Guild Wars 2

I ll begin by saying "Smart design is not a boss that has 1 million hp and 1 shots you with his auto attack, smart design is a boss that has various abilities, multiple phases and tactics.
Currently and as far as my gw2 dungeon experience until now bosses are poor on mechanics… Player have fun not by hitting a dude for 30 min with autoshot, players have fun by doing things that keep them busy, helping their grp and gives them a feeling that doing this specific thing for a reason.
Ideas :
Add phases (at least 3 for each boss)
Add announcements for the most important things or the most dangerous abilities.
Add mechanics that keep some players busy.

Example of the above 3 in a fight:
Description: A giant troll dude that repairing something and you interrupting him by entering his area. He becames furious and wants to destroys u.

Phase 1: You can see his back while he dont bothers interrupt his repair job. Decides to sents his minion slaves to do the job and kill u.
Mechanics: Spawns 3 waves of adds, every wave is split in 2 grps, 3-4 different grp “type” of creeps that has a chance to get at every wave.
So lets say that at 1st wave it happens to have a grp of melee tanky dudes and a grp of ranged psysical dps.
The melee type grp focus on 1 person of your grp. Aggro can be defined by a stat combination formula(that changes at every wave and every instance restart).
So this guy has to start kitting this grp by using his cc (team can help him with their slows) and the rest to dps down the second grp and support the guy.
Remember its the tanky melee grp so these adds cannot be killed. Their flaw is that flee when the second grp is dead. Also the dps grp are physical dps so their shots penetrating on single lines.
The rest of waves can be necros(DoT dmg), casters (aoe dmg), fighters (bersherking mode) etc etc.

Phase 2: You can see the boss face since you managed to get his attention. He asks for support from his best champion. Champion comes in the area (its medium size, something between the phase 1minions and the troll boss and seems strong like a champion).
Champion initially has 2 abilities (except autoattacking players) that uses every now and then. An AoE fear and a poisonous breath that does dmg at a straight line (standing for 2 seconds and then use it).
Every X time the troll boss yells at his champion (he is impatient). When this happens the champion trying to become more effective.
So he gets a buff, this buff also lasts X seconds. The buff makes the AoE fear lasts 1 more second and the poisonous breath to target 1 person (the targeted person gets 1 red circle around his feet as an indication), also now this breath sums the persons.
So if the targeted person go away from his grp he ll get medium dmg, if he stays in his grp the grp will wipe.
The champion gets 1 more ability when he has the buff. He hits the floor with both of his hands and rocks falling from the roof (red circles that has to be avoided on the floor).

Phase 3: Champion is dead. Troll boss decides that has to do the job by his own. He is coming towards you and holding the wrench (the tool that was using to repair but now turned into a leather weapon ((can be a pickaxe or whatever)).
He is doing aoe dmg with his feet since he is trying to kick you or something. Every 15 secs? trying to hit u with the wrench. When you avoid it the wrench stuck on the floor making the troll boss vulnerable BUT when he finally manages to unstuck it there is a hole on the ground. By time the holes on terrain limiting your mobility / accesibility.

Notices: Above there is an imaginery fight that i only created to show how tactics and doing something for a purpose comes into the game.
Warnings should be included before every phase change and major attacks ability.
Also the above seems a bit like a raid to me so its not reflecting 100% how dungeon fights should be.
BUT fights with tactical decisions, progression feeling and synergy can be created with the right design. Have fun.

I can’t imagine them doing this too all the current Dungeons, but definitely has already been implemented in some Bosses in GW2 (Jormag) and most likely happen in future patches/content.

I have posted a huge piece about dungeons on a number of other threads maybe you could read that also (sort of similar to what you are trying to say here).

When I think of fun boss moves and fights, I think of Arah. They did that dungeon so well. The bosses weren’t obscenely hard, they were interesting, they were fun. 360 energy ball spam, exploding zombies, throwing balls in a mouth, firing canons at a dragon. Loved it.

I would love to see dungeons that you could have more people in (10 mans or so?).
Random idea/example of so:
The Pact has a mission to go do something, and it requires using an airship. But you come under attack by _______________. They fire missiles at you, which you have to deflect with an air canon (Kinda like in CM Exploration, they needa look out for those red circles or whatever marking alert) or your ship will take damage. So you have several people running around the ship deflecting them, while the rest are busy doing something else (Put them on canons firing at the enemy ships?). To make it even more fun, randomly generate who goes where. Like people on air canon duty will stay on there for the whole fight, so the rest isn’t such an “OMGOMG NO ONE IS DOING THIS”. Also, of course, add the ability to request a position switch with people in case the one on reflection duty ABSOLUTELY HATES it while another doesn’t mind.
After you finish that part, then the boss appears. He would get his minions on board, while missiles are still firing at you. Then he could challenge one person to fight every % of health or every few seconds/minute. This person is the only one who can do damage and has any CC effects on him. So while you have people fighting mobs and deflecting missiles, you’ll have someone in the center fighting the guy (I imagine it would look kinda epic. In the center of a giant mob fight is another major fight).

Iunno, just a random idea/conglomerate of things I enjoyed that they have done and things I have seen in other games that are kinda enjoyable.

TL;DR: Fun.