Guild Wars 2

I want to thank you devs for some of the best dungeons runs I have ever experienced since EQ1. My static group and I have had a blast the last couple weeks and will remember how great they were before the big dumbing down of ’12 begins.

These dungeons were pretty well thought out and some of the boss fights were amazing in their nuances. The fact there wasnt a healer or a tank made these encounters exponentially better. Every person had to pull their weight instead of 1 or 2 members carrying the rest of the group.

I applaud all of you content devs for a job well done.

RIP some of the best dungeon design in 10 years.

lol my guess is your not lvl 80 yet or very easily pleased

Nope. Ive been 80 since the 3rd day and have completed every explorable mode in the game.

I agree, it takes a bit of know-how to do the dungeons, not just the typical tank and spank or face him away from the group or he will cleave the whole group for 100k damage. I love how everyone has to, as you say, pull their own weight.

Oh come on guys.. seriously. The boss battles are not engaging and challenging in a fair way. Some other games do this beautifully, where Guild Wars 2 fails to deliver. I love this game but the dungeons are in need of some serious changes.

Do you really want to compete with a boss with incredibly high hp pools, plenty invulnerability moments and unannounced damage spikes? Be serious… I don’t mind games being hard. A boss can even have the ability to one-shot me for all I care, as long as I feel that I had an opportunity to react/block it. There is a big difference between having cheap difficulty (quite tedious) and being challenging (engaging).

Other games do this with the holy trinity group build. GW2 doesn’t, maybe thats your real confusion. If you are not intelligent enough to figure out how to overcome these obstacles using GW2 group dynamics then that is your own problem, no one elses. What you need to do is quit vomiting forth the same crap you see everyone else saying and instead form your own thoughts. Just because you say a thing over and over and over again does not make it true, no matter how many people repeat the same mantra, still does not make it true. It just makes you a sheeple, incapable of forming your own thoughts and opinions.

deherch.3158:

Oh come on guys.. seriously. The boss battles are not engaging and challenging in a fair way. Some other games do this beautifully, where Guild Wars 2 fails to deliver. I love this game but the dungeons are in need of some serious changes.

Do you really want to compete with a boss with incredibly high hp pools, plenty invulnerability moments and unannounced damage spikes? Be serious… I don’t mind games being hard. A boss can even have the ability to one-shot me for all I care, as long as I feel that I had an opportunity to react/block it. There is a big difference between having cheap difficulty (quite tedious) and being challenging (engaging).

Do name some examples of bosses that oneshot without warning or ability to evade. I guarantee you, they don’t exist. I’ve seen a lot of oneshot mechanics, but none are without warning. Have you considered that the fault might lie with you, not the boss?

I also love the dungeons. Some are even too easy.

I don’t know if they should be called too easy, though I haven’t done them all yet. I also really like them though, now that I’m getting used to the new mechanics. I also haven’t yet run into a situation which couldn’t be countered by some player thought. I’d l Ike to add to this thread – I think they’re very challenging and enjoyable.

From the ones I’ve done I as well find them great. I think they’re lacking in a few areas and need some tweaking here and there, but not much. I love difficult things.

@ brewbeer

Kudu fight in CoE story mode.
20k killshot.
He’s a tiny asura. Literally obscured from view by my party members, and his telegraph assuming he even has one (no one in our party saw it) is less than a second.

Youve also got the thief in CM explorable who stealth backstabs. Of course because she stealths her only telegraph is literally “I am invisible now, so you better have the best estimation of how long it takes me to get behind whoever ive decided to bone up the protein chute”

in something like SE you have bosses like the destroyer of worlds, who, admittedly wasnt hard, but his telegraph for vacuuming you in is either instant, or so short the odds of you seeing it before you’re ontop of him are slim to none (especially seeing as most of the fight takes place actively avoiding his adds by climbing on the rubble)

Youve also got bosses whose auto attacks alone are simply slaughter. I know I helped a PuG do TA story today. Eir has a move that mimics the ranger shortbow attack that fires 5 arrows (spreadshot I believe it was called?) The animation for this is the exact same animation as firing a normal auto attack. With the difference being that this one will do 8k+ damage to you and anyone in a cone pattern nearby. Again, still a doable fight by ensuring that she never hits more than one person ever with it. But the telegraph is non-existant.

There are plenty of bosses throughout both story and explorable modes that dont have engaging fights. They’re simply dodge and spanks. There are also bosses that have moves which are not telegraphed very well at all. I’ve sunk about 1000 hours into monster hunter, a game where you fight giant things for 30 minutes and if you slip up once then you just lost 1 of 3 lives. I know the difference between well telegraphed attacks and total shenanigans. And quite a few bosses fall into the latter category ;p

@Zenyatoo

You can see Kudu. He gets the charge-up effect, a lot of bosses have the same effect. This isn’t very hard to spot. You also have to remember he doesn’t have any follow up for it, so it’s easy to get up anyone who gets downed by it.

I have only done the butler path in CM, but from your description it sounds very much like a timing thing. If she stealths, in the beginning, use mist form or elixir S or similar to get the timing, then dodge the rest.

SE I haven’t run at all, since I’m not interested in that gear at all. Does the vacuum work like Kohler, in that he doesn’t actually kill you with the pull, but an ability afterwards? If it does, abilities like Roll for iniative or Lightning reflexes work well.

Eir in TA has two counters. First, blind works. So keep a blind up at all times, and you can burst her down. Or, you do as you say, and make sure she only hits a single person, and then get that person back up when he goes down. On autoattacks, I’ve never seen a boss with incredibly brutal autoattacks that can’t be spotted. Giganticus is probably the hardest to spot, and his autos hit very hard, but that’s part of what makes it a challenging boss, that it requires good awareness to even spot the attacks.

I agree that lots of bosses need more abilities or less hp, the evolved destroyer in CoE or the Abomination in Arah are good examples of needing both, . But saying bosses are poorly telegraphed because you don’t immediately realize how to read them is wrong.

Brewbeer.8239:

@Zenyatoo

You can see Kudu. He gets the charge-up effect, a lot of bosses have the same effect. This isn’t very hard to spot. You also have to remember he doesn’t have any follow up for it, so it’s easy to get up anyone who gets downed by it.

You’re right, you can see Kudu. That’s the worst part.. because one you see it, you’re dead. Just like CoE’s champion destroyer crab (not even a boss!). You can see his red patch, sure. Now you’re on fire, AWESOME. Or Subject Alpha’s earth spikes. I can very clearly see the red circle and if you aren’t already mid dodge, guess what? You’re dead.

Here’s one I love to cite though, our buddy Mr Rumblus in AC and his 270 degree screams. Oh me oh my, that’s fun considering there is no real tank and it’s basically just whack a mole, no telling who is about to get thrown up on. Those are just some of the more extreme and frustrating ones.

Or hey, hey.. what about this one. Butcher (I think that’s the path? Not 100% sure.) in Honor of the Waves and his freakin birds.. I love seeing my life get pecked down to nothing and there’s nothing you can do about it. Oh, you dodge? Still taking damage. Still dead.

Downed state is not dead. A lot of bosses have these 1 shot mechanics ON PURPOSE to put people in the downed state so that your OTHER team mates can get you back up. You people are stuck in the mentality that downed means dead and not taking any utilities that counter the downed state like warrior rez banner, ranger search and rescue etc.

Im done trying to teach people simple game mechanics. Team coordination isnt simply everyone speccing tankiness or dps. In fact the most successful teams are specced in a wide variety of abilities.

The game is NOT broken. The mentality of most of its players are because of weak gameplay of other MMO’s.

Ruien.9506:

Downed state is not dead. A lot of bosses have these 1 shot mechanics ON PURPOSE to put people in the downed state so that your OTHER team mates can get you back up. You people are stuck in the mentality that downed means dead and not taking any utilities that counter the downed state like warrior rez banner, ranger search and rescue etc.

Im done trying to teach people simple game mechanics. Team coordination isnt simply everyone speccing tankiness or dps. In fact the most successful teams are specced in a wide variety of abilities.

The game is NOT broken. The mentality of most of its players are because of weak gameplay of other MMO’s.

Except it does mean dead and in 90% of those cases your team mate reviving you will also result in them getting downed too because it’s used as a baiting mechanic and enemies focus on the downed player. I don’t even bother reviving people during a lot of encounters because it’s pointless and wastes my time and theirs.

I bet you’re that guy who tries to revive others during the fire elemental event, huh?

@Sean

If you feel burning is a problem, bring condition removal.

Rumblus is really obvious, getting hit by it is entirely your fault. The birds in HotW disappear if you go into the water. Not entirely intuitive, but it’s there.

Also, on the downed state, it’s not dead at all. Beyond just getting them up normally, all classes have something that gets people up from the downed state almost instantly, or a lot faster than normal. Reviving downed players is in no way pointless or a waste of time.

I’ll give you the birds but you have nothing on any of the other ones and actually show quite a bit of ignorance since you just cherry picked specific things from my sentences and replied to them and totally disregarded the context. Also, Rumblus AoE is gigantic relative to the size of its graphic.

I wouldn’t call them the “best,” but they’re pretty great. As much as I’m SO over WoW, it’s still got the “best dungeons” title for the moment. WoW’s dungeons are very very solid and very well balanced.

GW2 would probably sit somewhere between RIFT and WoW for me.

GW2 has a massive amount of dungeon potential though. I have no doubt we’re going to see some amazing things in the future.

Just go’s to show that you can hand some people a plate of steaming dog **** and they’re still happy. Go figgure. Doesn’t mean that they’re right though, just very easy to please among other things.

Eh, I think dungeons are extremely clunky in this game. To the point where I just want to log off sometimes while doing them.

So Ruien, if I understood correctly, then:

• you’ve been playing MMOs for 12 years now
• you run with a static group. in which undoubtedly all your buddies also have 12 years of experience.
• you power-leveled to 80 in 3 days. which proves you are the achiever-type. and you’re good, fast, and don’t care at all about the RPG element in RPGs.

And how are your thoughts on the game of any importance to ArenaNet ? You are so far away from the average ArenaNet customer, it can not be any further. If ArenaNet wants to make sure that the reputation of GW2’s PvE at level-80 will get the reputation that it is fun to play for the majority of their (potential) customers, they better not listen to you.

As I explained in that other thread in which you posted, ArenaNet should start by making Story Mode as easy as required, so that 70-80% of the playerbase can finish it.

And then they need to start working on Exploration Modes. Not to make them easier, or nerf them. But so that players can gradually adapt to the difficulty level. So that unfun elements (like WayPoint zerging) can be removed. So that people will feel a bit better rewarded for running a dungeon. So that there is an incentive to run all paths. So that it is more clear what the game-mechanics of the mobs are, so that people don’t feel blind, but actually can see what’s going on. (I realize there are ways to figure out stuff, but they are not obvious). And I can go on and on.

I don’t want to take away the fun for you, or other players who are very good. But fact is, the majority of PvE-players are not enjoying the dungeons. Not even the Story Mode dungeons. They will play to 80 in the outdoor world. And then stop playing GW2. How can that be good for you, for me, for them, for all the other players, and for Arenanet ?