Guild Wars 2

… it really isn’t. Very weird that they have dungeons of different difficulty levels that mostly seem to need at least half the party to be much higher level downscaled.

I actually think it is fine. Get yourself some full green / yellow equip and there shouldn’t be much problems. Doesn’t the downscale work at least so that a full exotic lvl 80 is near a fully geared lvl 35 character? Of course, that is off now with ascended gear

Fine? I was just in a group with an 80, 68, a couple in the 40s and me, a 38. We repeatedly got our butts handed to us. We only really got through one fight, and that was by ‘stacking’ which seems to be somewhat controversial.

This is the first dungeon new players like me are likely to try. What a horrible experience.

I think challenge is great but it should scale properly to the levels of the players. The issue is that even downscaled, higher-level gear has more + stats, and higher-level players also have more traits and skills.

top lel m8

explorable is and has always been a challenge mode.

the first dungeon new players try should be story. this is like starting halo on legendary and then complaining it’s too hard.

besides, i’ve done AC full clears with all lowbies before, it’s not hard. just gear properly and you’re a-ok.

Don’t bother posting about dungeon difficulty here, you’ll only get elitist responses. I agree with you though. AC is a bit too hard for lower levels and even ANet seems to think so considering that dungeons’ path reward you the same gold as Arah path 3 which is a level 80 dungeon. What Writetyper wrote is true however, stick with storymodes until you’re ready for more challenging content.

AC explorable is the second hardest dungeon imo, while Arah story is by far the easiest.

i see some inconsistencies here. it should get harder as the dungeon level raises.
now it’s like this from easiest to hardest(explorable):

-Honor of Waves
-Caudecus Manor
-Embrace of Sorrow
-Twilight Arbor
-Citadel of Flames
-Crucible of Eternity
-Ascalonian Catacombs
-Arah

while EoS, TA, CoF and CoE share pretty much the same explorable difficulty imo.
also, difficulty inside a dungeon (between each path) is pretty incosistent too.

well, at least they fixed the burrows at AC, which are responsible for many wipes back in the day.

Next time advertise your party like I do in LA.
LFG AC Story, level 80, full exotic zerker, ascended weapons/legendaries, 10k+ AP, must have dungeon master. I need you to carry me through dungeon.

I usually get zero responses but I feel today is the day.

Oh yeah and make sure you are < level 30 and wear the hardest title to get Combat Healer.

On a serious note it isn’t that the dungeon is hard, not as much as you don’t know the mechanics of it yet. I learned very early that a group can hold you back if they don’t know the content/don’t know how to play their character well.

Did CoF P1 with my old guild, I had done it once before with a PUG and it was quick so I figured, easy. Slave master hit us like a brick wall. We failed the acolyte part. Died repeatedly on boulders, wiped on opening gate, and then everyone quit at the searing effigy because we didn’t have enough DPS so they got frustrated and just left.

CoF P1 by no stretch of the imagination is hard, we just didn’t know what to do, had terrible builds, and terrible gear. The only way to get better is to play the content you find difficult repeatedly i.e. practice makes perfect.

Good Luck.

viciouspike.8624:

…

Oh yeah and make sure you are < level 30 and wear the hardest title to get Combat Healer.

…

Nuuuuuuuu… “Master Crafter” lets everyone know that you craft-leveled your character.

lunyboy.8672:

viciouspike.8624:

…

Oh yeah and make sure you are < level 30 and wear the hardest title to get Combat Healer.

…

Nuuuuuuuu… “Master Crafter” lets everyone know that you craft-leveled your character.

What am i supposed to do? Bore myself to death with open world crap instead of spending some money that i wouldn’t use otherwise? >_>

You must know the dungeon before you do the dungeon. If you don’t know the fights EXACTLY you won’t do well in a dungeon, no matter what level you are.

Lower leveled characters should be introduced to somewhat lower difficulty in dungeons. At level 80, you have more skills available and if it’s you first character you’ll be better at the game. In addition, at level 80, are we not looking to be challenged a bit more than at, say, the minimum level to enter AC?

At the same time, do we not desire to feel our characters become more powerful as we get better and better gear? But that means that the dungeons becomes easier.

There ought to be a solution. Maybe one could enable a personal, semi-hardmode in dungeons in exchange for increased rewards, for once the challenge isn’t big enough.
But then there is the same problem as for Magic Find (which was quite terrible); You get better rewards in exchange for your decreased contribution to the party.

Maybe the Fractals of the Mists is the best solution, and should be improved (as it seems like the best place for having challenging dungeons).

lunyboy.8672:

viciouspike.8624:

…

Oh yeah and make sure you are < level 30 and wear the hardest title to get Combat Healer.

…

Nuuuuuuuu… “Master Crafter” lets everyone know that you craft-leveled your character.

Master Crafter implies you have some idea of what is going on in the game. We want that completely clueless I revive NPC in the middle of fights thing going.

I agree that AC has a lot of issues that need working out. Like someone else said, the problem with pretty much every dungeon is you have to know it before you can even attempt to run it. Then there are a bunch of trash mobs that you have to skip.

I mean if we really want to get down to it, dungeons in general have a ton of issues. I think what really needs to happen is a dungeon rebalance for some of the more problematic dungeons. AC could do with a thinning of the trash mobs. Same issue with CM. Anything that can make dungeons more appealing to those who don’t want to do them would be helpful.

wauwi.9162:

AC explorable is the second hardest dungeon imo, while Arah story is by far the easiest.

i see some inconsistencies here. it should get harder as the dungeon level raises.
now it’s like this from easiest to hardest(explorable):

-Honor of Waves
-Caudecus Manor
-Embrace of Sorrow
-Twilight Arbor
-Citadel of Flames
-Crucible of Eternity
-Ascalonian Catacombs
-Arah

while EoS, TA, CoF and CoE share pretty much the same explorable difficulty imo.
also, difficulty inside a dungeon (between each path) is pretty incosistent too.

well, at least they fixed the burrows at AC, which are responsible for many wipes back in the day.

I’m sorry but this is BS. I’ve got my Dungeon Master Title and AC is arguably the easiest explorable dungeon along with CoF. In order of hardest to easiest explorables..
Arah>CoE>SE>HoW>TA>CoF>AC
With the last two being interchangable.

TBH anet could just scale up every explorable dungeon to 80 and be done with it, at least fresh l35 people wouldn’t have horrible AC runs thinking they should do fine. I’m pretty sure they said that explorable paths were meant to be played by groups of organized l80 people somewhere. >_>

ChaosElite.6973:

I’m sorry but this is BS. I’ve got my Dungeon Master Title and AC is arguably the easiest explorable dungeon along with CoF. In order of hardest to easiest explorables..
Arah>CoE>SE>HoW>TA>CoF>AC
With the last two being interchangable.

I have my Combat Healer title, and the only ones I would swap would be HotW and TA.

I honestly think HotW and TA are equal. TA might be seen as easier because the end boss you can literally just walk away from the screen if you stand in that one spot and range. That and I think HotW has an underwater boss. All underwater content is hard.

Underwater combat is broken, I would take every boss in the game underwater. Solo.

Dry ground is OP.

No I am trying to tell you those barracudas just destroy me every time. They need to fix the underwater melee exploit that those fish use.

Qaelyn.7612:

Fine? We only really got through one fight, and that was by ‘stacking’ which seems to be somewhat controversial.

The Spider Queen’s AoE has a minimum range, so stacking on top of her makes her not fire it off. It’s not our fault the designers made it work this way. Some “exploits” are just players knowing how the game works.

Nokaru.7831:

The Spider Queen’s AoE has a minimum range, so stacking on top of her makes her not fire it off. It’s not our fault the designers made it work this way. Some “exploits” are just players knowing how the game works.

Yeah it really is a mechanic. It’s there to punish afk auto-attack bearbows. The CM story golem, TA wurm boss, CoE Alpha 1&2, Arah 2 deadeyes, Belka and Abom all don’t use their deadly ranged attacks if you are close to them.

If anything people should be complaining about people ranging Lupi to avoid his melee kicks/claws and kiting is an exploit since it doesn’t let melee mobs use their melee attacks/hit you.

Nokaru.7831:

Qaelyn.7612:

Fine? We only really got through one fight, and that was by ‘stacking’ which seems to be somewhat controversial.

The Spider Queen’s AoE has a minimum range, so stacking on top of her makes her not fire it off. It’s not our fault the designers made it work this way. Some “exploits” are just players knowing how the game works.

the game requires skill. well…it should at least.
what’s the point of stacking at a boss, pressing “1”, autoattack and idk watch a video or grab a smoke? isn’t this supposed to be somewhat action-oriented?
well, that’s what i do with half the dungeon bosses in this game.
i do press “F2” to apply my cheetah’s +5 might buff to the group once in a while as well as healing/rezzing downed mate rarely.

but to be honest, having to dodge, while everyone spamming their skills on the boss, while on a stack would be pretty annoying, thanks to the over-the-top particle effects.

If your just pressing one on the spider queen your getting carried hard by someone else’s condi removal, and even then I don’t think I could just tank all of her hits (tbf I am on a zerk ele). I’m not sure which boss you “just press one” on, I assume that’s an exaggeration. Most bosses require the use of evades/block, reflections, sometime condi removal, etc. the only difference between stacking and not is that instead of running around like a headless chicken every groups up to benefit from buffs/heals/reflects.

Qaelyn.7612:

Fine? I was just in a group with an 80, 68, a couple in the 40s and me, a 38. We repeatedly got our butts handed to us. We only really got through one fight, and that was by ‘stacking’ which seems to be somewhat controversial.

This is the first dungeon new players like me are likely to try. What a horrible experience.

I think challenge is great but it should scale properly to the levels of the players. The issue is that even downscaled, higher-level gear has more + stats, and higher-level players also have more traits and skills.

It scales properly, your problem is inexperience, though I agree that ac is one of the harder dungeons and I’m not sure if it’s intended to be that way, as I can usually breeze through cof, se and coe, but can sometimes encounter some problems running ac.

Qaelyn.7612:

… This is the first dungeon new players like me are likely to try. What a horrible experience …

its not about level, but about number of experienced players in group

number of experienced players vs dungeon difficulty:
5 – breeze
4 – smooth
3 – average slug pug
2 – struggle
1 – frustration
0 – no idea what we are doing

so if you want healthy dungeon experience, make sure to grab at least couple experienced friends before using lfg tool

pro tips:

• if you encounter experienced players who don’t mind lower levels in the group, don’t be shy to befriend and chat with them after dungeon. they might help you with dungeons in future
• avoid people who don’t want lower levels in party and/or do dungeons just for gold reward

Saulius.8430:

Qaelyn.7612:

… This is the first dungeon new players like me are likely to try. What a horrible experience …

its not about level, but about number of experienced players in group

number of experienced players vs dungeon difficulty:
5 – breeze
4 – smooth
3 – average slug pug
2 – struggle
1 – frustration
0 – no idea what we are doing

so if you want healthy dungeon experience, make sure to grab at least couple experienced friends before using lfg tool

pro tips:

• if you encounter experienced players who don’t mind lower levels in the group, don’t be shy to befriend and chat with them after dungeon. they might help you with dungeons in future
• avoid people who don’t want lower levels in party and/or do dungeons just for gold reward

False. Soloing/duoing dungeons involves only 1-2 experienced players yet does not = struggle/frustration.

zencow.3651:

False. Soloing/duoing dungeons involves only 1-2 experienced players yet does not = struggle/frustration.

when you solo or duo dungeon you don’t have 3-4 kittenes who are creating dangerous situations by pulling too many mobs, and prolonging fights by doing something counter-productive – e.g. scattering mobs

not to mention soloing/duoing dungeon is off topic in this thread, as it wouldn’t exists in the first place if OP could solo AC dungeon

ChaosElite.6973:

wauwi.9162:

AC explorable is the second hardest dungeon imo, while Arah story is by far the easiest.

i see some inconsistencies here. it should get harder as the dungeon level raises.
now it’s like this from easiest to hardest(explorable):

-Honor of Waves
-Caudecus Manor
-Embrace of Sorrow
-Twilight Arbor
-Citadel of Flames
-Crucible of Eternity
-Ascalonian Catacombs
-Arah

while EoS, TA, CoF and CoE share pretty much the same explorable difficulty imo.
also, difficulty inside a dungeon (between each path) is pretty incosistent too.

well, at least they fixed the burrows at AC, which are responsible for many wipes back in the day.

I’m sorry but this is BS. I’ve got my Dungeon Master Title and AC is arguably the easiest explorable dungeon along with CoF. In order of hardest to easiest explorables..
Arah>CoE>SE>HoW>TA>CoF>AC
With the last two being interchangable.

CoE is incredibly easy with an experienced berserker group.

//Haru

There’s a difference between being a lowbie and a newbie. AC exp is not particularly difficult for lower leveled characters, but if you’re unfamiliar with the game mechanics, you get served.

Like with many players AC exp was the point where the game told me to learn to dodge or perish.

I’ve been running AC p1 & 3 recently, and I advertise level 35+ in my lfg. This usually brings in some newbies. Path 3 always goes smoothly, while path 1 is almost always held up at the burrows (usually due to kiting issues or somebody running where they shouldn’t), and again at the final boss. I recommend running story and path 3 of this dungeon, until you feel comfortable and then take on paths 1 & 2.

Mirsa.1628:

CoE is incredibly easy with an experienced berserker group.

//Haru

Coe is very easy period…

Seveleniumus.5973:

Mirsa.1628:

CoE is incredibly easy with an experienced berserker group.

//Haru

Coe is very easy period…

Disagree, try it with a few longbow rangers. They are awesomely kittened.

A lot of the dungeoning is experience. Both in game mechanics and dungeon encounters. A group of 35s, after the AC redesign, did a run and destroyed the place. Its very doable, even at level. You just need to know your class and the dungeon; it may take some learning.

AC path 2 is by far the easiest/quickest. Unfortunately to many people don’t know how to play ghostbusters and never learn it.

Xystus.3241:

A lot of the dungeoning is experience. Both in game mechanics and dungeon encounters. A group of 35s, after the AC redesign, did a run and destroyed the place. Its very doable, even at level. You just need to know your class and the dungeon; it may take some learning.

AC path 2 is by far the easiest/quickest. Unfortunately to many people don’t know how to play ghostbusters and never learn it.

Path 1 is actually easier and quicker. A good group can spend around 10 minutes completing it.

It’s pretty darn tough. Dungeons in this game are pretty hard, in my opinion. I’d suggest leveling a bit more, watching some guides on youtube (even Strife’s old video guides work), and using good DPS builds.

Mirsa.1628:

Xystus.3241:

A lot of the dungeoning is experience. Both in game mechanics and dungeon encounters. A group of 35s, after the AC redesign, did a run and destroyed the place. Its very doable, even at level. You just need to know your class and the dungeon; it may take some learning.

AC path 2 is by far the easiest/quickest. Unfortunately to many people don’t know how to play ghostbusters and never learn it.

Path 1 is actually easier and quicker. A good group can spend around 10 minutes completing it.

You maybe right. There is a lot of NPC dialog in 2 plus setting up the traps. Still say 2 is easier, however.

P2 defend detha as she sets up traps is really harsh on less tanky groups because the mobs hit hard, there are many, and how fast you kill them doesn’t really matter (they respawn). if your party is tanky it’s much easier to survive the attacks.

ghost eater also hits like a truck in melee without reflects if people fail to dodge the vapour blades (obviously lowbies can use reflects but inexperienced ones won’t)

guanlongwucaii.3162:

P2 defend detha as she sets up traps is really harsh on less tanky groups because the mobs hit hard, there are many, and how fast you kill them doesn’t really matter (they respawn). if your party is tanky it’s much easier to survive the attacks.

o.O you don’t even have to fight ANY of those, you just have to get them off detha and then run around pillars. Alternatively run around the pillar once and use the LoS to burst them.

doesn’t bursting them quickly just cause another wave to spawn? and I though only the final wave despawns once the event finishes?

guanlongwucaii.3162:

doesn’t bursting them quickly just cause another wave to spawn? and I though only the final wave despawns once the event finishes?

A maximum of 3 waves spawn anyway, so we usually burst them all down really fast. Good for sigil stacking and they are pretty easy anyway.

And yes, only the last wave despawns, so in theory you could just kite the first spawn, let Detha fix the turret, kill it and move on, but killing it is easier and probably safer anyway.

CoE is hard if you can’t count to 3.

AC is one of the hardest dungeons because it demands actual teamwork (or icebow), when other dungeons are mainly dps race. In fact the hardest content in game is one that ppl need to do something strategy like. For eg I have seen more 1-4 CoE p1 fails than CoF, TA, SE, HotW, CM fails combined.

The real reason why AC as a first dungeon is not a good idea is because you need to know a lot of things that most 35 lvl ppl don’t know. On the other side it’s a good one because you have an opportunity to learn stuff like when to dodge at boss and how to team play (or how to use fgs and ice bow against burrows). All others dungeons (maybe besides Arah) are easy because you only need to know what wall of reflection is(CM), where to skip(TA), wall of reflection or feedback is(SE), how to faceroll(CoF), what gniva the butcher op attack looks like(HotW) and how to count to 3(CoE). There are exceptions ofc like CM p2 when strategy like gameplay makes you to put barrels down at the same time (which obviously is so hard that only few of the chosen ones are blessed enough to do it). Even in Arah there are only few places that are truly hard and again the hardest parts are ones that need you to do sth else than pure dps aka “how to find Simin”.

So it kinda looks like this: team play explo paths(8)> the rest of explorable dungeon content(17). (Maybe some mistakes in number of paths^^)

TL;DR
Teamplay is hard, dps race is not.

Simin is NOT hard. that garbage fight is the epitome of a DPS race with a lame gimmick also included.

Duanheim.9527:

AC is one of the hardest dungeons because it demands actual teamwork (or icebow)

Woah woah, hold the phone. Icebow? Like switching my utility skills to counter some mechanic? This is gw2, i play how i want.

I find icebow just as good as attacking the burrows without it unless i go full nerd and pre cast #4.

Oxxy.7068:

I find icebow just as good as attacking the burrows without it unless i go full nerd and pre cast #4.

you went full nerd? never go full nerd, not even nerds go full nerd /tropicthunder