Guild Wars 2

The dungeons now are getting too Hard within explorer mode we tried to do AC and CM and both were extremely hard and some points within it where 20 adds were coming and then when you placed the stuff it takes it back to the start and then the bills to get your armour fixed are too high. also the way point travel is now going to 3 silver for me and the ones that are close to your cost alot. please fix this because I cant get this armour I want with this many problems

The same happened to me, there are serious issues with the game.

Dungeons are so bloody hard to do, alot of the mobs can one shot most characters.
Armor repair bill is sky high obviously a way to make us need to use silver up then having to resort to buying gems which is a Facebook games tactic.
Waypoint travel is sky high again, forcing us to spend up silver.
The drops from events and dungeons are usually poor.

These factors would easily push players away.

Anet specifically stated that these dungeons will be difficult they are not impossible but they are hard what exactly did you want a premade faceroll team like other mmo’s or a real challenge. If you have anything less than 5 80’s with vent your chances of success are low. When you finish a path once you get between and your repair bill goes down. There’s no need to swear and curse because you are failing get yourself setup with a good guild/team and actually get somewhere for your efforts .

Sorry SBBLogic, but i don’t see any problems here dungeons are just fine it was really hard when we ran them at lvl 40 or so and yes it’s very hard doing it for the 1st time, but now we are lvl 80 and we are always on TeamSpeak. Doing Ascalon runs aprox 20-30 mins each with few to none deaths so the money is good you just need to find the right tactics/learn to dodge etc. and yes it’s extremely hard to do it with random people not on Vent/TS. Our team done all the dungeons explorable modes up to Arah. Cant wait till Arah is fixed and we can get in and go on with exploration Don’t expect to get lvl 80 exotic armor sets with nice cosmetics easily you have to put a lot of effort in to it.

To ZxYViperz: Stop whining, prices are good it keeps challenge, don’t expect to be a millionaire in a month. Dawn price is sky high because it’s part of LEGENDARY it’s not ordinary exotic weapon, try to make one for your self you’ll see how hard and costy it can be. And i know what i’m talking about I have explored 100% of the map already, i’m full in lvl 80 exotics, and i’m not to short on money. Story line is perfect except Zaithan fight and very last reward

ANYONE who says “dungeons are just fine” are full of it. The dungeons are absurd, and I’m now at the point of telling EVERYONE DO NOT BUY THIS GAME. Dungeons are not fun anymore, and now only exclusionary groups are running them, thus if your class and traits are not perfect, combined with all yellows, and level 80’s do not attempt it. I don’t care as a player, if people speed farm, normal players cannot complete these, nor do they devote their lives to complete them. Evading attacks is irrelivant when the mobs are faster, spam skills faster, massive AOE’s, and deal enough damage to 2 shot you. You might think you have my money, but what you lose are any costs related to GEM’s. Eventually this will affect your bottom line, and I know I’m not alone here.

Stop being bad? The dungeons are super hard to learn and figure out the best ways to do many of them. This is a bug forum anyway, try posting things like this:

One issue I have seen that has been pretty breaking is that the hitboxes for the burrows on Tzark’s path ( And for some reason, only the burrows in the lovers room) are erratic, and near impossible to hit. Hodgins’ burrows are just fine, but the burrows in Tzark’s are a pain, even when hitting them in the same spots we hit the burrows in the other rooms. Seems to only work when moving, and even then we still wiff on half the hits. Casters and ground targeting seems to be the only effective method. Seems highly unlikely that these specific burrows should have different stats than the ones that spawn elsewhere in the dungeon. Also, have seen many members get knocked into a wall, unable to get out, many times on the first two burrows.

Report things like that here, go gripe about how you can’t learn how to effectively overcome a challenge on the WoW forums.

I’ve seen mutiple issues with dungeons, they are not fine and some areas make it worse.

For example the keg part of CM explorer. They instantly respawn, instantly go for the kegs you drop, 8 enemies, some that can kill players without heavy armor in seconds when they all focus you.

The Dungeons have serious issues and the price on repairs and waypoint also have issues.

Your level 80 doesn’t make much of a difference when the dungeons are scaled down in nearly all.

As for Teamspeak, I always do Teamspeak for dungeons and it still doesn’t assist to make dungeons better.

@ kettle, I agree that there are technical issues with the dungeons. But in terms of light gear being focused a warrior with and the right utilities can absorb 10 seconds of damage without loosing HP and without leaking enemies onto teammates. These simple tactics can make or break dungeon events . You seriously need to make use of everyone’s skill and if it fails try again . No dungeon bugs aren’t fine but the difficulty level is. Just think outside the box. PS scaled 80’s are FAR stronger than par levels for the dungeon.

There are very few posts saying that dungeons are fun. There is a small a handful of defenders of the difficulty who post in all the forums saying they are too hard. They also don’t ever seem to pug them.

Dungeons are difficult. They are brutal, the enemy move tells are horrendous. You are often outnumbered with trash mobs that hit far harder than you do or even can in the best of gear along with silvers and golds who hit much harder and one shot.

When its 8 vs 5 or even more than that and many of the mobs one shot, and player cc (I guess they should all just be called interrupts, only a couple even last more than 3 seconds, not enough time to actually down anything) options few and far between and underpowered in durations, they just are not fun. They seriously the one part of the game that is least well implemented, imho. For those few who actually farm and complete them, grats. I don’t really understand the design goals in them nor how they are doable by any party makeup. I’ve read the guides, I’ve had smooth runs as a filler in a pre-made group. They only seem to run well with specific cores and multiple players who already have gone through the pain and suffering of learning them who are also willing to explain them. The learning curve is very high. I only ever try to finish the story mode, then never want to see them again.

What is usually my favorite part of an mmo, is something I despise in this game when learning one for the first time, and honestly what is ruining my enjoyment of the game. I’ve seen about 50 players quit now, seen entire guilds move on, all of whom farmed them simply for the tokens and their gear (which they got) then said this game broke what I love about mmo’s. Its not about the loss of the trinity, its the difficulty level in dungeons and inaccessibility of accomplishment for a large part of the player base. They just are not fun, even when you know the strategies.

Pretty much every single run I’ve run has essentially the same two strategies. 1. focus the annoying ones (that most parties all disagree on) then try to hide or not take aggro, dps when you can, dodge if a circle is under you, and if its coming at you stun/fear/kb and run. or 2. wing it as number 1 and death zerg it.

I think it bounces from what it seems

AC Ghosteater(?) is insanely easy

HoTW – Butcher/Plunder both insanely easy (though they have a sizeable chunk of hp)

TA is exploit heaven (Devs needs to fix some of these)

Other dungeons I don’t know, but those ones I usually run (because everyone on the server pugs those) aren’t tough at all. They just aren’t.

the early dungeons that you mentioned can be especially rough in comparison to the later ones, but never, ever ‘too hard’.

i’ve done all of CM’s explore modes multiple times as i wanted a few dungeon pieces and for the most part, the groups usually succeed. of course there’re always portions of the run that are particularly challenging (mob group that spawns at waypoint in seraph run), but not impossible. i’m not boasting, but it is a fact that a few of the runs progressed with little to no death. so it’s definitely not impossible with a few deaths here and there. the runs that were just horrendous ie, wipe, respawn, wipe respawn 10x, just had poor players/class combo/group support.

and mind you my char is a melee thief so there are a few things that can 2-shot me like the two snipers on the platforms in the butler run. in this situation, i can either throw a blind screen and range it, or a tanky class can take aggro. experience also makes a world of difference.

point is, these dungeons can and are constantly being cleared. if there’s a hold up in your dungeon run, then someone/something in your group is lacking whether it be yourself, another member, or your coordination.

not every run is guaranteed to be successful, especially with a crappy group. the dungeons aren’t meant to be a cakewalk which is what they will become if they catered to the crappy groups. the fact that you’ve cleared some runs means you’ve had groups that were doing it right and witnessed yourself how doable they are.

Seriously people who says Dungeons on this game are all hard are those with IQ of 1 digit.

The problem with dungeons is mostly that this game never really attempts to teach you how these mechanics work. Literally every other aspect of the game, from dynamic events to hearts to gathering to PVP, are casual. You jump in and out when you want, and there’s never much real danger.

Then you get into dungeons and suddenly, you’re expected to know all these strategies and ideas, and you are brutally punished for not knowing these things. The monsters have way too much health, and their abilities rarely have enough telegraphing to say “Hey, stupid, dodge this!”

Don’t get me wrong, the dungeons become infinitely simpler once you figure it out. But then you still have to contend with the monsters having too much HP, turning the encounters from “hard but interesting” to “long and boring” with the added frustration that if you goof up because you accidentally tap your dodge key or something before you meant to, you get smeared across the floor.

The dungeons aren’t “fun” for a huge portion of the player base. They don’t want to spend two or three hours trying to learn mechanics in an extremely punishing environment for a handful of blues and greens, and a helm they’ll never use. You can throw your hands up and complain about “casuals ruin everything!” or “only hardcore jerks want to spend five hours in a dungeon!” but just because something is getting cleared doesn’t mean it is in a good place overall. Personally, I don’t want to have to block out 2.5 hours of evening to learn Twilight Arbor for the first time. That’s not fun, it’s not enjoyable. The result is that it drags and when I finally get to the end, I’m frankly glad it’s over and consider myself unsure if I want to even bother with the explorable modes.

These dungeons are doable in their current form, but they are supremely aggravating in many ways. They need a good deal of readjustment to bring them into an area where they are challenging, fun, and interesting at once.

Roctod.7290:

The problem with dungeons is mostly that this game never really attempts to teach you how these mechanics work. Literally every other aspect of the game, from dynamic events to hearts to gathering to PVP, are casual. You jump in and out when you want, and there’s never much real danger.

True. I don’t have that much problem with dungeons – finished all SM w/o much issues, and doing explorable paths atm, but I always do dungeons/instances in all the MMO’s I played and I just sorta had “known” what to do. The regular game just doesn’t do what dungeons do – at all. I will say they TRY to teach you basic mechanics though. A script is a script no matter where you go.

Take the Shadow Behemoth – It teaches players Red circles are bad (First major fight in that area where you might have to pay attention to them) because of the AE in it. But that just isn’t enough – You can’t teach players to assist targs (and what to use assist on) correctly just from that, it has to be learned the hard way.

Roctod.7290:

The dungeons aren’t “fun” for a huge portion of the player base. They don’t want to spend two or three hours trying to learn mechanics in an extremely punishing environment for a handful of blues and greens, and a helm they’ll never use.

Explorables don’t give helmets as rewards. But you DO bring up a point I have in the past. Story mode is too hard for what it is supposed to be. Story mode takes longer than most explorable paths. They should have made SM a solo instance from the start and explorable the true group instances. People interested purely in lore and story might not want to deal with TA final boss and learning to use assist on Eir first then boss etc. They are in it for Lore. To put such a key story part in it was a bad decision.

The loot of course doesn’t make up for it as well.

Roctod.7290:

the result is that it drags and when I finally get to the end, I’m frankly glad it’s over and consider myself unsure if I want to even bother with the explorable modes.

You will be SHOCKED when you see how easy some of these explorable paths can be. some can be done in 30 mins and have very little chance of death. It is like night and day.

Some paths are brutal though, but most PuGs go for the super easy ones so most players should be fine.

Am I missing something? Isn’t waypointing in dungeons free..? Why does OP complain about 3 Silver waypoints?

@ roctod – Then go back to wow dude go back to what is safe and has been done 4 trillion times you know your role you know what to expect no suprises put your brain into autopilot. The rest of us will devise ways to make our runs work get creative and squeeze fun out of them just like we did in gw1.

For those who do farm how many different paths do you take? just one of the 3 or all 3? Near as I can tell the farming paths are few out of many and the dev who designed them is a partial sadist. This comment comes from a dev who has shipped more units than Anet will ever hope to ship, even counting their current sales numbers.

Sevati.6724:

For those who do farm how many different paths do you take? just one of the 3 or all 3?

Depends on what the group wants or needs. If were farming we obviously take the easy route. But we just did the hardest path in CoF today mainly to get the acheezement for the dungeon.

Also that comment about shipping: You do know what that makes you look like right? Here is a hint: It isn’t nice.

The dungeon difficulty mentality is an ironic philosophy that’s not an inclusive philosophy. This sort of feels like WoW Cata at the start, drop in players with limited play time being left out of content.

Having purchased this game for PvP only, I’m in the camp that’s fine with PvE content being nerf’d to care bear status. Let the casual players have their cake and fun.

Dead.7385:

Words

Yeah, I’m sure the explorables aren’t quite as rough (in general). These dungeons just leave a bad taste because, in my opinion, they bleed over into “heartbreakingly difficult” due to seeing many of these mechanics for the first time in dungeons.

Sure, the Shadow Behemoth teaches you the GW2 equivalent of WoW’s old adage: Fire = Bad. And the giant at Nageling Point in Diessa teaches you to look for enemy animations to dodge. But the animations in dungeons are really really difficult to catch because they are often woefully short animations hidden behind players, player effects, ground effects, and particle effects. Take the rangers in Ascalonian Catacombs. Their “hey get away from this!” animation is the white smoke trailing behind their trap shot. I ran the story mode with guildmates several times before I actually realized “oh THAT’S how you dodge this stuff” because there was just so much going on.

I don’t much mind if the dungeons are going to be difficult, but right now, it strikes me as an artificial difficulty. The dungeons are only hard because: 1) The monsters have boatloads of HP; 2) they can all nearly one-shot everything in the game if you miss the animation tells; 3) The mechanics are usually something you’re seeing for the first time. Once you figure out how to deal with 2 and 3, the encounters then just become a slogfest due to 1.

The aggro mechanics strike me as obtuse, as well. The game’s done away with a holy trinity, which is fine with me. I enjoy it. But the result is that maintaining all the monsters or trying to keep them off less-armored players is an exercise in futility. Look at the end of Twilight Arbor’s story mode. It is painfully simple for people to get wiped out through no fault of their own because Logan decides to bleed one person who is at low health while Rytlock knocks someone else down as Zojja and Eir smoke them from afar. There’s no easy way to control the encounter, especially since most of the control abilities the classes have are short durations on cooldowns long enough that makes effective rotation require flawless coordination.

These all combine to make runs kind of a frustration. Personally, I think if the HP and damage of trash creatures was reduced while giving them abilities that reflect boss mechanics would go a long way to solving the problem. I also think giving boss monsters slightly larger models (like how Rift or WoW did), it would eliminate the “can’t see boss animation cues” problem significantly.

Booler.6598:

@ roctod – Then go back to wow dude go back to what is safe and has been done 4 trillion times you know your role you know what to expect no suprises put your brain into autopilot. The rest of us will devise ways to make our runs work get creative and squeeze fun out of them just like we did in gw1.

Did you actually read anything I said, or did you just decide you wanted to trip over yourself to be the first to make a disparaging comment about WoW?

Roctod.7290:

These all combine to make runs kind of a frustration. Personally, I think if the HP and damage of trash creatures was reduced while giving them abilities that reflect boss mechanics would go a long way to solving the problem. I also think giving boss monsters slightly larger models (like how Rift or WoW did), it would eliminate the “can’t see boss animation cues” problem significantly.

fully agree with this

I did ac exp first week of the release and it must’ve taken me like 3 hours to complete, bear in mind I was level 40. At level 80 though I can breeze my way through it as I usually run with a coordinated leader that knows the paths very well. Path 2 with the burrows was a struggle with 5 80’s as we could not get the coordination right. Moreover, when I did the same path again with a level 62 and four 80’s it was a lot smoother, it is all about coordination.

@roctod I just get kittened off because everything you elude to is that you want bosses to scream i’m going to destroy you now, i understand your post but if you look at wow as i mentioned the first time raids were done this is exactly what the people would be thinking one little slip up and bam entire team wiped with an extremely small window to do anything with UNTIL someone developed deadly boss mobs making everyone more lazy and less creative then becomes the dungeon standard to have this finger feeding program installed. Gw wont allow such programs and hence all of these things you claim you learn after 2 or 3 attempts will always take you 2 or 3 attempts there are no shortcuts to this, and i am glad there isn’t. Fun shouldn’t be determined by conquering simple mechanics but by achieving something difficult. an underlying reason people get no fun from these dungeons is the small rewards you just don’t want to do it again because you don’t really get anything from it especially an extremely rare drop. repair bills are fine no pain no gain. the thing i was trying to say is that if you do use out of the box tactics you can control aggro for small periods of time mostly long enough to make a difference if the weaker people in your group start taking damage walk right out of the room and return. i wont give you every out for every situation but that’s how we completed many of these and we all had fun. gl

Tungsten Monarch.6058:

ANYONE who says “dungeons are just fine” are full of it. The dungeons are absurd, and I’m now at the point of telling EVERYONE DO NOT BUY THIS GAME. Dungeons are not fun anymore, and now only exclusionary groups are running them, thus if your class and traits are not perfect, combined with all yellows, and level 80’s do not attempt it. I don’t care as a player, if people speed farm, normal players cannot complete these, nor do they devote their lives to complete them. Evading attacks is irrelivant when the mobs are faster, spam skills faster, massive AOE’s, and deal enough damage to 2 shot you. You might think you have my money, but what you lose are any costs related to GEM’s. Eventually this will affect your bottom line, and I know I’m not alone here.

You dont need to be hardcore bro. If you want, ill add you along to my dungeon group and I can show you how they are done =). At the moment, AC EM is farm mode, and I not longer have to bring my mace / shield vit build, but can go full greatsword DPS build

Some general, overall, tips:

1) Always revive DOWNED players if possible, leave the DEAD players alone.

2) Bring at least 1 stun break ability and 1 condition removal ability. You can swap these out depending on the fight though

3) Dont watch your skill bar, watch whats happening on screen. (I find this hard for most players, even myself, as this was trained and ingrained in us my most other MMOs. You need to be aware of your surroundings) All bosses and trash mobs have a tell or animation that precedes most hard hitting and 1-shot abilities, and you need to keep an eye out for this.

4) Conserve dodge when possible. Dont use it unless in cases of #3

Let me know if your interested =). Ill get you your AC exotics and it will be fun to boot

Dead.7385:

….
HoTW – Butcher/Plunder both insanely easy (though they have a sizeable chunk of hp)
…..

They changed this recently. They made this path challenging now =)

For all you forcing players away by telling them to go back to wow, you are ruining your own game because the odds are they will do exactly that, for many this game is an escape from wow but in it’s current state it will not keep players entertained for long. Just some food for thought.

“These all combine to make runs kind of a frustration. Personally, I think if the HP and damage of trash creatures was reduced while giving them abilities that reflect boss mechanics would go a long way to solving the problem. I also think giving boss monsters slightly larger models (like how Rift or WoW did), it would eliminate the “can’t see boss animation cues” problem significantly.”

I would definitely not be opposed to that. Learning cues can sometimes be frustrating and for bosses that you do learn them it is a nice feeling. I remember when I was farming Pre-Nerfed CM for PLing/Cash I learned all the slight tells on the Robot boss which was interested. And bigger baddies are always more fun to smack on anyway.

Personally TA was my favorite fight across the board. Maybe the AC trap fight in a very close second (nothing beats kiting billions of little guys to their death)

“They changed this recently. They made this path challenging now =)”

So they are updating fights up a bit? That seems like great news to me. I haven’t run them in awhile even though I still need to farm it (at this point I don’t want to bother people to farm dungeons they have seen before since in the end I do fine with the gear I have), but I might have to check that out.

Booler.6598:

@roctod I just get kittened off because everything you elude to is that you want bosses to scream i’m going to destroy you now, i understand your post but if you look at wow as i mentioned the first time raids were done this is exactly what the people would be thinking one little slip up and bam entire team wiped with an extremely small window to do anything with UNTIL someone developed deadly boss mobs making everyone more lazy and less creative then becomes the dungeon standard to have this finger feeding program installed. Gw wont allow such programs and hence all of these things you claim you learn after 2 or 3 attempts will always take you 2 or 3 attempts there are no shortcuts to this, and i am glad there isn’t. Fun shouldn’t be determined by conquering simple mechanics but by achieving something difficult. an underlying reason people get no fun from these dungeons is the small rewards you just don’t want to do it again because you don’t really get anything from it especially an extremely rare drop. repair bills are fine no pain no gain. the thing i was trying to say is that if you do use out of the box tactics you can control aggro for small periods of time mostly long enough to make a difference if the weaker people in your group start taking damage walk right out of the room and return. i wont give you every out for every situation but that’s how we completed many of these and we all had fun. gl

No, I don’t want bosses to scream “I’m attacking you now” then give 5 seconds to get away. What I want is for the mechanics to be less obtuse and more easily accessible. The people who enjoy brutal learning curves with little to no margin of error and are willing to spend 4 hours learning a dungeon are a small minority. This is a game, not a second job. If I have to work late or run errands on a week night, should I just not be able to try a new dungeon since I can’t stay up til midnight just to slog my way through a dungeon of mechanics that have never been introduced before?

Nobody is asking for a DBM equivalent either, but do you know why DBM was created for WoW? It’s because the mechanics in vanilla were obtuse. Look at old Naxx40. That raid is, what, seven or eight years old at this point, and people STILL argue over how Patchwerk’s Hateful Strike mechanic functioned.

Look at AC story, and the lovers. Sure, the mechanic here is very obvious: split them apart. But you have no idea that’s the case until you get there, and you may not have realized you can use the heck out of boulders. Instead of having more generic, overpowered trash before them, why not set up a couple pulls of ghosts that provide buffs to each other when nearby? This gives the group the chance to learn mechanic, figure out a strategy, and coordinate better. Instead, you get stuffed by a chaotic fight wherein you can get completely wiped out by Ralena’s lightning storm before you even hit the dodge key while trying to deal with Vassar’s illusory mages while trying to keep them apart.

Or the second champion in Twilight Arbor who summons all the spiders. It took us a couple runs to figure out “oh, you’re supposed to kite the spiders” because the monster tag is “poisons” and that’s really unclear. I assumed they poisoned on melee strike. You know, like every other mob that has “Poisons” as a tag. Except nope, these are poison bombs that slowly lose health, which you also might not realize because the difference between “lose health naturally” and “lose health because I’m putting down damaging spells” is not noticeable. There’s no prep for this to be a kiting fight, and melee especially gets completely wrecked.

Again, if they stuck in a couple pulls with necromancers that summon spiders that detonate into poison AoEs, the mechanic would come out a little clearer. You see it, you learn it, and you do it without having your hand held or needing a mod. And even through all this, the creatures all still have too much HP. Once you figure out that champion, everyone can stay alive but it’s a 10 minute slog of people running around autoattacking with a ranged weapon while occasionally dropping a weapon or utility skill on him.

I like this game, and I enjoy a challenge. But I want the challenge to be a real challenge; I don’t want it to be artificially inflated due to cheesy mechanics and overtuned health pools.

Simply put Anet, fix these kitten dungeons. They’re too hard, time consuming, not very rewarding. I’m sick of them!

You say you got rid of the holy trinity, well look what happens… each fight turns into a mess. I’m not saying you should put the holy trinity back in, but do something to make it easier for people to understand what and how to do these dungeons.

They’re hard at first, but once you learn them they’re fairly easy to rinse and repeat with minimal death…. Most of my experience has been such. They’re like an investment where you have to sink capital (time and money) in order to learn them because once you know how to do them you can make pretty good money and tokens off them. I do agree that some encounters are unnecessarily long when they’re only 1-phase fights.

But to say it can be exclusionary when partying up I find somewhat true. You don’t need all 80’s and vent, but you do need to listen, cooperate with each other, and be ready to do things you might not be accustomed to doing with your toon. The exclusion is not just level and vent availability but classes. I’ve had people turn me down just cause I’m an engineer (with no other engineers in their party)… like seriously?

kaotiktheory.8942:

Simply put Anet, fix these kitten dungeons. They’re too hard, time consuming, not very rewarding. I’m sick of them!

You say you got rid of the holy trinity, well look what happens… each fight turns into a mess. I’m not saying you should put the holy trinity back in, but do something to make it easier for people to understand what and how to do these dungeons.

They’re not hard to understand in the first place. Those that can’t grasp that they need to watch for tells, dodge, and adapt don’t understand the basics of the game’s combat in the first place. You wouldn’t believe how often I see dungeon pugs failing to understand the rally and revive mechanics. They will start reviving downed players when a mob is nearly dead and could be used to rally, or start beating on a full life mob in a failed attempt to rally a dead player.

A lot of players also seem to fail to understand that no player is meant to take excessive hits, no matter how much vitality and toughness you pump into yourself. If a mob turns to attack you, you stop trying to do damage and start acting defensively or else you will go down.

When you die, ask yourself a couple of questions…
1. Did the attack I died to have a tell? If so, learn that tell and use it to avoid the attack.
2. Did I die from being focused? If so, learn to watch when mobs face you and become defensive when it happened (Dodged, kite, control, LoS, heal, CD, ect)
3. Did I die from AoE? If so, don’t stand in red circles.

Also, I found dungeons extremely rewarding, not only for the fact that my group overcame difficult encounters (Doing exp AC, we figured out after a few wipes on Lieutenant Kholer that his pull had a very obvious tell that we could dodge to make the fight much easier, and that felt good) but even with a 16 silver repair, I came out with 40-50 more silver than I went in with as well as the dungeon tokens and a lot of salvageable gear for potential tier 6 crafting materials. I would run it again for the rewards if I didn’t have fun in the first place.

ArenaNet, please don’t nerf the dungeons for the actual kittens that can’t actually learn to play your game, or else teach people how to play your game better.

Bruno Sardine.2907:

They’re hard at first, but once you learn them they’re fairly easy to rinse and repeat with minimal death…. Most of my experience has been such. They’re like an investment where you have to sink capital (time and money) in order to learn them because once you know how to do them you can make pretty good money and tokens off them. I do agree that some encounters are unnecessarily long when they’re only 1-phase fights.

But to say it can be exclusionary when partying up I find somewhat true. You don’t need all 80’s and vent, but you do need to listen, cooperate with each other, and be ready to do things you might not be accustomed to doing with your toon. The exclusion is not just level and vent availability but classes. I’ve had people turn me down just cause I’m an engineer (with no other engineers in their party)… like seriously?

Yeah, it takes some time and practice. I play with a group of friends/guildies, so that we can develop our skills together and never have to say LFG on both public and guild chats. Our runs are typically 30 mins or less once we mastered the paths.

lol @ the turndown because of your profession. That’s just sad that people do that. I see people around AC advertising that they specifically need a heavy armor profession, and they are there after we clear AC a few times, but guess what? We cleared 2 different AC explorables with all medium and light armor professions in less than 30 mins each. People need to realize that it isn’t healthy to bring the group composition mentality of other MMOs into this game because with enough knowledge of the dungeon mechanics, your professions, and group coordination, you can find a way to do the dungeon. Anet essentially promised us that we can just pick up people instead of professions for dungeons, and I find that more true each day. It’s funny when some of my friends ask what they should bring, and I just tell them to bring what’s comfortable and we’ll tweak for the situation.

… Who in their right mind would turn down an engineer?

I think it’s a good thing that exp dungeons are a bit hard.
People doing dungeons mostly for skins and gears and you can kind of stand out with you skins and gears you got from dungeon tokens because you can not get them easily.
You don’s want to see everyone wearing the exactly the same gear.

Well I just did my first ever dungeon run; AC Story with a pug. And wow. I am still in shock at how horrible this experience was.

There was me (elementalist), a warrior, thief, ranger and a guardian being oneshotted about 5 times over on every pull; even after switching to staff just so I could cast geyser/healing rain etc.

The whole thing just made it painfully obvious that no trinity just doesn’t work! You try & pull even just one mob and the whole thing turns into a bursty zerg kittenfest, but hope you’re not doing the most damage, because the mob will turn all its attention to you and come over and one shot you!

Five minutes of complete fail later, gz, you killed one normal mob! Now onto the boss that spawns 15 more of these kittens for no loot worth mentioning!

TL;DR: Dungeons are a chaotic burst russian roulette mode, mob damage is mostly unavoidable due to them being near instant casts, and at the end of it all, all you got was an hour worth of sheer frustration and a nice big repair bill.

COFFIN. NAIL.

Dangerkips.6035:

Well I just did my first ever dungeon run; AC Story with a pug. And wow. I am still in shock at how horrible this experience was.

There was me (elementalist), a warrior, thief, ranger and a guardian being oneshotted about 5 times over on every pull; even after switching to staff just so I could cast geyser/healing rain etc.

The whole thing just made it painfully obvious that no trinity just doesn’t work! You try & pull even just one mob and the whole thing turns into a bursty zerg kittenfest, but hope you’re not doing the most damage, because the mob will turn all its attention to you and come over and one shot you!

Five minutes of complete fail later, gz, you killed one normal mob! Now onto the boss that spawns 15 more of these kittens for no loot worth mentioning!

TL;DR: Dungeons are a chaotic burst russian roulette mode, mob damage is mostly unavoidable due to them being near instant casts, and at the end of it all, all you got was an hour worth of sheer frustration and a nice big repair bill.

COFFIN. NAIL.

You should expect such things since this was you first run.

You can not have a nice and enjoyable first run since dungeons are hard enough to let you have many attempts and practices.

And you can also try to run with you guild mates or friends instead of pugs, you will have an uncomfortable run for sure you all your group members are unexperienced.

I run Arah exp almost everyday with someone I know and we usually had a good time.
Practice more and you will see the difference.

Dungeons are the “RAID” content. Please learn it they shouldn’t be handing out exotics. Cause once you have all the gear your going to complain about LACK of content.

I’m not here to plea for a nerf. I’m just very disillusioned with how the actual game mechanics work. It’s complete chaos.

Where is the “skill” here? Dodging? Running away? Not dps’ing until halfway into the fight?

Dangerkips.6035:

I’m not here to plea for a nerf. I’m just very disillusioned with how the actual game mechanics work. It’s complete chaos.

Where is the “skill” here? Dodging? Running away? Not dps’ing until halfway into the fight?

Here’s some strategies I use with my friends/guildies when we do dungeons.

Basic mob macromanagement:
If you got mobs on you, stack them together, then have your group apply roots/snares, then proceed to AoE. Rinse and repeat until dead.

If you have skills that can push back, you can push isolated mobs into the stack/ball of other mobs. If you have pull skills (i.e. guardian’s binding blade or mesmer’s temporal curtain), you can position the pull point in the stack/ball of other mobs and pull isolated mobs into it.

It’s basically strategical positioning/control. You deal more DPS if you can hit many targets at once, rather than if they were scattered.

Basic mob micromanagement:
Have someone in your group identify and call key targets during the AoE fest (requires prior knowledge of what each mob does). You want to spike down targets that produce adds, kill your group fast, or hinder you from dealing damage effectively. For example, in AC explorable, you may want someone keeping an eye on graveling breeder cues (looks like she’s taking a deep breath and about to scream) and interrupting her before she spawns adds.

Killing low hp targets are also a priority since it can help rally downed players and can reduce the pressure on the team.

Reviving:
Pay attention to your party member UI every now and then. If any of the bars go red (downed state), make sure your team can rally that member quickly, either by killing a near-death mob the downed player can attack or by reviving the downed member. Your team is stronger with more living members. Anticipate downed states before they happen, not after they happen. Defeated party members should usually waypoint, since it’s free and reviving a defeated player in the middle of combat takes too long (still irks me when people yell revive in the defeated state when we’re in combat).

These are just a few things we took the time to understand and learn, but there’s more to it. Just evaluate yourself each time you do a run and look for something to improve.

In AC explorable, as a Guardian, I used to counter Kholer’s pull ability (he pulls you in with a projectile and spins to down/kill you) by using scepter/shield, shield of the avenger, and wall of reflection to counter his pulls for as many teammates as I can. Now, I use stand your ground (stability shout), retreat (aegis shout), and virtue of courage (aegis virtue) to counter Kholer’s pulls, while fighting him at melee with my greatsword. I’ve traded a completely supportive stance to one that allows me to increase my DPS and produce instantaneous results as support. A lot of people have complained that this fight was hard, but we now understand that projectile counters make it much easier.

After trying more dungeon exploring tonight with guildmates, I’m going to reiterate my stance that these dungeons still need a serious tune-up, and frankly, I can’t see myself really bothering with anymore of them if they continue to exist as they are. After 3.5 hours of getting one-shot by trash mobs with special animations you can’t see with player effects going, getting punished by events that spawn too many monsters, and not finishing because we were frustrated, I walked out with about four items (a couple of blues and greens) and ultimately will have had to pay about 20 silver for the pleasure of doing the dungeon (7 silver for trait respecs and 13 silver in repair bills).

That’s not fun. That is not enjoyable, and it is not good game design in a game meant to appeal to thousands and thousands of people. I don’t want to spend 3.5 hours struggling through a dungeon full of obtuse mechanics and cheesy deaths.

The rewards and time investments are not acceptable here. I’m sure that a bunch of people, in their rush to be the first to declare themselves internet superstars, will tell me I’m bad and should just go back to WoW. Here’s the deal: that is not the attitude you should take if you want this game to succeed. Because people will go back to WoW if they aren’t enjoying this game, and you should want them to enjoy it because it means the continued success of this game.

I’m not asking for Arena Net to make these instances braindead, but they are not fun. I didn’t pick up this game because I wanted to get stuck trudging through a dungeon that takes all night. These are painful slogs that irritate a great number of players.

If one of the paths in AC explorable is really you/your group more than an hour, then you’d almost certainly benefit from taking a look at a guide video – you’re probably having problems that are common/serious enough that they’re covered. (May I humbly suggest the one in my sig?)

If you’re still having trouble, or if it doesn’t answer your problem, post again – with SPECIFIC things that are going wrong, or specific points at which the group seems to break down – and we can help.

Either way, best of luck to you.