Guild Wars 2

So, here’s the problem I’m facing. The CM armor set is the only one I really like for an elementalist, since everything else for a female character looks either overdone or provocative. That’s fine, there’s at least one set which is pretty.

Because dungeon tokens are not interchangeable, I need to run CM about 27 times to get all the tokens I need. Even split across three paths this is pretty grind-tastic. Still, at least its a consistent push towards progress, and not a random drop.

Nobody in my guild wants to run CM, since there’s new things to run. Fine. CM is not that bad with a PUG.

But, and here is where it gets dreary, the area in front of CM, which formerly let me find a PUG reasonable fast, is dead. It was dead on NSP, my old server, and its dead on Maguuma, which my guild moved to. The LFG web tool has yet to show me a single bite for CM, everyone’s running Fractals. And, before the fractals, everyone was running the Halloween content.

It doesn’t help that nobody I know finds CM enjoyable. I can’t blame them. It takes a long time for a moderate reward. It’s fun the once, to be sure, but doing it time and time again is tedious.

To the developers: I know you’re sick of hearing this, and I realize its not simple to release, but LFG system please. I’d love a straight up matchmaker system where I could go and PvE towards 100% match completion which would insta-port me to the dungeon the moment 5 people across server were interested. Even some communication saying “coming in a few weeks” would be great, because I don’t know if I should give up on CM armor entirely and try to craft something, or just wait.

TBH: I don’t even really want to run CM anymore, I just want to finish the armor set I’m working on. Changing fractal tokens and/or tokens from any other dungeon towards CM tokens would be a workable solution as well. Anything that lets me get decent elementalist clothing which doesn’t follow the inverse law of female armor.

To other players: Seriously, is anyone running CM anymore? How do you find players? Is it possible to 2-man or solo?

Agreed on whole suggestion. Finding people for other dungeons than fractals have become somewhat difficult. Everyone I know runs fractals to get new shinies. And since we’re on the path to become like a standard mmo, I don’t see a particular reason why not to implement that kind of system which is almost a standard feature there now.

Btw, I thought that inverse law of female armour was mostly applied for heavy armours. Might have been mistaken though.

CM is over tuned on difficulty, as such nobody wants to run it. They need to make it a bit easier.

haviz.1340:

Btw, I thought that inverse law of female armour was mostly applied for heavy armours. Might have been mistaken though.

That depends, is a chainmail bikini light or heavy armor?

The problem with CM isn’t the difficulty, it’s the randomness (and the general “fakeness”). Get lucky, you take almost no damage. Get unlucky, 3 riflemen decide to shoot you at the same time, and you’re dead.

Also, the encounter design is really bad. It takes place in a great setting, full of potential, but it’s just wave after wave of mobs with huge HP pools, half of which are completely static. I’m a max-level adventurer in (supposedly) the best gear available in Tyria, and yet some random “cannon fodder” guard has 10x my HP and hits 5x harder than I do. Does this make any sense? I can understand giving them a tactical / numerical advantage, but why the huge stat advantage? Because hitting a static rifleman 30 times is more fun than hitting him 15 ? It isn’t. Also, why is he static? Feet glued to the floor?

When I first saw that big room with the fireplace, the chandelier and the bookshelves, I expected to meet a boss that would do things like cut a chain and drop the chandelier (damaging players near the middle of the room), shake the ground and make books fall (damaging players near the edge), or throw out embers from the fireplace (damaging players who didn’t hide behind the furniture). Instead, the boss you meet in that room (the “door guard”) just runs after players and does a (cheap and deceptive, because it hits even if you’re clearly out of range and behind him) AoE attack over and over again. Sigh…

CM just doesn’t feel like a real place. It looks like a real place (more so than most GW2 dungeons), but the inhabitants are just weird and behave in nonsensical ways.

It’s as if whoever designed it was trying to simulate / emulate other MMOs, instead of trying to simulate or emulate a realistic place, which is what RPGs are (or should be) all about. The end result is formulaic and artificial.

The solution to GW2’s empty dungeons isn’t an automated dungeon party finder (which will only lead to people treating other players as disposable “assistants” – WoW’s “dungeon finder” was the coffin in its nail, community-wise). The solution is to make the dungeons themselves better, so that people want to play them (you know, because they’re fun – that strange concept that used to guide game design 10 years ago, before bad design became acceptable as long as there’s “loot”) and to make the process of acquiring dungeon gear less grindy.

It doesn’t make any sense to make people repeat the same dungeon dozens of times to get the set of armour they want, while giving them no “useful” reward for running other dungeons – which they or their friends might prefer, while disliking the “local” armour sets. This would be easily solved by adding and NPC that would exchange dungeon tokens as long as the player has completed every path in both dungeons at least once (ex., if you have the CM and AC completion achievements, the NPC would let you swap AC tokens for CM tokens and vice-versa).

GW2’s dungeon token system manages to out-WoW WoW (and the dungeons themselves feel a lot less polished – with low ceilings leading to horrible camera angles, etc.).

i’ll agree CM is one of the more annoying dungeons lol. even other more difficult dungeons i find more enjoyable. not sure why. lot of the mechanics are pretty annoying.

that being said, i know another who wants the armour from there as well. is Maguuma a US server, yes? feel free to add me in-game. i’m on SoR, from HK, GMT+8. usually on my night times or on all weekend : )) hopefully i’ll be able to catch you in-game

This doesnt only apply to CM.. on my server its very difficult to find groups for places like Arah in addition to others.. a group finder in game would be very helpful especially cross server, even a LFG global channel on each server would make a big difference.. being realistic whenever there is something new or a time limited event there is always going to be a large number of people doing those instead of other things but in general as the player base spreads out among areas like it has since the game has been out a bit now.. the harder it is to make a group to do things, and a large part of that is simply just not being able to look for a group beyond the people in the immediate area.. especially when you have a level 40 dungeon in a level 1-15 area

They increased the difficulty of the butler path and it is beyond kitten ridiculous so I won’t be running cm again anytime soon.

I will run CM any time add me in game and send a whisper when I’m on.

I like the CM gear too ( for my little Asura thief) and I also have a hard time finding people.. I actually joined a really good group today, just sad that they only wanted to do one path. I’ve found that most of the people lfg are in LA.

maplealmond.8092:

haviz.1340:

Btw, I thought that inverse law of female armour was mostly applied for heavy armours. Might have been mistaken though.

That depends, is a chainmail bikini light or heavy armor?

Chainmail bikini is always heavy armour, is it not? ;p

The ‘problem’ with CM is that it is designed to ‘skip’ some parts.
You can and should skip the big groups in the cave. You should skip the next groups until you get into that small room under the floor, and fight everything that’s coming there, nuking everything with AoEs. You should exploit the AI design when placing bombs at the gate.
This is how it’s designed. Most people ignore the tactics that are necessary to win easily and they just try to bruteforce stuff, failing.

All i can suggest is to try stirring your guildies a bit and organising CM runs with your guildies, filling spots with pugs from LA. Given you can multiguild and do dungeons cross-server within the same database, you can look for a guild that does CM fairly often and ask them if anyone’s up for a run.

Dogblaster.6713:

I want to see how you deal with Fractals 20+ difficulty .. gonna also cry about making it easier?

No need to. Just grind Ascended gear to win in Fractals.

Milennin.4825:

Dogblaster.6713:

I want to see how you deal with Fractals 20+ difficulty .. gonna also cry about making it easier?

No need to. Just grind Ascended gear to win in Fractals.

ascended gear? You mean rings and back ?

just run CM with Guardians, tell them to bring Shield of the Avenger, enjoy never taking any ranged damage ever in the whole instance.

as for finding people to run the dungeon, yes it is hard but your best bet is to find a guild that enjoys running older dungeons, im lucky in this regard as i have one.

Another option (on top of LFG) is to scale them all the way down to solo if so chosen. If no one is playing them, what’s the harm? Right now it’s content they made that to me, doesn’t really exist. Or go the GW1 method, because it’s the same basic idea, running an instance in GW1 you needed X(8)…. have AI hirelings fill your slots. To me scaling down to solo, is easier and more of a standard practice vs AI hirelings filling roles.

Well, it’s not just CM. Every old dungeon is affected. Just fractals and fractals.

Wouldn’t it be better to just have a server-wide party search interface like other games have? Set yourself as looking for party and allow players to add a short description of what they’re searching for. From there it’s just a matter of forming the party.

This system sort of existed in GW1. I was surprised that it didn’t port over in some capacity.

drkn.3429:

The ‘problem’ with CM is that it is designed to ‘skip’ some parts.
You can and should skip the big groups in the cave. You should skip the next groups until you get into that small room under the floor, and fight everything that’s coming there, nuking everything with AoEs. You should exploit the AI design when placing bombs at the gate.
This is how it’s designed. Most people ignore the tactics that are necessary to win easily and they just try to bruteforce stuff, failing.

All i can suggest is to try stirring your guildies a bit and organising CM runs with your guildies, filling spots with pugs from LA. Given you can multiguild and do dungeons cross-server within the same database, you can look for a guild that does CM fairly often and ask them if anyone’s up for a run.

your suppose to skip it? that is stupid imo. power level is scaled in such a horrid manner. I like how challenging=“getting 1 hit” and I do not literally mean 1 hit, im referring to being knocked down over and over until you die, and other basically 1 hit scenarios. evade serves a purpose, but u cannot spam it as much as they can their attacks. I like this game, but kitten I wanna love it

Drew.1865:

They increased the difficulty of the butler path and it is beyond kitten ridiculous so I won’t be running cm again anytime soon.

Wait, what increase in difficulty? I just did this with a pug a few days ago and it seemed fine.

Jon.1376:

your suppose to skip it? that is stupid imo. power level is scaled in such a horrid manner. I like how challenging=“getting 1 hit” and I do not literally mean 1 hit, im referring to being knocked down over and over until you die, and other basically 1 hit scenarios. evade serves a purpose, but u cannot spam it as much as they can their attacks. I like this game, but kitten I wanna love it

Oh boy… Why is it, that if you are getting permanently knocked over, you don’t bring stability? Aegis? Blind?

Furthermore, bring as much projectile reflection as you can in CM, and pay attention to what mechanics enemy attacks have. It will make the dungeon a breeze.

Seems people are running it after all.

Wow, what a bump.

On another note, I did CM with 4 Guardians about a week ago. It was the most lol-worthy thing. Each person set up Wall of Reflection after one another, and enemies decimated themselves.

My issue with CM is that everyone wants to exploit geometry and skip to the last boss, i hate that

Gab Superstar.4059:

Oh boy… Why is it, that if you are getting permanently knocked over, you don’t bring stability? Aegis? Blind?

Because I play a necro and only have a couple of blinds on long cooldowns and no stability, Aegis (or other blocks), or Vigor (or dodge skills)?

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Gab Superstar.4059:

Oh boy… Why is it, that if you are getting permanently knocked over, you don’t bring stability? Aegis? Blind?

Because I play a necro and only have a couple of blinds on long cooldowns and no stability, Aegis (or other blocks), or Vigor (or dodge skills)?

Ah, sorry. Didn’t know you were soloing the dungeon. My bad.

CM has got to be one of the easiest dungeons out there. Just find one of those groups who KNOW how it’s truly run and remember and copy it. You in turn, can lead your own group.

Gab Superstar.4059:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Gab Superstar.4059:

Oh boy… Why is it, that if you are getting permanently knocked over, you don’t bring stability? Aegis? Blind?

Because I play a necro and only have a couple of blinds on long cooldowns and no stability, Aegis (or other blocks), or Vigor (or dodge skills)?

Ah, sorry. Didn’t know you were soloing the dungeon. My bad.

Oh right, I forgot that every group has a Guardian (only reliable source of Aegis and stability from an ally)

Yeah… doesn’t work that way. Necros are screwed hard in that dungeon because they need tons of things that they don’t have. That particular dungeon is one where the necro is more or less along for the ride.

Other dungeons are set up to not require skills that are only found on 2 professions (Mesmers and Guardians). CM is not.

Necromancers tend to be built around conditions. Condition removal or application. Removal in CM is extremely helpful, especially against Cutpurses, who deal 12 stacks of bleed in one hit. Also, Plague + Well of Darkness is a 25s blind from a sole character. I don’t recall stability being that useful in CM, except for path 1 and 3, if you try running the last section of the dungeon straight to the final boss.

No one character is “along for the ride” in dungeons. If you’re still alive and dealing damage or helping your party, you’re a part of the team as much as any other profession.

LOL Think back to what was said pre-release. All classes are equal, and can keep themselves up. We do not need healers and tanks because of this, that’s why it is not incorporated. Then why is it every group needs a guardian?

All I want is better scaling. My engi build is beautiful at 80, but feels horrible when scaled down. Also as previously stated, npcs seemed scaled wrong to your level sometimes.

I will say it again, GW2 creators made the “highest potential” game that ive ever seen. Its a good game, that could be better than great. Its a new release still, patients is a virtue.

No class is ever necessary, but sometimes bits that are only found on a couple of classes make the experience easier by several factors. Group projectile protection is only found on 3 professions, and of those, only two have it on multiple skills. Group stability is only found on the Guardian where they have 2 skills and a trait. Group condition removal, on the other hand is done by most, if not all professions (I think the thief lacks it, but I can easily be mistaken).

Group stability is also found on Earth 30 elementalists.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Gab Superstar.4059:

Oh boy… Why is it, that if you are getting permanently knocked over, you don’t bring stability? Aegis? Blind?

Because I play a necro and only have a couple of blinds on long cooldowns and no stability, Aegis (or other blocks), or Vigor (or dodge skills)?

Blinds from weapon skills/well/Plague, stability on DS when traited, chill/cripple/interrupts for CC, boon removal against Thugs, excellent condition damage and management from staff/dagger OH, epidemic for AoE blinds/conditions. And of course Death Shroud to soak up damage.

L2P issue, nothing else.

allright im a experienced cm player i like this dungeon so if anyone wants to play whisper me on dawnbuster or jale star