Guild Wars 2

Before anyone starts flaming me and saying I’m casual or a noob I want to specify I LOVE dungeons and raids. I was in a top 50 guild in Vanilla WoW for many years and greatly miss the old school grind of weeks or months to clear a raid. However, GW2 dungeons are completely unsatisfying and ridiculously painful.

As it is now the thing I love most about MMO’s is so painful myself and most of my 200+ guild mates hate dungeons. I figured I would post my concerns here in hopes that ArenaNet could re-balance the dungeons to make them actually satisfying without making them completely casual.

1. No reward: As it is now the amount of time and effort you put into a dungeon does not reflect the rewards you get. For all the pain we endure to complete a dungeon for some worthless whites and blues you’d think it was a joke.

2. Difficulty: Bosses should be difficult, however SOME of them should not be THIS difficult. You shouldn’t have to wipe continually or run back to the boss fight after death to complete an encounter. You shouldn’t have to switch to ranged in hopes of surviving or kite a boss in circles endlessly. The mechanics for the fights SHOULD be challenging while not being ridiculously difficult or require you to switch your play-style just to complete a particular encounter.

3. Trash: The trash mobs are pretty much bosses. Each pull is a nightmare. The trash should be interesting, and require some skill to pull off but they should NOT be harder then the bosses or take longer to get through then anything else in the dungeon. I can understand having to LoS, dodge, and do minimal CC but as it is now they might as well just be the boss fight.

4. Bugs: Sometimes just getting EVERYONE into the same instance of the dungeon is as ridiculously difficult as the dungeons themselves.

There is MUCH more that could be improved in dungeons, but for now this would be a good place to start IMO.

I would also like to add some more things I believe could be resolved…

5. Visual/Audio Ques: For melee it is especially hard to see what is happening on boss encounters, making it rather difficult to dodge when needed etc. If the visual ques and audio ques to hint at boss abilities were there or more pronounced that would greatly help resolve this. The Secret World has decent visual ques, and GW2 has some as well, but they need to be more pronounced. An enemy cast bar might help this as well.

6. Trash abilities: This could technically go under trash, however I just wanted to point out that some of their abilities are ridiculous. They can chain fears that last forever, knockdowns, or chain sniper shots that kill anyone. There is no way to dodge an ability or skill that can be chained continuously by multiple mobs.You can only dodge twice before you are SoL.

There is not enough endurance to dodge everything in some encounters.

Which is why I listed number 6. It simply cannot be done in the manner they intend.

This game is balanced around the downed state you know. Your entire party should not be dying at the same time. Also whats your gear like? I guarantee if you run with a group where everyone is in full exotic trash mobs will no longer feel like bosses

There are damage mitigation skills as well, each class has them, there is a reason why protection boon is pretty accessible by most professions.

Also knowing which attacks you can soak and what attacks you should dodge show a big difference in experience for players who have cleared this content without problems as a pose to others. Only dungeon I haven’t done is Arah, but the rest of the explorables I have with pugs in almost every group. Brushing up on knowledge will probably help you out.

Gamebreaking bugs, terrible rewards, way overtuned mobs and bosses, and unbalanced combat. Nothing new, all has been pointed out since official forums came up. Who knows how long dungeons will be playable let alone enjoyable.

My only issue is the fact that some bosses can see through stealth, while others can’t. If bosses CAN see through stealth, then the UI needs to make that apparent, because in dungeons I like to play as a Ninja Resser (Run around stealthing myself and the downed person while I revive them), and it’s a pain in the kitten when the boss can still focus fire the downed person through stealth.

I’m not sure if this is intended or not, but the Lieutenant in AC Explorable last night was giving me some grief.

I would just like to say that dungeons are easy as kitten if you don’t give up and go in with an experienced party. It’s really a learning experience, and the more you do it the easier it gets.

EDIT: I think you’ve been spoiled since Vanilla. Personally I’ve just stopped doing MMO’s since wow changed, except for a little Eden Eternal, which has alot in common with GW2 now I think about it. Accept the challenge and find a way past it instead of giving up after your third try.

Dungeons are fine.

Really you start off with don’t flame me and combine with I was in a top guild in wow and then go on to say your guild has hundreds of players (IE random pug under 1 roof for buffs)

Too much grind? You get 60 tokens a run at about 30-35min a run and some gear is about 180 tokens for max level max stat gear… really 1hr45 too much of a grind for a 100% shot at a max level max stat item? yes things like chest or 2 hand weapon will be double that gasp 1hr45min x 2 different days

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again communication and willingness to switch up your traits and skills on the fly are necessary. You all cannot go in trying to solo people must learn to work together. I have run all of the dungeons (Story mode at the least, some explorables) and I have not really had any major problems that could not be resolved by strategics. And I’m not even really that good. I don’t know if these are things you are or aren’t doing but these are my suggestions.

I love the dungeons in this game. At first, I struggled to get through them and thought a couple were over-tuned. Then, I realized I was wearing gear between 5 and 10 levels below my level and that my guild mates were as well. Since then, I crafted the level 80 rare magic find set (so not even ideal stats, plus rare instead of exotic) and have no problem in almost any dungeon. I’ve been downed a few times here and there when I ran out of endurance or wasn’t paying attention, but I’ve only died when my group was ignoring resurrecting me

Honestly, check out your gear and see where you can improve. Perhaps your build isn’t focused enough and you’ve got stats all over the place? Once I switched to all Power/Precision and picked my skills based on that, I started doing a ton more damage and having no real problems with the dungeons.

Also, some of your Utility skills should really be focused on that – Utility. I see a lot of people taking all damage abilities then they run out of endurance, or can’t remove conditions, etc, and they die because of it. Get some Utility spells that let you regen your endurance, or give you evasion, or something similar so that you are able to stay up longer if the boss decides to throw a string of hard-hitting attacks your way.

Additionally, I think the system (when it’s not bugging out and giving people 5 tokens instead of 60) is great. If you run one explorable dungeon (all 3 paths) once per day, you’ll get a full Exotic set in 8 days. While that may seem like a long time, some of these dungeons take an hour to complete all 3 paths. 8 hours for max level, max stat set is an amazing lack of grind in my opinion. And yes, I raided in WoW (BC – Cataclysm). So 8 hours seems like a blessing, considering I raided more hours per week in WoW and would have to raid for a month or two before I got my full set (assuming I ever did… I remember a few particular pieces just completely refusing to drop for the entire 3-6 month period we had to farm that tier).

Once your group gears up a bit, switch to some Magic Find. I don’t have a ton, but I usually wind up with a rare or two per path. I’ve yet to find a GOOD rare, but I can still salvage those for 1-3 Globs of Ectoplasm per rare, plus whatever rune was on it (which I just sell on the TP for a few silver).

I don’t agree with you, OP, but I’ve said enough on other threads about it.

There’s a nice review-in-progress series on MMORPG.COM right now. Their latest part is on dungeons, and I think it’s a fair overview of what they’re all about.

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/473/feature/6756/Review-in-Progress-Dungeons.html/page/1

Dungeons are not made to be easy. You need to know how your profession can best adapt to an encounter.

While I wouldn’t say to bring all your profession weapons along with you, just in case, picking a build or at least a weapon suited for the path you are doing would help tremendously.

You can do story mode with anyone. Explore mode is an entirely different matter. If you don’t come prepared, you’ll be crushed.

The dungeons in this game aren’t hard they’re tedious. Very tedious. I used to somewhat enjoy doing story mode with a PuG, but know it’s just a constant zergfest from the grave ever sinse the last patch. In my opinion this is just bad game design and it will cost ArenaNet greatly down the road.

Story Mode is too hard to enjoy, should be much easier than explorable. I want the story, not a grind.

Explorable Mode is fine. If it were easy, I probably wouldn’t care to earn the skins.
Rewards are being worked on, we’ll see what happens.

Just because you haven’t figured out the most effective way to run a dungeon, doesn’t mean it’s broken.

TwistedWarrior.8613:

The dungeons in this game aren’t hard they’re tedious. Very tedious. I used to somewhat enjoy doing story mode with a PuG, but know it’s just a constant zergfest from the grave ever sinse the last patch. In my opinion this is just bad game design and it will cost ArenaNet greatly down the road.

This.

The dungeon’s in this game remind me of the bad old days of EQ1 and EQ2 with tons of trash mobs to be slogged through just to get to a boss. I think what makes it worse is that every other part of the game is just so well crafted and fun yet the dungeons which should be the crowning jewel are just such a major let down.

1: I make 50s-1g from loot drops, not including final rewards for a complete clear. Sometimes i make more than that if I get lucky. Considering it takes ~30 minutes to do a full clear, if you have a good group, that’s a pretty decent return for the little time I spend in there. Plus I get my 60 badges.

2: If you are zerging the boss down after you die then you’re doing it wrong. Sure, sometimes it’s ok to do that, but if you’re doing that over and over again then STOP, regroup, figure out what you’re doing wrong, and start over from the beginning. I know, gasp, resetting a boss takes precious time, but guess what, you’re going to spend less time if you figure out what you’re doing wrong and fix that instead of bum rushing from rez. You can clear them with any comp if you’re actually willing to learn what you’re doing wrong. I find it hard to believe that you were in a top 50 guild if you can’t grasp this simple concept.

3: Mark a target to be focused down for trash. If they are going to do a dangerous move, they are going to start sparkling to let you know hey, I shouldn’t be in this dudes way. If you are just dodging every stupid attack then you deserve to die. Learn the attacks you need to dodge and you’ll find that trash is simple. I spend 1-2s a run, if that, on repairs, except in TA because the Hell Blossoms get me a lot more then they should.

4: Bugs I can agree with you on. ANet is working to fix them though so give it time. I’ve only had it happen to 1 person and all he did was re-enter once and bam, he was in with us. If you find a bug report it in game, or in the bug reporting forums.

5: I’ve gone dagger/dagger on my ele so I have to be pretty close in order to get anything done. If a boss is going to do something dangerous it’s easy to see. Generally they are going to stop and wind up while sparkeling. If you can’t see it then turn the animation, I think that’s what it is, down in the visual options to make it easier for you. If you see a guy with a sword start to pull it back, chances are you’re going to need to move quick.

6: I would like it if they had some form of DR on trash abilities to make it where you can’t be chain CC’ed. It does suck when a group seems to do nothing but CC 1 person over and over again. Then again, if they’re getting you they aren’t after anyone else so it’s kind of a good thing. ;-)

@Xetelian, you shouldn’t be trying to dodge everything. Only certain things are worth dodging. Learn them and save your endurance for them. If a guy is shooting you with an arrow, don’t dodge that. If he starts pulling back for a huge attack, get ready to dodge. If you waste your endurance on the basics you’re going to end up dead from lack of endurance.

If someone in your party goes down, go revive them before they die. Don’t do that if it’s not safe to do it. If you’re having a huge problem with stuff like that, get some of the Salsa food buffs to give you more hp whien downed. I have 100% more hp when downed and 20% dmg increase. That’s generally more than enough time for my team to revive me. Also, get the potions. If you’re doing TA then get the potions that reduce damage from the Nightmare Court. That’s 10% less damage to you and 10% more damage to them. They’re extremely cheap too.

Don’t go in with glass cannon specs. Those will get you killed over and over again. If you’re in a good group you can pull it off with berserkers, if you’re not then have Knights armor for the added toughness. I love using Soldier crests as they give power/vit/tough which goes nicely with my knights armor. I’m working on getting the AC armor set as I love that it has power/vit/tough on it! I’m an ele and I have over 16k hp and 1k toughness, toughness might be higher as I’m not logged in atm. If you’re going in in berserkers gear with ruby crystals, or something similiar, then you’re going to die. That’s not ANet’s fault.

Learn your combo fields. They will save you time and money!

I have to say that somewhat agree with the 6th but then again a lot of classes has MOVEMENT ABILITY. USE THEM TO DODGE THE AOE IF YOUR ENDURANCE IS EMPTY… That’s what I have been doing…

Many of you are right about a few things

To complete dungeons:
-No glass cannons
-Exotic Gear Only
-Well Structured Seasoned Players in a Group with constant Communication
-Change your skills
-Dungeons are hard

Now lets Review this. What happening here is that with a mix of all five of those things, A group of Lvl80 Guardians geared in exotic’s and in a guild together spec’d differently is THE WAY TO GO.

With that said, here is why it is still wrong.

The game is suppose to be played with any combination of classes, with any spec, and the “Holy Trinity” is suppose to be gone, but as said above by someone, no “glass cannons” now doesn’t this go against ANet’s Vision of Guild Wars2? (Also, at @Artorous if you are a berserker, you are a glass cannon.) If you are a group of glass cannons, kiss your win goodbye, now matter how “Berserker” you are.

Play dungeons in exotic gear only, Sure, that’s fine. Except that also Goes against ANets Endgame theory, and last i checked lvl 40’s at CM aren’t getting exotic gear, dungeons aren’t suppose to be endgame only in ANets eyes.

Well sturctured groups, great. so no one pug it up and and EVERYONE better be in a guild, Is this what Anet wanted? Nope. In which case I’m sure there is a “dungeon” guild out there to remedy this, but that again is just another set of pugs who don’t really know each other or how to communicate with each other.

Change your skills, REVOLUTIONARY unfortunately there isn’t a trainer in front of each dungeon for me to do that…OOPS guess ill have to pay the ridiculous way point fee to get to a trainer… and back…. which is ridiculous.

Dungeons are hard, Agreed. But when you are in a narrow corridor with 10 thiefs knocking you down and heart seeking you, and you filled your quota of 2 dodges.. it gets silly hard, and you die, and run back and die, and run back, and die, and if luck(yes luck) brings you to the end of the dungeon… WOOHOO the rewards cover your repair bill, after you sell your white and blue loot of course..

So because of these truths, and Anet’s Inability to stick to their manifesto’s in their dungeon, i have created a warrior and completely abandoned my ranger. Probably should have made a Guardian

So for the point of all of this, Is that I hope Anet sits in a room, reviews their reasons for making this game, and then actually create dungeon mechanics that coincide with there theory. Theory is great, but application is needed.

I’m an 80 Guardian wishing I wasn’t.

Killing yourself isn’t the answer. Don’t do it.

i agree,only reagrding bugs on rewards..as for difficulty, there’s always a way to counter such problems…

advice : try harder and eventually you will find the “trick” to solve the dungeons…

the video shows how only 3 people tackles the dungeons only 30 minutes…this shows that many people complaints about how difficult AC EM for the first time,yet they found a way to only just 3 men run..if there’s 5 on the group i don’t know what would become of those poor mobs…

that being said,the first fewa days people complaining about AC is impossible at some path they’ve done it…and i’m sure there always a way out for other dungeons as well just like this one…

i am too,just like OP, which despise the difficulty sets by ANet at first..but i’m willing to try harder and try to think another way,build and try to communicate more with mates..

how to utilizes combo field to keep everyone buffed enough,how to keep them alive by get riding their conditions and to constantly apply controls on the mobs as damage mitigation,even controls for the boss

so,i wish you luck and good hunting OP

I’ve yet to run into a boss I can’t solo, except the ones that regenerate alot.

Trash can be difficult, but every class is equipped to CC and kite, and that’s exactly what you should do sometimes. Most of the REALLY strong stuff is condition damage, and every class has aoe condition removal. Use it, and tell others to use it too.

Those are the only mobs I can’t reliably tank/solo, because I can’t keep up with the speed of conditions they apply to me. Though it’s almost always a kitefest when I run with pugs.

The game is meant to be completed regarding of who is on your group. If you think without tank classes (in a game where tank role doesn’t exists lol) 2 are the reason:
your group is zerging around without any comprehension of his class
the dungeon needs a balance fix

Speaking of which, i still think your case is the first, Jaded..

You answered yourself. The problem of the group is the balance, a glass cannon group is not meant to be played, so obiouvsly you feel the needing to have a guardian.
Try to organize a more balanced group not on glasscannon mode, you will find a huge difference about performance, and will be even faster as much incoherent could appear.
I didn’t mention combos, would add a new chapter.

As a guardian, I don’t find myself being a tank, even though I’m definitely built like one.
I find myself kiting and dodging mobs just like the thieves and rangers.

I’m about CCs, Stability, and Regen for my team, while dishing out a pretty decent amount of damage. I rarely die in dungeons, but that’s because I do a darn good job keeping myself alive.

Everyone has that job, to stay alive. Not everyone is good at it, though.
You don’t need toughness and vitality to stay alive, you need practice and enemy awareness.

Jaded.8591:

That is a video of a lvl 80 Guardian, lvl 80 Warrior, and a Mesmer. Clearly they are going to do it with no problems, No show me a video of a group of 3 without tank classes, and by that i mean a video of a group of 3 making it WITHOUT a guardian or warrior, like let say an elememntalist and ranger, 3 lvl 30’s that aren’t tanks and don’t have epic gear on?

The problem here, is that these dungeons are NOT living up to the Anet Manifesto of Guild Wars2. That is the problem.

If they gave up their manifesto and made a traditional endgame, that’s fine, but don’t spout out change, and then not do it.

“Tank classes” No such thing. Everyone can tank.

I’ve cleared every single dungeon there is wearing a mix of level 55 blue items and 70 pure dps exotics (when CM rewards were still 70) functioning as the primary tank and leader of the groups I was in. Went just fine. Sure it’s easier now in my full 80 exotic gear, but nothing that couldn’t be fixed with a little teamwork.

Mr Prismatic.9578:

You don’t need toughness and vitality to stay alive, you need practice and enemy awareness.

Yep, agree 100%. Toughness helps a bit, vitality is needed but not something to stack.
I met a funny guy with an uber vitality. He still think it’s the best set ever.
He thinks to be a healer..

Jaded.8591:

The problem here, is that these dungeons are NOT living up to the Anet Manifesto of Guild Wars2. That is the problem.

Except, they are. Part of the manifesto was that dungeons were supposed to be difficult. All difficult content in a video game has a learning curve. People are complaining about the difficulty without taking the time to learn how to beat it. If I can beat a dungeon, then anyone should be able to.

Jaded.8591:

That is a video of a lvl 80 Guardian, lvl 80 Warrior, and a Mesmer. Clearly they are going to do it with no problems, No show me a video of a group of 3 without tank classes, and by that i mean a video of a group of 3 making it WITHOUT a guardian or warrior, like let say an elememntalist and ranger, 3 lvl 30’s that aren’t tanks and don’t have epic gear on?

The problem here, is that these dungeons are NOT living up to the Anet Manifesto of Guild Wars2. That is the problem.

If they gave up their manifesto and made a traditional endgame, that’s fine, but don’t spout out change, and then not do it.

the video weren’t meant to guide on how to finished the dungeons,but only to give an example of how 3 men group can tackle such dungeons…

and tank weren’t supposed to be in the game after all,so it’s not a must to have specific professions,instead a good team should be able to change roles depending situations…

does that mean we have to have a guardian in the group?no..assume that it has a 5 or more damage mitigation and warrior can’t do such things?

the answer is no…warrior can have many damage mitigation and also damaging skills or control at the same time

here’s my current warrior build :
20/20/30/0/0
weapons : hammer.mace-shield.GS and rifles
skills : kick,stomp,fear me

and here’s my list of “damage mitigation” :
1. 3 from hammer
2. 5 from mace and shield
3. 3 from utility skills

so my total is : 11 skills that can be used to mitigate damage,damaging mobs and controlling them at the same time

that excluding of how i supposed to find covers,dodge and using fields to gain advantage from other members as well..

so a specific professions is not a must on dungeons rather it’s suppoed to be roles that can be optimized and used best for situations on dungeons…

like i said before,don’t give up hope….there’s always a way to “exploit” professions into something that can be very very powerful

HotW Expo Butcher.
First try i get 6 tokems kitten!

Artorous.8573:

1: I make 50s-1g from loot drops, not including final rewards for a complete clear. Sometimes i make more than that if I get lucky. Considering it takes ~30 minutes to do a full clear, if you have a good group, that’s a pretty decent return for the little time I spend in there. Plus I get my 60 badges.

2: If you are zerging the boss down after you die then you’re doing it wrong. Sure, sometimes it’s ok to do that, but if you’re doing that over and over again then STOP, regroup, figure out what you’re doing wrong, and start over from the beginning. I know, gasp, resetting a boss takes precious time, but guess what, you’re going to spend less time if you figure out what you’re doing wrong and fix that instead of bum rushing from rez. You can clear them with any comp if you’re actually willing to learn what you’re doing wrong. I find it hard to believe that you were in a top 50 guild if you can’t grasp this simple concept.

3: Mark a target to be focused down for trash. If they are going to do a dangerous move, they are going to start sparkling to let you know hey, I shouldn’t be in this dudes way. If you are just dodging every stupid attack then you deserve to die. Learn the attacks you need to dodge and you’ll find that trash is simple. I spend 1-2s a run, if that, on repairs, except in TA because the Hell Blossoms get me a lot more then they should.

4: Bugs I can agree with you on. ANet is working to fix them though so give it time. I’ve only had it happen to 1 person and all he did was re-enter once and bam, he was in with us. If you find a bug report it in game, or in the bug reporting forums.

5: I’ve gone dagger/dagger on my ele so I have to be pretty close in order to get anything done. If a boss is going to do something dangerous it’s easy to see. Generally they are going to stop and wind up while sparkeling. If you can’t see it then turn the animation, I think that’s what it is, down in the visual options to make it easier for you. If you see a guy with a sword start to pull it back, chances are you’re going to need to move quick.

6: I would like it if they had some form of DR on trash abilities to make it where you can’t be chain CC’ed. It does suck when a group seems to do nothing but CC 1 person over and over again. Then again, if they’re getting you they aren’t after anyone else so it’s kind of a good thing. ;-)

@Xetelian, you shouldn’t be trying to dodge everything. Only certain things are worth dodging. Learn them and save your endurance for them. If a guy is shooting you with an arrow, don’t dodge that. If he starts pulling back for a huge attack, get ready to dodge. If you waste your endurance on the basics you’re going to end up dead from lack of endurance.

If someone in your party goes down, go revive them before they die. Don’t do that if it’s not safe to do it. If you’re having a huge problem with stuff like that, get some of the Salsa food buffs to give you more hp whien downed. I have 100% more hp when downed and 20% dmg increase. That’s generally more than enough time for my team to revive me. Also, get the potions. If you’re doing TA then get the potions that reduce damage from the Nightmare Court. That’s 10% less damage to you and 10% more damage to them. They’re extremely cheap too.

Don’t go in with glass cannon specs. Those will get you killed over and over again. If you’re in a good group you can pull it off with berserkers, if you’re not then have Knights armor for the added toughness. I love using Soldier crests as they give power/vit/tough which goes nicely with my knights armor. I’m working on getting the AC armor set as I love that it has power/vit/tough on it! I’m an ele and I have over 16k hp and 1k toughness, toughness might be higher as I’m not logged in atm. If you’re going in in berserkers gear with ruby crystals, or something similiar, then you’re going to die. That’s not ANet’s fault.

Learn your combo fields. They will save you time and money!

Just quoting this for ppl who scroll all the way down cuz it’s 100% true and a perfect response.

The only things that need to change in dungeons, are the extremely annoying token bugs, but I guess monday that’ll finally be over.

AcE.3418:

What ever happened to Hard Mode, and Normal Mode? It just seems everything is set to Rediculous Mode, and your team has no choice but to get owned by AoE Spamming, Billion health boss’s.

Dungeons. Are. Broken.

S s- s- s—s

s-s -

s-
STORYMODE might be for you!

I can’t think of a single boss that has no telegraphs or otherwise has unreasonable strength/speed given the context.

Yes, this even applies to people fighting in melee. Indeed, even most trash has its counters. I would go so far as to say that only three or four boss fights are genuinely difficult, and that several are very undertuned or one-dimensional.

If you think of any fight in the game as “They attack me faster than my endurance regenerates for dodging”, or otherwise rely on dodging as your end-all be-all form of damage evasion, you are doing it woefully wrong.

I posted this in another thread, I wonder what people think about my view on dungeons.

What I’m saying is I personally don’t find dungeons that hard because I’m getting through them but do I think they are fun and worth the time and effort? Nope.
Hi Robert I actually got the forums to work so I’ll give some feedback of what I think about dungeons. First I’ll list what I’ve done so I won’t get called a complete noob and should “l2p” because dungeons are easy.

I completed every story dungeon, 1 route in AC, 1 route in CM, 3 routes in HotW, 2 routes in CoF, and mostly pugged might I add.

I think that mobs in dungeons have way too much health. Even for a well geared 5 man team, it’s takes a pretty long time just to kill one trash enemy. In all the dungeon routes I’ve done, everything is a damage sponge while they have things that will kill you or your team in one hit. It seems like your principle of making things hard is giving everything a billion health and attacks that will one hit you which requires split second reaction time to dodge. I’m pretty sure I say this for a lot of people, but hard mode in GW1, which used the exact way of making things more difficult, was not every well received because players felt cheated and just not fun to play until really OP PvE skills came out like a year later which made PvE a joke.

Also I have some comments to make about the story mode dungeons. Let’s say for example your average player just got to level 30 and got an invite to AC. The difficulty jump from zones to AC is pretty kitten huge. A lot of players got discouraged from ever doing a dungeon again because of that. Story modes shouldn’t be that hard and frustrating. When I was slaving through CoE story, it was just brutal and we were doing it with a fully equipped team on teamspeak. I understand that explorable areas should have a reasonable amount of difficulty but story mode shouldn’t. I played 6 years of GW1, and cleared pretty much all end game and high end areas; Personally I found The Deep to be the most fun. I also played a lot of high end PvP; infused for top 200 teams and also held halls a lot. I’m no means a bad player, but the point I’m trying to make is if I don’t find dungeons fun as a pretty experienced player, story mode and explorable mode, imagine what your average player would think.

What I’m saying is I don’t find dungeons that hard, although some difficulty adjustments could benefit greatly, since I’m getting through them. However I don’t find them fun or worth the time and effort at all. This anti-fun feeling happens what when you add in a fake difficulty, such as just bumping the health of all enemies by like 50 times, in every game.

I agree entirely on the health of mobs.

Apparently explorable dungeons are intended to be an hour or so in length, but the actual boss fights are often so lackluster it feels like they deliberately pad the rest to draw the experience out. The only time I felt this wasn’t true is in Crucible of Eternity and Arah explorables.

Yes, most boss fights were eh. However some felt rather unbalanced to me. They need to find a good medium. The trash is ALWAYS the worst imo.

Dungeons are fine, get a better group.

For the most part dungeons are fine when they are story mode. However on exp mode they tend to be ridiculous and the trash is usually harder the bosses. How can that be fine?

I have had no problems with any dungeons. Did the Giganticus Lupicus (I’ve heard this is the hardest boss in the game) last night and yes he was extremely hard, but once we learned and implemented our strategy he wasn’t too terrible. This was with a random pug group and only one person had fought him before.

Every boss is doable, you just need to understand their mechanics and be skilled enough to fight them. I guarantee you that many people that run explorable dungeons with their guilds will never die.

As far as trash mobs being insane, not sure where you are getting this from. Generally the groups I run with can take them out quickly with no one being downed or even below half hp. Try speccing more into defensive stats, if you or anyone in your group is set up as a glass cannon you will be eaten and spat out by the dungeon.

if you or anyone in your group is set up as a glass cannon you will be eaten and spat out by the dungeon.

They really need to DRILL this into players heads before entering dungeons.
Then they may even stop assuming they need 5 level 80’s to even complete the dungeon lol.

Dungeons are fine, get a better group.

No, they’re not, they’re horrible buggy messes, with major tuning issues which are causing their supposed design ethos of “bring anybody regardless of class” to fail miserably and class stacking for certain bits. Not working as intended, thus they’re not fine, post something more coherent than that garbage will ya? or better yet, don’t post at all

And as for the trash hp argument, some mobs have too much hp at certain events like defense segments, but in general the idea for high hp is CLEARLY to discourage glascannon builds who burn all their dps utilities up and then burn out and get overwhelmed, they DON’T want you trivialising the content by stacking super duper damage, and that’s something you have to respect

If they fix the bugs, the dungeons are all good, tbh. You really need to work together as a group, and – shocking as that might be – actually use what group utility spells you have.
Every class has some form of boons or conditions to help out; if you’re stacking glass cannon players without group utility, you’re going to have a bad time.

Have done only a couple AC story modes and my first AC explorable pathe two. The dungeons feel good. Explorable was to Story Mode as Story Mode was to normal questing in regards to how hard it felt. But I can see it getting easier each time as story mode became almost easy. When it was all said and done with sixty tokens in hand it felt pretty good.

Game being balanced around downed state (which is a horrible mechanism on it’s own) has a huge F A I L written all over.

@raging bull—-F A I L is written somewhere alright but it isnt on the game.

@op—-Top 50 guild huh? Sorry dont believe a word of it. Describe the Twins encounter. Describe the ocean part of the opening of AQ gates? Lets go earlier, describe blackwings throne(cant get this off a website only know if youve been there.)

Basically I call BS. Nobody who has done what you claim is having trouble with these ridiculously easy boss fights. The ONLY fight that is even semi interesting is Gigantus and only because he looks cool.

People are talking about how buggy the dungeons are. Funny that because I have only run into a few minor script issues and pathing issues that every MMo to date has to this day. I think your definition of buggy needs some adjustment.

As to dungeons. I am in PRX on HoD server. My static group and I have cleared the explorables. We found them to be fun and enjoyable even back when they gave crap tokens. During that time, most of our guild members were crying in chat about how broken and buggy the dungeons were.So for the last 2 weeks we have been running people thru them and showing how they are done with 0 exploits. Guess what they say in chat now? Yea, how easy the dungeons are and hope they get harder. Go figure right.

I don’t think it’s the dungeons that are broken but the professions.

Some professions get good kit out the door to handle support, others tanking, others damage, but until they reach 80 there’s no way to fill out the remaining roles.

My mesmer simply does not have the traits at 35 for instance to tank an AC explore mode. The defensive weapon cooldowns are too long to be chained together, the caps on traits-per-line prevent the stacking of enough toughness to make up the heavy vs light armor gap seen on warriors/guardians, and condition removal skills are still many levels further up the trait lines.

People saying “anyone can build for any role” are not taking into account the max level for these explore modes are not 80, so anyone running these at “even level” are going to be missing chunks of their slot skills and have far fewer traits invested.

The trinity may not be there, but you still are profession-bound on certain roles.

My only issue is that the downed stated gives them an excuse to make mobs just throw endless amounts of dmg that can’t be 100% mitigated.

Being in the downed state most of the fight isn’t fun.

plasmacutter.2709:

I don’t think it’s the dungeons that are broken but the professions.

Some professions get good kit out the door to handle support, others tanking, others damage, but until they reach 80 there’s no way to fill out the remaining roles.

My mesmer simply does not have the traits at 35 for instance to tank an AC explore mode. The defensive weapon cooldowns are too long to be chained together, the caps on traits-per-line prevent the stacking of enough toughness to make up the heavy vs light armor gap seen on warriors/guardians, and condition removal skills are still many levels further up the trait lines.

People saying “anyone can build for any role” are not taking into account the max level for these explore modes are not 80, so anyone running these at “even level” are going to be missing chunks of their slot skills and have far fewer traits invested.

The trinity may not be there, but you still are profession-bound on certain roles.

In most dungeons you can PuG story mode doing anything. If you find you’re not able to ‘tank’ yet on your mesmer, just run DPS. realistically there shouldn’t be any roles, everyone should be just another individual who happens to be coordinating fight plans with other players with a common objective. also those “even level” signs on the lower dungeons aren’t entirely accurate. While it is low enough for you to enter, it could still be a bit too much until you’re around 5-10 levels passed it unless you’re with a good team. ofcourse we all get downleveled to suit it, but being a higher level down-graded still has advantages over those who ARE that level. some dungeons are quite difficult for anyone, but in those cases it’s more obvious the dungeon despite being open to lower levels, is another End-game activity. just look at the level of the token rewards from exp modes. atleast leveling is a relatively fast experience in this game. you wont be 35 for long. until then, don’t judge your fish class on its ability to climb trees.