Guild Wars 2

It feels like zerging a heroic in greens (for a WoW reference)

Before the last patch I found dungeons do-able. I don’t know if the difficult changed, but things feel so sloppy now. I die so many times it’s unbelievable. I stand back as support but can barely even doing that. If I attack, I die almost immediately, instantly.

Any insight into this, or have all my groups just been horrible?

Don’t run with people who only stack precision/power and crit damage + traits that only increase damage. I have run most of the explorables, and although sometimes hard (and sometimes buggy) they get easier as we get more familiar with them.

I don’t know man. Without that real “tank” and “heal” role, it feels too sloppy. I don’t see any feasible room for improvement when so much goes on at once, and it seems so hard to decipher through the aoe and sloppiness what really needs to be done.

I’ve only done CM, been too afraid to try others.

above poster (caliber) is wrong, dungeons are being buffed and retuned even in story mode (recently Caudecus manor) to have extra champions, extra cheese damage effects, more aoe etc etc etc and less rewards. they felt they were too easy for the casual playerbase and they weren’t getting out to test their diminishing returns on farming for crafting or repeating events in area’s they’re able to for karma and exp which also btw diminish over time and the playerbases response was to simply not run them if they disagree’d, chat’s a lot more quiet since then in queensdale. it was teeming before. wonder what happened… pfft defo wasn’t that mess of a patch :P amirite A-net? :P rofl

I agree with Caliber on this one. You can’t play this game like past MMOs where you just stand around and face bosses away from the party and tank and spank. Your character needs to be built intelligently, striking a balance between survivability, DPS, and support/control. I can’t count how many frustrated players I have grouped with in Ascalonian Catacombs that flip out on the final fight or the lowers because they keep getting killed. Survivability is more important than DPS, if you have to do crap DPS to survive and help your allies, that is what you do.

My character is built mostly on defense as a warrior, because I enjoy playing a defensive fighter that is a pain to kill. I have just enough points in the precision line to get my bonus for unused signets, yet in a dungeon I use banners only. I lose a lot of my DPS, but my longbow gives me utility to blind, ignite, immobilize and give my allies the ability to ignite enemies. Being at range keeps me slightly out of harms way and I watch closely for attacks aimed at me and on the ground around me. I’m hardly a tank, even when using my shield and sword. I can take hits better than most, especially pure DPS characters, but I will still go down if I’m not paying attention.

People just aren’t used to how active the playstyle is yet, give it time and it’s nowhere near as hard as people make it out to be. Pay attention, scrap the glass cannon spec if you don’t want a repair bill, and don’t be selfish with the skills you use. You should also pick when you should revive a player and when not to, though noble, it isn’t useful if you die trying to help your friend up.

The way I balanced myself out on my warrior was like this:

Ten points into precision line for increased crit and so on, followed by 20 in the defensive line, and I forget where I put the rest. My gear is largely power and precision to offset my largely defensive build. My DPS is stable, but I would say at a medium, but my survivability is fantastic if I’m paying attention and my utility with my weapon choice is proving to be useful time and time again. If you want to be good in this game, throw out what you know from WoW, don’t stand in the fire, and move on.

Arethwen.6972:

I agree with Caliber on this one. You can’t play this game like past MMOs where you just stand around and face bosses away from the party and tank and spank. Your character needs to be built intelligently, striking a balance between survivability, DPS, and support/control. I can’t count how many frustrated players I have grouped with in Ascalonian Catacombs that flip out on the final fight or the lowers because they keep getting killed. Survivability is more important than DPS, if you have to do crap DPS to survive and help your allies, that is what you do.

My character is built mostly on defense as a warrior, because I enjoy playing a defensive fighter that is a pain to kill. I have just enough points in the precision line to get my bonus for unused signets, yet in a dungeon I use banners only. I lose a lot of my DPS, but my longbow gives me utility to blind, ignite, immobilize and give my allies the ability to ignite enemies. Being at range keeps me slightly out of harms way and I watch closely for attacks aimed at me and on the ground around me. I’m hardly a tank, even when using my shield and sword. I can take hits better than most, especially pure DPS characters, but I will still go down if I’m not paying attention.

People just aren’t used to how active the playstyle is yet, give it time and it’s nowhere near as hard as people make it out to be. Pay attention, scrap the glass cannon spec if you don’t want a repair bill, and don’t be selfish with the skills you use. You should also pick when you should revive a player and when not to, though noble, it isn’t useful if you die trying to help your friend up.

The way I balanced myself out on my warrior was like this:

Ten points into precision line for increased crit and so on, followed by 20 in the defensive line, and I forget where I put the rest. My gear is largely power and precision to offset my largely defensive build. My DPS is stable, but I would say at a medium, but my survivability is fantastic if I’m paying attention and my utility with my weapon choice is proving to be useful time and time again. If you want to be good in this game, throw out what you know from WoW, don’t stand in the fire, and move on.

Oh i don’t disagree that balanced and intelligent traits are a prerequisite, and avoiding certain trait lines that seem to offer good stats, but in fact are offering kittened stats is mandatory. I don’t totally hate this aspect. But I can completely relate to the feeling that they sucked the life out of the game in one fell swoop, by simply adding more cheese and not more skill challenges save for “kite moar”
I personally don’t like the “ok lets all go retrait to glascannon or take all our gear off to graveyard zerg and kite this” or the fact players are going to keep trying to exploit what they can to seemingly spite A-net and their responses are seemingly insane nerfs

I don’t appreciate one shot downs, I really don’t, I don’t appreciate mob’s bugging through wards and barriers, I don’t appreciate aoe’s being nigh unstoppable with barriers either, I don’t appreciate how it’s slowly changing from bring the classes you want to “without a guardian, you’re gonna have a bad time”

There is gameplay core issues, and all they seem to want to do is to shore up holes in their goldsinks, and stop players grinding towards the large GRINDY thresholds they told us wouldn’t exist. THAT THEY CREATED!

A lot of us were forgiving, expecting things to be imba at first and get better, but now we’re just seeing the same trends as some of the most FAIL and third rate mmo’s out there, which seems to place us on a slippery slippery road towards them further down the line.

if their goals were to make something fun, tell me this?

How come I’ve noticed a large drop in players in area’s where as before there was usually some lfg chatter?

Am I insane and actually wrong, in assuming that people just stopped, and if so. Was that the goal? cos if so why the heck would that be the goal? even Cm story seems overtuned now, friggin idiotic and a lot of players are NOT happy with this design U-TURN they’re now pulling after sales.

to quote the op: dungeons, feel disgustingly sloppy

They just further added issue to this, by then deliberately making them more sloppy, and less fun. even on story mode.

I don’t like wow anymore but I gotta say, WoW’s PvE in it’s prime with GW2’s pvp system would have been the best mmo ever… The pvp in this game is beautiful, no gear imbalances, no healers, no tanks. The only problem is that the PvE is severely lacking. I’m not saying that there should be a holy trinity, but I remember back before I quit wow me and my friends played a lot of heroics in a group.

It was really fun to try to do all the achievements and you had to employ clear tactics for mobs and bosses. But there’s a reason I quit wow, It got boring and not worth my time. All I’m saying is that Anet could take a few cues about clear encounter design. When you do things right in WoW, you win and feel good about it. You get a feeling of satisfaction, kind of like running a perfect run in games like gradius. When you do things right in GW2, you and your group die several times (CoF bomb room).

Going to have to agree. The PvE in this game is a joke. Im level 50 and have done AC story/explore and CM story/explore.

AC story while hard isnt impossibly so. AC explore likewise, smart play will get you through without any major issues. Still, very unforgiving and hard. Had already done CM story a few times previously so figured lets try CM explore and see what unique challenges the Anet team could throw at me.

CM explore just reeks of lazy design. An entire hallway filled with spike traps that cant be negated or disabled without basically just zerging the bomber and snipers? Really? A room filled with 18 linked enemies that all aggro if you get too close to them (10 of which are silver elites) where as it was explained to me the goal of the room is to jump up on rocks and exploit the terrain to simply go around them.

Are you really telling me that your level design for this instance is to basically AVOID combat or mindlessly zerg rush mobs?

Can someone tell me if the rest of the explorable instances are like this? Not really hard per se, just cheap and uninspired design. You have your moments of cool mechanics in the game, like where you need to bounce back missiles being shot at you in the dungeons of CM Explore. Ok yes, thats cool. But hop on this rock, now run along the side of this wall and over onto the railing of this ramp, ok now lets avoid this entire room is NOT fun. Nor is it really giving me a lot of hope for the future of this game.

Your overworld gameplay and pvp is spot on. Did you guys in the rush to polish pvp and the overall leveling experience simply forget to craft a solid pve game? Was this just phoned in or what?

edit

I started playing about a little over a week or two ago, as others have already said. Getting a group for a dungeon is becoming increasingly harder and harder. Im on a very high pop server and I can already tell a marked decrease in the number of players loitering outside of instances looking to do runs.

Guys, something is wrong with your game. Fix it.

Agreed with OP. The dungeons I’ve run (AC, ACe and CM) felt about right before the patch. CM story was a little face roll, but ACs was good. AC explore was a good challenge. Ran CM tonight after the patch, now it’s just dumb. It could’ve been made more fun with some interesting mechanics, but instead we get a bunch of mobs that all jump on you with knockback so you get ping ponged to death (No diminishing returns on cc, for real??). The game needs PUGable content! Give it back!

if this is all about after the patch then i guess i haven’t checked it out yet…just sounds a lot like the things that people have been complaining about since release.