Guild Wars 2

Aside from the two bugged paths in Citadel of Flame this was the last dungeon path I needed for my Master Dungeon Explorer title, and considering I’ve done Citadel of Flame paths too up to the end boss in Path 1 (who regenerates far too fast due to crystals spawning way too fast to bring down with anything but a combination of 4 Rangers/Warriors and a Mesmer) or Path 3 where you actually kill the boss but aren’t awarded dungeon completion I’ve basically done every single explorable.

I could go on and on about the health of literally everything in any dungeon and ridiculous amount of trash spawns (most of which can be skipped by simply running past it) and how dungeons aren’t balanced at all and every dungeon has an easier “farm” path. It’s painfully obvious these dungeons weren’t well play tested. Overall the Arah paths are all too long, but Forgotten is the most acceptable all of them. Let’s talk about Seer, the worst of them.

The trash in Arah is hard. It’s challenging. This is a good thing. In the Seer path you have some of the hardest trash packs, with 2 hunters + mage + illusionist. It’s ridiculously easy to split these packs though, and the majority of the time we wound up doing that. There is also a lot of trash that is a pushover such as the Gorillas and Spiders (no Champion versions show up in this Arah path that can party wipe, the sliver elite and hatchlings can’t possibly wipe a party) that really serve no purpose other than to delay you. This could definitely be removed. The trash leading up to Giganticus (which is the same on all paths except Seer has non-Champion versions of the Abominations) is ridiculous and serves no purpose other than to delay you for 30 minutes (which you cannot avoid) and can’t really wipe you as they are all single pulls. Keep in mind between each boss there is multiple rooms of trash that takes ~30 minutes to clear or 2 minutes to run past.

The first boss is a Priest of Balthazar. The hounds of Balthazar can’t really wipe a party out and again seem to serve no purpose other than to force you spend 10 minutes pounding on trash with too much health. The Priest himself serves no challenge whatsoever, with a whooping one ability used throughout the fight (2 if you count the fire raining down throughout the fight) which is the Warrior skill we coined “Spin to Win”. Just dodge roll it and proceed to fight against his health bar for 15 minutes. Extremely boring and poorly designed. Your reward for the effort? 1 Shard of Zhaitan.

The second boss Melandru is even more of a joke. There are multiple places in the room where you can avoid all the damage throughout the entire fight. Sit in one place and AFK for 20 minutes as your attack slowly picks away at the ridiculously large health pool. Collect your other single Shard of Zhaitan.

Next you have Lyssa, but first you have to deal with the bug where the script where the NPC is suppose to blow up the wall bugs out. Graphically, the wall explodes, but you can’t walk through the walk and are forced to glitch your way through another area of the instance to get past. Yes, we had to exploit to get to the next boss because the script bugged out. We spent an hour figuring that out.

So after clearing through another hour of trash you are finally at Giganticus who is in fact a well designed encounter. It’s probably the most fun fight in the game, though it does suffer from the same problem this game has everywhere and he has way too much health. It’s a 15-20 minute fight when done properly and can easily wipe your group and take a while getting used to. I have no qualms here, and you are actually awarded 4 Shards for your effort.

We were clearing through more trash and took out the anti-air cannons event, which surprisingly awarded 4 Shards even though it was easier than most other areas in the instance? Well, at least we got something for clearing trash for a change.

Next you have Grenth. Why is the Wraith projectile immune? This hurts certain classes and doesn’t hurt others. I thought Guild Wars 2 dungeons were designed to be done with any combination of classes. Sure, you can pick up the bone and do a whopping 200 damage a hit to the Wraith at a slowish attack speed, but this really isn’t a statisfying mechanic. Once we finally spawned him, we honestly couldn’t decipher how the mechanic worked, but no damage was going out other than the random automatic downed player when the debuff faded (which sometimes didn’t down the player and was never removed even after killing Risen Wraiths which we figured it probably should). Simply revive them and kill all the Wraith (which takes a stupidly long time) and the boss is done. They’ll lose downed penalty before they need to get revived again. No damage whatsoever. Mechanic can be ignored again. Fun? We got 3 Shards for it.

Finally we came to Dwayna. We understand the mechanic perfectly. We knew how to remove petrify and removed it quickly. However this encounter obviously wasn’t tested at all. At 50% she hides and heals and you have to pull sparks to the center. The sparks are ranged and stop to autoattack you frequently and are hard to place in position, especially 5 at once. This isn’t so much of an issue except the boss heals to full within 10 seconds and there isn’t enough time to get the Sparks in position. We tried for over an hour, mastering getting the Sparks there and she healed too quickly. Everytime she would hide and heal at 50% again as if the fight reset entirely. We made no progress. Did I mention the damage throughout this fight is minimal and it’s nearly impossible to wipe solely from the bosses and sparks damage? So it’s basically just trying to get past another heal mechanic (because that worked so well in CoF Path 1), but it’s like the boss is resetting endlessly and progress is impossible. Eventually after an hour of fighting the boss (no wipes, same engage) I DC’d. I was unable to get back into the party instance (why can’t this game get you back in the correct instance when it bugs?) after 30 minutes of fighting. They were still fighting the boss. We called it quits. Considering the trend this was probably the last boss (or second to) in the dungeon no less.

The dungeon was nothing but a frustrating experience the entire time. I like challenge, but the dungeon did not provide it with the exception of trash pulls and Giganticus Lupicus (who is found in all paths anyway). There is absolutely no reason to do this path over the Forgotten one as that path can be done in half the time (less trash, less bosses) without bugs and much more amusing boss fights for the same amount of shards anyway. This entire paths needs a complete rework.

Having done the explorable mode (as much as our sanity could withstand), i have to agree i nreguards to the content. Some of the events were interesting like using the suit to get through the room of spiders was interesting. But the trash has way to much HP to make it an interesting place and a place where i would enjoy going back to again. Trash can be interesting but not when its the same mob copy pasted in packs that take far to long to kill and bosses that take even longer.

Im not saying i want Arah and other instances to be a cake walk but i would much rather not feel like we are beating our heads against a wall with a name over it.

We don’t want it to be another CoF Gaheron or AC Ghost Eater either, but we absolutely cannot stand having it take 3 hours when we are acing every mechanic and pull solely because everything has a gargantuan HP pool with not a snowball’s chance in hell of killing us.

I dont think most people want another CoF10 min speed run instance (well maybe some do).

have you tried saving the butler in CM?

Did that one awhile ago, it honestly wouldn’t have been half as bad as it was if we saw thekittencrystal on the wall opening the passage to the rocket turrets of death. Instead we cleared the rest of the dungeon……then went back to the actual path.

I feel your pain, I tried 2 of the different options in Arah explo … Made me want to kill myself.

Trash mobs, trash mobs everywhere taking litteraly HOURS to kill. x.x And they are freaking hard too ! God, the illusionist / mage groups, you’re getting one shot, you don’t even have the time to move, geyser+chaos stom, BOOM one shot (and I’m fully exotic geared)

Its the hardest possible dungeon available to us in GW2. Do you seriously want to ask Anet to tune it down? No thanks:)

I think its already been nerfed down enough since the start up. It should either get fixed back to what it was before, or it should stay the way it is. Why should it take 10min to finish GW2s hardest dungeon.

DKP.4196:

Why should it take 10min to finish GW2s hardest dungeon.

We’re not asking for nerfs on anything but the health pools if you read the post (maybe Risen Priest of Dwayna healing frequency/amount). We’re simply asking them to reconsider the kitteny design and mechanics they used for some of them. The dungeon as a whole was just incredibly frustrating BECAUSE everything took so bloody long to kill and had not a snowball’s chance in hell of killing us. Bosses shouldn’t keel over at my feet in 30 seconds. Conversely, I should not be falling asleep at my keyboard doing them because they take an eternity, and I’ve been in the dungeon for more than 2-3 hours already, especially if I’ve mastered not getting hit by their mechanics.

If anything we were sort of asking for buffs to most of it….the Balthazaar priest was just a “spin to win” with some red circles scattered across the room. The spin to win move didn’t even put me below half health…if that is the only ability that could even feasibly kill me (since you can’t get rooted or snared in the very small radius red cicles of not so immediate doom) then I believe it should actually be able to kill me if I eat it. Or have the HP nerfed on the boss so I’m not spending 10 minutes auto-attacking because my AoE never hits him.

The Melandru boss we literally could have AFK’d on because the green balls of stun/poison/death didn’t path around all of the available area and the boss just sat there while we were regen’ing the damage of the roots being spammed on us away from the green balls. How is that even a remotely fun or challenging encounter? Hell, how is that even an encounter?

Edit: I wish people would read the bloody posts before replying, but I understand, your average MMO goer is distracted and doesn’t care if the text he is reading cannot be read in < 20 seconds or is greater than a single paragraph. I don’t see where in the OP anybody said anything about nerfing the bosses. We just think the mechanics were unsatisfying, dull, and poorly implemented to a whole new level. Oh, and the whole thing took an excessive length of time for nokittenreason.

Well, I do agree some do take some time to kill. Literally AFKing and looking through Youtube videos or making myself a sandwitch and Im 99percent of the time still alive, and the boss still trolling about.

I guess the solution here isnt to decrease the HP of the boss but increase their abilities, and decrease the damage of certain “trash mobs” or decrease their hp. Although I disagree to decreasing overall HP on everything. It would make the dungeon too easy, and the length would be shortened which is not the solution. 10min per dungeon is ridiculous.

I’m fine with it being “hard”. They should only fix the Sparks at the endboss at Seer’s path. The arah gear should be the hardest to aquire, sadly there are “8 shard” runs… Would be much better, if you get all the shards at the endboss only (that’s a bit elitist, I know, but do you want every 0815 running around with the complete gear?)

Hax.5817:

I’m fine with it being “hard”. They should only fix the Sparks at the endboss at Seer’s path. The arah gear should be the hardest to aquire, sadly there are “8 shard” runs… Would be much better, if you get all the shards at the endboss only (that’s a bit elitist, I know, but do you want every 0815 running around with the complete gear?)

Didnt they fix this? So now its a 4 shard run? Also, i wanted to add. Fix some of the way points please. It seems like way points dont appear after each boss chest area. Is this part of the dungeon plan or just a bug? It would be nice to know if this is part of the design or not. This way we can accept the situation we are lobbed into during every Arah runs.

yeah, seems that they fixed it but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s still possible to grind those shards without ever clearing the dungeon – even if it takes forever it’ still annoying

Sucks to be a grinder Missing out on the rest of the dungeon.

You could technically grind any dungeon. Worth it? I dont know:) I dont think it is;) I get bored:o

One thing, trash shouldnt be hard, its supposed to be the breath time between bosses, in arah, its reverse, you afk/faceroll on bosses for about 45 minutes or do what i did on melandru, walk away, make a sandwitch, find that you lost about 300 hp out of 20k because of plague signet pulling in poison.
Stuff thats ok = bosses that take 4 wipes each to figure out how to even not die at em and require exact and timed use of some skills, a ton of, but easy to dispatch trash mobs that kinda hint at the boss mechanics, bosses that hard punish people who ignore their taunts

Stuff thats not ok: 15 minute kite of a swarm while pressing/having 1 on auto attack, actual afk fights with 1 on, bosses with no taunts but have a instakill, AoE instakills that dont have the bright red circle around them, but the blurry one that melts with the ground, the godkittentrash being harder than 4/5 bosses, boss skill chains that cause a player to die for trying to solve the situation (using a condition removal skill killing you because of a 15 second 25 stack confusion on you instakilling you), bosses attacking between 2 poles despite your attacks being “obstructed”, 40 minute turret secotions that result with 5 bags of loot that give level 20 gear.

Also the whole “end game” is based on the fact that all loot should take the same time to aquire, no matter if AC or Arah since its about the looks, not the stats that you can get if you level the craft of your profession.

I like some of you folk, you understand the real issues here. If a boss/mob can’t kill me because he is either lacking punishing abilities or I’ve mastered those abilities he might have, I should not have to be fighting it for 15 minutes. Granted, endurance tests are a great way to increase difficulty; having to repeat a process countless times without screwing up becomes exceedingly difficult due to complacence and fatigue. But it’s more of a pseudo-inflation to difficulty than anything.

Everyone in our groups loves the Lupicus fight, it’s a pretty demanding fight in comparison to a lot of other dungeon bosses, even those not part of GW2. But we don’t like spending 15-25 minutes fighting him (based on how many or how few overpowered Shortbow Rangers we have grouped at the time) because he has that gargantuan HP pool.

I don’t even mind the Giganticus Lupicus’s fight’s length as much as some of the other bosses who have absolutely no mechanic that can punish you enough to wipe you. I actually think Giganticus is one of the best encounters in the game even despite it’s length. There are bosses you can literally sit AFK on (the Melandru fight mentioned here, final boss of Cadecus’s butler path) that are nothing more than very large HP pools. There are just a stupid number of bosses that don’t deal enough damage through their mechanics to wipe a group out even if they aren’t paying attention. Dungeons need serious looking at.

Fights I like because they require a decent amount of teamwork and have a lot going on (note these are all pretty difficult encounters):

- Giganticus Lupicus
- Mesmer Boss in Arah Mursaat path that does extreme AoE damage (forgot name)
- Twilight Arbor’s Giant Nightmare Vine
- Alpha Subject in all CoE paths, especially the front door one
- The protect the NPC / area in Ascalon Catacombs explorable Paths 1 and 3 (2 is too easy)

Itari.1063:

Pathetic sry. Arah is fine how it is! Just becuz u are to bad to clear it doesnt mean others also cant. We spent 3 * hours 4 Dwayna to try out every posibility on the Sparks and we had her on 30% then DC and we didnt continued but still, it IS possible.

I hope they only change the amount of shards u get depending on the path u choose.
Warden less maybe 20
Seer the hardest maybe 50
Something like this.

No challenge for the casuals huh?

How is Seer hard? All the bosses are a joke and can’t wipe your group out. Did you even read the post? The Jotun and Mursaat paths have much more difficult bosses. Dwayna isn’t hard, she’s just unreasonably lengthy. She can’t kill your group with damage. She probably isn’t doable right now either and until you show a screenshot or video with her dead (because we got her to 30% too, she heals too fast period) I still stand by her heal is too fast even if you master getting the sparks are (which are also super buggy and annoying to deal with as they stick to Ranger pets and have all sorts of other issues).

Did u even read the post AIMonster? I dont think so cuz i never said the bosses are to hard or? So dont place words in my mouth THX! If it was 4 me, the bosses should be WAY harder then the trash is atm.
I dont care if i need 10 mins for a Boss or 30 mins. If i need 30 mins i should think “maybe im to bad” or “how can i do more dmg” but thats impossible for ~60%? of the player.

Maybe if you took the extra time to format your post and stop using lazy internet text shortcuts for three letter characters I could understand the point you were trying to make, but I don’t. I’m pretty sure you don’t understand the point I’m trying to make with the statement “Arah is fine how it is!” as I’m not asking for nerfs at all and I want the encounters to be MORE challenging and only the trash and health pools to be less time consuming (less tedious and more fun).

Dwayna is most likely not doable the way she is now. I’m guessing you don’t understand exactly how the fight is working. She hides at health intervals at every 10% starting at 50%. Each time she hides the orbs spawn further away and you need place more orbs in the middle (starting at 2 and probably ending with all 5). She’ll hide first at 50% which is easy enough as you only have to place 2 orbs in the middle and she’ll likely heal in that amount of time to 70% or 80%. The next time you have to place 3 orbs and they spawn further away. At 30% you have to place 4 orbs. The orbs themselves are buggy as mentioned in other threads and this one, but I’m not going to get into that. The main problem with the encounter is if she heals more than 50% the encounter essentially resets. As far as we can tell the closest you can get her down is 30% (maybe 20%) before it’s simply impossible to get the orbs there fast enough before she heals more than 50% and you have to do the encounter again starting at 50% intervals. During this time she does absolutely pathetic damage (compare to say Giganticus Lupicus who comes before her and can 2 shot you if you fail to dodge any of his mechanics) so it’s not like your party ever runs the risk of wiping. The fight is just tedious as are all except Giganticus and MAYBE Lyssa on the Seer path.

almonster, going off colin’s reply, im going to tell you to L2P. obviously what you need is an engineer with sup runes of speed, swiftness, combat shoes, and slick shoes(toolbelt skill). essentially doing this encounter without an engineer=failure.

good luck!

I guess the whole “5 elementalists can do any dungeon in Guild Wars 2 without issues” mantra they were spouting then was a lie.

We don’t have an engineer, nor are we going to go have everyone respec into high mobility specs to complete the encounter. I’d still like to see a video or screenshot of the boss killed even with high mobility specs as the sparks themselves don’t move at swiftness speeds when you kite them into position.

Not sure if post was serious or not.

Had the same problem as the OP with the Dwayna priest. Felt like most of the reason she just wouldn’t die is down to the behaviour of the sparks and the graphical glitches preventing you from seeing which circles still require a spark to fill them. Or because she decides to petrify someone right at the start of a spark phase. You need consistently perfect spark phases, and they rarely occur back to back because it’s up to the sparks to decide whether or not they want to co-operate in time.

Wow i dont even know why you explain the boss. I know how he works but i dont care about this useless talk anymore. But i can tell u, there IS a way to get her out of hide with only 1 Spark, but hey thanks. The prove is u explained how the encounter works.
So far bye bye