Guild Wars 2

Just tedious. A test of a players endurance, how long they can follow basic paterns before fatiguing but that’s all. The trash mobs have about 2/3’rds more health than they should in order to make them a speed bump to slow down groups and keep them from completing the dungeon quickly, there’s no need to swap weapons in combat or coming up with any tactics as going melee in most cases is suicide so everyone just goes ranged and you can’t seem to decide if you want to reward or punish players for using control skills in big fights as getting close enough to get mobs in range for a “fear me” or a stomp or other normal control skills usually means dying immediately.

Bosses not only have the 2/3rds extra health but also have stability. Yes it can be removed but why bother going through all that work and group coordination when it just gives you a window for a 2 second stun then stability is back with 5 stacks. I have to question the purpose of giving every boss stability in the first place thoguh when throughout the rest of this game you’ve attempted to teach players a new way of playing the game where control is important then throughout the endgame you take away all the new found and hard won skills you gave players by making every boss immune in order to pad out the completion time some more.

Also, I don’t know why there are 4 different paths, every group will just want to do the easiest one to get tokens since the armor is so god awfully expensive. And I get the feeling that the armor is only so expensive to keep it on par with the overinflated price of cultural armors.

Normally I wouldn’t say anything because most MMO’s use this kind of tedium to keep subscribers, but since this isn’t a subscription based game and since the devs have said that their goal was to make the entire game fun then I just have to point out that as dungeons are now, nobody is having fun. The unskilled or uncoordinaed just die and give up or find a group to get carried by (and will likely never get enough tokens to afford the armor) and those who are skilled enough to play through them will only ever play the quickest and easiest path to get the tokens then never touch the dungeon again.

I figure this post will get ignored but I hope someone takes notice. The majority of this game is a step forward in the MMO genre but the dungeons themselves is a huge step backwards into grind.

Your points are simply wrong, as is your opinion.

Just because you aren’t having fun because you don’t know how to dodge doesn’t mean other people aren’t having fun. I’m having a blast with them.

1/10

I am well aware how to dodge. Dodging has no relation to any of the points I’ve brought up.

Oh, I thought you were making the point that whenever you get within 600 range of enemies you instantly die.

Yes you can dodge. that isn’t the point. the point is this:

Why go into melee range if you are just going to immediately roll out of it or die? You can dodge, and I do dodge and have done so to great effect. The point is that there’s no point getting that close because you’ll die. its better to just use a ranged weapon.

Whenever you get within melee range you get hit for massive amounts of damage with very little options to migitate it. You can delay the damage but if you stay in melee you can’t avoid it. There is no incentive to spec for melee in a dungeon.

Saint.2043:

Yes you can dodge. that isn’t the point. the point is this:

Why go into melee range if you are just going to immediately roll out of it or die? You can dodge, and I do dodge and have done so to great effect. The point is that there’s no point getting that close because you’ll die. its better to just use a ranged weapon.

Whenever you get within melee range you get hit for massive amounts of damage with very little options to migitate it. You can delay the damage but if you stay in melee you can’t avoid it. There is no incentive to spec for melee in a dungeon.

You do know that you have two weapon slots, correct? You don’t have to spend 100% of a battle in melee or 100% at range.

Apathy.6430:

Oh, I thought you were making the point that whenever you get within 600 range of enemies you instantly die.

facepalm, if every player give this kind of “constructive critism” then this community is bound to be doomed and so is this wonderful game

Apathy.6430:

You do know that you have two weapon slots, correct? You don’t have to spend 100% of a battle in melee or 100% at range.

Yes. I’m making the point that there’s no reason to go melee. dungeons force you to go 100% range.

Saint.2043:

Apathy.6430:

You do know that you have two weapon slots, correct? You don’t have to spend 100% of a battle in melee or 100% at range.

Yes. I’m making the point that there’s no reason to go melee. dungeons force you to go 100% range.

Well, then as I said, that is wrong.

I don’t know how else you’d want me to put it. That simply isn’t true.

i think the people commenting haven’t done any hard dungeons.

coming from someone who has done every single explorer mode and almost every path..
I have full exotic gear and the greatsword from COF farm

my grp i use for every dungeon is also full exotic + wep we have wiped hundreds of times doign these dungeons ..

we never get any decent loot from the dungeons only from tokens being a warrior myself and i fully understand what op is saying i too have to go range 80% of the time if you go down in mele range good luck tryign to get revived.

You just cant dodge evade reflect everything or whatever especially on trash when there is 5-6 mobs and they are all focusing on you.
i find teh trash harder then the bosses, since the majority of our wipes are from trash.

This all takes the fun out of it for me and i decided today i just cba anymore, less then a month into the game ….

What Apathy said. I love HotW, CoF, AC, CM, and the WeedPeople one that I can never remember.

Explorable and story. The only problems I have is figuring out the my teammates skill levels, how to make them work off of each other, with each other, the best strat to do things with the team composition, communication (especially since a lot dont like to talk), and making sure the new ones know as much as possible about the dungeon as possible.

One mistake I made early in the game is assuming one strat would work all the time. No! once the group changes, the plan changes.
2war- 3 ele= 10 -15 min run
3 war- 2 ele= 15-20 min run
2war – 1 mes – 2 ele = 10-12 min run
1 guard 1 war 1 mes 2 necro=15-20 min run

Its highly dynamic but it can all succeed. And you meet some great people!

I am not discounting the OP but you can list traits and hp/toughness that you run explorable with? That gives a better impression that the dungeon is wrong or your hp/toughness isn’t right.

Anyone going into a dungeon with a Berserker’s set is foolish, even ranged.

PvE zerg tactics and fast kills won’t save you here. If you plan to survive a dungeon, each person on the team had better be self-sufficient, while at the same time providing support & DPS as needed.

Also, consider this…There are no trash mobs in GW 2 dungeons. The so-called “trash mobs” require at least the same strategies and mechanics neccessary to defeat bosses (and sometimes, even more so). If your group just started and you’re struggling/wiping consistently on “trash,” examine people’s traits, gear, stats, and everything else. Respecs are cheap, so it might take some experimenting to determine which trait spec works best for you. The explo dungeons are designed to be the hardest level of PvE content available now in Guild Wars 2. They are not meant for everybody. I do think AC explo is a little unfair in the picture it paints for future explos, but aside from that, it takes a coordinated team who can rely both on themselves and each other, using positioning, combos, and tactics to complete an explo without a wipe.

And that’s exactly how it should be

Saint you are absolutely right the dungeons are not fun. Melee characters have to use ranged weapons the whole time or risk pulling aggro from multiple mobs and dying. And the dungeon system in gw2 is just another way to grind unfortunately. Dungeons are the best way to lvl earlier on by simply doing the story on farm mode over and over again. And farming tokens is all you do later on by taking the easiest shortest path over and over again. Hopefully they will figure out a way to change this experience

+1 on the complaints about ranged combat. There are VERY few encounters where you can get away with melee combat, usually only bosses and even then still few.

The trash is WAY too OP and as someone said above, this is likely due to ANet wanting to keep a certain “pace” for a dungeon, which imo is bs and poor design.

Honestly, I think they need to sit down and re-tool EVERY dungeon and come up with some CREATIVE ideas, not just “oh lets put a trash mob here with 200% extra hp and stacking poisons/cripples”. Think up some clever puzzles/mini-bosses instead.

Until ANet puts some effort into their product…I won’t be putting much of my own effort into theirs(that includes money too).

Malchior.5042:

Also, consider this…There are no trash mobs in GW 2 dungeons. The so-called “trash mobs” require at least the same strategies and mechanics neccessary to defeat bosses (and sometimes, even more so).

so it’s complicated trash. yay! all of a sudden I have fun now grinding down champions which a) have no connection whatsoever to the bosses and b) have an obscene amount of hp just to so we can enjoy them more!

still doesn’t change the fact that the fun get’s lost somewhere between the portal an the first boss…

somsom.5201:

The trash is WAY too OP and as someone said above, this is likely due to ANet wanting to keep a certain “pace” for a dungeon, which imo is bs and poor design.

Honestly, I think they need to sit down and re-tool EVERY dungeon and come up with some CREATIVE ideas, not just “oh lets put a trash mob here with 200% extra hp and stacking poisons/cripples”. Think up some clever puzzles/mini-bosses instead.

the problem is, there is no pace. it gets killed with the first trash pack. the whole pacing is off, during the instance and for the bosses.

even if you have a top-coordinated group and figured out the mechanic (if there is any/it’s not bugged), it still is a drag to move that bar down.

Man, reading these replies from players makes me sad at the state of gamers nowadays

c-c-c-combo system.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo

“it takes a coordinated team who can rely both on themselves and each other, using positioning, combos, and tactics to complete an explo without a wipe.”

this here, gets repeated in every dungeon discussion across the web, with pretty much zero detail on what exactly constitutes positioning, tactics, etc in this game. Where does one go to find specific information on these strategies. Currently I need some help, as I haven’t yet had the opportunity to experiment with every profession.

It is clear from our lack of success that we are missing on strategic elements and group synergy, but there is not nearly enough discussion on any of these forums about what exactly these missing strategies could be. All we are left with is frustrating iterations of guessing which is mainly a community problem, we could do a lot better with sharing of successful strategies for the specific problems we are facing across the various encounters.

The people who have been succesful are not sharing, I really want a thread that goes like “I was able to clear X explorable in Y time with no wipes, my group was composed of these classes with these builds, we played in this fashion to succeed in this difficult encounter”. Whenever I inquire about group composition I get the same line about how there is no trinity, which I am already well aware of. However there is still group composition, there is still a strategy which can maximize synergy and cause fewer wipes. I have found very little helpful information towards composing a group towards smooth dungeon runs.

I understand the ideal is to bring 5 people of any profession, but among those 5 people, we still need to adjust our utility skills, trait selection and gear loadouts in some way to synergize with the other group members and adapt to the encounters we will face. Clearly we cant all bring our glass cannons out and expect to win. There is little to no guidance available in our communities for accomplishing this and it frustrates me that people constantly spout off the need for a new style of strategy, yet fail to specify or even point towards information on building that much needed strategy.

So what is the strategy? where can I find some helpful hints? I’m talking specific information here, not vague things like “learn to dodge, use combo fields” or other obvious things that we are already familiar with from leveling.

This “this isn’t WoW, stop trying to tank, employ dodging and strategy” is an overly gauge and unhelpful statement to people who are struggling with dungeon content. I am not looking for cookie cutters here, but something like a list of things to make sure a group has in the team would be really helpful.

Here is what I think is helpful so far.
-projectile blocking/reflection, like the mesmer dome or the guardian wall
-disabling and interruption, like blinds/daze/stuns
-snare/cripple/chill/knockback effects
-“dummies”, things that the mobs can hit without killing people, like clones, pets, turrets, minions
-condition removal

but we need something better than that, like an ideal list of stuff to bring to make sure you win in a dungeon group, and a description of how to work all these elements together, which classes to look for to fill your group if you are looking for some specific thing, you know, real, usable information that helps us to win the dungeons.

Go do the Help the Asura path on CM and do the bandit rooms in one try.

Im having fun…? What do you mean nobody is having fun. Please explain. Please dont come back with the, “Everyone else is not enjoying or the majority isnt enjoying it”. Get good statistics before you make certain accusations on your post please.

Also, I do agree that dungeons could be tuned up a bit more, but rewards should also be given through out the dungeon. Atleast something better than what we could expect now. Ill leave that bit for the dev team to figure out:D

The cost for dungeon armour is not expensive. Why should it take 2-3 days to get a full dungeon set of armour? Is it just me that finds this stupid?

Mobs don’t all have stability, actually very few of them have stability, what you mean to say is they are Unshakeable, I wrote a guide for this a while ago but didn’t get much notice, because I am no good at making guides but if you want to take a look:

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/48714-pve-control-defiant-indignant-guide/

Sephelutis.3480:

Apathy.6430:

Oh, I thought you were making the point that whenever you get within 600 range of enemies you instantly die.

facepalm, if every player give this kind of “constructive critism” then this community is bound to be doomed and so is this wonderful game

Nah, we’ll be alright. Kids like that seem to be quite rare around here. Plus, I heard there’s like a new patch coming out for WoW. Don’t quote me on this, but I think something’s being released for that game pretty soon. I’m betting we’ll ‘lose’ quite a few bad-mannered players to that. What a shame.

Apathy did you even read saints post?

UnWorldly.8607:

“it takes a coordinated team who can rely both on themselves and each other, using positioning, combos, and tactics to complete an explo without a wipe.”

/snip

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/59322-my-observations-of-the-current-meta-and-suggestions/#entry1870017

That post won’t give you all the answers you’re looking for, but it should give you some good ideas to build off of.

Ill admit I stopped reading like 2 posts down. I cant answer for everyone but the reason i play at melee range instead of ranged is well i enjoy it. Sure i could play at ranged but theres two flaws to that idea.
1: Who has agro is determined by who’s closest to the mob. Without melee characters those super squishy ranged glass cannon types would never be able to play that style.
2: Melee to me atleast is a greater challenge. For those of us who perfer challenge we will always seek it reguardless of if theres something thats “Better” according to someone else.

One of the groups I run with in-house are perfectly able to melee and ranged equally. Our Ranger and Warriors go into melee quite often when they deem fit (based on when and what combo fields I as an Elementalist throw down), our Guardian’s are almost always in melee except when they need to pop out and heal up, and even our silly Thief manages to drop in from time to time with his daggers (lord knows he’ll be the one to get dropped first if he isn’t careful).

It’s pretty easy to determine when it is a safe time to melee and when it isn’t. Mob running toward you/already smacking you? Probably not a good time unless you have some sort of protection/aegis/heal. Mob on a bunch of minions/being kited? Probably an okay time to go melee for better damage. It also doesn’t hurt if the people your’e playing with have defensive stats on their gear and in their builds, since every aspect of this game boils down to a war of attrition. And those who do not die, win that war every single time.