Guild Wars 2

Colossus Rumblus:

It was amusing seeing all those red circles for the first time, I’ll give you that. However you need to choose between making a monster have an instant-kill move or have extremely powerful regular attacks, you cannot have both on the same monster, that is bad design.

-Colossus’s regular attacks do way more damage then is necessary. This wouldn’t be so bad if we had room to move around inside of Grast’s shield bubble, but there is little margin for error if you’re going to allow a monster to move around and attack while channeling an instant-kill attack.

-I understand that you allow Colossus to move around after starting the boulder drop attack but allowing him to knock you out of the shield into certain death completely? You have to allow him to move so that he can come to Grast so that people with melee builds can attack him instead of being useless inside the shield, but then you punish melee players by giving him knockback and making his regular attacks do a ridiculous amount of damage. The design choices for this fight are in conflict with one another and in the end it’s more efficient to just sit back and ranged attack him to death then risk death by pure damage or being knocked back into the rocks.

-We didn’t have any problems with Grast dying or the shield not working, but since I’m hearing reports of that too then there is definite need of some adjusting here.

How this could be fixed:

-Lower Colossus’s attack rate OR damage and remove his knockback.
-Lower the spawn rate/radius of the rocks so that if you are skilled enough you won’t die if caught outside the shield bubble.

The minor things:

-Why did you feel the need to give every single Graveling some form of knockback? Nobody likes not having control of their character that often as was evidenced by the complaints about Risen Putrifiers in Orr. This does nothing but waste everybody’s time and is an annoyance that has no place in this dungeon.

-Raising the HP of the Spider and Graveling Hatchlings. Again this does nothing but waste everybody’s time for seemingly no reason, it also makes it nearly impossible to rally yourself if you get downed.

-Raising the spawn rate of the Graveling Hatchlings and their attack power. Why was this needed? Hatchlings were already a threat if you left them alone for too long, why did you feel the need to make them a threat even in small numbers? You also broke the framerate of your game in the process, so this serves zero purpose.

-Increasing the damage and number of the poison fields that Spider Queen puts out. This wouldn’t be so bad if by simply attacking the Spider Queen we didn’t push her into a corner/wall and make it so the fields are almost constantly on top of her, thus once again making Ranged Attacks the most efficient way of dealing with a boss. I do appreciate the sound effect for the web attack though, it’s nice.

-Graveling Stalkers. You turned several mobs in the dungeon into the final boss of CoF Path 3, the path that nobody runs specifically because the boss takes too long to kill because it goes invulnerable every few seconds. This serves no purpose other than to waste people’s time, so why did you change it? I realize that it doesn’t go invulnerable if nobody gets hit by that attack, but that is asking too much of people unless they are in a static together which brings me to my last point.

-You made this dungeon completely un-friendly for any form of Pick Up Group. All of the changes require coordination that any number of random people simply do not have and that goes directly against your overall design philosophy. I have 2 friends I run with regularly, which means we need 2 random people to get a full group. Those 2 random people were the cause of most of our deaths when we did this revamped dungeon, and it wasn’t even that they were bad players, it was just that they couldn’t communicate as well with us. I suspect that even having one member in a group that isn’t established and knows how the group works together would cause unnecessary frustration. You took one of the few things in the game that was completely PUG friendly and made it a chore for them.

How to fix these:

-Return the Spider and Graveling Hatchling HP back to the original values.
-Spawn rate of Graveling Hatchlings can stay the same if the above is met and you fix the framerate issue.
-Remove the knockback from regular Gravelings.
-Remove the invulnerability from Graveling Stalkers
-Make Spider Queen easier to position and give her some form of stability so that when people hit her she doesn’t continually move backwards.
-I haven’t fought Troll yet so I don’t know if that needs to be adjusted, but if it’s anything like the above points please take a look at that too.

(Post 2 of 3)

You made one of the few things my group genuinely enjoyed doing together an absolute chore and this is very upsetting because I’m sure that wasn’t even your intent, but it happened because of the poor implementation of some good ideas. I sincerely hope you intend to adjust this further. I don’t expect you to return it to the way it was but as it stands the dungeon is unacceptable. It’s not that it’s too hard, it’s not that the ideas were bad, it’s just that you did it poorly and it needs some serious adjustments and a lot of these adjustments waste everybody’s time for no good reason.

AC was the most balanced dungeon in the game as far as effort:reward ratio and difficulty (could be easy with competent people, but could give you trouble without competent people), and I hope that you return it to that former glory as the most polished dungeon in the game, but for now it is most definitely not anymore.

TO REITERATE: I AM NOT SAYING THE DUNGEON IS TOO HARD AND I LIKE THE CORE IDEAS BEHIND THE CHANGES TO THE BOSS FIGHTS. THE PROBLEM IS THE NUMEROUS CHANGES THAT WERE ADDED SIMPLY TO WASTE PLAYER’S TIME AND THE BUGGY NATURE OF CERTAIN MECHANICS CAUSES THINGS TO BE NOT FUN.

(Post 3 of 3)

Spy kits r mainly needed for fractals and this change made fractals even less interesting. There has been already no reason for doing fractals higher than lvl 30 since u dont get any better loot compared to the time spend. spy kits made this horrible tuned and misconcepted pve content at least a bit fun. i think its important to see the diffrence between a pug grp with casuals and a “guild grp” with “pros”.
this change mainly affects grps with 2 or 3 casuals.
especially the dredge events is just a joke…. think here was the main use of the spy kit and its ok! this event is just stupid….. the button keeps pressed if u die… so its basicly an event where u run in and die on purpose since fighting is useless….
this is just fail….

We ran all 3 AC paths last night to check ‘em out. The overall consensus is that we enjoyed it more, and didn’t find it much more difficult. As I only joined in for Tzark/Detha paths, I can only comment on those. (Subjective report is based around a scaled guild team of 80s in full exotics/some ascended. My dungeoneering character is a warrior running a convoluted tanky/support build with decent damage through boons.)

Common

• Spider Queen: This felt pretty much the same to me. The poison ground AOE was slightly more worry-some than before. Previously, I could just ignore it with my passive regen. Seemed tougher to fight pinned in a corner, which is good. I agree with the changes made to spiderlings to get people off the fence (literally). In a way, I miss the old “breeder” behaviour from beta, but I wouldn’t want it on an at-level run.
• Gravelings: We didn’t mind any of the changes made to the graveling types. After run #1, we knew to bring stun break and stability for it and had no problems. I was surprised that Scavenger eating was removed—something that was needed to prevent average teams and PuGs from going insane.
• Kohler: We like it. He was my personal fav fight in the entire dungeon. Now he’s easier to melee, his adds spawn at a reasonable rate, and flimsier characters can survive longer.
• Bonus Troll: Hard to say because we pulled Kohler into him like usual and it felt much harder to hang around nearby. The Troll still has a problem with his AoE skills over-reaching their “red ring” boundaries. The fear was annoying because of its frequency, inevitably it happens when your stun breaks are on CD.

Detha Path

Fighting the gravelings and breeder at the spikes. Coming down into the water and having the three pulling chains part.
As soon as this event starts, everyone takes a MASSIVE video lag hit for the duration of the fight. Terrible! You have to face away from the spawn area in front of you to stop this lag, but trying to fight this way = bad. Please fix this.

• Confirmed. Personal framerate drop from 53 FPS to 17 FPS as soon as the first wave of hatchlings ran in. It was a miracle I survived tanking that first wave before I could switch to performance graphics and finish the fight. Everyone else in the group reported the same, even the mezzanine trappers.
• Ghost Eater: Our particular run had no bugs in it. As such, we really enjoyed the new mechanics on this fight. Our method was to have one person (me, with the highest toughness) distract the boss while two teams activated all 3 traps. Then we just drag him around into each trap and burn him down easily. Good fight, way better than the “stand and hit until it’s dead” fight we used to have.

Tzark Path
*Everything on this path felt the same to me until the Colossus. We out-paced the spawn rate on the burrow event and sat around doing nothing from 97% to 100%. Had a fun “pinball” moment on the ghostly burrows section what with the new graveling knockbacks but that was all I saw that was new.
*Colossus Rumblus: I’m not sure what I think because it feels like he’s a one-trick pony and you can just stand under the shield for that trick. I’m sure this is just purely subjective as my build is absurdly survivable and I saw some teammates dropping in one-shot but I couldn’t figure out what it was from since there was nothing he could do to me that even halved my HP pool. We didn’t seem to have much difficulty with him.

Other Thoughts
I like the new bosses and I’m curious as to how often things bug-out. I must wonder how it feels to a PuG or a group of true level 35’s—probably very difficult due to some of the concentrated damage thrown out. I feel like the HP pools of some gravelings were boosted (graveling hatchlings didn’t die in 3 hits) which is fine for us, but troublesome for a level 35. I think I would have to agree with others who comment that a PuG is going to have a hard time with this. I personally don’t ever set foot in a dungeon without at least 2-3 guildmates on the team so I am not one to talk about PuGs—I’ll let them speak for themselves.

The framerate hit in the spike room needs to be investigated. I’m happy to PM my details and a full bug report, or even a video of it if you need it.

For an “endgame team” who regularly facerolls explorables, speaking overall, we like these changes. Now to fix HoTW…. =p

Robert Hrouda.1327:

For those upset about the changes I made to Food items that life steal on crit, and the spy kit, here’s some words:
Spy Kits: permanent stealth at the cost of karma isn’t good. It’s practically exploitative since it’s a pay-karma-to-win scenario, and it needed to change. We test all of our dungeon content without the use of external items to make sure it is all capable of being completed. This has led though, to a recent surge in players using items from the open world in dungeons to trivialize content or outright break bosses designed to present a specific challenge to a five man group.

Food item life steal on crit Cooldown: The best heal in the game can’t be 100 blades or other similar attacks. If you want to play a glass cannon, there should be danger involved, and the food buff mitigated the danger and allowed glass cannons to stand and trade blows without having to utilize their own heals or dodge rolls. They could just stand still and win – and that’s not the type of dynamic combat we want for our game. We test our content without the food buffs to ensure they are capable to players without access to them, and make sure the balance is good enough for players who don’t have those buffs. There are a lot of other viable food buffs in the game, and this one food buff meant a core few items were dominating all the others.

For those also thinking I went rogue and did this, I went through all the checks and balances, and discussed the changes with leads. While I do have the power to change dungeons, things that affect the world outside of dungeons is handled through meetings to make sure everyone is on board with a proposed solution.

To bad you never thought a solution to how that would effect other classes. You completely destroyed many viable builds, and you changed nothing to compensate for this, you obliterated play-styles and failed to look at other things like “Runes of Vampirism” and “Sigil of Blood” not changing them for the compensation, you did nothing but destroy without any discussion or feedback to your players or community.

You should revert the food changes, or at least change rune of Vampirism and Sigil of Blood to be the same effect so the play-style can remain in a taxed/nerfed form.

I would also really go back and look at the Warrior and offer them some kind of compensation as well, especially to sustain or protection because it honestly is not even fun anymore, i’ve completely lost my will to play dungeons or the game, and now I just role-play until classes are changed or balanced around being fun again.

There are other ways to nerf the item as well without adding an internal cooldown and nerfing some high-hit rate attacks without completely destroying a play-style.

For example:
“This item can only take affect 3 times per second, and then it refreshes every second.” This way it doesn’t “DESTROY” the food and still makes it fun and viable AND nerfs what is overpowered of the item.

Many of us who used this were Knight’s Geared players as well, Tanks for our group, we didn’t just stand in the thick of it and melee, we dodged as well and took the mobs to tank them, we did our job well and you took our job away from us and the only viable alternative is to drop that play-style or re-roll to guardian. (which did not get effected nearly as much, due to the fact that there attacks don’t swing that quickly.)

I can completely understand the other changes, because skipping content is wrong.

Sigil of Blood already has a cooldown. 2 seconds IIRC

FYI, that 2 seconds is so bad that I stopped using it

Daecollo.9578:

…

To bad you never thought a solution to how that would effect other classes. You completely destroyed many viable builds, and you changed nothing to compensate for this, you obliterated play-styles and failed to look at other things like “Runes of Vampirism” and “Sigil of Blood” not changing them for the compensation, you did nothing but destroy without any discussion or feedback to your players or community….

Agree. For Dungeons the nerf to the food has wiped out my role of off-tanking with FT, and yes this did also involve dodging and other healing/support abilities the class had…well, until anet nerfed KR, but that;s another thread.

In addition, given how long this game has been in development how did all of you miss this (food) during testing?

The whole thing is sloppy.

So, was my party the only one who had trouble dodging through traps and spider venom? Or have I simply not noticed it, and everyone’s ignoring me because I sound like a noob?

Robert Hrouda.1327:

@Kuishen

Thanks for the feedback. I noticed however you mention that your necro minions were causing ectoplasms. I built it specifically so that only players can draw ectoplasms off – that way rangers, mesmers, and necros wouldn’t enrage their party just by playing. I think someone in your party may have been attacking when they shouldn’t have been.

It’s a possibility, but since almost every other facet of that fight is broken I’d hope you would at least double check to make sure that function is working as intended.

give us a hardmode please

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Ok-Devs-so-now-that-u-start-to-nerf/first#post1530915

Robert Hrouda.1327:

For those upset about the changes I made to Food items that life steal on crit, and the spy kit, here’s some words:
Spy Kits: permanent stealth at the cost of karma isn’t good. It’s practically exploitative since it’s a pay-karma-to-win scenario, and it needed to change. We test all of our dungeon content without the use of external items to make sure it is all capable of being completed. This has led though, to a recent surge in players using items from the open world in dungeons to trivialize content or outright break bosses designed to present a specific challenge to a five man group.

Food item life steal on crit Cooldown: The best heal in the game can’t be 100 blades or other similar attacks. If you want to play a glass cannon, there should be danger involved, and the food buff mitigated the danger and allowed glass cannons to stand and trade blows without having to utilize their own heals or dodge rolls. They could just stand still and win – and that’s not the type of dynamic combat we want for our game. We test our content without the food buffs to ensure they are capable to players without access to them, and make sure the balance is good enough for players who don’t have those buffs. There are a lot of other viable food buffs in the game, and this one food buff meant a core few items were dominating all the others.

For those also thinking I went rogue and did this, I went through all the checks and balances, and discussed the changes with leads. While I do have the power to change dungeons, things that affect the world outside of dungeons is handled through meetings to make sure everyone is on board with a proposed solution.

Hey pal, this is a dungeon discussion. How about responding to any of these posts that discuss the dungeon? I understand that you are getting ragged on hard because you took a good dungeon and made it bad, but you’re the one that started this thread.

I’d like to add a quote from one of your NPCs, the CoE guard: “Your failure is only funny if you try.”

And you really did try on this. And that’s what’s worrying all of us.

For once I would like to see the developers play test AC dungeon using only lvl35 – 40s not lvl80 with full exotics. AC explorable is recommended for lvl 35 and suppose to be an intro for new players into dungeons and should be playable with all low level characters.

With the pre patch AC exp I already find it hard with a less organized group having two < lvl 50 players in the group.

Part of the problem with ANs defense of “well we can do it ourselves so you should be able to” is that THEY have experience playing together with the same people when they do these for testing and thus have been able to develop strategies that can only be developed in teams that have played together for long periods of time. Unfortunately those of us that relied more on PUGs where such does not exist apparently are of no concern. Only the hardcore teams that have spent countless hours developing team strategies together are supposed to be able to play in the Explorable mode of dungeons.

Xynn.2748:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

For those upset about the changes I made to Food items that life steal on crit, and the spy kit, here’s some words:
Spy Kits: permanent stealth at the cost of karma isn’t good. It’s practically exploitative since it’s a pay-karma-to-win scenario, and it needed to change. We test all of our dungeon content without the use of external items to make sure it is all capable of being completed. This has led though, to a recent surge in players using items from the open world in dungeons to trivialize content or outright break bosses designed to present a specific challenge to a five man group.

Food item life steal on crit Cooldown: The best heal in the game can’t be 100 blades or other similar attacks. If you want to play a glass cannon, there should be danger involved, and the food buff mitigated the danger and allowed glass cannons to stand and trade blows without having to utilize their own heals or dodge rolls. They could just stand still and win – and that’s not the type of dynamic combat we want for our game. We test our content without the food buffs to ensure they are capable to players without access to them, and make sure the balance is good enough for players who don’t have those buffs. There are a lot of other viable food buffs in the game, and this one food buff meant a core few items were dominating all the others.

For those also thinking I went rogue and did this, I went through all the checks and balances, and discussed the changes with leads. While I do have the power to change dungeons, things that affect the world outside of dungeons is handled through meetings to make sure everyone is on board with a proposed solution.

Hey pal, this is a dungeon discussion. How about responding to any of these posts that discuss the dungeon? I understand that you are getting ragged on hard because you took a good dungeon and made it bad, but you’re the one that started this thread.

It’s bad when even the staff can’t stick to the topic.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

JungleNin.8379:

It’s bad when even the staff can’t stick to the topic.

I think its worse when staff doesn’t say anything at all, but I can see where you are coming from. Figured I’d post it here since there have been a few threads and posts about it throughout the dungeon forum.

Hey Robert,

Thanks for keeping in touch with the community. You’re one of the most active developers on the forum, keep up the good work.

People can be pretty tough on the internet mostly because of anonymity.
Don’t let destructive posts/thoughts disencourage you.

Robert they should make you lead designer.

As someone with hours and hours in the catacombs, I was working hard on earning all of the weapons. I have all the armor I wanted from the dungeon now. I think I have earned well over 2300 tears to date.

I felt this dungeon was well made to begin with, there were some buggy issues that felt like we had to have specific classes to be successful. For instance the excessive need for Elementalists to have ICE BOW on tap for graveling mounds.

What I think is the biggest pain in the donkey is the extreme amount of knock back. I feel like Xibit shows up and says “Yo dawg, I heard you like knock back…so I put knock back on the knock back”

I don’t have enough stability or cool downs to deal with being banged around like they are playing keep away…and I am the ball. The scavengers were the most OP mob I had ever encountered because if you didn’t see them wind up and evade just in the right time you were DEAD. Even if you did evade and you moved into close enough range to melee it would down you. So no matter what I did I had to waste time. Either waiting to be revived, or respawn because someone is in “KITTEN” combat somewhere in the group, or wait for the scavenger to exit their kill shot move.

So – now everything has a cute little knockdown…wonderful. As a Guardian in full AC gear with AC weapons at level 80 using a bunker build to stay alive….I don’t like the changes made to gravelings one bit. I feel that if the gravelings were returned to their pre-patch state it might make this dungeon fun again. Right now, I am kitten OFF playing the dungeon. I loved it, I would only log in to play this dungeon. Once I got all the gear, I was going to move to the next dungeon.

I really dislike whining about changes…because that is life. Things change and we need to adapt. I just feel that this many changes, and the type of changes, felt pretty heavy handed for a level 35 dungeon.

I brought in my 80 necro which has no stability and I couldn’t keep him on his feet.

My overall feel right now is a 1/10 for the changes, and second guessing playing the game until something changes. The AC dungeon was CHALLENGING to me, and now it is nothing more than RAGE.

Sure – There are groups/guilds out there that say “This was easy.” I am proud of you guys for being so elite. However the majority of PUG players that are fighting solo for better gear and status…this dungeon is now an abomination.

I apologize for the raving lunatic way that this post may read…I just finished trying to win path 1 in AC…we couldn’t do it with the group we had. So my rage is a little high and I don’t have any more time to play tonight. I wish I could say I was still having fun in this game, but this really did harm my enjoyment of my favorite content.

Hodgins, Path 1, The Room with the Burrows. For the first scepter. The Framerate drop from the burrows and the hatchlings is INSANE. I don’t know what you guys did, but its actually one of the more frustrating things I’ve had to deal with. Also it feels like you are REQUIRED to have an Elementalist with an Icebow to clear it fast enough.

So frustrated… I disabled smilies. watches world burn

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Yeah, there’s a few bugs I was grappling with that we thought got fixed – there something weird with the FPS that seems to have to do with shaders (investigating), but aside from that the only issues I’m seeing are with Detha and the Ghost Eater. We were seeing some of the same problems with the traps, and I was fixing them as much as I could – but it seems I didn’t fix them up good enough. her getting stuck and the traps sometimes not firing are known things – try leading GE out of the trap and then back into it – that might help for the time being.
And… well… Detha is Detha, lol. I’ve been at it trying to fix her, but the issue where she doesn’t start rebuilding the traps isn’t 100%, and we’ve not been able to get a solid repro.

As for things players feel the spy kits were necessarily to get through, we’re watching the feedback and will make sure to give them some extra QA attention to ensure they are in line with what we want players to experience.

Maybe you should be clear about what you want players to experience. AC should be the “intro Dungeon” and should be level appropriate for the minimum level requirement. It was already very difficult for those new to Dungeons, now it’s difficult even for level 80s in Exotic gear. This is good for the game how?

Dungeons should NOT be tuned to developers and QA teams that have been playtesting the game so long they could probably do most dungeon paths blindfolded. AC should be tuned for level 35s new to dungeons, Arah should be tuned to experienced players with full exotics and all the dungeons in between should provide a steady increase in challenge between the two extremes.

The food was too powerful, but nerfing it, with out profession improvements to address the design flaws that made a high rate of dependence on the food and kits such a necessary “band-aid” is just bad game design. Timing it to an adjustment up of the difficulty level of the first tier Dungeon is a bit mind-boggling.

If you guys would rather the game be a niche title for elite players, than the title of mass appeal and financial success it has been, let us know so those of us not elite enough for your sadistic dungeon design plans can start to look elsewhere. (We can only assume that if the new AC is your idea of entry level, that it won’t be long before you redesign all the other dungeons to make them as completely inaccessible as possible).

I’ve been a huge fan of the game, but the contempt for non-elite players that has become apparent is enough to make this fan worry about where this game is heading. I’ll stress apparent, if that perception is wrong why don’t you correct it with an explanation of why racketing up the frustration levels for an already challenging game is good for anyone but the elite among the player base. (Ruining the game for the majority because of pressures by the elite that there be more of an “end game” is not an excuse. The elite always complain about end game and move on. Even if you buy another month or two of time for the elite, that’s nothing compared the the losses among “the rest of us” as you tune the game to the wrong portion of the population).

Creating, improving and playing with your build is part of the game. I completely understand about only having a few hours a week to play, but why can’t those who DO have that time have an activity that they can work hard at?

You should. There should be “hard mode” content in the game. It just shouldn’t give rewards that you can;t get through “not hard mode” content. If all dungeons are converted into “hard mode” content then that means that many players will be unable to earn dungeon tokens at all, and that’s unreasonable. Basic dungeon explorer mode should not be “hard.” It should present a reasonable amount of challenge, it should not be completely trivial, but neither should it require absolutely hardcore expert skill, and it definitely shouldn’t require pinpoint coordination between multiple players.

If they want to add hard mode, one where it’s harder to complete than the existing dungeons, then that’s fine, but they should leave the existing dungeons as options, not make “hard mode” the new default.

To bad you never thought a solution to how that would effect other classes. You completely destroyed many viable builds, and you changed nothing to compensate for this, you obliterated play-styles and failed to look at other things like “Runes of Vampirism” and “Sigil of Blood” not changing them for the compensation, you did nothing but destroy without any discussion or feedback to your players or community.

I think the point here is, food and other consumables should never be a balancing factor. A build that is unbalanced without food is just unbalanced. If you need to use a food item to achieve viability with a given build, then you shouldn’t be using that build, and if you’d like to use that build then you should be pushing them to change various powers and traits to make that build more viable. Sigils and runes are completely different, those are permanent elements and intended to be involved in balance. Consumables are just meant to buff up what you’re already doing (ie making your attacks hit a bit harder), not replace entire functions within your build.

Tl;dr, if you were viable before the food nerf and aren’t viable now, then you weren’t supposed to be viable before the food nerf playing the way you were.

«Copy-pasted from another post of mine»

I, for one, enjoyed the overall revamp of the AC dungeon. What used to be, at the very least, a mediocre dungeon, is now a more challenging, compelling and fun experience.
That said, I think it invalidates the idea of it being an entry dungeon for either new players or lower level characters, especially considering the “recommended level” is 35 (an easy fix would be to make all explorable modes level 80-bound).

So, even if I like the added complexity and difficulty, there are a few key exceptions. Here’s what I think it worked great, and what simply didn’t work:

- Nerfing all trash mobs’ health (and damage?) was the right call. Some of those always felt too overpowered, or simply took too long to kill, being either tedious or overly punishing fights. Now, everything’s more fast-paced, with emphasis on the boss fights.

- Overall, all gauntlet-styled events seem more polished, which is nice.

- All the stun-locks, knockdowns, cripples and bleeds seem overly excessive. It indeed presents some sort of challenge, although a very annoying one, to the point of being a fun wrecking experience. There are other ways of making things interestingly difficult and challenging without such degrees of irritation.

- The Spider Boss had some welcomed changes. As a tanky elementalist, I used to simply stand in front of her while attacking, ignoring whatever mechanics there were. As it is, I now have to actually pay attention to the fight, and really move around.

- Kholer, albeit an interesting fight, is simply too easy – what once used to be a feared boss fight, mainly because it required a lot of observation and attention, is now a very toned down version of it, with lower health/damage and fewer grabs. Not even the added spawns during the fight make up for that, people simply focus on Kholer and they eventually die with all the AoE. Heck, even the Spider is actually a tougher challenge to overcome, and it probably should be the other way around.

- The bonus Troll boss, although fairly easy once you know his attacks, is now more challenging and fun, a welcomed change. Still, should it spawn near Kholer, it is still possible to make them attack each other, and some people will simply avoid attacking it normally, making him and Kholer walking lootable trophies that require no effort or skill.

- The final boss in P1 is a really fun and challenging fight – be it in melee or ranged. It actually requires positional movement and awareness of the overall surroundings – from the fire circles and the gravelings, to all the running around for escaping his screeches and kamehameha-styled beams.

- The final boss in P2, although I find the ghost-busters theme interesting, seems unnecessarily too gimmicky, PUG-unfriendly, and slightly buggy. Don’t get me wrong, I like the whole coordination idea, but it just takes too long and, by the time you kill it, you’re tired of it. Maybe reducing the number of oozes required to activate the traps would help make it better.

- The final boss in P3, even though buggy and unnecessarily punishing, if fixed, probably has some potential to it. Still, I’m not much of a fan of “hidden” mechanics, like getting rid of the Defiant stacks to make interrupting his rumbling AoE possible (which, as it stands, it doesn’t work). Also, I find it annoying having to rely on NPC skills to avoid certain-death situations, like the Warmaster’s protective bubble, especially NPCs that like to Leeroy-Jenkins-run to the boss and get stupidly and constantly killed.

- Lastly, a technical thingy. Just wanted to point out that there seems to be something in the dungeon that causes really awful FPS drops and lag spikes. In the runs that I’ve done, mostly everyone complained of these same issues, and I myself noticed it too. It was certainly a challenge to overcome, albeit an unwelcome one

On a more personal, final note, there’s something I’d like to add.
Even if the dungeon is now more challenging, compelling and interesting to run, I still feel like it’s not rewarding enough (as is the case with most of the dungeons).
Even if I enjoy doing dungeons just for the sake of doing it, I still need something more to fuel my interest for it. That’s simply not the case with AC (or, for that matter, most of the dungeons) because:
a) both bosses and treasure chests keep dropping worthless loot, with the occasional rares and the mostly nonexistent exotics; b) the AC armor sets are terribly bad looking, and the weapons, glowyness asside, are nothing but rusty pieces of metal; c) the gold one can get for a full run is simply not enough for all the trouble of doing it; d) tokens serve little purpose with very limited spending options e) even if I’m lucky enough to gather some greens to use with the mystic forge, seeing as the RNG gods probably hate me, I barely manage to get any rare items out of it, making it a royal waste of time and money.

Hello, can you re think the skills for swords off hand for warriors? i’m happy that you guys noticed how useless it is, but 5 sec cd reduce on impale won’t be enough to make it anywhere close to useful. please reconsider.

also sword maim hand in some aspect

@ Robert

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/PETITION-pets-optional-talent-for-Rangers

When a common need is present, those that can change things should consider it. Please let the appropriate people know and many would appreciate it. Anything from passive buff when not used to reworking a beastmaster tree to pet mechanic fixes are desperatly needed. Our class is getting shunned…SHUNNED…from everything other than solo content.

Many on our board do not think we are being heard or even having the section visited at all by Devs.

The new changed to AC are terrible ANET….
You have successfully taken the first dungeon, the FIRST dungeon most people would try and turned it into a NIGHTMARE. Way to turn off a ton of new people to the dungeon experience by not addressing any known bugs or issues and just introducing incredibly hard content for any group lower than 70 with full exotics….
If you want to fix it, honestly either change it back, or just make it a lvl 80 dungeon.
And the sad thing is I know you won’t do squat about it. Sure maybe a nerf here and there, but it will still be this colossal failure in my mind, and in A LOT of other players minds. Thank you for raising my blood pressure and completely ruining the game for me. I don’t know how much time I’ve spent on the game, spitballing I’d say at lest 300 some hours and I have put up with the good and the bad of things. But I’m putting my foot down! THIS S*** IS TERRIBLE! Good Day.

Yeah I ran it pre and post patch. It was really crazy hard for someone just getting into dungeon content.

If you guys think all the excessive kd’s in AC are rough for you, go try playing it on a class like necro that has no stability, blocks, invulns, evades, stealths, ect. Since the patch this dungeon has become a living nightmare for us. I don’t honestly know when I’ll be able to stomach going back.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

For those upset about the changes I made to Food items that life steal on crit, and the spy kit, here’s some words:
Spy Kits: permanent stealth at the cost of karma isn’t good. It’s practically exploitative since it’s a pay-karma-to-win scenario, and it needed to change. We test all of our dungeon content without the use of external items to make sure it is all capable of being completed. This has led though, to a recent surge in players using items from the open world in dungeons to trivialize content or outright break bosses designed to present a specific challenge to a five man group.

Food item life steal on crit Cooldown: The best heal in the game can’t be 100 blades or other similar attacks. If you want to play a glass cannon, there should be danger involved, and the food buff mitigated the danger and allowed glass cannons to stand and trade blows without having to utilize their own heals or dodge rolls. They could just stand still and win – and that’s not the type of dynamic combat we want for our game. We test our content without the food buffs to ensure they are capable to players without access to them, and make sure the balance is good enough for players who don’t have those buffs. There are a lot of other viable food buffs in the game, and this one food buff meant a core few items were dominating all the others.

For those also thinking I went rogue and did this, I went through all the checks and balances, and discussed the changes with leads. While I do have the power to change dungeons, things that affect the world outside of dungeons is handled through meetings to make sure everyone is on board with a proposed solution.

And hows about warriors that lacking sustain? I am running balanced build with over 40% damage reduction from armor, yet i sill have to be carried by team to be effective, because warrior lacking damage mitigation and sustain i mentioned up.

I do agree with nerf, but warriors and thiefs needed it badly to be effective, now u guys left us with nothing but praying that we got a bunker guardian/ele in party that will heal us.

If the task would have been “make a hard mode version of AC for level 80 players that use voicechat”, I would consider the changes a success, although the rewards should have been upped as well then (maybe increased amount of tokens by 25%).

But that was not the task. The game considers this dungeon explicitly for level 35 (not 40) players and above. In the current state, most players in this level range will not be able to do this dungeon anymore. It does not matter that it is technically possible to do the dungeon at level 35. Put a pick-up group of players together and put them in this dungeon, and they will most likely fail to complete encounters repeatedly, and not bother to return until they are high level (if at all).

The changes excluded not only lower level players from the low level dungeon, it also excluded players who are not “highly skilled”. Players who are skilled tend to look down on players who are less skilled. However, the game company should make sure that players who are less skilled than average can still have fun playing their game. This is no longer the case in this dungeon.

tl.dr:
You took away a game element for casual players and replaced it with a game element for skilled high level players. It is not the new dungeon design that is bad. It is the de facto removal of a dungeon for lower level players, and players who are not near-perfect at the game which is bad.

Ok, I now have an official opinion on the “new and improved” AC… The improved part is clearly debatable to say the least.

I wont paraphrase what’s already been said in this thread with an in depth review of what’s bugged, what’s infuriating and why I would stay clear of this particular instance until there’s palatable changes being made.

I would summarize my experience for your reading pleasure though:
- spend around 1.5 hour in path 1 on patch day. Unable to finish it with 3 guildies and 2 PUs due to bugginess and tediousness of the Ghost Eater,
- spend 2 hours to clear path 2 with a competent group of players. That was my 3rd group. The 2 first parties raged quit on the spider queen. Wiped / failed around 15 times on the burrows, and then around the same amount on the howling king.

I can’t stress enough that I was in a party of competent dungeon runners and that we were trying to clear the lvl35 intro lvl dungeon.

Needless to say, I’m pretty pleased to be done with my AC tokens currently. I must have been collecting something around 2000+ tokens since I started playing the game.

The armor skin is horrendous, but at least, that was reasonably farmable to get entry lvl PVT exo gear for alts, that could be transmuted (that’s how I geared my ele). Now it’s nowhere near rewarding enough. I’d rather go wipe on Lupi with PUGs, at least it’s somewhat rewarding when I down it.

On a final note, I’ve always been in favor to always accept sub-lvl80 people in runs, especially in AC that was the intro dungeon. I won’t blame anyone refusing to enter without a full group of max lvl properly geared people anymore.

I love this game, I spend a good chunk of my free time in Tyria since launch, and more so in the 5-manned darkest parts of it. I hope you guys won’t ruin the other dungeons the way you ruined AC, or I’ll have to reluctantly say goodbye and sail toward brighter horizons.

Anet, take 5 players that have started to play the game, have blue/green gear and are at minimum level for an explorable instance and tell them to finish all three paths. I bet they’ll give you stellar reviewes

Explorable dungeons should be part of the most difficult content in the game, even the 35 dungeon alias AC… Your party should fail for days/weeks until you figured out the mechanic…
If you want less challenge, go story mode. And I’m saying that without being some elite guy, I actually still haven’t seen all the dungeons yet, not even story mode!
But there is not very much to do for those hardcore guys and I’m kind of sad for them.

And sometimes I would certainly do that kind of content and I’m ok if I would get my kitten kicked over and over again (Say hello Dark Souls!)… As long as the mechanic is more than: Dodge 1 hit kills!
If it would be content I can join in but not have the skills/tactics to see the end even close, that would be awesome, and when the day probably comes where I would finish it, that feeling would be even greater!
I really hope dungeons and higher fractals (and the dragons/temples in the open world to some degree) are gonna be such content when ArenaNet is done with those.

I would be more precise, but work is waiting for me!

After running every path just once:
Again, I can solo Spider Queen on my full-glass melee Warrior. If your team has issues with Queen perhaps you should analyze what you are doing wrong.
If knocks are issue then dodge better.
Hatchling changes are good, can’t just ignore them now. Shutting down Breeder is a lot more important.
Silvers have less health, who can complain about this?
Howling King was easy, three manned it. You can just run around and they hardly catch you.
Ghost Eater was bit weird, idea is nice but execution might be a problem (we just pulled it to one trap which means oozes spawned right on the trap so we had to just hover them).
Colossus was bit problematic. Relying on melee NPC, well, is very unreliable.

But I can see it being problematic because just facerolling seems quite hard (until you guys figure out some exploits).

Fiontar.4695:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Yeah, there’s a few bugs I was grappling with that we thought got fixed – there something weird with the FPS that seems to have to do with shaders (investigating), but aside from that the only issues I’m seeing are with Detha and the Ghost Eater. We were seeing some of the same problems with the traps, and I was fixing them as much as I could – but it seems I didn’t fix them up good enough. her getting stuck and the traps sometimes not firing are known things – try leading GE out of the trap and then back into it – that might help for the time being.
And… well… Detha is Detha, lol. I’ve been at it trying to fix her, but the issue where she doesn’t start rebuilding the traps isn’t 100%, and we’ve not been able to get a solid repro.

As for things players feel the spy kits were necessarily to get through, we’re watching the feedback and will make sure to give them some extra QA attention to ensure they are in line with what we want players to experience.

Maybe you should be clear about what you want players to experience. AC should be the “intro Dungeon” and should be level appropriate for the minimum level requirement. It was already very difficult for those new to Dungeons, now it’s difficult even for level 80s in Exotic gear. This is good for the game how?

Dungeons should NOT be tuned to developers and QA teams that have been playtesting the game so long they could probably do most dungeon paths blindfolded. AC should be tuned for level 35s new to dungeons, Arah should be tuned to experienced players with full exotics and all the dungeons in between should provide a steady increase in challenge between the two extremes.

The food was too powerful, but nerfing it, with out profession improvements to address the design flaws that made a high rate of dependence on the food and kits such a necessary “band-aid” is just bad game design. Timing it to an adjustment up of the difficulty level of the first tier Dungeon is a bit mind-boggling.

If you guys would rather the game be a niche title for elite players, than the title of mass appeal and financial success it has been, let us know so those of us not elite enough for your sadistic dungeon design plans can start to look elsewhere. (We can only assume that if the new AC is your idea of entry level, that it won’t be long before you redesign all the other dungeons to make them as completely inaccessible as possible).

I’ve been a huge fan of the game, but the contempt for non-elite players that has become apparent is enough to make this fan worry about where this game is heading. I’ll stress apparent, if that perception is wrong why don’t you correct it with an explanation of why racketing up the frustration levels for an already challenging game is good for anyone but the elite among the player base. (Ruining the game for the majority because of pressures by the elite that there be more of an “end game” is not an excuse. The elite always complain about end game and move on. Even if you buy another month or two of time for the elite, that’s nothing compared the the losses among “the rest of us” as you tune the game to the wrong portion of the population).

Excellent post; ty for summing up exactly how I feel but have been too frustrated to put it down in ink.

I’ve only just started paying attention to this forum. From reading a variety of Dev posts I can’t help but get the uncomfortable feeling that rather than playing a commercial game, I’ve been invited at my expense to play someone else’s (Dev) hobby.

Wethospu.6437:

After running every path just once:
Again, I can solo Spider Queen on my full-glass melee Warrior. If your team has issues with Queen perhaps you should analyze what you are doing wrong.
If knocks are issue then dodge better.
Hatchling changes are good, can’t just ignore them now. Shutting down Breeder is a lot more important.
Silvers have less health, who can complain about this?
Howling King was easy, three manned it. You can just run around and they hardly catch you.
Ghost Eater was bit weird, idea is nice but execution might be a problem (we just pulled it to one trap which means oozes spawned right on the trap so we had to just hover them).
Colossus was bit problematic. Relying on melee NPC, well, is very unreliable.

But I can see it being problematic because just facerolling seems quite hard (until you guys figure out some exploits).

The problem with your “argumentation” is that you do not seem to realize that your skill obviously is a good deal above average, and that not everyone with a skill below average is able to become as good. Instead of being glad that you are good at the game, you seem to feel the need to bash at those people who cannot control their character as well as you can, even when they try hard. Implying that people who have problems staying alive just suck and “faceroll” is rude and unneeded. Also your generalizing remark about “you guys” finding some exploits is pretty arrogant.

The dungeon with its current skill level would be ok if implemented as a challenge to level 80 players (who have decent gear and a good deal of experience). As an entry level dungeon with an (explicitly stated) “Level 35” requirement it seems more like a bad joke.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

JungleNin.8379:

It’s bad when even the staff can’t stick to the topic.

I think its worse when staff doesn’t say anything at all, but I can see where you are coming from. Figured I’d post it here since there have been a few threads and posts about it throughout the dungeon forum.

You know what ? Thank you for nerfing those foods, 99.99% of all players I see run some DPS build and used to abuse those foods.

I’m sorry guys but DPS being the only viable build is just kitten I run a Knight’s Tanky build and also play a melee mesmer, so this effects me too but I think it’s for the better of the game. Sigils and on crit effect in general were a bad idea to begin with. You cannot give that much freedom to DPS builds while neglecting everything else.

On the dungeon side of things I think this patch was the most PUG UNfriendly patch ever. Do I hate it ? I do. Do I think it’s that much of an issue ? No, I did not raid in WoW and I refuse to raid in this game too. They gave pugs buffed event chests and yes pugs play 1-2 hours a day so that’s a direct buff for all my casual guildies and those of us who actually go to work and don’t have the time to camp the Maw all day long (like I did on Sundays).

Shikigami.4013:

Wethospu.6437:

After running every path just once:
Again, I can solo Spider Queen on my full-glass melee Warrior. If your team has issues with Queen perhaps you should analyze what you are doing wrong.
If knocks are issue then dodge better.
Hatchling changes are good, can’t just ignore them now. Shutting down Breeder is a lot more important.
Silvers have less health, who can complain about this?
Howling King was easy, three manned it. You can just run around and they hardly catch you.
Ghost Eater was bit weird, idea is nice but execution might be a problem (we just pulled it to one trap which means oozes spawned right on the trap so we had to just hover them).
Colossus was bit problematic. Relying on melee NPC, well, is very unreliable.

But I can see it being problematic because just facerolling seems quite hard (until you guys figure out some exploits).

The problem with your “argumentation” is that you do not seem to realize that your skill obviously is a good deal above average, and that not everyone with a skill below average is able to become as good. Instead of being glad that you are good at the game, you seem to feel the need to bash at those people who cannot control their character as well as you can, even when they try hard. Implying that people who have problems staying alive just suck and “faceroll” is rude and unneeded. Also your generalizing remark about “you guys” finding some exploits is pretty arrogant.

The dungeon with its current skill level would be ok if implemented as a challenge to level 80 players (who have decent gear and a good deal of experience). As an entry level dungeon with an (explicitly stated) “Level 35” requirement it seems more like a bad joke.

They should just make every explorable level 80 and implement up-scaling. Or make that entry-level dungeons have worse rewards than “real” dungeons. Yeah, no good money mobs, no tokens and so on.

I’m well aware that most of you guys suck, some even so horribly that they don’t try to improve. Still, if I can solo something (and quite easily btw) it should give some hint about the real difficulty.
It really boils down to how one thinks how dungeons should be. On my solo-journeys I have noticed that I will do much better and get stuff done much faster when I just walk to enemy and see what it does, intentionally let it hit me and try figure out how to avoid that. This is exactly what I love to see more. It doesn’t take special skill to research monsters, reset and prepare accordingly (not even for current AC).
On the other hand, some (you?) want them to be like you can just go unprepared without needing to learn mechanics/bosses (this is what I refer with facerolling) and still win. And this is the very reason we are seeing so many complaints.
I realize it’s not nice that everyone can’t do it and I think there should be better learning curve (generally). But truth is, I’m all up for a challenge and that’s design I will support.

And I have noticed that when an encounter forces people to learn and analyze it they rather find exploits (arah p3 lanterns anyone?, ac stairs?, list goes on), and yes, usually get huge problems if they have to do it properly.

arah p3 lanterns anyone

Painball gets tedious after the 2nd time you do it. Just saying.

Another tedious boss then.

Wethospu.6437:

They should just make every explorable level 80 and implement up-scaling. Or make that entry-level dungeons have worse rewards than “real” dungeons. Yeah, no good money mobs, no tokens and so on.

I’m well aware that most of you guys suck, some even so horribly that they don’t try to improve. Still, if I can solo something (and quite easily btw) it should give some hint about the real difficulty.
It really boils down to how one thinks how dungeons should be. On my solo-journeys I have noticed that I will do much better and get stuff done much faster when I just walk to enemy and see what it does, intentionally let it hit me and try figure out how to avoid that. This is exactly what I love to see more. It doesn’t take special skill to research monsters, reset and prepare accordingly (not even for current AC).
On the other hand, some (you?) want them to be like you can just go unprepared without needing to learn mechanics/bosses (this is what I refer with facerolling) and still win. And this is the very reason we are seeing so many complaints.
I realize it’s not nice that everyone can’t do it and I think there should be better learning curve (generally). But truth is, I’m all up for a challenge and that’s design I will support.

And I have noticed that when an encounter forces people to learn and analyze it they rather find exploits (arah p3 lanterns anyone?, ac stairs?, list goes on), and yes, usually get huge problems if they have to do it properly.

100% agreed with everything you say.

Yesterday I tried to solo ac explo on my lvl 35 warrior. I was able to kill a breeder on my first try. It required interrupt and that’s it. No kiting, no special setup. Just 1 utility interrupt and auto atak. On ther other hand, if you don’t interrupt, you are dead. This is good change.

But this makes me think that it is absolutely possible to do that dungeon with a group of lvl 35 characters. (Although having full rare gear is a big help).

I just see one problem with the dungeons in this game. It is far too easy for a half-decent party of glass cannons to group up mobs and perm stun lock them for an easy aoe nuke and instant win. This trivializes some part of the content very much. This is why I prefer doing dungoens with friends that are not very good and don’t know about exploits than in PUG :/ Even if that means running the dungeon with fewer ppl and doing it much longer. I hope anet solves that problem somehow…

Dodges and stun-breaks for enemies.

So last night we tried the path 2 AC, for the first time since the patch of course. Here’s my opinion on the changes:

- We had lvl 44 guardian (rebuilding his lvl 80 guardian for looks/race, experienced AC runner on various toons), lvl 80 warrior (soldier, experienced AC runner on various toons), lvl 80 engineer (inexperienced, not full exotic/rare), lvl 73 engineer (very inexperienced) and I brought my lvl 80 necro (cleric tank/well/mark) ’cause I heard some stuff and we were doing path 2.

- Firstly: I have an older system, run at relatively low settings at 1680×1050 and am quite used to FPS drops, but these mass spawns and additional particles/effects made things a lot harder. Add to that mobs that don’t render and massive amounts of CC and I’m a pretty sad panda, no matter how experienced I am.

- So we start at the spider queen: our very inexperienced member triggered the queen before we were even through the first gargoyles, so we wipe and npc is downed. That continued a few times, we had to wipe the team to kill enough of the hatchlings to even try and cope with the new queen set. Our warrior with 2H tanked her melee, our guardian couldn’t, our engineers were so squishie I had to spend most of my time healing them and getting their conditions off, rather then help with the actual killing. In the end we decided it was easier to not res the engineers and just tank spank her with 3 peeps. Not so much fun for the newbies.

- Champ Stalker: I had 9 fps just spammed my marks and wells, I heard it was going ok.

- Kohler: we decided to not even try a quick run, but test his new set up: it took us about as long, but the fight is a lot more entertaining (although certain combinations of adds make it really hard on lowbies). Again, my colour blindness and fps combined with certain adds makes it very hard for me to see kohler’s animations, but it’s not like my necro dies to his combo anyway.

- Mobs between the boss location and Kohler: quite annoying with all the cc and again so many mobs at once makes my fps drop to uncomfortably low compared to even wvw. We decide to not do the champ scavenger, some of us have families and couldn’t stay on for too long, so I bashed my creeps through him and we ran through. Takes a very long time for the mobs to reset, I can see you really want us to kill those.

- Defending Detha: this was easier in my opinion, but more importantly a lot more fun with what seemed like easier, but more mobs. Obviously our inexperienced squishy peeps needed some help, but that was fine.

- Ghost Eater: fun concept, little buggy, very hard to target him sometimes (again, fps, colour blindness but also amount of adds). Tricky to see the pain he can sometimes cause with/due to his AoE’s, but I managed to keep most of us up.

Rewards were crap, blues again (no magic find gear/food) and only 2-3 greens for the entire party, but we ran it for monthly and tears anyway.

In the end it was more annoying due to the buggy GE, the almost unforgiving Queen fight and the mob CC. I don’t dislike change, or increasing difficulty, but I don’t like it when those changes make it harder to show newbies/lowbies the ropes (or crash my fps).

I’ve just done a couple more runs.

Are Breeders/Burrows meant to spawn infinite mobs. There were a few times where a single player got left against a breeder and a burrow, after people had died, and I think at one point I had around 50-60 mobs following me and my FPS dropped off the face of the earth.

So nice update.

- Less people doing dungeons.
- Less viable builds.
- Almost impossible to do at the rated and recommended level.
- Nerfing things without feedback from the players and nothing to compensate. (Aka nerfing builds.)

I’d say this is very successful.

The statement at start is even ridiculous. “Standing there in full berserker’s tanking named with the food?” make a video and prove it to me, all the dungeons I have done unless your talking about old AC and CoF Path 1-2 (which are so easy, anyone can still do that.). I am in full “Knight’s Gear” (Which apparently has more toughness then berserkers! that should mean more survivability right?) and often I would have to cancel to dodge out of the way of AOEs and knockdown mobs because they would just one shot me before I could do anything.

To be honest, if the zones you designed are that easy, its not the foods problem, its yours for making the AOE not significant enough, its called “bad design.”

Which is exactly what I think of when I go into CoF and old AC, it was stupid easy anyone could do it.

But saying they could just face-tank named when there is tons of CC/Knockdown/Anything dangerous like in harder dungeons and fractals? That is ridiculous. In berserker gear, any burst dps would destroy you.

If you wanted to nerf the food, you could of done it in many ways. I will give you one right now! “make it scale good with toughness!” that way it doesn’t benefit full zerkers as much but benefits tanks a lot more! Toughness could use a buff anyways!

This is simply my feed-back though, however I don’t have any desire to step foot into a new dungeon since my play-style was destroyed, unless warriors gain some sustain i’m pretty much done playing one, its not simply fun anymore. (I could also beg a Guardian to come help me, since that is apparently what i’m suppost to do now…)

Interesting Food/Mechanics/Runes/Sigils/Builds and Customization keep people in the game, and all I see from you guys are basicly cookie-cuttering everyone into 2-3 builds, its very lazy and sloppy in my opinion. PvP/PvE will never be balanced unless you make everyone the same.

Here it goes for my comments

Arah path 4:

• Simin: you nerfed her WAY too much

Arah path 3:

• First boss, nice thinking on the modifications. But seriously ? resurecting any kind of monsters ? You DO know that means you actually CAN’T kill the roaming patrols to clean up the room ? Also, it is a pain in the kitten if you want to separate the hunter and the crusher. If your aim is to get people to use stun breaking mechanics to escape from the killing blow then it is OKAY, I think. However, please make the room more spacious or just don’t pop the roaming patrols until the boss is killed. The other day we had to kill the patrol, the boss and the sucker kept rezzing every last one of them, took us a while to down it.
• Second boss, seems like we can’t stay in the same place anymore. NICE

Arah path 2:

• exploit still available

Arah path 1:

• haven’t ran it yet sorry

I challenge the designers to spec out a group of 5 level 35 characters with random world blues and greens and complete these paths without an excessive number of wipes.

Explorable mode most certainly is not dialed in to level 35 players.

I’ve only managed to run p3 so far… and while I liked most of the changes, almost all our parties frustration revovled around Grast.

1. You basically get one good shot at Rumblus when Grast is at full health. If he dies it is extremely frustrating to make another attempt. He runs full bore back at CR with half health ready or not… after the party has likely used a good bit of their defensive cooldowns to stay alive long enough to rez him.

2. Consistently Grast would NOT use his shield when CR would use his rock attack. I’d see CR wind up his attack and instead of shielding Grast would be using his sloooooooow wind up hammer attack. Then the whole party, including Grast, gets knocked down and wiped. This caused a vast majority of our failed attempts