Guild Wars 2

We got through the instance. NO WAY in heck I would do that instance with a pug. You wanna scale that one down a bit? its a little out of control.

God forbid anyone want gear from that instance (like me pout) no one is ever going to want to go back. Difficulty level vs reward is just tooo out of wack.

A zillion knights all over, one of the names were surrounded by 4 knights.
On the last boss the tree vets that spawned did nothing except chain root, stun, knockdown. It was way too much.
Oh and those stupid little trolls at the entrance, did you put them on roids or something?

This is kitten instance? lol at 55 I wasn’t geared like I am now I’m not sure I would have been able to do it.

The gears pretty, the instance is pretty too bad its too much of a PITA to run. =(

haha I said “This is a” ….. “55” instance and it replaced it with “Kitten” Lame!

The last boss is pretty simple. Kite/blind/aegis/cc the adds and lay into the boss. It’s the only version of the nightmare tree that’s melee friendly so it dies at least twice as fast as the other.

Knights are pretty annoying though, blind isn’t reliable against them because of their wells.

Just skip the champion hammer warder, forward forward instantly becomes a joke.

hit a knight with a long range skilled and roll backward
they get aggroed
back up
knight starts to reset at a certain distance (you may wish to get hit once as they’ll leap to you, clearing distance from their friends. With mist form I could single out one knight with ease)
immobilize him, and then annihilate his face (mesmers in the party can use the moa morph to reduce any knight to a laughable encounter)

repeat 4 times.

The tree has literally never been a problem for me. admittedly I used a staff ele for it though, which is basically easy mode for a boss that doesnt move and is rather large (dat meteor shower!)

Explorables are not meant for PuG’s which is why you are struggling, Find a regular team to do dungeons with of decent skill and you’ll see a vast improvement with practice.

All TA expo routes are easy …

Just learn them

Just ran TA for the first time today and did all paths, only ever did story and never explorables until now. It went smooth as butter so I’m not sure where you’re getting this from. And I did run with a guildie, but the other 3 were PuG’d.

your group was just bad

I want to see a dev video of them fighting the next to last boss. 3 hammer dudes and the boss all at the same time. :P

they really arent that hard.just get someone to pull the group then have someone stand a bit behind the large plant(the place where mobs start to reset) and use a pulling skill to pull the mob back.i play necro so i use spectral grasp

I’ve never had any problems with that path. The knights can be solo pulled and the oakhearts are kitable, the group just has to stay mobile while wailing on the tree.

@Fay: you can do most explorable dungeons/routes with a pug, so don’t spew that nonsense. As long as people know what they are doing, it’s not that hard.

Eurosdown.6072:

I’ve never had any problems with that path. The knights can be solo pulled and the oakhearts are kitable, the group just has to stay mobile while wailing on the tree.

@Fay: you can do most explorable dungeons/routes with a pug, so don’t spew that nonsense. As long as people know what they are doing, it’s not that hard.

I did not say that PuG’s can’t do it, I said that they aren’t meant for PuG’s and aren’t designed with PuG’s in mind. Next time please read what I say before claiming it to be nonsense. It’s no secret that explorables were made for organised, well coordinated teams and not PuGs.

Yet people continue to be surprised that they struggle with the content in PuGs, Sure it’s possible to be done with PuGs but there is a high probability you end up with unskilled players, bad teamwork or being kicked at the end of the dungeon before rewards etc.

Your group did it without exploiting AI or using very specific strategies. This is what I mean by dungeons being designed to support the idea of players learning how to do them rather than players using skill.

The wurm boss is easy. There is a location on the hill near him which you can stand and he often won’t shoot at you.

The knight boss is easy. It’s possible to tag the mobs near him, pull them one by one and as soon as they reset, immobilise, snare, stun and generally CC one of them. The others will continue to run back but the snared one will aggro onto the party. If they every change this, I guarantee this path will be killed for pugs as knights (and their knockdowns, along with wolves) are half the reason players skip mobs in here. You can kill his guards one by one making the champion much easier (still possible to die and you need to pay attention, but it’s not a death fest like it would be if you took all four on at once). Pulling is a very common strategy in MMOs and was very frequently used in Guild Wars 1. Colin talked about DoA being too hard for players but when they learned how to do it, it became easier and he wants to repeat that with dungeons in GW2. If you nerf pulling for encounters like this one, you aren’t keeping with the spirit of GW1 and will turn this path into a res run (everyone focus down knight 1, we will wipe but hopefully kill it before all four of them kill us, repeat).

The boss tree in this path is by far the hardest (the other two can be killed by standing at max range and only attacking the tree or spiders that come to you if you are on that path, that will kill the tree without taking any damage). I’ve seen groups that chose to run circles around the boss for the oak hearts and just dps the boss, which is arguably difficult depending on the group. I’ve seen one group that had most of the party behind the boss while one person aggros the oak hearts and runs backwards into the tunnel with the oak hearts chasing him, only to have them reset and run backwards, the person reaggros the mobs and repeats while the rest of the group is ignored. I’ve never seen people kill them, there are too many with too short respawns, ignoring them and circle strafing seems to be far faster while killing them isn’t rewarding at all. Other times I’ve seen people drag the trees to parts of the map where they can be herded and stored there while the group kills the boss (in any other game this is considered a viable strategy and a creative way to approach content – like pacifist Diablo 2 runs, in this game it’s probably an exploit).

People really badly need to qualify their dungeon difficulty posts. If you say it’s easy, tell people the strategy and party composition you used. The water spout/bee path can be a lot easier if you have a mesmer to portal people across it (mesmers can portal people through 80% of the dungeon if they died and you skipped a bunch of mobs or just want to avoid the long walk back). You can also turn the water off if you move on far enough from that part (I think aggroing the second pack of wolves is enough).

Some paths and strategies make it significantly eaiser, some make it much harder. If you are going to outright say it’s hard or easy or someone is bad, explain why it’s easy, explain what you did and why it was hard (usually not a problem) and share your strategies. Sometimes the same encounter approached differently will vary greatly in difficulty.

@Fay I pug TA at least three times a day, usually four and at least 50% of the time I’m with people I’ve never been with before (I’m building up a friends list for this dungeon). I’ve been with groups who have never done the dungeon before and I’ve shown them quickly how most guild or organised groups do the dungeons (barring the runs which skip content, those are often too difficult for pugs – you need to know to avoid blossoms and which parts of the routes don’t have them and when to dodge knockdown attacks, this comes from experience and can’t be observes while running through the first time). Your post annoys me because you seem to think this content is being done more skillfully by organised teams. The people who end up having to play the most skillfully, do the most dodging and squeeze the most survivability, utility, crowd control and team work out of their teams are the pugs who don’t know where to pull mobs to so you can fight free of the blossoms, they are the ones who fight mobs of four instead of one at a time because of pulling, they are the ones who fight four knights in the boss fight instead of one by one. PuGs are doing it harder than organised groups because they often don’t know the dungeon and have specific strategies to turn it into easy mode. With a good leader, pugs will easily move up in efficiency and even become more efficient than many organised teams if they are instructed well and can follow those instructions.

I’d like to see some type of direct healer class introduced to try and rectify some of the arbitrary number-related difficulty in these dungeons. It’d also probably encourage people to group in the overworld if there were more solid class roles. It doesn’t feel right to me and i’ve tried desperately to like it.

lothefallen.7081:

I’d like to see some type of direct healer class introduced to try and rectify some of the arbitrary number-related difficulty in these dungeons. It’d also probably encourage people to group in the overworld if there were more solid class roles. It doesn’t feel right to me and i’ve tried desperately to like it.

I’ve done all dungeons on all paths without exploits up to Arah (Can’t do Arah at the moment because the gate outside is bugged on our server Desolation for a while now). Without needing a healer class.

I’m glad they removed the holy trinity in this game because the holy trinity takes away a lot of the responsibility from certain players while putting the majority of it on tanks and healers. I love that the responsibility is equally shared amongst party members and everyone is responsible for themselves and each other. It means that everyone in the party has to pay attention and be skilled enough in order for everyone as a whole to succeed.

^ Big thumbs up from me to Arenanet for this.

Fay.2735:

Eurosdown.6072:

I’ve never had any problems with that path. The knights can be solo pulled and the oakhearts are kitable, the group just has to stay mobile while wailing on the tree.

@Fay: you can do most explorable dungeons/routes with a pug, so don’t spew that nonsense. As long as people know what they are doing, it’s not that hard.

I did not say that PuG’s can’t do it, I said that they aren’t meant for PuG’s and aren’t designed with PuG’s in mind. Next time please read what I say before claiming it to be nonsense. It’s no secret that explorables were made for organised, well coordinated teams and not PuGs.

Yet people continue to be surprised that they struggle with the content in PuGs, Sure it’s possible to be done with PuGs but there is a high probability you end up with unskilled players, bad teamwork or being kicked at the end of the dungeon before rewards etc.

So the content isn’t meant for pugs but most pugs (except the ones without a single person that knows what to do) can easily clear most explorable modes? Makes perfect sense.

You don’t need skill or teamwork to get through most dungeons, you just need to know what the mobs or bosses do. The topic in this thread is a perfect example. Are the knights hard if you don’t know what to do? Yes. Are the knights hard if the group has even a single person that knows to pull them individually? No.

Fay.2735:

I’m glad they removed the holy trinity in this game because the holy trinity takes away a lot of the responsibility from certain players while putting the majority of it on tanks and healers. I love that the responsibility is equally shared amongst party members and everyone is responsible for themselves and each other. It means that everyone in the party has to pay attention and be skilled enough in order for everyone as a whole to succeed.

Sorry for OT.

If the encounter is tweaked optimally, (few have done so in the other game), all three parts of the trinity shares just as much responsibility. Tight enrage timer is a very good mechanic where the failure of a DPS can easily lead a wipe.

Just finished that one. That one warrior boss and his adds can be single pulled.

Final boss was easy too. Kite adds → range boss → Profit. Use condition removal/dodge when needed.

My group was just bad? I didn’t say we weren’t able to complete the instance I said that time-sink vs reward is out of whack.

My group did very good. Considering we didn’t tab out, look up any strats or anything like that. We went in blind and came out with 60 tokens and our repair bill wasn’t THAT bad.

Those of you who took your time to explain the fights thank you
Those of you who didnt jump all over and say omgwtfbbqQQmorenoob… thank you.

Were a group of pretty decently skilled MMO players. Those of you who tout that this instance isn’t out of whack at all seem like nothing more then dedicated fan boys or elitist jerks.

Remember, I didn’t say we weren’t able to complete the instance. we did. I was giving my opinion on it.

Mods, why was the title of my post altered?

I’ve never had any trouble with the TA Explorable routes. The hardest is the bee path because you have to hope your team is able to make it through. And I always pug it because I can’t find a good dungeon guild on JQ :/

Wykydtron, if you can get one or two people through the bee path they can turn the water and bees off by progressing far enough into the dungeon. I think if they push forward through to the second pack of dogs the water turns off. I know at the very least if they activate Vevina (they don’t have to fight her) the water will definitely be off then, but usually before that. Another trick is to have a mesmer make it across and portal people, but that’s not necessary because a single person running past the dogs should be enough to turn off the water.

First time? Well..what did you expect?

Not to sound “kittenish”, but just because you’ve done one route, doesn’t mean the rest will be anything remotely close to that one.

The knights can be dealt with easily with good pulls and proper teamwork. The part towards the end with the knights and the named isn’t hard, but it is poorly designed. You shouldn’t allow the player to leash/kite them in such a way; if you want to utilize knights, think of a better solution which doesn’t allow for this practice.

The bee/water part can easily be done with one person, especially a necro(hell I’d recommend having a necro period for this dungeon): let them get covered in honey(or whatever cloaks) and if they need to they can DS to stay alive long enough to turn off the water/bees. This practice also works for running past mobs which have blossoms mixed within them: let the necro go first and DS #4, which will destroy all the blossoms along the way.

It definitely isn’t a very forgiving dungeon, but once you learn the tricks it goes very fast(30 mins or less with a good group)

Shiren.9532:

Wykydtron, if you can get one or two people through the bee path they can turn the water and bees off by progressing far enough into the dungeon. I think if they push forward through to the second pack of dogs the water turns off. I know at the very least if they activate Vevina (they don’t have to fight her) the water will definitely be off then, but usually before that. Another trick is to have a mesmer make it across and portal people, but that’s not necessary because a single person running past the dogs should be enough to turn off the water.

Oh I’m aware of this, its just tricky and can sometimes take far longer than should be necessary if someone isn’t good at dodging.

forward forward is my fav TA path

and ive only ever done it with rands