Guild Wars 2

Thank you for updating this fight, this dungeon and path in particular are much more fun/entertaining now.

Specifics please!

Ursan.7846:

Specifics please!

The area you fight him in doesn’t have gravelings anymore, and he has a new attack that looks like hyper beam.

During the fight, gravelings will spawn behind you and swarm your group as well. It is just overall much more fun to do this dungeon than before.

I’ll write some more after I finish all 3 paths :P

guess I’ll be trying this dungeon out again when I have the time.

He really is amazing now, if you wait too much you’ll have so many gravelings chasing you :P, I enjoyed him and also the new spider queen a lot.

I feel like the dev team have finally learnt the elements to a good boss fight.

a) pizzazz. Bosses should have a visual uniqueness in the way they attack.
b) flexible time constraint. onslaught of gravelings means you will die after a certain amount of time from being overwhelmed, but this will differ depending on the team, thus flexible.
c) telegraphed moves. a good balance between telegraphed moves and untelegraphed attacks that should be soaked.

Are you serious?! This boss fitgh is a joke right now. I just did it with normal guild party. took as less then two minutes and i didn’t even dodge once. Now he’s even worse then trash mob that was nerfed to the point that stabilty and interrupt skills are uselless right now. Are you going to do same thing to lupicus? Only bosses i enjoyed fighting.

Try path 3, interesting boss fight, to say the least.

MarsNobu.3412:

Are you serious?! This boss fitgh is a joke right now. I just did it with normal guild party. took as less then two minutes and i didn’t even dodge once. Now he’s even worse then trash mob that was nerfed to the point that stabilty and interrupt skills are uselless right now. Are you going to do same thing to lupicus? Only bosses i enjoyed fighting.

So you were expecting to fail it (or to have an hard time) with a “normal guild party”? We never said its hard, we said the mechanic is more interesting (he actually required 1 dodge every 30 seconds or so before the patch, so its pretty hard to say they nerfed it lol). Also how can you say things are easier? The little spiders before the queen can no longer be killed with a 100b in a corner, you can no longer stand in the queen’s circles while facerolling her, The champion howler in the traps hallway is now a stalker (or scavenger, cant remember), scavengers attacks are much more interesting, adds spawn many times at kholer and if you want to kill the champion before the final boss (which is not a dumb howler anymore) in 1 pull with all the trash you’ll need a much more organized group than before.

Anet, why is the new scream animation not the Ray of Judgement?

did path 3:

• spider is a lot stronger but has way less health. great change. her channeled immobilize/damage ray is a cool idea. condiremoval followed by a dodge seems to work.
• kohler was interesting (re-summoned his adds once or twice). seems weaker now, in terms of health, as he died rather quickly (even though our group did very low damage overall). maybe now all the cowards won’t skip him anymore ;-)
• burrows spawn those tunneling gravelings which knock you down when they surface. great addition
• sigil of bloodlust didn’t seem to work (without my 25 stacks I couldn’t kill a burrow with icebow, was a bit harder)
• hatchlings add bleeds like crazy, they actually are dangerous now

rumblus

• still calls rocks down, though the red circles are much bigger and nearly unavoidable
• warmaster grask summons a large shield against those rocks => safespot
• auto-attack adds several conditions and 10 stacks vulnerability, dodge reccommended
• other attack knocks you back

one of our group rage-quit after we wiped the first time at the boss so we proceeded with only 4. worked well and it seems the fight is now faster but you have to be on your toes a bit more, since the normal attacks are pretty dangerous now.

Oranisagu.3706:

did path 3:
…

Yep, that sums it up, we finished it too now. Just annoying for melee, not recommended, as you cna’t really dodge his knocks without getting out of the shield.

His knocks are quite fast, but we’ll learn to deal with it.

Oranisagu.3706:

did path 3:

• spider is a lot stronger but has way less health. great change. her channeled immobilize/damage ray is a cool idea. condiremoval followed by a dodge seems to work.
• kohler was interesting (re-summoned his adds once or twice). seems weaker now, in terms of health, as he died rather quickly (even though our group did very low damage overall). maybe now all the cowards won’t skip him anymore ;-)
• burrows spawn those tunneling gravelings which knock you down when they surface. great addition
• sigil of bloodlust didn’t seem to work (without my 25 stacks I couldn’t kill a burrow with icebow, was a bit harder)
• hatchlings add bleeds like crazy, they actually are dangerous now

rumblus

• still calls rocks down, though the red circles are much bigger and nearly unavoidable
• warmaster grask summons a large shield against those rocks => safespot
• auto-attack adds several conditions and 10 stacks vulnerability, dodge reccommended
• other attack knocks you back

one of our group rage-quit after we wiped the first time at the boss so we proceeded with only 4. worked well and it seems the fight is now faster but you have to be on your toes a bit more, since the normal attacks are pretty dangerous now.

Awesome, I’m excited to try this path out!

path 1 a joke, going to path 2

I was happy with how mindless it was before. ):
Path 2 took my group like 3 hours due to Detha randomly falling over dead every 3 feet and the Ghost Eater not getting hurt by the traps. If it’s gonna be this glitchy just give me back the faceroll paths.

Yeah, we had p2 glitch a couple of times. Don’t know if you can only use a trap once before having to use another or not. Boss got stuck. Detha died. Boss healed slightly. Detha died.

Howling king- great if you’re organised and communicating well I’m sure, but for a PUG with little muscle it was rather tough as we couldn’t kill it quick enough before getting overwhelmed. One nibble off a trash mob and some of the lighter armours go down.

I liked dungeons as they were a good way of having an adventure with friends and laugh and got into them casually, but now I think I’ll give them a miss :/

The mobs in Howling King fight really aren’t much of a problem either. If you pull them into the flame circles that appear on the ground they die almost instantly.

if you want to make hatchlings “not a joke” then make them count towards sigils and give EXP.

That is a clever mechanic, tbh, I was too busy running in circles and rolling about to notice I wasn’t getting burnt by the flames. Cheers for the tip Greggers!
Dungeons make me so twitchy, especially with the sheet amount of bodies around at once, the lag ramps up. Maybe I’ll brave it again some day.

Agreed, awesome.

I hope all dungeons are revamped like this.

Please Robert Hrouda. I hate Hodgins more than Trahearne. Please swap him with a clone of Detha so she can BUILD the scepters herself and kick kitten with them in his place.

In all seriousness, I really like the idea of making NPCs more useful.

Hodgins= Kills adds.
Grask= Defends against rocks.
Detha= Cannons being usefu.

This is a huge step in the right direction. Nicely done!

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Greggers.6247:

The mobs in Howling King fight really aren’t much of a problem either. If you pull them into the flame circles that appear on the ground they die almost instantly.

They should die instantly. That is the power of the flame scepters! Hodgins sure is useful isn’t he?

We’ve been joking all this time doing guild runs of AC that Hodgins is like the accountant that the Priory hired to manage the books, and just fell into a life near the catacombs due to budget issues managing the gravelings. He’s so ill equipped for the life of the adventurer. The entire flame scepter story seemed to go out the window for the HK fight when Hodgins spends 100% of it lying flat on his face. It was a running joke on voice to always say “Oh Hodgins…”.

So… definitely a big improvement. The Ghost Eater fight might need a bit more explanation from Detha though.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

They should die instantly. That is the power of the flame scepters! Hodgins sure is useful isn’t he?

NPCs are now slightly more than completely useless?

Why I never.

I love the way every mob has knockback now.

Makes the whole dungeon more fun being perma stunned.

Great changes guys. I guess thats one more dungeon I won’t be pugging anymore, and the less than awesome guys in my guild now don’t get invited.

Good changes for the level 30 dungeon.

Kain Francois.4328:

I hate Hodgins more than Trahearne. Please swap him with a clone of Detha so she can BUILD the scepters herself and kick kitten with them in his place.

This sort of nonsense makes players look silly. “Hate”? Really? How can you have so much bile for simple, friendly NPCs? Maybe you should go for a walk.

Devs, can you make Hodgins invulnerable during this fight but not attacking?

Like the scepters give him a shield so when a circle comes down there is a voice que or a sound so we can see them better.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Greggers.6247:

The mobs in Howling King fight really aren’t much of a problem either. If you pull them into the flame circles that appear on the ground they die almost instantly.

They should die instantly. That is the power of the flame scepters! Hodgins sure is useful isn’t he?

Was it the intention of making AC Bosses just about ranged attacks now ? Used to be a great dungeon for melee, now its ranged or die.

Dradiin.8935:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Greggers.6247:

The mobs in Howling King fight really aren’t much of a problem either. If you pull them into the flame circles that appear on the ground they die almost instantly.

They should die instantly. That is the power of the flame scepters! Hodgins sure is useful isn’t he?

Was it the intention of making AC Bosses just about ranged attacks now ? Used to be a great dungeon for melee, now its ranged or die.

You obviously don’t melee correctly.

Dradiin.8935:

Was it the intention of making AC Bosses just about ranged attacks now ? Used to be a great dungeon for melee, now its ranged or die.

Funny, didn’t stop me from meleeing almost everything to death last night.

Greggers.6247:

The mobs in Howling King fight really aren’t much of a problem either. If you pull them into the flame circles that appear on the ground they die almost instantly.

I figured this out when I rifle butted one into a flame circle. I found it so thoroughly enjoyable that I continued to run around rifle butting them into the fire.

I like most the new changes, kholer is a little harder but less HP, howling king is amazingly cool, my jaw dropped at that new scream, ghost eater is a nice mechanic, rumbulus is the easiest but still a cool fight.

the things that suck are troll is real mean now, which is fine but needs his HP lowered. somethings up with the gravelings causing severe framerate issues.

p.s was the secret room with the ghost event always in AC ?

My two friends and I had finally felt we got AC P2 understood well enough to lead a group on it, and maybe take less experienced guildmates through it after another pass or two, then tried it last night. Two and a half hours, most of it on the final boss, with fortunately very understanding PUGmates. We never were able to find a consistent way of getting the ghost shield turned off, sometimes he would park at a full trap and nothing would happen, other times the shield would turn off, once it even turned off twice at the same trap. The ectoplasms despawned if you tried to pull them too far, so you had to park the Ghost Eater by a trap to get them “inserted”, but then with his super long lasting AoEs it was tough to get more than one or two fed in.

Maybe someone will figure out a good system for it, but so far the dungeons seem to be getting harder faster than we are getting better at the game. AC is the only Exploreable I’d been on a successful run with, I’m 0 for 2 on CoF, I was at least 4 for 6 on AC.

Did Howling King:
The fight is more interesting once you know how it works..
The Beam he shoots looks pretty cheese. Should really reavamp that effect. the game has such cool artsy fx.. this one just looks bad.

About Gravelings:
Knock down is relied upon too much. KD is probably the least fun mechanic for players. As soon as you take control away from a player it becomes very frustrating. It should be a last-resort mechanic.

900 Billion Gravelings:
the Dungeon needs WAY more flavor & encounter variation than: lots of Gravelings, lots of KD. The mechanics are a bit better now, but geez.. First of all, Graveling don’t look like they belong in that dungeon they are sleek black & neon, not dusty & dry. They feel swamp like. 2nd, there are WAY too many of them.. it gets visually boring really fast. & 3rd.. the boss.. is a scaled up Graveling mob.. that’s SUPER boring. Probably the most disappointing aspect of AC. Dungeon bosses should be epic & memorable. AC is neither. It’s a big, bland Graveling.

People ran AC because it was the best time/reward ratio. It’s a little more fun now.. more time required, same reward. But it’s not that “cool”. The story is bland & while the environment is well made, it’s not all that memorable or cinematic. If there were more memorable moments (there really are no “scenes” in GW2 dungeons) & a Wide variety of Graveling models & encounters it would be good. Right now I think GW2 dungeons need quite a ways to go to be beloved similar to WoW raids and the like.

Of the three fights this is the most fun one (and the reason we are chasing down those scepters makes sense when you can see what they do, the fact that it’s fun to drag aggro over the rings of fire is a bonus). I really enjoy the new Howling Kind. Ghost Eater is hell and Colossus Rumblus is only good when the NPC lives.

And yeah, it’s too late now, but this dungeon is way too heavy on the gravelings. There are oozes, spiders, ghosts (the weapons come with ghost slaying sigils for crying out lout) but 90% of the time we are fighting gravelings.

This thread is waaaay more positive then the other ones. I’m enjoying it.

Are these flaming circles suppose to damage players as well? There is a lot going on in that fight but I always seem to get damage when I walk through them. (And yes, walking through them happens on accident.) I always thought it was an enemy attack but I didn’t see any red rings for indication.

It’s Hodgins. I’m not sure it deals damage but it gets you burned, so you’ll die slowly anyway. Just stay beside or behind them, so that stupid adds will jump into :P

It would help if the npc said, “Hey, I’m going to use a shield to stop the falling rocks and firefields to take care of the critters. Be sure to utilize both!” And why does an ALLY attack hurt me?!

Yeah. I like how Hodgins’ assistance to the fight not only does insta-kill the adds, it also gives the players areas they can’t use or become collateral damage.

Did path 1 and 2 a couple hours ago and I love the changes, Robert.

Spider Queen is certainly more challenging, though I was expecting a lot harder after what I heard. Me and my guildies got her killed on second attempt and then first attempt next path. Fight goes quicker and it’s more interesting.

Same with Kholer. He dies so much quicker now that it’s almost worth doing.

Ghost Eater was a lot of fun after we figured out what to do. Co-ordinating with teammates to drag the ectos in was great.

I’m looking forward to more of these challenging but not long drawn out fights with the other dungeons in the future.

Just did a run on path 1, and I LOVE the changes. Spider Queen is challenging, Kohler and his minions are easier to deal with, love the Stalkers and the lack of scavengers mostly (hated those things), and the Howling King fight was actually REALLY fun. If Path 2 and 3 are like this, then I daresay you’re onto something with the upgrades to the dungeons.