Guild Wars 2

Hello. I recently got this game. I’ve been really enjoying it. Yesterday I started to look for dungeon groups for ascalonian catacombs. I’m having a huge problem though that I just can’t seem to fix, this is kind of like a brick wall for me.

You see, in every dungeon group I join the same thing happens. We’ll pull a group of enemies. Everything will be going smoothly for about 5 seconds, then 1 (or maybe more) enemies start attacking me. Their attacks hit me incredibly hard. I’ll give an example. we pulled a group and suddenly 2 archers started shooting at me. My health was literally just gone almost instantly. Now I have a heal, and 2 dodges, but thats not nearly enough to stop me from dying.

TL;DR, how am I, as a squishy caster, supposed to deal with the insanely hard hitting enemies who have no threat tables and just attack me at random? I’m really at a loss here.

What is your class, level and build?

I’m guessing you’re where doing Ascalonian Catacombs Story. AC Story was a pain at level 30. When I first did AC Story I was a support Staff Elementalist. The only time a mob would attack me was if I aggrod it first. When I’m playing a toughness heavy build or glass cannon aoe, I’ve noticed that I can pull random mobs off the tanky player if they aren’t focusing that mob.

Well, welcome to Guildwars 2. It is fun, but dungeons require a lot of tip-toe precision. As i see it, their difficulty is only realistic for advanced rewards and the like. As it is, you’re allowed to do personal stories alone, with a possibly normal amount of difficulty for occasional close calls that make them exciting. Where that difficulty is realistic for advanced play, it’s not so much for consistency to the main personal story. When i do the personal story, it’s enjoyable, until i reach the dungeons. feeling like a hero in the mainstream, then in side-canon being kicked around by drone-enemies who have boss-strength individually , finishing the dungeon with no shred of armor and dignity left is a real ‘living story’ killer. As said, the difficulty is good for advanced play. But for those new, doing an exciting personal story sometimes want a more fundamental reward: Experiencing lore. I see no problem allowing people experiencing said stories getting a preview of these dungeons by giving a moderate and realistic difficulty to start. If we have no problem letting people barely solo a personal story, or with one other friend at the end of a hard long day at work to unwind, then what’s the problem with letting them see side canon under the same conditions, with minimal rewards like the story mode? But i think this has been under discussion all over the forums for two months or so. If they were to be more realistic in the way i layed out, bugs and exploits have to be fixed first. But if they can’t “embrace simplicity” at the end of this, then all we can do is just accept that starting new and being un-practiced at the game simply means… No side stories for you… An alternative for those wanting to see the side stories you intitialy miss, there’s always Youtube. Or… Just wait untill you’ve achieved good upper-level armor, know your way around the combat system, and team up with others under the same conditions. Don’t sound to ideal for a simple fundamental goal of ‘experiencing the game’, but… There it is…

This game also got rid of the “holy trinity” of the tank, healer, dps, so no one holds aggro permanently anymore.

When doing a dungeon for the first time you gotta go tanky so you can learn how each enemy works and not die from every attack. Once you learn their attack patterns you can switch to something squishy and bursty and just use alot of vigor (endurance regeneration) and dodge everything. Also, make sure all your gear is up to your level, that also really really helps out.

Just from my personal experience, going full dps or going full tank or full whatever doesn’t work in this game. The most effective build is one that mixes a decent amount of tankiness and gives boons to the rest of your team. The best boons (buffs) to share are might (power/condition damage) and fury (20% crit chance). Protection (33% armor buff), Regen (HP heal) and Vigor (endurance regen) are also good boons too.

If I am running a dungeon for the first time or I’m running it with a pug that might suck, I’ll always run pwr/tough/vit gear with pwr/prec/tough trinkets to give me a decent mix of damage and survivability.

If you ever manage to find a guild that is 100% awesome at dodging swords and arrows, running glass cannon builds are definitely the way to go, but thats after you’ve mastered dodging like Neo in Matrix.

I guess this was in CM.

If you need to go melee be sure to bring a few skills to resit damage or reflect projectiles.
If you don’t need to melee, stay back and wait a few seconds for enemies to settle on someone before coming closer. But be sure to have a defensive skills in case you are in trouble.

Also wear gear appropriate for your level, with defensive bonuses if you can find some.