Guild Wars 2

I keep seeing topics along the lines of “dungeons too easy!” or “dungeons too hard!”

The fact is, it’s both. Dungeon design is all over the place in terms of difficulty and design.

Take, for example, Arah path 1. Not terribly difficult, but huge, HUGE gaps in waypoints where two bosses don’t generate any (is this intentional or a bug?).
Then we get to the last boss, probably the most laughable boss in the game where all you do is stand there and bat light beams back at it’s stupid self for massive damage.
Moving on to path 2, it’s generally okay except for the Deadeyes. Mobs that one shot you at range, and can continually knock you back if you close to melee. Their sole purpose seems to be a gigantic money sink where you die over and over. What is the point of that. But what path 2 does have, is a wp right next to Lupicus, whereas in path 1 you have to travel half the map and path 3 quite a distance, path 2 virtually allows zerging.

This is of course just a few examples from one dungeon. Others such as AC suffer from overly difficult encounters, CM from overtuned mobs and bosses, TA suffers from literally no waypoints at all except for the entrance, the overtuned Laurent fight and the laughably easy tree bosses, HotW from extremely tedious fights, CoF from wildly fluxuating encounters from the pathetically easy (path 1 cage fight) to the unreasonably hard (path 2 kaboomium fight) to the ridiculously strict to the point of impossibility without voice chat (path 3 torch lighting encounter).

There’s no rhyme or rhythm. Most parts of dungeons in GW2 are either too easy or too hard, and neither are fun. This isn’t even getting into the outright broken encounters such as Simin or Subject Alpha half the time, which also represent the imbalance in dungeon design. Simin is broken to the point of impossibility with certain class combos and builds, whereas Subject Alpha can break himself and sit there passively as he’s beaten on.

Actual encounters that are balanced and at least somewhat of a fair challenge, such as in my opinion the CoE path 1 hacking encounter, and Giganticus Lupicus (save for the whole anti-melee thing) are unfortunately rare.

I agree that dungeons lack consistent challenge. It’s all over the place. One moment you’re afking on something so easy that barely hurts you at all, another moment you’re forced to dodge out of attacks that take away huge parts of your HP.

Dungeons being of different difficulty between paths isn’t a bad thing. I would be happy if all dungeons had paths split on difficulty – path 1 would be easy, path 2 medium, path 3 difficult. This way…

1) Players who just want to experiment a dungeon once in a while but not really learn about it, and want to get enough tokens for one or two weapons, can do path 1.

2) Players who play in PUGs, and want to learn how to play in a dungeon but do not have an organized group, and want an armor set, can do paths 1 and 2.

3) Organized groups with voice communication can do all 3 paths and get any reward they want.

This way, more organized groups can get 180 tokens per day, while unorganized players who try hard can get 120, and very casual players can get 60 tokens per day. IMO, this system is fair, and gives everyone a decent enough reward.

Having some dungeon paths easier and harder might make sense, but there’s no rhyme or reason to it. It’s not like every dungeon intentionally has one easy/medium/hard path so that you can grind 60/120/180 tokens per day based on how good you are.

The difficulty within a single path might fluctuate wildly – CM Asura, for example, is afk-worthy except for three of the most frustrating pulls in the game (Sure-Shot, Frost, and that pack with 8 silvers who all heal each other you HAVE to skip and leash). Seraph is afk-worthy until you find the “blow up the gate” event…then you realize you can just throw 200 barrels next to the barrel spawn point, causing the mobs to permanently run for those barrels while 1 guy handles the gate alone and you don’t fight any enemies at all.

The problem is when I’m fighting the afk-bosses in CM I’m thinking “boy, this guy doesn’t do anything and has way too much health. I’m not having fun.” When I’m running through the 8-silver pack in CM I’m thinking “this pack has to be skipped or we all die. There’s no way that’s intended, and it’s sure not fun.” As I’m dancing back and forth across the water against the billion-health, one-attack Frost, I’m thinking “I have to repeat this for ten minutes without dying once, and there’s only one mechanic. This is not fun.”

the real problem for is not the challege (sure they have to make something new, and more challeging) but the must be calibrated to be overcomed with a good strategy or good teamwork. Now some part of dungeon are extremely difficult to pass, due to extreme control by some mobs:

like the paralizing spiders on TA, why all the spiders can paralize, i run a shout guardian with rune of soldier, and my team can resist no more then 4 or 5 sec.. poison is ok, but hard controls must be placed ONLY on few rare and hard mobs.

or Caudecus manor (asura path) whats the sense of all that silver bandits after gunpowder morgan? they are immune to all(we tryed to block em with ring of warding\line of warding or barrage) , and stability dont work to protect team mate from tha bomber blast. So here where is the strategy? where is the teamwork?

Gw2 is a game that have a balance for PVP fight, so pve fight must be similar to pvp match to be enjoyable or follow at least the same rules… Monster immune to controls are incredibly annoyng bacause a part of the non trinity concept is: there is no tank because all classes can control! Reflect about it ^^

“Gw2 is a game that have a balance for PVP fight, so pve fight must be similar to pvp match to be enjoyable or follow at least the same rules… Monster immune to controls are incredibly annoyng bacause a part of the non trinity concept is: there is no tank because all classes can control! Reflect about it ^^”

Not necessarily. PvE and PvP must be different because if they were the same then burst specs would be either OP or useless compared to sustained damage + tanky specs. Players have much smaller health pools and damage capabilities compared to even some silver mobs, and this creates a much different dynamic. Not to mention that AI doesn’t have quite the same capabilities as true intelligence and free will. That giant tree may be a god of some sort according to the lore, but in actuality lacks free will and tactical awareness, as he was ultimately created and programmed by humans, whereas humans were “programmed” and created by nature over millions of years.

Done all dungeons but Arah 4. No voice comm at all throughout it. Sometimes pugged, mostly with guildies – not people i’ve known for years though.
Nothing is hard if you’re willing to open up and learn, run a tanky build and actually play the encounter as it was intended. Tbh, i should have stopped reading the first post and closed the tab at “AC with overly difficult encounters” – AC is laughably easy, all three routes are farmable in about an hour per toon.

Point is, the dungeons are enjoyable.
Some fights are challenging – not hard or impossible, even the Leurent fight isn’t that tough if you properly manage your cc; just challenging. And they’re enjoyable thanks to that, because you feel rewarded just for beating a challenge.
Some are facetank easy – even done afk-way. They might become tedious – if you let them; if you do them too often, that is, without enjoying them each time. If you stop enjoying the HotW bosses, don’t do HotW too often, or don’t do it at all except for once for the achievement – it’s that easy, really! I hate the HotW underwater fights, and i hate the two big norn fights in either HotW 2 or 3, and i simply don’t run that dungeon. On the other hand, i honestly enjoy AC and i try to do it daily.

It’s just that – if you don’t find dungeons fun, don’t play them.

Your post is actually an example that dungeons are too easy or are mostly just right.

All your examples of things being “too hard”? Actually are you failing at teamwork or you just failing by yourself.

Take deadeyes. If you die to them, you or your team sucks utterly. They are an idiot check. You can ALWAYS sneak up on them. If you do so, you use an ability that causes BLIND or a knockdown. Bzam, the enemy is now safe to approach even by slowpokes.

Their knockbacks aren’t an issue, because it doesn’t knock you into instant kill range. If SOMEHOW one of you fails and still gets knocked into instand death range, use knockdowns or blinds. BZAM issue solved. There really is no excuse to dying to them if you know what they do.

The point of dungeons is not to zerg them down without thought. Deadeyes exist to remind you of this. Put in an iota of thinking, and you will not have a problem with them. You certainly won’t die over and over. You won’t even die once.

Take the spiders. Those are pretty much harmless if you approach them intelligently. That’s where the teamwork lies. If your group has issues with them, you really, really fail. Hardcore. That’s just sad.

This really is why you should stop just thinking it’s all about DPS DPS DPS DPS. It’s not.

UrieltheFlameofGod.8643:

The problem is when I’m fighting the afk-bosses in CM I’m thinking “boy, this guy doesn’t do anything and has way too much health. I’m not having fun.” When I’m running through the 8-silver pack in CM I’m thinking “this pack has to be skipped or we all die. There’s no way that’s intended, and it’s sure not fun.” As I’m dancing back and forth across the water against the billion-health, one-attack Frost, I’m thinking “I have to repeat this for ten minutes without dying once, and there’s only one mechanic. This is not fun.”

Gotta quote this b/c it nails it … now that I’ve gotten all the pieces of gear I wanted, I’m finding it very difficult to get excited about a Dungeon anymore (unless it’s Arah which is always bugged lately or not possible to get into). They’re just not polished and EXCITING or fast-paced like UW/FoW/Deep/DoA

Y’know what they’re like?? They’re more like Sepulchre of Draggimar and every single boss fight and even some Trash mob fights are exactly like that except you can’t even interrupt the stupid Remnant. Dodging is fun in PvP, don’t get me wrong. But in PvE? It feels like a gimmick that was carried too far to the point that they thought they had to make every fight last sooooo long that you only die because you start getting sleepy or don’t have stability.

Ganzo.5079:

like the paralizing spiders on TA, why all the spiders can paralize, i run a shout guardian with rune of soldier, and my team can resist no more then 4 or 5 sec.. poison is ok, but hard controls must be placed ONLY on few rare and hard mobs.

Only the Stonetouch cause the ‘petrification’ effect.

Ganzo.5079:

or Caudecus manor (asura path) whats the sense of all that silver bandits after gunpowder morgan? they are immune to all(we tryed to block em with ring of warding\line of warding or barrage) , and stability dont work to protect team mate from tha bomber blast. So here where is the strategy? where is the teamwork?

At that point, Bandit Thugs start to appear in the trash groups and they can grant aoe stability to the other mobs. Not sure why stability isn’t working maybe you’re mistaking Stand Your Ground ad being an AoE stun break and using it too late? Bear in mind Bombers actually throw their bombs and counts as a projectile that can be reflected. Saboteurs place bombs at your feet and you can move away from them. (could be other way around.)

Zefiris, your post is proof that fanboys will outright lie in order to protect Arenanet from the truth for reasons best known to yourselves.
The Deadeye knockback does put you in range of their explosive attack, which is pretty much an instant kill. Idiot check? You cannot expect whole teams to suddenly hug a mob, when all other mobs teach you otherwise.
Moreover, what do you do when there are 2 of them?

You’re also missing the point that Deadeyes are sprinkled randomly throughout path 2 and nowhere else, with no rhyme or reason to it. Why does path 2 have overly difficult mobs and all the others nothing of note, aside from Mages and Illusionists which are just annoying?

Stop assuming that everybody who recognises dungeon problems are “zerging” them.
I come from many years of experience in raiding and dungeons in various MMOs. GW2 is not special. It is not “above” other dungeons and raids. It is broken and needs to be fixed, and people like you continuously lying to Arenanet ARE NOT HELPING.

Deadeyes are not a problem if you run a tanky build. I agree that dungeons punish glass cannons hard, but there’s an easy solution – don’t run a glass cannon.
I’m not one-shot in Arah on my ele by anything, be it Deadeye or Lupicus, and i’m still over 3k attack.

drkn.3429:

Deadeyes are not a problem if you run a tanky build. I agree that dungeons punish glass cannons hard, but there’s an easy solution – don’t run a glass cannon.
I’m not one-shot in Arah on my ele by anything, be it Deadeye or Lupicus, and i’m still over 3k attack.

Do I seriously have to explain the problem of having to run a tanky build for one enemy in one path of one dungeon?
Moreover, I have a tank build guardian with over 2.1k toughness. It will still kill me in one shot. You seem to ignore the fact that other enemies are attacking while the Deadeyes are shooting me.

Say there’s a Deadeye and two or three other mobs. Even if I use “Stand Your Ground”, that Deadeye is likely to knock me back and kill me even if it’s being focused.
This isn’t even mentioning the Sentinels, who can trap you at range.
There is no sense in these difficulty spikes, and this is an undeniable fact.

But of course I know someone will dispute this, because it’s become almost tradition to deny the obvious and mislead Arenanet.
I could use this kind of insane troll logic to claim that the spider hall waypoint in Arah path 2 is working as intended, and the weird spider bite aoe bug is actually a test of skill. After all, I can pass it without dying. It is therefore okay.

Theres tons of broken things/bad design in dungeons but Deadeyes aren’t one of them. Their 1 shot takes as long to charge as a warrior’s Kill Shot at 1.75 seconds, it marks the target with a red circle underneath them AND the notification icon on your boons/condition UI, “Dead Eye’s Stare” which gives you plenty of time to react.

If anything, the introduction of Deadeyes RIGHT AFTER introducing you to the Berserkers and Defilers is an ingenius design in getting players to use their heads and weigh their options.

I have only died to Deadeyes once when first fighting them during the first week of release. The working strategy since was to stack on them and focus them down asap so you could kite the others. Another trick to them is to line of sight them from behind rocks as any MMO should’ve taught you so they come to you/duck behind rocks so they can’t shoot you. Their extremely low health pool compared to the other Risen on path 2 makes this the most viable in approaching Deadeyes. We are geared in GREENS back then and could the trash mobs down fine.

The synergy skillsets used by the Risen mobs in Arah in general and their cooperation each other from Ring of Warding entrapment and getting stuck with Berserkers/prevent you from reaching their Deadeye buddies to Elementalists/Hunters comboing Vapor Blade/Ricochet off Geysers/Chao Storms puts PuGs and baddies to shame.

Edit: The spider bite aoe on premature golem scene activation is a bug known by Anet, as I’ve said, lots of things are broken, Deadeyes simply aren’t one of the broken things.

I would, also, like some “balance” in the difficulty and some more work in certain dungeons and bosses.

Take, for example CM butler path.
There’s this boss, Wahlen or something, he throws bombs so fast the only way to avoid them is to dodge before he actually throws them, pure luck.
There’s also this tunnel with the traps and the riflemen on the other side or that big room full of bandits that you can skip hopefully.
Finally, there’s the last boss where it’s nearly impossible to wipe. He does this circle of spikes aoe that’s undodgeable because instant.

Of course, all of this isn’t that hard. What I mean is that there are stupid ramp ups in difficulty and mechanics that simply don’t follow the game design with its dodging system.

I love how you point out the Sentinels in a veiled insult against anyone who disagrees with you, but don’t point out that you’re helpless if you are actually trapped.
Nor do you mention the Deadeye’s explosive attack, which is as good as a 1 hit kill if other enemies are beating on you.

No, you give one example on one type of fight where YOU personally can survive therefore it’s okay.
This is the kind of dishonestly I am sick of.

Why are you trying to make it sound so impossible? Even with PuGs I have cleared path 2 3 times since then with various different teams from “I only have a Gsword mesmer” to the best 5 Signet warrior ingame, I simply telling them beat on the Deadeyes while I do some CC of my own at the melee mobs. Ring of Warding still doesn’t stop you from dodging and the Berserker’s autoattacks for the first 10 seconds should be bearable enough since they haven’t built up much might/fury. I just don’t see how it’s so ‘hard’? I guess I should just give up trying to enlighten baddies?

The trash mobs mechanics weren’t the problem with them, it was the amount of groups you had to wade through after learning them the first time.

Edit: Oh and Risen Illusionists are really the ones you should be complaining about with their insta-cast guaranteed 7k damage from one tick of Chaos Storm that is impossible to avoid. Leave the Deadeyes alone.

zencow.3651:

Ganzo.5079:

like the paralizing spiders on TA, why all the spiders can paralize, i run a shout guardian with rune of soldier, and my team can resist no more then 4 or 5 sec.. poison is ok, but hard controls must be placed ONLY on few rare and hard mobs.

Only the Stonetouch cause the ‘petrification’ effect.

even if its that ability, there is no reason to give that ability to minor enemy like a little spiders, because they come on good number. YOU are paralized, you breake it, and you are paralized again after a second.

Ganzo.5079:

or Caudecus manor (asura path) whats the sense of all that silver bandits after gunpowder morgan? they are immune to all(we tryed to block em with ring of warding\line of warding or barrage) , and stability dont work to protect team mate from tha bomber blast. So here where is the strategy? where is the teamwork?

At that point, Bandit Thugs start to appear in the trash groups and they can grant aoe stability to the other mobs. Not sure why stability isn’t working maybe you’re mistaking Stand Your Ground ad being an AoE stun break and using it too late? Bear in mind Bombers actually throw their bombs and counts as a projectile that can be reflected. Saboteurs place bombs at your feet and you can move away from them. (could be other way around.)

in that part i was running with stand you ground, and halloweed ground and wall of reflection… im not sure about the effect of wall of reflection, because in that place, the camera is a bit messy, but im sure that all my party members was under the effect of stability 10 sec from halloweed ground.

Sorry Asagi – i’ve followed some of your posts, read quite a bit of them, replied to some, but you suffer from a little bit of the good ol’ L2P Need, as much as i hate to say it. If you die to a Deadeye as a guardian, you are doing something outright wrong unless you were really unlucky to get focused by two Deadeyes right after you’ve burnt your dodges for something as important – but that’s it, being unlucky, not a broken design; to start with, you shouldn’t aggro more than a group in Arah, and there’s never more than 2 Deadeyes per encounter. On my guardian – pow/tough/vit armor with the generic runes of Forge (i’m too cheap to upgrade my SE set), RUBY jewelry and p/t/v mace/shield combo – i have no problems running into two Deadeyes and surviving it, mainly via proper dodging, rupting (shield 5 ftw), blocking (mace 3, 3rd virtue, Retreat!), but sometimes even after eating a hit – i still have over 2,5k health, enough to dodge out, pop Renewed Focus if really needed and heal up with the signet.

I can totally agree that there’s one thing unbalanced – tanky builds are far superior to glass cannons in this game, especially that bunker builds still have considerable power – my ele has over 3k attack with 0 points in fire, with p/t/v armor, runes of Mercy and Sapphire jewelry. But that’s how the game is to be played right now – be tanky or have godly reflexes and never waste any of your skills without need.
And that’s all.

Some parts of dungeons are tricky – because of introduced mechanic, like jumping in CoF/CoE or some boss fights, like Alpha or even Lupicus amongst others – not really hard, but may be challenging and cause a few wipes for the first few times; then it’s pretty easy and enjoyable. Some parts are very long, either because of facetank-easy bosses with gazillions hp (HotW) or because of requiring a careful approach, aka wasting a lot of time for running, dodging, popping defensive utilities etc instead of just dpsing. Finally, some parts are indeed challenging and require proper usage of your skills, including using different major traits, weapons and utilities, but there’s nothing ‘not doable’ or ‘ridiculously hard’ or ‘ridiculously broken’ or ‘requiring a specific team of 5 guardians to complete’, as far as all dungeons except Arah 4 go – as that’s my last dungeon to do.

TA’s stonetouches? There are only 4 of them, 2 in the Malrona’s room with other spiders, then 2 separate after the room. Just focus them down – call the target and have everyone follow the call; also, don’t stay on top of each other as the paralyse is actually a small AoE – tiny, yet still AoE. I’ve pugged TA countless times, got over 2k tokens to outfit my necro with TA stuff, and stonetouches gave me a hard time maybe once or twice, when i was still new to TA and on glass cannon ele.

CM? Bring projectile reflection, dodge properly, use all kinds of crowd control – everyone has some – blind, chill, cripple, put walls of any kind, go hammer, fear, use minions/illusions to tank, call out the most annoying targets and focus them down one by one. The only silly part of CM is the gate bombing – not because it’s hard but rather boring for the one aggroing and keeping all the mobs away.

I won’t say that Dungeons aren’t fun. I enjoy them most of the time.

I will however agree that they are very inconsistent and more often than not, very easy where they shouldn’t be and very unforgiving where a little leeway might be nice.

I really like Erasculio’s idea on how to deal with this, because if one path is going to be MUCH easier than the rest then naturally everyone picks THAT path. There have been so many comments about how in AC no one does Path 1, and in HotW people avoid the all but one path, etc. They’re definitely not balanced paths, and yes the repertoire of, “You’re just newb, learn to play” is certainly coddling Arenanet. They need to know that this game has some unbalanced aspects. How else can it be improved upon.

Offering suggestions on how to deal with a certain enemy is fine and good, but in general this WHOLE forum section is about 95% negative and quickly boils down to attacks. And it is true, a lot of people I have met and played with on this game have said the dungeons here are often unbalanced and some paths are stupid hard and they have PLAYED MANY GAMES FOR YEARS and have a lot of experience, so pulling the, “Well they must be newbs” garbage doesn’t sit well with me.

And yeah, some dungeons will be easier with some classes than others. I did Sorrow’s Embrace after hearing so much bad about it on the forums and in map chat, and it was insanely easy for me because we had myself with Feedback and two Guardians, so we never had to worry. Then I imagined doing that without any Guardians and on my Ranger instead and felt the frustration I’ve said before: that the current dungeons are set up where you often need one of some type of class to get by certain enemies. So instead of the holy trinity I can’t do such and such path without this and that class and glass-cannons cannot even enter a dungeon. That deviates SO far from Anet’s banner of creating a game that lets you build your character and enjoy the game as you wish to. Choosing glass cannon should entail a definite higher level of squishiness, but not make doing any route pretty improbable.

I agree to the many posts that say the difficulty are all over the place.

Would like to add that, Dungeons get exponentially harder when played with non-80s.

Your group dps takes a huge hit, and non-80s have lower health. Added to the fact, that most of the time, they will be new. Cause many many wipes.

The scaling mechanism needs to be less harsh. Especially if Anet says that dungeons do not need lvl 80s to run.

The truth is, they kind of need to be lvl 80 geared. And this causes much bad blood all round between lvl 80s and non-80s.

After all, taking AC as an example, if you have runed it 30 times over, and do it very fast now because your fellow players are geared and experienced, will you not get annoyed when you get into a group of 3 or 4 non-80s and get wipped alot, taking triple the time. More often then no, you will avoid any non-80s. Maybe even point out, that their level and gear are not good enough. This is especially true, if you are working and only have about 2 hours each night to play.

Non-80s will also be extremely unhappy that the 80s “snub” them or keep picking on any small mistake they do or telling them to get better gear.

All these can be avoided if scaling will be less harsh on non-80s. After all, they are leveling and you cannot expect them to get orange gear, which they will largely out level in 5 dungeon runs (5 level ups).

I am not seeing a “zerg” mentality – I’m seeing spoonfed gamers with no problem solving skills, who can’t see their entire bag of tricks because of the one on top they’ve traited until sooooooo shiny it makes them turgid.

Three of us jumped into a dungeon without having heard anything about it, we’re newer to GW2 than some, but have been playing games together for a decade and are familair with playstyles. The other guys were randoms and obviously not A-List. We carried one member entirely, ex-retadin I would guess from build/style (fellow guard), and otherwise enjoyed a challenging experience which will become less challenging and faster as we hone it.

None of the mechanics you see in an instance are really new or especially difficult to overcome, the tuning towards good teamwork can make it a challenge for PUGs filled with muppets – however if you analyse what your logs are telling you and look around your character (rather than just repeatedly bludgeoning your favorite two keys with your over sized brow) they reveal themselves as being non-trivial, decently rewarding spats of fun with friends.

Failing that I suppose players can eschew picking up their acts and try just raging about how hard, unbalanced, and over-tuned the instances are while concurrently sooking that their class is broken, the fundamental game mechanics are broken, and finally that the community is broken because their tolerance-credits are all used up.

their dungeon team needs to triple in size and they should be done all by committee instead of what’s clearly been a few guys each designing a dungeon with the rest just helping with stuff here and there.

while plenty of you are unskilled whiners, there is a bit of poorly tuned crap in these dungeons, and yea the bosses in HotW have too much HP.

I am going to rub my crystal ball of experience and logical predications…

It shows me a world where the game has progressed and people are complaining that dungeons aren’t hard enough – their experience at being told exactly how to act helps them overcome the initial problem, the fact dungeons were made easier to accomodate poor players, the new game system/mechanics, etc.

The guys out there claiming everything is too easy have options for “elite eSport” games that might challenge them (which this one may yet develop into), I am always amazed at how many “Pro” players (sinch launch bro!) never try real eSports…

itsnot so…
Its like once people with “normal” equipment tried dungeons.
They found them really hard so they complained….

After few fixes, MOST people got to 80 and got exotic sets……also they memorized anything they have to do i dungeons (run past dogs, troll VS LT etc etc etc).

So the dungeon are now easy for them……

Its clear some dungeons have some design flaws when you check one of CM path, you fail it once, you find enemies killing you at the spawn point .____.

Also opponents focusing on a single player chainstunning him forever (yes i use lot of sunbreak skills but they finish first or after and recharge is slow…and its a pure matter of luck not of skill, because sometimes they do that stunchains and sometimes they don t in this case the path is really easy)….

Asagi.1405:

Take, for example, Arah path 1. Not terribly difficult, but huge, HUGE gaps in waypoints where two bosses don’t generate any (is this intentional or a bug?).

imo thats a bug. Cos in path 3 & 4, that ‘close’ waypoint was spawned, but not in 1.
Also, once i saw a screenshot from path1 where that WP actually exist.
They just fixed the doors, but not the WP of path 1. Rlly dissapointed.

And yes, the CoF3 torches w/o voice chat almost imposibru.

The OP provides accurate info.

CoF3 torches:
Everyone brings blinds, blocks, invulnerability skills, fear and whatever you want. Best if it’s instant or over time.
So a necro brings Well of Darkness, warrior brings Fear Me, ele brings a staff (earth 3 is enough) but can resort to Mist Form or Arcane Shield, guardian brings Retreat, mesmer brings Decoy and Feedback, thief pops 5s stealth etc. I’m not familiar with rangers and engineers yet, but 6/8 classes are certain to handle the torches just fine. I had a ranger in my party once and we did fine, no idea how he did it though.
Get close to your torch. Kill random single mobs that you’ve pulled. Kill 2 mobs out of the 3 that spawn for each torch. Keep one of those alive. Keep in mind they’re all shooters. Run with that mob a bit and just facetank it without killing until everyone is in the same spot – you can use the rock on which the torch is to benefit from line of sight and get the mob closer for Fear Me.
Once everyone is ready, which means ‘by the torch, with just one mob, can hit F whenever’, someone counts down, eveyone pops their control skill(s) and hit F. Keep in mind that insta cast skills, like shouts or auras, can be used WHILE channeling the torch. Don’t shout Fear Me in the beginning, before popping the torch – do it as the mob is about to attack you.

Done it three times with no voice communication, with almost only people new to CoF3.
I guess it’s hard if you try to kill off all 3 mobs and light the torch within that small time window, and i guess it’s impossible for a glass cannon that refuses to chance weapons/utilities/traits for the occassion. Other than that – a fun and challenging spot.

Your ‘hard’, ‘impossible’, ‘overtuned’ stuff is really easy if you try to fit to the design rather than bruteforcing the game YOU want to play it. If you were supposed to jump forward and left in an old platformer, you would do it rather than jump right. If you were supposed to input left right left down up lk in Mortal Kombat to get that sweet hit, you would do it. Now you are supposed to be able to survive in dungeon, control enemies and deal damage at the same time – and EVERY class, EVERY players is capable of doing so. Still, people keep refusing it, they want to ‘play the game their way’; sorry to burst the bubble, but you ALWAYS play the game the way it’s designed, supposed to be played – if it’s about the controls, about the most useful setup, about requirements for a certain map/mission/level/dungeon/boss, about anything really. You can’t play Settlers II without building an army, even if it’s what you want to do. You can’t play God of War skipping all enemies, even if you can skip a lot of them, because you want to be Kratos The Pacifist. You can’t refuse to tune your build in dungeons in GW2 to use everything you can because ‘this is my build and i won’t change it, if i can’t complete stuff with it then it’s broken!’
You are presented with a challenge and think what can you use in your arsenal to overcome it. You DON’T try to beat that challenge with what you’re currently using if it outright sucks or just isn’t enough.

I wish the old times of gaming were back, or rather that old mentality of gamers was back. We used to play for fun, with no achievements, no stuff to gain in-game, no carrot to keep us going on. Enjoying the game while playing and the sweet feeling of success after overcoming constantly harder missions/levels/maps was enough. I cannot recall any entitlement 10+ years ago in gaming, just people having fun, appreciating the work of game developers.
And no one whined that the games are too challenging. Heck, we used to play games BECAUSE they were challenging. Nowadays if someone still plays point-and-click adventure games, and i mean proper stuff like good old Faust of Phantasmagoria, i bet they resort to online solutions when they get stuck for 5 minutes. Everyone seems to expect breezing through all and any content found in games, and they not only play to win (as fast and easily as possible), but also to be rewarded with some in-game pixels.

I weep at the contemporary gamers.

I’m starting to wonder if anyone ever reads the first couple posts, or they just read the topic, skip to the end and expand on what was said most recently. The reason I wonder this is just because currently this whole thing has deviated so far from the normal subject. It isn’t a matter of people complaining, or which strategy and use of skills can be dealt to get past this-and-that group of enemies. And it’s a disappointment that it has deviated so far because an idea was presented and it was worth hearing, but as usual it was drowned out.

It is simple: the different paths are UNBALANCED. If this is to be the case, in my opinion, how hard is it to acknowledge this and maybe have a system with some simple parenthesis beside each path designating the difficulty of each path. They have quests that use this same system in game. I have no problem with a challenge, which seems to be drkn’s implication that everyone who is posting in favor of such a concept is implying—that we’re all a bunch of youngin’ babies who weren’t around when Nintendo was a huge step up (been there, your assumptions are highly critical and inaccurate).

In the end, as an adult with responsibilities and commitments, walking into an explore mode without at least a semblance of an idea of how long say Path 1 will take can cause problems when I’m running said dungeon with 4 other people in the same boat as I am. Sure, I can youtube it and get a basic idea, but who knows how often those people ran the dungeon before recording it? Who knows how many skips they take? And why should I have to spoil the content of the dungeon when hey designating the path difficulties isn’t asking much.

Saying we’re feeling entitled just because there’s a suggestion being offered to the developers of a game that is totally unlike Mortal Kombat or Dizzy or Asteroids is just over the top. Are you saying if you sat down at a restaurant and were given a burnt steak that coast you $35 bucks when you asked for medium you wouldn’t at least SAY SOMETHING. This game isn’t going to be something I intend to play for three months and shelf it, which is your standard console life (and that’s being generous). I’m loyal to the games I play and stick to them. I love seeing improvements and I have a ton of respect for Guild Wars 2. But is it perfect? No. Can it be better? Yes. Is it bad of us to offer suggestions? I never got that impression from any of the staff, just people on the forums oddly enough.

@drkn.3429:

Now that strategy that you discuss at the beginning of your post, how long did it take for you to figure that out? Or did you look it up on youtube or ask a guildmate/friend/whatever? And if you asked someone or watched a video, how long did it take for them to figure that out? You say that people are complaining about things being too hard or whatever, when all people want is just a difficulty indicator in explorable modes, which is something I favor greatly.

Second, dungeons ARE unbalanced. Hands down. You tell me you can play a warrior or a thief, or even a melee ranger and can stay in melee range before you lose 90% of your health from one boss attack or from two-three trash mob attacks before having to back up and use ranged? You say that the game is developed a certain way, which was what? To play your class your way. Now I will say going berserker is dumb in a dungeon, but given the current mechanics where trash can practically destroy a party with no effort and it takes 5 players several minutes to kill one thing is annoying, but berserkers should be useful for that. People who want to play that class shouldn’t be restricted from doing so. Skillsets is what I am sure they meant by filling certain roles, like reflects for guardians and so on, but you shouldn’t be punished for not bringing a pair of guardians to an instance because every single enemy does a projectile skill and the skill that blocks them is on a 30-60 second cooldown.

You say that people complain that things are too hard. The abilities that would make the instances much easier are on too long of a CD for no real reason. I would love to have a difficulty indicator on explorable modes to ease myself into a new instance that I haven’t done before. Cuz let’s face it, Story modes are pathetically easy compared to Explorable modes of their respective instance.

I am not gonna make an insanely long post, but flat out, it boils down to this. Melees can barely play in instances, (unless you’re mr/mrs. perfect in dungeons. If that is the case, please upload a video where you run CoF/Arah as a melee warrior or thief, not get downed even once and not using any sort of ranged weapons.) Certain classes are literally needed or else an instance can’t be done (I ran SE with 2 guardians, a mesmer, with me as my engineer. I use the elixir that grants quickness, which gives the toolbelt skill that can create the wall of reflect guardian skill randomly, well frequently. With all of those reflects, it was pathetically easy, compared to other peoples experiences.) and with a game that says you can run an instance with any combination of classes with no trinity, I don’t see it.

Dungeons need to be scaled down. Hard. Either make trash hit as hard as it does now but give it a quarter of the health, or keep the immense health pools but weaken their attacks, and give bosses a crapton less health.

Also, another good suggestion would be to add a trait reset merchant at the beginning of the instance by the repair anvil. That way we can switch it up for the instance without having to go one route the entire instance. There is a lot they can do with instances, but as of now, saying the L2P bs isn’t helping anybody. It’s going to turn away new players and make an aspect of the game people are supposed to find fun be a waste of code.

You wanna see hard dungeons? Play runes of magic, where you had to spend real life money to get yourself geared for an instance where practically everything one shot you, and you had to pay real life money to maintain that armor. This game has plenty of potential, and I hope that they do fix instances, because as of now, they’re too hard and unbalanced.

CoF3 strategy took us 2 hours. We all were there for the first time and we all were wiping at the torches for 2 hours straight. One guy was near to ragequit. But you know what? We told ourselves – one more try. We told ourselves – let’s try a different approach. How about leaving one mob alive? How about controlling it with something? Oh, wait, it didn’t work because Bobbie hit F too late. Let’s try again. Oh, great! Worked awesome!
Then we wasted another hour trying to hold our ground in the blue field. We kept wiping – we weren’t prepared for those mobs. First time in CoF3, not fully exotic geared, not that experienced with the dungeons yet. Now it’s a walk in a park, but then we kept dying, resping and going again.
But then, guess what – we did it. Without watching anything on yt, googling answers or dropping people. We swore to never venture into CoF3 again, which we obviously have broken many times by now, but that feeling of accomplishment is not to be found in your usual daily AC run. This is what makes wiping, paying repair bills and changing your builds worth it – the sweet taste of success after overcoming a serious challenge.
Right now doing CoF3 torches takes us 3 tries tops, with no one dying. We got better – because we tried, kept pushing and thinking until we finally made it, instead of ragequitting and whining how broken and unbalanced it is. Now it’s a piece of cake – without voip or any special preparation.

If you need ‘several minutes’ for trash and you die to ‘two hits’ from trash mobs, you’re doing something very wrong. I facetank most veteran mobs in dungeons with my guardian. I facetank or outright ignore at least half of the incoming damage on my ele – i can heal it up or pop Arcane Shield when needed.
We did CoE1 earlier today – all Alpha fights were facetanked with the game minimised, as he doesn’t drop any AoEs on melee range. Find it out as we did and use it – then enjoy arguing with people in this forum while your toon is bashing the boss down.
We did Arah4 today, first our time there – it’s the most fun and certainly one of the easiest dungeons in the game, although it’s long and unforgiving – but it’s hard to make a fatal mistake.

The problem with glass cannons is that nearly no one can actually play them.
On paper, you should gear yourself up to have the bare minimum of self survivability so you NEVER get downed in a dungeon run, throw in some party support, and go all out on damage with other stats. It’s hard to level it out in practice, though, and at the same time pow/tough/vit gear still has power in its major slot. 3k attack alongside 30% crit chance and 50-60 crit dmg on tanks still can deal high damage and mow through mobs while being much more forgiving for players and just safer.
If you really can run full glass cannon and 2 dodges are enough for you in Arah, be my guest – just don’t die and don’t make others revive you every fight.

I am playing my guardian in dungeons now, playing melee almost exclusively unless a certain boss is really unforgiving for melee (Lupicus – although i meleed him down in phase3 today for fun – and the first two bosses in Arah4). Mace/shield combo. I barely ever swap to scepter/focus, i barely ever get downed. I’ve done all explorable routes with her, including all Arah routes.
Tbh i find the all melee teams best in dungeons. 2 wars, 2 guards, 1 ele – or just 2 guards and 3 wars. So much dps, so much support through all the shouts, so much armor and health.

Do you want to know a secret?
We run power/toughness/vitality armor. We run toughness/vitality runes. We run ruby, emerald or sapphire jewelry. On everyone – from ele to warrior, only necro excluded.
It is true that you can do any dungeon with any profession combo. But not with any build combo. You still need survivability and support. Thing is, with tanky builds – like pow/tough/vit – you still get enough dps to mow through content. Yes, it’s a bit slower, but nobody ever gets downed, nobody dies to trash mobs, nobody has to run from a wp, we don’t get bosses reset on us. Sure, mistakes happen, sometimes we even wipe – but due to a stupid mistake on our end or simply being unlucky, not because dungeons are hard or broken.

I actually plan to fraps our next Arah run, probably in similar heavy-based team – although there are so many guildies who want to do Arah now that we’ve ‘breached’ it and can guide groups through. It is long – very long – bosses have gazillions of hp, most trash is not skippable – but it isn’t hard.

SE 1 and SE 2 is currently bugged, with dev confirmation. Still, i used to farm all SE routes (except 2, as it’s too long to farm – done it 5+ times though to help people with achievements – i still remember the first time, took us a while to figure out you need to kill both golems at once, fun times) – in fact my guardian has SE armor set (p/t/v as well, although with default runes of the forge, i’m too cheap).

You don’t need to reset your traits in dungeons, and if you do, something’s wrong with your build. Just swap major traits if you need – that should be enough. Same goes for weapons and utilities – the fact that i mostly use mace/shield on guardian or staff on ele doesn’t mean i don’t have all the other weapons in my inventory, just in case they got useful.

I did play Runes of Magic and got turned out by the gear treadmill there, even though i had a quite well outfitted mage/priest up and running. The major flaw of RoM’s dungeons, as opposed to GW2’s, was aggro based on the dps-meter – you needed one awesome tank, one extra off-tank, one decent healer, one decent supporter who could take over healing if needed, and everyone else could go full dps.
It’s not the case here. You are responsible for your own survival. If you are the first or second to die or get downed in a dungeon run, you’re doing something wrong – if it doesn’t happen a lot, you probably made a mistake and it’s fine; if it does, you might need some more time with your character, understanding your skills, combos, cycles, understanding the game’s mechanics, understanding the encounters you’re facing in dungeons and properly preparing for them.

The only real problem i see with all the whining around is the fact that a lot of people refuse to even TRY to learn the game, to tweak builds, to change gear. They put all the blame on dungeons being too hard or unbalanced, or unfair, without even putting some effort on their side to adapt to it. We already have some Dungeon Masters out there, a lot of people close to it but just needing more time, and this alone proves that nothing is ‘too hard’ or ‘impossible’.

I wonder if people claiming that ‘X can’t be done’ (except for truly bugged stuff, like SE 1/2 now or some bugs outright blocking progression) took some time to actually think what THEY can do to help it. Tweaked their gear and build? Watched the fight on yt? Asked ‘what can i do to be better’?
It’s pretty much the same as with Arah being bugged now – everyone cries how it’s been bugged the last month, inaccessible and stuff, oh you evil devs fix it now! Instead of whining in the forums, i asked myself what WE, players, can do to somehow circumvent the problem – and i’ve started a EU Arah-oriented guild being an extended friendlist of those who need to do Arah.

The same goes about dungeons. It’s not about devs doing something, especially that numerous people has already proven that each dungeon run is doable – there are videos on youtube you can watch. It’s about asking yourself how can you get better at what you need to get done, hone your skills and then have loads of fun after beating something that was challenging for you. After all, it’s end-game we’re talking about.

For me a game is meant to be fun and a little bit of challenge. But I found after running a few dungeons it was not enjoyable. I rather enjoy a game after working all day not to have to work at a game. So to you who claim we need to learn the game or need to work harder more power to you.

I think we may have got off topic here a bit, I don’t think the guys trying to say anything about the difficulty of any of the dungeons…. But they are 100% beyond a shodow of a doubt unbalanced. There is no reason why my 6 year old daughter should be able to auto attack/afk a boss fight in one instance and in the next, I a 10 year MMO veteran has to corpse run back just to pass an event….lol that my friends is seriously kitten tuning…pure and simple. And yes my 6 year old can seriously auto attack afk a few of the dungeon bosses in this game… I would suppose if arena net would just come out and say that instance A is easier than instance B that would explain stuff a bit. Buuuuut they don’t and the haven’t, so it leaves a lot of people scratching their heads like WTF mate?

Having all dungeon routes balanced all across the game, or even within one dungeons, is simply impossible. You encounter a whole variety of different mechanics later on in dungeons – each route of CoF introduces at least 2 different mechanics which simply require different tactics. If you build up yourself for the encounter and coordinate the team, instead of running the same build and tactic as before, you will succeed everywhere in CoF, despite varying degree of difficulty coming from the difference in design.
But it’s apples and oranges, really. You can balance out two encounters ‘stand here and survive’, but you can’t balance out ‘control this point against enemies’ with ‘survive until 100% keeping the NPC alive’. It’s just different design – but swap your utilities and major traits, understand the encounter after wiping twice, and everything will come to you with relative ease.

Then there’s CoE, which routes are the most alike i think, given the 3 Alpha fights and the unique boss encounters being more of a fun design than an actual challenge. It is unbalanced, yes, but it seems to be meant that way.
CoE 1 is clearly the easiest and shortest, with Alpha being the most passive, not doing anything in melee, not encapsulating in crystals. CoE 2 has less room and nightmare adds, which are a bit tougher than CoE 1’s, but still easier than the destroyers in 3. Finally 3’s Alpha is the most lethal.
I don’t know about you, but i see a clear learning curve in CoE. People usually start new, unknown dungeons with the first path – because why not? Each route becoming a bit harder than the previous one makes sense – not from a perspective of someone who wants to farm that dungeon beyond any limits, but from a perspective of someone who explores it, delves into it for the first time.

Lots of dungeons and fights there are more of a fun design than a challenging one. Take the Stargazer in Arah 1 – the final boss which is VERY easy, yet quite fun and it’s clearly the design that is shown there. There are SOME encounters which are challenging even to an experienced player, still showing great design – take Lupicus. But i really can’t remember any encounter that was challenging, overly hard, unbalanced – when doing things as they’re meant to be done.
CM2? Have one person drop a barrel far away to lure all the mobs.
CoF3? Use your crowd control skills, stealth, Mist Form – whatever works.
Arah4? For some encounters, go ranged, even if you’re a melee-specced warrior.

People find dungeons too hard or unbalanced when they (a) try to run them with their usual builds and refuse to tweak them for encounter, (b) try to bruteforce them and refuse to find out what’s the working strategy and simply execute it, © ragequit after a wipe instead of trying to learn something from it (i still remember my first time in AC – took us 1,5h to do one route, my armor was broken twice – good times), (d) try to rush them – yes, bosses have loads of hp, yes, trash has loads of hp, yes, most dungeons take a while – but that’s their design and rushing them will only cause bad things happen.

Then there are some dungeons that require a bare minimum of teamwork and if X people in your party are bad, you won’t succeed. Sometimes it’s 3 – like when jumping in CoE or going with the fiery balls in CoF1. Sometimes it’s 1 – like in CoF3. But that’s about teamwork and having everyone on the same page with their builds, skills and expectations, not about nerfing dungeons into oblivion because a pug of bad players can’t succeed.

I don’t think you’re reading the posts, I hope so but I don’t think you are. Two suggestions were made, one to have path 1 easiest, path 2 to be medium difficulty, and path 3 to be the most difficult. I suggested they don’t need to be that way so much as just putting the difficulty in parenthesis beside each path in the same tradition as the heart quests in Ashford Plains and Snowden. You say the dungeons are doing what they’re designed to do, yet when I comment how inflexible they are—that only one gear-set seems to be adequate—you see no problem in that, even going so far as to say that the people you run with all use the same: power, toughness, and vitality. Instead you keep tossing out long replies with examples from the same three dungeons. Oddly enough the dungeons that cause the most grief to players are not on your list.

Then, in an earlier reply to Andaras, when he says close melee have difficulty, he specifically says he wants videos of thieves/warriors able to do this stuff while staying in close melee and not being downed. You then reply saying your GUARDIAN is able. That is not the same, not at all. If you do have a situation where a warrior/thief is able to stay in close melee and not have to consistently back off and go long-range in a trash mob of a dungeon please, instead of these substantial posts, post a video we’d all love to see the strategy. Because I see thieves having to resort to bows, and I’m sure having played a thief, that this is a letdown from the pleasure of daggers or a pistol/dagger.

Challenge accepted – leveling my warrior atm, as soon as she turns 80 she’s getting proper dungeon gear and is off to get me more tokens, as right now she’s running with some masterwork underleveled crap.

Oddly enough, i thought that CoE and CoF were some of the most problematic dungeons. I mentioned the all-hated CM and the supposedly tough Arah 4. Which ‘dungeons causing most grief’ have i omitted?

TA’s paths with hammer enemies and the blossom respawn right there, often coming back too quickly. Honor of the Waves, the water paths especially. SE without Guardian/Mesmer’s shield skills, AC Hodgins specifically and the perma-knockdowns.

You yourself said it took your group 2 hours for CoF3, which goes back to what I was saying that simple labeling of difficulty would at the very least honor GW2’s promise that this game would also cater to even the casual players who have limited time. And every aspect of this game has remained true to that promise except dungeons (and maybe a few of the more complicated jumping puzzles). I’ve played for half an hour and got quite a bit done at times. But dungeons are out of the question usually unless you have 2-2 1/2 hours, and although that is an explore mode/learning for the first time situation… with a PuG that will almost always be the case. Finding a group where everyone is in different guild, and have never played together, yet who can strike a cord and everyone has done the dungeon previously so there’s zero hiccups is not likely in a PuG. In a group of five, at least or two people will be geared inappropriately (magic find, glass cannon), or will have NO idea what they’re doing, which means more time.

Honestly, you post a lot in the dungeon forums, and the one thing I can say is it seems you’re fortunate in the people you run with, have established trust and teamwork. Good for you. I’m lucky in that regard too. Most on here are NOT. Acknowledging that PuGs are typical dungeon-mode for most is essential for developers. I think in this situation you and other people who are against a bit of simple coding to add difficulty range are over complicating things.

Why does one boss need to be comparable difficulty to another in and instance?

Broken objects and skills aside (as they are broken) – why should encounter A and encounter B, even if in the same instance, be pretty close to the same level of “hard”?

I don’t really think anything based on “players expect” should count in a game that is trying to shake up player expectations.

Nico – that’s why i don’t pug, and when i do i’m just looking for 1-2 more players to my 3-4 man guild group. That’s why guilds are there – to help you organise stuff and keep constant parties up.
But we were beginners, too. I remember wiping in TA story, CONSTANTLY. It took us nearly 4h to finish it the first time. I remember wiping at Ramblus in AC the first time i saw him. I remember taking a lot of time to figure out puzzles and mechanics, like CoF3 indeed.
Right now we can run most of it blindfolded – and by ‘we’ i mean most people in my guild, as i don’t have a constant party of 5 clearing stuff together. I’m in a 150+ man guild, with ~80 active people, and each and everyone who has ever attempted dungeons with me is capable of doing nearly everything now, and not wiping constantly on trash or dungeon mechanics.
But we were beginners, too. We were utter noobs. I used to run carrion set on elementalist and claimed it to be the best possible. I used to lock myself out of swapping traits and utilities, because it was too much work for me back then.

Yet since then, i’ve learnt a lot. I taught others a lot and was taught by guildies and random pugs alike. But first of all, i kept myself open on all the game’s signals – tried to do it the way it was designed, intended and planned; built myself up to overcome any challenge rather than make the game more challenging because ‘i have to do it my way’.

I cannot agree that pugs are the basic way to do things in Guild Wars. Even ignoring the social aspect, guilding up is the common thing to do in order to find like-minded people who will enjoy playing together with each other, who will have the opportunity to try things together, fail, wipe and learn, overcoming obstacles and getting better together. After all, it’s an MMO games and the standard is to play multiplayer games with other people, make acquaintances if not friends, team up in some sort of way.
GW2’s open PvE content has been designed to be fully puggable – you never need to party up in Cursed Shore to finish a Temple event. Mind it, Balthazar chain is probably the hardest open PvE encounter right now, alike to a raid – but still, you don’t have to party up with others, you can do it with completely random people, total strangers – and move on.
Dungeons do not work that way, at least not all of them. If someone insists on pugging everything, they have to realise they cripple themselves. With multiguilding in place, you can be a member of your casual guild of real-life friends, but at the same time be on the roster of a more dungeon-oriented guild so that you don’t have to pug; heck, with 500 slots in guilds, your whole real life group could and should join something bigger, even if only for 24/7 guild buffs.

This is not a single player game with other members of your party being NPCs, or GW1 with its heroes. I realise it might take a while to find or forge a decent guild, but there are gazillions of guilds out there, with all kinds of activities, expectations, requirements and offers. For one, my guild is a PvX one, a laid-back group with next to no requirements but being a nice and helpful person, and we’re always open for newcomers; there are loads of guilds like this out there, with people willing to teach you dungeon runs if only you would put some effort in looking for them and then listening to what they say.

About specific dungeons – the only hard moment of all the TA explorables is the Leurent fight, but there are no blossoms if you pull the group a little bit. HotW is easy if you are properly geared – the sad thing is that loads of people ignore their underwater gear and don’t go after that sweet lv79 aquabreather with pow/tough/vit, which is only 1 stat point weaker than its cond/prec/tough lv80 friend from Orr – which is also a decent choice; too many people ignore their underwater weapons. It’s not the fault of how dungeon is designed but of those people, sorry – we don’t run HotW because is kitten boring and much too easy, including the underwater part, and simply longer than AC which also yields pow/tough/vit gear. SE 1 & 2 are allegedly broken right now, but i don’t recall any troubles before the ‘patches’ – it took us a while to figure out that we have to kill both golems at the same time at SE 2, but that’s it – we kept killing one five times before we tried downing them both, without having anyone here downed; and we weren’t as experienced or geared up as now. And AC… sweet AC… let me just say i can solo the left side of the Hodgins’s room with my ele, and i’ve seen a warrior doing the same – not saying how pro i am, but how easy that encounter is if you, yourself, are prepared – 4 people are enough to destroy the right side and babysit Hodgins, even if they’re complete noobs and idiots.

drkn.3429:

And AC… sweet AC… let me just say i can solo the left side of the Hodgins’s room with my ele, and i’ve seen a warrior doing the same – not saying how pro i am, but how easy that encounter is if you, yourself, are prepared – 4 people are enough to destroy the right side and babysit Hodgins, even if they’re complete noobs and idiots.

I could solo the right side with the double scavengers as Ele. But in one of my PuG, they somehow kept wiping on the left side with 4 people. They also refused to take an ice bow from me. The instance owner left after 5 tries claiming it was too hard. Occasionally I would recommend utility changes so their life but they would simply refuse and keep dying. I’m not even asking them to change their traits/buy new gear! Truth is, some people rather complain and continue to be bad than even listen.

Then there’s confused individuals who support them by saying skill > gear. But you have to realise 95% of the population cannot survive in MF gear/5 signet warrior/full zerkers (avid zerker believer myself) and are a liability to the team. Usually I would carry these guys as much as possible until they make changes on their own and survive or ragequit the party.

I just had to log in and put my little cents in here. Simply put whatever your argument, I am getting bored with this game over the simple fact that the dungeons I was so excited to do ARE NOT FUN. Simple enough.

I was just thinking today… wow I can’t believe I waited so long for this game and I am bored already, as brilliant as it is, PVP just isn’t enough (nor is all that challenging, it needs help too). In the end games like WOW and FFXI (6 years at this game) had a long life because they were fun to do, well WOW lost its luster with every expansion. But unless they fix some major issues in dungeons and make them FUN and CHALLENGING then the hype for this game was only hype.

I hope they fix it I am getting to old to keep starting new games and frankly just done.

I must say that every single post on this thread is laughable and truly pathetic.