Guild Wars 2

After a few weeks of play, and going as high as 57 on my Mesmer, I did my first dungeon today, AC. It was an interesting experience and I wasn’t quite sure what to expect based on what I knew from just standard world PvE.

I come from WoW, where I had many 80s and did every raid up to cata (all the way back from vanilla) so that’s my point of reference for dungeons. Having played the majority of classes in this game to at least level 15, I got the impression there wouldn’t be dedicated tank/healer roles like in WoW. Curious to see how this worked, I eagerly entered the dungeon.

What I found was sort of… lackluster. It felt more like a zerg, an elongated event rather than a dungeon requiring strategy. There wasn’t really any one person tanking damage, and usually the aggro would bounce between people, resulting in some confusing play. The bosses themselves, interesting, but also boring.

The lovers idea is fun, but you just end up spamming rocks not just in that fight, but everyone. Carrying boulders with you from one boss to the next. It becomes beating a stunned horse almost. There isn’t a lot of reward or challenge. And not a lot of coordination, just chickens with their heads cut off, dpsing.

Now I’ve played guild wars 2 long enough to know there is a lot to this game that I still may not know. I slowly but surely discovered things as I leveled up, and I still discover small elements of play even now. But, I’m pretty disappointed with the dungeons.

So tell me, am I missing something? Is this what I can come to expect as I get higher, or at 80? And with fractals? Maybe I’m just a traditionalist, and I enjoy my standard roles a bit too much. Which is fine, as I enjoy wPvE enough to continue playing this till 80. And wPvP looks good too. But I am a bit disappointed.

Thoughts, feedback, all appreciated.

Cheers!

This is how everyone’s first attempt at a dungeon goes. People don’t know what to do, and instead of trying a strategy they just zerg things down. The biggest problem is that rarely will anyone go back and redo a story mode dungeon, so you generally have people that are doing it for their first time, or at least first time on that character. So nobody knows what their class is supposed to do, or they don’t even know what to expect in the dungeon itself.

This goes away when you get to end game explorables. People want to do them as quickly as possible, and as efficiently as possible. There is no graveyard rushing, there are no convenient boulders laying around, and there’s a lot of fancy jumping in order to avoid pulling trash that doesn’t need to be cleared.

Yeah I felt the same way about things. I’ve played MMORPG’s for a long time now, or so I’d like to think from FFXI, WoW, Aion and now GW2. I was expecting more myself, it didn’t really feel like teamwork anymore so than what I would do in a group event somewhere but at least the group event felt fun and you could play normally like your character would anywhere else.

In the dungeon (believe it was AC exp mode could be wrong) everyone just switched to ranged weapons and we tried to avoid most hard battles. I guess if we had a guardian it would have made some of those fights “easier”. I guess it’s not required to have a guardian just takes forever otherwise. Seemed to me a guardian was a lot like having a tank/heals, but they claim there is no such thing in this game.

Then we got about 30 minutes into it and the npc that continues our journey got bugged, so we all just ended up quitting. It wasn’t the best experience and certainly left me with a bad impression about this game. More so when I see on these forums any exploits or so called “exploits” that allow someone to farm gold or make money at a faster rate than normal get dealt with exceedingly fast yet bugs in dungeons are just left in the game? It’s not a new dungeon so why hasn’t it been fixed? Why nerf anyway in game where people can make money faster as well? Also why would people be skipping most of your dungeons if they felt they were worth the time to complete them normally?

Overall I just felt like I had the least amount of actual fun running that dungeon and honestly even if I had completed it I doubt I would have felt differently. I’m seeing this as a trend though in MMO games, they are becoming less about fun and more about pointless grind. After an eternity of grind you get shinnies, somehow this is supposed to make the fact you had almost no fun along the way worth doing it.

I could go back and do more dungeon runs but meh… what’s the point the only time I’ll use this gear is for what world vs. world pvp? I don’t even care much for pvp as it is.

Don’t judge GW2 dungeons based on your first attempt at one dungeon path in a group that was likely filled with inexperienced players.

It doesn’t matter how many MMOs you’ve played or how many years you’ve been playing MMOs, you’re still new to GW2. It gets better as you learn how to properly spec, gear and play in a dungeon as well as when you’re grouped with other experienced players.

try again at lvl 80…you’ll see that despite downleveling, any dungeon is made for lvl 80 players….

I m not an elitist i take often low levels to dungeon..
Yet 100% of people i took there finds dungeons really bad, and they change opinion at 80 usually….

Also some huge design mistake should ve been corrected long time ago….
Enemies attacking the respawn -.-? that is the first thing to check….

@ Mars.

Actually it was a guild run with people who all but myself were not new to running dungeons or the one in particular seeing as I was the only n00b in it I’m doubtful about how much I could have possibly slowed things down. I don’t run around aggroing trash to the party and for the most part ask for advice before I do anything that might be stupid.

It didn’t feel fun or worthwhile in the least, no wow dungeon did I ever really leave where I didn’t have the least bit of fun or get something worth my time out of it, I’ve had bad experiences but even then I could laugh at them and say well it’ll go better next time. Playing a different spec would not have helped me enjoy myself anymore.

I’m a Theif who has to run through dungeons with a shortbow because there is nothing to heal me besides myself and almost everything did aoe damage weather or not I was close to them didn’t seem to matter except they did more damage up close, my conclusion this games dungeons are not in anyway melee friendly. Not being melee friendly pretty much destroys any fun way to play a primarily melee class wouldn’t you say?

Also I care more about pve than pvp almost all my gear had defensive stats for survivability, yes I knew I would take a hit to dps but you take even more when you can’t use melee abilities with a melee build. Even than I was taking damage like no one’s business.

You say don’t judge GW2 dungeons based on my first experience yet you clearly judged me and the group I was with my assuming we had no clue of what we were doing…

I haven’t played a thief, yet. You can post in the thief forum and I’m sure someone will be more than happy to give you advice.

Well sorry thanks for the advice I guess all I hear when it comes to thieves in dungeons is use your shortbow.

Sigh it’s like really that’s it? If I wanted to run around and ranged attack all day I could have rolled a ranger, or warrior since they seem to have a higher dps ranged attack than rangers oddly enough.

Well… not being able to melee the Legendary bosses, and some lesser encounters in dungeons is a problem for all melee classes. This is a flaw in design on the part of Anet unfortunately. Their idea of tough and interesting bosses seems to be “dodge the numerous one hit KO attacks”, most of which happen in melee range of the boss.

Anet seems to have improved upon this idea with the fractal bosses, so I’ll hand them that cookie. However it doesn’t take away the pain of the older dungeons.

TheRabbit.9478 : I’m not surprised to here that that’s common for many peoples first attempt. And I’ll certainly give it another try at some point. But I’d be lying if I said it was high on my to-do list. In terms of ‘knowing what your class is supposed to do’ I’m not sure it would matter. Classes don’t have rolls. People help each other and dps, that seems to be the gist.

Skotie.2614 : I don’t know if I’d say this is a common trend in MMO’s. Certainly when I played SWTOR for a while, the dungeons were pretty enjoyable. Especially the first one. WoW is WoW. Some are kitten, some are nice. The grind is the grind. That’s a staple in MMO’s and the key is to make it fun as long as possible. Overall, sounds like we had a similar experience but I would disagree in writing off ‘most mmos’ following a similar path, beyond the standard path.

Mars.6319: This is a snap judgement first impression. I completely agree, I’m still new to guild wars.

Lordbyron.8369: I guess I’ll just have to wait till 80.

Once you get an organized group you realize there are still roles, they are just not as defined as other MMOs.

It’s true that every class has different specs for more damage or survivability, but certain classes are still just naturally better.

Guardians for instance can still tank for most instances, while Warriors can go full dps much better then most other classes, and it provides a much cleaner and imho fun experience.

I was in the same boat as you and probably almost everyone was the first couple weeks of the game when most people didn’t have a clue on dungeons. I remember when I thought AC was super hard. Now I can do it in my sleep in under 15 minutes and even do it with less then 5 people.

Things change alot when you get to 80 and start figuring out builds and group comps with people who aren’t terrible and in all greens.

I suppose coming from a decent raid guild in WoW, there were a couple of things I was used to. My first dungeon was story mode Arah and it wasn’t too too bad… a few deaths here and there as we were figuring out what everything did, but overall nothing that was OMG; though I’d say the story modes from most of the other dungeons had me saying that that more that Arah, except for CoF (SE story mode being my absolute bain…. kitten you fire golem…. kitten you to hell).

But that’s something I did notice… this game presumes a lot about the player and doesn’t really do a lot to try and teach the player about the game like GW1 did. I’m not always a fan of hand holding, but I’m not a big fan of just being shoved out into the world either.

Ranged weapons? pfffft. If you’re not up in Kholer’s face, you’re not having fun. (I’m a D/D ele).

If your class can’t melee on most bosses, you’ve either got to respec, regear, read bosses better or learn your class’ abilities. Gearing and spec’ing for overworld pve is cake. When you tool up for a dungeon and learn your class, you’ll actually be better setup for wvw. I don’t change my spec in the least between the two, but if I wanted to overworld pve, I’d go glass cannon as that’s really easymode and nothing much hurts you.

Comradecool.4275:

After a few weeks of play, and going as high as 57 on my Mesmer, I did my first dungeon today,

So tell me, am I missing something? Is this what I can come to expect as I get higher, or at 80? And with fractals? Maybe I’m just a traditionalist, and I enjoy my standard roles a bit too much. Which is fine, as I enjoy wPvE enough to continue playing this till 80.

You have to let go of the WoW way of thinkin when it comes to groups in gw2. If you cant do that then you probably wont enjoy dungeons at all. I WvW a lot so dungeons are a great change of pace for me. Some aspects in dungeons are better than others. I do enjoy that I dont have to spend 30 minutes in a dungeon just clearing trash mobs.

Fought AC @ lvl 35, Died about 11 times at the spider boss and then lost count, and Killed the Last boss in my Underware – Priceless .

Once you’ve run a few dungeons you’ll see it’s not zerg anymore. There’s ways to stay alive in fights, you just need to strategize and coordinate with your party.

Also, best thing I can tell you about your WoW experience, it doesn’t amount to a bag of kittens in this game. Approach the game as an MMO virgin and you’ll have a way better time.

P.S. don’t min max.

LordByron.8369:

try again at lvl 80…you’ll see that despite downleveling, any dungeon is made for lvl 80 players….

I m not an elitist i take often low levels to dungeon..
Yet 100% of people i took there finds dungeons really bad, and they change opinion at 80 usually….

This… My first tries at AC story (while around lvl 30) was rough with lots of corpse zerging. It was very difficult, but we got through it eventually. I really dislike corpse zerging btw.

I tried AC exp at lvl 35… it was horrible. I take that back. It was bad until we got to the final boss, then it really sucked. The boss mechanics just ROFLstomped us. One-shots all around!

When you get to 80 and gear up in greens, things will get much better.

same here. after doing AC story very first time. i had JUST hit 80. and was still in all greens and stats were all over the place. that left a bad taste in my mouth and never wanted to run AC again.

fast forward. 80, more experience, know what builds work for me, how my skills work with my traits, full exotics, know a good group and we work well together… most dungeons are pretty darn fun, and a breeze for some. save Arah, but mainly because i haven’t even set foot in due to bugged gates.

that being said, started to “farm” dungeons for tokens and AC with most pugs we do more than fine. : )) hang in there! and melee is definitely more than viable, apart from certain specific situations i guess.

I lol’d when you based everything you felt off 1 story mode run on the easiest dungeon. CM and TA are much the same, just need to have decent reflexes and understand the mechanics of your enemies. However, when you get to dungeons like SE, CoE, HotW, and especially ARAH… and even to some extent CoF, you’ll realize just how much your opinion will change. Also NEVER base your first dungeon experience on a story mode. They are usually designed to be stupid easy compared to the em modes (not SE though, that was worse than the em modes).

The dungeons of GW2 will feel really odd at first. Your experience with “spamming boulders in Ascalonian Catacombs” is pretty common for newcomers, but no other dungeon is this cheesy.

GW2 dungeons are basically about controlling chaos. As a five player party (at 80) you will have a large arsenal of abilities are your disposal to tackle even the most ridiculous odds. The harder the content is, the more you will begin to recognizes the three roles of GW2 better: Damage, Support, Control. While every character is capable of the three, a more difficult dungeon (Fractals 30+/40+) will require the players dedicating themselves into builds that compliment their party members, with a more balanced setup.