Guild Wars 2

This thread is for suggestions for Ascalonian Catacombs. Remember we were asked for a bullet point form for ease of reading. Lilith, Kane, and myself will try and keep this organized.

-Ghosteater mechanics should be changed so that his shield comes back up at percentages of health, not time.

(Before my head gets chewed off, this is supposed to be the easiest dungeon, there should be no paths in it PUGs can’t do. Right now this boss is a DPS race, and the only other boss in the game like this is Simin. I’m willing to take an extra minute to load more traps than I normally would do so that this becomes more friendly to the general public)

Path 1 (Help Hodgins defeat the Howling King):
- Tweak the dungeon progression in order for the ‘Search for the scepter pieces in the Hall of Champions’ event requiring completion of the ‘Defend Hodgins from gravelings’ event in the Archive Room. (Effectively solving the exploiting of map design weaknesses to skip the large majority of this path.)

Path 3 (Help Tzark defeat Colossus Rumble):
- Decrease the duration of the ‘Defend the essence collectors from gravelings’ event in the Lover’s Crypt by half, making burrows spawn twice as fast. (This event is currently a huge drag clocking at about 6 minutes and easily completed by a single player, increasing the velocity at which burrows spawn will increase the challenge level for newer players and make it a bit more interesting for more experienced players)

Path 2

A two parter:

- Fix Detha at the ghost eater. For real.
- Test Detha at the ghost eater. Repeatedly.

dlonie.6547:

Path 3

A two parter:

- Fix Detha at the ghost eater. For real.
- Test Detha at the ghost eater. Repeatedly.

Detha is now in path 3? kitten.

I fully agree though.

Haha, I was working on my BAC achieve when I wrote that.

I think for AC, since it is the first dungeon, it should incorporate a lot of the mechanics you’d find in other dungeons and have little popups (that you can turn on and off of course) that say things like “stability is a boon that is great for fighting these gravelings!” And other things like that.

But that’s a bit heavy on development so I doubt that would be something they are open to. Anyway. With AC, the bugs that can require a reset of the dungeon need to be fixed. Aside from Detha, there is also the Grast one at collosus rumblus. Where he won’t appear. Also in p3, there is a bug that prevents the experience reward being given, and you never get changed back from being a ghost despite killing the boss.

That’s all I have

One of the coolest features of AC has lots it’s touch. I’m talking about the bonus troll event. I remember the first time encountering the troll, it was quiet a frightening experience. Mainly because we had no idea where the Troll was going to spawn.

Why not force the troll to spawn in every path, but just differ it’s spawn location. You are going to have to learn to deal with the unknown variable.

Also in Path1, Hodgin aggroes too easily to the ooze if you spawn them prior to finding the pieces of the scepter. We could play around with the idea of changing this event so it’s both a run-and-find, as well as defending the Hodgins event? Making sure Hodgins don’t aggro extra mobs, and have him on a short leash to the defending players. Hodgins can’t be interrupted while he’s piecing the scepter. This gives a great chance to prep players up for the future dungeons.

PandorasBane.2319:

Why not force the troll to spawn in every path, but just differ it’s spawn location. You are going to have to learn to deal with the unknown variable.

The extra boss might make ACs higher reward a little more justified, too.

And just think of how much easier HotW will be in PUGs if he were required in AC.

Path 3
Alter the Lover’s Crypt event. This event is a drag, even with being able to obliterate the burrows in seconds. There is no urgency to this event and the burrow spawn locations are learn-able.

• Have the burrows have randomized spawn locations, and/or as the event goes on, more burrows start to spawn at the same time.
• Provide a bigger threat against the collectors. This could be through having a few gravelings with harder to tackle mechanics, and a tad more HP (NOT TOO MUCH THOUGH!).
• Ensure that any ramp up in difficulty does not cause the gravelings to be unmanageable.
• I think the HP of the burrows could stay the same if some of the above things were added, but this is also an area to look at.
• Use Tzark a little more. Maybe he can have the ability only defend one collector at one time (maybe with a protection bubble). This means you have to keep watching for which collector he is at, so which needs defending and which doesn’t.

Path 1

• Add an indicator to the danger of spawning oozes if you take the right hand path just before the collect the scepter pieces room. I doubt most people realise it was their fault without being told. A subtle sign that there is danger ahead would be a nicer indicator than just doing it, and then possibly not learning from your mistake if no one comments on it.

General

• The troll has been mentioned above, and I too think this is currently a wasted opportunity. Encountering the troll could be a great addition to the dungeon if it was reworked. I am unsure how to give players an incentive to fight the troll, but players cannot be forced to fight this boss unless it is reworked. It is currently an irritating fight, from hitting hard to applying fear (and the possibility knocking you off with it).

Maybe reducing the time for the Alter the Lover’s Crypt event in AC path 3 and add a mini boss, the 5 minutes of waiting while doing the path feel like an eternity. I would much rather defend for 2-3 minutes and slay a mini-boss. Like Sazberry said, make it a little more interesting too.

Dramen Maidria.1034:

<snip>

-Ghosteater mechanics should be changed so that his shield comes back up at percentages of health, not time.

(Before my head gets chewed off, this is supposed to be the easiest dungeon, there should be no paths in it PUGs can’t do. Right now this boss is a DPS race, and the only other boss in the game like this is Simin. I’m willing to take an extra minute to load more traps than I normally would do so that this becomes more friendly to the general public)

I pug a lot. I mean a ton, a really big ton. I’ve pugged path 2 more than is probably healthy. That said ghosteater isn’t the problem that gives most new players a hard time in path 2. Their problems lie earlier in the dungeon.

The majority of the issues that I have seen come from the event right before ghosteater. Defend Detha while she builds the traps. Those ascalonian ghosts are very often much more than what the average pug is expecting, even when told exactly what is going to happen. Plus the way Detha moves from trap to trap, inexperienced players stay behind to kill ghosts while more spawn on detha complicating the whole encounter. Not only that but none of the ghosts in that encounter trigger ‘on kill’ traits anymore (or loot for that matter). This encounter also does not reset at all on party wipe.

The second place I’ve seen inexperienced players have trouble is while defending Detha while she gathers the bait in the spike pit. For some reason no one seems to believe that the spike traps don’t hurt the graveling champion. That is if they even try to pull the chains.

Third, is actually charging the traps. This is a bit less of an issue if party members are observant or willing to listen.

Ghosteater himself comes in after the above ‘issues’. I’d even wager Kholer wreaks more havoc on pug groups than ghosteater.

dlonie.6547:

Path 2

A two parter:

- Fix Detha at the ghost eater. For real.
- Test Detha at the ghost eater. Repeatedly.

Detha at ghost eater observations:
Usually glitches if people run into the star and “triggering” the event while there are oozes/gravelings in the room.

I have not glitched Detha in past 60runs. My methods are:

A: If you run into the room and LOS on the left side of the door and burn the oozes down.
B: Run to the right side of the map, outside the event circle and wait for the oozes to leave the room then run into the event circle.
C: If you are highly organized, Run from choler waypoint to room completely stealthed.( I have not tried this but I am sure it will work since the cause of the bug is the mobs going into the room causing detha to aggro them instead of running to the triggered event spot.)

In all honesty i think they should drop the difficulty of the explorable mode, and bring in a hard mode for those people that are lvl 75+ or 80. Also would have to reduce the rewards given out for the regular explorable mode. Some times while it says lvl say 55+ on the explorable mode, there just isn’t a way to do it unless you have a lvl 80 or 2 in the group. I personally love running dungeons, one of my favorite things to do, but when dungeons are the way that they are right now, you either have to be really skilled and know what you are doing or you have to be lvl capped and geared to make it fun. 90% of the lfg is people looking for zerker runs or 80’s only, I like to run story and explorable modes b4 I hit lvl 80 so that way when i do hit lvl 80 i know the mechanics of the fights, which makes it easier for the group i’m in.

P3: What if the lover’s crypt gave you the option of speeding it up. Say Tzark does his little spiel and then you have a dialog that asks “How quickly should we retrieve the essences?”. Then on some sliding scale (1-5 with one being current timing) you can choose, but the faster they collect the fast the mounds appear. Basically this would offer an option to reduce the time gate but in return would up the difficulty.

I actually doubt this would be too hard to implement for ANet developers. The pattern could remain the same even and the timing of the spawns would just get shorter.

stachekiller.2591:

P3: What if the lover’s crypt gave you the option of speeding it up. Say Tzark does his little spiel and then you have a dialog that asks “How quickly should we retrieve the essences?”. Then on some sliding scale (1-5 with one being current timing) you can choose, but the faster they collect the fast the mounds appear. Basically this would offer an option to reduce the time gate but in return would up the difficulty.

I actually doubt this would be too hard to implement for ANet developers. The pattern could remain the same even and the timing of the spawns would just get shorter.

This is actually borderline implemented as it is. The burrows spawn at certain percentages, and if one of the collectors is destroyed it slows down. I noticed this recently when I went afk at the beginning of that part (apparently along with 3 others in the team), and the remaining player got slightly overwhelmed by gravelings. They killed one of the collectors before we all came back, smashed the gravelings and caught up. Then I was shocked at how slow the development of the % was, and that the burrows were spawning really slowly.

So I think this would be a good idea, or possibly trigger a 4/5% (whatever the percentage is they spawn at) boost on the death of the previous burrow.

Path 2

-Traps

A few months ago, the champion was kind of made immune to traps. If you manage to push it right on top of one as soon as it spawns (by using a hammer guardian for example) it won’t become aggressive and will be damaged by traps.
One of those situation is a bug.

I’m not sure I support any suggestions for making the Graveling burrows more difficult on Paths 1 & 3. They are already DPS races as they are; you would not believe how many PUGs I’ve seen struggle through them if we don’t have an Ele with Frost Bow/FGS.

Instead, perhaps adjust them so that multiple burrows spawn at once, but with less gravelings spawning from each. (A maximum of 3 burrows can be active at any time.) This forces the party to split up and tackle multiple threats at once, but if the party each engages the gravelings early when they spawn, the risk of Hodgkins/the collectors getting attacked is extremely small.

Zaxares.5419:

I’m not sure I support any suggestions for making the Graveling burrows more difficult on Paths 1 & 3.

I’d say P1 burrows need no change at all. You are right in saying with little organisation they are hard, and even with slight organisation you can still mess it up sometimes. They are fine as they are. But I have done P3 burrows without an ele and they’re still really slow and dull. It’s not so much about an up in difficulty, more just an up in activity and interest.

sazberryftw.3809:

Zaxares.5419:

I’m not sure I support any suggestions for making the Graveling burrows more difficult on Paths 1 & 3.

I’d say P1 burrows need no change at all. You are right in saying with little organisation they are hard, and even with slight organisation you can still mess it up sometimes. They are fine as they are. But I have done P3 burrows without an ele and they’re still really slow and dull. It’s not so much about an up in difficulty, more just an up in activity and interest.

^^ This. P1 is fine, the faster you kill the faster it goes, no need for a change. P3 though is a timegate that is quite literally a snooze fest, by that I mean 3 out of 5 people in my group with /sleep in the middle while 2 take on the burrows, even without ice bow 2 can easily take them down fast enough.

They can be left alone as far as “worst case scenario” but they should really allow us to kill them faster, IE kill one the next starts to spawn and once all are taken out Tzark will instantly finish.

There should be an option to spawn all burrows at once.

One possible way to reduce the boringness of p3 burrows is to have the next one spawn as soon as the previous one is killed, while keeping the timing of the spawn as it is now if the previous one is still not destroyed. Thus it will reduce the time gate for organised, high dps groups while still presenting challenge to pugs with random levels, gear and skill.

Also, randomising the spawn places would make things more interesting

Dramen Maidria.1034:

This thread is for suggestions for Ascalonian Catacombs. Remember we were asked for a bullet point form for ease of reading. Lilith, Kane, and myself will try and keep this organized.

-Ghosteater mechanics should be changed so that his shield comes back up at percentages of health, not time.

(Before my head gets chewed off, this is supposed to be the easiest dungeon, there should be no paths in it PUGs can’t do. Right now this boss is a DPS race, and the only other boss in the game like this is Simin. I’m willing to take an extra minute to load more traps than I normally would do so that this becomes more friendly to the general public)

The path 2 boss is NOT a DPS race. It is best to treat it as such, but it can be done with a lack of damage. A DPS race suggests if you don’t kill it in a certain time limit, you won’t kill it at all. With the Ghost Eater, its best to try to kill it in 3 traps, but it is far from the only way to accomplish it. To accomplish it with more than 3 traps does require more coordination, but is far from impossible.

We always kill that boss with just one trap. And even we four players. And without a FGS (never understood that one against this boss).

I think a lot of people have never realized how simple that boss is. How easy it is to pull him right next to a trap and how useful reflects/projectile absorption are.