Guild Wars 2

My problem with Dungeons is that they are not skillbased enough. Make us actually use the knockback skills against some hard-hitting fast monsters, make us actually need to chill a boss to slow down its vital skill enough for someone to interrupt it, in short, make me think more of just when to dodge.

Dodging is fine and it’s a nice skillcheck, but really, aside from that i’ve rarely seen something that actually demanded us to make better use of our weaponskills, let alone our utility/elite.

I’m so tired of hearing how hard these dungeons are as me and my friend clear all 3 wings night after night on multiple dungeons.

They are easier now thought that we’re all in full exotics. I guess we must be playing a different game then the rest of you who keep complaining.

I’m all down for balancing and tuning, bug fixes but to just outright say they’re too hard is simply wrong.

We have them on farm, it took practice and thought. Try it.

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.

doesn’t take long to get the skillpoints, and as annoying as it is to have to get toughness with vitality, it does the trick in terms of clone tanking

Inci.7560:

It’s really a learning experience, and the more you do it the easier it gets.

Statements like this make me so mad. An Elementalist with toughness on each piece of armor, and 30 points in Earth Magic, still dies from most things in 1 frikkin hit. I can dodge 9 out of 10 things, but unless I make it a perfect 10, I’ll die at least 5 times per boss encounter.

Toughness should be worth something, but at the moment, all it does is making you die instantly instead of dying instantly.

At least place a few waypoints closer to the fights for cat’s (not kitten) sake.

Godmoney.2048:

I’m so tired of hearing how hard these dungeons are as me and my friend clear all 3 wings night after night on multiple dungeons. I guess we must be playing a different game then the rest of you who keep complaining.

I’ll bet you’re playing warrior. Try Project Alpha as an Elementalist. No matter your gear, unless you dodge everything perfectly, you’ll die. And by perfectly I mean 10 our 10, not 99 out of 100.

story mode dungeon should be doable by a group around the required level.
ex; 40-45 for CM.

as it is now its totally an unneeded diff spike.
each pull is a pain for lower level, not super geared toons.

Godmoney.2048:

I’m so tired of hearing how hard these dungeons are as me and my friend clear all 3 wings night after night on multiple dungeons.

They are easier now thought that we’re all in full exotics. I guess we must be playing a different game then the rest of you who keep complaining.

I’m all down for balancing and tuning, bug fixes but to just outright say they’re too hard is simply wrong.

We have them on farm, it took practice and thought. Try it.

exacty what im saying.
dungeons open up before you reach 80.. but really? not possible unless your team is full of 80.
story mode should be a lot easier.
explore mode, as hard as they want.

ThiBash.5634:

Inci.7560:

It’s really a learning experience, and the more you do it the easier it gets.

Statements like this make me so mad. An Elementalist with toughness on each piece of armor, and 30 points in Earth Magic, still dies from most things in 1 frikkin hit. I can dodge 9 out of 10 things, but unless I make it a perfect 10, I’ll die at least 5 times per boss encounter.

Toughness should be worth something, but at the moment, all it does is making you die instantly instead of dying instantly.

At least place a few waypoints closer to the fights for cat’s (not kitten) sake.

Godmoney.2048:

I’m so tired of hearing how hard these dungeons are as me and my friend clear all 3 wings night after night on multiple dungeons. I guess we must be playing a different game then the rest of you who keep complaining.

I’ll bet you’re playing warrior. Try Project Alpha as an Elementalist. No matter your gear, unless you dodge everything perfectly, you’ll die. And by perfectly I mean 10 our 10, not 99 out of 100.

Not true he has 0 attacks that will 1 shot me. That means if I dodge 9 out of 10 I will be alive the whole fight until he dies. Also some of his circles have a hole in the middle that you don’t have to dodge…pay attention and learn which ones to dodge, which ones to step out of and which ones to just go oh cool I am in the center. by the way I am on a ranger.

Cosmo.8176:

My problem with Dungeons is that they are not skillbased enough. Make us actually use the knockback skills against some hard-hitting fast monsters, make us actually need to chill a boss to slow down its vital skill enough for someone to interrupt it, in short, make me think more of just when to dodge.

Dodging is fine and it’s a nice skillcheck, but really, aside from that i’ve rarely seen something that actually demanded us to make better use of our weaponskills, let alone our utility/elite.

I agree and disagree at the same time.
I agree that this is the case in about 75% of the boss fights with “Dodge X Move” mechanics, it makes them boring, and devalues skilled play.

I disagree in that many fights (trash mobs especially) are made substantially easier if people know how to use their utilities and synergize with their team (combo fields, cc, shouts, group buffs). I can 100% tell which members of a group are ‘solo heroes’ and which are actually trying to play as a team, and it does make quite a difference when the majority is of the latter type.

Because i care about the game i decided to make 1 final post otherwise its dead in 1 month, Anet stamps on anything worth farming relying on cash shop for inc money in a F2P game, that has a FATAL flaw if nobody’s around who is going to use it? farming gets stamped on quicker than bug fixes, speaking to lots of GW1 friends big fans me included since 05 all came to the same conclusion without even speaking to each other prior, bad dungeons/bad rewards/ no specific class skins all medium the same, poor poor poor. Once more reach 80 they will see it for themselves and this game will become a ghost town faster than swtor and i don’t want that.

What I see from answers is :

Dungeons are fine, adapt to the situation, you need to analyze and understand the fight, go full exotic (lol ?).

First of all, what is the end reward of explorable dungeons area ? Tokens. To buy what ? Exotic armor (with highest stats). So why you are supposed to be wearing full exotic armor to achieve dungeons ? Like you need exotic armor to get exotic armor ? Is this only about skin then ?

You need to analyze the situation ? XD : Giganticus and the Legendary searing effigy are the most broken fights I have ever seen. The latter more than the former. The legendary searing effigy is a really basic fight. As you analyze it, you need to destroy the crystals to prevent the regeneration from stacking. Is there anyone here doing so ? No, every groups who want to kill this beast need to go for max damage and a dumb burst.

Giganticus stacks overpowered buffs as he eats larva. The larvas are either bugged or the fight is ridiculous. Did you saw how fast they are, and again compare to the Effigy this fight is easy.

What makes the dungeons hard is not the mechanics of the fights which are pretty basics what makes the dungeons (espacially Arah and CoF way 1) a pain in the kitten to achieve is the ridiculous overtuned and instant effect damages. It is like : Hey guys, I dont know how to make challenging. Oooh dont worry just multiply the damage ratio by 100 and make every event instant.

What is frustrating is dying because everything OS you even if you have understood the fight.

I agree bring something to the table. If you have 0cc 0buff and 0 aoe heal there is something wrong. You don’t need all 3 of these things but if you don’t have a single one of any of them that is bad.
Standing people back up…general rule in my groups if you can stand them back up without risking you dieing then do so. If you are likely to die doing it leave them on the ground, as 2 people dead is not an improvement.
With all the skill points running around there is no reason to not have skill x unlocked. Even if you want a legendary there are still plenty of skill points to unlock every skill for your class and still have enough for both a legendary and a mystic.

I’m fine with most of the difficulty, but my only $ 0.02 is that sometimes there seem to be too many mobs during trash. Since I have yet to understand aggression in this game, it seems to be just too much of a Charley Foxtrot. The. Whole. Time.

Every dungeon I do with my core group is extremely painful. It has nothing to do with skill or gear. The mechanics are just not balanced nor are the dungeons. As to those saying being in full exotics makes them easier… Seriously?

“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.” From OP

This is your real problem. You got so used to the WoW system that think all the games should be like that. Please don’t try to change this game and make it into another copy of WoW. The combat system is different and therefore you and your guild should adapt to the new system. You said you loved the old school grind to finish dungeons…In this game they let you finish the dungeons by dying a lot so you still get the reward. The objective is to make the dungeon without dying for utmost profit. You can do that by toying around with different builds and team compositions.

Adapt or Perish…

I try to summarize a lot of issues that arise reading many (maybe the great majority) of posts about dungeons, included those anbout fixes and updates (anti exploit mainly) by ANET, suggesting a potential solution to most of them through a new approach to the reward system. I try to do this in a very sytnthetic way omitting comments and personal feelings abut the arguments if possible in order to avoid a very long textwall post.

change proposal:

ELIMINATE TOKEN REWARD SYSTEM, and give directly gears (soulbound) as reward (like in SM), one piece for each run (path) (this solves the issue of multiple run of same path/dun, without need of hideous DR system, giveng big headache to developers and players).

SM can stay as it is, maybe a bit easier so that ppl of appropriate lvl (example lvl 35 for AC) can complete it, but makes it only completable a single time: once you have completede SM, u can only do EM (this way nop exploit for exp gain is possible).

Make EM in 2 versions:
-normal-mode, more or less same difficulty as SM, and with reward of yellow, low lvl sets;
-hard-mode (very asked by players), like it is now (or even harder), with lvl 80 orange set as reward;

make party for dungeons ranging from minimum of 5 to maximum of 10, so that ppl can complete it also when

someone leave (which is almost always the case), scaling the difficulty, if possible, with number of players and average lvl of them.

Leave only lvl 80 dungeon with token reward instead of gears, and make these tokens sellable (no soulbound and no accountbound), increase the number of things that u can spend these tokens for, and maybe increase dungeon difficulty (EM), so that this can remain as a always challenging content, repeatable for profit if ppl like it.

eliminate (or drastically reduce) exp from EM (as partially is already).

If someone leaves get a replacement. Must say those 3 guys must have been very happy when they joined my CM exp with 75% done.

So what I’m hearing from this list to complete an instance, and have it not be a royal pain in the kitten Be 80, have full 80 gear, trait for instances.

If the above is how Anet balanced the dungeons, it’s no wonder players doing them while leveling are under geared, missing most traits, are frustrated.

It’s pretty easy to beat Explorable Modes. All you have to do is follow these 5 simple rules:

1) Pay attention. EVERY SINGLE BOSS in this game telegraphs their attacks. You can say all you want that “they’re too subtle” or “they’re too fast” but the fact of the matter is, they’re all telegraphed, whether it’s the Flame Effigy rearing back before he uses his flamethrower in the first path in CoF EM or the Destroyer of Worlds bundling himself up before pulling you all in, everything is telegraphed. Your inability to pay attention and react accordingly should result in you going down because, what the hay, you weren’t good enough to avoid the attacks.

2) Coordination is King. You cannot assume everyone knows the fights unless they explicitly have told you they’ve done them, nor can you try and play the hero. Everyone has to work together. Call out targets to focus fire, try and use attack combos effectively, stack boons at opportune times to help benefit the group and, if need be, use some form of voice communication.

3) Don’t be the hero. If that means that you have to sacrifice your pretentious little DPS build in order to equip a toughness signet or a move that grants vigor so your endurance will regen faster, then so be it. Rather than simply trying to brute force your way through encounters, analyze what’s happening during them, re-evalute your skills and current trait perks, and readjust accordingly.

4) Two weapons are better than one. If you go into an encounter with 2 melee weapons, there is something wrong with you. You have two weapon sets for a reason. Take a ranged and a melee weapon. Swap them accordingly. React to the boss fights. If he’s wrecking you in melee, then go ranged and start firing away. These bosses don’t exactly have enrage timers. It’s not like DPS is the sole purpose of this game. It’s about group cohesion while breaking the trinity. Every member is responsible for himself and everyone else. It’s something that takes getting used to. Adapt or get annihilated in Explorable Modes.

5) Learn to play. As much as I hate to be “that guy”, it goes without saying that a lot of these encounters, after proper analyzation and enough tries under your belt, are perfectly doable. That said, they shouldn’t be EASY. They’re not supposed to be one shot PuGs that you can do in level 76 blues and greens. This is a part of the PvE ENDGame. You shouldn’t be able to roflstomp all 3 paths, get 180 tokens a day, and then log out only 45 minutes later to watch your favorite TV show. If you don’t want to invest the time for the sets, then who cares? Farm money and buy equivalent exotics. You’re running this for the skins and the achievements. Emphasis on ACHIEVEMENTS. As in, achieving something, rather than having it handed to you. Get better at your class, learn the bossfights, and be quicker on your feet when reacting to boss fights. Are some boss attacks or mob attacks cheap? Absolutely. Could they use some tuning? Sure. But a nerf? A nerf because it’s “too hard”? Has it gotten to the point where we have to pander to everyone playing on a schedule just because they want everything for as little effort as possible? Play storymode if you want some form of PvE dungeons without dying too much.

And in case someone tries tossing out the “You play a Warrior, so you wont go down as much!” card, I play a Ranger using a Shortbow and a Sword/Warhorn in my OH, so I’ve been in my fair share of close quarters encounters. My guild and I wiped PLENTY of times in CoF EM learning the encounters, especially when Magg plants the bomb. We could have cried and run to the forums begging for a nerf, but we learned the encounters instead, nailed down the tactics, and now we can clear something like the Flame Effigy path in ~20 minutes.

Five simple rules.

Dungeons are nothing like the rest of the game, they’re at a totally different level. I don’t think anyone will disagree that you need to learn to play dungeons. There would be no problem with that if dungeons actually motivated me to learn to play them.

“Learning to play” dungeons serves no other purpose than to play more dungeons, because nothing else in the game requires me to excel at the style of play required to play dungeons. And here’s where the whole thing comes apart: dungeons are dreadfully boring. After the ridiculously long time it took us to whittle away the obscenely large health totals of the first few trash mobs in the Catacombs (story mode), I would’ve logged off if I wasn’t there with guildmates that I didn’t want to let down. I was bored with what I was doing 5 minutes into it. Design like that doesn’t entice me to adapt to the required playstyle, it turns me away because it’s not worth the bother.

And there’s more bother: I also need to respec and switch equipment between playing dungeons and open world content. Because my open world build can’t survive dungeons, and my dungeon build is far too defensive to be efficient in the open world. All in all, dungeons aren’t worth my time and effort. Fun content is worth investing time and effort into. GW2 dungeons aren’t. Even the rewards are discouraging me from playing more dungeons: I really don’t need those generically skinned hats with useless stats that storymode slaps you in the face with for putting up with it.

And the final nail in the whole dungeon deal, was finding out that my story ends in the last dungeon. I’ve been looking at the “Kill Zhaitan” objective for 2 weeks now, and I don’t have the slightest urge to act upon it. I don’t expect to be sticking for very long with a game I can’t even be bothered to finish.

Guys, i only can say 1 thing.

Yesterday i was make Arah 3rd way. We’ve needed 8 REAL HOURS to finish it, and more than 1 gold in repairs.

The reward? 60 Badgets and 20-30 silver
Wanna repeat to earn the Armor Set and get 20 Badgets for the 2nd try?

PS: Say whatever you want, but this game need a Tank and Healer.

“4) Two weapons are better than one. If you go into an encounter with 2 melee weapons, there is something wrong with you. You have two weapon sets for a reason. Take a ranged and a melee weapon. Swap them accordingly. React to the boss fights. If he’s wrecking you in melee, then go ranged and start firing away. These bosses don’t exactly have enrage timers. It’s not like DPS is the sole purpose of this game. It’s about group cohesion while breaking the trinity. Every member is responsible for himself and everyone else. It’s something that takes getting used to. Adapt or get annihilated in Explorable Modes.”

I resent that.
I’ve never encountered a boss that forced me to use a ranged weapon. Even Giganticus Lupicus, which is supposed to be the bane of melee.
If you follow your 5) then it makes your 4) obsolete

Dabu.1258:

Guys, i only can say 1 thing.

Yesterday i was make Arah 3rd way. We’ve needed 8 REAL HOURS to finish it, and more than 1 gold in repairs.

The reward? 60 Badgets and 20-30 silver
Wanna repeat to earn the Armor Set and get 20 Badgets for the 2nd try?

PS: Say whatever you want, but this game need a Tank and Healer.

I’m sorry, but 8 hours and 1g in repairs? It sounds like your party wasn’t very prepared and probably didn’t communicate or work together well.

I don’t think it’s fare to say this game needs a tank and healer just because your group really struggled. There are plenty of groups out there that have been clearing Arah in decent time and with few deaths without dedicated Tanks and Healers.

When I’m with a group where everyone knows what they’re doing, path 3 usually takes around an hour with only a few deaths amoung the group. If people take the time to make sure they are well equiped and understand all of the encounters things become much easier.

With regards to balancing, I think the dungeon difficulty is fine. I would like to see a few things even out though. Arah path 2 comes to mind (I think that’s the Murssat one). Lupicus can be a challenge but a good group will take him down in one go without much of a problem. In comparison, the final boss is a joke. He goes down very quickly and requires little effort.

I don’t want to see Lupicus get easier but I wouldn’t mind seeing boss encounters be a little more consistent across the board. Average completion time for the different Arah paths also seems to differ a lot. Not because of difficulty but because the objectives in some are so spread out compared to others. Maybe that’s something that needs to be tweaked.

Personally i really think GW1’s Realm of Torment was a gorgeous example of true group cohesion in a dungeon. It’s a lot easier to judge when people play well when mistakes are critical and can cost a wipe rather than the jumble mumble of GW2 where if you play badly, that slack can be offshifted to other players and wiping really has no real effect except for a boss reset.

All I want are fair and fun dungeons lol!