Guild Wars 2

Hello fellow guild wars 2 dungeoneers,

I see a lot of posts on difficulty, how hard and not hard it is. This is because there is different levels of skills and different experiences with each player. I’ve have not completed all explorable modes yet as I’ve just been focusing on ones that I like the type of gear ‘look’. Right now it’s Arah and Sorrow’s Embrace. I have done others like AC, TA, CoF, CoE but not all paths. I am not a hardcore player; I have a 9-5 job and a wife. I do not get to play all the time. I do however play with friends sometimes all 5, sometimes 2-3 and pug the rest.

With that out of the way here are some tips and tricks I’ve found out through my play to help you guys (may not be the same as your groups). As I’ve seen a lot of posts about “difficulty is fine deal with it” but no comments on how to help these people complaining it’s too hard. Hopefully they want to try and learn.

1. GROUP COMPESITION:
Although there is no holy trinity (Tank, Damage, Healer) you need to cover your bases with what you have. All the classes can cover all the roles from what I’ve seen so you just need to find right players. TANK: A character with high toughness. Yes a Warrior in plate can do the same as a Elementalist in Earth/Water. More than one can help. SUPPORT: As I said before any class can cover these, even a Warrior with Tactics spec can make his shouts heal and give effects. You will need a couple of these types to make these dungeons easier. CONTROL: This can be linked with the tank as well some one to put the mobs together or kite the mobs around with cripples and immobilizes. DAMAGE: Everybody covers this job.

2. BOONS:
Try and get your group to cover multiple boons. Vigor, protection, and regeneration will keep you alive. Try a 100% up time or close to it. Vigor does not need to be 100% but it helps. Might and Fury will increase the damage you do which will in turn make you live longer. Might can stack up to 25 so don’t worry about having too many with it.

3. CONDITIONS:
This is just as important as boons. Weakness is extremely useful and make sure at least one person can keep this condition up 100%. Warriors with Mace for example. It turns criticals into normal hits and normal hits into 50% damage. Frozen reduces cooldowns on the enemy by 66%, less attacks means less damage. Poison reduces healing done which is great for those bosses/enemies that heal. Blind causes the next attack to miss which can be their ‘powerful’ attack.

4. INTERRUPTION:
Most bosses are immune to daze but not the interrupting part of the attack. You can interrupt big attacks in fact route 3 end boss colossus guy you can interrupt his shout that pretty much one-shots everybody but behind him. Once you know this it’s a walk in the park. I don’t know if you can interrupt all big attacks but most I’ve seen you can. This is a huge help to your group.

5. COMBO FIELDS/FINISHERS:
Look up tables if you don’t know what combos with what. These can really help cover areas that you don’t have in your party. Example; you don’t have frozen but a water field plus leap finisher will give the leaper a frozen shield and apply frozen to everything around him. There are ones to give all types of boons, conditions, and healing.

6. BOSS SIGNATURE SKILLS:
Bosses can have skills that one-shot you or your party. These large skills will have ‘tells’. The boss will sparkle, glow, flash, etc. Example: Lieutenant Kohler of AC, his skill he shoots out a roped spear that will pull you and your party in and then proceed to spin and kill, only high toughness characters can roll out in time. This move is preceded by a charge like animation where he pulls his arm back. This gives you indication and timing to dodge out of the way. (I know all the people that played wow need to have a flashing screen with big words ‘Boss is doing this attack now prepare yourself!’ but this game doesn’t have that. Get used to it, it’s not those other games. You have to pay attention.) Really that’s my only point out of this… pay attention.

7. LEVEL 80:
Explorables to me are the end game dungeons, I didn’t even try explorables till I was 80 as the good rewards were level 80 rewards. Not to mean I haven’t been able to complete explorables without level 80s. First time I completed route 3 AC (not having done AC before) I did it with two 80s (not in exotics) 35, 47, and 55. Yes we wiped (you will wipe, I know this is different than you are used to), but we completed the whole instance.

8. CHANGING SKILLS:
Sometimes you will need to change your elite, utilities, healing, and weapon skills to fight certain bosses. I never had to change my traits, but weapons and skills I change often. Don’t stick to one set and be happy with it. This bo

The rewards for dungeons are the same exotics you can get everywhere else, crafting, pvp, karma, random drop chance. The only reason to do these dungeons is for fun and/or you like the look of a certain type of armor. (Yes I have fun doing these instances and working out strats on how to deal with the encounters)

These are not all the tips and/or tricks if you know of others feel free to add

In Conclusion these dungeons are tough and will take time to learn and deal with the new style of mechanics. You may or may not complete an entire dungeon in one night, don’t lose hope! (and don’t come complain on the forums after!) You may not have gained any loot for that night, but you did gain something. You gained knowledge on how to better equip yourself for that encounter, whether it be gear, skills, or information.

- Xhaine, Warrior

good points but several things:

you don’t always need a ‘tank’. It’s nice to have someone distract the mob (especially a ranged mob that kiting does nothing for) but illusions, pets, elementals and so on can be used to do this as well.

Ele’s are hardly tanks, in any attunement. Their pets can be, but even a full toughness spec ele (which is a silly tree to put 30pts in, tbh) won’t “tank” anything for very long. A water ele with high arcana is much, much more useful due to healing/condition removal.

water and ice are different combo fields. Water fields tend to give healing/regen finishers and ice gives chilled/frozen armor finishers. Blast finishers tend to be the most useful, so any time you see an obvious opportunity (field) up, abuse your blasts. Otherwise, knowing when (and where) to toss up a field is handy, for example necro dark fields in an aoe scenario (give aoe blindness on blast and leeching projectiles), or the lightning field from ele and leap finisher on a boss or heavy hitting mob for a daze, or smoke bomb where melee can blast it for an aoe stealth, and so on.

CC is crucial. Blindness, cripple, chilled and weakness are some of the best ‘soft’ cc (most mobs won’t be immune to these*), and obviously daze/knockdowns are good hard cc, usually on long cooldowns, but to which most elites are immune. Like the OP said, still useful as an interrupt sometimes. Use cc as an opportunity to put in some dps, or pick up a downed teammate (any time a mob tunnel visions someone and downs them, like the graveling kitten in AC, I go plague form and chain blind them while someone picks that person up).

Condition removal: VERY important for many dungeons. Burning, bleeding, poison, chilled can all screw you if not taken care of promptly. Knowing your own as well as other classes condition removal skills is important. For instance: necro marks and wells have various uses: if you see it being cast on the mobs, it’s probably a debuff, but if you see it being cast closer to the group, chances are you should probably stand in it and good things will happen. Also most guaridan combo fields are light, which has a condition removal finisher (projectile and whirl). They also have a ground aoe condition removal that looks like a circle of blue fire: stand in it (also fire field combos). Engis and eles can remove conditions around them, so standing close to them is usually a good idea. (I’m sure there are others, I’m only giving examples).

Avoidance: dodge is only one way to get out of crap. Blocks (guardian and warrior), any invul abilities (ele vapor form, mes sword abilities and shatters that give invul), stealth, or even ‘soaking’ tactics like necro death shroud or mesmer soaking phantasm are all viable ways to avoid incoming dmg. Don’t rely on dodge alone.

*dredge are immune to blind<

+1 to the OP. everyone new to exp mode (or dungeons in general) should read. actually I request sticky!!!

I don’t understand why people advocate the concept of “support” so strongly. The only real necessary support in dungeons are condition removal, which can be provided by every single profession with a switch of a utility.

Healing stats scales extremely poorly and you are sacrificing too much DPS to make up for other people’s poor play.

To be effective in dungeons you just need intelligent players that is capable of swapping utility and major traits depending on encounter, tailoring a build to a fit some predefined “role” is a very poor mistake.

And yet any time I run a group with no ‘support’ roles (primarily dps warriors, rangers, thieve), people will go down a lot more frequently than if I see at least one person doing a bit of healing and buffing (often myself, when I run on my ele).
Rotating aoe condition removals/fields for fights with constant condition spam is much better than relying on your own (often 20+sc d) condition removals, especially for things that also kitten your dps (chilled/weakness).

Providing support does not prevent you from doing dps, you may sacrifice some of it sure, but having dead party members is a significantly greater dps loss and higher risk of failure for the encounter. No one is advocating running a 5-support team, just 1-2 is usually fine, especially if one of them is an ele and people understand combo fields.

If you don’t understand the importance of support, you don’t undertand support.

• Support is reviving a downed ally.
• Support is removing conditions.
• Support is prviding boons.
• Support is creating combo fields/finishers.
• Support is interrupting an enemy.
• Support is applying conditions.

The removal of the holy trinity was not the removal of teamwork, it was the removal of over-specialized roles. Tanks were only ever tanks. Healers were only ever healers, and damage dealers only dealt damage. Everybody contributes to support—some more than others. Similarly, everybody provides a meaningful contribution to damage and control aspects. Some professions/builds have a stronger affinity than others for certain roles, but it is a shared responsibility.

I don’t think you understand my point, you do not need a designated slot in your party for this support role. Everyone should be contributing to what is needed during an encounter.

You can easily toss down your Healing Rain for that three second condition removal, same goes for the warrior in your party to switch his utility to Shake it Off. There is absolutely no need for someone to heavily build and gear themselves to fullfill this role. It definitely should not be a 1 person job.

You anecdote experience is great and all, but I have far more success running with 5 strong DPS that is capable of providing the necessary utility depending on the situation.

I agree it doesn’t have to be a 1 person job. Some professions just have exceptionally good support skills vs. others. That’s all I’m saying.