Guild Wars 2

erm… I for one love the dungeons. So much so in fact, that I run a weekly dungeon event in my guild, and am wishing I could do it more often. In the meantime I tend to log off because I get bored when out of the dungeons.

I’m not quite sure what’s bothering everyone, but my guess is your just not paying attention. Last Friday for example (my weekly dungeon is every Friday) we did CoF and only had problems with I think it was the second boss. He swapped weapons and would use a Greatsword spin attack that would kill anyone in his path. Once we learned how to avoid it (after a quite a few deaths I admit) it was easy – and fun.

Later in that dungeon, we were fighting on the bridges when our whole group wiped at the same time. – Lesson learned… don’t fight on the bridge or be very careful if you do, because the fireballs can knock you to your death…

The only real disappointing thing was the final boss, was easy – really easy. Cool though.

I went through AC story mode a while back with my guild. We’d never done any dungeons. Died a few times, wiped a few times, too.

Lovers was a nasty fight, took a few tries for us to get them to not just both charge one person so we actually could lure them apart, but we got them down, and the rest of the fights were more fun than impossible.

Guildy says, “Hey, let’s do CM!” Never done that before, but have a fair idea of what to expect thanks to our semi-fumbling clear of AC, so— Nope. I handle the golem okay, being the only person in the group who isn’t downed by it at some point. Then we wipe on the door guard twice before getting to the cellar. We clear the cellar, though wipe about a half-dozen times on the first fight down the stairs.

Ugh, that wasn’t fun. We’ll we’re through that, and so—

Zerged by the group inside the tunnel. I lost count of expenses at 45 silver in repairs, plus a respec that didn’t end up actually helping the run before we all just quit there. Realistically, the problem was probably some of the guildies not being able to focus fire or take proper care of themselves (the dungeons really do encourage an ‘every-man-for-themselves’ feel instead of any sense of teamwork). That doesn’t matter, though, because the unfortunate outcome was: I can’t do story mode dungeons with my guildies.

In my view, dungeons are for hardcores, and so, I won’t be doing them until (at the very least) Story Mode dungeons are made more reasonably doable. Also, seeing the skill divide between dungeons vs. everything else, honestly diminishes my interest in continuing to play the game. The more content I’ll never get to access in any form because I’m not hardcore enough … the more reasons to just go play other games where I can see the content.

As has been said elsewhere, the game doesn’t have a sub. Maybe I’ll check back and see if if things are more fun in a week or three — but between dungeons being curb-stomp difficulty, and invisble armies in WvW, there’s not much left for me in the game at the moment.

Yeah, the dungeons in Guild Wars 2 aren’t for the faint of heart. CM Story was the exception, but I believe they certainly fixed that.

They require a good amount of ability from each and every member to complete. For those who are frustrated with dungeons as they currently are, you can wait until Guild Wars 2 irons out the wrinkles. Dungeons, currently, are extremely unbalanced in the way of some areas and bosses are extremely easy and other areas are the extreme opposite. It makes them feel broken. I don’t know if they plan on doing anything, but they should. Challenging dungeons are great, but it feels like the difficulty slider is on a dart board.

Or people can wait until guilds do enough dungeons to waltz through them. As time progresses, people learn to cakewalk through these things.

miya.5160:

Or people can wait until guilds do enough dungeons to waltz through them. As time progresses, people learn to cakewalk through these things.

People learned to cakewalk through Guild Wars 1 with clever build designs provided by the sheer depth that 1300 skills provided. All you can do in GW2 is dodge twice, use whatever get out of free utility skill you have and then pray to god it goes to attack someone.

miya.5160:

Yeah, the dungeons in Guild Wars 2 aren’t for the faint of heart. CM Story was the exception, but I believe they certainly fixed that.

They require a good amount of ability from each and every member to complete. For those who are frustrated with dungeons as they currently are, you can wait until Guild Wars 2 irons out the wrinkles. Dungeons, currently, are extremely unbalanced in the way of some areas and bosses are extremely easy and other areas are the extreme opposite. It makes them feel broken. I don’t know if they plan on doing anything, but they should. Challenging dungeons are great, but it feels like the difficulty slider is on a dart board.

Or people can wait until guilds do enough dungeons to waltz through them. As time progresses, people learn to cakewalk through these things.

See that’s the thing: I already feel some of these dungeons are cake. AC story or explorable? Cake for me. I’ve only done it twice, the first time with a miserable failure and the second with some initial difficulties but then a quick win. I don’t feel like twice is a huge number to expect out of people. To think of it getting easier makes me shudder at how quick people are to pass very bad judgement.
CM explorable I have the same attitude. Was tough the first two times I did it – I’m sure I could blaze through it now.

Dungeons mut be greatly improved, seriously.

- Minions are like tanks: as someone said before, they have a lot of hit points Today I made Crucible of Eternity and my party needed a lot of time to kill a technologist from the Inquest. I don’t know how many hp he had, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t less than 500k (I think it had about 1M). It was like hitting a door in WvW without a flame ram

- Minions do really high damage: ok, that’s good for me… but only if I have a real chance to avoid it. I like a lot the giant champion in the charr village. In fact, I think he’s one of the best bosses of the game. But in dungeons, sometimes you found 4-5 minions doing the same damage and you can hardly hit them with a proper strategy without being killed.

- Rewards: rewards are… well, the most unbalanced thing I’ve found. For example: you are lvl 80 and you are going to play Ascalon Catacombs in history mode. You are going to find harder minions than playing in Orr. They are harder that Zhaitan minions, but the reward is… worse! You are going to get blue-green items as if you were killing spider hatchlings. And finally, as reward, you will get a low-level yellow hat… with the same design for all the dungeons!!

So these are the three main reasons because I don’t like dungeons in Gw2. I’ve played Crubile history today, because i heard about some rebalancing, but… I’ve only found tanks and deaths, for a very small reward: the final yellow hat (salvaged for an ecto), a superior golemancer rune (ok, this is good, but I need 5 more to get a set and I cannot sell it in the market, so it’s useless for me) and a bunch of white-blue-green items.

By the way, I’m not crying about difficulty. I like a lot HM in GW1. I got Legendary Vanquisher title and I made all dungeons in HM. Torment minions, Aatxes… they were hard, but more enjoyable in my opinion

P.S.: I hope I’ve expressed clearly my opinion, because I’m not English native. Sorry if some parts are hard to understand :S

Yeah, Arah and CoF are pretty not-fun.

I think bigger issue actually comes down to…

playing what works vs playing whats enjoyable

In my experience with my elementalist i cant STAND any weapon but dual daggers. The other weapons are just so enjoyable, and feel lame in comparison. Yet, are TONS of boss mobs that pretty much REQUIRE me to be staff or sceptor to even stand a chance against them. So it comes down to a choice by the player…

Do you play what works and succeed, or play whats fun and enjoy your time in game… if answer is play what works then the devs have failed. If you add a weapon or spec type into the game, and it doesnt work then why does it exist in the first place?

" you shouldn’t play pure dps because you just die constantly"

Then why does it exist? if it doesnt work as a playstyle then why is it there? if you are going to GIVE an option in game it had BEST be viable! its something i thik that Tochlight 2 has done amazingly well! are builds that sound like they shouldnt work in that game, but they do work generally very well at very least its playable! I know difference is night and day as far as game play goes but… the concept remains.

If you are going to let us spec for pure damage, then it had best be viable… if you are going to require us to have spamable CC or other effects just to stay alive, it had best be an option for any spec, rather then just a certain set up.

For me, untill i can play dagger/dagger on my ele and not feel like a burdon to my entire team, i will just not play…since all the other classes dont interest me, and nor do the weapons it comes down to this.

If you arent having fun playing a game, its not longer a game so why play it? untill i am enjoying my time in GW2 i cant see reason to log in…which is sad because game is good but i enjoy the pve… and until pve is reasonable i just cant force myself to endure the horrible design.

Mekboss.5069:

Sometimes it feels like the dungeons are tuned for people with permanent swiftness and infinite dodge rolls, it doesn’t really help that some classes have limited utility in dungeons due to the nature of their skills.

Melee is still a terrible idea 90% of the time due to high damage, non-telegraphed moves, low combat mobility and some very melee unfriendly mechanics, like that one boss in CoF story mode that has a 900+ range aura that burns anyone within range.

I couldn’t say what i wanted to say much better than this, in my experience it is the trash that are overtuned especially as melee as mekboss said with high damage attacks that you have zero time to react to. Bosses are simple to be honest, Most i’ve encountered require you to follow simple tactis and stay out of obvious’.

And as Lokai said above. We shouldn’t be forced to play weapon sets that we do not enjoy, I chose to play a thief as i enjoy the close combat classes, I’ve always played these sort of classes in the games I’ve played and i will continue to do so as i enjoy them. Why should i be forced to play short bow or pistol / pistol so i don’t die every time a mob looks at me funny…

Aesthetics.2671:

Mekboss.5069:

Sometimes it feels like the dungeons are tuned for people with permanent swiftness and infinite dodge rolls, it doesn’t really help that some classes have limited utility in dungeons due to the nature of their skills.

Melee is still a terrible idea 90% of the time due to high damage, non-telegraphed moves, low combat mobility and some very melee unfriendly mechanics, like that one boss in CoF story mode that has a 900+ range aura that burns anyone within range.

I couldn’t say what i wanted to say much better than this, in my experience it is the trash that are overtuned especially as melee as mekboss said with high damage attacks that you have zero time to react to. Bosses are simple to be honest, Most i’ve encountered require you to follow simple tactis and stay out of obvious’.

And as Lokai said above. We shouldn’t be forced to play weapon sets that we do not enjoy, I chose to play a thief as i enjoy the close combat classes, I’ve always played these sort of classes in the games I’ve played and i will continue to do so as i enjoy them. Why should i be forced to play short bow or pistol / pistol so i don’t die every time a mob looks at me funny…

I play Thief, Warrior, Guardian and Mesmer, I have literally no problems being melee in dungeons. I’ve cleared them all on all of these, multiple times.

maybe I’m blind but I don’t see the quote button anymore.
@Lokai

Just because something is possible doesn’t mean it can be playable. It’s like running around with no weapons and armor and saying well I have the option to play this way – why can’t I kill the hardest boss in the game?

When a player has lots of options, invariably something is going to be a little better than other options or downright awful – like wearing no weapons and armor.

I play dagger/dagger Ele all the time btw…

yeah I wont be sticking around either or spending any of my money on the game as I as well prefer mainly pve and dungeons and in all my many years of playing mmos these dungeons are the most frustrating(and has nothign to do with learning them) has to do with poorly designed.

Scarlett.9256:

1. There is absolutely no sense of control – it is very chaotic. It feels like a giant game of aggro ping pong. Yes, you blind, you dodge, you roll, you bubble, you slow, you pray – but at the end of the day you are doing these things because you have aggro and you are trying not to die. When you no longer have aggro, it becomes someone else’s problem. The people in your party may be doing the very best they can to use all abilities to aid the group, but the way the game is structured I never notice them (even if its being done effectively). Dungeons FEEL like they are every man for themselves even though that may not be occurring. Bottom line: They feel like a massive cluster bleep.

4. Zero boss mechanics. Crank up the hp, max out the damage – one shot kill. Fun stuff. Actually, it would be fun if you could tell what the boss was doing through all the spell effects and the giant Norn Guardian in his face. Boss fights are just giant target dummies with massive amounts of hit points with poorly telegraphed one shot kill mechanics. How many times have you died with ZERO clue of what hit you because it was masked for whatever reason.

Even though I never had any problem running explorables, (actually last night we did CM exp with 4 people) I have to agree with this. I generally like the dungeons and I like the difficulty, I just don’t like the fact that it’s “cheap” difficulty. Instead of giving interesting mechanics to bosses and making them smarter, they just gave them insane HP and1-shot skills (often without an animation so you can tell what they’re about to do and avoid it).
Some bosses are better but most fit this description. And although I like the dungeons and I don’t want them to make them easier, I would really like it if they improved boss mechanics. Like the OP said, it’s too chaotic, sometimes you die and you have no idea what hit you. I think there’s alot of room for improvement in this sector.

christ! that edit time limit! <_<

Lokai.7850:

I think bigger issue actually comes down to…

playing what works vs playing whats enjoyable

In my experience with my elementalist i cant STAND any weapon but dual daggers. The other weapons are just so enjoyable, and feel lame in comparison. Yet, are TONS of boss mobs that pretty much REQUIRE me to be staff or sceptor to even stand a chance against them. So it comes down to a choice by the player…

Do you play what works and succeed, or play whats fun and enjoy your time in game… if answer is play what works then the devs have failed. If you add a weapon or spec type into the game, and it doesnt work then why does it exist in the first place?

" you shouldn’t play pure dps because you just die constantly"

Then why does it exist? if it doesnt work as a playstyle then why is it there? if you are going to GIVE an option in game it had BEST be viable! its something i thik that Tochlight 2 has done amazingly well! are builds that sound like they shouldnt work in that game, but they do work generally very well at very least its playable! I know difference is night and day as far as game play goes but… the concept remains.

If you are going to let us spec for pure damage, then it had best be viable… if you are going to require us to have spamable CC or other effects just to stay alive, it had best be an option for any spec, rather then just a certain set up.

For me, untill i can play dagger/dagger on my ele and not feel like a burdon to my entire team, i will just not play…since all the other classes dont interest me, and nor do the weapons it comes down to this.

If you arent having fun playing a game, its not longer a game so why play it? untill i am enjoying my time in GW2 i cant see reason to log in…which is sad because game is good but i enjoy the pve… and until pve is reasonable i just cant force myself to endure the horrible design.

So rather than think that maybe something that’s highly viable for say spvp, wouldn’t be as viable for a dungeon, that the choice at this point should be taken from you to avoid you building it in the first place??

In the sense of if it was explained a little better ingame that 5 glascannons with no support skills would be suckage in a dungeon I agree, in the terms that 5 glasscannons should be viable in a dungeon over a team that works in unison and supports one another, I think your idea of how that should work would be horrible tbh, not fun and end up as bad as a lot of WoW dungeons, which are god awful the last time I played the game

Hellkaiser.6025:

So rather than think that maybe something that’s highly viable for say spvp, wouldn’t be as viable for a dungeon, that the choice at this point should be taken from you to avoid you building it in the first place??

In the sense of if it was explained a little better ingame that 5 glascannons with no support skills would be suckage in a dungeon I agree, in the terms that 5 glasscannons should be viable in a dungeon over a team that works in unison and supports one another, I think your idea of how that should work would be horrible tbh, not fun and end up as bad as a lot of WoW dungeons, which are god awful the last time I played the game

Nope, you didn’t get it.

In GW2, the “spec” has 3 major sources and if you talk about “spec” as a cohesive unitary thing, you’re wrong from the very beginning. Obviously I’m talking about traits, utility skills and weapon skills.

- traits: believe it or not, here the difference is quite small and even going pure mitigation/HP won’t matter in front of 1-shot moves that are not noticeable.

- utility skills: these indeed have to be chosen more carefully and will make some difference

- weapon skills: here is what Lokai meant: since GW2 was made with the “gear doesn’t matter” mindset, and the progress is in terms of cosmetics, it is quite logical to assume that ANY weapon combo you would pick should perform equally well. Some people just hate the way some weapons look or their skills. They shouldn’t be punished for that.

For example, at the moment most melees are punished by being one-shot by “mechanics” or moves that are null when you are at range. Why?

Also, just because you or 1-2 other people had no issues running the dungeons doesn’t make the system perfect or even good. It has many many flaws, and the difficulty is just one of them. However you and the rest of the zealots only see this one because it is the most easy to use to pick on others while also patting yourself on the back. I was 100% sure this is what I’ll find on threads such as this: ignoring all other flaws and bashing on people thinking dungeons are too difficult. Very constructive.

What about the stupid millions of HP that some bosses have, while not being any threat at all if you just stay at range and shoot for 15 minutes? How is that a fun, well build encounter?

What about the useless rewards? What’s the logic behind having to run a dungeon 50-60 times for a skin-set? Where’s the flavor in that?

What about spending 30-40 mins to finally find someone willing to go through this ordeal? This is the most obvious symptom showing that something is wrong: most players aren’t willing to run through dungeons: and this means that it is a lot of wasted content and effort from ANet. And it’s a shame.