m all for more interesting dungeons, with more barriers, and more events that you have to do. I’d love it. But I do like current dungeons as well and I wouldn’t want them removed. Ideally I’d like to see some future dungeons given paths that take longer, are harder, but most of all they need to be rewarding. If it takes me 5-10 mins to get a gold-gold and a half reward, doing a 45min dungeon should be giving me at least 4 gold.

As for stacking again, I’ll point to Subject Alpha. By stacking you’re having all the AEs land right on top of everyone. But proper dodging can allow you to avoid the majority of the damage. HoTW Troll is another fun one. Very action hybrid oriented. Now not all stack stuff is like that, lots of the time it is just stupid easy, esp with FGS, but you won’t be seeing me shed a tear when that gets nerfed. As for how to prevent it, some story modes have things going on that do a pretty good job. dropping fire fields is always a good option, stay in the stack and burn.

So again, I’m all for some of the ideas, but I don’t think the tether is the issue, or more that removing it is a good idea, it’s just as open to exploits. And while I’d love some dungeons that force you to break the mold more, they need to be rewarding, and I don’t want to lose the current setup to gain the other, I’d like to see both =).

Poorly worded and hostile sounding but I can see the OP’s point. Still, it would help if posts like these didn’t all come from people who ‘AFK range’ bosses to death from safe spots.

If, if mob agro is to be changed, I hope that all safe spots are removed from the game. The trouble is that the ‘no skips, no stacks’ crowd is also the crowd that has never really been in the ‘line of fire’ by mob mechanics.

For as much as they may detest stacking and skipping mobs, it is a solution to the current PvE and AI. The same should not be said for ‘AFK ranging and safespoting’.

I don’t know, I have mixed feelings on open-world leashes.
On some level I remember that sort of a world could be tedious, on another level I kind of miss having a sense of Danger walking around. It’s probably one of those things we’ll never see again in the post-WoW era just on principal alone. But, I’ve got some good memories mixed in with the bad.

I think we’re mostly on the same page about Stacking in that there’s good and bad iterations. For example, I thought the sub-dividing boss during the Marionette was a good fight (sans exploit and in an AOE lane). But, I think something like Wraithlord Mage Crusher is just awful.

I think where we differ is that I draw the line between ‘bad stacking fight’ and ‘good stacking fight’ much earlier than you do, so that all the current ones in dungeons end up on the bad side.

In my mind even Subject Alpha comes up short.
I get that it trades off activity through movement for trying to inspire activity through dodging. But I think if they’re going to bank all the gameplay on reactive play, it needs to actually be reactive. A perfectly predictable cycle that always leaves you with just enough endurance so that you never have to make any heat of the moment decisions is pretty shallow action experience in my book.

First, don’t get me started on oldschool MMOs, it makes me feel like an old man. “back in my day we had to take a Real life hour boat ride to get to the other cities, and that’s after our runs that were just as long before and after the boats!, and we walked through snow, backwards on our hands over broken glass!” lol

And yeah, the stacking is far from ideal, but there are lots of fights I find fun, and I still find the game/dungeons overall pretty darn fun. Would be nice to see more variety of attacks from bosses though. I mean Subject alpha even does a couple different attacks, but the answer to all of them is pause a second then evade, not very complex there, it’s a simple reaction test as you point out. Need some different reactions required for different attacks and what not. One that is like normal, but then make one where you actually have to roll out. That could be interesting. My favorite fights though would easily be Subject Alpha, Icebrood Troll, Lupi and the berserk champ I think it’s called in Arah. The fights that have more obvious telegraphed attacks to respond to, but also more punishing.

Overall though, I just know it’s easy to point out issues, but it’s much much harder to actually come up with ideas that fix those issues without breaking other things. Like IMO the tether/non tether situation discussed would do. We’ll see what they do in the future, maybe it’ll be a bit better.

“remove mob leash in instances.
once you aggroed a mob it should pursue you until it is dead.”

Nope not a solution at all. Group needs 2 more, stealth/smoke classes only. Leashing only penalizes classes without stealth and will not stop skipping.

Alternatively one or more players will run to die in a safe corner with all the mobs. Other players will move past and return to revive the dead players in safety once the mobs have reset. Again classes that can support these tricks will get group places ahead of those who cannot.

And there go people thinking that creating a game or overhauling game mechanics is easy and there are no consequencs. Just implement stuff on the fly!

It’s mostly an issue of bad AI
Even the GW1 creatures on Hard Mode had worlds better AI than creatures in GW2

The best way to put it, is that GW1 had “engaging PvE”, that made you have to pay attention 100% of the time while playing on hard mode, as example
GW2 dungeons/harder areas still equate to stacking, fast tap skill spamming and obvious enemy NPC patterns

All they need to do, is make enemy NPC AI better and the game will feel immersed and engaging in PvE
Can you imagine approaching a lvl 80 zombie mob in Arah, that was situated like an spvp team? With AI that was programmed to use certain skills at certain times and they even went in to downed states like the toxic sylvaris and would res each other

~ There is your answer to fixing boring dungeon play

Can you imagine approaching a lvl 80 zombie mob in Arah, that was situated like an spvp team? With AI that was programmed to use certain skills at certain times and they even went in to downed states like the toxic sylvaris and would res each other

Funny you mention arah, because it has the trash that is the closest to being decent in terms of mechanics. The trash packs in arah tends to have diversified skill sets that complement each other : one who can imprison a group into his ring of warding, one with aoe knockbacks, one that grants stability to the whole trash pack and spawns adds that have low HP but high damage, illusionists with heavily damaging AoE etc.
I think the mobs in arah are already fine, much better than most of the boss fights there (apart from Lupicus and Alphard the rest of the dungeon bosses are a bit of a snoozefest and would need a revamp more than any of the trash mobs !), it’s just that there is no point in killing trash so you don’t really get to experience them apart from the four at the gate in p3 and the savage pack in the wraith room of p4.

Mechanics wise I feel they are pretty good, at least compared to most of the game. They’d just need a buff to their HP so that casting a single wall of reflect, and a single stability skill wouldn’t be enough to kill a whole pack safely. In a good meta group they die too fast so you don’t really get to experience their mechanics.

There is no amount of mechanics you can add that would change the fact that those things have too low hp and die in seconds in front of a group that stacks all the good offensive buffs. The game is balanced a bit too much around a PVT wearing, running like headless chicken players and not enough around the idea of an organized group, despite what they said about dungeons years ago. The amount of HP of most trash is evidence of that, they’d have a lot more HP if they were balanced around solid groups.

I facepalmed when I learned that they halved the HP of most things in Ascalonian Catacombs during the days of the revamp. Facepalmed so hard because the new mechanics they introduced were actually kinda interesting but you don’t experience them since they die even faster than the previous boring incarnations. There’s no point in the path 1 boss being able to summon adds if you kill it before it can even summon them. What was the big idea behind the nerf to the boss HP? completely nuts.

Aden Celeste.3650:

1) snip

You are absolutely wrong. Actually stacking is intended with limited range support skills (boons, fields that you have to blast, etc). Even when you aren’t stacking in a corner you are still stacking close to your teammates. Look at WvW where they go in and out and then stack up for water fields and boons. In dungeons you still have to time your dodges against bosses along with things like aegis, blinds, and reflects. So it is still action based but not what you expected like an arcade action game.

3) snip

Completely untrue. In fact “play how you want” mentality is the cause. If you run PTV you are less likely to die. And if you don’t time a dodge, aegis, or any other critical skill correctly then you will still survive since you have high toughness and HP. People running zerker would have to time their defensive abilities correctly otherwise their hp will drop significantly or they will go into down state (one shotted). Don’t believe me run a 5 man zerk group stacked in a corner and the rule is nobody can dodge or use any defensive/utility based abilities (no whirls, no aegis, no protection, no condi removals). Simply just stack a corner and dps in every dungeon from AC to Arah. You won’t last very long the fact of the matter is that it is not simply stacking. The problem is that people running PTV never learn to play better (hence reducing the skill level) because you aren’t force to learn or get timings down. If you know you’ll get one shotted on your thief you will over time learn to dodge better because if you don’t you will die. Versus PTV if you miss a dodge you will still have a lot of HP and heal up.

4) snip

People asking for a stack are being team players. Stacking effectively puts people near you so you can accomplish things.

1. Boons and other support/defensive skills (aegis, reflects) work best stacked do to limited range. If someone is far away and a guard drops a reflect it may not cover this person. On top of the fact that if this non stacked person moves then it may move the boss away from the reflect. This affects the entire team due to the fact that someone wanted to not play as a team aka “play how you want”.

2. Aggro mechanics. It isn’t guaranteed 100% that a boss or mob will act in predictable ways. I had a boss turn to burst me on a full zerk thief before even though someone in the group had more defensive stats. Stacking makes it more predictable because if everyone is in the same spot then the boss will move in predictable ways. If someone moves away from the stack and the boss is aggroed on them then it moves the boss away from the group and what they were trying to accomplish. Hence working against the team.

3. Reviving. If someone is nearby it is easier to revive without wasting time. On top of the fact that you don’t run the risk of aggroing the boss away and you can put aegis and reflects to get the revive.

Note: This refers to your normal dungeon runs and not Fractals

4. Boss mechanics. If you know a boss will do a strong attack if certain conditions are met will you meet those conditions? Of course not that is silly. It is like playing an RPG game like FF and fighting a boss with a mechanic (if your party has shell active then the boss will remove it and gain triple damage). You would never do that. So in GW2 if you know Lupi/Spider Queen have stronger attacks when you aren’t stack why would you not stack. If you want a challenge sure. Do it on your own time and with guildies or something. But don’t waste other people’s time just because you want to “play how you want” aka being greedy aka not being a team player.

Here’s your solution. Make your own LFG stating how you want to play and stop complaining about how others want to play.

Aden Celeste.3650:

Hey OP, I agree with your post, but I also understand that some people just prefer to stack. I want to point out a few things:

1) GW2 was advertised as an action oriented, fast paced MMORPG, where skills and constant movement is a must in order to survive (take a look at old commercials for GW2 before release). I sincerely doubt that stacking was intended in this game. In reality, mob AI is simply not good enough in this game, and would gather up easily in a corner only to get butchered quickly. How do I know stacking was not intended? think about how the camera goes ABSOLUTELY BONKERS when stacking in a wall. YOU CAN BARELY SEE WHAT YOU ARE FIGHTING!!!!

2) Players will ALWAYS search for the easiest way to obtain what they want. That includes skipping/stacking on mobs. While it is fine to skip trash mobs (albeit, trash mobs in this game are almost POINTLESS to kill) Im not sure stacking was one of the approved methods. However, in a post made by an ANET employee a while back, they DID mention they are neither FOR or AGAINST stacking. The reason he/she may have said this was because they would make a LOT of people angry if they approved either method.

3) Stacking has (in my humble opinion) dumbed down player skill. I have been in countless COE runs, and every time alpha moves a slight bit away from his corner, the party I am with wipes, leaving me to face alpha alone and usually just solo it. People feel spider queen is super strong if not dragged to her usual corner, yet with skills, proper dodges, and condition removals this fight is so easy I solo her for breakfast.

4) Is not a good idea to post against people that do stack. Those that prefer to stack are usually offended with comments like these, and is only natural, after all you ARE judging their preferred methods of playing. I understand that in some ways they feel that they are being told how to play, and you will not change their mindset the same way you wont change yours. At the end of the day, is up to ANET to decide what is the method of fighting they truly envisioned in their game: whether it is a stack infested game (where corners and walls are the ONLY method to win a fight) or a action and movement oriented game.

1) how do I melee then if stacking isn’t allowed? plz tell me your magics.
The cameras always sucked.
Anet cant do AI.
2) seriously learn what stacking is
3)Pugs are bad and don’t know how to properly ‘sploit the AI (melee OP).
4) I only get upset when people don’t educate themselves on what stacking does, It isn’t to exploit AI its so you can buff your allies. With LoSing(different than stacking) you kill stuff and anet will never get rid of that. It just so happens to be that the AI wont used ranged attacks when in melee, which makes sense. This however makes the content much easier in some cases though it makes it much harder (ie bloom hunger without reflects/blocks). The only problem with stacking is it means dodging is key and lots of players need to L2D.

I find it funny how tough it was to ball mobs in GW1 because their AI would actually make them spread out unless pulled a particular way but in GW2 all you have to do is round a corner and the mobs blindly stand in AoEs ect. That being said I both agree and disagree with OPs post yea it can be annoying how some people play but who are you to tell them how to play the game? Stack if you want clear if you want.

Those of gw1 were different times, different views on things.

Remove dungeon tokens as a reward for path completion. Add dungeon tokens as a possible drop from trash mobs.

Add a substantially increased chance of dropping a specific precursor as a reward for each path completion.

Tasty Pudding.3764:

Remove dungeon tokens as a reward for path completion. Add dungeon tokens as a possible drop from trash mobs.

Add a substantially increased chance of dropping a specific precursor as a reward for each path completion.

People will keep skipping mobs to finish the dungeon for the gold reward (since that’s the main reason they do dungeons) + this higher precursor chance you’re suggesting. If anything, this will make people rush even more, so they can complete more paths each day and have higher chances of getting that precursor reward.

When they need tokens, they’ll just farm the starting mobs:
Enter Arah > farm spiders > leave > Enter Arah > farm spider > leave… complete Arah set. Very epic!

Anaal people who can only focus on doing one thing at a time will always try to find the optimal way of achieving their one goal while skipping everything else. The only way you can eliminate that is by eliminating choice.

I’m only concerned with making it so that you are not a complete idiot for doing everything. Currently, you are stupid if you don’t skip the trash. Fix that.

I don’t know why ANet forgot what worked in GW1. The trash dropped the stuff you collected (ectos, shards) and the end chest had a chance at a drop that was unique to the location.

There we go!
/15charrs

FenrirSlakt.3692:

There we go!
/15charrs

A+++++++++++++++

Tasty Pudding.3764:

Remove dungeon tokens as a reward for path completion. Add dungeon tokens as a possible drop from trash mobs.

Add a substantially increased chance of dropping a specific precursor as a reward for each path completion.

Doesn’t WoW have this? It’s such a great idea!

WoW drops tokens in the end, same as here, but they have (or only had) a currency exchange to get older contents rewards with new tokens.

Unique drops however are nice idea, even if it’s just 1 weapon / path or boss.

Okay there’s alot of controversy here clearly, just from reading this thread , clearly there are people who like charging through a dungeon saying kitten you trash mobs, times is l00tz. As well as people who prefer to take their time pull every individual enemy from each mob separately and whisper it a bedtime story as you plunge some form of object into it’s failing carcass.

Personally i prefer a mix, sometimes i don’t wanna deal with the small fries and wanna go straight for the man in charge in dungeons. This is usually the case in dungeons like AC and Cof. as a warrior, why on earth WOULD i fight the spider queen attempting to run in circles around her constantly focusing on removing poison conditions, when most of my attacks rely on me being stationary, and not knocked down.

This is supposed to be a life or death dungeon, not an orderly game of badminton. If i can lure a giant spider into a corner with the supple bait of a succulent asura ear treat, i will. If you allow me to knock a boss off a cliff, I will. if you give me a skill that keeps me from being knocked down for 5 seconds, I PROMISE to use that in a hallway where getting knocked down means certain death.

There’s a simple solution here, It’s called freedom.

if you want to speed run for l00tz well good news adventures, grab 4 like minded individuals and saddle up.

if you want to employ non-meta tactics and fight the bosses on their own terms, well similarly good news adventurer, grab 4 like minded individuals and have your hayday gauging the eyeballs from every foe you encounter that you may emerge from your encounter with the bosses head on a pike and his minion’s eyeballs threaded onto fine necklaces.

why are you so insistent rather than to play your game as you desire to, to make it so that others have to play the way you want to.

sidenote regarding all the “safe spot ranging” comments isn’t that the POINT of ranged combat? that you may destroy your target OUTSIDE the immediate reach of his claws/fangs? I mean lets think about this for a moment, if there wasn’t an advantage to ranging an opponent in safety, why would anyone ever buy a rifle, bow or handgun in real life? safespot ranging is boring and slower than straight up fighting something, in exchange for safety. that’s the point of ranged weapons.

Lord Aoshi.7509:

sidenote regarding all the “safe spot ranging” comments isn’t that the POINT of ranged combat? that you may destroy your target OUTSIDE the immediate reach of his claws/fangs? I mean lets think about this for a moment, if there wasn’t an advantage to ranging an opponent in safety, why would anyone ever buy a rifle, bow or handgun in real life? safespot ranging is boring and slower than straight up fighting something, in exchange for safety. that’s the point of ranged weapons.

No, when ranging you should deal less damage and have less risks during the fight. When we mention ranging from a safespot, you are dealing less damage and have zero risks, as the boss can’t hit you back at all, hence the term “AFK ranging”.

NINA! I posted our 5 ranger run! It’s on our forums! o_o;

Edit: And here too now. My guild being ridiculous!

Yay, Gene! Bear fish OP! Too bad I didn’t get a chance to use my Jellybear though :P

People will always find the path of least resistance. Skipping mobs that give trash rewards, using combo fields, this is it.

I agree with you OP, it is dull as heck to stand in a corner and blow through mobs in every single dungeon. On the other hand, I feel like LoSing is one of the best tactics in the game. I think we just have to give them time to rework things and flesh it all out so that there is a balance between tactically LoSing rather than using it on every single fight. The community has evolved and become way more keen on how the game works as a whole, and I think Arenanet sees that the game needs to evolve to match that. You can see it in various places in the Aetherblade path of TA, and a lot of the new Living Story content.