Guild Wars 2

Nilkemia.8507:

Not for me anyway.

Fighting regular enemies with near champion level HP requiring all 5 players to focus fire for 3 to 5 minutes isn’t fun.

Getting killed in 5 hits at best and 2 at worst isn’t fun.

Having to sit there dead because I can’t just waypoint and run back until everyone’s dead or the others retreat isn’t fun.

Getting rewards that aren’t worth the time isn’t fun.

I just don’t get this. I’ve tried the story mode of every dungeon except Citadel of Flame, and it’s more or less the above happening all the time. So far, I’ve only ever beaten Twilight Arbor story and Arah story. All the other times, it just got so frustrating that we’d just give up.

So, what do any of you see in these dungeons that I’m not seeing? Because right now I can’t imagine anyone wanting to do these the 50 or so times each it takes to get the gear from those vendors.

Welcome to every single mmorpg game.

Nilkemia.8507:

Not for me anyway.

Fighting regular enemies with near champion level HP requiring all 5 players to focus fire for 3 to 5 minutes isn’t fun.

Getting killed in 5 hits at best and 2 at worst isn’t fun.

Having to sit there dead because I can’t just waypoint and run back until everyone’s dead or the others retreat isn’t fun.

Getting rewards that aren’t worth the time isn’t fun.

I just don’t get this. I’ve tried the story mode of every dungeon except Citadel of Flame, and it’s more or less the above happening all the time. So far, I’ve only ever beaten Twilight Arbor story and Arah story. All the other times, it just got so frustrating that we’d just give up.

So, what do any of you see in these dungeons that I’m not seeing? Because right now I can’t imagine anyone wanting to do these the 50 or so times each it takes to get the gear from those vendors.

i’ve said this in another thread, but maybe dungeons just aren’t your thing?

i love (most) of the dungeons that i enter, and i do them because for me it’s fun
if you’re really that frustrated with these dungeons then maybe you should try something else in gw2? maybe you prefer spvp or wvwvw? who knows

Ive loved dungeons in the secret world rift wow even warhammer online and my all time favorite DAOC. I absolutely hate dungeons in guild wars 2 , the devs here seem to think fun is having to dodge around an entire room or get 2 or 3 shotted even in full exotics and max level. Dungeons are made to be challenging yes , puzzles are challenging , mechanics are challeging , GW2 dungeons are not challenging , they are nightmares of dodging around a room and not dying while you dish out as much damage as you can.

I ran the new AC explorable after the patch and do not even want to touch it again . Troll was just annoying and took forever to kill. The stupid grave slinks kept getting to the npc like 10 times before our pug finally got them downed before the npc . This is just not fun at all mechanics , and pugs suffer for it making dungeon runs a chore and longer to complete.

I enjoy it mainly because I have a static team that I play with on a nightly basis. No need to LFG or deal with PuG drama. Together, we find new ways to clear the dungeon, mess with team comps, learn more about new professions in the dungeon environment, etc. We try to help everyone get what they need from their dungeons and try to teach our new players. While I think the dungeons could use some reworking, I’m fine playing them while I wait for the changes.

I really hope nobody jumps on you for this. I think “Why isn’t this fun?” is always a worthwhile question.

I feel like I have to ask though: is your equipment at-level greens? I feel like that’s the baseline for dungeons to not just destroy your character based off of stats alone. I’m sorry if this is kind of rude but I’ve got to be sure.

Have you tried a ‘safe’ build? Something a bit heavier on the defensive side (Higher toughness / healing, vigor or other dodge mechanics) could help you contribute throughout a fight, even if you’re doing less damage.

Also: have you tried any of the dungeons on explorable mode? I may be in the minority, but I feel like the story mode for a lot of dungeons are significantly longer (and sometimes, harder in terms of mechanics) than their explorable mode paths.

You make a very valid point however, expect to be trolled by a select elite few who believe if you play game it is elite or out.

There is a very fine line between a good challange and been outright dull/boring/over-done.

I do believe ArenaNet struggles in creating a proper balance.

They believe adding inflated HP values to mobs & 2/3 shot kill’s add to the challange, which in my opinion only adds to the frustration. This then leads to avoidance.

AC is a perfect example of this.

You will find the odd few who would claim dungeons and the entire GW2 is already extremely easy. Make no mistake, no one gamer is the same.

You need to create an environment that would suit different play styles or you risk allienating players.

Once again the AC change was an perfect example of this.

I am not sure what are you talking about. Dungeons in GW2 are way too easy. Its all about whether you know the “right way” to face these challenges. So far, dungeons are one of the most profitable PvE content. With so many player farming inside dungeons, I have no idea what you mean by hard. What you need to do is learn about the dungeon and find out the right way to go through them.

I don’t mind the punishing mechanics of the dungeons (when they’re not buggable by groups at any rate and completely avoided) but the health on bosses is a bit annoying. It’s almost like they want you to run 5 zerk warrior groups (or whatever the popular speedrun setup is) just to get through the boss fights in a decent amount of time.

DeathPanel.8362:

Welcome to every single mmorpg game.

Really? I’ve been playing MMORPGs since 1998. I’ve raided in World of Warcraft, Star Wars: The Old Republic, The Secret World, DC Universe Online, and even the old Trials and then Incarnate Trials of City of Heroes.

Nowhere else have I encountered the frustrating, over-inflated difficulty, and poorly over-inflated HP design choice, of these Guild Wars 2 dungeons. I agree with the OP, they are not fun; and it isn’t because dungeons/raids aren’t for me.

It gets better?

I don’t know what to tell you. After you start understanding the mechanics of the game, when to dodge, how to move while attacking, when and how to kite, plus all the other specific knowledge of your profession in the mix, it’s not so bad.

It was pretty crazy when I started playing the game, we had to focus down foes otherwise we’d die with several mobs down to 2/3 HP. But I also knew very little about special stuff, like how conditions worked, timing, how boons affected things.

In normal groups now, it’s not necessary to focus down enemies because if you kite them right and keep yourself moving (mobs tend to have to stop moving in order to hit you back), you can just spread your damage to multiple foes. With defensive skills, I can hold back a couple of enemies with my Mesmer, War or Elementalist while the others handle other stuff.

Another piece of motivation is seeing players solo the content. Really, anyone can do it too. All it takes is concentration, patience and knowledge. Know how to keep out of reach of the foe while doing damage to them, dodge their special moves, etc, and just keep your head straight and pretty much any mob is defeatable by yourself. So it got me practicing soloing various dungeons (AC, SE and made it through some of CoE) although I haven’t the patience to actually ever complete any of them T_T

Basically, if you can learn to do it by yourself, then it’s not that much harder to go with a team!

To OP, you’ve described why groups prefer to skip trash. Too much hp and no reward.

I’ve had groups that took 2hrs to clear a path vs groups that took 30 to clear the same path. I’m a big believer in enjoying dungeon grouping rather than speed running. But clearing trash isnt enjoyable in GW2.

My main problem with the dungeons is in dodging. Between the enclosed areas, overdone particle effects blocking the animations and dodge “tells” that are difficult to time, it is of little wonder why most players just choose to go range. I realize that there are dungeon running gods that these problems are of little consequence, but I find that if your not having a perfect day you better hope the rest of your party is.

I agree that most of the dungeons are very meh.
One of the problems is that other games relied on the trinity so could make the bosses interesting for that party make up- but in this game there is supposed to be no trinity so the bosses have to be made tough to take a full dps party but also have to hit hard in case the party is mostly support.
The big fail is having npc involved in the fight in some way – trying to make it more interesting

GW2 is an action based mmo. Comparing it’s dungeons to WoW and other raid type mmo is rather ignorant. Alot of the dungeons are about learning the monsters and their attacks. Once you’ve learned the mob mechanics and boss mechanics, things get easier from there. If you expect to run up to mobs and facetank it till you can kill it, then yes dungeons are not for you.

Dungeon’s hate 1 thing the most, players that learned how to dodge. Dodging can negate 100% of the damage when done properly.

Kumakichi.2583:

I’ve had groups that took 2hrs to clear a path vs groups that took 30 to clear the same path. I’m a big believer in enjoying dungeon grouping rather than speed running. But clearing trash isnt enjoyable in GW2.

You spent 1.5hrs on clearing trash?

It comes down to the basic fact that Dungeons are not fun. Even those who run them say “build X to produce Y, which exploits Z and makes the run easy”. That isn’t fun, that’s a formula. I haven’t logged onto the game since the AC changes it aggrivated me so badly after having played daily before that. But if the end game is Dungeons that give you zero clue as to what the goals are all while 2-3 shotting you as end game unless you built the predetermined uberbuild all to get mediocre loot 90% of the time is the end game I guess I grossly misplaced my faith in the Arenanet crew.

you don’t really need uberbuilds like you write here. tho you are right that just any random skillsets doesn’t work.

a lot ‘beginners’ go to dungeons with ‘solo’ builds. i mean builds that work kinda ‘ok’ when you are alone in open world. they don’t take any utilities or weapons that actually help the group. typical example would be warrior with might sigil instead of “for great justice”. well it kinda gives more might to him… but FGJ would contribute more to his group performance.

and there are really a lot alternatives for all classes for group utilities, if u wanna be ‘casual’.

P.S. i’m on of those who prefer killing all the things. yes over and over again. don’t care about rewards. because i’m filthy rich anyway.

No one has addressed the OP’s concerns directly;

1) Too many hitpoints
2) 1-shot kills
3) No waypoint ability to rejoin the fight

Yes, all of these suck. Really, really badly.
Anet needs to add extra activities into the mix of combat in addition to dealing with the above.

Pure Heart.1456:

No one has addressed the OP’s concerns directly;

1) Too many hitpoints
2) 1-shot kills
3) No waypoint ability to rejoin the fight

Yes, all of these suck. Really, really badly.

why do those ‘suck’?

in my opinion:
1) depends what monsters/bosses you are talking about. i find it fair that dungeon monsters have more hp then open world ones. i take it for damage avoidance test – that is survive long enough to kill monsters. if it had less hp, there would be no need to master that… (well there are exceptions like HoTW)

2) and this is bad why? a lot of games have this, remember mario? you fail a jump, and rip. (GAME OVER, sound familiar?)

3) the more reason to make less mistakes. promotes improving skillful play. unlike the old – oh i died.. lul w/e lets run back and not care about getting better.

and one last thing that most people miss – dungeons are not meant for everyone to like. its a place with strong monsters for strong players (of course that’s just my opinion too).

I think any sort of “fun” in dungeons died when they announced to get rid of the “Holy Trinity”. The trinity made sure dungeons were organized, fluid, everyone had a specific job, and everyone got rewarded for that job.

This game takes all of that throws it out the window, grabs some lighter fluid and burns it alive. There’s no sound structure, fights consist of a bunch of aoe so it’s just a mess of graphics, the rewards are……….pitiful to say the most. There’s no joy in these dungeons. I think the OP is right. I just have no intentions of ever trying these trainwreck dungeons until Anet at least puts some effort into fixing them.

Nilkemia.8507:

Fighting regular enemies with near champion level HP requiring all 5 players to focus fire for 3 to 5 minutes isn’t fun.

Exaggeration. Dungeon shouldn’t have super weak enemies like in the overworld anyway. There are cases where some things do have too much health. IMO at least its not “I’ll get aggro, everyone nuke, and make sure you heal me!”

Nilkemia.8507:

Getting killed in 5 hits at best and 2 at worst isn’t fun.

Dungeons should not be easy. Most of the stuff that can wipe you super fast can be dodged. Sure it takes time to learn the animation or the exact time to dodge but that is part of the fun. Being able to mindlessly run every instance in the game takes the challenge and fun away from the game. Tackling something that previously smashed your face in should make you feel great. Raging because of difficulty means find a different niche in the game.

Nilkemia.8507:

Having to sit there dead because I can’t just waypoint and run back until everyone’s dead or the others retreat isn’t fun.

?? And graveyard zerging is fun? That is the most idiotic thing ever and I am so glad they removed it. If you wiped in certain end-game instances in GW1….you got teleported back to town. Having the ability to leave dungeon, change characters, reorder skills and traits makes everything possible. There is even a repair booth in dungeon O-o

Nilkemia.8507:

Getting rewards that aren’t worth the time isn’t fun.

That is a matter of opinion. Doing something you hate is not going to be fun.

Nilkemia.8507:

All the other times, it just got so frustrating that we’d just give up.

Guild runs! I tend to avoid runs unless I can get at least 3-4 guildies to go with me
PUGs skip everything and rage on anything and everything.

Nilkemia.8507:

So, what do any of you see in these dungeons that I’m not seeing? Because right now I can’t imagine anyone wanting to do these the 50 or so times each it takes to get the gear from those vendors.

I see the challenge
I see a fun way to get “free” gear for my characters.
Tackling enemy AI is something I have been doing a long time. The thrill of owning some digital monster makes me smile

Fun is subjective.

My enjoyment of this game becomes increasingly small as weeks go by. Not due to difficulty or nerfs. It’s the community that’s slowly being poisoned. Skipping content, exploiting fights, elitist mindsets and griefing. A lot of the times, I don’t even care about all the fuss, so long as I get to fight my NPCs and get my shinies, the ‘only lvl 80s’, gear checking kittens and bad players can be generally ignored or avoided.

But more and more, people are asking for only 80s (I avoid groups like that when possible), or asking for specific professions, or cheating bosses (easy ones!) to the point that it gets harder to avoid. And so, I either sit around waiting for a good team to form or waiting to invite people because I had to kick some idiot who’s auto-attacking from some hill not to mention all the drama I have to put up with when the more than one try to pull this crap.

Shouldn’t have to advertise “LF2M AC exp 1-3, no cheating” because that’s plain sad.

Cawesome.1580:

I think any sort of “fun” in dungeons died when they announced to get rid of the “Holy Trinity”. The trinity made sure dungeons were organized, fluid, everyone had a specific job, and everyone got rewarded for that job.

This game takes all of that throws it out the window, grabs some lighter fluid and burns it alive. There’s no sound structure, fights consist of a bunch of aoe so it’s just a mess of graphics, the rewards are……….pitiful to say the most. There’s no joy in these dungeons. I think the OP is right. I just have no intentions of ever trying these trainwreck dungeons until Anet at least puts some effort into fixing them.

yes they threw it out. and replaced with ‘do not get hit’ concept. and it works. i like it. there are others who like it. ofc there are those who don’t. pick a side. join us, or do something else. choice is yours

Nilkemia.8507:

Not for me anyway.

Fighting regular enemies with near champion level HP requiring all 5 players to focus fire for 3 to 5 minutes isn’t fun.

Getting killed in 5 hits at best and 2 at worst isn’t fun.

Having to sit there dead because I can’t just waypoint and run back until everyone’s dead or the others retreat isn’t fun.

Getting rewards that aren’t worth the time isn’t fun.

Although my group still tries to find fun in dungeon running, these are completely legitimate concerns.

We had a boss that was easily 3-4 mannable due to the mechanics, but of course had some bullkitten one-shot mechanism that yet again, had a poor tell or weak warning animation.

After 5 minutes of attrition, he announced he was going to go make a sandwich to watch the remainder of the fight due to being teleported on death (boss mechanics) to somewhere completely out of the way, when leaving him where he died would have been reasonable to res him.

Sitting around isn’t fun. Boss warnings aren’t loud enough. DR forcing you to run paths that aren’t worth the time investment. Meh.

Cawesome.1580:

I think any sort of “fun” in dungeons died when they announced to get rid of the “Holy Trinity”. The trinity made sure dungeons were organized, fluid, everyone had a specific job, and everyone got rewarded for that job.

I’m of the opposite mind in that I don’t find ‘tank, heal, dps’ particularly fun because I’ve been doing it for almost 15 years now. This system may not be perfect but it’s a lot more enjoyable to me.

While I enjoy the trinity, I’m also enjoying this model as well. I also enjoy the difficulty of the bosses in these dungeons. These are essentially 5-man raids, not the 5-man AoE fests that WoW has become.

That being said, the amount of trash mobs in the dungeons is ridiculous. When they are so hard to kill that the obvious choice is to just run past them and keep trying until you finally make it, it indicates there’s something wrong with the mechanics of the dungeon as a whole.

Bosses should be hard, no doubt. I want to have to take a lot of time to figure out a boss fight. I DON’T want to spend a lot of time trying to run past 150 vile oozes to get to that boss fight.

If you want a lot of trash mobs, that’s fine, but as said before, making them all champion-level difficulty is a bit silly.

Cue the elitists with the “ThesedungeonsareeasyL2P” responses.

I have to agree that the dungeons are not fun in the slightest. Fractals are the only exception, but I believe there was a lot more time invested into creating those.

I’ve said before: It is easy to make something hard, but it is hard to make something fun. It’s even harder to make something hard and fair. If I wander into a room and someone drops a piano on my head, some may call that a challenge. But that is what a lot of the dungeons feel like: Countless boring pianos. One of the hardest things to design, is a challenge that people find difficult, but where they blame them selves and not the game. This is not the case with GW2’s dungeons, they are simply unfair hard. And sure, with enough coordination and trial and error you’ll eventually get through them with ease. But it is still bad design. It is linear. And it isn’t fun.

The odd thing is, I was doing a quest in Straits of Devastation yesterday, and it was a hundred times more fun than any of the dungeons. And it felt like what a dungeon should feel like. The quest was: "Escort Warmaster Leddron and his team to Zho’qafa Catacombs ", which is a chain event that starts with “Kill the Risen noble in the catacombs” and ends with a boss battle with an Eye of Zhaitan, and escaping the catacombs while it all collapses.

So clearly the team CAN make a fun dungeon, but the current dungeons simply seem rushed to completion.

Shotting down clay pigeons isn’t fun.
OP, please reply to this: How do you make interrupts, cripples, blinds, dodges etc. relevant to the game when enemies fall dead after 2-3 hits and can’t deal damage?

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

The odd thing is, I was doing a quest in Straits of Devastation yesterday, and it was a hundred times more fun than any of the dungeons. And it felt like what a dungeon should feel like. The quest was: "Escort Warmaster Leddron and his team to Zho’qafa Catacombs ", which is a chain event that starts with “Kill the Risen noble in the catacombs” and ends with a boss battle with an Eye of Zhaitan, and escaping the catacombs while it all collapses.

I’m happy that there is diversity in content difficulty and appeal (you are more happy with overworld PVE quests like this one; I more with the current dungeons) so that lots of players can enjoy the game on their own terms, but you aren’t. Why?

When doing dungeons I run and fight when I need to. I do dungeons quickly and efficiently and that’s why I enjoy them. I often play with pugs and use gw2lfg. I run up to 9 dungeons a day none of them speed clears. I find ppl that can’t pull their own weight the ones who complain about dungeons the most.

Jamais vu.5284:

Shotting down clay pigeons isn’t fun.
OP, please reply to this: How do you make interrupts, cripples, blinds, dodges etc. relevant to the game when enemies fall dead after 2-3 hits and can’t deal damage?

The situation you’re describing wouldn’t happen unless you were in Lv 80 gear killing enemies in a starting zone(Lv2-5), or killing ambient creatures which die in one hit no matter what.

And besides, those conditions are not relevant when the bosses have innate resistance or outright immunity to them.

Nilkemia.8507:

Jamais vu.5284:

Shotting down clay pigeons isn’t fun.
OP, please reply to this: How do you make interrupts, cripples, blinds, dodges etc. relevant to the game when enemies fall dead after 2-3 hits and can’t deal damage?

The situation you’re describing wouldn’t happen unless you were in Lv 80 gear killing enemies in a starting zone(Lv2-5), or killing ambient creatures which die in one hit no matter what.

And besides, those conditions are not relevant when the bosses have innate resistance or outright immunity to them.

He’s saying that reducing the health of mobs in dungeons is not a viable solution because it can break any of their mechanics or dmg output. But I disagree with him about it not being fun because who doesn’t enjoy killing mass amounts of puppies in TA? I think there should be a better mix of the two.

Maybe I’m not describing well enough why I find dungeons not fun.

I tried a solo run of Twilight Arbor’s story with a necromancer, circle strafed with a staff to kill the two spiders at the start, did the same against the spiders in the next room, and then kept dying while trying to run past the next trash mobs due to Grasping Dead wells, seed mortars, and at least one of them having a leap and knockdown move which sticks my character’s face in the dirt for about 4 seconds, during which they shred her HP.

Bad Design/Not fun elements:

1: Enemies with knockdown, launch, or stun moves that they use as their opening attack, and when they do, these keep you stuck anywhere from 2-6 seconds (depending on what’s using it), much longer than similar skills you can use against them.

2: Overpowered/Combined versions of skills we can use. The “Grasping Dead” wells they use? Basically they can throw it on the ground like a trap or grenade, the resulting well being the size of nercro staff marks with the Greater Marks trait on, and if you’re stuck in them, it hits you constantly and lasts as long as wells do. And I’ve seen them get two or three around, leaving little room to avoid those, let alone any other attacks that are coming your way.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I have to agree that the dungeons are not fun in the slightest. Fractals are the only exception, but I believe there was a lot more time invested into creating those.

Due to the monthly a friend mentioned that 2 fractal runs would complete the requirement for the monthly veteran slayer. The fact that fractals have veterans instead of the silvers could be a big part of that.

Jamais vu.5284:

I’m happy that there is diversity in content difficulty and appeal (you are more happy with overworld PVE quests like this one; I more with the current dungeons) so that lots of players can enjoy the game on their own terms, but you aren’t. Why?

Because I know that the dungeons can be better. I know that they don’t have to be linear, or have monsters that are massive damage sponges. I know they can have interesting mechanics, puzzles, multiple paths, like for example the original Sorrow’s Furnace. It is not the difficulty that I dislike, it is the way the difficulty has be implemented. I also dislike the boss designs. GW2 currently has many bosses that will instantly kill you and give you large armor repair costs on top of that, turning a boss battle into a matter of trial and error. Trial and error is a terrible way to add difficulty to any game. And you are free to enjoy it none the less, but a whole lot of people don’t. Many players whom I used to do tons of dungeons with in GW1, hate the dungeons in GW2 so much that they won’t even consider ever doing them again.

TA and AC, along with CM, are the main offenders. Countless mobs that are immune to all sorts of things for no reason (CM), instant kill mechanics all over the place (especially before they changed the blooms in TA). And challenges that are almost impossible for pugs of the appropriate level of that dungeon, like path 3 in AC pre-patch with the horrid burrows, or path 3 in CoF, and not fun either. And lets not forget what a nightmare TA is in storymode, which is a lot harder than explorable.

Difficulty levels are all over the place, the only consistency being that Arah is the hardest one. But none of the dungeons are suitable for the area where you access them, or the minimum level requirement they indicate (lets be honest, you should be level 80 for all of them). Some of the early dungeons such as AC and CM are a lot harder than some of the later dungeons, such as HotW. There are also plenty of boss encounters and dungeons that seem to favor or unfavor specific classes. I play a necromancer exclusively, and the amount of foes in dungeons being immune to key necro powers like fear, is staggering. Not to mention bosses that require some form of blocking or deflection, which necros are unable to do. (It is no surprise everyone wants to bring guardians into dungeons, there clearly is an unbalance here.)

Some time later, I saw a chat looking for players to help with the Crucible of Eternity. I decided to help with that, and being teleported into it made it so we didn’t have to fight the frustrating champion commander to get in.

Note to any developers who might, but probably aren’t reading this: Making a dungeon only accessible after running a gauntlet of annoying enemies, and then having to kill a champion whom abuses teleportation and non-combat regeneration with an arena that forces you to split up and gives little room to dodge his beam spam is not fun, at all. And that repeated “You know, your failure is only funny if you try” line
gets grating after the first time hearing it.

Once inside, things go fine at first. We just run past the first few mobs, and fight through what we have have to, but then we reach the lasers..

Another thing to note: Instant deaths are one of the fastest ways to suck the fun out of anything you’re doing in a game. One mistake and you die is just infuriating. You so much as stand next to one of the lasers, nearly 30000 damage to you, instantly downed, dead if you fell in the ground lasers, and even if you didn’t, the vertical ones will get you before you can get back up. And this damages your armor, so you’d better run this part nude.

Afterwards, having to disable security while endless bomb golems and some bigger ones come after you. Doable, but still not fun. Getting spam launched multiple times by the bombs didn’t help.

What was next.. ah, the big ice guy.. (Name began with a B, had Scales of Jormag, needed to make him hit pillars..) More padding. The constant icicle red circles were a pain though. You see? It’s either frustrating or tedious.

And, finally Subject Alpha. Only attack I could clearly see through the whole fight was the fire spikes he kept dropping. And they hurt (over 2/3rd’s of my HP), partly because my armor was damaged quite a bit from everything else.

I’ll try running some other dungeons to point out other things, but my fingers need a break.

Honestly, since story mode seems intended for players to go through at some point, it should be a lot more accessible than it is (easier to group for as well, IMO, but that’s a different topic). It should definitely never be more difficult than explorable mode.

I do recall some comment from a developer to the effect that explorable mode was GW2’s “hard mode” – which sounds fine to me (though less so if it takes GW1’s “let’s just push the damage numbers over 9000” approach), but most enemies in the story mode have quite a crazy amount of HP as well.

Didn’t stop me for the dungeons I’ve tried so far, the main issue has been that it’s annoying to even get into them, but I definitely agree that having to bash on trash mobs for half a minute each even in a group of 5 is doing nothing to make the dungeon more enjoyable.

Jamais vu.5284:

Shotting down clay pigeons isn’t fun.
OP, please reply to this: How do you make interrupts, cripples, blinds, dodges etc. relevant to the game when enemies fall dead after 2-3 hits and can’t deal damage?

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

The odd thing is, I was doing a quest in Straits of Devastation yesterday, and it was a hundred times more fun than any of the dungeons. And it felt like what a dungeon should feel like. The quest was: "Escort Warmaster Leddron and his team to Zho’qafa Catacombs ", which is a chain event that starts with “Kill the Risen noble in the catacombs” and ends with a boss battle with an Eye of Zhaitan, and escaping the catacombs while it all collapses.

I’m happy that there is diversity in content difficulty and appeal (you are more happy with overworld PVE quests like this one; I more with the current dungeons) so that lots of players can enjoy the game on their own terms, but you aren’t. Why?

What you’re failing to realize is there’s a difference between “difficulty” and “fun.” Something can be very difficult and fun at the same time.

If you feel that running past mobs because they are impossible to kill is “fun” then your definition of “fun” is completely different than mine.

I’m not in dungeons to run past impossible mobs. I’m in a dungeon to kill stuff and collect loot.

Shootsfoot.9276:

When they are so hard to kill that the obvious choice is to just run past them and keep trying until you finally make it, it indicates there’s something wrong with the mechanics of the dungeon as a whole.

The idea of mindlessly blowing through junk to get to a boss seems blah and over done. The idea that certain mobs in a dungeon pose a threat is awesome in itself. Some mobs are tough but I am having tough time thinking of one that cannot be handled in at least 2 tries.

That group in TA Up path comes to mind…the 4 Nightmare Court people close to the final fight. O look its just some nightmare court. Then you get smashed in the face by the knight and his nasty KD.

However most people don’t know because they just run by all the fun. Yes if you tend to skip content it will come back around and smack you in the face later O-o

Nilkemia.8507:

And, finally Subject Alpha. Only attack I could clearly see through the whole fight was the fire spikes he kept dropping. And they hurt (over 2/3rd’s of my HP), partly because my armor was damaged quite a bit from everything else.

Try him in Path 2 he can be nasty.

IMO Alpha is one of my favorite boss fights in the game. I did path 2 recently and we killed him without doing the “push him into a corner” technique. Not evens sure if that is possible on 2 since his new found AoE needs to be dodge rolled.

Hilko.1760:

Shootsfoot.9276:

When they are so hard to kill that the obvious choice is to just run past them and keep trying until you finally make it, it indicates there’s something wrong with the mechanics of the dungeon as a whole.

The idea of mindlessly blowing through junk to get to a boss seems blah and over done. The idea that certain mobs in a dungeon pose a threat is awesome in itself. Some mobs are tough but I am having tough time thinking of one that cannot be handled in at least 2 tries.

That group in TA Up path comes to mind…the 4 Nightmare Court people close to the final fight. O look its just some nightmare court. Then you get smashed in the face by the knight and his nasty KD.

I’m referring to the hundreds of vile ooze in Arah, not 4 mobs.

Pure Heart.1456:

No one has addressed the OP’s concerns directly;

1) Too many hitpoints
2) 1-shot kills
3) No waypoint ability to rejoin the fight

Yes, all of these suck. Really, really badly.
Anet needs to add extra activities into the mix of combat in addition to dealing with the above.

Completely disagree with #3.

I hated the fact you could just rez to a waypoint and rejoin the fight. It took all strategy out of boss fights.

Hilko.1760:

The idea of mindlessly blowing through junk to get to a boss seems blah and over done. The idea that certain mobs in a dungeon pose a threat is awesome in itself. Some mobs are tough but I am having tough time thinking of one that cannot be handled in at least 2 tries.

That group in TA Up path comes to mind…the 4 Nightmare Court people close to the final fight. O look its just some nightmare court. Then you get smashed in the face by the knight and his nasty KD.

However most people don’t know because they just run by all the fun. Yes if you tend to skip content it will come back around and smack you in the face later O-o

Pretty sure those got nerfed in the January patch but it doesn’t really matter anyway. That trick isn’t very effective on repeat visits. The biggest surprise in that fight is that the silver is more dangerous than the champion.

Hey everyone, I’m new to these forums. I have to agree with Nilkemia. She is right, dungeons are by far hard to beat, to make matters worse they have even beaten groups of level 80’s before, I know from experience because I joined a group of them in the lowest level dungeon Ascalonian Catacombs, and we got our butts kicked. Plus, it is throwing away our hard earned in game gold every time we get beaten (because armor breaks with every defeat). I sent a message to customer support about this, they said to try here. So, I made a post about why dungeons are a waist of our in game money.

Lightrayne.7829:

I enjoy it mainly because I have a static team that I play with on a nightly basis. No need to LFG or deal with PuG drama. Together, we find new ways to clear the dungeon, mess with team comps, learn more about new professions in the dungeon environment, etc. We try to help everyone get what they need from their dungeons and try to teach our new players. While I think the dungeons could use some reworking, I’m fine playing them while I wait for the changes.

Here is a hint… I am a firm believer now that ANet want’s nothing but bunkers to run their dungeons… I did arah 4 (last path of last dungeon in the game and crazy) with 3 guardians, a d/d ele and me in my bunker mes set up… We wiped I would say once… Doing dungeons in pick up groups has its ups and downs… Some are still like “Really they expect us to survive this?” but our group usually gets through.. I run HOTW all 3 paths a lot and they are a breeze (except for mobs right before final boss in path 3… Anet kitten?) but seriously question your team composition before you go into the dungeon… Ask the people how much toughness they have (dead serious do it the same way people do for AR in fracs). Enjoy!

Edit: my post was meant for OP sorry lightrayne

Wiping with 5 bunkers, horrific.

Nikaido.3457:

Ask the people how much toughness they have (dead serious do it the same way people do for AR in fracs).

Hahaha. Thanks for the good laughs.

And I am really curious as to what made you wipe in Arah path 4. With 5 bunker in the group, it could only possibly be a major epic missed dodge that happened to all 5 party members during Lupicus, because there is absolutely nothing else that could possibly make the whole party wipe during the whole instance except for that.

I think what had happened is we got split up on the path to one of the bosses (the lyssa one I believe). But beyond that the entire dungeon was a breeze… DPS sucked but the joke of the group was “Hey we don’t have enough boons.” “Yeah I think we really need more boons.”

Dungeons are fun only if you are looking for a challenge. If you’re looking for relaxed, team-based, instanced content with a reward, explorables are not going to fit that bill. Both remain true until you’ve mastered the mechanics, at which point those looking for challenge realize on the umpteenth repetition that they are going through the motions. The relaxed-experience seekers, on the other hand, get their relaxed experience. Funny how that works.

If dungeons are not fun it more likely has to do with group composition and class imbalance than the difficulty of the dungeon. The little spiders in AC are reportedly a breeze with reflection. Five of 8 classes can bring reflection to the table. The spider queen is easier with a lot of condition management. All classes are not equal in that regard, either.

Dungeons are not fun. Plain and simple. I 100% agree with the OP. Now there’s all the elitist GW2 fan boys defending it, as their own ‘challenge’ and that it’s fine as it is.

Far from it.

There’s challenge. And then there’s completely, and utterly stupid. Dungeon’s are simply not fun, because you’re bombarded with knockdowns, stuns, conditions, launches, knockbacks, etc. More than you can handle with the endurance recharge rate, all the stability/cc removal skills. That’s the problem. There is simply NO balance in dungeons.

Now some are saying, players enjoy different parts of the game, while the others enjoy this and that. Why can’t all aspects of the game be fun for everyone? Or at least do-able?

I’ve been playing since pre-launch, and I’ve probably only done half the dungeons. I regret to say each one was a frustrating experience. But why wouldn’t it be, when I’m being cut down in seconds, even in my tank gear/build, from constant AoE and CC?

I can dodge attacks, sure. I can block for a few seconds, ok. Knocked down? I’ll just pop that stability. Conditions on me, heal/remove them. Oh wait. The mobs seem to have no cooldown on any of these abilities, nor a cast bar of some sort (major flaw in the game’s design, KEY aspect of GW1) so I’m unable to react in time. All my major CC removal skills are on minute long cooldowns, while I’m being tossed around like a ball and unable to do anything while everyone’s dying and desperately hoping they can get a revive or two in, before the mobs go on another multi-CC frenzy every second.

The MAIN issue with dungeons is BALANCE. To be fair, ANet hasn’t disappointed me with balance (give or take a few cough OP classes/builds on new expansions cough) and have fixed the problems regarding them (eventually).

Well, inb4 the ‘go l2p nub’ crowd show up, and blindly defend the most terribly flawed area of the game.

Turgut.4397:

Dungeons are not fun. Plain and simple. I 100% agree with the OP. Now there’s all the elitist GW2 fan boys defending it, as their own ‘challenge’ and that it’s fine as it is.

Far from it.

There’s challenge. And then there’s completely, and utterly stupid. Dungeon’s are simply not fun, because you’re bombarded with knockdowns, stuns, conditions, launches, knockbacks, etc. More than you can handle with the endurance recharge rate, all the stability/cc removal skills. That’s the problem. There is simply NO balance in dungeons.

Now some are saying, players enjoy different parts of the game, while the others enjoy this and that. Why can’t all aspects of the game be fun for everyone? Or at least do-able?

I’ve been playing since pre-launch, and I’ve probably only done half the dungeons. I regret to say each one was a frustrating experience. But why wouldn’t it be, when I’m being cut down in seconds, even in my tank gear/build, from constant AoE and CC?

I can dodge attacks, sure. I can block for a few seconds, ok. Knocked down? I’ll just pop that stability. Conditions on me, heal/remove them. Oh wait. The mobs seem to have no cooldown on any of these abilities, nor a cast bar of some sort (major flaw in the game’s design, KEY aspect of GW1) so I’m unable to react in time. All my major CC removal skills are on minute long cooldowns, while I’m being tossed around like a ball and unable to do anything while everyone’s dying and desperately hoping they can get a revive or two in, before the mobs go on another multi-CC frenzy every second.

The MAIN issue with dungeons is BALANCE. To be fair, ANet hasn’t disappointed me with balance (give or take a few cough OP classes/builds on new expansions cough) and have fixed the problems regarding them (eventually).

Well, inb4 the ‘go l2p nub’ crowd show up, and blindly defend the most terribly flawed area of the game.

Finally!!!! Someone actually agrees that the dungeons are overpowered. I also mentioned that its also wasting our in game money, I mean come on, fixing armor in dungeons ain’t cheap. its like fight, defeated, fix armor, and that pattern will keep repeating until we have no gold, silver, or bronze coins left.

As someone who has been playing all sorts of games and run all sorts of dungeons, so far GW2 is by far the one that I have the least fun in.

It really seems like chaos.

Now I get it that they don’t want to have the holy trinity set up, that’s totally fine and acceptable, infact I would say it’s a good thing in a way because it makes people think of new strategies. But, it also leads to chaos.

Now that we have a decent list of things wrong with the dungeons how do you think we can fix them.

Personally the things I would like to see fixed are 3 major things.

1. Less trash. I want to run the whole thing and not feel like I’m fighting constantly it should at least be somewhat relaxing and not uber stressfull. Or keep the same trash just make it easier, those are really the main options to deal with trash mobs.

2. Health and power of mobs. Trash mobs shouldn’t be able to feel like they can one shot a big thing in heavy armor. Trash should be kept around the area where it might take 2 people to kill 1 mob, but they should do enough damage to make you think twice about soloing it, just my opinion.
I understand then it might turn into an AoE fest, that’s also manageable though by setting mobs at dif ranges etc. etc.

3. Bosses should not one shot…except. I think all bosses should have one, WELL ADVERTISED ability that you can easily see coming that should almost or maybe one shot you, that way it keeps the players ready.

I dunno like I said, the game is pretty great and the worlds are amazing, but it feels like they just put a bunch of championish class characters in one area and said, alright have fun in there. There is no synergy or flow to the dungeons, no dungeon rhythm that a pug should be able to find.