Guild Wars 2

Urrelles.4018:

If there is an icon for stability stacking how the hell would I know. Id have to hover the mouse over it to read the description, which means I am standing there dying form AE effects.

It’s the Unshakeable mechanic that a lot of champions have, both inside and outside of dungeons. The silver and golden icons for it always show up to the left of the conditions that the mob has. The counter on the golden icon tells you how many more control effects have still to be applied to temporarily remove the effect.

You can observe it easily in action during pretty much any dynamic event involving a champion fight.

Note also that not all champions do have this mechanic.

This is, to be honest, part of preparing properly for a dungeon by familiarizing yourself with the game mechanics, just as in other MMOs you may read mechanics and strategy guides before going into an instance.

In fact, I suspect that much of the inherent difficulty is currently simply because there’s no “go to” site (yet) with readymade how-to guides for dungeon bosses and trash that explain the fights in detail. So, everybody is learning the encounters from scratch, more or less, often doing them with non-optimal strategies.

OhTeeSee.3870:

Ruien.9506:

When does my mentality get a game?

You sir, have clearly not tried playing Dark Souls, which I would suggest, as it sounds right up your alley. I promise you wont have to deal with all the lesser mortals scumming up your gaming environment there.

He’d hate that game, that game requires planning your approach, paying attention to visual ques, and having reflexes instead of just spamming a single button for 20 minutes. He wouldn’t have time to wipe the cheetos dust off his fingers in time to dodge enemy attacks.

I totally agree with the OP. One of the most promising things I saw with GW2 was combining abilities for an increased effect… such as a flamethrower engineer placing a wall of fire and physical ranged firing through it to gain such fire effect. However in dungeons there is no promotion of doing this at all considering the damage increase from it is pathetic.

Just a suggestion here – Not all but a few mobs here and there and bosses that promote this by rotating immunity through the elements so one minute only dmg that effects the mob/boss is fire and Electricity so someone places a ground effect of either down so the boss can be damaged or some mobs that stack an insane amount of boons and without massive condition removal the group dies… promoting Guardians placing their wall down (I don’t know the specific spell names).

There needs to be more mobs as well that promote timing, knock backs (into their own AoE maybe) and every single control effect the professions have. Mobs being immune is really not good enough. That rubbish was in WoW where bosses would be immune to heaps of abilities. Lets have a different game plz.

shaktiboi.5194:

To Ruien (who typifies the “elitist jerk” stereotype so perfectly and ironically), and to all the others agreeing with his viewpoint on this and other threads, here’s what you’re all missing.

No modern MMO can survive or thrive if it locks casual players out of entire sections of content. It’s that simple. Want a current example? Look carefully at the financial woes of The Secret World, where casual players are completely brick-walled from participating in the end-game progression for purple (epic) crafted gear, in a game where gear stats are everything.

And before you say anything in rebuttal, consider the fact that dungeon tokens, many many many of them, are needed in this game not only for dungeon prestige armor skins, but also for legendary weapon crafting components. So if the casuals cannot do dungeons here, then they are effectively locked out of both of these types of “end game” goals/content.

We’re not asking for the game to cater to less skilled players, but for it to actually require some kind skill instead of just patience. The most viable strategy for most bosses is to get a ranged weapon, set auto attack, and then leave your computer for 10 minutes. Is that really what you’d call fun?

I haven’t had trouble with a dungeon yet.

Maybe you just need to learn to play.

Shooopa.5632:

shaktiboi.5194:

To Ruien (who typifies the “elitist jerk” stereotype so perfectly and ironically), and to all the others agreeing with his viewpoint on this and other threads, here’s what you’re all missing.

No modern MMO can survive or thrive if it locks casual players out of entire sections of content. It’s that simple. Want a current example? Look carefully at the financial woes of The Secret World, where casual players are completely brick-walled from participating in the end-game progression for purple (epic) crafted gear, in a game where gear stats are everything.

And before you say anything in rebuttal, consider the fact that dungeon tokens, many many many of them, are needed in this game not only for dungeon prestige armor skins, but also for legendary weapon crafting components. So if the casuals cannot do dungeons here, then they are effectively locked out of both of these types of “end game” goals/content.

We’re not asking for the game to cater to less skilled players, but for it to actually require some kind skill instead of just patience. The most viable strategy for most bosses is to get a ranged weapon, set auto attack, and then leave your computer for 10 minutes. Is that really what you’d call fun?

Since when were casual players unskilled?

piitb.7635:

I haven’t had trouble with a dungeon yet.

Maybe you just need to learn to play.

You are the cancer which will drive people away from this game in droves.

Jordan.6157:

I totally agree with the OP. One of the most promising things I saw with GW2 was combining abilities for an increased effect… such as a flamethrower engineer placing a wall of fire and physical ranged firing through it to gain such fire effect. However in dungeons there is no promotion of doing this at all considering the damage increase from it is pathetic.

Combo fields for damage may not always be great and are often just an incidental perk, but combo fields for defensive effects (condition removal, blindness, weakness, healing, etc.) are well worth leveraging on purpose.

Honestly I just did a dungeon and we where on a mobs for like 10min not a boss but a trash mobs, it took us 2hrs to finish the dungeon and yeah on story mode, I think it’s a little exagerated 2 hrs maybe 45min for a story mode and a 2hrs for a explorable mode but 2hr for the story mode is insane.

and like the OP says I only go their with my gun in dungeon cause everytime I use my 2-hand sword i ended up dead -_-, I always dodge from the red circle on the ground but that’s about it I cant know if a mobs is about to do a spell and I need to interupt or dodge cause you cant know. I think they should recheck the dungeon systeme cause this game isnt going far if it continue like that. Being an ex WoW player and honestly I’m tired of it cause now it’s only race in dungeon, no CC at all take 15min to clear the instance is dumb. but we can find something in the middle I think with leting us doing some CC =) that would be nice.

As a for-instance, take Heart of the Waves story mode. There are two encounters, the Champion Icebrood and the Corrupted Voice, where the target mob is just a big bag of health. My group’s bars seldom went down at all.

The final boss, the Kodan Hunter, has a bird attack. Several times when targeted by it, I would dodge, it would hit in mid-dodge. Sometimes a second dodge would shake it, sometimes not. Since I have 20 points into Vitality plus Vitality gear, I could survive this if full when targeted. Pity the poor sucker who isn’t specced that way.

The other thing about dungeon design is that condition removal seems to be about forcing mobs to rebuild stacks, since many of them they re-apply the conditions as soon as you remove them.

I’ve only done a few dungeon runs so far, but AC and CM have definitely lived up to the billing for me. I think the combat system meshes very well with the content (at least when you consider the ease of swapping skills pre-fight), and I understood the CC immunity system without needing a tutorial. I haven’t seen any significant attack without a tell, but I do have to admit that I didn’t notice the rings from the snipers in CM at first.

I haven’t felt the need for any sort of trinity, but, at the same time, I love how players can synergize. For example, I think it’s awesome that a S/P thief can create smoke fields to vastly improve the DPS of a D/D thief (by giving them easy stealth for backstab). It’s just really cool how you can form a group with three thieves (or whatever) and still make the whole greater than the sum of its parts.

I think they need to drop mob/boss health somewhat and get rid of graveyard zerging. Graveyard zerging reduces most fights to someone stay alive long enough for other people to get back, which generally means that many of the tactical aspects of the fights can be ignored.

Boss and mob health is often high for the sake of making it a grind and does not make the fights anymore interesting. Also, by reducing the health, and removing running back you allow for more intense fights where you may be slowly dying, but you feel as if the boss is noticeably approaching death as well.

FuriusGeorge.1207:

Boss and mob health is often high for the sake of making it a grind and does not make the fights anymore interesting. Also, by reducing the health, and removing running back you allow for more intense fights where you may be slowly dying, but you feel as if the boss is noticeably approaching death as well.

just this wow, sorry I’m not a perfect bilingual so I couldnt state it like this.

Ruien.9506:

… Just like poor people hating the thieves who steal them poor and rig the system to make it even easier to keep stealing even more.

There. Fixed that for you

Lymain.6723:

I’ve only done a few dungeon runs so far, but AC and CM have definitely lived up to the billing for me. I think the combat system meshes very well with the content (at least when you consider the ease of swapping skills pre-fight), and I understood the CC immunity system without needing a tutorial. I haven’t seen any significant attack without a tell, but I do have to admit that I didn’t notice the rings from the snipers in CM at first.

I have a few complaints about this, though. As far as bringing the right weapon set and utilities, a lot of pugs just get upset if they fail and you try to make those types of suggestions. I did that last night and suggested specific weapons and skills to use to deal with ranged mobs and people didn’t want to hear it. They were just frustrated that the dungeon was so hard and some actually just ended up leaving before we reached the last boss.

I think to combat that we need two things. One, some sort of very clear tutorial that lets players know what to expect and how they need to adapt so that they go into these things fully prepared and aware of what to expect. Instead, it’s totally different from the rest of the PvE that getting a pug that isn’t already more than capable through this, is impossible because people just shut down. Secondly, add in a more casual form of Explorable – an intermediate mode. I don’t want to make it dumbed down, but make it something that the average gamer can do to earn tokens for dungeon gear. People want to enjoy group PvE content but not everyone has the time to devote to “hard modes”. Every other MMO has intermediate dungeon modes for people, why not here?

I’d also like to comment on the CC immunity stacking system. It’s pointless garbage just there to make it artificially harder. If you’re going to take away the trinity and a tanking role and also give us such funky aggro, then let us use the tools you gave us to control the mobs. Let us use the CC we have and give it the proper strength it has in other PvE. If you’re telling us that we need to control mobs in other ways, then let us actually do it. I fail to see the logic at all. There is so much potential for strategy and groups working together if it was just done right.

well honestly I never did an explorer mode yet so I dont know what is waiting for me. But by seeing what story mode give me well I’ll be sure to have a lot of silver and a lot of time for it.

I’m just curious, to all the good player I mean the one that are ofended by this post how long it take you to do an explorer mode of CoE ?

Alright, people are saying to post some more suggestions… so i’ll post more suggestions!

1.) Give mobs the same mobility that you see often in the overland content, where they will… run away, chase after group members, etc, sometimes seemingly randomly. What will this do? Give Warriors, for example, who spec into more crowd control and support/buff orientations something more to do during trash fights, and introduce that notion of cooperation again. Mob chasing a group member? I’ll snare it so he can get away, bringing him to turn toward me so I can time a block. Synergizing abilities. Giving me full access to my spec. These are things that I mentioned are lacking.

2.) Instead of having the Stability Buff on Boss Mobs, where you’re chipping away layers of CC Immunity to get to CC “for real”, add in diminishing returns. IE: If he’s snared once, then the snare effect diminishes until it becomes immune for a brief point in time. What will this do? Require coordination of effects, so that it isn’t just a button mash to try to break open a CC opportunity. It will also allow people who have chosen specific roles to perform those chosen roles should they coordinate with their group.

3.) Remove the seemingly random knockback and fear effects from trash. It’s not fun, and it’s not hard. Find some other way to inflate the challenge level.

And lastly…

4.) Recognize that massive HP Pools, near one shot abilities, and anything related do not equate to “Challenge”.

I’m sure there are other things that have been brought up in this thread, but this is at least a start.

I agree that the Stability Buff on Boss monsters is silly.

I’m sure somewhere out there is a group that is timing their CCs and whittling down the Buff until the one CC they wanted to land actually lands, but for the rest of us peons, we just don’t think about it. If I toss out a CC and it sticks, awesome. If it doesn’t, I didn’t expect it to anyway.

I agree with #2. The Stability Buff should work the other way around. It should wear off, but be gained upon CC. This would encourage people to CC when they see that its down, instead of making CC’ing bosses feeling somewhat random.

I’m not sure we should even have a reverse CC buff though. When you had tanks, they kept the mob controlled. Without them, it’s up to the rest of us. Without proper usage of CC, how are we supposed to keep the mob under control? What are we to do when the CC wears off and he goes after a group member hoping to one shot them? We need to be able to keep a fight under control for the entire duration of the fight if we work together as a group properly. CC is already short so it already requires people to work together.

You have given us so many tools to work with, why don’t you let us use them. No one likes the seeming chaotic nature of fights right now. If you let people control the fights using skill and teamwork, then people would enjoy it a lot more. But right now, players for the most part, feel very helpless. I think honestly that is the root of the problems people have.

Leiloni.7951:

I’m not sure we should even have a reverse CC buff though. When you had tanks, they kept the mob controlled. Without them, it’s up to the rest of us. Without proper usage of CC, how are we supposed to keep the mob under control? What are we to do when the CC wears off and he goes after a group member hoping to one shot them? We need to be able to keep a fight under control for the entire duration of the fight if we work together as a group properly. CC is already short so it already requires people to work together.

You have given us so many tools to work with, why don’t you let us use them. No one likes the seeming chaotic nature of fights right now. If you let people control the fights using skill and teamwork, then people would enjoy it a lot more. But right now, players for the most part, feel very helpless. I think honestly that is the root of the problems people have.

You have a very good point! I agree with you.

I could see not having a CC buff be problematic with balancing—and let us not add to Arena Net’s balancing issues…—because a group full of CC that physically moves a boss would make a melee boss somewhat ineffective. The fix would be to give melee bosses a ranged attack with a higher cooldown, but even then…

For example, as a mesmer, I could immobilize a melee boss every 9.5 seconds and physically move the boss every 20-30? with Black Hole—or whatever the Focus skill is. And that’s just me. With 5 people manipulating a boss’ movements, the encounter would be INCREDIBLY FUN, but this might break it.

miya.5160:

I could see not having a CC buff be problematic with balancing—and let us not add to Arena Net’s balancing issues…—because a group full of CC that physically moves a boss would make a melee boss somewhat ineffective. The fix would be to give melee bosses a ranged attack with a higher cooldown, but even then…

For example, as a mesmer, I could immobilize a melee boss every 9.5 seconds and physically move the boss every 20-30? with Black Hole—or whatever the Focus skill is. And that’s just me. With 5 people manipulating a boss’ movements, the encounter would be INCREDIBLY FUN, but this might break it.

What’s wrong with people not getting hit, though? When you have a trinity, the tank keeps the mobs off the team and the healer keeps everyone alive who does get hit. With no trinity, we are not supposed to get hit. We have small, situational heals and various shields to deal with damage. But the idea with GW2 is that it’s an action combat game. Good teams are supposed to get through encounters without getting hit much. Why force us to get hit and take the skill out of our hands? That completely defeats the purpose of a trinity-less game, doesn’t it?

boy gotta love these threads, it basically boils down to doing some “soul searching” and placing yourself either on the “casual” side or the “elite” side and bashing each other.

honestly i consider myself a casual, but sadly i’m well aware that a lot of my fellow “casuals” are just people moaning for devs to spoon feed em content.

examples (and i did my best to explain this during the first few weeks but now i just let em be)

1. during the first few days people told me they had no “clue” where to go or how to play (and some actually dropped the game thanks to this “wtf no tutorial” rant), clearly expecting some WoW style hand holding tutorial that they needed to “farm” hearts and events to level up. Why this happens? cause they expect the “blah blah blah TL;DR: __” quest summary thing. the game clearly puts a scout right in front of you that explains those mechanics but people just want to skip the reading and go down and “kill things”. this is the first step on the long road that ends with explorable dungeons

2. people often ask “where do i? ____” man, TALK TO THE NPCs, seriously, these games are MMORPGs in the first place, but somewhere down the line we forgot about the “RPG” part and it’s just “MMO” aka hang with bros and get loot. every single thing that i find people can’t figure out, there’s an npc that clearly explains it, be it how to get to that vista in lion’s arch down to the npcs giving directions, thing is, there’s no big yellow ! on top of em so people just ignore the ones that aren’t vendors/karm/repair.

3. it’s an MMO: a lot of people just want to go all out and unload on mobs to get their rewards, when the game clearly encourages cooperation. please don’t read this as “omg so we’ve to run tough/vit builds” no, i’m talking simple stuff as, learn how to create combo fields, be ready to revive downed players, bring at least one skill that gives some sort of group buff/cc. the first step is for people to stop considering how they can shine in the dungeons and start thinking how they can contribute to the goals, there’s no “inspect” no “dps meter” nothing right now that encourages you to try and get some sort of satisfaction of being the best player in X run, so think “multiplayer” and help others

4. have some curiosity please!, seriously, some of the stuff i’ve read, the boss’ unshakeable mechanic thing, it’s on lousy champions you find on starter zones! (at least i remember seeing em on 15-25 zones) do you remember those guys you rushed to tag along 10+ players? did you ever stop and read under their names and realized their abilities are CLEARLY started in there, and that some had a white icon? those icons are unique, so you can figure out the ones that frenzy and stuff like that real quick, so next time you see some orange + or an orange boot or something like that, please take a moment to read em, believe me, at level 20 the mobs that have that stuff won’t one shot you, so you’ve 60+ levels to learn to quickly spot mobs with special abilities.

5. try to figure out the basic things the other classes do. i’m an elementalist, i’ve a job so i can’t actually spend my whole day reading the wiki, but during the first 20 levels i learned these basic tips

a. if you see a banner-flag thing, stay somewhere close, it’s a buff
b. if you see a friendly purple burble thing, stand inside, it may give buffs
c. if you see some sort of non red circle, try and stand inside and check if on the lower right side of your screen you get some buff
d. if you see any circles with whiteish auras, stay inside, it’s a heal
e. if you see someone down and it’s safe to approach em, go and pick em up real quick, it’s faster to pick downed players compared to dead ones

and i learned all that without youtube, wikis or tutorials and having a normal job to pay my bills, was that hard? no way

on the other hand…

the mechanics need some tuning, let’s break this part on smaller chunks:

1. the “large HP pools + massive hits = fun” thing as a design philosophy is wrong. dungeons need to be challenging thru mechanics and forcing people to keep an eye on what’s happening instead of going all out on the mobs.

2. the telegraphing skills part. honestly i believe the abilities are ok, not everything needs to be red circles, changing animations should be enough, the game should remain that way, not end up like wow with everyone just waiting for that huge message on their screen telling em to run away, stop casting, etc.

3. story modes should be the “casual” level, they should be easier but gradually ramp up in difficulty, so people can start practicing the “team play” they should’ve learned during the world bosses

4. the “CC skills” should get an alternative dps/function, like, if i can’t slow-stun-knockback-push the mob, at least i’ll do some dmg or dazed or something for a couple secs, so people will feel they aren’t just getting useless buttons on their action bar and instead focus on how to change their strat.

5. on the other hand, have you considered what would happen if suddenly they lowered the HP in half across the board on the long run? the people that are clearing everything now will finish their sets soon, find there’s no more “hardcore” content, and leave along their strategies, leaving behind the next wave that would do the same thing, and so on. clearly we’re ignoring the part that dungeons are meant to be the “prestige” armor thing, not just strap lvl 80 rares and let’s go, there must be some form of pain in there to force people how to rethink their strategies according to what’s on their pug/static, of course, with this i mean the explorable modes, not the story modes btw, since those are like, the only way to get the other half of the “main story”

I’ll just come out and say it – being that I doubt anyone on this forum is even close to me and dungeon kills on ‘another not named mmo’ same name Moophious@Hyjal I must say that while I like GW2’s dungeons they are in fact very sub-par in any coordination and exactly as the OP says they are and sorry to say the ONLY reason while I’m not playing.

I don’t mind the half-wing attempt at self healing out leveling but in dungeons it’s flatly absurd chaos. I don’t call it ‘fun’ or challenging.

But who cares the fanboys will try and tell us what fun really is…

>.>
<.<

Elitism in PvE is funny to me.

Like I said, it would be incredibly fun to be able to manipulate bosses in such a way, but the encounters will seem broken if you don’t run the risk of getting hit at all.

I don’t agree with the current system of Stability buff until X amount of CCs. If there is any mechanic necessary in order to help with dungeon balance, I agree with, after X amount of CCs, the boss gaining resistance to them for a short while.

I would not mind if they removed it completely, but I am definitely seeing how it could trivialize content. And maybe you want this. That’s fine. It’s just not what I want. I am sorry that we don’t agree.

Leiloni.7951:

What’s wrong with people not getting hit, though? When you have a trinity, the tank keeps the mobs off the team and the healer keeps everyone alive who does get hit. With no trinity, we are not supposed to get hit. We have small, situational heals and various shields to deal with damage. But the idea with GW2 is that it’s an action combat game. Good teams are supposed to get through encounters without getting hit much. Why force us to get hit and take the skill out of our hands? That completely defeats the purpose of a trinity-less game, doesn’t it?

If they wanted trinity-like combat, they probably would have just used the trinity.

This game is different starting with the downed state. Getting downed isn’t a big deal and recovering from it is a significant part of the game. Then you’ve also got active dodges, which everyone from the toughest to weakest characters has access to. If the game were just about CC locks, what would be the point of dodge?

It seems like you’re trying to make the game play more like other MMOs you’ve enjoyed while the developers have gone out of their way to make it play differently.

Nocturnus.6031:

Dungeon mobs don’t behave in ways that encourage anything but tank and spank tactics.

Stopped reading there. You clearly have no idea how dungeons work and your opinion is invalid.

Lymain.6723:

If they wanted trinity-like combat, they probably would have just used the trinity.

This game is different starting with the downed state. Getting downed isn’t a big deal and recovering from it is a significant part of the game. Then you’ve also got active dodges, which everyone from the toughest to weakest characters has access to. If the game were just about CC locks, what would be the point of dodge?

It seems like you’re trying to make the game play more like other MMOs you’ve enjoyed while the developers have gone out of their way to make it play differently.

No I’m not. I was talking exactly about dodges when I mentioned how people are not supposed to get hit. We don’t have tanks nor do we have any class capable of taking that kind of damage from a mob long term. This is because the encounters were designed for the group to work together and no one class is capable of taking hits. So they gave us dodges, slows/stuns, protection shields, reflect shields, projectile destroying shields, combo fields to do more of all that, teleports, blinds, etc.

The idea is that we all work as a group to control the mob while we take it down. If you guys are letting people get downed and/or die all the time then you’re doing it wrong. Dying does not equal success and getting downed means you failed to do something. Dungeons are designed for us to work together as a team, not die, rez, and repeat until the boss is dead. That is why I feel like the CC immunity is not working as intended. Good teams will be capable of working together using all the skills they were given and bad teams will get hit and die a lot.

But there’s not much “action” in stunlocking a mob. You’re practically going back to CHeal rotations from Everquest, heh. And if you’re stunlocking a mob, you don’t need anything else that you listed in your first paragraph.

Lymain.6723:

But there’s not much “action” in stunlocking a mob. You’re practically going back to CHeal rotations from Everquest, heh. And if you’re stunlocking a mob, you don’t need anything else that you listed in your first paragraph.

You can’t stunlock a mob in this game. Stun typically doesn’t last for longer than a second or two so it’s impossible to chain cc a mob. Do you see people getting chain CC’d in PvP? No, you don’t. What makes you think we’d be able to do it in PvE dungeons?

Here’s my question. For those of you that aren’t dying or getting downed in instances (those of you more pro players that have had the time to form statics and figure out the best way to do things), what are you doing during both trash mobs and bosses to keep things organized and prevent death?

I’m not concerned about average Joe who thinks things are all jolly and thinks dying means they succeeded. I don’t want to just get through an instance. I’ve done explorables and finished them and done them with some good tactics, but that doesn’t mean we did it the ideal way. If people are getting downed and/or dying, than there’s either something we could have done better, or it’s just a bad system. I’ve seen plenty of you elitist jerks in this subforum so tell me what I’m missing here.

If you look at it that way, good teams ARE capable of working together and using all their skills to whittle down the CC immunity until the ONE CC they want lands.

As for getting downed meaning you are failing, that’s not necessarily true. I believe the game was designed around the fact that you could be downed and brought back up. I know. It goes against my survival instincts, but Borderlands 2 has helped me with this.

The downed system is a conscious effort on their part to promote team play. In a dungeon, if one person is downed, you don’t have a problem, because whoever else the boss focuses on can lead it away and the others can help revive. As long as multiple people don’t get downed at a time, you are rewarded for your collective effort to get people back into the fray. Borderlands 2 does this as well, because it promotes you running into a fight and reviving yourself with Second Wind, which fully replenishes your shields.

The way I know Arena Net, in part, also wants to encourage people to not think that getting downed is complete and utter failure is that there are many traits that give you abilities while you are downed or while you are reviving someone else. They EXPECT you to get downed and get revived by your teammates. Otherwise, they would have made fights more forgiving—less one-shots—, if they’re not complete sadists.

I am always striving to not die during fights in Guild Wars 2, but I have come to realize that there are acceptable sacrifices. If someone is downed and almost dead dead, throwing yourself into harms way and getting downed to revive them enough to survive the next boss hit or the next few seconds until both of you can be fully revived is acceptable.

So that’s why I am apprehensive about removing any sort of CC resistance COMPLETELY from bosses. Between the downed state and being able to fully manipulate and control a boss, you could break encounters to the point where you have very little risk of actually dying.

I suppose you don’t read what bosses or mobs can do?

When I fight a Mob I always look under their healthbar what kind of abilities they have.

Then when I am used to fight them and see their patterns I think of tactics you can do to win. Most people here come from games where they have so many helpfull tools to get their role. Like the add-on which name I forgot where you can see when a certain boss is using a certain ability.

Anyways, you have to stop thinking how previous games work. Cause this game and other mmo’s are a whole other experience. Yes, dungeons are hard. Cause they feel new.

If you read your skills good enough you can actually do many things. For example, a boss who uses many projectiles. Use reflection shields and walls.

A boss who does insane damage, use crippel or immobillize attacks.

A boss who uses a pull mechanic. Watch his way of moving and dodge it or just LoS.

People mostly zerg into bosses and corpse camp them. While most of the time there are mechanics to it. Is this game 100% flawless. No, not by a longshot. But are there problems with the dungeons? No, to be honest.

I find them fairly easy as of now. Haven’t really got a boss fight yet where I said. Godkitten you are hard. I would love to see more different abilities on bosses thats true, but maybe people should stop wanting to make games easier. I hope they make them harder so it is actually an acomplishment when you finish them.

There are many things to work on that’s true. But these dungeons are fun already. The main problem was the reward after completing dungeons. But they are fixing it. As of tommorow I am going to start working on my dungeon set <3. Hopefully with people who also do different routes

RobinotX.1604:

I suppose you don’t read what bosses or mobs can do?

No I read them and when I try to tell my group what we need to do they get upset it’s too hard and eventually raqequit. The groups that I’ve succeeded in are the ones where people already know what they’re doing, but most pugs are not going to be those people. I had an Ele/Mesmer pair last night in CM and I tried telling them to equip a focus offhand for the projectiles. The Ele got upset and said “Yea I get it” and quit. >.< This was after we failed our way through the previous few bosses and we were at a huge pack of mobs to get through before last boss. And these were guildies too. If that’s what I have to deal with if I don’t have a static, I’d rather not.

Leiloni.7951:

You can’t stunlock a mob in this game. Stun typically doesn’t last for longer than a second or two so it’s impossible to chain cc a mob. Do you see people getting chain CC’d in PvP? No, you don’t. What makes you think we’d be able to do it in PvE dungeons?

Five people focusing one target? You could absolutely lock that target down in PvE (or PvP). Just as an example, the sword backstab for thief is a 2 second daze that can be used as often as you can get into stealth.

EDIT: And I mean, that’s not even considering blinds…it’s pretty trivial for even just 1-2 players to keep blinds on a single target full time.

Most people work on power builds. (I have to admit so do I). But I am still looking on my Engineer to change to a build where I have many supportive stats. I probably going to a tanky Engineer with a shield. Which gives me a block and reflection.

I use every trait tree at the moment and see what do I like and what do I not like.

Anyways, dungeons are doable, yes it’s hard without coordination. But when I did AC with my guild we went trough it pretty easy. Ok, we died a few times cause people didn’t focus when I asked to, but hey. They did an EXP for the first time and they where like.. holy kitten. They now also get what it takes to do more :p.

And, forgot the name of the buff bosses have. You have a certain attack, which makes them immune for knockback and such and after a few stacks they get vurnerable for it. If you coordinate it well enough. You can really get some nice things of it ;p.

Plus, you can also LoS pull mobs. Which make some packs really easy

I agree that dungeons are difficult and unforgiving for people who are complete fresh to them and I can understand how frustrating it can be for you to be in a party that ragequits, but you can see the silver lining in what you just said. People who know how to do them are successful. This might seem like an obvious statement, but the difference between the successful PUGs and the unsuccessful ones are people who know the encounters.

And I did most of the dungeons with a group of my friends who were evenly leveled, so we were always fresh to the dungeons. It took some extra doing, but we slowly learned the encounters to the point where we too knew the encounters.

Now, I’m not saying dungeons aren’t broken or imbalanced and shouldn’t be fixed and re-balanced. I just believe that people not knowing encounters is not a reason for Arena Net to make it easier. It’s when people DO know encounters and have tried everything, only to have a minority be successful, that Arena Net should consider balancing.

Also, just to reiterate what I’ve been saying in other topics: When the difficulty slider of a dungeon seems all over the place, there’s a problem. Challenge is great. Extreme challenge, and then cakewalk final boss is stupid.

My friends and I just tried different paths in AC exp for about 3d and it was the worse experience we have ever had. I’m pretty sure my friend from back home uninstalled earlier today(i also believe he is repatching atm). Everyone dies in one hit, there is not emotes or fair warnings, no direction on how to actually do a fight. I just watched a youtube clip on one vid and it just showed someone kiting for about 10min. So if u dont bring someone who can kite gtfo basically.. Its super frustrating and was a major let down.

Leiloni.7951:

And make explorable accessible and fun for pugs. I consider myself a good gamer and I’ve had my hardcore days in the past, but I don’t have time anymore to find a static dungeon group. I want to be able to do explorables with any group I find so people need to be able to figure out how to play on their own.

Right now dungeons are just not fun for the average gamer and they are supposed to be accessible and fun for everyone

Pretty much this. I’ve been on both sides of the casual/elitist spectrum in other games, and dungeons are not fun for anyone that doesn’t have a dedicated dungeon guild/group. (It’s fine when i run it with a full group of friends with ventrilo)

Locking the majority out of the “endgame instanced content” is something most people are unhappy about, and there is no real fix to this issue. It’s a l2p or nerf the content situation… And I highly doubt the average player will get better at doing dungeons.

Yesterday me and my guildmates done 3 paths of Crucible of Ethernity – one after another. It is a very cool looking dung (althouh low fps) with a lot of challenge in it. It was FUN defeating waves of bomb-golems or killing the flock of risen asuras.

What was NOT FUN was fighting the Subject Alpha.

I find myslef a good dodging player but with instant cast Earth-spike (no telegraphing at all) and such a high density of AoE , even traited for endurance regen / vigor gain i was totally overwhelmed.

If any Dev is reading, plz lower a bit the density of AoE; make the Earth-spike run those 3 circles for 2sec, not instantly;

Uzl.1987:

4. the “CC skills” should get an alternative dps/function, like, if i can’t slow-stun-knockback-push the mob, at least i’ll do some dmg or dazed or something for a couple secs, so people will feel they aren’t just getting useless buttons on their action bar and instead focus on how to change their strat.

I think they do, sometimes. I play a guardian and focus on control, so that means hammer. One of our skills on the hammer does a huge knockback w/ knockdown (“launch” is the official term ). I haven’t noticed it every time, but sometimes when I use it on an enemy with a defiant charge they still get the interrupt effect, but not the launch effect. This happened on the rampaging troll in Bloodtide Coast. Sometimes he’d launch when not immune, other times an interrupt message would appear. Not sure how effective that is as launching is definitely preferred, so I agree with your suggestion that something needs to be added if the main CC component is blocked.

I’d just like to let those who are reading this discussion and that are frustrated with the CC blocking know that defiant seems to only work on hard CC abilities; like stuns, fears, launches, and knockdowns. Immobilize still works, chill and cripple still work, though they may have a shorter duration.

I think the main point to this is not about if it can be done or whether or not it is difficult. This is about whether or not they are FUN to do. I’ve been able to complete the dungeons just fine, but in comparison to the rest of the game, it wasn’t a very enjoyable experience. It’s like going on a trip where the destination is great and the scenery is beautiful, but the car you are driving is bumpy and pulls randomly to the left and right the whole way.

People are saying you need a wide variety of utilities from different professions to complete dungeons. But how about their promise that you could actually do a dungeon with 5 warriors if you so chose? Right now, that’s pretty much impossible. They said they wanted to move away from the WoW-raid system because that way only a select few would see content (which isn’t even true anymore, because of the implementation of LFR), but what did they come to? Well, they’ve created dungeons where even story modes make you grind your teeth in frustration. And if you aren’t doing dungeons what else is there to do? Farm mindlessly in Orr? No thank you. I’m done with the game and I’m not going to say I didn’t get my money’s worth because I did. The leveling and exploring Tyria were interesting, but I simply have run out of things to do.

Gauradan.8361:

People are saying you need a wide variety of utilities from different professions to complete dungeons. But how about their promise that you could actually do a dungeon with 5 warriors if you so chose? Right now, that’s pretty much impossible. They said they wanted to move away from the WoW-raid system because that way only a select few would see content (which isn’t even true anymore, because of the implementation of LFR), but what did they come to? Well, they’ve created dungeons where even story modes make you grind your teeth in frustration. And if you aren’t doing dungeons what else is there to do? Farm mindlessly in Orr? No thank you. I’m done with the game and I’m not going to say I didn’t get my money’s worth because I did. The leveling and exploring Tyria were interesting, but I simply have run out of things to do.

To be honest 5 warriors would be one of the few professions that could actually finish dungeons due to the sheer amount of knocks they have at their disposal, as well as shouts and flags and ability to take hits.

Actually, the only profession that could probably not make this happen would be Necro. But I might be wrong there, it’s the profession I least understand.

Inci.7560:

To be honest 5 warriors would be one of the few professions that could actually finish dungeons due to the sheer amount of knocks they have at their disposal, as well as shouts and flags and ability to take hits.

Actually, the only profession that could probably not make this happen would be Necro. But I might be wrong there, it’s the profession I least understand.

Alright, that might be the case, but anyway, I feel like the game requires a level of theorycrafting that I’ve never encountered in WoW as a non-hardcore player. I won’t complain, nor will I try and compare Guild Wars 2 and WoW, but after so many MMOs, I simply don’t have the energy to learn every little detail of the game anymore in order to do dungeons. Therefore, I will simply stop playing the game, while still being grateful for the opportunity of exploring the great world that is Tyria.

Gauradan.8361:

Inci.7560:

To be honest 5 warriors would be one of the few professions that could actually finish dungeons due to the sheer amount of knocks they have at their disposal, as well as shouts and flags and ability to take hits.

Actually, the only profession that could probably not make this happen would be Necro. But I might be wrong there, it’s the profession I least understand.

Alright, that might be the case, but anyway, I feel like the game requires a level of theorycrafting that I’ve never encountered in WoW as a non-hardcore player. I won’t complain, nor will I try and compare Guild Wars 2 and WoW, but after so many MMOs, I simply don’t have the energy to learn every little detail of the game anymore in order to do dungeons. Therefore, I will simply stop playing the game, while still being grateful for the opportunity of exploring the great world that is Tyria.

You personally don’t have to. Join a dungeon guild. It’s really quite rewarding and void of requiring energy when you get it right, which shouldn’t take long at all provided you found someone that knows how to do it correctly. I personally devise and find all the tactics for my guild, the rest only has to follow. That’s how I recruit too, all hand picked, dungeons are fun and rewarding if I do them with people I know will and can do their jobs as well as hold their own in combat. The more I play with them, the less I have to explain, even if its a totally new thing. It’s really more a learning curve and different way of thinking than anything.

You guys have to realize this game is designed for casuals.

Dungeons don’t emphasis group composition where you NEED specific classes/specs. Yeah, certain traits or abilities make it a hell of a lot easier, but it’s not needed in most of the dungeons.

There’s also so many dungeons available that people will naturally gravitate to the one that gives them the most bang for the buck in the least amount of time. I mean, why spend 1 1/2 hours in 1 dungeon when you can do one in 20-30 minutes?

Since exotics are the end-game gear, they can’t add a “nightmare” mode.

I mean, in Aion Online when the game came out you could literally skip 99% of the trash in every instance and run to the last boss. SWTOR’s dungeons difficulty was based on stupid enrage timers.

Uzl.1987:

1. the “large HP pools + massive hits = fun” thing as a design philosophy is wrong. dungeons need to be challenging thru mechanics and forcing people to keep an eye on what’s happening instead of going all out on the mobs.

My thoughts exactly. Are you reading my mind?

A challenging game isn’t challenging because it’s testing how patient you are, it’s about how you respond to what it does. See the attack, move out of the way. Enemy activates something that makes them immune to projectiles? Get in and hit it. Enemy becomes immune to melee? Get back and shoot.

Real simple things like that would make all the difference and be a lot more fun than just “here’s an enemy, it has lots of HP and kills you in one hit. See you in 10 minutes!”

@Inci: I almost guarantee you could field a 5-necro team. Have 2 or 3 run ‘army’ spec, 1-2 condition/wellmancers and a pure dps conditionmancer with lich form.

I highly, highly doubt you could complete a run with 5 thieves though.

But, back to the topic, I agree: most dungeon fights are frustrating/boring, not ‘hard’. Just not fun.