Guild Wars 2

This rant was a part of my reply in Asagi’s ‘dungeons are unbalanced’, but i think it deserves its own spot to get a bit more interest and maybe nudge some of you out of some contemporary-gamer torpor.
I’ve done all dungeons except for Arah 4 (yet to attempt it), and i don’t find any route particularly broken, hard or demanding once you know what to do and actually do it rather than ignore and go your own way. I’ve done CoF3 several times in random setups, including complete CoF rookies; just done, for the nth time, all CoE routes yesterday; done 3 Arah paths in one day and other than being very long, there’s nothing particularly wrong with them; done all CM multiple times and as long as people aren’t glass cannons with old man’s reflexes and can call/follow targets, everything’s very easy there.
The only times i use voice communication is for PvP, and even that is not always true as there are roles in W3 that don’t require VoIP.

Your ‘hard’, ‘impossible’, ‘overtuned’ stuff is really easy if you try to fit to the design rather than bruteforcing the game YOU want to play it. If you were supposed to jump forward and left in an old platformer, you would do it rather than jump right. If you were supposed to input left right left down up lk in Mortal Kombat to get that sweet hit, you would do it. Now you are supposed to be able to survive in dungeon, control enemies and deal damage at the same time – and EVERY class, EVERY players is capable of doing so. Still, people keep refusing it, they want to ‘play the game their way’; sorry to burst the bubble, but you ALWAYS play the game the way it’s designed, supposed to be played – if it’s about the controls, about the most useful setup, about requirements for a certain map/mission/level/dungeon/boss, about anything really. You can’t play Settlers II without building an army, even if it’s what you want to do. You can’t play God of War skipping all enemies, even if you can skip a lot of them, because you want to be Kratos The Pacifist. You can’t refuse to tune your build in dungeons in GW2 to use everything you can because ‘this is my build and i won’t change it, if i can’t complete stuff with it then it’s broken!’

You are presented with a challenge and think what can you use in your arsenal to overcome it. You DON’T try to beat that challenge with what you’re currently using if it outright sucks or just isn’t enough.

I wish the old times of gaming were back, or rather that old mentality of gamers was back. We used to play for fun, with no achievements, no stuff to gain in-game, no carrot to keep us going on. Enjoying the game while playing and the sweet feeling of success after overcoming constantly harder missions/levels/maps was enough. I cannot recall any entitlement 10+ years ago in gaming, just people having fun, appreciating the work of game developers.
And no one whined that the games are too challenging. Heck, we used to play games BECAUSE they were challenging. Nowadays if someone still plays point-and-click adventure games, and i mean proper stuff like good old Faust of Phantasmagoria, i bet they resort to online solutions when they get stuck for 5 minutes. Everyone seems to expect breezing through all and any content found in games, and they not only play to win (as fast and easily as possible), but also to be rewarded with some in-game pixels.

I weep at the contemporary gamers.

…. Well said. However, I have never ever changed my build to get past a difficult dungeon. Tactic sure, but the idea of having to mould your character for each situation is stupid (and unnecessary, as I said I’ve never bothered)

If ‘elitists’ requiring you to be lv80 and exotic-geared (what is a standard now if you’ve been playing since the release) for a dungeon run irritate you, just don’t play with them. Instead of ‘lfg for CoF’ shout ‘lf more people for CoF’ and invite them yourself. It’s that easy! Still, if random pugs annoy you in general, just as me, just don’t play with pugs in the first place.

Find a guild with decent people and run dungeons with them – even if you’re noobies, failing all the time, you will learn much better and faster together, if you run the same content in more or less the same team.
There are loads of guilds out there, and if you’re playing without one, or in a bad one, or in a small and inactive one, you’re missing out A LOT of the game – not just in the dungeon department, but also in the social one.

If you expect explorable dungeons, the true END-GAME PvE at the moment, to be ‘fast and easy’, play another game.
It’s fine that some routes take much longer and are harder than others – CoF3, CoE3, SE2. If you don’t like them, don’t farm them later – it’s that easy! – if you don’t like something in the game, don’t enjoy it, just play some other part of it – either format of PvP, open PvE, explore stuff and collect lore bits, get all alts to 80. Whatever works for you!
BUT. If you already get into something, be ready to change your build and attitude as is required by the specific format. What works in sPvP won’t work in dungeons, what works in open PvE won’t work in dungeons, what works in dungeons won’t work in W3. It’s completely fine – learn to adapt.
It’s also quite fine that some dungeon routes are longer/harder than others because people will still play them for the achievements or just to see on their own what’s the whole fuss about. If you don’t like CM or find it ‘to long and to hard’, get through it once and never go back – no one forces you to. I’d gladly farm CM as it’s not as impossibru as most people claim, but i like neither the stats nor the looks of CM gear and i have no reason to venture there unless to help guildies complete their achievements.

Try to understand that every game out there is and is SUPPOSED to be challenging and tough, at least in the beginning – though that ‘beginning’ part may last longer for some people (or games). Even Tetris isn’t that straightforward the first time you play it, but with practice you can learn to get loads of points – if you don’t whine that it’s too hard and complicated, there’s too much RNG and ragequit after your first two games, that is.

@Dolan,
Changing the build in LA, at the retrainer, is stupid. But since you can change your weapons, utilities and major traits ANY TIME you’re out of combat, why not do it if it would clearly help you?

It’s about not using minions or illusions during fights with Alpha or Lupicus phase 1. It’s about slotting revive skills for Lupicus if you’re with a mediocre team. It’s about slotting some extra control for CoF3 torches. It’s about swapping your usual flamethrower, working for most dungeons and routes, for grenades (and changing some major traits to follow it) because that next encounter is easier and gives you more room for error if you use grenades.

It’s really that simple, yet loads of people refuse to even consider it, to my constant bewilderment.

One thing that is truly great and unique in GW2 in regard to PvE is that you can get top level and top gear on your own, aka there’s no barrier to get into dungeons that would require a group to break. Most games i know present a perpetual conundrum of how to get into groups/guilds if you don’t already have the gear that is obtainable via groups/guilds raiding. Consider Aion instance/abyss sets (unless something’s changed lately) – not just lots of time required to obtain one, but you also need a group running already, and groups don’t want to get people who aren’t already geared up – thus the vicious circles is ensured.

It’s not the case in GW2. You can get to lv80 in open PvE which is really easy. You can get lv80 exotics without much hassle – either craft them or just slowly farm AC in your masterwork gear until you get 1200 tears (takes about a week of doing all three routes daily, aka about 1-1,5h a day – for TOP armor set in the game!).

Yes, while GW2 isn’t a gear-based game, the gear does play an important role in every build. Yes, tanky builds are at the moment MUCH better and promoted, especially if you use sharpening stones and pump your power through other means. Yes, condition damage at the moment is a PvP-only statistic (though it’s not the thread to discuss condition damage in PvE).
It might change one day, might get balanced, tweaked, etc. But before it is, adapt!

I see both sides of this coin.

I will compare these dungeons with raiding in WoW, which had the following characteristics;

• Required preparation. Such as;
  • reading about the encounter on the internet,
  • gathering of +resist gear,
  • running Onyxia for the key to BWL,
  • potions.
• Had to work out a strategy,
• Had to learn to do the strategy,
• Wipe-nights were regular (if one person messed up once, it was often a wipe),
• Painful, dull and work-like.

Back in the present, and while many of these elements are gone, reading about the encounter on the internet is still the best preparation you can do. Even if you are going to ignore the advice that someone else has written, amend it, or append it, it is still a good source of information, such as;

• what the encounter does,
• what elements are there in the room,
• what should be avoided (and what happens if you don’t).

Ultimately, I think runs such as Arah are simply too much for the humble PUG at the moment. In time, and without nerfs, the Giganticus Lupicus strategy will become well known and well practiced, and he will bend to our will, but for the moment, the immediately-after-launch moment, when all else is crumbling before us, he rules supreme!

Those who have mastered Arah have won the (PvE) game. Congratulations, now go and play WvW because that’s where the end-game is!

Well said. My guild has a consistent 4 on all the time(small group of RL friends), so we usually pug 1. It’s sad now that when doing AC we look for someone who is not 80 because we don’t want to hear the whining when they realize we kill all the bosses and trash packs and lower levels are usually fine with it or don’t know any bad habits yet.

It’s was even worse when we wanted to do TA. I happened to run it with a pug(not with my guild) and they skipped everything and i went along with it without a word because i was new to the dungeon and just wanted to learn it a little. Last night we wanted to do it as a guild and instead of dealing with a pug wanting to skip everything we just 4 manned all paths. Why do people skip husks at the start? They die in about 45 seconds. We killed everything except the spider packs in the “spider tunnel” before the boss that starts as sylvari and then transforms into a spider(fyora?). It was loads of fun and no path took us longer then 45 minutes with only 4 of us.
One tip on the spider boss(the one that shoots poison volley’s and a poison cone), a guardian can put up reflect wall on the volley and if done right the boss will wreck herself…good times.

I mean there are a few annoying pieces…

Lupi’s phase 2 attack with the green stuff that isn’t one of the AoE circles… I know you can kinda see it, but it’s hard given the camera angle and general chaos on the field. He can also reset even if you’re in the boss room (wtf). I’ve only really done him a handful of times and it seems like sometimes I can do it flawlessly and other times it’s a total disaster due to that non-red-circle green stuff.

Crystal prison of alpha isn’t too too bad, but there’s no way to help block his fire/ice AoE on the prison while ur trying to smash it. Also, only some professions can actually break out of it… kinda lame that some stun breaks are better than others.

TA vines boss… for some reason it’s like you can be in melee range and he won’t spam the poison stuff on you and then other times he’ll launch all of them on you at point blank and do a ton of damage before you can really react.

Yeah nothing I would say impossible, but just uneven which makes for more annoying in a cheap-shot frustrating sense rather than annoying in a kitten this-is-tough sense.

Alpha – call the crystal as soon as possible and have OTHERS break it – it goes down in four-five hits, or one ele’s Lava Font. Blocks work while encapsuled – Retreat is a must in dungeons if you’re guardian, and not because of swiftness

Lupicus – been there with an inexperienced team (3 people attempted Lupi once/twice earlier but wiped, 2 people never seen the fight – we watched videos on yt though), 2 guards, 1 ele, 1 war, 1 mes – no one has died throughout the whole fight and we had only a few downs here and there.

Don’t try to rush bosses. Don’t run berserker gear.
Take your time and you’ll be fine – you will ‘waste’ much less time dealing less dmg, but dealing it ALL the time, than dying and running back from a waypoint.

Right now i’m only worried about the Simin fight in Arah 4 – yet to attempt it at all, just read lots of comments – i will report back once the route is done.

Just done Arah 4.
First try. No wipes. No resets. No problems with any of the bosses. No bugs except for a visual one – one of the prisons had the shields up all the time, but it didn’t cause any troubles. Simin is easy if you do her as she’s supposed to be done and not rushed.
I find Arah 4 the most fun of all Arah routes and much easier than Arah 2, not to mention the ape fight in Arah 1.
Took us ~2,5h.

Dungeon Master o/
If i could get it, everyone can – really, it’s a matter of adapting to the game rather than trying to bend it to your own will.

I’m tired of the complaint posts, all dungeons can be done easily even with casual players.

You need 2 things really:

1.) A brain
2.) Proper gear setup

You cant figure that out, A-net isnt going to listen to you (thankfully).

You know what the real issues are?

-Bugs.
-Poor Loot.

I mostly agree, though when a guardian leaves a dungeon for being too hard you have to question what’s wrong with this dungeon (before getting to Lorent even). I personally did path 2 in TA a few times and what you say applies even there. Now, I know I have superior precision and crit damage runes (shhh! Don’t tell anyone I’ll dungeon with!), which are less than optimal for dungeons, but have enough points in the vit (30) and toughness (15) trees to make up for it.

In other words, having survivability in dungeons simply isn’t optional. You cannot go 30 power/30 precision with full berzerker jewelry and gear and expect to do well. Dungeons aren’t PvP, and the devs explicitly stated that they don’t want glass cannons in dungeons, and it shows in the design. If something has high damage, CC, and huge health pools then you can deduce that you can’t burst it down quickly. Now, when I’m at the first boss at TA explorable I sometimes have parties that try zerging down the big vine, but after it loses a certain HP % more vines spawn, and those little vines keep spitting. In those cases I’m left soloing a vine, which takes me about under a minute as I like to take the little guys out before their comrades pop up.

Bruno Sardine.2907:

I mean there are a few annoying pieces…

Lupi’s phase 2 attack with the green stuff that isn’t one of the AoE circles… I know you can kinda see it, but it’s hard given the camera angle and general chaos on the field. He can also reset even if you’re in the boss room (wtf). I’ve only really done him a handful of times and it seems like sometimes I can do it flawlessly and other times it’s a total disaster due to that non-red-circle green stuff.

Crystal prison of alpha isn’t too too bad, but there’s no way to help block his fire/ice AoE on the prison while ur trying to smash it. Also, only some professions can actually break out of it… kinda lame that some stun breaks are better than others.

TA vines boss… for some reason it’s like you can be in melee range and he won’t spam the poison stuff on you and then other times he’ll launch all of them on you at point blank and do a ton of damage before you can really react.

Yeah nothing I would say impossible, but just uneven which makes for more annoying in a cheap-shot frustrating sense rather than annoying in a kitten this-is-tough sense.

There are times I have more trouble on the vine boss than even Lorent because of party. More often than not it goes smoothly. The vines don’t shoot at point blank, those shots come from the little vines aiming at you. As a thief I’m specced into condition removal upon stealthing, and after three seconds another condition is removed, so I’ll cloak and dagger a mob or poison flower and wait it out. Condition removal is everything in this dungeon. Sometimes you also have to provoke mobs with knockdowns and then dodge, and they won’t be able to do that in another few seconds or so (applicable to every dungeon).

Traits – i believe you should choose traits considering the trait bonuses, especially the major traits, and not the stat points you get from traitlines. It so happens, usually, that supportive/defensive trait effects are found in traitlines granting vit/tough/healing, and vice versa, but it’s not always so. Go for the effects, not extra 100 to some stat.
I also think you should go for major traits first and foremost (judging by ele, nec, guardian and war which i’ve played extensively so far) with minors being only a nice addition on the way. You won’t get those effects in any other way.
The same is true to runes – choose runes either granting some really sweet effect on 6 slotted or something like Mercy, with stat/effect progression.

If a guardian ragequits a dungeon, it’s either a bad guardian or just a typical ragequitter. Possibly someone who rerolled onto a guardian expecting it to be a breeze through everything, imba-immortal-invincible tank mowing through mobs. It’s not the case – even guardians go down and have to watch themselves.
Tbh anyone ragequitting a dungeon is just that, a ragequitter – of course sometimes it’s just about time left for sleep before getting up to work/school in the morning, sometimes you just have to leave regardless of the will to continue, but if that’s not the case and you simply ragequit, something’s wrong with you, not the dungeon – especially that countless people have already finished all routes in the game, proving they’re doable, even if bugged or a bit unbalanced here and there.

About the TA vine – we usually zerg the champion vine as well, as it’s much faster and we’re tanky enough to sustain the incoming damage. The lesser vines are terribly weak and the blossoms can be easily avoided – they are even helpful when you get downed as you can rally really fast on them.
One time we had 5 tanky guardians in TA – random guild group – so much facetanking! And it didn’t take us longer than usual, possibly even faster i’d say as no one ever got downed, no one ever wasted time to dodge too much etc.

Yes – tanky setups, even full tank setups, are the way to go in dungeons. It is even shown in the stats that come with legendaries. Yes, they are even useful in W3.
We can discuss if it’s fair or not, argue that it limits our build freedom and stuff, but any system is bound to have the better options and the suboptimal options. Absolute balance, with every profession, build and style equally viable, is a utopia – it’s good to long for it, to go after it, but it’s a wild chase that will never end.
It’s all about accepting and bending to the requirements of the game – you can’t choose the next block in Tetris, after all.

I just posted a rant about this, but I think the biggest problem is just there’s to many munchkins in this game. People want to maximize damage, or defense, or support, this game isn’t built like that. You gotta be middle of the road.

You know, avoiding words like ‘crying’ and ‘whining’ might lend a lot of credence to your arguments. Just saying…

I’m not a PR guy and the amount of crying and whining in this forum lately has gone through the roof.

@Sittaraha,
This is pretty silly when you compare gaming with sports. If you want to be successful in playing tennis, not hurt yourself and have much more fun, you have to follow some rules, train the techniques, hone your skills, simply get better after a rough beginning. If you want to play proper football, you need to learn all the rules and learn tricks like the offside trap.
Heck, if you want to learn to juggle or master the Rubic’s cube, you have to follow some wide-known patterns and standards – first learn about them, then train them until you’re comfortable with them, then expand onto harder things.

Gaming is no different. It’s a hobby like any other out there, and while some games or parts of those games are casual to the pain – you can just click click click and get stuff done, with no insight into the game whatsoever – there are also parts which require you to learn stuff and get through the tough beginnings.
GW2 is no different. You can swing your sword as much you like in open PvE and get through it with relative ease. You can’t, however, go into explorable dungeons and keep the same tactic – you have to develop your knowledge and skills as a player, learn more about your profession of choice, learn more about the encounters.

I’m not saying you should go onto the wiki and waste 3 hours a day just reading about stuff, memorising every spell and skill used by enemies. That would be silly, though some people sometimes do it. But just accept the fact that some content in games is meant to be challenging at the beginning, that it requires you to learn and practice it, and then it really becomes much easier and more enjoyable.
It’s fine if the learning process takes long for some, advancing slowly. Not everyone is apt at tweaking builds, not everyone will memorise all your character’s skills and traits in one day. That’s fine, really. The common problem is that people completely shut for any personal progression and blame the game for being too hard – in the beginning.
It’s like saying that tennis is a sport for masochists because your wrist hurts for the next week after first longer session of playing.

Just notice and accept that if you are constantly dying or having problems with a dungeon, YOU are doing something wrong. Do NOT blame yourself and go cry in a corner, but do NOT blame the design either. Just notice that there’s room for improvement, think how could you get better and move in that direction – at your own speed.
Ask people for advice. The correct way would be to start a thread ‘i wipe in Arah, how can i get better, suggestions plz’, and not a ‘i wipe in Arah, it’s broken and unbalanced, nerf!!!!11’ one.

It might be something to do with the general mentality and a very casual approach to gaming – lots of people out there treat games as a pastime for kids or something to relieve their stress at, or as a habitual ritual of milking cows in Farmville, or as a means to do something with other people. But it extends beyond that – it’s an art and a hobby in its own right.
You can play tennis ignoring all the precautions, without any proper training and by just running around trying to hit the ball, playing with another rookie. It works, but is not comparable to playing tennis properly, with a proper warm-up, in proper clothing, with proper attitude in mind, with proper training throughout weeks/months/years.

GW2 is not much different – open PvE and some jobs in W3 are the ‘casual tennis’, where you can play any way you want it, when, how and with anyone you want; explorable dungeons are for enthusiasts who at least are willing to learn over time, just through playing, instead of mashing the ball back and forth.

Taken from another thread, addressed at a player who claimed that dungeons are not fun because you constantly die there in one hit and they take no tactics to overcome, just wipezerging all the time:

…we all worked to get our gear. We were utter noobs when we came to GW2. We never mastered any of the GW1 elite areas, just done them a few times. We weren’t handed proper exotic gear on a silver plate; no one ever came to us telling us what gear should be go after in the first place. We figured that out on our own, simply noticing that if we get killed in one hit, we need to invest more in survivability. It’s not that hard to find out.
Then no one guided us through dungeons. We all tried different tactics at tougher spots, wasting as much as 2h to just lit the torches in CoF3. But instead of trying two times, dying and claiming it’s too hard, we just kept on trying until we succeeded. Thanks to this, right now we can overcome all those tasks much, much easier – and the dungeons are, indeed, easy for us.

They can be easy for everyone. If you are a ‘casual player’, which means you don’t have much time to min-max everything and just want to play, it might take you a bit longer to learn that stuff, but you are still not excluded from it. If you are a ‘casual player’, which means you don’t WANT to learn anything and you just want to mash buttons and swing your sword again at mobs… dungeons indeed might not be a place for you.
But i firmly believe that everyone wants to get better at something they suck at in the first place. It’s just that not everyone understands that GW2’s dungeons are not meant to be doable by any casual, totally random pug out there, that it takes time, patience and willingness to improve in order to overcome the obstacles of rough beginnings. Instead, lots of people die a few times in a dungeon run, do a few dungeon routes, possibly with other ‘like-minded’ people who refuse to learn on their failures, and then complain how dungeons are hard, unbalanced or not fun.

The ‘learn to play’ argument is very much in power, as much as i hate it to be. The only difference between you and me is that i sucked it up and spent my time in dungeons, trying to figure out how to improve, rather than on forum commenting how i’m constantly dying and it’s unfair. Because i were wiping all the time as well, until i stopped – because i’ve learnt to play.

If hearing ‘learn to play’ makes you want throw sharp objects, have it another way – instead of saying that dungeons are hard, ask people in this forum how can you improve your build. Post what stats on items you’re using, what traits, what utilities, what weapons – and ask the veteran dungeon runners what can you do to make it better.
The next time you are in dungeon, try not to rush it and try to follow the basic, intuitive things like ctrl+clicking one mob and focusing it down with other teammates, using all of your skills including your weapon swap (or other attunements on ele, or kits on engi), try not to overaggro things (aggro one mob/group from a safe distance and let them come to you).
If you have troubles fight a certain path, possibly a certain encounter, ask for help in the forums – post what was your team composition, just in general, and what was the problem – and where, of course. Wait for replies and try out what you get the next time you’re there.

All of the above doesn’t take weeks. Writing a thread ‘help me get better’ is as easy as replying to this thread, and takes about the same time. Then, tomorrow or in a few days – whenever you have a moment – read the replies, find the ‘prevailing consensus’, ask more questions if needed and try it out.

I’m pretty active in the forums lately and i’ve seen two or three threads outright stating ‘please help me improve’, and it was mostly about Arah. That’s something really worth doing – since there are enough dungeon veterans here, supposedly enough of them will try to help you if you only provide the necessary data and are willing to listen – i can at least assure that yours truly will try to help you if you let him. Things were tougher 5-7 weeks ago with less videos on yt, less people willing to share their strategies and just less dungeon vets in general.

Just to prove the point, i found specific threads where the starter explicitly states the problem and asks for help. Not cries about something being too hard, not suggests that something should be changed because of X, etc. Every reply in those threads is full of hints, tips and additional questions, NOT any kind of bashing, growing kitten and so on:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Advice-on-improving-in-Arah-exp
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Caudecus-Manor-Help-me-understand
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Arah-Path-4-plz-help
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/How-important-is-LOS-Line-of-Sight-in-dungeons
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Advice-b-t-AC-SE-and-HOTW
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Arah-path-4-2

I’ve gone through the top 10 pages. That’s 300 threads.
Six of them asked for help.

Loads of them pointed at bugs – warned about them, cried about them, were angry about them. This is pretty understandable, as bugs are bugs – it’s good to talk about them, it’s natural to be annoyed.
Several of them were of positive feedback, but i could count them on one hand – some love for CoE, HotW being fun and so on.
kittens of them were about how dungeons are hard, overpowered, broken, unfair, not fun. kittens of them were about supposedly impossible dungeon mechanics that are undoable, at all, and need to be changed. Some threads were about completely doable mechanics that should be changed for some reason.

But only SIX threads out of THREE HUNDRED were about asking for help, helping to understand something, getting advice.
6/300.