Guild Wars 2

Since some people said that it’s okay for me to post this here goes:

This is one of two runs they did that evening. The second run is the one where the little excerpt from Nikaido came from. This one shows a full run, no glitches, no exploits, mild screw up 12 minutes total.

You can tell it’s post-patch because the Mesmer picks up Dragon Coffers here and there.

Any questions about builds or tactics, feel free to ask. Nikaido was one of the Warriors in that run as well.

EDIT: I removed the link to the video because the person that recorded it requested me. Apparently, he did care, but since this is his privacy, I respect it. When a new video is available or the one I posted earlier has its audio redone, it will be posted again.

Just did three path run with a half pug group. First two path went perfectly fine. I knew F/U would go bad because we had to replace a melee guard pug and the next pug to join was a pure ranged thief who never used melee weapons.

First kitten up happened at vines. While during the first two paths our vine fight went perfectly fine, during that third run, we got totalled. We killed the boss way too slowly which has let all six vine adds spawn so the few of us in melee got overwhelmed by the six vines and we wiped. We had to go to full ranged fight when we respawn and had to kite a lot. The fight was still within the realm of “okay”, not good but passably doable.
Same thing for a couple other bosses, it was mostly a kite fest at range.

Then the end. I didn’t say anything. I wanted to see exactly what happens when you let pugs have their way. So we fought the F/U end boss with a pistol thief and a bow ranger. The bow ranger btw didn’t even have full exotic equipment (as seen through the generic bow skin used that comes from white/blue things). This is bad because lvl 80 characters downscaled have worse stats than low lvl char that fits the level of the dungeon. Yes, you’ll have more +power on a char that fits TA’s level than a 80 with blue/green.
Of course, we failed. We took way too long to kill the boss, all reflect went down and we wiped. The fight became nearly impossible unless you try to kite for hours.

Which is something, in my opinion, that is perfectly fine. If you want to be a ranged kitten you gotta pay the price. This run truly explained to me why and how groups come to fail this and then complain in this thread.

This boss has a mechanic that reminds me of enrage timers in other mmo. Content should not be accessible to every group who wants to use green bows and pistol thieves.

I was in the group Nikaido was describing. The problem that pugs are having is that they’r not fast or coordinated enough to do it right the first time, so they wipe to the enrage mechanic (whether intention by the devs or not), then the room is in a state that’s probably undefeatable by 95% of groups if not more. I have no problem with engrage mechanics disfavoring parties that don’t coordinate and bring enough DPS/utilities, but the only thing that bugs me the way the setup is now is that the dozens and dozens of spiders left over from the first attempt are still there, leaving the room in that horrible state. I think it’d be fine if the spiders just despawned when you wipe, but then would come right back if you fail the DPS check again. That way it at least gives a semi-uncoordinated team a chance to consider their mistakes and correct it at the boss, rather than having to reset and redo the entire dungeon. Especially since that’s the path with Vevina, the most annoying fight in all 3 paths IMO.

I guess it’s just a difference of degrees, whether you think a failed group should have to redo the boss fight or redo the entire dungeon.

I agree with Broadicea that a good way to fix the issues most PUGs have is to despawn the spiders you pop from the run before that.

I don’t know, now I kind of wanna go out and do F/U, spawn all the spiders, retreat and see if it’s still possible then.

But the point wasn’t that people in this thread were complaining about that being unbalanced. Most people complained that they didn’t bring the reflects that are available to them in a fight that not just favors reflects, but almost requires them.

I am an ahole so I really don’t mind the current state of things. Because I think it can only push the average pugging culture into using better group set ups, weapons and man up a little, which will make everything go better.
Since you were in that run, you must have realized the difference you felt as soon as we started F/U, I mean, before the path selection itself, just at the vine.. having these two ranged guys really kittened the vine fight. If that kind of boss can break the instance for people who have never had the motivation to use the right weapon set and melee things, maybe the fact that they can’t even complete the dungeon will finally motivate them and push more people into playing correctly, with decent gear, weapon sets and builds and end this “you can be and do anything and sleep through a run” nonsense.

Should players be punished for failure ? This game has almost nothing that punish failure, so I don’t really mind that there is a single dungeon path in this game where failure means losing the run or having to spend 40 minutes trying to succeed through he kiting method. Old school games have always been like this. A lot of old school games made you play through the whole level again if you messed up. It’s nothing new, but it’s something that does grate new players.

In some old school MMORPG if you died failure meant that other players could loot your corpse.

Losing out on 60 measly token and some exp is not that much of a punishment compared to what older MMORPG did to you when you failed. For me, this change to this path is going into the right direction, and more content in this game should be like this.

Bright.9160:

Most people complained that they didn’t bring the reflects that are available to them in a fight that not just favors reflects, but almost requires them.

I think that’s a semi-reasonable complaint, too be honest. ANet’s design philosophy was/is that you can do all dungeon content with any group composition. Not saying I agree with how they wish to balance content around that philosophy, but if the fight is insanely difficult without the use of reflection/absorption skills, that’s probably a ‘balance issue’ with the encounter.

I havent touched that path in months, so i dont have first hand experience of the fight,

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

I think that’s a semi-reasonable complaint, too be honest. ANet’s design philosophy was/is that you can do all dungeon content with any group composition. Not saying I agree with how they wish to balance content around that philosophy, but if the fight is insanely difficult without the use of reflection/absorption skills, that’s probably a ‘balance issue’ with the encounter.

I havent touched that path in months, so i dont have first hand experience of the fight,

Although I agree to a certain extent that the fight might not be entirely balanced to allow for any group composition, I personally think that’s hardly ever the case in the game anyway. It’s just that most boss mechanics that favor one thing or another are so laughable anyway some people don’t even notice. Although, Anet’s philosophy was that you can complete it with any composition. They never said how smooth it would go… You could complete this fight with 4 warriors and a Mesmer if everyone kites around as proposed higher, they would be able to complete it, but it’s not going to be an enjoyable experience for everyone involved.

What really grinded my gears in this thread though was the guy that complained that he couldn’t finish this path using 2 mesmers, a guardian, an ele and a warrior, and the reason was that it were his WvW buddies and they didn’t want to change their skills or traits.

It’s as if people want to get the reward for completing a dungeon by just zoning in to be honest. And people can’t stand failure or learn from it in this game anymore. If they failed something in a dungeon, the dungeon must be OP, or the mechanics must be broken. But god forbid they learn something from it and adapt their play style, because that would be against “their way” to play the game.

Nikaido.3457:

snip

Agreed basically, redoing the path is a pretty small penalty compared to even stuff like GW1, losing the money it took to go to UW or FOW.

Broadicea.8294:

Nikaido.3457:

snip

Agreed basically, redoing the path is a pretty small penalty compared to even stuff like GW1, losing the money it took to go to UW or FOW.

Well, it’s not like that was such a big punishment either…

“Oh noes, I lost anywhere from 100g to 1k depending on whether or not we split the cost or if I used a scroll.”

Bright.9160:

Broadicea.8294:

Nikaido.3457:

snip

Agreed basically, redoing the path is a pretty small penalty compared to even stuff like GW1, losing the money it took to go to UW or FOW.

Well, it’s not like that was such a big punishment either…

“Oh noes, I lost anywhere from 100g to 1k depending on whether or not we split the cost or if I used a scroll.”

True, true.

I think pugs will just have to suck it up and learn this stuff eventually. It’s been months and months and players are finally learning that berserker gear should be the end goal for PvE. Eventually the idea that they’re going to have to utilize reflects, group coordination, and god forbid, voice chat, it just gonna have to sink in. The AC changes that kitten ed off all the whiny babies have not been reverted. That’s a good sign. It might take forever, but maybe dungeons are being made harder.

(still need to up the rewards, but it’s nice to have things that people can’t sleepwalk through)

striker.3704:

striker.3704:

striker.3704:

Me and my guildies did this dungeon path earlier today, we tried:
1. having 2-3 guardians using wall of reflection and sanctuary (spiders ignored both)
2. hitting the boss from a range (aggroed the entire room as soon as we made contact with the boss)
3.Killing all the spiders (killed about 6 entire rooms full before deciding that they simply spawned endlessly)

None of which worked. The only way we could complete it is by having everyone circle strafe the boss while using some form of maintainable speed boost. If you do this, even if it’s only a 15% boost, you can out run the spiders’ attacks and focus on the boss.

Whoru? 2-3 guardians and you couldn’t pull this off?

• Stand in melee range
• Chain wall of reflection
• Stand inside the wall
• Profit

Yeah we did stand inside it, the projectiles still hit us.

this! we brought 4 guardians using WoR, SoA and Sanctuary, but the spiders ignored everything while standing in a clusterkitten of projectile reflection/absorption utilities. the way we did it was by running circles with swiftness and ranged the boss down, but it took a few attempts to get it done. Anet needs to go back to the drawing board when it comes to this encounter’s design.

The fact that you need certain classes to complete a dungeon moves away from Arenanets “Dont need certain class for certain content” Reason they removed the healer etc. Also the philosphy that Arenanet has to balancing is really wierd.

If they want players to stop farming a certain dungeon/event and spread out, they just make that popular dungeon really hard. If they want players to try different build they make that build really weak. Its a really awkward strategy that only makes people move onto the next easy run or the next best build.

However for this path I believe it is a bug because there is no way that a party can pass this if they are slightly out of sync and do not have a guardian. Feels like they tried to fix something and broke something else. Make the spiders weaker or spawn less…this dungeon is so bad.

I would like to share my two cents here on TA and something more.

First, who am I? A pugger and I’m not ashamed of it.
Why am I a pugger? Because I’ve played GW2 for not more than 2 weeks.
Why do I think I’m entitled to discuss about TA path forward up? Because I completed it with a PUG, and I’m farming TA since level 55.
To put in prospective: I needed 2000 blossoms. Now I need only 690. In two weeks (leveling included): punch the numbers in your computers, people.
Maybe some of you will even recognize the name “Cyridven”, at least from LFG…

But more about “Forward/up”: has it been an easy run? No, but we didn’t surrender: if there is a thing I loathe in dungeon exp, is when a team member rage quit because “it’s too difficult”, “You’re noobs”, “I won’t listen to you: YOLO” and so on…

“We are struggling together!”
Speaking with the team, listen to each other is the only way to do it, IMO. Especially in PUG: we discussed at least 4 strategies with 4 wipes before winning the spider tree…
So ask about the noob if you have to carry one.
Or not, if you prefer to do dungeon speed run only.

And btw: PUG will remain a cowshed until you leave it that way. Training noobs is hard work, I know it, but I know for sure too that you can do it. It has been done, it can be done even in GW2: especially in GW2, where something like “guilds” exists.

I’m not interested in what will you do with my post: burn it, despise me, hug me… don’t care. It’s just my way to say thank you to the team with which I won path forward/up.

First and foremost: “berserk gear”.
Is it fair that to complete a level 55 dungeon, you need at all cost level 80 equipment master crafted and a team with full spectrum gear? Because this is the question for me. Is it fair that to do a successful exploration of a dungeon, you need to know it beforehand, every nook and cranny, and have a level 80 team downscaled, with tested teamwork?
Maybe it’s just me, but something seems amiss: like… 25 levels. And some thousands of points earned.
But maybe it’s just me.
I’m not complaining about the challenge: the harder the better, It’s just…
Is it fair that tricks have become the “right” and only way to do a dungeon? Is it fair that using every safe spot available is the only “WAY”, because the others are almost impossible for a PUG team?
You tell me: I’m too much of a rookie to know the answer.

The TEAM:
For the spider tree, we were 2 guardian, 2 elementalists and one warrior (me).
No mesmer, no necro, no condition thief.
The Guardians were experienced, the elementalists less so (I’m using your scale of values: I was just the zero of the team :-).

The strategy:
Full ranged: we created our personal Thermopylae in front of the tree, right where the hallway becomes the room with the boss (where the aggro zone start).
After 4 wipes, we did it like this: the guardians aggro and kill the spiders.
If the guardians wipe… the team is gone: they are the first and last defensive line of the team.
The 2 Guardians of my team were awesome : like the two doors to hell.
Nothing alive could go past them.
Elementalists help them as much as possible, focusing fire on the tree when free.
In my team, they were a mix and match of water and earth: while one of them kept us alive, the other helped making the spiders dead.
The Warrior helped where needed: I was toting 2 axes and a rifle, dishing pain and eating dirt a lot, shooting the tree with the rifle and using axes with the spiders.
It wasn’t easy, it wasn’t fast: but we did it.
And it’s doable with a semi decent team too.

I hope to have been of some use and at least to have shaken the tree a little, so to speak.

Arrow.3856:

The fact that you need certain classes to complete a dungeon moves away from Arenanets “Dont need certain class for certain content” Reason they removed the healer etc. Also the philosphy that Arenanet has to balancing is really wierd.

If they want players to stop farming a certain dungeon/event and spread out, they just make that popular dungeon really hard. If they want players to try different build they make that build really weak. Its a really awkward strategy that only makes people move onto the next easy run or the next best build.

However for this path I believe it is a bug because there is no way that a party can pass this if they are slightly out of sync and do not have a guardian. Feels like they tried to fix something and broke something else. Make the spiders weaker or spawn less…this dungeon is so bad.

necros are the only class with no projectile reflection or absorption skills. Unless you insist on doing this path with 5 necros it is still very doable with a little bit of coordination.

I wouldn’t really count the non-aoe or tiny aoe absorbs/reflects that you can’t actually do anything during as being on the same level as a real projectile reflection/absorption skill. A warrior blocking with their shield isn’t doing much…

A warrior blocking all the spider projectiles with their shield stance allows the rest of the team to dps. Obviously shield stance doesn’t have 100% up time so the rest of the group need to fill in with their skills,

Shield stance is also only the size of a single player’kittenbox…

lol @ that censorship

but yeah strictly speaking warriors can block off the spiders with shield stance if everyone stack really tight (doesn’t have to be exact, this game has some leniency in this type of positioning. If something shoots stuff at me and the person beside me has aegis, the aegis proc always take priority even if they are like half a step away from me. I see this all the time in WvW, don’t see why it wouldn’t be true in pve) or if the warrior has fast enough reflexes to run around and catch all the projectiles.

Also, probably beside the point but when a group needs to rely on a warrior for defensive utilities things don’t look good lol.

This is not QQ, this is not sarcasm, this is a really question – how can this boss be done without a guardian or mesmer?

My group was an ele, a necro, a ranger, a warrior, and a thief. Every part up until that point was fine, but even with everyone melee dpsing the boss we would die too fast to the massive amounts of spiders. We had no access to chain reflects, so what should we have done?

rfdarko.4639:

This is not QQ, this is not sarcasm, this is a really question – how can this boss be done without a guardian or mesmer?

My group was an ele, a necro, a ranger, a warrior, and a thief. Every part up until that point was fine, but even with everyone melee dpsing the boss we would die too fast to the massive amounts of spiders. We had no access to chain reflects, so what should we have done?

You couldn’t… This is not sarcasm: it’s hard truth.
Without a mesmer and (or?) 2 guardian, this path is impossible.
And to add something more to the conversation, I did again with a PUG, this time full melee.
We were a mesmer, 2 guardians and 2 warrior. We aimed for the crotch of the tree from the start, cycling protection and ignoring the mobs.
We did it in one go, but we won narrowly: half the team (myself included) wiped before escaping the room.
At the moment, the only 2 working strategies seems to be full melee (but how many teams can do this in PUG?), or a perfect ranged teamwork with 2 guardians for aggro and destructions of the spiders, forgetting about AOE damage to the tree (again, how many PUGs can pull this off?)

Wukunlin.8461:

…
Also, probably beside the point but when a group needs to rely on a warrior for defensive utilities things don’t look good lol.

This too it’s an hard truth XD

Mander.6924:

(again, how many PUGs can pull this off?)

I’ll have to quote Hrouda on this :

Of course when they stepped into explorable that was a different experience, since we built our explorable dungeons to directly challenge a coordinated 5 man group.

That something, for once, can’t be done well/easily in a pug directly follows anet’s intent for the dungeons. The fact that a lot of dungeons are faceroll in pugs is just an indication that they did it wrong, not that they wanted any sort of random pick up group or team composition to faceroll content.

“How many pugs can do this” is not an argument against anything related to dungeons.

If that ticks you off, do what you’re supposed to do in a MMO and find a more permanent team to play with. MMO are “social” games as in you’re better off playing with the same people you know and trust over time than trying for the russian roulette every day.

Nikaido.3457:

Mander.6924:

(again, how many PUGs can pull this off?)

I’ll have to quote Hrouda on this :

Of course when they stepped into explorable that was a different experience, since we built our explorable dungeons to directly challenge a coordinated 5 man group.

That something, for once, can’t be done well/easily in a pug directly follows anet’s intent for the dungeons. The fact that a lot of dungeons are faceroll in pugs is just an indication that they did it wrong, not that they wanted any sort of random pick up group or team composition to faceroll content.

“How many pugs can do this” is not an argument against anything related to dungeons.

If that ticks you off, do what you’re supposed to do in a MMO and find a more permanent team to play with. MMO are “social” games as in you’re better off playing with the same people you know and trust over time than trying for the russian roulette every day.

Probably you red my words harsher than I intended: mine is an interested concern, not a whine. I’m not interested at all to begin a kitten ing contest with a more experienced player as yourself, I’ve only to lose to something like this.
I’m just curious: is really path forward/up of TA a level 55 dungeon? Doable as a PUG?
I don’t think so, but I base this realization only on my extensive farming of all the paths of TA.
I don’t need, nor want it changed, what I would like is something like a billboard on the entrance of TA (or something like that) telling “Path forward up is not for beginners, nor for level 55 players. Is a difficult dungeon for experienced party only.”
This would suffice: not everyone is a veteran in GW2.

And maybe “How many pugs can do this” is really not an argument against anything related to dungeons, but “L2P nob” and “Get on my level!” surely aren’t good arguments to rebut it.

I’ll quote Hrouda as many times as you want since you seem to suffer from heavily impaired reading comprehension.

Of course when they stepped into explorable that was a different experience, since we built our explorable dungeons to directly challenge a coordinated 5 man group.

This is an explorable. It doesn’t need a billboard stating that this path is not for beginners. Story mode were intended for beginners.
You again miss the point. Your question is irrelevant (can pug do this path) because whether a random pug kitten group can complete something is not within the requirements for an explorable path. It is for story modes.

Nikaido.3457:

I’ll quote Hrouda as many times as you want since you seem to suffer from heavily impaired reading comprehension.

Of course when they stepped into explorable that was a different experience, since we built our explorable dungeons to directly challenge a coordinated 5 man group.

This is an explorable. It doesn’t need a billboard stating that this path is not for beginners. Story mode were intended for beginners.
You again miss the point. Your question is irrelevant (can pug do this path) because whether a random pug kitten group can complete something is not within the requirements for an explorable path. It is for story modes.

I think you’re a little too full of yourself to actually read the opinions of others…
Sigh, why do I bother?
TA is a fifty five level dungeon: this, I believe, is commmon knowledge.
What I’m asking is: is really TA forward/ up a level 55 exploring dungeon? Or is it a little more (or a lot more) challenging than this?
Not that this is bad: I would just like to know why, and share my experiences with this particular path.
Why labels forward/up as a level 55 dungeon, when we know as a fact, that we need a fully level 80 team with level 80 gears, with tested teamwork, just to hope to complete it?
And why this abysmal difference with the other two paths? Why is it needed?
And your rudeness don’t promote your arguments more than exploiting Hrouda quotes: I refuse to believe you don’t know the difference between the coordination required to do the 3 different paths of TA, paths that are supposed to be doable in the same range of team, skills and level.

Mander.6924:

Nikaido.3457:

I’ll quote Hrouda as many times as you want since you seem to suffer from heavily impaired reading comprehension.

Of course when they stepped into explorable that was a different experience, since we built our explorable dungeons to directly challenge a coordinated 5 man group.

This is an explorable. It doesn’t need a billboard stating that this path is not for beginners. Story mode were intended for beginners.
You again miss the point. Your question is irrelevant (can pug do this path) because whether a random pug kitten group can complete something is not within the requirements for an explorable path. It is for story modes.

I think you’re a little too full of yourself to actually read the opinions of others…
Sigh, why do I bother?
TA is a fifty five level dungeon: this, I believe, is commmon knowledge.
What I’m asking is: is really TA forward/ up a level 55 exploring dungeon? Or is it a little more (or a lot more) challenging than this?
Not that this is bad: I would just like to know why, and share my experiences with this particular path.
Why labels forward/up as a level 55 dungeon, when we know as a fact, that we need a fully level 80 team with level 80 gears, with tested teamwork, just to hope to complete it?
And why this abysmal difference with the other two paths? Why is it needed?
And your rudeness don’t promote your arguments more than exploiting Hrouda quotes: I refuse to believe you don’t know the difference between the coordination required to do the 3 different paths of TA, paths that are supposed to be doable in the same range of team, skills and level.

In a coordinated group you dont need to be all level 80’s and full exotic to complete the path, (as seen in the no armor boss kill video) so I think it can be done with 55’s. That means all the path requires is a coordinated group which is competent with there professions.. although some classes help more then others (guards mostly)

Mander.6924:

I think you’re a little too full of yourself to actually read the opinions of others…
Sigh, why do I bother?
TA is a fifty five level dungeon: this, I believe, is commmon knowledge.
What I’m asking is: is really TA forward/ up a level 55 exploring dungeon? Or is it a little more (or a lot more) challenging than this?
Not that this is bad: I would just like to know why, and share my experiences with this particular path.
Why labels forward/up as a level 55 dungeon, when we know as a fact, that we need a fully level 80 team with level 80 gears, with tested teamwork, just to hope to complete it?
And why this abysmal difference with the other two paths? Why is it needed?
And your rudeness don’t promote your arguments more than exploiting Hrouda quotes: I refuse to believe you don’t know the difference between the coordination required to do the 3 different paths of TA, paths that are supposed to be doable in the same range of team, skills and level.

We did it without armor boosts at all, so I think lvl 55 with lvl 55 armor would be perfectly fine, with maybe a couple deaths before the boss dies. A lot of people like you complained right after AC was changed that AC couldn’t be done at lvl 35 too, same type of complaints, and a group of people who were levelling their alts banded together and put up a video showing a full team of 35 doing AC.. but it didn’t stop all the whining so I guess the effort was nice but useless.
I’m not exploiting Hrouda’s quote, you’re just too hurt at the thought that there might be content in the game not tailored for random people who have zero communication.
As for all paths from the same dungeon being supposedly doable by a team with the same amount of skill.. have you even ran a dungeon other than TA ? None of the dungeons in this game are like this. SE P2 is much more of a pain in pugs. Arah Path 4. AC Path 2 is almost never ran in pugs. CoF path 3 requires at least three people with a brain to get past the torch part without losing your mind.

Your belief that all dungeon explorable path should have the same amount of difficulty stems from ignorance of this game dungeons.

Anyway I love the “lvl 80 with lvl 80” gear sentence. You don’t even need a full 80 armor set to do this.

Delay.6908:

Mander.6924:

Nikaido.3457:

I’ll quote Hrouda as many times as you want since you seem to suffer from heavily impaired reading comprehension.

Of course when they stepped into explorable that was a different experience, since we built our explorable dungeons to directly challenge a coordinated 5 man group.

This is an explorable. It doesn’t need a billboard stating that this path is not for beginners. Story mode were intended for beginners.
You again miss the point. Your question is irrelevant (can pug do this path) because whether a random pug kitten group can complete something is not within the requirements for an explorable path. It is for story modes.

I think you’re a little too full of yourself to actually read the opinions of others…
Sigh, why do I bother?
TA is a fifty five level dungeon: this, I believe, is commmon knowledge.
What I’m asking is: is really TA forward/ up a level 55 exploring dungeon? Or is it a little more (or a lot more) challenging than this?
Not that this is bad: I would just like to know why, and share my experiences with this particular path.
Why labels forward/up as a level 55 dungeon, when we know as a fact, that we need a fully level 80 team with level 80 gears, with tested teamwork, just to hope to complete it?
And why this abysmal difference with the other two paths? Why is it needed?
And your rudeness don’t promote your arguments more than exploiting Hrouda quotes: I refuse to believe you don’t know the difference between the coordination required to do the 3 different paths of TA, paths that are supposed to be doable in the same range of team, skills and level.

In a coordinated group you dont need to be all level 80’s and full exotic to complete the path, (as seen in the no armor boss kill video) so I think it can be done with 55’s. That means all the path requires is a coordinated group which is competent with there professions.. although some classes help more then others (guards mostly)

I woudln’t use the “no armor run” as an example to show how this path is not difficult at all XD.
It is awesome, but I don’t think that even a random team of experienced people could do the same. Or win this boss.
The coordination of a team is mandatory for win even path up… but the oddity of path forward/up is the complexity spike of the final boss, which at the moment, don’t have a credible, IMO, reason to be.
It can be rewarding as hell to win this, but again, why is needed to create such an anomaly in a level fifty five dungeon? Because the rest of the path is doable with level 60 gears and I know because I’ve done it.

It’s only the final boss that put path forward/up of TA in a different rank and it’s an oddity I don’t comprend. It seems almost a way to close 1/3 of a very nice dungeon to people who PUGs.

Mander.6924:

The coordination of a team is mandatory for win even path up… but the oddity of path forward/up is the complexity spike of the final boss, which at the moment, don’t have a credible, IMO, reason to be.
It can be rewarding as hell to win this, but again, why is needed to create such an anomaly in kitten level dungeon? Because the rest of the path is doable with level 60 gears and I know because I’ve done it.

The complexity spike of the final boss isn’t the problem, it’s the failure of anet to make the rest of the dungeon like that.

HROUDA

Of course when they stepped into explorable that was a different experience, since we built our explorable dungeons to directly challenge a coordinated 5 man group.

The TA F/U Tree meets that standard. The rest of the dungeon does not. The failure is the rest of the dungeon.

Nikaido.3457:

Mander.6924:

I think you’re a little too full of yourself to actually read the opinions of others…
Sigh, why do I bother?
TA is a fifty five level dungeon: this, I believe, is commmon knowledge.
What I’m asking is: is really TA forward/ up a level 55 exploring dungeon? Or is it a little more (or a lot more) challenging than this?
Not that this is bad: I would just like to know why, and share my experiences with this particular path.
Why labels forward/up as a level 55 dungeon, when we know as a fact, that we need a fully level 80 team with level 80 gears, with tested teamwork, just to hope to complete it?
And why this abysmal difference with the other two paths? Why is it needed?
And your rudeness don’t promote your arguments more than exploiting Hrouda quotes: I refuse to believe you don’t know the difference between the coordination required to do the 3 different paths of TA, paths that are supposed to be doable in the same range of team, skills and level.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZBkjdkhi0c

We did it without armor boosts at all, so I think lvl 55 with lvl 55 armor would be perfectly fine, with maybe a couple deaths before the boss dies. A lot of people like you complained right after AC was changed that AC couldn’t be done at lvl 35 too, same type of complaints, and a group of people who were levelling their alts banded together and put up a video showing a full team of 35 doing AC.. but it didn’t stop all the whining so I guess the effort was nice but useless.
I’m not exploiting Hrouda’s quote, you’re just too hurt at the thought that there might be content in the game not tailored for random people who have zero communication.
As for all paths from the same dungeon being supposedly doable by a team with the same amount of skill.. have you even ran a dungeon other than TA ? None of the dungeons in this game are like this. SE P2 is much more of a pain in pugs. Arah Path 4. AC Path 2 is almost never ran in pugs. CoF path 3 requires at least three people with a brain to get past the torch part without losing your mind.

Your belief that all dungeon explorable path should have the same amount of difficulty stems from ignorance of this game dungeons.

Anyway I love the “lvl 80 with lvl 80” gear sentence. You don’t even need a full 80 armor set to do this.

a) Lol what? If a team want to go YOLO, fine for me. I’m not one of them and for the love of the Grove, I surely do not support them. Quite the opposite, in fact.

b) Have you even ran a dungeon other than TA?
Yes: I can be new, but I’m not so inexperienced…
I’ve not ran the other dungeons so extensively as TA, but at the moment, I miss only Honor of the Waves, Arah and Cof. I tried more than once every other dungeons, in PUG and in party and, IMO, the differences beetween every of their path isn’t so big as in TA….
So I beg to differ with your statment.

It’s not a coordinated group, it’s a very specific set of classes. You need a guard or mes. To me, there’s a world of difference in that. If it was a matter of traiting, correct stat allocation, skill and weapon selection, and effective communication, that would be one thing. But none of that matters if you do not have reflections. if a group of 5 different classes does not have the means to deal with the mechanic, something is wrong.

Broadicea.8294:

Mander.6924:

The coordination of a team is mandatory for win even path up… but the oddity of path forward/up is the complexity spike of the final boss, which at the moment, don’t have a credible, IMO, reason to be.
It can be rewarding as hell to win this, but again, why is needed to create such an anomaly in kitten level dungeon? Because the rest of the path is doable with level 60 gears and I know because I’ve done it.

The complexity spike of the final boss isn’t the problem, it’s the failure of anet to make the rest of the dungeon like that.

HROUDA

Of course when they stepped into explorable that was a different experience, since we built our explorable dungeons to directly challenge a coordinated 5 man group.

The TA F/U Tree meets that standard. The rest of the dungeon does not. The failure is the rest of the dungeon.

I would have almost understood this and maybe preferred too. XD
Spider Defiler: now with 8 times the attack power. Every time is hit, release a couple of suicide spiders who poison and explode for AOE.
Spider bees: because insta kill bees swarms it’s too mainstream.
Spider Vivena. Special ability: after her shadow step, summon 6 spiders, all of them with chaos armor.

I believe we need a new meme:
Spiders rush is the new zerg rush.
Or the mighty Colin in “Yo dawg, I heard you liked spiders, so we put spiders in your spiders, so you can spider while you spider.”

rfdarko.4639:

It’s not a coordinated group, it’s a very specific set of classes. You need a guard or mes. To me, there’s a world of difference in that. If it was a matter of traiting, correct stat allocation, skill and weapon selection, and effective communication, that would be one thing. But none of that matters if you do not have reflections. if a group of 5 different classes does not have the means to deal with the mechanic, something is wrong.

This sense of entitlement to being able to complete anything in the game with any class with any gear and any build is unique to the GW2 community.

You have 5 character slots. Use them.

Broadicea.8294:

rfdarko.4639:

It’s not a coordinated group, it’s a very specific set of classes. You need a guard or mes. To me, there’s a world of difference in that. If it was a matter of traiting, correct stat allocation, skill and weapon selection, and effective communication, that would be one thing. But none of that matters if you do not have reflections. if a group of 5 different classes does not have the means to deal with the mechanic, something is wrong.

This sense of entitlement to being able to complete anything in the game with any class with any gear and any build is unique to the GW2 community.

You have 5 character slots. Use them.

And may I ask about those who have only 1/2 characters atm? What do they have to do when thery’re kicked from a party because they don’t have a char with complementary abilities to the team? (Ranger for TA just for instance?)
Sit on a broomstick?

Uhm, they make another character?

swiftpaw.6397:

Uhm, they make another character?

So not having the time to level 5 different characters (guardian, mesmer, necro, elementalist, thief) is a reason good enough to kick someone?
XD

Broadicea.8294:

rfdarko.4639:

It’s not a coordinated group, it’s a very specific set of classes. You need a guard or mes. To me, there’s a world of difference in that. If it was a matter of traiting, correct stat allocation, skill and weapon selection, and effective communication, that would be one thing. But none of that matters if you do not have reflections. if a group of 5 different classes does not have the means to deal with the mechanic, something is wrong.

This sense of entitlement to being able to complete anything in the game with any class with any gear and any build is unique to the GW2 community.

You have 5 character slots. Use them.

You did not read what I said. I did not say any gear, any build, or any class. I specifically said I wouldn’t mind retraiting, regearing, switching weapons, changing up tactics, etc. But my friends and I literally cannot do this dungeon together because we chose the wrong class. It’s not challenging, it is simply impossible unless one of us rerolls the “right” class. How is that in anyway a good thing? When 6 out of 8 classes do not have the means to defet the boss, regardless of spec or weapon set?

Mander.6924:

swiftpaw.6397:

Uhm, they make another character?

So not having the time to level 5 different characters (guardian, mesmer, necro, elementalist, thief) is a reason good enough to kick someone?
XD

Well technically you can just pick one and lvl it. An ele or a war or a guard or whatever. Not hard with crafting, not to mention all the free booster hand outs. Sitting on the same poor class and expecting other people to deal with it because you cant be bothered to make another one isn’t the answer. The real issue, and the one you really should be getting mad at is Arena Net for making the classes the way they are. It really isn’t fair that some classes provide more for a group than others. But that’s what happens when they are too lazy to split pve and pvp skills and sit in denial. Kicking someone for thier class I find isn’t a really valid reason, but at the same time, I have seen enough shortbow auto attack bear pet rangers to understand why.

swiftpaw.6397:

Mander.6924:

swiftpaw.6397:

Uhm, they make another character?

So not having the time to level 5 different characters (guardian, mesmer, necro, elementalist, thief) is a reason good enough to kick someone?
XD

Well technically you can just pick one and lvl it. An ele or a war or a guard or whatever. Not hard with crafting, not to mention all the free booster hand outs. Sitting on the same poor class and expecting other people to deal with it because you cant be bothered to make another one isn’t the answer. The real issue, and the one you really should be getting mad at is Arena Net for making the classes the way they are. It really isn’t fair that some classes provide more for a group than others. But that’s what happens when they are too lazy to split pve and pvp skills and sit in denial. Kicking someone for thier class I find isn’t a really valid reason, but at the same time, I have seen enough shortbow auto attack bear pet rangers to understand why.

And for these precise reasons, my first char is a Warrior builded as a boulder…
I would love to go mad with crafting, but atm I need a little more gold to buy ore: sadly, the first char is always so poor
And this is the other reason why I farm dungeons…

Nikaido.3457:

We did it without armor boosts at all, so I think lvl 55 with lvl 55 armor would be perfectly fine, with maybe a couple deaths before the boss dies.

Not gonna run the numbers, but i’m even betting that lvl 55’s in appropriate gear would out stat your 80’s without armor… people who keep saying ‘must be lvl 80’ clearly don’t notice what happens to their stats when they bring an 80 into a non-80 area.

Mander.6924:

swiftpaw.6397:

Mander.6924:

swiftpaw.6397:

Uhm, they make another character?

So not having the time to level 5 different characters (guardian, mesmer, necro, elementalist, thief) is a reason good enough to kick someone?
XD

Well technically you can just pick one and lvl it. An ele or a war or a guard or whatever. Not hard with crafting, not to mention all the free booster hand outs. Sitting on the same poor class and expecting other people to deal with it because you cant be bothered to make another one isn’t the answer. The real issue, and the one you really should be getting mad at is Arena Net for making the classes the way they are. It really isn’t fair that some classes provide more for a group than others. But that’s what happens when they are too lazy to split pve and pvp skills and sit in denial. Kicking someone for thier class I find isn’t a really valid reason, but at the same time, I have seen enough shortbow auto attack bear pet rangers to understand why.

And for these precise reasons, my first char is a Warrior builded as a boulder…
I would love to go mad with crafting, but atm I need a little more gold to buy ore: sadly, the first char is always so poor
And this is the other reason why I farm dungeons…

Just always have a pickaxe when you’re roaming, the materials in your level of zone will match the requirements to craft your level of gear. When my first character hit 80 i had the mats to craft his armor and jewellery just from my own collecting, and at the time those mats would look way more expensive :P

rfdarko.4639:

It’s not a coordinated group, it’s a very specific set of classes. You need a guard or mes. To me, there’s a world of difference in that. If it was a matter of traiting, correct stat allocation, skill and weapon selection, and effective communication, that would be one thing. But none of that matters if you do not have reflections. if a group of 5 different classes does not have the means to deal with the mechanic, something is wrong.

guardian, mesmer, thief (smokescreen), ranger (whirling defense), ele (swirling winds), all have reflection/absorption skills of at least 20% up time. Engi can throw elixir U to help out as well.

tl;dr

We just did it with 3 war and 2 necro, you go behind the big guy and then 2 necro overheal the spider damage and cure poison while the 2 war kills spider and occasionally chop the tree and one war stays on the tree, it was not that slow.
We are doing it every day now to increase speed as we did to arah p4 BS simin dps check. Because if it’s long and not rewarding, we farm it with only necro and war until it’s fast, then we go sPvP.

The Sixteenth.2561:

tl;dr

We just did it with 3 war and 2 necro, you go behind the big guy and then 2 necro overheal the spider damage and cure poison while the 2 war kills spider and occasionally chop the tree and one war stays on the tree, it was not that slow.
We are doing it every day now to increase speed as we did to arah p4 BS simin dps check. Because if it’s long and not rewarding, we farm it with only necro and war until it’s fast, then we go sPvP.

I’d love to see a video of this – not because I doubt you but because as a necro I’d like to see how I can be credit to team on this fight. It sounds like your method is to beat the dps check, with just enough healing and condi clear to get the wars through til the end. Not sure that would work without 3 wars, but I’m glad to see another method.

Urg so much stupidity in this thread in support for an obvious flaw/glitched boss.

I can solo this on my mesmer. Takes 23 minutes, but I can still solo it. Does that mean it’s a fair boss? Hell no.

What’s so unfair about it?

Kagato.5390:

Urg so much stupidity in this thread in support for an obvious flaw/glitched boss.

I’m suuuuuure it’s a glitch that the spiders are now aggroing and not letting you afk autoattack a boss like before. I’m suuuuure it was intended by anet for all of you to jump on the leaf and afk auto too.

Get real. What’s happening is that now you have to complete the fight the intended way, something pugs have never done because this boss was one of the most exploited, afkrange boss of the game until now. The groups “strategies” in pugs until now were all about either jumping on something on the map that allowed you to afkauto or to max range it and only kill the first pack while completely ignoring everything else in the room.

They only changed the aggro mechanism to reflect the way boss adds work in other dungeons. Can you ignore the adds from AC P1 boss, or kholer ? Can you ignore the grubs in the grawl shaman fractal ? the fact that you could do this fight while ignoring everything else in the room was the glitch. Not the current situation.

Delay.6908:

In a coordinated group you dont need to be all level 80’s and full exotic to complete the path, (as seen in the no armor boss kill video) so I think it can be done with 55’s. That means all the path requires is a coordinated group which is competent with there professions.. although some classes help more then others (guards mostly)

Yep you don’t need full 80s for this path. I did it while leveling up my second Engineer as some of my Guild needed it for Dungeon Master. I think our party was 2 Engineers, Guard, Mesmer, can’t remember the last slot (just remember they couldn’t bring any reflect to the party), but a few weren’t full 80s.

Nikaido.3457:

Kagato.5390:

Urg so much stupidity in this thread in support for an obvious flaw/glitched boss.

I’m suuuuuure it’s a glitch that the spiders are now aggroing and not letting you afk autoattack a boss like before. I’m suuuuure it was intended by anet for all of you to jump on the leaf and afk auto too.

Get real. What’s happening is that now you have to complete the fight the intended way, something pugs have never done because this boss was one of the most exploited, afkrange boss of the game until now. The groups “strategies” in pugs until now were all about either jumping on something on the map that allowed you to afkauto or to max range it and only kill the first pack while completely ignoring everything else in the room.

I totally agree, the real question now is not whether it should be returned to the way it was. It should be “Now you have to do it the intended way is it now a touch too harsh?” Ie do the spiders a) have too much health b) do too much damage.

I know it’s doable, and I do like the challenge it gives. But I do a lot of dungeons. Not everyone attempting it is as experienced.

I really don’t like this change at all, but I suppose it is fair for one explorer mode path per dungeon to give the ‘elite’ players a challenge. I’ve noticed this in all of the dungeons I’ve run so far (and I almost exclusively run PUGs); there’s always that one path nobody cares for.

As long as the two ‘moderate’ difficulty paths remain unchanged, explorable dungeons make up far too significant a portion of endgame PVE to be hard mode only.