Guild Wars 2

Hello Everyone!

I typically game with a small more or less static group of friend (depending on the game 4-8 people.) Recently we’ve begun to try our hand at dungeons in GW2, and have not been doing very well at all. We’ve not had any issues in previous games, so I thought I’d see if anyone can point out where we’re going wrong so we can fix this

Our group currently consists of two level 80s, and two mid 40 characters.

80 Engineer(me), currently in a pistol/Shield tank/support build. This can be changed if needed. Currently in lvl 80 rare MF gear, saving up for exotic with build appropriate stats. Build link

80 Mesmer, currently using greatsword/staff, focusing on greatsword for dmg, switching to staff to drop the occasional chaos storm, tele away etc. She is also currently in lvl 80 Rare MF gear, saving for exotic with build appropriate stats, and is open to adjusting her build, which is currently a mix between survivability and dps. Build Link

80 Warrior, currently running a shout based healing build. uses sword/shield mainly. I don’t know the specifics of her build. She just hit 80, uncertain of her current gear, imagine mix of mid 70s blues/greens.

45 Warrior, running a defensive/tanky mace/shield build with greatsword on the side for burning down adds and such. I don’t know his build, but he is wearing either a full set of 40 or 45 rares that we crafted him.

42 Elementalist, running a glass cannon dps build, uncertain of specifics of build or gear. uses a staff or scepter/dagger depending on the fight.

As the resident artificer/chef I always make certain we have the appropriate potions for a given dungeon run, as well as the best available food for everyone’s level with the stats they’ve requested (currently mostly passive regen food or lifesteal on crit food, mf/gold find food when grinding currency.)

So far as tactics go, in multi mob fights the tanky warrior usually grabs hate on the biggest/worst monster, while everyone else focus fires the adds down. I’ll use shield abilities to control the flow of battle as needed, and will drop healing fields/regen and such on the tank and other members pretty frequently.

Typically we don’t have problems once adds are burned down, but situations with many mobs typically don’t turn out well for us. We’ve only tried AC thus far. Story mode was a breeze. Explorable mode has been a different story. There’s a big ghost guy after the spider queen who we’ve only beaten once. If we can get rid of the adds quickly at the start we usually do pretty well, though his move that pulls everyone towards him usually gives us trouble. If we bypass him (on path one) and go straight to the dredge event we usually split the party into three parts: I usually stay with the npc, keep healing fields up on him, knock mobs away, try to pull their hate, etc. One of the warriors and mesmer go left, the other warrior and ele go right and focus on burning down the burrows as quickly as they can, we usually get three to five destroyed before either we die or the NPC does.

I have heard that some changes were recently made to AC which have increased it’s difficulty, though I’m not certain what those changes were. For this reason, as well as somewhat low morale, we’ve decided to skip to the next dungeon Caudecus’s Manor.

Any thoughts/comments/help/constructive criticism is very much appreciated!

Your group is fine for content that is, admittedly, easy once you learn it. The challenge is the learning. Kohler (the ghost guy you refer to in AC), is a one-trick pony, but he has a painful trick if you’re unaware of it. His spin-to-win has a clear wind-up, and the pull can be dodged. Dodging will be the real savior of every run with your group; you’ll find CM arguably harder than AC based on your current group composition. You can’t just rush in and smash the enemies’ faces in and win; you’ll need to pick targets, burn them down, and be situationally aware so that you know when to dodge the big hits. Also, make sure you pack lots of stunbreaks on every character in AC; it will save your life more than you may realize.

Good luck!

1. Watch for Kholer’s scorpion wire into daggerstorm. The tell is when he raises his right arm to horizontal level with charging sparks. Dodge about a half a sec once you see the tell. If you do get pulled in, immediately use Elixir R to stun break and dodge away from him. Your mesmer mate can use Feedback on Kholer to help mitigate Kholer’s scorpion wire on the team. When adds spawn focus on them first but always keep a watchful eye on Kholer and be prepared to dodge when scorpion wire is about to trigger.

2. Burrows event. You got an Ele. Use her. She can have whatever build she wants as long as she packs Ice Bow (with an Optional Fiery Greatsword Elite). All but the npc defender (you) should focus on the burrows in this manner – East, South East (in small room), North West, North (directly north of npc), South West and finally North East. Have your ele pop the elemenal weapons for herself and another teammate constantly. Use Ice Bow 4 or Fiery GS 5 skills. Those are capable of dealing more than 70% dmg to burrows by themselves, but avoid using the aoe skills on the same burrow.

As the defender, you should kite the gravelings away from npc. Use Toolkit 2 skill and Elixir Gun 2 skill to apply cripple whenever you can. I would advise you to switch in Invigorating Speed trait to have constant vigor so that you can dodge more often. Have a habit of constantly switching kits so that Speedy Kits and Invigorating Speed can constantly trigger. Having 100% swiftness and vigor uptime is completely doable.

3. Gear. MF Gear is fine for starting out and understandably so. But you should switch out for other gear the moment you can. Something like Knight’s gear is great for dungeons.

For the burrows room you have lots of little gravelings plus a few larger gravelings who leap and cause all the problems. The leaping ones don’t actually do much apart from leap so if you can neutralize that one attack, with blinds or interrupts, you’re just left with a much simpler problem of killing gravelings.

Yes the new AC is a much harder dungeon for new players than the first dungeon in most other MMOs. The good news is that player skill (experience) makes an incredible difference in character capability so as you get more experienced the dungeons will get easier and easier. If you can get past the spider queen without too much trouble then you’re already better than many pick up groups.

get a pug in your group every once in a while. they have all the info you need.

Here’s some tips from my experience:

• Never bring MF gear into dungeons. That gear, as far as I know, is more or less intended for farming mobs with better drop rates, which are in the open world. MF does not affect dungeon chests, only mob drops (confirmed by Izzy, an Anet Dev). By equipping it, you are hindering yourself from being able to kill stuff faster or survive better. You are rewarded more from dungeons by being able to clear more efficiently, so you can get the chest loot and end reward loot.
• I think your team has a problem with large groups of mobs because of the lack of efficient cleave damage. If the mesmer could learn to use sword/focus and the warriors use axe/offhand and GS, you have more AoE power.
• I’m not sure if your elementalist is using frost bow, but its skill 4 can burn down burrows fast at the event that you’re having trouble with. Ask your party members just to channel skill 4 on the burrow and drop the bow to continue their regular damage (rest of bow skills are useless for the burrow scenario).

Your team seems to be a little heavy on the tanking side. In that regard GW2 works quite differently from most other MMOs – It will not make things take a little longer but safer, usually quite the opposite actually.

With the amount of damage mobs put out and the limited healing, avoiding damage by dodging/blinding/cc is always the substantially better option and a glass cannon can do that just as well as a heavy tank.

Encounters are balanced accordingly and most dungeons will have one or multiple fights requiring you to bring big AoE damage. Warriors are best for this by a very large margin. If your warrior were to go for a dps oriented greatsword/axex2 build, you’d probably have a much easier time when being swarmed by little mobs.

Thanks for all of the help everyone!

We’re tweaking our builds to reattempt AC this weekend or early next week.

Right now the mesmer is tweaking to more of a damage focused build.

Either the healing warrior or myself(engineer) are going to respec for AoE damage to help burn down mobs. Between that and the elementalist I think we’ll be ok.

Would the warrior or the engineer be better suited for group healing? I understand healing is more of a damage mitigation type role than actually stopping anyone from dying… This is the current build I’m looking at running if I take responsibility for healing, while the warrior is running this build .

Which profession would be more suited to this role? Or should we both spec more for damage in general?

Thanks!

I run that healing build on my warrior, it works well but you need to hold every person in your group responsible for their healing, also dodging at the appropriate time is a must when bosses tell you what they are doing. I would also suggest soldier runes for the warrior because they also remove conditions which help. another helpful thing for warrior is to spec warhorn and use the 5 on the horn whenever you engage and also horn 4 for a condition removal.