Guild Wars 2

AC is not “hard” provided you know the mechanics BUT there are parts of the dungeon that is flat out unfair to some toons and pug groups.

Rapid Spawning burrows in AC path 1. To a group of Conditional Damage build characters (Guardian), breaking all those burrows and keeping that brainless NPC alive is a nightmare to say the least. Yes, with an Elementalist, things are easy but without the Ice Bow, it all boils down to DPS checking. CoF, CoE are too DPS checks to a great extend but the 1st Dungeon a DPS check?? No wonder everyone is a zerk.

If there exists some game mechanics that can help us deal with burrows and the spawns of knockdown Gravelings, please do tell.

AC Path 2, the spawns of Ascalonian Ghost Army is in many way a DPS check as well. Why? If you cannot bring down those Necromancers in time, your are so done for. And dont forget those Rangers that has infinite no cooldown pushback(Yes, switch to range weapon and get cut down by Warrior Ghosts). Yeah, a group of zerk can kill em all while stability last but others are suffering greatly for this.

It is unfair, it is lazy and it is flat out bad game design.

Is DPS Challenge the only thing the game designers can think of? Have enemies use infinite conditional damage and control skills that players have no defense against the only thing to make things challenging? Dont even bring up dodges, I am not the best at dodging but I think I can dodge decent enough. When DPS is low, I just do not have the endurance to keep up with cheating enemies that has endless charge and knock backs.

Cant you make certain enemies vulnerable to one form of damage but strong against another? Like say super high armor and weak against conditional damage? Because your 1st Dungeon already tell us that GW2 PvE is about 1 thing and 1 thing only – DPS check. This game offers close to nothing but DPS checks. No wonder everyone is a zerk. Wanna play a conditional damage warrior? Want to hold a sword instead of a Greatsword, well, good luck looking for group. Players have bad attitude? Elitism? Well, not their fault really, they are just products of one-dimensional game design.

-Rant-

I absolutely hate my rabid necro because he is pretty much “useless” for destroying structure. Which is werid because people told me rabid is one of the best pve dungeon build.

I just can’t dmg burrow, gate, turret, basically anything immune to condition dmg.

I’ll agree with condition damage on structures, but the part with the ghosts on path 2 is really not bad. I’ve very rarely seen a party fail on this. The only time a party fails on this part is when your group absolutely sucks, and you should be able to tell that it does 5 minutes into the dungeon. Only once seen a party break on this part (which was months ago when people were still kinda new to dungeons).

Milennin.4825:

I’ll agree with condition damage on structures, but the part with the ghosts on path 2 is really not bad. I’ve very rarely seen a party fail on this. And only once seen a party break on this part (which was months ago when people were still kinda new to dungeons).

I have just spent 1 hour guiding a group of new players through that part.

4 of them against a Necro, a Warrior, a Ranger and a Monk. 4 vs 4 fight, all of them targeted the Necro and they wiped because they fail to take down the necro. I was down so I had a pretty good view of what is going on.

The ranger will knock you back without fail, maybe a second of cooldown on animation if you get close to it.

Hence, unwillingly, I switch to my warrior and cut those pesky necromancers down… and things were far smoother there on. So… if that aint a DPS check… I dunno what is.

p/s: I never notice this until now myself… usually there will be enough zerks to make quick work of them.

Berserker equipment is the best way to go, AC has a DPS check to tell everyone from start so they don’t buy worse equip and waste money.
Also Anet has implemented a great example of how unbalanced professions into the first dungeon. Good thing imo.

It’s really not a DPS check, because the enemies don’t heal or resurrect themselves unless your group’s so bad that it wipes without killing a single enemy. Even by making just 1 kill, the next try at it is going to be easier.
If the ranger knockback’s a problem, then tell your party to use more projectile reflects or use skills that grant stability.

Milennin.4825:

It’s really not a DPS check, because the enemies don’t heal or resurrect themselves unless your group’s so bad that it wipes without killing a single enemy. Even by making just 1 kill, the next try at it is going to be easier.
If the ranger knockback’s a problem, then tell your party to use more projectile reflects or use skills that grant stability.

That to me is sort of a dps check. Necros do drain health to heal themselves after spamming every known condition on you by the way.

Skill that grants stability – yes. 8 seconds of stability on a zerker, it is more than enough time to tear them apart. 8 seconds on a weak dps character means you get to hurt them before they smash you.

If enemies have normal cooldown like us, using certain skill at the right time becomes tactical play. When my skill only provides a small window for me to kill them before they kill me (because I wont last through the cooldown) – that enforces my point – it is a dps check.

At the moment Condition damage is terrible in dungeons and open world, this is probably due to the fact that when the devs worked on the game they wanted PvP/WvW/PvE to be really similar in terms of numbers on skills (damage, range …).

They announced that they will probably split more skill numbers between PvP/WvW/PvE. So we may see some number changes on Condition damage. This is kind of my hope anyway. They halfed the damage of confusion in PvP, so they could probably increase the coefficients for condition damage in PvE. This would really help build variety in PvE.

Concerning variety of challenges I do agree. Challenges like surviving an invincible beast NOT only using projectiles(because projectile reflection is already too present in the game) for a certain time could be fun and different.
Guild mission bosses have some nice fight mechanics, that in a dungeon could provide some very fun and hard challenges with some environmental mechanics added to defeat him.

ParnAshwind.4823:

That to me is sort of a dps check. Necros do drain health to heal themselves after spamming every known condition on you by the way.

Then by that logic any and all mobs in the game could be seen as a DPS check. If you or your party fails to kill a single mob in a group then it’s going to reset. Well, that’s just all mobs in the game described right there. Obviously you need enough DPS to kill a mob. If you somehow lack the DPS, you must have sacrificed it for defensive stats. If you are fully defensive spec’d how do you even wipe as a party?

If Necromancers are a problem because they drain health, why not take out one of the mobs that don’t heal themselves? Take out the light armour Elementalists first for example. Don’t stay so stuck in the mindset that you must do things in 1 specific order. If it doesn’t work for your party you gotta find another way to make it work.

Milennin.4825:

ParnAshwind.4823:

That to me is sort of a dps check. Necros do drain health to heal themselves after spamming every known condition on you by the way.

Then by that logic any and all mobs in the game could be seen as a DPS check. If you or your party fails to kill a single mob in a group then it’s going to reset. Well, that’s just all mobs in the game described right there. Obviously you need enough DPS to kill a mob. If you somehow lack the DPS, you must have sacrificed it for defensive stats. If you are fully defensive spec’d how do you even wipe as a party?

If Necromancers are a problem because they drain health, why not take out one of the mobs that don’t heal themselves? Take out the light armour Elementalists first for example. Don’t stay so stuck in the mindset that you must do things in 1 specific order. If it doesn’t work for your party you gotta find another way to make it work.

Defensive stats? I am talking about a group of new players who has probably mixed gears that are neither dps/defend/etc.

DPS check means – kill them fast enough or you are in for it. Cant take the 1st Necro down in time? 2nd one spawns and wipe you out.

When was the last time you try leading a ragtag group of new players into a dungeon? If you dont do that, obviously you have no idea what people are experiencing. Elementalist? In the 4 enemies left, did I mention Elementalist? If I didnt, why would you assume they are alive?

Get of the forums and find yourself a ragtag group of new players and experience the agony others are experiencing.

ParnAshwind.4823:

Defensive stats? I am talking about a group of new players who has probably mixed gears that are neither dps/defend/etc.

DPS check means – kill them fast enough or you are in for it. Cant take the 1st Necro down in time? 2nd one spawns and wipe you out.

When was the last time you try leading a ragtag group of new players into a dungeon? If you dont do that, obviously you have no idea what people are experiencing. Elementalist? In the 4 enemies left, did I mention Elementalist? If I didnt, why would you assume they are alive?

Get of the forums and find yourself a ragtag group of new players and experience the agony others are experiencing.

A group that couldn’t even handle 4 enemies at a time? Wow.=s
There isn’t an infinite spawn of enemies in that part. It’s just kill a group. Revive the NPC to continue repair trap. Kill the next group. Move on to the next trap.

By the way, I always PUG my dungeons, with none of my characters being in DPS focused gear, so thanks for the advice, but it’s something I do pretty much every day I log in on the game. Like I said, only very rarely does a group fail on the ghosts part in path 2. I’m surprised a group that fails there was able to get past the Spider Queen at all.

ParnAshwind.4823:

CoF, CoE are too DPS checks to a great extend but the 1st Dungeon a DPS check??

There’s nothing in CoE that is a DPS check. The only thing that could be considered that is for the security console in path 1 but that’s only if you choose to have most of your team use it at once.

I think some people need to look up as to what a DPS check really is. The only things that I could see being a DPS check is when you have to defend Hodges on path 1 (very minor dps check) and again on path 3 with the mounds. This is because you are limited by time and if you don’t kill them quick enough then you lose. TIME is a major factor in determining whether something is a DPS check.

Milennin.4825:

A group that couldn’t even handle 4 enemies at a time? Wow.=s
There isn’t an infinite spawn of enemies in that part. It’s just kill a group. Revive the NPC to continue repair trap. Kill the next group. Move on to the next trap.

By the way, I always PUG my dungeons, with none of my characters being in DPS focused gear, so thanks for the advice, but it’s something I do pretty much every day I log in on the game. Like I said, only very rarely does a group fail on the ghosts part in path 2. I’m surprised a group that fails there was able to get past the Spider Queen at all.

Yeah, the group I was in cant handle that 4 enemy because they cant kill either one before they all went down. I am not saying it is a norm, I am saying the odds are highly against certain builds and when they come together as a group – it is disastrous.

PuG groups on LFG arent are bad usually, you get at least 2 or 3 experience players on the team. I am speaking about a group of new players. A group of players who would die and rise for god knows how long trying.

And what has infinite spawn got to do with anything? If you do not take them down fast enough, they will take you down because all your skills are on cooldown.

For the Spider Queen, I never complain about the spider queen because she is just fine. Why? Because no matter how long you take to kill her, the difficulty remains constant. Dont stand in green circle, keep circling her so her web does not get you and have one conditional remover ready – that’s it. If you mess up, run circles around the statue and get your skills off CD. In this case, it is not a DPS check.

Try running with a dozen of conditions and warriors that bash you every few sec. These spawns simply do not give you a second chance if you fail to kill them while your skills are not in CD.

This is the difference between these clowns and the spider queen. The difference between a DPS check and a Challenging Fight.

Ayrilana.1396:

ParnAshwind.4823:

CoF, CoE are too DPS checks to a great extend but the 1st Dungeon a DPS check??

There’s nothing in CoE that is a DPS check. The only thing that could be considered that is for the security console in path 1 but that’s only if you choose to have most of your team use it at once.

I think some people need to look up as to what a DPS check really is. The only things that I could see being a DPS check is when you have to defend Hodges on path 1 (very minor dps check) and again on path 3 with the mounds. This is because you are limited by time and if you don’t kill them quick enough then you lose. TIME is a major factor in determining whether something is a DPS check.

Hodges is not a minor DPS check – not everyone can break structure easily. Conditional Damage heavy,/Necros team and dont have an Ice Bow, it becomes the definition of DPS Check itself.

Yes, my mistake. CoE is not really a DPS check, High DPS just makes it easy as hell. Boss dies faster, less dodging, less mistake.

Condition damage will never damage structures. It would not make any sense if you could bleed dirt or poison dirt. It is a minor dps check because you do have a time limit. Saying it’s difficult because your conditions have almost no effect is like going into the dungeon naked and saying you don’t do enough damage.

Ayrilana.1396:

Condition damage will never damage structures. It would not make any sense if you could bleed dirt or poison dirt. It is a minor dps check because you do have a time limit. Saying it’s difficult because your conditions have almost no effect is like going into the dungeon naked and saying you don’t do enough damage.

But it makes sense that we can bleed and poison golems? That we can burn fire elementals? That we can fear the undead?

Played all paths last night. The burrows are not difficult if 4 members target together while the 5th member kites baddies off of the npc. As for the ghosts, provided you target them in order, that being necro, mage, w/e, you won’t have a problem. I was the only heavy and 3 of the players were below 80. Our biggest challenge was getting the final boss in the right place before he drops the ceiling on you.