Guild Wars 2

Topis was to long, the idea was “I know You all love AC and CoF, but what about other Dungeons ?”

This is not a QQ post. I had about 100 runs of the dungeon I write of. Farming them, and I would really be happy if they put some love in it like in AC or CoF.

The main forum Dungeon topics are now:
AC hate/love/wtf Anet/is impossible now/why they don’t let me in party with 35lvl – 96%
Lupicus too hard/solo 1%
CoF 1%
“Dungeons are to hard” 1%
Kicking from last fractal by a guid X 1%

(But jokes aside)
What about Dungeons like CM or HoTW 2/3 or even SE… (but we almost never do SE so I’m quiet about it…) ? AC and CoF got a little too much attention imo…

I like the dungeons but we need to reserve some more time than for other dungeons. Most peaple have duties and dungeons like CM/SE/HoTW(2/3) are made rarely sometimes only to get achievement for Dungeon Master becouse they need more time than CoF or AC, most rather farm 2-3 times CoF p1 than go to CM/TA or SE, and I undestand Why.

Caduceus Manor has a big amount of trash and they come in big groups.

Most rifle mobs in CM can 1 shot You if You move, thievy like mobs apply 6 stacks of bleeding with 1 hit if You let them – remember not to move while You are targetted by a sniper but if ur not You get bleed… and ranger like mobs ? Don’t even try taking them down with the best “distortion” in the game. All could be doable if not be attacked by 10 silver mobs at time… 3 gives You 25 stack of bleed and other 3 snipe You once every second 1 hitting You, You must always be on the move or a keg explodes by Your feet sends You flying.

It’s ok to have hard trash but at least reduce their ammount to 4(?) maybe silver mobs at time or keep their amount reduce their hp like You did in AC, make CM more attractive at least !

Honor of The Waves

Path 1 is also pretty popular but the last boss is boring as hell… his Health Pool is so high ait’s getting on and on and on… I’m not telling he’s hard, he’s just boring the fight takes too long.

Path 2 and 3 trash is ok… but the bosses takes also soo long. And the underwater fight are once of the most boring in dungeons. Path 2 last boss can 1-hit-combo You. I got a full Power/Toughness/Vit armor/weapon/jewelery for the test and he can kill me with it if I take all hits, so the fight is “downstate” -> get to a safer place -> heal -> go in combat -> get 1 hitted if melee -> downstate etc. Off course if You have a good reflex You will dodge it faster or use a utility but that’s not the point, the point is the HP pools are so big this fight can last to even 10+ min it’s boring! The boss with 2 quaggans is also long and boring as hell.

For me personally the best fight in all dungeon bosses was Sorrow’s Embrance Story Mode… EPIC fight!

I enjoy CM with people who listen – it can be hell if people run and grab all of the groups of trash at once, quick dungeon once you get it down.

HOTW…I agree. The bosses most definitely have too much health.

Even COF3 has a really nasty part (that one where you need to hold an area against waves of silver enemies, and the waves spawn before you even finish killing the last one). No one ever runs THAT one.

To be sadly honest, I find Cm too hard. Thats why I don’t play it.

None of the dungeons offer a decent reward for the risk. Oh I got some silver and a bunch of trash loot, well I still gotta run it again and again to get 1 item I actually want. It just happens that AC and CoF are the least risk for the reward.

As much as I want some of the dungeon armor/weapons, I’m just not going to spend hours grinding those dungeons and wanting to kill myself.

Arah path 3 is good because even though you can skip most of the crap and it’s still a reasonable length and difficulty.

AC
I liked the old AC, I thought all of the paths were good and strong and that there was nothing too easy or difficult. I have not tried the new AC yet.

CM
I only did this a couple of times. The gear from this dungeon looks like world drops and it isn’t worth doing this dungeon to salvaging it’s exotics when I could do AC or CoF.

TA
I haven’t done TA enough to pass judgement. Some of the armour sets are really nice and distinctive.

SE
Horribly tough trash that can’t be blinded. Really nice looking gear but not worth the effort.

CoF
It has some challenging encounters in the “Kiss my tail” room and the new invisible assassins encounters. I haven’t done Path 3 yet. I love the rolling boulders. More of these things would rock! Rock, geddit? Suit yerself.

HotW
This dungeon has chewy mobs instead of interesting encounters. The hunter (or whatever he’s called) is just horrible. It could do with more mechanics. The gear from this dungeon doesn’t thrill me in terms of visuals.

CoE
Has a nice puzzle in the laser room, but Project Alpha is inconsistent (e.g. circles that don’t really mark where you will be damaged and overlapping circles … can you stand in those or not?!). Also, room with lasers in it where several people just press one button the whole fight while a couple of people try to find a safe spot – that fight needs an overhaul. The gear from this dungeon is really quite unique – I like it.

Arah
Ahh Arah, what can I say?
I think path 3 is perfect as it is, skippable but with difficulty yet still challenging and about the correct length. The other three paths are long, paths one and four are, imo, too long.
The mobs are very tough, the trash surprisingly so. Again, I think we could use some more interesting mechanics on some of the encounters (Lupicus is superb and garners the “it’s like a raid boss” comment from all and sundry).
I love the Arah gear (I use a set of heavy gear on my asura, I love that gnashing mouth).

Overall, I’d say please make encounters require more thinking and reacting and puzzling and please make some encounters that have ranged people doing more than melee.

I’d agree with your comments about CM. Interesting trash encounters are good but you don’t want your leave players needing to deal with special attacks from every trash mob in large group. That’s too punishing for people coming into dungeons and learning them. It also punishes classes that rely on skills for defense as they can’t get the right skills done for everything, at the right times, with the right traits, until they’re very familiar with the fights.

Yeah I really wish a lot of the dungeons had more mechanics implemented (or get revamped) as it is most enemies I can learn how to beat solo (or exploit them) which isn’t too hard considering most of the AI is the same. However I am not a fan of the CM rocket trap hallway where you have to reflect rockets, that is not fun nor does it take any thinking.

I don’t understand why people are always complaining about dungeon difficulty as I’ve yet to come across a dungeon that someone didn’t know how to beat before entering or a couple retries couldn’t fix.

I hate how easy CoF P1 is.

I agree, other dungeons deserve more attention and use. If it is due to quickness and ease of completion, I think SE path 1 and 3, HotW path1 and CoE path 1 are just as fast as AC or CoF, more so after the update. And the new knockdowns in AC just get very irritating after a while.

Do have to admit that I refuse to do CM anymore, since PUGs always have to try some glitch or to run past mobs and fail so the run always ends up taking forever.

Personally, the most fun dungeons are CoE, SE, and Arah.

Neo-AC
Graveling knockdowns are crazy.

Caudecus Manor
Done with tanky (Guardian) and glass cannon (Engineer) characters. Difficulty is generally fine but as above, people always try to come up with some hare-brained scheme to skip mobs and many PUGs fail. My only complaint is Turmaine (the last boss of Path 2). I understand his mechanics, i.e. bring copious amounts of condition removal and avoid AOE, but his move speed Plague Form really needs a second look.

Twilight Arbor
Twilight Knights are still a bleeding nightmare, but the rest is generally fine, especially after they retuned the Leurent encounter (Forward/Up). The only path I absolutely dislike is Forward/Forward where you have to face Nightmare Tree Fyonna’s endless wave of spiders.

Sorrow’s Embrace
My guild’s new AC. P1 and P3 are fast and the tokens can be used for Soldier and Knight gear. P2 is just so odd because it stretches across so many large encounter-filled rooms.

Citadel of Flame
New P2 is fine and the gate-opening event is actually more fun now. This is one path you’ll never find glass cannons.

New P3 is much better now, although the bomb-run portion still takes 10-20 minutes for some to complete.

Crucible of Eternity
Now this dungeon I like. Thanks to the value of Charged Cores and difficulty of Subject Alpha, the risk reward for this dungeon is spot on.

Honor of the Waves
Bosses are just too beefy and have very uninteresting mechanics, especially the Twins. In any other game I would have set them as the final boss encounter, instead of as severely padded mini-bosses.

Ruined City of Arah
I love Arah. I still think Simin and Risen Illusionists need to be retuned, but in general, Arah is a fun dungeon. Again, ANet puts the good end-boss fights in the middle and anti-climatic boss fights at the end (see Wraith at end of P3 and Bloodstone Shard at the end of P4).

I would rather be water boarded than run CM explorer ever again but the other dungeons can be fun.

The new changes to AC are fun except for the insane buff to the spider adds at the beginning.

As it is I’m pretty bored with the dungeons in this game so I guess them buffing them isn’t a bad thing.

After having done SE a lot, I’ve started to really like it.
Path 1 is a pretty great ‘different’ encounter, what with the periodic waves and trying to rush up through them. I feel like the Nokk fight is missing something though: the knockback into the lava feels terrible, the 6+ second stun feels oddly impotent, and the singularities are annoying but ignorable? I don’t know, it’s just not quite right.
Tazza feels a bit like this too. I feel like her ‘Summons an illusion of a party member’ gimmick could be turned up a notch in power, to make it feel more impactful and keep the fight from getting monotonous.

Path 3 is a great ‘bust down the door’ thing where you just get to beat stuff up. Both the dredge bosses have a gimmick that requires a bit of (readily available) counterplay, but isn’t an instant wipe if you mess up once. It culminates in the Destroyer Giant fight which isn’t too tough, and I wish less groups would cheese it via sniping points that prevent retaliation.

Path 2 feels bad though. It’s long. Really long. So long that I simulated its length with the following wall of text.

Yes CoF p3 last boss is also boring as hell… resetting conditions every time he comes invourneable is a butt kick for all condition build proffesions.

About Alpha Circles in p2/p3 there are 2 types of them. If You are “stacked” You can’t see the difference but when You spread and wach closely there are 2 type of “ice” or white thing in the inner circle. The whiter and bigger one means rock spikes, the one wich goes more blue/watery and smaller means ice crystal inside.

In general, i think that the main issue for NOT doing certains path/dungeons are the incredible lenght of certain encounters…
Dungeons are not so difficult after all, but some fights get terribly boring…and not for mechanics, but only for a matter of health pools! The destroyer boss in CoE (even if it’s since the new patch that i don’t get in there, maybe something has changed), subject Alpha (VERY funny combat dynamic but way too long for a boss you meet 3 times/run), +1 to the insane health pool of final bosses in HotW….

That should go this way imho: more mechanics with faster fights

sostronk.8167:

To be sadly honest, I find Cm too hard. Thats why I don’t play it.

CM is about 90% afk-killing mobs through walls. 5% running and 5% doing ranged fights while pressing a-d-a-d-a-d to not receive any damage.

The proof is in the pudding.

CoF p1 and to some extend p2 are so popular because the majority of players want the opposite given by arenanet.

The majority of players prefer fairly easy but fun (FUN) (FUN) runs.

The majority does not want to spend 2+ hours in one dungeon grinding like zombies.

The majority does not want to spend 2+ hours getting half an inventory of purples.

Really, the toughest dungeons gives “not worth the effort” awards.

That is why the easier dungeons attract so many players.

The results speaks for it self, a few minority shout for longer/tougher dungeons and when implimented, turns those very dungeons in ghost towns.

Messing up CoF like they messed up AC, well, who cares, luckily dungeons aren’t the only activity in game as much as GW2 is not the only MMO.

CM is just plain broken and doing it is just plain waste of time.
Too much trash mobs with bombs, rifles, fear, blowout, evade and healing. Too long , poor reward (crap from drop and 0% chance for cores/lodestones) and gear with condition damage…
Arah need redesign. It’s all around put some fun events and bosses and fill empy space with bilion of hard hitting, annoying and with massive hp pool zombies. You can clear them and spend in dungeon 2h or just run for you live and do it in 30 min…Map is just huge and for me all arah paths are mostly made around trash skipping.
SE path 1 and 3 are fine, probably path 3 need more love, because carrier event is just stupid. What sane man/woman made it have so much hp? Thats why all just shoot at it from some box…
Path 1 is fine. Path 2 is not fine, it’s way too long. Dungeons should be mare around 30 min per path, not 1h+ like path 2 in SE, it need to me faster.
TA is fine but annoying because of trash mobs. I don’t like dungeon where trash is harder than all bosses.
New ascalon is quite fun, I like mobs hp nerf, still buffing Kohler where we all know that 99% ppl just skip him is just bad idea…New bosses are quite fun, still on rumblus this “AI dependent” aspect good be annoying.
What I don’t like is path 1 defending guy event. They changed something in agro system and now mobs just attack npc on sight.
COE is fine, my favourite dungeon in game

Slaptjip.4895:

CoF p1 and to some extend p2 are so popular because the majority of players want the opposite given by arenanet.

That’s the point.
At the evening, after work, tired and wanting some entertainment, the “uber hard pro” dungeon is the last thing I’d be willing to do.
I want to do:
1) something together with my guildmates, who are not necesserily the hardcore players (many casuals, many over 40 yo)
2) something requireing a group play, some comminication, some coordination
3) something that takes not to much time (30-45 minutes is ok)
4) something that is not frustrating but fun and realtively not hard

The old AC, COF p1, and maybe TA p1 was the only content in the whole game that fulfilled all the criteria for me.

This does not mean I do not like challenges. Sure I do, but only once-twice a week, appointed with other good players, as a real challenge, taking more time and effort. And of course giving something worth doing it – even just a feeling we did something epic, but most of the dungeons do not give that feeling, it’s rather “thanks god its over, it was so long, boring, frustrating and not rewarding, won’t ever do it again”… But this is another story.

@ Aksamitna you may want to check out the SE p1 and p3 speed clear as it is comparable to running CoF p1 and p2. Id be happy to show you guys some time if you interested.

I love CoE, its just the stupid laser jumping part, with a charr, that I find horrible. I’m no good at that stuff. ><

You’re all over-complicating it. The reason no one runs certain dungeons is because you cant salvage the 30 token rares for ecto in them. SE path 1 is as fast or faster than cof 1, but the tokens are more or less worthless. Consider that one CoF/CoE/Hotw1 run gives on average about 2 ecto if you trade tokens for rares and you can see how much more lucrative it is to farm it than SE/CM/AC/TA. Make all the rare items from all tokens level 80 and you will see more variety in what people run.

The only losers in this scenario would be people who use the tokens to buy armor for their low level alts, but I don’t imagine that is a huge group, especially compared to the size of the group of people who would love to run every dungeon to alleviate boredom if only it was worth doing.

I’ve never done CoE or Sorrow’s Embrace. The reason I haven’t is because they’re obscure dungeons in the middle of no where and people have no interest in them. When the game came out people were beating their heads into AC, TA, and CoF.

The reason is because CoF = berserker gear, AC = tank/healer gear, and TA = condition gear.

I’m going to say the reason why anyone does dungeons outside the listed above is just to get gear for looks and dungeon master.

Also, I grinded AC and CoF to get my Mesmer from 20 to 80 by relogging, but with the way the dungeons are getting beefed up I have no interest in leveling a 4th.

I still laugh whenever I hear people having problems with the new and improved Spider Queen. Most I died in there was twice by myself (rest of the party survived) because i just came from farming and forgot to switch out of the MF armor to the good armor. Other than that the mechanics behind the boss is really easy. She may have stronger attack, but the general strategy has always been the same. The web shooting can get dangerous if she’s coming after you, but that’s easy to fix with condition removal signets and traits. I really don’t see how people have problems with her. Kohler, however…

Aksamitna.9680:

Slaptjip.4895:

CoF p1 and to some extend p2 are so popular because the majority of players want the opposite given by arenanet.

That’s the point.
At the evening, after work, tired and wanting some entertainment, the “uber hard pro” dungeon is the last thing I’d be willing to do.
I want to do:
1) something together with my guildmates, who are not necesserily the hardcore players (many casuals, many over 40 yo)
2) something requireing a group play, some comminication, some coordination
3) something that takes not to much time (30-45 minutes is ok)
4) something that is not frustrating but fun and realtively not hard

The old AC, COF p1, and maybe TA p1 was the only content in the whole game that fulfilled all the criteria for me.

This does not mean I do not like challenges. Sure I do, but only once-twice a week, appointed with other good players, as a real challenge, taking more time and effort. And of course giving something worth doing it – even just a feeling we did something epic, but most of the dungeons do not give that feeling, it’s rather “thanks god its over, it was so long, boring, frustrating and not rewarding, won’t ever do it again”… But this is another story.

I get your point exactly.

I honestly believe GW2 does have a very large base of older players.

Despite contrary believe many of these older players are business owners, hard working employees, parents and generally very busy people.

I too come home from a hard day running a financial practice, been a husband and a daddy wanting to relax having fun late evenings (game time)

Last thing I need is 4 hours of hardcore grinding.

I use to when I was younger and had little responsibilities, but it is not on anymore.

There will always be those who seek challenge in a game, fair, have very hard dungeons but have some for us less hardcore gamers.

Leave CoF alone, there are many more to provide ample challenge to those who seek such.

I believe completely removing the somewhat easier dungeons will merely alienate large numbers of players from all dungeons.

You only need to be aware of the before & after “LFG” @ AC now to understand the statement.

Softspoken.2410:

Words about SE

I actually really enjoyed Path 2 when I first did it near release, mainly due to the fatiguing nature of the encounters. It just felt very atmospheric and fitting with the Dredge theme, the waves of enemies pouring from the ground and the agonizing pace of the guy carrying the rock. Then the final boss is one of the best encounters in the game, probably only Lupicus is better, and it’s horribly demoralizing just like everything that preceded it. The dungeon was honestly one of my favorite parts of the entire game, after wiping with both golems at <20% doing it on the second try was truly satisfying.

Still repeating the dungeon is a total chore for all the reasons you listed, mainly the length and finding a group to stick the whole thing out is pretty difficult. And of course the rewards aren’t any better than far easier dungeons, making the whole thing feel a bit pointless after you’ve done it once. When the inevitable redesign comes I really hope they get rid of the Foremen (because they’re just padding) and don’t mess too much with the rock-carrying encounter, which is far more engaging (plus teammates raging at the dredge’s glacial speed never gets old). If the path gets toned down substantially I’ll be a little disappointed, but it’d be worth it if the result is more people actually fighting one of the game’s better bosses. So don’t nerf Shukov too, in fact, give him the status he deserves and put him in every path like Lupi and Alpha!

Sticks.9374:

@ Aksamitna you may want to check out the SE p1 and p3 speed clear as it is comparable to running CoF p1 and p2. Id be happy to show you guys some time if you interested.

Thanks Sticks, as a dungeon master and frequent dungeon runner I’m quite familiar with all paths/dungeons. I was rather talking about going with friends for something more relaxing in general. I really think there shall be also several easy to do paths in dungeons for more casual players, who do not want to master skills, gear and sacrifice lot of time. The pre-patch AC was one of few of such dunegons. I could go with friends at lvl 40 with greenies and we could do it and have fun. Now I’m not sure about that. I have no idea, why did they change the AC. Maybe the problem was, that easy paths were overused by fast-runners for quick loot. But in my opinion the changes made harm to overall community.
And talking about SE, dunno why, but my people do not like this dungeon… There must be something wrong with it

Did HOTW p2 last night for the first time and that final boss was such a pain. It wasn’t difficult just took forever to kill – it seems underwater weaponry/skills are just pitiful compared to land. And the rest of the bosses the group elected to bug in one way or another which annoys me (but not enough to drop group) – just more poor design.

I’ve done several explorable runs of SE and CoE, a few HotW, and less CM. Based on that:

CM:
Hate this dungeon. I suspect it’s fine once you’ve got the mechanics down, but I have no desire to do so – the snipers hitting me for loads of damage if I move coupled with being ganked by bleed stack NPCs if I don’t is very demoralising. I now actively refuse to do this dungeon if my friends ask me to run dungeons because of this.

SE: P1 has a fun sequence at the beginning – racing to kill the Inquest waves while destroying the barriers is a nice change of pace. Nokk is a bit annoying with the lava, but generally OK. The triple golem fight is interesting. Final boss needs some more interesting mechanics.
P2: Tedious, not done it much.
P3: Fairly fun. I especially enjoy running a build with CC in it to snare all the adds the Destroyer of Worlds throws at us, leaving the rest of my party free to do as they please (ish)

HotW: Run P1 & P2. On the whole, not bad. Some bosses with too much HP and not enough to do, turning the fight into a tedious drag.

CoE: This is my favourite dungeon so far. Subject Alpha has some nice mechanics, as do the second-to-last bosses, although I do feel sorry for poor Bjarl being unable to realise that running into the pillars is what makes him vulnerable. I like the atmosphere a lot here: kind of creepy, but alleviated by the humorous tannoy announcements.

Well, I like all dungs, it is good change etc. AC before changes was good place to get some money and run dung if u dont have much time.

Really simple, people don’t want to play harder dungeons because loot they get for doing so is as miserable as one you get for doing cof p1.

Simply logic, you get 10 blue items and few tokens for 10 minutes, or you get 10 blue items and slightly different tokens for an hour, which do you pick?

I did every dungeon several times, and none of them are actually hard, but since rewards are equally bad in every dungeon I just gave up and stuck to COF p1.

Not to mention not every dungeon has lvl 70+ rare items that can be acquired with tokens, which most people farming cof do to get nice supply of ectos.

Tbh best type of dungeon is grawl one in fractals. It has a twist to both boss fights, and playing like a team really can make a difference. Sure it has some bugs and elementals tend to spike one person a bit too often, but it sure is fun and intense.

But seriously, no one will play dungeons because they are fun. Sure first few times its amazing and thrilling, but later it is all about loot, and if player knows he will not get anything, he will not come again.

Pls redo chests at the end of every dungeon to be a bit more similar to new world event chests, so people can hope for at least a single rare item at the end of a run.

DrWhom.3105:

don’t mess too much with the rock-carrying encounter, which is far more engaging (plus teammates raging at the dredge’s glacial speed never gets old).

To be fair, the dude is carrying an unecessarily giagantic rock. You’d be going slow, too!