Guild Wars 2

So, the Wiki states that the Story Mode for a dungeon should be relatively easy for any makeshift group to get through. Yesterday, my guildmates and I decided to run Ascalonian Catacombs. Obviously we got our stats scaled down, but in terms of gear we had a lv 80, lv 70, lv 50, and two lv 45s. And we got absolutely trounced by just about every set of mobs we encountered. Just regular trash mobs took every ounce of strength we had to defeat, and we ended up zerg-rushing most of the bosses, especially Vassar and Relena. I was literally completely naked by the end of it, and all of us were sufficiently frustrated. In total it took us close to two hours.

It wasn’t like we were the most disorganised group on the planet, either. We spent a little bit of time working out strategies and picking skills, although less than we could have done. Still, we were hardly a “pick-up group.”

So what is the secret we’re missing? Why was it so kitten difficult? If that’s the wiki’s idea of “easy” then I dread to imagine what the Explorable Mode has in store. And even more I dread the higher-level dungeons.

Also gotta take into account the gear, traits and skills of each individual.

I found that doing these story modes with mixed levels ( not all 80’s) is of course more difficult, but if everyone wears the best possible gear available for their level, it should still go relatively smoothly.

Oh, might also add, as it seems you are new to dungeons (haven’t done explore mode yet), that the base stats of gear are also important. Glass cannon is not recommended. Dungeon frequenters will generally run a gear set with toughness and/or vitality on it to bump up their survivability. Magic find is also not an ideal set to be running.

Another thing to consider is that dungeon mobs hit CONSIDERABLY harder than standard mobs. This means that bringing Crowd Control and timing your dodges well will mean the difference between life and death. Not only this, but learning enemy behavior is important as well. For example, those Ghostly Rangers won’t use their traps on you if you’re in melee range, the illusions summoned by the Twins are really easy to kill, someone should be on boulder duty, etc. Heck, my warrior is specc’d for CC and healing because I can make up for the lack of coordination and skill pugs typically have.

most story modes are harder than the explorable versions.

but generally it all comes down to experience i remember my first AC story experience well, i considered it a nightmare.
i went back in there a few weeks ago only now at level 80 and being very experienced at dungeons as a whole, it was still harder than Xp but then the Xp version of AC is very easy.

i ended up solo’ing Vassar whilst my team dealt with Relena, Adelburn is the easiest fight of them all as there are several boulders that spawn around his room that you can just have 3-4 people constantly pick these up and throw them at him and he spends the whole fight on the floor.

also had similar experiences repeating SE Story, not the nightmare i once knew.
the idea is basically stick with it, you’ll get used to what to expect after running the dungeons a few times, then further down the line go back and repeat this dungeon and see what a difference it makes when everyone is used to dungeons in general.

AC story mode is particularly horrible. It tries to teach you what you should and shouldn’t do in a dungeon is rather harsh way.

However, the bosses are easy. Then Ranger isn’t really hard, and for the others, use boulders. That’s the thing with AC story mode, you must use gimmicks to defeat the bosses.
Yes you could bother to kill them the “real” way, but why bother risking your life when you keep the boss on the ground ? It even works on the lovers. Push them together with boulders and then you’ll be able to knockdown both of them with only one rock.

RedStar.4218:

AC story mode is particularly horrible. It tries to teach you what you should and shouldn’t do in a dungeon is rather harsh way.

However, the bosses are easy. Then Ranger isn’t really hard, and for the others, use boulders. That’s the thing with AC story mode, you must use gimmicks to defeat the bosses.
Yes you could bother to kill them the “real” way, but why bother risking your life when you keep the boss on the ground ? It even works on the lovers. Push them together with boulders and then you’ll be able to knockdown both of them with only one rock.

How are boulders a gimmick?

BlackIce.5276:

And we got absolutely trounced by just about every set of mobs we encountered. Just regular trash mobs took every ounce of strength we had to defeat, and we ended up zerg-rushing most of the bosses, especially Vassar and Relena. I was literally completely naked by the end of it, and all of us were sufficiently frustrated. In total it took us close to two hours.

That’s your first problem: believing in trash mobs. There are no trash mobs in dungeons; even the regular enemies range between Veteran and Champion in power. Don’t underestimate them. Treat them with the caution you’d give those kinds of mobs, like avoiding as many attacks as possible instead of thinking you can tank them.

Second problem: The Lovers. They are arguably the hardest thing in AC (except perhaps Lt. Kholer in exploration mode) and unless you know how to deal with them, they are the crusher of newbies. The trick to most AC story mode bosses are Boulders, especially The Lovers. These ignore Defiant stacks and will always knock them down. So for The Lovers you have one guy grabbing a Boulder and knocking one of them up against a wall, so that he can spam Boulders on the boss (if there’s a wall behind the boss, the Boulder will land by your feet and you can pick it up again for another toss) while the others kick the crap out of the other boss.

BlackIce.5276:

So, the Wiki states that the Story Mode for a dungeon should be relatively easy for any makeshift group to get through…… we got absolutely trounced…… all of us were sufficiently frustrated. In total it took us close to two hours.

So what is the secret we’re missing? Why was it so kitten difficult? If that’s the wiki’s idea of “easy” then I dread to imagine what the Explorable Mode has in store. And even more I dread the higher-level dungeons.

Like the others, I’ve found that in many respects the story mode dungeon is harder than the explore. The story mode does prepare you for explore mechanics.

I’ve run a LOT of dungeons over the past weeks and two constants I’ve noticed is that people stand still too often not dodge rolling or evading…. and they are trying to do dungeons in a traditional group makeup with a tank, dps and healer/support role. Level and poorly geared people (relative to there level) just add to that. Also a lot of players have the “zerg” mentality. The lets run this fast and get our loot type of thinking really can make things messy in a hurry.

At a certain point level and gear make up for the shortcomings of other poor players. Once your geared up, lvl 80 and experienced you’ll find your the anchor to even a bad group. Then again even that sometimes isn’t enough.

haviz.1340:

How are boulders a gimmick?

Keeping a boss on the ground, preventing it from using any skills or even moving, thus rendering the whole encounter trivial is something I find to be a gimmick.

It’s not an exploit, because Anet placed those boulders, but it’s not a totally expected part of the fight because nothing hints you to use those boulders that abusively, especially on the last fight (except if I missed something).
So it’s a cheap trick, a gimmick.

I feel your pain, BlackIce, when my regular group went in to AC (with only one person at 42 with Elite skill, mind you, everyone else in the 30-35 range) we spent 4 and a half hours and everyone ended up naked more than once. The only thing that kept us going was that we were friends so we wouldn’t quit on each other.

We had much the same experience in CM, though at least it was shorter at only 2 and a half hours.

The dungeons are a huge step up in difficulty from regular PvE, and frankly if I was the devs I’d make the Story modes, especially for the lower level ones, easier so that people can get a more gentle introduction to that. I’m sure some people try them once and swear off them, rather than using them to try to improve their ability to play.

I have hopes that now that 3 of us are 80 and accumulating good gear we may be able to make another less painful run at them, but I still suspect we are going to have a somewhat tough time of it since none of us are that good at memorizing animations or have fast twitch reflexes. And I want some armor specs that only come in dungeons, sigh. . .

well big mistake thought i’d wait till morning to do AC, well whilst standing there a group rolled up and were going in, i made the 5th member, i’m lvl 80 but it is the only second time i’ve ever done a dungeon the first was CM, did watch on youtube first, the lowest lvl was 25, but no one else over lvl 60, the other lvl 56 and 48, it was not good, alot of dying of party members and at certain points myself and i spend alot of time moving, human warrior, traits build for range as rifle is my fav weapon, not much communication though, we killed the Lieutenant (he chased me alot) then when we went up the stairs into the room where the WP is and we just all died and that was it, ppl then just left, so they gave up, cowards :p

Though there’s no “trinity”, dungeons somewhat require a certain makeup of classes, or at least builds to complete flawlessly. EG: you don’t really want to be composed of all light armor classes with dps builds and getting smashed by a boss’ auto-attack, constantly having to revive. You need decent condition removal, group related skills like giving allies protection + regen, if you want to do the dungeon without anyone getting downed at all.

It can be really difficult when first starting dungeons, knowing exactly what you are supposed to be dodging. “Is that an auto attack or is he telegraphing his 1 shot kill attack?”, you just get experience with telling the difference after a while, even with new encounters.

And yeah I agree dungeons need a more gentle intro. I did AC as a level 30 a week or so after the game came out, just getting 1 shotted by everything and group wiping, it was enough to make me swear off dungeons until about 2 weeks ago when I tried them again and my knowledge of the game has increased enough that it was a decent challenge without being awful. Now I’m hooked on grinding them.

Its funny people still defending the absurd design of dungeons…

I’ll explain to you exactally what is happening and why you guys are getting so badly torn up. Basically design of dungeons come down to REQUIRING specific builds, and " roles " to be filled in order to get through them.

1: Buffer: this build/setup is designed to do one thing buff your team usually come with short term damage reductions, sometimes even healing. Will remove debuffs, and make you hit harder ect with out this you become stupidly vulnerable to damage.

2: Controller: Basically prevent enemy from doing damage, stuns, disables, or abilities that prevent damage. Its probably most important role of any of the, think of them like a tank in other mmos. They stop alot of damage from going out and if is not a troller in your group makeup you will die….alot

3: Debuffer: they put various debuffs on target that reduce damage, or increase damage ect ect. Much like buffer only in reverse.

With out these kinds of builds in your team you rely heavily on sheer luck, or rez spamming… additionally you are going to need some kind of vit/toughness spec of some sort to help you not die over and over again. Some people claim you dont need it but from my own experiences if you arent running at least toughness you will eat dirt ALOT!

Combo fields: learn to use them, personally i find this is probably biggest thing people don’t do. Dropping a heal down a field on ground shoot through it! causes various effects,debuffs, buffs and control effects to be spammed.

Lastly despite all of the above, and trying your hardest YOU will go down…and will be times you cant be rallied…do to various mechanics in game. I personally will never do dungeons and havent done them ever and will never do them… because they are just plain and simple badly designed…

Do all players agree with me? no… but this is way i felt and feel about GW2 it has one inherent flaw…and that is the dungeon design.

Lokai.7850:

Buffer, Controller, Debuffer

But that’s not how you spell 5 warriors

If everyone does what they are able to do to help the situation, there shouldn’t be any problems.

Enemies have boons ? Do you have a skill to get rid of them ? If yes then maybe you should take it.
Projectiles ? Do you have something against that ?
Your team is having a hard time against Kohler ? Maybe bring stability or an anti projectile to help them.
Lot of melee ? Maybe use mass blind (such as combo field if you can) or skills to reduce the damage.
etc…

You are able to change your skills in a dungeon, use it.

And then of course, there’s the player’s skill. But if that’s only a matter of training.

redid AC story on my lvl 40 mesmer a week or two ago, it was easy (despite having two dungeon newbies) with only one 80 in the group (everyone else was <50)

the lovers are easy if you keep them apart (it even says that they’re stronger when they’re together) one/two people can easily keep one locked down using the boulders found in the room, if you had trouble with them then you probably didnt?

also; glass cannons are especially difficult to play in dungeons, ive noticed a lot of overworld PVE/wvw players go glass cannon, own everything then come to dungeons and get destroyed, just in case you were… you probably shouldnt

honestly; dungeons are easy (i havent done coe p3 any cof or any arah though) as long as you can work out the mechanics of each boss, you arent glass cannon, are apt at playing your classes (other team mates classes too; knowing thats a well of blindness and staying in it, instead of kiting out of it, or that healing rain cures conditions -so you dont blow your cond removal) and are appropriately geared/traited/utilities