Guild Wars 2

When it comes to leveling content this game is awesome. Events, no questing with npcs, lv to map scalling. It doesn’t even compare to Wow like games with kill 5 rats of this get 8 pelts and talk again with the npc. Individual resources, tagged mobs for kills and so on make this game very enjoyable to play.

And then you get to dungon part….omg. Was this even made by the same team? Did they even planned to add dungeons when they started working at this game?

Seriously they can make dynamic events that can scale from 1 to 20 players but for some reason they suck to bad at making dungeons. For some reason Arena decided to shove 5 players in a party to do a dungeon. None of them has a specific role so why 5, why on 6 or 3 players? There isn’t a need for tanks or healers so why 5?

The first big mistake was to say they dropped the tank/healer/dps. This made World of Warcraft a game with 10 mil subscribers and that’s what keeps it going, they have good dungeons and raids. There aren’t enough tanks or healers but somehow the game keeps going despite been 8 years old.

Without tank/healer/dps roles this game won’t end up well.

You start with the low lv maps and say this game is awsome, then you see the “end game content” or the awful Orr maps and you want to cancel the subscription. At least Arena had enough brains to no add a subscription for this game because it would have been another 1 month subscription mmo.

I do not understand what’s wrong with “no tanks and healers”. Please explain.

Dungeons are a big failure in the game, and the developers have acknowledge as much. It is probably the result of rushing to meet a dead line. But I’m hopeful that future dungeon content will be better. We already had a taste of improvement with Fractals and the Molten Facility.

The developers were very much focused on getting rid of the classic trinity, but they kind of neglected to give us something in return. That is why PVE favors DPS so much, they basically unintentionally dumbed down the game’s combat, in an honest attempt to refresh the genre.

The dungeons also suffer a lot from a poor difficulty curve. Players receive their first invitation to Ascalon Catacombs pretty early, without anything to prepare them, for that abysmal experience. A lot of the dungeons are filled with HP sponges, and enemies that do insane amounts of damage. There’s very little strategy here, and it is no surprise that a lot of players are turned off by dungeons permanently. Add a lot of unfair insta-kills on top of that, and frustrating trial -and-error obstacles, and short linear corridors filled with enemies that just take very long to kill. And you end up with just not a very pleasant experience. Plus, there is a heavy bias against various classes for dungeons, due to the classes being unbalanced in PVE. Dungeons are very much against conditions and control skills (due to champion/boss immunities), while DPS is king.

There’s been some improvements to some of the dungeons. Some of the bosses in Ascalon Catecombs have been tweaked to be more interesting. And Twilight Arbor even got a whole new path. But most of the other dungeons have remained untouched since release, and that’s a shame. I would advise to stick with Fractals if you want to have fun.

Oxxy.7068:

I do not understand what’s wrong with “no tanks and healers”. Please explain.

Every party you make has the potential to be a complete mess. If you end up with the right mix of builds/professions then it’s easy mode but if you end up with some dps oriented party without enough heal skills, condition removers buffs it’s wipe after wipe.

Your party gets killed really fast, so you want to tank. But you can’t because mobs don’t have a threat list and you can’t tank even with the best “tank” builds. Arena put some kind of tanking kills on the guardian but again they didn’t get it right. You can try to heal, well not with all the cool-downs(the old story with pvp balance). Again they tried to make Elementalist and Engineer healers but again they failed.

It’s like Arena devs took a school test “build a dungeon/party system” and failed.

Basically new players don’t know what’s expected of them to do in a party. You’re a warrior, tank? dps? well not very clear, buffer? hm… Elementalist, dps? healer? not really.

I think anet failed on two things PvE wise: overall difficulty and learning curve. Some stuff is awful for new players such as yourself to get used to, while veterans can do’em blindfolded. Lack of typical roles has nothing to do with this, though. Granted it’d help if anet made a video explaining how dungeons groups really works (i.e.: You bring a guardian for protection, fire fields, reflects, aegis, cleanses and stability, not healing/tankyness), but they’re not going to do that and you should go after the information yourself.
On a side note, engies are awesome at healing without wasting one single trait point or gear status with it.

“Your party gets killed really fast, so you want to tank. But you can’t because mobs don’t have a threat list and you can’t tank even with the best “tank” builds. Arena put some kind of tanking kills on the guardian but again they didn’t get it right. You can try to heal, well not with all the cool-downs(the old story with pvp balance). Again they tried to make Elementalist and Engineer healers but again they failed.”

If you try to play your party as a trinity then it will fail as the trinity is not there. Experienced GW2 players make it work because they play their own characters and make it work. Dodging is the best defense in the game for all players to learn and it does not require a trinity. All classes can bring missile defense and the individual players can decide whether to use it and when/how it is best used for the group.

Stooperdale.3560:

Dodging is the best defense in the game for all players to learn and it does not require a trinity. All classes can bring missile defense and the individual players can decide whether to use it and when/how it is best used for the group.

Yep, that’s how it’s suppose to work and when all the players in the party know what to do it’s easy.

But this isn’t the case. Some players don’t dodge because then don’t pay attention and second case the freaking boss keeps attacking the same player until all defense options are used up. You can dodge 2 time use you heal and defense buffs if you have them and dodge another time and that was all you could do. I’ve seen enough warriors that got agro from a boss and couldn’t get rid of it. Run, Forest, run….

Then it’s the second problem, the learning curve. GW2 just dumps players at lv30 into a hard dungeon and if they have bad gear and don’t have experience it ends bad. 5 new players that have some mmo exprience(and since all have tank/healer/dps partys) with average gear have about zero chances of finishing AC at lv30. If the freaking Troll spawns in a tunnel it’s game over, it wipes the hole party on the spot.

And in the end what do you learn? Do I keep up the Regeneration buff, the party is full with condition, do I use some area cleanse skill with 1 min cd or is somebody else going to do that.

On the other hand WoW has an easy learning curve, the first dungeons start at lv15 and are easy. There aren’t any “wipe out the party” bosses at low lv. You slowly learn what you need to do and by the time you get to max level you know what you need to do. A 3 man party with good gear can handle the first dungeon at lv15.

This is another part where GW2 sucks big time, you can’t gear up to handle content more easy. Changing from green gear to yellow of the same type it’s kinda… meh, going from 18k hp to 19k and another 100 toughness…

I’m sorry to see a game with such potential fail so bad at mmo content that’s well tested and proven to work. The game can handle a lot of players in a single spot had a good single player concept and a lot of other nice things but when it comes to dungeons/raids and gear it fails big time

This is catastrophic for a mmo, you level up, then what? Dungeons, raids, raid events? For something like this lead developers and product managers get fired, and new team with a new vision is need to sort things out.

This thread sounds so much like the usual 2012 “Why isn’t this MMO like WoW”.

I mean, there are issues in DGs, but if you think it’s the lack of trinity or gear focused raids and progression, then you’re doing a basic mistake.

I think the problem is your trying to play Guild Wars 2 as WoW or some other MMO instead of changing your mindset and playing gw2 as gw2.

I will be honest. GW2 is pure awesomeness for me but the dungeons…Oh man. Randomly placed mobs and prooly designed bosses and mobs nothing challenging. Just look how Aion’s instances are awesome. You need to be carefull to pull mobs and watch out their skills. Every boss has at least 4 interesting phases and more than few bosses per instance.

rhodoc.2381:

Just look how Aion’s instances are awesome. You need to be carefull to pull mobs and watch out their skills.

This comes from someone who actively pvp’ed (read solo roaming) on aion, was in the first raid that successfully killed padmarshka @NA/EU and did everything PvE based to get my god kitten PvP gear… Aion PvE sucked, big time. GW2 is much better unless you think spending 1hour in the same dungeon pulling the same mobs is fun, bosses are always an item check and there are very few mechanics that doesn’t rely on item grade and choice (i.e the jumping thing on TSH). So… yeah, maybe you should stick to aion?

“Yep, that’s how it’s suppose to work and when all the players in the party know what to do it’s easy. But this isn’t the case.”

If your group plays badly then you wipe. I don’t see a trinity problem there. If you’re suggesting that a group of idiots can go through a dungeon in other MMOs and survive just because there is a tank and healer in the group … well you can go back to other MMOs if you like.

clint.5681:

changing your mindset and playing gw2 as gw2.

Would love to, as soon as gw2 has a play style for dungeons. It’s just 5 man zergs. If you get the right mix in the zerg, nice, easy mode, if you don’t, wipe…

In the end you need a specific team build up with professions and builds. In fact gw2 with they “brilliant” dungeon system made things even worse than having 1 tank, 1 healer and X dsp. If you look in the LFP list you see stuff like “need warrior” or “need guardian”, but not any kind of warrior or guardian, they need specific builds.

Right now it’s worse than World of Warcraft from several years ago when you needed the exact number of classes and builds.

I understand what most of the fanboys are saying, but please look at the game with a more critical eye. If you think nothing is wrong, well, I don’t think there would be anything I can write here to change your mind

adrian.4962:

clint.5681:

changing your mindset and playing gw2 as gw2.

Would love to, as soon as gw2 has a play style for dungeons. It’s just 5 man zergs. If you get the right mix in the zerg, nice, easy mode, if you don’t, wipe…

In the end you need a specific team build up with professions and builds. In fact gw2 with they “brilliant” dungeon system made things even worse than having 1 tank, 1 healer and X dsp. If you look in the LFP list you see stuff like “need warrior” or “need guardian”, but not any kind of warrior or guardian, they need specific builds.

Right now it’s worse than World of Warcraft from several years ago when you needed the exact number of classes and builds.

I understand what most of the fanboys are saying, but please look at the game with a more critical eye. If you think nothing is wrong, well, I don’t think there would be anything I can write here to change your mind

You don’t need any specific party composition to complete gw2 dungeons. Any composition can complete them. Certain compositions are however more efficient than the rest, and all builds being full dps is more efficient.

I’m in a dungeon guild where everyone is full on dps, we steamroll all dungeons and fractals. But I also pug often, I find it fun. Even in pugs I rarely see wipes because I know the dungeons well and can advise the pugs as we go. That’s with any party composition.

Oxxy.7068:

rhodoc.2381:

Just look how Aion’s instances are awesome. You need to be carefull to pull mobs and watch out their skills.

This comes from someone who actively pvp’ed (read solo roaming) on aion, was in the first raid that successfully killed padmarshka @NA/EU and did everything PvE based to get my god kitten PvP gear… Aion PvE sucked, big time. GW2 is much better unless you think spending 1hour in the same dungeon pulling the same mobs is fun, bosses are always an item check and there are very few mechanics that doesn’t rely on item grade and choice (i.e the jumping thing on TSH). So… yeah, maybe you should stick to aion?

PvE is sucked yes and maybe dungeons were long but im talking more about mechanics and art. The art of structures and art of the mobs, the mechanics of bosses even single mobs, it looks more professional than gw2 for me. Just imagine the BT, individual places and bosses. This is ofc personal opinion after 3 years of Aion. However it is the only thing for me that seems a plus. The rest is not succesfull and it is going down after changing hands.

adrian.4962:

Would love to, as soon as gw2 has a play style for dungeons. It’s just 5 man zergs. If you get the right mix in the zerg, nice, easy mode, if you don’t, wipe…

I understand what most of the fanboys are saying, but please look at the game with a more critical eye. If you think nothing is wrong, well, I don’t think there would be anything I can write here to change your mind

It is only a “zerg” if you don’t know what’s happening, or is just mashing 1 non stop, praying to allah that said mashing works. Pick any game that you never played before, now try to watch a round of it, it may be a FPS, fighting game, MMO, anything, you won’t understand a thing. Same thing is happening with you here, you’re failing to do content and instead of trying to understand what happened you just decided to blame the game.

We “fanboys” do look at the game with a critical eye, and lack of trinity is one of the few things anet did right.

adrian.4962:

clint.5681:

changing your mindset and playing gw2 as gw2.

Would love to, as soon as gw2 has a play style for dungeons. It’s just 5 man zergs. If you get the right mix in the zerg, nice, easy mode, if you don’t, wipe…

In the end you need a specific team build up with professions and builds. In fact gw2 with they “brilliant” dungeon system made things even worse than having 1 tank, 1 healer and X dsp. If you look in the LFP list you see stuff like “need warrior” or “need guardian”, but not any kind of warrior or guardian, they need specific builds.

Right now it’s worse than World of Warcraft from several years ago when you needed the exact number of classes and builds.

I understand what most of the fanboys are saying, but please look at the game with a more critical eye. If you think nothing is wrong, well, I don’t think there would be anything I can write here to change your mind

You don’t need specific builds or classes to get through any of the dungeon. All you need is 5 people with brains. You can go through dungeons faster with certain gear and knowledge of the dungeon. Certain classes can help you go through dungeons faster like someone else said, but the problem is you are still looking at dungeons and the game in general wrong.

Dungeons are supposed to be for five man ORGANIZED groups that know their classes and know the game mechanics— including the dungeon mechanics. Not the game’s fault if you and your group need to l2p, or if you should be running with a guide and you’re not. Considering that even most pug groups are able to easily finish paths, I don’t think there’s much of a problem.

Without tank/healer/dps roles this game won’t end up well.

rofl. Trinity is the thing of the past, it’s robust, boring and the most challenging part in that format is usually finding the group, it also often leads into people playing classes they don’t want, because fe goup/guild or whatever needs another healer or smthng. Trinity opens the doors for a botting heaven as you can pretty much afk with atocasting for most of the encounters, now try doing that in gw2 dungeons and you’ll see the difference.

So stop QQ’ing and l2p.

Blablabla trinity blabla zerk bla.

1) Tank is remplaced with dodge mechanics, not only dodges, as a warrior playing full berserker GS/A&S, I get 3/4s of evasion from GS and a good 3s of blocking from A&S. You add to that aegis from your team mate and all those projectiles absorption/reflection, I rarely go under 50% of health. My personnal heal gives me 50% of my health every 30s plus the water combo from elem/guard, here is your healing. You fail because you failed your tanking and healing. You are all the trinity by yourself, remember when you blamed the tank who died because he wasn’t doing his job ? Remember when the heal was being yelled at because he let the tank die ? Now blame yourself for not being a good tank and a good healer. Your team, to be efficient, must be one, one that heal, tank and dps. Everyone is a bit of tank, a bit of heal and a big piece of dps. In a ordinary MMO, a 5 man team is 1 tank 1 heal and 3 dps, in gw2, all five is 1/5 tank, 1/5 heal and 3/5 dps. You can have an other ratio, of course, but you must always have all three of them in you. As said above, organization is the key, you must make all those fragments of tank, heal and dsp come alive, be one again, you play for the team as a team. PUG are for testing, exploring, you some times have excellent PUG. Team is for steady end game. Though having a team in the early stages might help.

2) Needing a specific team build ? Are you even trying ? As I said, you need to be all thee roles in different proportion, if there is a group that have the right proportion, it goes well, if not, it doesn’t.
Most good player change their build while moving to the next encounter to be more efficient. Stop thinking that one build is good enough. Yes, some build are more polyvalent than others, but you have to tweak them in some fight or you won’t be that efficient.

3) Game mechanics ? Think about AC, CM, TA, SE, CoE, CoF, HotW, Arah, Molten facility, Aetherblade hideout, Fractals (don’t forget about the story path)… almost all dungeons have nice game mechanics. You went by them without even paying attention. Replay the paths in your head and ask yourself, is there anything more than a standard fight with a moa in open world ? If there is one path that don’t have at least one game mechanics, please let me know, so I can prove you wrong.

4) Endgame. Dungeons are interesting, but if you have done it 1000 times, it becomes boring, OF COURSE it’s the same thing no matter how interesting if you do that over and over you get bored. Go PvP, as a team, 8v8 is total mess, and solo queue can be frustrating. In a team, you can progress with constructive criticism, try to have the right balance, develop strategy… Each encounter is different, challenging (ok, not all the time, some are terrible at pvp)… If you have a good computer and a good connection, try to understand WvW, not just following blindly a CM, try to understand his moves and mistakes (you ill see a lot of the later since not much CM are good in WvW) and maybe one day, buy a tag and lead your server to the first place.
I go oftenly in PvP because I’m not good enough so I try a lot of things and it’s fun. I do daily 1 to 4 path to get a little cash, then PvP or WvW. If you are bad like me, the beginning can be frustrating, but now, I’m better and have a W/L ratio that is above 50% and getting better.

Ps : Some phrases might not have a good syntax, grammar or spelling, I hereby apologize for it and ask for your forgiveness. I’m french and never studied seriously english.

someone needs to buy the Frenchman a drink or several.

thanks Sixteenth. that was well said.

dungeons are awesome. nuff said

Dropping the holy Trinity was not the mistake. Rushing the dungeons was the mistake. They did not have the time to test and polish the dungeons and well the result is the original dungeons, full of HP Sponges and hard hitting Bosses with almost no mechanics. Some fights had cool ideas but the mechanics are not complete, like the other half is just a placeholder and most boss fights feel like placeholder. They only cover the basic game mechanics. A basic Trinity fight would also be boring and Brain AFK as hell, it would be just tank and spank without paying attention to mechanics.

Now look at the fractals with cool ideas, the revamped AC bosses with working mechanics and also cool ideas. There was a step in the right direction. Molten Facility and Aetherblade Retreat were even better with unique Boss Fights and fun mechanics. The Queens Gauntlet showed some possible cool Bossmechanics and the new Aetherpath ist just awesome. We can see that Anet is learning and even the new mechanics in the Aetherpath are just the bottom of what is possible.

Well you see, the lack of trinity was not the problem, it was the lack of time and polish.

Walhalla.5473:

and the new Aetherpath ist just awesome.

Unfortunately, only very few people share this opinion, compared with the ones that feel it’s terrible.

The problem with the path is that it’s just too much. Too many puzzles mainly. Most dungeon paths have 3 bosses and 1 puzzle. This path has 3 puzzles and 3 bosses, which is a little bit too much imo and makes it take way too long.

in GW2; team play, as a concept, lacks design. Everyone is everything and nothing and the same.

Dungeons have to communicate with the party team play. Since there is none, the whole experience turns shallow.

Bright.9160:

Unfortunately, only very few people share this opinion, compared with the ones that feel it’s terrible.

The problem with the path is that it’s just too much. Too many puzzles mainly. Most dungeon paths have 3 bosses and 1 puzzle. This path has 3 puzzles and 3 bosses, which is a little bit too much imo and makes it take way too long.

It is awesome on a different scale called “colossal waste of time”.

First reaction that me and my team had when they did the Aetherblade Path was: “Yup, Anet still can’t design boss fights”. It’s dreadful.

The whole path is littered with annoying enemies that spam immobilize, pull, and dazed. There are various puzzles in it which are not any fun, just annoying and convoluted. The first puzzle with the oozes is okay-ish and easy, if your whole team understand the concept. But even then it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. And it doesn’t really invoke a feeling of victory when you complete it.

Then there’s the boss battle with Slick and Spark, which is mostly just a matter of “who do we all spam our attacks on first”. Again, the cleansing of the puddles is one of those mechanics that is kind of nonsensical, and just makes you shrug. But perhaps worst is that this boss fight follows up on Anet’s tradition of just spamming conditions around at random, with the players having no idea where some of the conditions are coming from.

Then there’s the Holopirate Generators, which for some reason can only be destroyed with their own holograms… because holograms explode???? All they had to do is make it air elementals, and it would have made a lot more sense. Just pull electric enemies to a machine, short-circuit it. Makes a ton more sense to me. Instead they make an exception on the behavior of established enemies, and have them do something completely new for no reason what so ever. It’s also just not a whole lot of fun, with the constant condition spam and stun locking of those annoying enemies.

Then there’s Foreman Spur. If a developer has to come on the forums, to explain how the achievement works… then it is not a good achievement. The boss itself is alright, I suppose. But could use more phases to make it interesting. It also has several charge attacks that instantly down players, and I’m really not a fan of that. It makes it so trial and error.

The Security Room puzzle: Nonsensical, annoying, and not a whole lot of fun.

And then Legendary Clockheart, AKA: “Battle with GW2’s atrocious camera system”. More spamming conditions around at random, even if you’re not actually hit by an attack. Poor boss tells, insta-kills, and no phases to keep this even remotely interesting. This boss again highlights the worst of GW2’s boss design. First of all it drops gears down that insta-kill players, yet the players are expected to occasionally run away fom this boss, while having to manually rotate their camera to see the boss and attack it, and thus being unable to see that they are running right into an insta-kill cog. Often the boss also drops cogs on downed players, or drops multiple cogs on the same spot, which is an insta-kill. Originally the point of the downed mechanic, was that players could be helped back on their feet during or after a battle. Many of these bosses negate this concept, turning boss encounters into trial and error. You learn by wiping, and wiping again, and wiping again. Isn’t this fun? I have no problems with a boss that is hard. But I do think the mechanics should be clear, and players should not die due to unfair insta-kill gimmicks, or struggling with the game’s poor camera system.

Bright.9160:

Walhalla.5473:

and the new Aetherpath ist just awesome.

Unfortunately, only very few people share this opinion, compared with the ones that feel it’s terrible.

The problem with the path is that it’s just too much. Too many puzzles mainly. Most dungeon paths have 3 bosses and 1 puzzle. This path has 3 puzzles and 3 bosses, which is a little bit too much imo and makes it take way too long.

Most of the feedback I’ve senn is that this dungeon is amazing. Most of the complaints I’ve senn is the thing with the rewards and this is where I agree. 2 Gold, 60 Tokens and some blues and greens isn’t enough. For a Dungeons this long ( 30 Minutes if you are really good ) and challenging, they should have made it to 3 Gold and one guaranteed Nightmare Weapon with random stats. And the chests could drop guaranteed rares with a 5% chance for the new skins.

But with or without rewards. This dungeons is one of the best dungeons in the game with interesting and good balanced mechanics, boss fights and even the Trash isn’t really annoying.

Walhalla.5473:

But with or without rewards. This dungeons is one of the best dungeons in the game with interesting and good balanced mechanics, boss fights and even the Trash isn’t really annoying.

Mad Queen Malafide disagrees with you:

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

First reaction that me and my team had when they did the Aetherblade Path was: “Yup, Anet still can’t design boss fights”. It’s dreadful.

But don’t worry, I disagree with him!

And what is you opinion with this dungeon and its quality?

It’s quality is unparalleled.

2 things really bother me when it comes to dungeons/PvE (expect a lot to read):

• Difficulty: Practice makes perfect, that’s true. But a new player gets a mail saying how awesome is Ascalonian Catacombs. He goes there at level 30 and does the story mode. Easy stuff, story is really enjoyable
  Cool, now he is rewarded with the exploration mode. Well, I’ve seen people giving up running dungeons after their first experience. Even in AC, some fights are punishing and involve mechanics that new players have not yet mastered, like dodging.

Beginning of this year, path 1 was hell because players could not defend Hodgins, path 3 was hell because players could not kill burrows fast enough and were destroyed by a huge horde of gravelings.
And then people complain about elitism, but the own game doesn’t help new players improving in a friendly way

• DPS: I think 90% of players want to be the star of the team, deal huge amounts of damage. “Supporting is boring, stay behind and use skills to help who is dying, and you can’t fight back if something attacks you”.

PvE in general is poorly designed for the “no trinity” idea. You can dodge – “total invulnerability” – but you can’t help an ally who is in trouble because healing isn’t that effective and you can’t aggro the monster.
It’s either kill or get killed. Not forgetting that tanking is impossible. 22k hp and 3k armor, and a normal monster you find around is able to kill you without problems. “Why would you need armor if you can dodge? So you only need damage”.

Sorry if I made any mistake, but it’s my opinion about the game, and I’m trying to improve it since devs said they read the topics

HELLruler.4820:

PvE in general is poorly designed for the “no trinity” idea. You can dodge – “total invulnerability” – but you can’t help an ally who is in trouble because healing isn’t that effective and you can’t aggro the monster.

But you can. Aegis, cleansing, protection, AoE healing from water fields (that are pretty strong, actually, just not “lol i pressed 1 and my team is fully healed!” strong that most mmo players are used to), blinds, projectiles defenses (the list probably goes on) are awesome supporting tools, its because of’em that anyone with experience and knowledge can run in berserker gear without any trouble.

I like the Aether path, I wish it gave out better gold. Mostly the group i run with does dungeons for the gold, so we don’t hit this one usually.

As for OP, you’re playing the wrong game, sorry. It was advertised before the game was released that tank, healer, and dps (aka the trinity) would be done away with. You have essentially bought a screwdriver and are trying to hammer nails with it.

As for dungeon difficulty compared to PVE yes it’s noticeable and is working as intended Dungeons are supposed to be one of the more difficult aspects of the game. It’s not a 5-man zerg that almost sounds like an oxymoron, parties should go into dungeons, players who can cooperate and work together form parties. People who run around a map pressing 1 and occasionally 6 form zergs.

Open world PVE should train you for dungeons but right now all it teaches new players to do is zerg for champ loot, then they get pasted when they enter a dungeon, because its a completely different animal.

I find aether path… hmmm… i wouldn’t say boring, i think tiring is a better word, there are too many things that depends on NPCs, and the “you must kill everything before progressing” design doesn’t help either. Also, kittening unskipable cutscenes, holy kitten.

MastaNeenja.1537:

As for OP, you’re playing the wrong game, sorry. It was advertised before the game was released that tank, healer, and dps (aka the trinity) would be done away with. You have essentially bought a screwdriver and are trying to hammer nails with it.

I personally hoped that they would replace the trinity with a less role focused, and more open experience. But instead of tank/healer/DPS, what we got was just DPS. The entire PVE game seems completely focused on DPS. Healing and Toughness have been greatly neglected, and are severely underpowered, while direct damage is way too effective.

Thats a good thing though. They just need to make control and condition damage better in high end pve. Which they have acknowledged.

I guess control is… fix’able somehow, not so sure about condition tho, i just can’t see it working on PvE without some sort of big revamp.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

MastaNeenja.1537:

As for OP, you’re playing the wrong game, sorry. It was advertised before the game was released that tank, healer, and dps (aka the trinity) would be done away with. You have essentially bought a screwdriver and are trying to hammer nails with it.

I personally hoped that they would replace the trinity with a less role focused, and more open experience. But instead of tank/healer/DPS, what we got was just DPS. The entire PVE game seems completely focused on DPS. Healing and Toughness have been greatly neglected, and are severely underpowered, while direct damage is way too effective.

Anyone remember Aetherblade retreat? The final boss was pretty much anti zerk DPS in how it was set up and that dungeon caused a tsunami of tears.

It didn’t matter how fast the party burned down Mai’s health when she went invulnerable in lost health increments and it then became a dodge, heal survival test to live through the cannon fire.

There was probably a better way to do it but … temp content =/

I heard it may become a fractal but i’ll believe it when i see it

Both Molten Facility and Aetherblade Retreat, according to devs, are bound to be reworked and put in the fractal rotation.

Reworks will probably be done manly for the lenght (they’re too long for a single fractal stage – we already have dredge fractal off-scale in that way) i suppose, but who knows they’ll take care of polishing the content here and there to improve it.

If you all love Aether path so much, how come almost no one wants to come back to it after the first time?
I personally spent 3 hours+ there and this was with a guild group, not some random pugs. Maybe that’s because we had three rangers and I was the only heavy with my war or maybe because I was the only one, who red the guide, before going into it, still, that was very painful, unsatisfying and unrewarding experience, I’d take fractals 48+ or Arah over this dungeon any day.

Funny how I see “vets” talking about how exp dungeons is too hard for noobs. I’m a noob($30 sale) and when I first went, i said holy “snap”. Let me get a few more levels AND read about my class. If people are quitting then it’s more about that individual than the game. Difficultly these days is always being patched out of games, these days, if people cant quickly beat a part a game without even trying to adept. EM is essentially “hard mode”. Explorer mode isn’t for people not willing to look into why they are failing. This is a RPG at its core, it isn’t brain surgery.

Oxxy.7068:

I guess control is… fix’able somehow, not so sure about condition tho, i just can’t see it working on PvE without some sort of big revamp.

Scale up monster toughness and drop down vitality to the point condition damage is the strongest option to use, but keep the current caps.

Every group is going to want one or two condi builds then, but any more and it’s a DPS loss. Also stacking warriors isn’t going to work as well or precise strikes is going work against the condi user. Guards would have to announce VoJ procs so the condi user knows to hold back an attack so their condition damage is the one attached to the burn.

The major issue would be the actual fix would just be buff toughness and leave vitality unchanged, as conditions are damage over time and currently things die way to quickly to raw burst damage. This would end up being highly punishing to defense oriented PUGs. The other argument would be that most current fights have very simple mechanics and prolonging them to make condi’s viable is just going to make them boring.

MastaNeenja.1537:

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

MastaNeenja.1537:

As for OP, you’re playing the wrong game, sorry. It was advertised before the game was released that tank, healer, and dps (aka the trinity) would be done away with. You have essentially bought a screwdriver and are trying to hammer nails with it.

I personally hoped that they would replace the trinity with a less role focused, and more open experience. But instead of tank/healer/DPS, what we got was just DPS. The entire PVE game seems completely focused on DPS. Healing and Toughness have been greatly neglected, and are severely underpowered, while direct damage is way too effective.

Anyone remember Aetherblade retreat? The final boss was pretty much anti zerk DPS in how it was set up and that dungeon caused a tsunami of tears.

It didn’t matter how fast the party burned down Mai’s health when she went invulnerable in lost health increments and it then became a dodge, heal survival test to live through the cannon fire.

There was probably a better way to do it but … temp content =/

I heard it may become a fractal but i’ll believe it when i see it

My party was full zerk for that path. I think we wiped once as we were figuring out the mechanics. In fact, obal got a bug where after we wiped and spawned from the waypoint, he somehow spawned right at the boss. By the time we ran up there, he already solo’d the stacks off of her and was dpsing.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

MastaNeenja.1537:

As for OP, you’re playing the wrong game, sorry. It was advertised before the game was released that tank, healer, and dps (aka the trinity) would be done away with. You have essentially bought a screwdriver and are trying to hammer nails with it.

I personally hoped that they would replace the trinity with a less role focused, and more open experience. But instead of tank/healer/DPS, what we got was just DPS. The entire PVE game seems completely focused on DPS. Healing and Toughness have been greatly neglected, and are severely underpowered, while direct damage is way too effective.

Completely focused on DPS is a little strong. Glass cannons in PUGs from what I see are horrid. down down down dead. Maybe you are talking about high level clan play. I haven’t seen the need to forgo survivability completely for dps.

laharl.8435:

My party was full zerk for that path. I think we wiped once as we were figuring out the mechanics. In fact, obal got a bug where after we wiped and spawned from the waypoint, he somehow spawned right at the boss. By the time we ran up there, he already solo’d the stacks off of her and was dpsing.

I’m not saying it can’t be done with a DPS group, to me the set up of the fight seemed to be staged play. Hit boss for a while then survive cannon fire remove stacks, rinse repeat. A patient player who causally stands in the safe spots of the aoe rings doesn’t need armor or extra health.

Also a big problem i saw and again this is coordination (not PVE zerging) was trying to lure the boss to remove the stacks. It would probably be easier soloing since there would be only one target.

What I am trying to say is I like the mechanics of that fight it wasn’t just burn the boss life bar down. I think they were trying something different with that dungeon and a lot of players didn’t like it, unfortunately. The way the game is set up now it encourages low survivability and high damage. They could break away from this but it would require effort, until then green light on the high damage setups! That’s what I run too.

For the TA path,
If you ask me people seem waaayyy more squeemish about the ooze puzzle than they do the actual combat, which is honestly much improved. Sparki & Slick is probably one of the better boss fights in the game right now.

I think what kills me about all of this, is that you can totally see that they’re trying.
And….nothing’s really quite hitting the mark.

I think they attempted no roles at all, and they got this Everything is Deeps problem that leaves 90% of character building just rotting on the shelf. Which is, you know, not something an RPG usually aspires to.

So then they tried some anti-zerk tactics, but that was pretty hit or miss because Mob AI doesn’t have the cycles to break up full-forward-aggression in exciting ways like evasive maneuvering. So they just used Invulnerability instead. And the execution of that can range from decently good (Mai Trin) to super contrived feeling (Graveling Scavenger).

Then they seemed to try fabricating temporary roles like ‘ooze kiter’ in TA. And I think this is ultimately the best of three…..But honestly, it still needs a little something. Like; they did a better job of hitting the high points, but it didn’t actually go so far as to open up build options because they’re still fundamentally flawed.

For example, for Support they normalized the damage so it’s not all coming in these huge packets you can dodge. So if you meandered in there with, say, Cleric’s gear you at least had something to do and buttons to press, which is an improvement. But many of the supporty skills in the game have a terrible sense of impact or don’t require much in the way of skillfull execution, and the ones that don’t (reflection, insta-rezzing) are freely available without specialization. And no amount of tweaking the content is going to fix that.

Until they start making specialization more meaningful, they’re just not going to get very far. (For example; specialization = radius, so the higher your healing stat, the higher the radius or the more people you affect with your healing-type skills).

In order to make dungeons more engaging, they have to make a combined effort to change both the enemy mechanics and the class balancing within PvE. Anet is (slowly) beginning to work toward the former, but they have been pretty adamantly against making any progress toward the latter, which, first and foremost, requires a split between PvE and PvP balancing.

durend.6237:

Oxxy.7068:

I guess control is… fix’able somehow, not so sure about condition tho, i just can’t see it working on PvE without some sort of big revamp.

Scale up monster toughness and drop down vitality to the point condition damage is the strongest option to use, but keep the current caps.

Anyone else think that Ginva the Butcher in HotW1 was maybe a sort-of-attempt at condi-friendly boss mechanics?

He’s got those boon-spamming totems. Protection is ignored by conditions, regen reduced in effectiveness by poison, retaliation is… um… just as annoying for everyone, but two outta three ain’t bad.

Conditions keep ticking on him when he does his blender move, and I think at least some professions have non-projectile, non-melee ways to apply more through it. (Yes, equally you can melee attack from just outside its range or use equally non-projectile ways to apply direct damage)

Sadly the utility of poison can be provided by some ’zerkers specs and the regen he gets is kind of negligible anyway, he has a mountain of health to chew through, and pure condition builds do laughable damage to his totems. I never said it was a shining success.

We ran 2 necros in hotw p1 for funs last night. Me on rampager and the other on rabid. It didnt really improve the kill time of ginva tbh. Still a huge meatshield.