Guild Wars 2

This is probably going to be long and I am not trying to complain just provide our thoughts as a guild as we have discussed this at length. Thus this will revolve around the things we find negative.

First our guild is a GW1 PvP guild so our players are solid in there capabilities. When we roll into PvP we do well. So player skill is not an issue. Player level and gear isnt a problem either. No pugs just guildies well coordinated in mumble.

We have Ran Ascalon Catacombs Story mode probably 9 times
We have ran AC Explorable event #3 – 4 times
We have ran Mansion Story twice
We have ran Mansion Explorable event #1 once

So to the negatives.

Most of this is for bosses – but some applies to mobs as well

1. uneffected by control and KD’s
2. 1-2 hit death no leeway
3. healthbars are ridiculous
4. AI will focus on 1 person till there dead and defeated
5. Doesnt feel like much strategy – no real agro juggle
6. Dodging mechanic seems wrong becuase of the above
7. Waypoint and run to keep from resets
8. Static Mobs take no damage just miss miss miss to make it harder or more health to make it harder

So lets elaborate, all of these issue tie to another. You pull a boss, you know his thing or move you could say. Thus if you avoid this you stay alive. Miss it once and your dead.
Perhaps you would think multiple ways to control this one move via control or interupt or dodge roll. Great but control and interupts do not work 90% of the time. They do not even seem to start to take effect until you get the boss down to say 40% of there health. Thus left with dodge roll.

Okay dodge roll sorta works, unless of course you have the agro, so between there big one move they stay on you still kicking your rear. So your going to die unless you dodge roll. Okay so you dodge roll, wait here comes the big move, darn no dodge roll energy. Dead. Ultimatly either way your dead. Bascially this means 1 party member is going to die every X amount of seconds. If at least 1 party member can not stay alive while everyone else is waypointing to run back the mob resets and you start over. So boss fights are basically a garuntee your going to die many times and its just running back before they reset.

Once control and interupts etc start to work there is some mroe strategy to it finally. Also then this ties into the health bars. Okay so lets just say your perfect you can avoid all damage all his big moves. Which is impratical becuase he takes 20 minutes to die with him doing his big move every 20 seconds. Meaning what you have to avoid his big move like 60 times. Kind of seems wrong to me lets say your really good what 90% of the time you avoid it. Still means your dead 6 times for the boss fight. More than likely more like 10 times. Also this is real boring after 10 minutes of rinse repeat same thing. They take 20 minutes to die and you die in 1 hit. They are unnefected by your skills but you are effected by theres just kind of ug.

Agro is another problem, take explorable event #1 Mansion. Ice thrower, once you have agro he doesnt leave you alone, he will chase you till he snares you, then kill you, then stay with you until your defeated period. LoL was very annoying. Forget rezzing just waypoint, anyone that attempts to rez you will die.

Lets take AC Event # 3 explorable, the mounds that pop at the very end. Perhaps we could handle it but when you have your whole team swinging away on them and they take no damage miss miss miss no blind or anything just no damage to keepthe difficulty up seems wrong. We have attempted that event several dozen times with different build and config and no luck to complete it. No damage thus the mobs just zerg us once they get to big. Can not take out the mounds in time the mounds pile up and the spawns from them just keep coming.

Okay so plz dont give me another infraction for just stating our feedback. When we heard open world MMO but instanced dungeons we where like dungeons are going to be awesome. So far though dungeons do not seem to be about strategy which we are huge on. Hey WvW is amazing and we love it. But dungeons to us just seem to be lacking.

What can you do to fix this? Idunno I am not asking for nerfs I do not want it to be easy. I just want strategy and skill of the team to disctate the play. It doesnt seem that way with uber high health bars and mobs either take no damage or completly uneffected by control or interupts and kd’s and push and pull etc.

Idunno thanks for reading, I can not wait to see where the game is 6 months from now.

Very well written description of how things are going. Thanks for writing this.

“AI will focus on 1 person till there dead and defeated”
this is not true save for maybe your ice guy.
none of the AC bosses are this way that i have seen.

ANet please recruit this person, you would be idiots not to.

I agree 100% with what had been said.
Getting insta-killed more times than I can count on my fingers and toes then having to fork out the repair costs is not what I came to this game to do.
They have always been boasting about this ‘we just don’t want players to grind in Guild Wars 2’ notion yet here we are with individual enemies taking several minutes to kill and some bosses taking up to 20 minutes of facerolling.
I get a lot more frustration and boredom out of the game than fun while doing dungeons in their current state.
I try to explain or gather other peoples opinions on these matters while in-game but most often people accuse me of trolling or being a noob and just barricade themselves behind walls of ignorance and simply refuse to accept that there may be a flaw with what they have been tricked into believing is a ‘perfect game’.

It reminds me of Diablo 3 where they defined challenging as just having massive %’s of damage and health increase. Just complete laziness in the develop stage. You can get away with that with people who have never played a PC game in their life

Lets not turn this into a rant, I am not trying to make a negative session just provide feedback from 40 players in my guild. I provide this to hopefully help improve the game.

For crunchy, you are correct, its not all bosses and in AC I have yet to find another that does this. We have so far only done 2 of the dungeons, and not every style of each. However if you find a mechanic in one style I am pretty sure we are going to see it again being with all the dungeons and events possible.

For arcane, thanks for propping the job offer and all, I am flattered but lets be realistic I would already be in the gaming industry by now if it was in the cards for me. Don’t get me wrong I am still waiting for a call from John Carmack to go work for free lol. But I enjoy my job and the pay/stability that comes with it.

Thanks for not flaming me or giving me a citation or whatever. I just want the game to be successful and good so that my guild is sucessfull and has a good time. Thus not breaking up and playing other games.

There is plenty of very solid components to this framework. IE no holy trinity, however many of the negative issues stem from the no trinity. Finding a way to keep that engaged teamwork gameplay via skill and coordination without the trinity will be the key. Currently the game feels a lot like a MOBA, which makes it really difficult to achieve those key points while still staying away from the trinity. Give it some time and I am sure you will figure out a winning formula, it is anet after all.

Break the mold.

About your issue with control, I wrote a guide for how it works a while ago before launch. But it kinda never got much notice, it may be a terrible guide or so but it may also explain the control issues that you are having.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/48714-pve-control-defiant-indignant-guide/

Does not help that you need so much control, but at least maybe it will help understand it a little better. Spirit hammer from guardian is one tool that really helps remove stacks of Defiant and allow more CC usage.

Defiantly some insight, nice read. Thnx, we will give it a try but we where already throwing everything at them. Don’t think it will change much.

But good info either way.

Not enough stamina/energy to dodge in all of the tougher boss fights.

Crunchy Gremlin.5798:

“AI will focus on 1 person till there dead and defeated”
this is not true save for maybe your ice guy.
none of the AC bosses are this way that i have seen.

Oh I know for a fact that many of the regular mobs in AC do this kind of focus. the 2 Lovers boss also do this with their illusionary mages. Most of the bosses don’t have this kind of focus but many elite mobs do. Monks are bigtime offenders of relentless aggro.

Never once had the sorts of problems you talk about in dungeons even in pugs, what sort of group makeup are you using, and what level are you attempting these at?

the boss has a buff that usualy blocks around 3-5 stuns/knockdowns before you can stun them, cant remember what its called at the moment but yeah almost all bosses have it.

Never been two hit maybe you just need to build more vitality/toughness

I’ve been able to dodge or get out of any boss aoe big damage moves relatively easy say one dodge back or sideways.

I find bosses seem to prefer attacking people in melee, but maybe thats just my experience.

GY zerging bosses does feel kind of cheap and it annoys me as well.

the last point about static mobs, i figure you are talking about burrows and stuff like that yeah, there does seem to be a problem with these, most likely a bug.

For hyper, I already said gear and level is not an issue. We also tried with multiple team builds and no real change.

Also the block skill your talking about is explained the article linked by Kellie.

How has this worked when you run a thief with AOE stealth? The focusing part that you’re talking about has never really been a problem with me or others. Guardian goes into down state and there I am throwing an AOE stealth and getting them back up rather quickly.

Hey wanted to update the thread with the progress.

Well I have to say Kellie is the man or woman. Understanding the dynamics of the bosses boons has made a difference. We spam worthless fast recharge CE’s and time the worth while CE’s when the stack is down. However this bascially means only the 6th CE will work. Still seems semi kitteny imho however it does add some layer of strategy. So let us have a few more runs and we will get back to you.

Still our feedback thus far and its early, yes we see the boon but it is not entirely clear how to combat such a thing. Without Kellie’s guide we would not have known. It also seems again kitteny lets just make it harder by making them immune type thing.

Also with this new knowledge we focused much more heavily on coordinating combos. With the two strategies combined it turned a 20 minute fight with a ton of deaths to a 10 minute fight with only 1 death.

Thus knowledge is power, appreciate it. I guess it does boil down to just understanding the game better, just a little bit of knowledge can change a lot.

Oh but lastly the mounds again. Tell me they are bugged without AOE damage in the party you will fail. Got to have AOE damage to handle them otherwise direct damage just misses 50% or more of the time. That seems really bugged.

Anyhow need sleep, cheers.

I also want to add another observation, it seems to be dungeons have been built with everyone being level 80 in mind. like Ascalon Catacombs says 30 for story and 35 for explorable. Honestly I think add 10 more levels to whatever the dungeon requires and then you will be okay. Or even better just wait till your lvl 80 to do dungeons. In the end though everyone will be level 80 soon enough and then all of this will be moot anyhow.