Guild Wars 2

I still don’t understand why you (aNet) haven’t built dungeons to scale down to allow for a single player to do them. I just dont understand why dungeons were built requiring a 5 person team considering the last step in the storyline is a dungeon and everything else in the pve game is solo-able.

Please change dungeons so that we can solo them. Seriously….

greetings robert&Anet .
the ONLY 100%completely wrong about the new dungeon patch is : NO wp’s use for death players when someone from party is still alive :o realy :s

i know dungeons and i know how it is to be new and experienced @ every dungeon in gw2 …. the thing is , it’s hard enoughf to find a party for a new’’ or experienced player most of the time for certain dungeons , leave alone complete it with grace and experience for those ‘’new players to specifik dungeons.
80power/full players will definatly play even LESS with unexperienced,not fully equiped players who didn’t do the specifik dungeon a 1000 times :s .

+ mind to say that with this you guyz have REALY messed up some of the dungeons like lets say :arah , Cof , Coe to name the most crucial ones that needs teamwork and WP’s to do the best runs possible. even just make it with pick up groups (like i mentioned early’er)

this adjustement comes @ a verry high price i’ll say , dungeons ’’was’’ a FUN and eazy(er) way to get some money, karma, and tokens from a specifik dungeon so you can then trade for exo’z… it was :fun and doable.

now with just this 1 thing you have changed (drasticly by my means) , you have made dungeon exploring LESS FUN , less interactive and people will not get the groups they want , or need !

is this what you want Anet ? i thought it was suposed to be fun , interactive …..
this is just (i’m sure someone will back me up on this one) a rash desicion , witch will hurt the dungeon players and people who will 1rst try out , people LFG , ETC……

thanx for listening robert&Anet ! cheerz

I am still wondering if theres a new update for fractals?

When u DC u couldnt reenter, is this fixed?

We ran CoF 1 and 2 tonight with the new rules. The changes to Magg’s chain were excellent, in my opinion. An encounter that was cause for groans was more cause for glee now. If the changes there reflect how you’re going to tune things long term, I think it is going to be excellent. There are certain dungeons/paths that I’m a little afraid to tackle with the res changes, but hopefully adjustments will come, waypoints will be added (I’m looking at you, TA), and my guild will figure out some of the tougher encounters. Dungeons are already one of my favorite things in the game, though I am far from hardcore, so I’m looking forward to phase 2.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/robert-hrouda-on-upcoming-changes-to-dungeon-mechanics/

WP Rushing was by far the most ‘disgusting’ experience of the game I’ve had and I’d be happy to see them not needed.
But The WP mechanic itself wasn’t to blame
At least the WP were helping to complete dungeons in a reasonable amount of time.

The dungeon encounters have nothing memorable about them, no strategic fights nor clever counters. It’s just offload as much as firepower you can on the boss in a ring whilst trying to dodge their nearly 1 shot kill attack

That’s pretty much it. These fights require the best steamrolling / Kiting your team can muster

You state that the goal is to make dungeons more memorable , more strategic. I’m all for that.
Perhaps that should have been part of the first set of changes that would encourage people to not adopt the play behaviour you intended for the game

Looking forward to phase two and more strategic gameplay in dungeons that should make WP zerging a faded memory

Essence Snow.3194:

What the WP change accomplishes

1) Less friendly PuGs and/or less pugs in general (why all the hate towards pugs?)
2) Groups finishing boss encounters while dead player remains dead being denied boss loot
3) Players less likely to help less experienced players in dungeons
4) Player mandated gear checking/title checking/ etc…

What good does this change accomplish?

1)Players with superiority complexes can feel better about themselves
2)I can’t really think of anything else…I simply don’t see the good in this

All in all this doesn’t really change things for groups that already had no issues with the dungeons. It doesn’t make it anymore challenging for them. What it does do is raises the barriers to entry for those who are new/less experienced/ and, or just well not as capable. How is that a good thing?

This. Congrats guys you finally convinced me to uninstall. Dungeons were pretty much the only thing I had fun with before and I didn’t play enough to really get together with a dedicated guild to play them due to having RL obligations. I liked fractals too, but the crashing ruined those… so now that’s fixed but I have to get through subject alpha in a pug with no reses since there ARE NO HARD RESES in this game? Oh yeah that’s going to be great. Not going to cause tons of rage or anything. I can’t wait for the xd response “dodge ftw”, people screw up sometimes, it happens. My favorite part is that I would be okay with this change if the game were more team oriented like GW1 where a good monk can deal with the faults of a bad player (short of frenzy+heal sig) and you can more solidly support others but you know, that’s not the case here. So now bad players flat out DIE and don’t get to play more challenging content because their detriment from being dead is massive, and new players have to face elitist hurdles. I still haven’t played Arah explore. Guess I never will get to now without a guild.

This game is one step forwards ten steps back every patch. No meaningful changes have been made to sPvP which has been dead for ages now. No meaningful changes have been made to WvW aside from orbs being removed when orbs should never have been in the game to begin with. Dungeons have tons of exploits some of which are just ridiculous (Cadecus’s Manor, I have no idea if they fixed getting on top of the map but I never want to go there again after that horrible experience) I’m waiting on the patch where Portal finally gets a recharge of 180-240 or is moved to the elite slot but Time Warp’s duration is increased to 60 seconds.

I’m all for changes to try and make things better and more of a challenge. I don’t want to really be able to just face roll my keyboard and make it through a dungeon on auto pilot.

Having the ability to use a WP while in combat is a nice and feature and by removing it, you have made GW2 similar to most other MMO’s where you are locked for the duration of the fight and if you leave to rez and return you cannot get in until the group is out of combat.

I agree with all the points that Kelly5293 posted about this making the dungeons less accessible to the players that aren’t as skilled or are new to the dungeon. Another problem with these changes is that the bosses/mobs don’t have a proper aggro table. Then there’s the lack of a “tank” that has aggro abilities and a dedicated “healer”. I know all the classes have their own heals and abilities to dodge and deal w/ aggro but expecting some of them to take the hits a tank would is a bit much.

I also wonder does the inability to use the WP during combat apply to any combat, such as trash, or only boss fights? I understand wanting to create an environment where the players rely on each other for help but in in changing the mechanics this way, you, in essence, have created what every other MMO has done. We’ve all been there and done that so lets keep some of the unique mechanics that GW2 has.

If you take away the rezzing from the waypoints then you will have to reduce the damage that bosses deal. When I run a dungon it’s usually to help a guild member complete part of the quest. It generally costs a fortune for repairs in the dungon because of the deaths we accrue. This is from people with little to no experience in a dungon, with most of them saying they won’t do that again. It doesn’t make sense at all that a warrior with level 80 exotic armor is dying in 3 or 4 hits from a boss.

That type of dungon keeps people from playing and this is happening most of the time. Out of the guild I’m in with hundreds of players there are usually only 3 or 4 that want to run dungons at any time. The reason for this is the level of difficulty that they already have.

That being said I haven’t tried the dungons since the change. After my past experience I’m not really interested in playing them because you lose to much silver in repairs. I definately will not take any new people out on dungon runs now. If you want to make dungons a bigger part of the game you will have to take the difficulty level down, not up.

LaCoria.8549:

If anything, boss and loot should have been modified before taking away the only tactic that some of us have to be able to be useful in dungeons.

This.

I don’t mean about respawn rushing being “the only tactic”, what I mean is that, if people were indeed doing that, it’s because the encounters were poorly designed. And designing them properly should be the #1 priority (before removing the ability to respawn).

In some encounters, trying to revive someone is virtually impossible (it freezes players in place, disables dodge, etc., making it very hard to react when the “resurrector” gets targeted – I very rarely die in dungeons except when I’m trying to resurrect someone). This leads to a kind of “binary” outcome. Either no one dies and everything goes fine or, if one person dies, everything falls apart.

And, in the case of encounters that are easy enough to do solo (or with only a couple of players), this will lead to players who happen to die spending 5 or 10 minutes lying on the ground while the survivors finish off the boss. Is that supposed to make the game more enjoyable?

It also doesn’t make much sense that resurrection rules inside dungeons should be different from rules outside. If they don’t want people to join a fight after resurrecting at a waypoint, a much more “realistic” mechanic would be to close the doors of the “room” where the encounter takes place.

This would let them decide on a case-by-case basis which encounters should be “isolated” and which should stay open.

Seems like yet another superficial and misguided “solution” that doesn’t really address the bad design of (nearly all) GW2 dungeon encounters, and is only going to make more people leave the game.

I don’t know everyone is so resistant to change. When I first started playing GW2, I thought the dungeons were incredibly tough. As I learned more and more about the game though, I began to adjust my build and learn how to avoid damage.

I find the dungeons very boring right now, especially when a team coordinates their group builds around one another.

Res-rushing was incredibly bad for the game’s longevity. Some pug groups I joined completely neglected making any attempt to revive their allies, or they themselves paid little heed to the encounter mechanics because this safety net was always there to catch them. Rushing over to save someone meant nothing because it was almost impossible to fail an encounter since you could zerg it to death.

I am very thankful for this change, because the defeated state has meaning now. It’s up to you to avoid it as much as possible. Now when I group, I encourage pugs to pay attention to their allies’ well being more if I see they are slacking, and there is noticeable improvement in reaction time towards reviving your helpless comrade.

The only “mistake” ArenaNet made was to not remove res-rushing sooner, since people are so accustomed to it. I’m sure they were limited by time and resources, however.

For stage 2 when removing the res respawn, you should allow 3rd person viewing, such that while u are dead you are able to see from your team mates point of view and see what they are doing, like in Counter Strike, cause otherwise it is gonna be boring as hell waiting

This thread is full of kitten people who thought they could just plow through any dungeon on their first go, thinking they were the best thing to ever happen to the world. Suprise suprise they died, a lot, we all did. But y’know what? You get better at it, you learn, and before long, you can navigate your way through a path with ease.

Pro Tip: DUNGEONS ARE MEANT TO BE HARD. Hard meaning difficult, difficult meaning challenging, but very much do able if you have the patience and skill required.

And for god’s sake people, if you want dedicated “Healer/Tank” then honestly, just go back to your children’s game, this not WOW, and I adore that fact.

Do not blame the Devs for building a part of the game that revolves around teamwork, blame the individual people who are “leaving you defeated on the ground while they fight the boss”.

/end rant

I fully agree with the removal of waypoint rushing…. But… Could encounters get toned down a slight? I ran a few dungeons today and while a lot of the encounters were tuned properly that proper strategy could beat them, there were a lot of fights we did juts plain wrong or exploited things in order to beat.

when the fights were about over I decided to try and jump in and see what the actual fight would be like (Such as the Nightmare tree, spider path) and I died only a few seconds after getting on the floor (This includes getting back up and going back down until instant death).

This is badly tuned and I don’t feel it’s something we can beat legitly.

Again, I fully agree that we shouldn’t just throw our bodies at a boss and beat them that way, but I don’t know if the fights are tuned properly right now for us not to do that.

All I’m asking is for a quick go over on the dungeons and see what people can and can’t normally do and adjust some numbers. Encounters do not need a redesign or anything.

Just saw the “Phase 2” talk.
So right now, we are having a half-baked pie?
No wonder I kept throwing up.

What an excuse for the laziness…

Can’t say I’ve needed to wp rush before other than for magg O.O, even for lupi, zerg rush was rarely ever needed, but at the same time I don’t think people stop being able to res because the party couldn’t res him/her. This could happen for TA with the spider has massive aoe dmg. Lupi, where you pretty much can’t res anyone as long as he’s on top of that person; and magg, but that got fixed. I feel as though a better fix would be increasing the penalty for dying like increasing armor repair costs, or causing a debuff to the party if someone dies (demoralize) so people understand that letting people die on purpose is not acceptable social conduct because it inconveniences everyone as well.

get rid of the option to kick people from groups then every one will have to res them and keep them in your group and suffer thru the dungeons together . no matter if they are dieing 30 times or not. just leave the option to leave party yourself ..

to start i really liked aspect of the game. none competative over resources which encourages helping and supporting other players in difficulty, team work. skills as i have explored i have been helped regularly and worked for short priods as an adhock team particullarly in events.
but i have found it difficult to get into dungeons had to wait for others and ask to join.
so though i have 69% tiria done and 80char with others following most crafting 200 and above cooking 400. i have only done story in ascalon and no explorable in any. have tryed WvW wandered lonly as a cloud collected some ore and got bored. am in a guild 300+ members who said we do + it all+ ???? the only contact i have had is why is that char not representing when i was helping a friend start his own guild and get a bank slot so i reped for the time we grouped up. do you not understand the lessons from WoW and eve both of which i played extensivly. was on eve coucil. but they dont listen. group group group but people are people and young people espessially. camping, weired in game actions as in all these combat games, gear scores, selfish guilds that serve only a very few and farm the good will of the many. I really do hope thatt you dont distroy this game. I do hope that you devs grow up and remain children in awe and excitment but look at any school play ground for most it was a trial with bullies and being picked last why oh why continue that nasty ethos in a game ?

I am also a bit concerned about the wp rez change. I’ve noticed in guild and in other teams we have had to rez, because in the heat of battle as soon as someone come to help they were also downed by the boss we were fighting. I fear there may be alot of resetting of the boss and it may become more aggervation than fun any more. Maybe a time limit and /or a certain % of rez b4 being able to use a wp would help, so that if your team can not rez you without dying themselves you still be a viable part of the team. If not those that are downed could possibly be spoken to harshly by the team they are with for causing them complications (as the reset of a boss). Not everyone has the same gaming skill, are not as hardcore and they should not be punished for that and still be able to have fun. I’ve seen some spoken to harsh already if they are downed and this may make such things worse.

A brief amount of feedback:

Ran COF P1 full pug – No issues, no significant changes required. Smooth run. Based upon numerous runs in the past, group was far from optimal with respect to dps, so, have to assume most were not fully geared, or running specs not designed for pure dps.

Ran COF P3 two players pugged – (1) 3 Torches made it significantly more manageable. Good stuff. (2) King of the hill/Hold area was much more challenging. Suffered a number of wipes until we got our act together based on group composition (Mes/War/Ele/Nec/Ran) Then it was manageable. Rest of the run was smooth.

All in all, having to actually co-ordinate was a welcomed change. Looking forward to working through the other dungeons.

Would have to say that those having issues with the changes may be running builds that are no longer as viable as before, may not be as willing to re-work a strategy based upon group make-up, or simply not as prepared as they may have thought themselves.

Expecting to be able to die and run back to rinse and repeat should never have been a viable strategy. It’s nice to see it done away with.

Interesting, I guess noone will ever make again COF path 2 now and if you are not a warrior or a guardian you are screwed up. Good JOB!

What about the kittenty rewards at the end of a dungeon? Rares are so rare that I’ve never got them from a dungeon or even if I found something rare it wasn’t from a boss.

Dolan.3071:

This thread is full of kitten people who thought they could just plow through any dungeon on their first go, thinking they were the best thing to ever happen to the world. Suprise suprise they died, a lot, we all did. But y’know what? You get better at it, you learn, and before long, you can navigate your way through a path with ease.

Pro Tip: DUNGEONS ARE MEANT TO BE HARD. Hard meaning difficult, difficult meaning challenging, but very much do able if you have the patience and skill required.

And for god’s sake people, if you want dedicated “Healer/Tank” then honestly, just go back to your children’s game, this not WOW, and I adore that fact.

Do not blame the Devs for building a part of the game that revolves around teamwork, blame the individual people who are “leaving you defeated on the ground while they fight the boss”.

/end rant

Agree.
There are casual players and there are good players that for example don’t like pvp, so they spend slightly more time in dungeons. As a result dungeons become too easy for them and they need good challenge. And there are hardcore players who only go to a dungeon if it’s made impossible-to-complete…and they overcome its difficulties.

I came from WoW, I miss raids and dungeons were too easy here, so as long I have good challenge with friends – everything’s perfect.

There were replies of people who don’t like slow time of resurrecting of dead.
Here guys, I found a link that you clearly missed – How to resurrect dead players faster

Another tip: don’t be cheapskate, buy some food when going in.

Great update.

Imo, dungeons need a difficulty split

Some think dungeons are too easy, some think they are too hard, both of them are right. Players simply have different playing strengths and different expectations for the content being served.

Tourist Mode
Hard to believe, but some players can actually play for fun instead of rewards. They play socially with their guild. Give them rez-rushing, give them push over enemies, give them the full “story experience”, because "explorable mode is story content as well! Rewards only on first time completion to scare away farmers.

Fractalized Mode
Fractals already fixed dungeons. No rez rushes, respawn points where you’d expect them, a very motivating difficulty scale from 1-80, rewards galore. Especially with the new “highest player decides” mode in place, there is no excuse why dungeons should not behave like fractals. Besides, what is better than beating GL on HM? Right, GL on HM +1.

I’m not pleased with the CoE Subject Alpha nerf. Decreasing the health of the Evolved Destroyer? Fine. But why fiddle with Alpha? He was already fine to begin with. Yes, he was challenging, and at times, he can be annoying, but Alpha was really a lot of fun to fight. And on a good day, it is possible to actually run all three paths without ever dying from fighting Alpha. All it takes is practice. Yes, that’s right, practice!

CoE can be very unforgiving if you arrive unprepared. When I first entered CoE, I hated it. I loathed it. I vowed never to enter that dungeon again. I died numerous times on my first few runs that I can’t even remember for the life of me how many times. But you learn. You don’t give up. You don’t QQ on the forums and cry out, “Alpha is too hard! He’s impossible! CoE sux! QQ Waah!!1” Instead, you seek advice, you read the wiki, you ask party members for tips, and you practice.

Don’t have the time to read, ask, or learn your way around CoE? Then perhaps, you shouldn’t be running it.

John Valdea.5879:

Alpha is nearly impossible to take out in one go on the final fight if you cant rez and run back to keep him from resetting.

I’ve run the majority of CoE with PuGs and I’ve had my share of being pitted with the worst and the best parties out there, and I can tell you from experience that it is possible to take out Alpha on the final fight in one go on all three paths. You can still, after all, help someone while they’re on their downed state, or rally of the tentacles provided they’ve got low health.

Charming Rogue.8071:

Just did some dungeons, and CoE is actually a lot easier now, fighting Alpha is like having constant Time Warp up, he dies that fast! CoE is pretty farmable now when you compare completion times.

Lovely.

I have no idea where all the disgusting whining is coming from. I also have little playtime, having a full-time job and a family. I may be in a good guild that frequents dungeons but more often than not, I’ll have to pug dungeons anyway as they may already have a few parties going.

I’ve pugged AC too many times than I can count (I have AC gear of 6 of my 80s), CM, TA, SE, CoF and CoE. I refuse to do HotW until the bosses get half HP and water combat is improved. Arah is in it’s own little circle of hell and that’s guild only for me. Now if all the above complaints were about Arah, I can understand, but it doesn’t seem that way.
In all the other dungeons, I can now clear pretty much any path flawless, including having soloed Subject Alpha from 25% when people started RQing or were busy running back and dying.
Personally, I have no issue at all at getting new people in my groups. I always ask at the start of a run if someone is new to the run. If I get a yes, I immediately notify the group that I’ll take my time explaining each and every encounter from then on. If the other group members complains about me explaining and wasting time, I outright kick them for more social people who don’t mind helping new people. And if the new person complains, I’ll let him die so many times, that they’ll come back crying for advice. Tough love works wonders.

Honestly, from most of the posts in this thread, I get the feeling that it’s much more a lack of understanding of mechanics than anything else. Dungeons in it’s current form aren’t hard. I’m definitely not an elite player, that spends 10 hours a day in game. 2 hours in the evenings that I’m available at most. But when I do spend my time in game, I spent that time to improve myself.
When I first stepped into dungeons, I wiped and wiped and wiped as well. Until I got the timing down on Kohler’s pull attack (His right arm and sword will be pulled far backwards and it will be pulsing light for a good 1.5 seconds) or the scavengers leap/knockdown attack (they crouch for a good 2 seconds before doing their leap, you can even walk backwards out of it’s leap range and still avoid it in time).
Even if the mechanics are trivial, there are mechanics. If you aren’t completely confident in your ability to play your class and your situational awareness, (like me) you’ll have to compensate by gaining some knowledge about the dungeon.
However, once you do know the encounters, I feel there is no reason at all to ever wipe any more. Yes, some bosses have some nasty instant attacks, but just about anything in dungeons can be completely avoidable damage if you spend some time figuring out what’s coming.
For example, did you know that the bosses in AC path 1 and 3, the two that have a scream attack, both bosses have less than 1200 range on their attacks? So if you stand at absolutely max range with your character, both the scream attacks and the rock dropping attack from the ceiling in path 3 will never be able to hit you. While you can still do damage without any issue. Just takes 1 player to be in melee range to hold him there. One of those players that do have enough situational awareness to dodge all screams and rock attacks. That’s what you’re a team for.

Honestly, my experiences with pugs is that the bad players are in a mindset that they should be able to zerg everything, stand still for the entire fight, rage when they die because they were too lazy to dodge an attack that had a whopping 2 second charge-up and then complain that repair costs are too high/rewards too low and that they lose money.
The few bad players that actually do take my advice will quickly stop wiping, have a much more fun time, better net loot (less repairs), and I get a heart warming thank you at the end. (As those runs tend to take at least 2-3 times longer than when I would do it with a guild group, so I do invest a lot of time in complete strangers)
But for the most part, they continue to remain stubborn and feel they are either too good to listen to advice or are apparently in a mindset that the dungeon should be zergable without deaths without ever having to use w,a,s,d or the dodge button or otherwise it must be broken.

I feel a lot of people posting in this thread are in the last category. I’d like to offer the following challenge to every single person posting scornfully in this thread. I want you to PM me in game, and we’ll do a run through of either one of AC, TA, CoF or CoE. (Because those are my 4 favourites) We’ll take our time doing the runs, and I’ll explain everything I know. I expect you to actually pay attention to it and I’ll help you out as much as I can. I’m almost 100% sure that you’ll die a lot less than any other run and you’ll actually find it enjoyable.

Congratulations Anet, this one change cana nd will kill your game. PuGs were already an incredibly chore to find for dungeoun crawls, now it will be impossible.

That “play the game the way we want it” philosophy is totaly dead isn’t it? As it stands, with this change forced upon s and yet again another “well this sounds like a good idea” patch…you obviously never actually tested it.

When you test something, grab 5 of the worst gamers you can find and see if they can do it. If they get frustrated easily, you have proven you need to rethink what your doing. The way it was with “rez-rushing” was fine, yeah it was a pain and people did not rez each other often. The reason why is not because they weren’t forced to, and not because they didn’t want to help, it was because it takes to kitten long! Make a rez while in combat in a pve environment take 2 seconds when the person is completely dead as a doornail and you will see people actually helping one another. As it stands it can take 10-15 seconds to rez someone, which is totally unacceptable in a fast paced game.

Congratulations, you’ve turned something that wasn’t broke, into a miserable experience.

Cleared CoE shortly after the patch kicked in.

Killed destroyer in 2 shields without time warp.
Alpha’s a joke in all three versions.
Husk needs a golem AI improvement (like making them unsubvertable until they complete their initial run).
Bjarl still has that “lose aggro mid-charge” feature.
Champion Abom’s charge made me kitten a few bricks.

Overall, 6/10 for CoE. I’ll see what you did to the other dungeons.

i dont really agree with the decision to stop res-rushing altogether at once. i used to dislike playing with pugs most of the time for dungeons (esp. FoTM), unless the dungeon is ez like CoF1, TA up kinda thing. now dungeons are just completely only guildmates only kinda thing.

the new change did not really affect good teamwork teams.. but it just completely destroyed of the possibility of being able to play with pugs as well as less experienced players (players could constantly be only on 4man or even 3man teams, if one /2 persons decide to play punk or not be properly geared or skilled for the occasion).

let me quote u an example, even though my team had completed CoE paths 2 and 3s repeatedly over many times. there is still a small chance in which players will not be able to dodge the AOE attacks of Alpha (which kinda 1 hit KOs u, even my Guardian on full P V T gear almost gets 1 hit KO). In the past players would just res back and walk back if they were completely down after being hit. Right now, It is impossible to almost fully res a player when killing the alpha boss would be a faster option. So, we are not even supposed to get downed even once? this is not realistic at all , esp. in pug games

I really liked the sorrows embrace story mode, the difficulty and the tactics, i hope more explorable dungeons will have that feeling.

I think i understand what Anet is trying to do: at first dungeons were supposed to be to equivalent of GW1 elite zone, and was supposed to be done only by the best players, not by some random pick up groups. However, it seems they scewed up on the difficulty because until now, I haven’t seen any difficulty in dungeons aside from Giganticus, so I don’t really mind not being able to not WP if party are in combat. On the last news for those who played GW1, we did not have WP at all in FOW, UW, Urgoz or Kanaxai, if there was a party wipe, it was the end. But what Anet should have done alongside this decision was to improve the rez skill in order to compensate, but well we’ll maybe have to finally deal with REAL elite zone( at least I hope). Oh yes do I have to remind that when Malyx appeared in Nightfall, the first groups were able to defeat him only thanks to a bug that made him stuck in a door and could do nothing… And I don’t recall so much complain from the newbies. We will just have to learn to play better that’s all( learning the boss mecanics, noticing the * dodge bar, learning HOW TO PLAY your caracter, learning to wipe, learning from your failures etc…). I may be one of the few people liking this concept, but I like it anyway, maybe some guys will finally learn the meaning of team work, instead of just attacking head on a boss without even thinking about its skills and mecanism, dying, coming bakc from the dead, going back to attack the boss, dying again and so on. So Anet, Thank you!

Armityle.3612:

I think i understand what Anet is trying to do

You should probably tell them, then, because apparently they don’t. They designed these dungeons with the WP respawns in mind. Now they’re changing the respawns but not actually changing the dungeons at the same time. And they’re not even testing it in one dungeon first, to see how it works.

It’s a bit like a car manufacturer saying “we acknowledge our cars’ brakes aren’t working properly, and we intend to remove them and replace them with better ones, but the new brakes aren’t ready yet so we’ll just be removing the current ones. Oh, and we’re going to apply it to every model at the same time, because our decisions have always been flawless in the past.”

eXs.6210:

if they weren’t gonna do phase 2 together with phase 1, then they never should have implemented phase 1 in the first place…

You’re only saying that because you’re using logic and common sense. Those have no place in GW2 design decisions, as the introduction of ascended gear made perfectly clear…

Mnemesis.8257:

That is how this should have been coordinated, the phases being reversed as to their order of implementation.

The issue with that is that making the dungeons better requires actual imagination and work, while simply disabling respawns only requires a couple of lines of code. And they’ve shown again and again that, between waiting another month or two and releasing an incomplete and untested patch, that causes more problems than it solves, they pick the latter.

And who cares if it makes even more people leave the game and never come back? They’ve already paid for it, right?

I don’t really agree with some of these nerf decisions. The black pools Zhaitan spawned were fine, in my opinion. They’re magic of an Elder Dragon after all. In fact, they added a little something to an otherwise dull end boss fight. I’ve seen a lot of improvement in this fight since the game came out, but in the end it’s still disappointing how you end up being a skeet shooter. As for the knockback of the lesser dragons I wholeheartedly agree. This part was not so much difficult as it was a pain, though the setting was cool.

As for the WP problem I feel that the term “strategy” has a way too narrow definition, not to mention that this update could be devastating for the inexperienced players. If you look at Arah you see a dungeon that can take hours of excruciating pain with inexperienced people, especially at the Giganticus Lupicus boss that all have to face. This giant has attacks that can down players in no time, which is fine, because people will help revive you. But the problem is that as soon as you’ve been downed by him, a single attack might defeat you if you’re in an unlucky position. At this point you’ll take very long to revive and your teammates would with this update either have to ignore you or go out of their way to revive you. If they choose to revive you, they’ll certainly be in a lot of danger because of the massive AoE, and it requires a little more effort to dodge when you’re reviving someone. This is not to mention the amount of time it takes to revive, which you could use to kill the boss. In other words, the defeated player would end up being at best an invalid, while rez-rushing could at least bring him back in the game. Already now we see people screaming “experienced players only” when looking for a group for said dungeon, and that tendency would not lessen if the ability to stay alive would become so much more important. Inexperienced players would have a much harder time actually getting experience in there.

I can see what your trying to achieve and to be honest I am all in favor of it. A lot of ppl are complaining saying it will hamper their ability to find a team, but honestly I think it will instead strengthen the functionality and purpose of a guild. The dungeons experience atm in my opinion is a bit hap hazard. Random teams just run their way thru them with very little strategy or team work and co ordination. I welcome the changes to encourage team play.

In response to ppl complaining about the rez skill not being patched well one simple answer… You revive fast if more are reviving. Also don’t wait for someone to die before reviving them. It just encourages ppl to work together too many teams are just 5 solo players. Playing their own solo role in a team ~ something which never happened in GW1 simply because you would fail. So I welcome the changes because I believe it will strengthen the team work and co operation side of this game which lacks a bit.

Account.9832:

You should probably tell them, then, because apparently they don’t. They designed these dungeons with the WP respawns in mind. Now they’re changing the respawns but not actually changing the dungeons at the same time. And they’re not even testing it in one dungeon first, to see how it works.

Pretty awesome that you know what they had in mind when the designed dungeons. You work at Anet? I’d like to hear more details then. Because when I read the Robert Hrouda’s post on the dungeon changes, I find this:

Robert Hrouda

Dungeons were designed to be highly focused on teamwork. The current res-rushing mechanic discourages the type of behavior we intended when a fellow player goes down. We hope that by eliminating res-rushing, we’ll bring dungeons more in-line with our original design goals, which are based around team play and strategy.

When I read Robert’s text here, it kind of conflicts with what you are saying. And I’m more inclined to believe that the original intention was that any and all dungeon content was designed to be played without ever having to waypoint-zerg. And after playing for all this time, and getting better at dungeons, I feel they achieved that pretty well, save a few weird paths, like CoF path 2 Magg event. Which is why they changed that event right now with this patch, along with the disabling of WP-zerging.

The only thing that WP-zerging did for the game was allow bad players, who have no intention of spending time in learning the game mechanics, to stay bad players but still get their dungeons done. Albeit, getting them done but with such frustrations about them, that those become a vocal minority here complaining about how horrible dungeons are. They are not, in fact, most are doable without any deaths. The entire point about WP-zerging being disabled becomes moot when you don’t even die once.
Finally disabling this stupid fallback means that stubborn players will finally have to grow up and play the dungeon as intended, paying heed to the intended mechanics, or they will fail miserably in the process. If that discourages them to ever play dungeons again, I don’t really see why they should be doing dungeons in the first place. Apparently, harder group content isn’t there cup of tea then. Fine. If you do want to play the harder group content that is, quoting Robert, “highly focused on teamwork.” and “based around team play and strategy.”, then you’ll have to learn how to effectively play as a team to get best results. In other words, you’ll have to learn how to play in dungeons.

I, for one, am very very excited by this change. I hope that over next 6 months, players that are serious about dungeons, will all grow up to be fine dungeon players and that in 6 months, even a pug will be an enjoyable experience, because every knows the drill and no one is reliant on WP-zerging because they are too bad to do it any other way.

The number one reason I never bother to rez people in a fight is:
It takes TOO FRICKEN LONG!! Its faster for them to run back and I continue DPS than it is for me to sit there and them to sit there while I’m taking damage, not providing DPS, and just wasting time.

I’m not sure if I like the whole WP gating. I have a strong feeling it’ll actually encourage less COOP. Some people are already picky when running dungeon.. they want you to be experienced, high level, good gear. Well with the WP gate they’re suggesting, it’s just going to increase those demands.

I’m a casual gamer. I like getting a group when I can and most of the time its with higher leveled people. They don’t tend to mind as much, because if I die, I just run back into the fight. I feel its going to become harder for me to find groups if this patch goes through.

From the moment I read about the update on the dungeon, I had the same fear as Kelly.5293. In GW 1, although playing it for about 7 year, I rarely did dungeons because of the instant need to be pro (teamspeak, timings, …) … or feel the guilt of failing/wasting the time of the team. Thus without a very active and big guild, with understanding people, it can become for the less pro a stressing instead of fun event.
In GW2 this system was great, even if you “suck” a little… as I on occasion still do… you are not that hard a burden to an other great team … you only have to pay more money to get your armor repaired. Even now it was sometimes hard to get all to cooperate on the braziers near the end of COF p1.

With the proposed resurrectsystem I can see a lot of last man standing people having to suicide because getting “out of combat” takes to long and thus leaving skillful people relucted to play with the less-skillful.

To discourage farming dungeons to excess it was already more than enough to have reduced rewards for within 24 hours repeats. And to make it more challenging and give new experiences, one does not have to totally end the old ways.

I myself don’t have all that much time to play, like many of the GW1 vets who now have jobs,…, but with the original GW2 dungeonsystem I can easily find parties and earn enough money to see even the longest goals, like a legendary weapon or cultural armor, within reach … be it a multiple year plan nonetheless…
With this new system however I can see dungeons progress again to be requiring certain team compositioning and more strategy … thus no longer “I have 1 hour … lets find a quick random team and do a run” but more “I got multiple hours … lets start a time consuming search to get a good teamcompo with members who can prove that they know what they’re doing”.

MY SUGGESTION:
Similar to Fractals, let the team decide for which level of difficulty they want to go. Time limited & less skilled people can, at the expense of less, but NOT to little, reward, still do the FUN low-threshold level “CLASSIC” way and for that long weekend one can do a high reward&risk version with a dreamteam of e.g. guildies.
That way you can have your cake, still eat it and no one gets left in the cold.

I will give this new system a try but I fear my, and many others, money & equipment source will have run dry.
My guildies laughed … in a friendly way… at me for doing many dungeons in the time I played GW2 … guess I’d be laughing now … If I was not worried about my own situation. At least I got the chance to buy dyes, mini’s, upgrades,… and save up for 2 sets of exotic dungeon armor… before the golden age ended.

I’m sorry but this is absolute CRAP. This way point thing is stupid, I’m currently Alt Tabbed from and AC run because were all screwed and can’t kill the last boss. I’m a huge fan of your work and I gave the way point thing a chance but playing dungeons isn’t worth it anymore… + the bosses still 1 hit K.O you… hp and dmg revised my kitten #8230;

So, here is my take on this:

Dungeons are supposed to be used to farm roughly 1300 tokens to get a set of armor. You are going to have to do this over and over and over and over until you want to puke all over yourself. At some point there was a dream that dungeons would have material reward in them. As it turns out, you only get blue items, with the occasional green. I have never dropped an exotic, and I have dropped three rares. And I run a lot of dungeons.

So lets review the risk-reward: lots of risk for almost nothing. You have exceptions like CoF, you can easily make gold on it, but for the most part, it’s crap.

Then you had this patch. I’m not sure exactly where it came out of, but I know where you should put it. I was super excited about the change to CoF path 3. I logged in thinking “I will be able to do path 3, this is going to be so awesome!”

Wow, I was so disappointed. Three torches? yeah, okay, but double the mobs because it’s the SAME AMOUNT OF ENEMIES. That’s stupid. And because there is no rezzing in combat, every encounter became a chore. I play a bunker warrior (yeah, I said that) with my guild, and we all thought the whole thing was dumb. It was not fun.

Segue: Fun – noun
1. something that provides mirth or amusement.
2. enjoyment or playfulness.

I PLAY games to have fun. Currently, this game is becoming work. Work is not fun.

I hope you see the issue. At this point, I’ve basically given up on Legendaries, named exotics, dungeon armor, pretty much everything. I have several characters not at level 80, and I will enjoy playing them.

The end game content in this game is so poor, so disappointing, that it makes me feel sorry for those of you that work at Arena Net, because you have to play this kitten for a living. At least I can turn it off.

So, I implore you to fix this. This game can be fun. It can be something everyone enjoys. But you’re going to have to try. You’re going to have to do better. If you don’t, you will lose customers. You will lose business. And ultimately, you will lose your jobs. So think about that the next time you decide to pull some moronic update out of your collective kitten

Tried a Pug team and a Guild Team in the dungions sorry big fail ANet no reason to even go into one now Impossible AoE become target when trying to res fellow player, It was not fun. ANet needs to just drop the Dungeons from the Hero Achievements now that the Casual Player has no chance to finsish the Achievement. You have just made the Game an Elitist type of game, If a player does not use a Certain Build or have Certain Equipment they can not get a group hence they can not play and have fun. Sounds like the GW1 mentality

I am fine with the changes.
That being said, these changes conclude my pugging experience. From here on out I have a select group of friends I will run with, and if they aren’t on, I won’t bother.

I know it’s not even been a day into this patch, but you can clearly see the rift between experienced players and their counterparts.

I’m not doing anymore dungeons unless the WP Change is removed. It makes some bosses that much harder to do. On top of that you wont get any loot if you are dead and the boss is killed. I just ran AC XP Path 1 and got to the last boss (Didn’t do Kholer because it was too hard due to the WP change….) and we gave up. Tried to kill the Howling king multiple times and we just couldn’t do it. My group was made up of 3 Guardians, 1 Ranger, and a Thief. On top of that you’re barely getting profit from the dungeon due to everyone dying so much.

Before the WP patched i didn’t mind grinding dungeons to get the Exotic sets, now its just annoying and frustrating.

I planned on grinding AC to get full exotic this coming weekend with Guildies, but the WP patch just put a big hole in my plans.

I have completed 7/8 dungeons and 2 paths from Arah so far, all with pugs, before the patch, we have managed to do all of them for the first time (except CoF path 3, due to lack of communication and English skills/patience of the other players) and I play 2-3 hrs per day, after work. (just to set the background) Also I had good groups, bad groups, rq-s, finished multiple level of fractals with 3-4 ppl (even colossus at 30+).

I started the game only in December, so I have no idea what has happened before.

Actually I have not been able yet to test the changes in detail, but reading the comments just reinforces my own experiences of the below that has not been addressed with the dungeons and I have not really been seeing discussed:

Currently the game is poor in teaching advanced game mechanics: I believe this is the bottomline behind the complaints on dungeons and the different views:

- You can get to level 80 and do most of the open area events, even in Orr without pretty much no need to dodge even once. The zerg will res you in no time anyway, why bother?
If you do not learn the most basic mechanic early on, you will fail in all dungeons.

- You can get to level 80 by using max. 2-3 skills of your class and 1-2 traits. The game does not teach you/force you to try basic combinations oy your own skills/traits/weapons etc. and to advance your skill with your class. (I am playing an ele which is a good example. Initially I thought it is a paper character and you learn by failure, google, reading and experience, actually you can realize how much more potential and innate tankiness your character have, also with proper gearing. If you invest a lot of time and energy. If you do not know your character, if you do not know your traits and skills, you will fail in dungeons as you cannot adapt to it.

- My guildie who plays GW2 since Day1, completed almost all dungeons, got to fractal lvl 40 without any exploits asked me few days ago: What combos are? How do they work? In 5 months, he has never needed to play with combo fields and finishers and nothing had tought him the mechanics behind (and they are fairly simple). Again makes life in dungeons easier.

- I was not supported by the game when I was getting to 80 to experience different class combinations. Nothing is teaching you that in the game. You do not know how your character interacts with other characters and you fail again in dungeons. (or you end up in a “we need a guardian to protect our butts all the time” situation for dungeons)

- I could say the same for ressing, there are very easy techniques how you can safely res someone, using proper char stats and paying attention.

- When we are discussing dungeons we should compare apple to apple. A player who enters at minimum level, straight from story with low level blue and green gear, will find the dungeon a lot more difficult than a full-exo-scaled-down-lvl-80. The question is who is the target group here? or the scaling down should be fixed (and I see it in the patch notes there are steps towards it, need to test it)

Also, (and this is my personal opinion) story modes of dungeons should play the above role, teaching the mechs, so they fluently build in the learning curve to the game and all exps for the same dungeons should be 80+, where you need to practice that you have learnt before. I have not seen any steps towards this in any of the patch notes and neither in future plans. I think the learning design principles should be fixed, that would eliminate a lot of the comments.

Also, as varying age groups playing this game, probably 10+ till retirement, they all elarn differently and all of them need to learn dungeon mechanics in a way that is appropriate for them, instead of dropped in open water and swim or die.

As people are different and they all learn differently.

definitely not going to like the no wp dungeons.. great job anet great job o-o

Gytis.1637:

There were replies of people who don’t like slow time of resurrecting of dead.
Here guys, I found a link that you clearly missed – How to resurrect dead players faster

“Healing power does not affect the revival process.”
Read Much?? haha

Don’t think the elimination of the “res-rushing” is going to increase the teamwork, all the comments above about PuG’s kicking people who die and aren’t going to take people in their group are going to apply…

How is a less experienced player ever going to learn the mechanics of a specific dungeon if he keeps lying dead on the floor for 15 minutes while the experienced ones finish off the boss? I don’t see the experienced players commit suicide in order for the less experienced one to ressurect (because let’s face it… ressurecting in combat is a no go! And people don’t generally die in spots where there are no foes… usually you’re lying in the middle of a mob).

I think it’s a good idea with eliminating the res-rush. Some fights WILL get harder. But then there also has to be a very very good tweaking for the bosses. I haven’t read all the replies but so far in my opinion, the storymode bossfight in Ascalonian Catacombs against “the Lovers” is way to hard for a storymode. Even with res-rush many groups don’t manage that one. Specialy not since it’s most often first time for people in a dungeon. And as many others have said, if this is gonna work, the time for reviving a dead player must be reduced.

I’ve read though 2 pages of replies and alot of you seem to think that removing Rez-Rushing will make some dungeons alot harder.

This boggles my mind! Didn’t you read the whole post by Robert Hrouda?

“Phase 2 of our dungeons evolution will see a lot of changes to bosses and enemies. We plan on taking a good, hard look at the health values and mechanics of our elites and bosses, and in turn how we reward players for their time investment and risk. This will include looking into every boss in our dungeons and seeing what we can do to enhance the gameplay experience in order to make more memorable and strategic encounters.”

They’re removing Rez-rushing with all it’s flaws and tweaking the encounters so that the benefits that the mechanic used to provide won’t be necessary!

I’ve been playing gw2 for a few months and have been loving it, esp the few dungeons I’ve managed to currently unlock. Played for about 45 minutes just now on AC and all 4 attempts resulted in someone rage quitting and ending the run. Most frustrating for me was that once you attempt to res someone the animation locks and you are unable to dodge to strategically revive someone. I spent practically the whole time attempting to res PUGs, animation lock, death, watch one remaining person sit on a ledge trying to kill HP minions. I won’t be going back or recommending to my friends until this is changed back. I hope the overwhelming feedback on this topic is taken on board

- when are you going to come out with a cross realm dungeon finder/ group finder that you can use to q for a random or specific dungeon? its very boaring and fustrating trying to spam in world chat looking for a dungeon group or using that gw2lfg web site. there should be a way to q up for a dungeon in game and the game finds members for the dungeon you want while you do other stuff.

- i play a guardian and i have as much deffense/toughness that i can get as well as trying to keep up protection buff as much as possible and mobs in the dungeons still hit me for almost half my hp. so i really think there damage should be reduced a littel as well as some of the bosses. i mean as mellee wearing plate i should be able to take more then two hits before i go down or die.

Res-Rushing should be left alone, now this means that we have to waste even more time with regrouping and wiping, more repair bills etc. Never mess with a good thing please ! Starting to go the WoW way.

I wonder what community response it will take to have this changed back. It would seem silly to create a feedback thread if you were only going to ignore the overwhelming feedback you received