Guild Wars 2

Greetings Forum people! I am bored at work and have GW2 on the mind, and I have questions for the people who have run a lot of dungeons.

GW2 doesn’t have dedicated roles for it classes, so any class can do anything. My question for the (relatively) experienced people that have run a bunch of dungeons is this: does it seem to work better if everyone in the group has a balanced build making them able to both stay alive and do some decent damage? Or is there some benefit to having, say, a player with a healing heavy build, a player with a defensive build, and some other players specced to dish out a lot of damage? (i.e. an old fashioned mmo grouping). Or some other combo? Or are there some new unusual fight mechanics that require coordination in a way that I haven’t seen before?? (I’m hoping that one). Basically I want to know if dungeons really require coordination to complete. I like to be challenged!

I’m asking this because I feel like there isn’t a lot of group coordination required. I feel like it’s too easy for a group to walk down the dungeon halls, attack stuff, and then keep walking some more. As long as everyone is able to dodge and use their heal spell they don’t need to do much else besides attacking. But then I have only done story mode on a few dungeons, so I hope I am wrong!

Thanks, and keep it clean people.

Overall I think it’s important that everyone is pretty balanced in their build. Glass cannon builds tend to be more of a hindrance than helpful in explorable dungeons. No point in doing ‘Uber Deepz’ if you aren’t alive to do them and when your party members all die trying to revive you constantly.

As for story mode it’s intended to be a lot easier than explorable. If you’re finding storymode too easy I would highly recommend doing explorables (It’s especially challenging with a group of new people who aren’t experienced in dungeons).

I would advice trying to establish a steady dungeon team to go with rather than just PuG’s so you learn each others play styles and can learn the fights together (much more fun that way).

really depends. I’ve been in groups where 1 guy plays the role of “tank” usually taking aggro and distracting most of the mobs while the rest of the party picks off stuff 1 by 1. In other groups it’s more balanced, and everyone does a little of taking damage, doing damage and support. Then there’s groups with people heavily on support, which also helps. All kinds of team setups work, as long as the players playing their class well.=P

Thats good to hear guys. Out of curiosity, what do you mean by tanking in a GW2 context?

He’s referring to getting a heavy armoured profession with high toughness and survivability to try to keep the mobs/boss distracted. This doesn’t always work though and even if set up for that the person is still not a ‘tank’ and can still easily die.

Yeah, generally high toughness/vitality, but must also be good at dodging and using defensive skills wisely.

Best way to tank in this game is to use snare abilities. Cripple, freeze, immobilize, even fear.

If everyone is moving around using those it makes it easier. Dead are the days of one person even someone with high defense standing and taking all the agro.

Out of all the explorable dungeons that I’ve run there are definitely some that require serious coordination. Some of the bosses do require some degree of coordination but there are events that are frustrating if your group isn’t on vent or mumble. Like the torch event in CoF(exp) or the barrel event in CM(exp). If you don’t get things timed down properly you can get stuck there for hours and hours.

Check the Sig and be amazed.

I know if you try CoE explorable in a first time group without coordination you’ll find yourself in a world of hurt. Doing Hodgins path in AC but don’t know the order, it’ll be much much tougher.

There may be no dedicated roles, but each person should have 3 or 4 “roles” he can swap into on the fly. These roles aren’t the generic trinity roles either, but encompass a much broader spectrum.

Using subject alpha as an example, a well timed interrupt can give you time to rez a downed player as well as stop him from consuming his essences, a ranged instant rez can bring party members up from the downed state, everyone going in with abilities that grant vigor can keep your party up close and personal for much much longer.