Guild Wars 2

So, I am a fresh player, gotten to lvl 41 and finally got into a guild and decided to take people with me to CM.

I initially had a very good opinion on this game because PvE is simply excellent, hard in some places but very good and well balanced.

And this is where it ends.
Instance is horribly missbalanced, I have no idea who designed the instance system but they have no idea what they are doing.
There is virtually no difficulty level, because I can’t say it’s difficult when you get thrashed around the entire available room or area or get one hit killed by a randomly standing enemy. There is no strategy to deal with this, just patience that it will work out this time, and after 2 hours of trying I ended up spending more money on repairs than I got from the fights and the XP at least could be better. Rewards from the enemies and loot is just horrible, it’s completely not worth the time and effort, I actually got more XP from reviving party members than from the entire instance.

Enemies deal 5-6 times more damage than champions in the open area zones, and that’s only the trash mobs, the elite enemies, silver and gold ones deal much more damage, which is simply cheap!

You created a wonderful questing area and a wonderful story system, you ruined it with your instances, I’m currently thinking of dropping this game because of the bitterness I feel after this instance.

Simply bad is not enough.

Here are a few hints:
-You do not make an instance difficult by making enemies throw players all around the area.
-You do not make enemies capable of one hit killing the player, especially when a player has the choice of using close range skills when the battle clearly dictates to be ranged, this is completely wrong taking into consideration the fact that every player has a choice to be close, mid or long range combatant. If you start dictating conditions like that, you are clearly breaking your own idea of free choice for all players on how to play their game.
-This is a big hint:
You do not make enemies that target a random player.
-You do not make enemies scatter like crazy just because they feel like it.

Do all that, and the instancing will be much more enjoyable for everyone, at least it won’t take 4 hours to complete one because it’s impossible to have 5 people fight 10+ enemies that can one hit kill you.

puts flame shield up.
I pointed out valid and serious problems, I’m ready to take any flames you want to throw at me now.

Lots of us play dungeons. Lots of us succeed at them. Lots of us like them.

Your opinion is your opinion, but I disagree with every statement you’ve made, and I’m not alone in that. This isn’t a game that needs to be easier.

To be honest I find CM to be the worst designed dungeon. And I have played them all.
CM fails to be fun or challenging in a good way at any point. It’s just kittens piled upon kittens. One huge annoyance, frustration and boredom fest with bad rewards to boot.

Before ranting about how broken a dungeon is after your first run, why don’t you try asking the community here for help on said specific dungeon? I’m sure people will be glad to help out.

Or you know, you can post topics like this and invite the “flames.”

From off the top of my head, there’s really only one boss that will 1HKO you with little warning, that being the bomb tossing boss in I believe path 3 (the one that actually moves around), and it’s really only an issue if you decide to go melee only. The tell is very short (a fast little spin) and doesn’t give you too much time to dodge in pointblank (from range, the travel time is enough). If you play smartly though, you can negate it in many ways, and there’s always the option of falling back on ranged weapons.

The only other truly 1HKO capable move I can think of from bosses in CM is the thief boss’s 1HKO, and that’s very obviously telegraphed. She stealths, stuns a target, then ~2 seconds later does a stab or something that basically downs you instantly. That gives ample time to hit a stunbreaker and move out of the way. And worse case scenario, you get downed, your teammates pick you up, because she pretty much only does single target.

Vallog, Turmaine, and Frost should not be able to 1HKO you at all (as in, I don’t think they can actually hit hard enough to do that). The other bomb tossing boss in path 1 is a joke. I don’t believe Mad Martha can, either. Sure-Shot Seamus usually takes 2+ hits minimum to down a person, and every one of his shotgun blasts (well, the only shotgun blast he does) is well telegraphed and easily avoided without the use of endurance.

The silver bandit riflemen may be able to 1HKO you, but again, like the thief boss, if it happens, it’s purely your own fault. They’re clearly labeled with “does more damage to moving targets”, and there’s a very clear graphic when they’re aiming for you. It gives you ample time to either dodge roll, set up some kind of projectile reflection/nullification, or just stop moving to take seriously reduced damage.

The shotgun mobs may also have 1HKO potential if you eat a perfect shotgun blast to the face, but again – huge wind up time accompanied by a pretty glow. CC it, roll, reflect it. And in any case, that rarely happens anyways.

Cutpurses hurt, but only if you have no condition removal equipped. If you have no condition removal equipped while facing them, well, that’s an issue on your end, not the developers.

There are some very serious issues with CM, on that I will agree. Some very poor level and boss designs thrown in there, such as Archer invuln, Turmaine invuln, Vallog in general, etc. However, what you’re complaining about is a clear case of needing to learn how to play and tackle the instance better rather than the actual design of the dungeon itself.

So what’s your class? Are you kiting mobs during normal map events or just stand still and hit them to death before your hp runs out? Do you know what dodge is and when to use it? How many controlling skill you have and when you should keep them in you skill slots? Do you have invul skills or reflection skills and when should you use them? If you are surrounded by several mobs, do you have at least one "help myself " skill sets as the easiest reachable key on you keyboard/mouse?

If you can answer all this questions, then you should be pretty good for most of the dungeons, if not all.

Cthuhlu.4250:

-This is a big hint:
YOU DO NOT MAKE ENEMIES THAT TARGET A RANDOM PLAYER.

can you imagine how incredibly boring (most people already find the PvE pretty boring) this game would be if they followed your.. “hint” here?

Dungeons are made for 80 lvl teams wearing exotics, fully traited, etc. Yes even the story ones. Sure you can enter it at recommended level but it will be hard and not fun. You will see it for yourself when you come back there later.

I felt the same way when I ran my first dungeon in this game. Once you have the right gear and master your class it’s not that bad. I think you should start with A.C. ex mode path 2.

Grav.4790:

Dungeons are made for 80 lvl teams wearing exotics, fully traited, etc. Yes even the story ones. Sure you can enter it at recommended level but it will be hard and not fun. You will see it for yourself when you come back there later.

I’m sorry but this is simply wrong, We did AC naked… no clothes on and completed it.

When we first started doing dungeons we did it with a steady team in blues, greens, at lower levels and until Arah some of our gear wasn’t even lvl 80 (Some even dreadfully under lvl 80) yet we still succeeded just fine.

So no this statement is very misinformed. It ‘can’ be easier if you have an experienced team with full lvl 80 exotics however I’ve seen A LOT of exotic geared people be terrible at dungeons. It’s the player skill and teamwork that really matters in dungeons.

As for the OP, I’ve seen the same kind of topics so many times especially just after launch. It takes time to learn your profession and find a good team, Caudecus’ manor is quite a tough one if you do not know how to utilize your profession or your party well. It’s a very steep learning curve but you will need it if you intend on doing the higher level explorable dungeons.

Sure Caudecus’ Manor has it’s flaws but it’s quite doable with practice, thousands of people already have completed them and we all had to learn the same. This isn’t like other MMO’s where you fit a specific role, you are responsible for yourself and your team. If you don’t dodge, heal yourself etc. then you will be struggling you can’t just faceroll in there and press 1 to win.

I would strongly advice going for Ascalonian Catacombs first, it wont be easy to begin with but you’ll look back at all of this few weeks from now realizing that it was just a lack of experience that was the issue here. I remember distinctly thinking how hard AC is and now I just laugh at that looking back. Best of luck!

Dagger Earth style Elementalist.
If dungeons are meant for lvl 80’s then they should outright close all access to them for everyone under lvl 80.

I learned at the very start of this game that standing still in combat is your undoing or at least makes you so much an easy target as a tied up naked woman wit ha “Use Me” sign in the metro. Kiting is the easiest way to kill enemies.
Earth Style daggers let me put a lot of bleeding stacks on enemies, why would I want to stand when I can cripple the enemy and start walking away with putting constant supply of bleeding stacks on enemy ? makes little sense if you consider the crippled enemy bleeds itself out and is fairly too far to even attack you.

I know my class well enough, i geared up to bleed enemies hard and fast, I’m no healer so I don’t even bother with healing.

Cthuhlu.4250:

Dagger Earth style Elementalist.
If dungeons are meant for lvl 80’s then they should outright close all access to them for everyone under lvl 80.

I learned at the very start of this game that standing still in combat is your undoing or at least makes you so much an easy target as a tied up naked woman wit ha “Use Me” sign in the metro. Kiting is the easiest way to kill enemies.
Earth Style daggers let me put a lot of bleeding stacks on enemies, why would I want to stand when I can cripple the enemy and start walking away with putting constant supply of bleeding stacks on enemy ? makes little sense if you consider the crippled enemy bleeds itself out and is fairly too far to even attack you.

I know my class well enough, i geared up to bleed enemies hard and fast, I’m no healer so I don’t even bother with healing.

Kiting might be the safest and easiest way to kill enemies… in solo PvE content.

Fyi, constant 100% kiting is generally what bad dungeon groups do. The best dungeon groups kite rarely for specific instances, and the rest of the time will pretty much stick together for boons and whatever utilities. Kiting just makes things take longer and leaves more room for error after a certain point. I’m not saying stand completely still, the very nature of D/D Ele means you’re zipping around everywhere like an ADD kid on crack, but sticking with the group rather than dragging that mob 6 miles out is more ideal for everyone. And standing still for half a second while a bandit rifleman tags you once every 10-15 seconds will hardly result in you getting rolled over, and that’s only if you don’t just dodge the dumb thing.

Dungeon PvE content requires a different approach than solo or even open world PvE content. Open world PvE is simply a joke and really doesn’t require much thought at all.

I leveled up my Elementalist from level 40 to 80 solely through dailies and dungeon running. I never actually upgraded my armor past 40/60 cabalist armor, because I liked how the armor looked and I was cheap, and wore that all the way up until 80 (which means that with dungeon downscaling, I was severely undergeared at all times. I still played a weird s/f + lightning hammer build that was virtually 100% melee all the time and had little issue. CM was actually really easy with that setup due to a 33% uptime on a huge AoE projectile nullification + spammable blinds + short CD personal reflection.

I’ve used dungeons as my main source of experience in regards to leveling my Thief, Elementalist, and Mesmer all the way to 80. I’ve never really had any issues running and dungeons on any of them while at the appropriate level. Sure, my damage output suffered massively at times, particularly as I neared 80 due to downscaling mechanics with non-ideal gear, but that was simply due to me being cheap.

If you got wrecked your first time doing a dungeon, I honestly don’t see a problem with that. Dungeons are supposed to be the “hardcore”, difficult content of PvE. And many would argue that in its current state, it’s not hard enough. You likely approached it from the completely wrong direction, which is made all the more clear from your first post. There’s nothing wrong with that, as long as you keep your head on and actually learn from it. Being 80 helps, and certainly makes things faster and smoother if they’re geared up, but is generally not a requirement. 80s fail all the time in easy dungeons like AC and CM and TA all the time, and that’s because they play poorly, not because dungeons are wtfOP.

Also, saying that you’re a “fresh player, gotten to lvl 41” followed by “I know my class well enough” as a dagger/dagger elementalist (especially as a d/d ele!) is, no offense, very unlikely, especially if you drop a comment like “I’m no healer so I don’t even bother with healing”. A simple 10 into arcana paired with proper attunement swapping actually makes Elementalist one of the more beefy of the squishies when compared with Mesmers or Thieves (though Thieves do drop aggro fairly easily). In truth, I’d say most 80s I pick up end game for random CoE pugs and such still have no idea what the heck they’re doing. 100% shortbow thieves with sig of shadows always on or signet warriors (that have no idea what the dodge button is) or rangers/mesmers who longbow/gs in melee range or eles who only believe one attunement exists and such show up all the time, and they will tell you that yes, they know what they’re doing, just after spamming double rolls and dying for the tenth time.

Furthermore, if you’re “geared up to bleed enemies hard and fast”, at that level, you’re probably a glass cannon (pow/cond or cond/prec gear), or close to one. Personally, I see no issue with glass cannons as long as you know how to dodge or are in a group that understands how to support you, but as a first time dungeon runner, many people will tell you that’s a big no.

Grav.4790:

Dungeons are made for 80 lvl teams wearing exotics, fully traited, etc.

This isn’t true, but they are balanced with level 80s in mind. This means that when you’re doing them in blues/greens near the minimum level for them (in CM’s case in the low 40s), that dungeon is as hard as it will ever be.

This is necessary because if dungeons were balanced to be easier at their minimum (midlevel + blues), then people running them at their maximum (80+exotics) could literally AFK+auto attack through everything.

People just aren’t used to running a dungeon for the first time and it being at max difficulty because most games start you off with easy dungeons and the difficult ones are only tackled at max gear/level. This is why there was a bunch of backlash on release from the first people tacking AC and finding it surprisingly difficult at 35 with blue gear. Now, of course, you can find threads on the forums proclaiming dungeons as a whole to be trivial and wanting new challenges.

Just stick with it OP, CM will never be as difficult again as it was for you now, GW2 has you start at the top of the difficulty scale and go down as you get better gear.

If this were about explorable mode, I could relate, I found that quite difficult at first also. CM storymode is a total faceroll even after the buff a while ago. This is caused more likely due to lack of experience and maybe a way too one dimensional approach to your class. It will get A LOT easier once you’re more familiar with dungeons overall.

As someone else mentioned, I leveled my alt necro from 33-80 purely on dungeons aswell and swapped armor two times because being a cheapass. Once on 35 and once on 55 (AC and TA rares). Was a bit more difficult later due to the downleveling, but nothing very noticeable.

I mean TBH… I find most of the lower level story mode dungeons horrible for acclimating players to what it means to play dungeons in GW2. This game, in general, presumes a lot about the players; two of which are that players have some experience with dungeon-based MMOs and that players understand how to apply a non-trinity system into group play.

I’m not asking for a hand holding experience, I’m just understanding the player’s frustration. I mean it’s story mode…. nothing more than attunement to host explore dungeons with some lore tied in.

unless the buffed it, CM story mode was one of the easiest dungeon runs ever. ever. for all story modes. CM explo is also pretty easy (just annoying at path 3, but lots of viable strategies for it). The problem is that there is a huge disparity between the level of difficulty of open-world mobs and dungeons. With open world mobs, there literally is no strategy needed apart from kiting and trying to survive as long as possbile. With dungeons, some mechanics force you into adopting certain strategies (range only, move fast, ignoring trash mobs, running past mobs, stealth, coordination) that simply isn’t and will not be available in open world. Take Claw of Jormag for instance. Apparently, for phase two you need to clear the way for the golems to bomb him so you can hit him freely without the debuff. But what do people do? Zerg it anyways, and continue hitting him. You cannot do those in dungeons. Dungeons are meant for higher-level gameplay, and even then, alot of people find dungeons easy (and could do them in their sleep, like AC for instance, which is probably the most grinded dungeon due to ease and good rewards).

I’m amazed no one has yet to post a “l2p noob” comment here.

This OP doesn’t know? Bandits are bugged atm CM is something you should steer clear of until the bandit problem is fixed… Someone really is not in touch with current issues imo.

The reason he/she got tossed around non stop is that the bugged bandits have no cool downs to these new abilities (KD/KB weapons) they were given to thwart botters.

Cthuhlu.4250:

Dagger Earth style Elementalist….

…I know my class well enough, i geared up to bleed enemies hard and fast, I’m no healer so I don’t even bother with healing.

This is your problem, it doesn’t matter if you have no +heal you still use your support skills. You do not know your class well enough in a dungeon setting. You “don’t even bother with healing”. That statement is probably the biggest fail in any dungeon group anywhere. No one is a healer and everyone is a healer. Your d/d water attun has a great heal/cleanse on #5 and a great cone heal on #2 that also chills enemies which makes them hit you less. But why would you bother with that “you’re no healer”.

If you stay in earth and just stack bleeds and don’t help your group with the abilities you are given(all of them in all attunements) you are not a good ele, im sorry but that’s a fact.
You need to be attun swapping like crazy, using your blast finishers when your allies lay down combo fields, there are combos with fields and blasts that heal, cleanse, blind, grant might, area chill…you name it, a combo does it, heck the ele has more self combo opportunities then any other class. This all helps your group avoid damage through boons on your party or conditions on the enemy.

No trinity(tank,dps,healer) means that everyone helps everyone, do it or suck at dungeons, its that simple.

But hey, you’ve done one dungeon and didn’t faceroll it so what do i know.

The one thing I’ll agree with here is that the learning curve for new players in this game is extremely steep. What needed to happen LONG ago was to make the story mode dungeons a lot easier and more of a transition dungeon for new people into the game.

First time I did a dungeon in gw, (AC) we got smacked down by the first mob we approached. Partywiped. Completely.
It took us a couple of minutes to defeat a single mob and people kept dying, if someone was downed, didn’t even have to think about helping them up, because within no time you were laying next to them.

With that first experience I didn’t feel like doing ANY dungeon anymore. Not too long ago however, my guild asked for dungeons and I decided to give it another go. We were with 4 from the same guild and one random who was at the level of the dungeon. We had a blast.

One elementalist in the group had a glass cannon build and died repeatibly, where the guy who was at the level of the dungeon had no problem at all.
Not long after we ran CM, the elementalist had adjusted his build and gues what. He didn’t spam-die anymore.

Give it some time, try AC first with some people you played with before, or who have some experience in the dungeon. After a while it really starts to get better, and starts to become fun.

penatbater.4710:

unless the buffed it, CM story mode was one of the easiest dungeon runs ever. ever. for all story modes.

Come on… CoF or HotW?

I will say CM story mode is certainly easier once you know it. I guess you can say the same for all the dungeons, but my first dungeon was Arah SM, then the story modes of CoF, CoE, and HotW (I wanted to unlock all the EM’s on my main toon just in case)…. I thought they were all pretty easy and involved minimal-to-no deaths. AC, CM, SE and TA by comparison were much worse (not necessary in the order I mentioned them). In all cases, no one knew what to do and it was the same group of folks so it’s not like I was PUG’ing and got good groups with the later dungeons and terrible ones in the earlier dungeons. Maybe it’s the scaling? Tactics? Idk, I just remember what dungeons were easiest and which ones were harder.

In all honesty? Try and get a seasoned player who knows CM and take as much advise from him/her. There are elements within CM that is vastly different from AC (which is another popular starter dungeon). You will learn to appreciate things like pulling, stacking, LOS etc. You will start giving some skills a chance, which you would never would in a normal PvE environment in the overworld.

No one and I mean, no one should do CM until the bandits are fixed.

Wow 2 hours for CM Story Mode…that’s awful, simply awful. It’s understandable to be extremely annoyed when you wasted two hours in a dungeon that can be completed in 20 minutes and as such the exp gain is quite good for the time spent.

As an elementalist, you don’t have a lot of toughness and vitality. If you use earth, I hope you put points in that trait line. As for your armor, even if it’s only a green set, I hope it gives bonus to toughness or at least vitality.
You can’t kill anything if you get killed rapidly.

If you use a scepter I hope you are using a focus as your off hand. That way you can use obsidian flesh and magnetic wave to throw off projectiles and then switch to air to use swirling winds (since there are a lot of snipers in CM).
Or you could use a staff to stand back more (and use eruption since you like to inflict bleeding) and use your different skills to help your teammates.

But it’s your first dungeon experience. Pretty much everyone first dungeon experience has been horrible. You aren’t really ready to do it (gear and skill wise) and the rest of your team probably has no clue either.
And because dungeons rely heavily on teamwork, all you need is 2 players that are completely loss and the whole thing becomes horrible.

In the end, get better equipement (not necessarily rares, but at least a masterwork item of your level which increases your toughness) and take your time to learn the different mechanics of CM, like taking something to counter snipers.

What is wrong with the bandits at the moment? Been awhile since I did either story or explorable, but I don’t remember anything different.

Anyway, communication and experience always make a huge difference. I was one of the people who constantly ran CM story way back when there was no DR. When they buffed it, we tried it again and it simply took a mere 2-4 minutes longer. You can be a level 80 but be absolutely terrible at a dungeon if you don’t know what to do or if you fail to communicate with your party. You can be an on level character and best the dungeon like a boss.

As for the OP’s points:
1. The knockback is quite irritating, but focus fire and equip a stability move and they won’t be able to knock you around. Or CC them.
2. The mobs tend to say if it can do a buttload of damage to you. Snipers, riflemen, and I think one other mob specifically say they do more damage to moving targets. (Or should I say damge – the typo in game.) A lot of people, including myself like to joke that the game should be called Range Wars 2, but everything can be melee’d, you just have to be more careful about it. It’s also a matter of knowing your party. Do they have your back if you’re going to melee while everyone else is range? Do you have yourself covered in case you need to get back to your party?
3. I think this is more of an issue of not knowing how aggro works. Which is still majorly unknown.
4. Mobs tend to scatter due to their mechanics and AI. For instance, AC rangers and eles tend to move away if you’re in melee range. It’s not to purposely annoy you, they’re trying to kite and get away from you, much like a regular player would.

What wrong with bandits? Here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Bandits-Spamming-Launch/page/2#post936130

And to your #4, Hard mode in GW 1 = Dungeon elites (silver border). Same AI and mechanics: 2-4x skill damage and able to kite and dodge aoe and attacks. If you never played GW 1’s Hard mode, you’d be confused to dungeons’ difficulty until you learn how its mechanics and AI works.

Yumiko Ishida.3769:

What wrong with bandits? Here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Bandits-Spamming-Launch/page/2#post936130

And to your #4, Hard mode in GW 1 = Dungeon elites (silver border). Same AI and mechanics: 2-4x skill damage and able to kite and dodge aoe and attacks. If you never played GW 1’s Hard mode, you’d be confused to dungeons’ difficulty until you learn how its mechanics and AI works.

Haha, wow. That needs to be fixed so bad. If the CM ones are indeed acting like that, then sorry to say OP, but you got caught doing the dungeon at a bad time. For point 1 at least.

New player to game, does a dungeon, can’t complete it, rages on forums.

Go play the game a bit more, and you’ll see the dungeons are too easy. The only thing that makes them difficult in this game is the thing that makes just about every dungeon difficult in any game – stupid people.

I suggest you try them again at 80 with exotics and with other 80s. It’s a completely different experience. The level boosting system needs some analysis.

Svarty.8019:

I suggest you try them again at 80 with exotics and with other 80s. It’s a completely different experience. The level boosting system needs some analysis.

This is silly! People go into dungeons to get exotic gear. They don’t have to be in exotic gear to do them! Does it make a difference? Sure but not that much. AC, CM and TA are completely doable in blues, greens and level appropriate rares with character who are sub-80. Heck, my engineer leveled from about 60is to 80 with 60% of her experience coming from CM explorable. She hit 80 being able to get her pistol and shield from the tokens from CM! It’s ludicrous to suggest or encourage people to be level 80 and in exotic gear for CM.

I have also done CM story 3+ times, once on each of my characters who reached CM story (guardian, engineer and ranger) and I think I repeated to help folks once or twice. It’s strictly, and I mean strictly, a 30 minute faceroll. It is beyond my comprehension why the OP had problems with what is by far the easier dungeon in the whole set!

You know, if you want to write a rant, write one without insulting the developers. Sure, there’s A LOT of things that need fixing, but that doesn’t mean you’re suppose to become an animal and bash these people as if they aren’t human beings.

Grav.4790:

Dungeons are made for 80 lvl teams wearing exotics, fully traited, etc. Yes even the story ones. Sure you can enter it at recommended level but it will be hard and not fun. You will see it for yourself when you come back there later.

I’ve never come across a less accurate statement regarding dungeons…

Most of my characters enjoy dungeons at level-appropriate points, and they are not particularly challenging. If you know how to set up a character right, lower levels can be stronger than higher levels.

Dungeons are considered hard by new players becaue they aren’t prepared for them when they get there. At no time in my trek to level 80 did I need stability or stun breakers. I would not set foot in CM story without them.

CM Story is one of the easiest dungeons I’ve done (disclaimer: I’m a guardian most of the time there; we have awesome stability buffs). Dungeons are not the faceroll dungeons from other games, they require you to actually pay attention and know your stuff and adapt to different situations. Once you know how to do it, it becomes fairly trivial, but the learning curve is very, very steep.

Svarty.8019:

I suggest you try them again at 80 with exotics and with other 80s. It’s a completely different experience. The level boosting system needs some analysis.

I have analyzed it.

An 80 in exotics is roughly equivalent to a 30 in top-shelf level 30 gear. The only difference that you see is that level 80s tend to have top-shelf gear, whereas lower level characters tend to not be fully upgraded in the best available gear.

The differences are so minimal that they have less impact than your ping time.

In theory, full Ascended gear will provide a 5-10% buff to your gear which will amount to a 1-3% overall buff.

Cthuhlu.4250:

Dagger Earth style Elementalist….

I know my class well enough, i geared up to bleed enemies hard and fast, I’m no healer so I don’t even bother with healing.

Good laugh, thanks for that one.

I just did CM Path 2 and Path 3. Path 2 everybody was 80 and I think most had at least a few piece of exotic gear. Path 3 (keeping in mind the exploit has been fixed) we had 3 people who hadn’t done it before. 2 of them where 52 and 50 and I can only guess what they were wearing. But both paths were successfully completed and fun and good times were had by all! You don’t need full exotics to do CM and while the bandits do seem to be hitting harder and CM does have problems, no need to avoid it or not do it with level appropriate characters in level appropriate gear.

Well thats what happens when you go full class cannon and don’t know how to dodge or bring stun breakers and expect to dominate everything the first try. I’ve also done all these dungeons with all players around the minimum level. People just have a tendency to cry/complain before looking what they are doing wrong

1. I am glad that many folks have taken a coaching approach to the question/comment here – thank you – that is what makes GW2 community awesome
2. Yes Dungeons in most MMOs really step up the difficulty and GW2 seems to do that in a pretty radical way – but as folks have said – I guess a lot of this is down to “cracking the code” on how to operate
3. Dont dismiss the comments about the bandits – they have been a nightmare due to game bug and that can really ruin your day

Dungeons in general get a lot easier after your first run through and you know what to expect. Problem with story modes is that people tend to do them one time only, and in the case of Arah its one very long, potentially frustrating time. I feel for you Cav but Im struggling to understand how you guys had so much trouble since Im not very good at this game and I went through Arah with a pug of also not very good people (by my low standards!) and we didnt have any trouble with the first boss or the trash mobs (2 dragons later was interesting but thats another story).

agree with autor of this thread. dungeons are absurd. if they been designed for 80s, lower lvl players shouldnt be alowed to enter the dungeon, or should be advice to come back at lvl80.
now it only builds fustraition and bad impresion about dungeons/event bosses

dotoni.9317:

agree with autor of this thread. dungeons are absurd. if they been designed for 80s, lower lvl players shouldnt be alowed to enter the dungeon, or should be advice to come back at lvl80.
now it only builds fustraition and bad impresion about dungeons/event bosses

i find it amazing that in this day and age, with the technology and gaming experience we all have, we still only get dungeons and bosses where the level of difficulty is simply defined on the hit points and damage output of the boss being increased to make the fight longer while throwing in a few mario brothers style boom skills.

i have yet to find a boss or dungeon that deserves the word “challenging” for making you think. they’re all the same.

nysta.6713:

dotoni.9317:

agree with autor of this thread. dungeons are absurd. if they been designed for 80s, lower lvl players shouldnt be alowed to enter the dungeon, or should be advice to come back at lvl80.
now it only builds fustraition and bad impresion about dungeons/event bosses

i find it amazing that in this day and age, with the technology and gaming experience we all have, we still only get dungeons and bosses where the level of difficulty is simply defined on the hit points and damage output of the boss being increased to make the fight longer while throwing in a few mario brothers style boom skills.

i have yet to find a boss or dungeon that deserves the word “challenging” for making you think. they’re all the same.

if dungeons are easy for you, you must be lvl80/someone else tanking the boss/your class somehow is tougher then mine/you have unique super powers

CM is fine. Bring a ranged weaponed and some stuns/knockbacks and stop trying to meele opponents that can stack bleed and poison on you like crazy…. aka the cutthroat bandits.

CM is one of my favorite dungeons.

First time a group does a dungeon it is expected to be long run. You only can get better from there.

Cav.9152:

Yes – I know only a very small percentage of GW2 players reads the forums and most of the readers are probably dedicated players who have tons of experience. You still have to understand that a large part of the player base cannot spend 8 hours per day in the game trying to perfect their game-play just to see/clear the game content.

I think this is deeply insulting to the majority of the GW2 player base because, news flash, the majority of the GW2 player base does not play 8 hours a day and have lives. However, they do try to perfect their game-play just to see/clear game content with whatever time they do have. This is part of playing the game. What you are saying is that you will not put any effort towards perfecting your gameplay, even if you can only do it for 30 minutes a day but want to breeze through content being crap. That’s not fair and there nothing “understandable” about a stance like that.

The OP was probably unaware that the bandits are bugged, as are probably most of the people posting replies in this thread and not bothering to read the other posts.

As long as the recent bug with bandits persists, it is probably impossible to do a dungeon like CM, or Arah for that matter. Both bandits and Risen spam their special attack every second, so even with stability you stand no chance. This is not intentional design, so wait till this is fixed, and then try CM again. The OP just got unlucky.

However, even if they do fix the bandits, CM still is a terribly designed dungeon. Its not much fun, even if you are more experienced at it.

I completely agree with the OP on this. Instances are disappointing, very disappointing.

CM is definitely one of the worse dungeons in the game. Pre-lvl80 I avoided it like the plague. Now at 80 with full Exotics it is still a big pain: mobs inflicting 25 stacks of Bleed AND Poison with ONE attack.

Several rooms with tons of Silver mobs which I’ve found no other way to clear than to just corpse run it. Seriously. Sometimes I feel they weren’t supposed to be Silver but were made so by mistake. Kitten those rooms on path 1 and 3.