Guild Wars 2

I’ve not done any of the Dungeons yet as I’ve been spending all my time
leveling PVE and crafting, going forward into 2013 not sure how much time
each night I will have to play so not sure yet if I’m going to commit to doing any
content which requires you to form an actual party.

How long typically does it take to run through each Dungeon
in both modes. could someone stick up a list ?

Also been wondering about the following:

Is everything a Zerg Fest or are their boss mechanics & tactics that players need to learn.

Communication between party member etc do things require “raid leaders” types.
since there is no ingame voice chat and you might be meeting strangers with no ventrillo or team speak, it must be difficult if people need to type to chat and fight mobs at the same time or communicate where you want the whole group to
stop, change skills on the fly, take a break or afk or briefing before next combat starts etc etc

If someones never done a dungeon before does it force the entire party to do it a specific way. I don’t want to be in a situation in 6 months were I decide to do a dungeon and nobody wants to do story mode and it too interested in just repeating
the same instance over and over as fast as they can to gain tokens.

~B

Timings are different for different dungeons. Some are notoriously fast and others are long slogs.

Most explore modes require each player to learn mechanics and execute (read: dodge) in boss encounters but it’s no big deal. voicechat is nice but not required. You can do explore mode dungeons without having done the story, only the guy who enters the dungeon first needs to have done story.

An idea for timings
HotW Butcher Run – personal fastest was 19 minutes, average pug will do in 30
CoE teleporter – ran in 27 minutes, pug in 40
Arah sylvari – my fastest was 73 minutes, pugs take between 90-110

Your first time running a dungeon on explorable will take anywhere from 40-90 minutes. After that you can bring it down to an average of 40-50 depending on the dungeon.

In regards to mechanics, make sure you read the lower part of enemy nameplates during each encounter. Things like “Pulls” “Burns” “Knockdown” etc. These let you know what to expect and usually pulls have an animation before they are actually used.

The mechanics are pretty straightfoward, all you have to do is pay attention to what a npc tells you, look at your map to know where to get next, etc.

Most boss fights have some sort of gimmick/pattern you need to learn. Examples of Types include: needing to dodge a very meaty attack that will 1 shot you at a specific moment, massive amounts of predictable aoe, protect the “x” for “y” amount of time, use of some environmental weapon given to you, kill 2 bosses simultaneously, kill the continually spawning adds that buff a boss, etc etc (these are ones i just came up with off the top of my head, there’s plenty more)

That’s not to say there aren’t many straitforward bosses as well. They are usually just the sub-bosses that you encounter on the way; you can just strait up sit still and tank those.

Most dungeons are slowest the first time since you learn through trial and error. The speed depends on how familiar each person in the group is with the dungeon, and their levels/gear (this makes a HUGE difference in the massively scaled down instances like AC or CM) Some routes are notoriously longer than other routes in the same chain as well (for example SE route 2 is much longer than 1 and 3)