Guild Wars 2

Seriously, the only reason why dungeons are difficult now is because the strategy guides like Tankspot are not available yet so you have to figure out the way to beat it like Paragon does. I bet once the guides are up and widely available, everyone will be complaining that the dungeons are too easy.

Examples of difficult stuff that is now easy:

AC story mode lovers used to be a wipefest, but now everyone knows that you put 4 on Ralena and one guy throwing boulders at Vassar. It has become a cakewalk.

TA Story mode second boss: just stack party swiftness buffs and run around in circles shooting the boss.

Honestly guys, do you want everything handed to you on a silver plate?

No but Id at least like something handed to me after all of my efforts.

I second that

Actually, my main complaint with dungeons in their current form is that the trash mobs are overtuned to the point that often they are harder than the bosses.

It would be one thing if they had half the HP they do now, because then you could use strategy, ie blind one, freeze another, dps the third down hard. But as it stands, you blow all your CC skills and they’re all still alive with 75% health and all the while hitting you for 1/3 of your life.

It’s not fun or challenging, but tedious. Staying alive often comes down to kiting them at max range, waypoint zerging, or dodging more blows than Tom Hardy at a lgbt parade

There’s definitely strategy for trash mobs and if you’re dying to them, it means your team hasn’t figured it out yet, just like the bosses.

For example, in AC explorer or story:

Melee mobs: kite. Too many people want to melee against melee mobs.
Rangers: blind, stun, remove their conditions. Kill these guys first
Eles: interrupt, avoid AOE, heal through the damage
Necro: remove conditions or just heal through the damage
Mesmer: leave till last

The tricky and dynamic bit is that everyone needs to know how to handle aggro. Easiest to just run away if you’re being focused by the mobs. Swiftness is very useful.

Also, staying alive often comes down to whether your team mates are quick in rezzing you.

AC is a terrible example, that was actually available in the BWE so it isn’t nearly as bad as some of the worst offenders. Go back and do a write up for CoE (any path, heck pick story mode if you want or front door if you’re feeling ballsy) or Arah. Or better yet, the new CoF door event!

I’m sorry but I disagree. Its not a guide issue but the fact these places are overtuned. I don’t want gear handed to me I like challenge. I left WoW mostly because of how much of a joke it is to “earn” gear. The 1-3shot mechanics throughout these places are extremely irritating along with whenever your downed then manage to get back up only to be downed AGAIN because you didn’t get a chance to move. Then there are some fights where the indication to dodge something is so obscure with all the flashy burn and lighting effects on the boss its just ridiculous. There needs to be a cast bar under their name so I can time myself properly without having to disrupt my “rotation” just so I don’t get 1 shotted. Without that I’m basically just auto atacking and TRYING to toss in other skills. (Good example of this is the 2nd boss on the option 2 in AC) With all of these problems and much more you get very lackluster drops for all the stress you go through. Take my opinion for whatever you will but the dungeons in this game need to go back to the drawing board.

There is a difference between challenge and getting brick walled by numbers. From hat I have noticed is one of two situations.

1. Enemy hits you with big numbers and you are downed instantly you either get pulled up or die.
b. You dodge this attack and his three buddies repeat the move, one dodge to go and three attacks later, you are downed/

2. The mob is easy to manage and you sit there chipping away at the mob/boss waiting for it to end.

I have no problem with challenge, in fact , I welcome challenge. The chance to get better excites me to no end. If I can spec glass cannon and go through a dungeon and not get hit and win that is what I would do in a heart beat, however, you CANNOT do that.

In these dungeons, you WILL get hit, you WILL go down and you WILL die. For the most part it is universally true. This to me is sad, I don’t mind the fact that I take damage if I make mistakes, or hell, even if I die from a mistake, that’s fine. But, If i die because I have to dodge 4 moves and am only ALLOWED to pick two then that feels awful.

I compare and contrast this game many times to Dark Souls. This is a game that is very dear to me as it has a true feeling of difficulty. It actually allows for any and all play style. Want to be fast like a freak wearing light armor? Do it, spec that dex, grab those straight swords and daggers and go to town. Do you want to be an armored juggernaught that can take the hits and roll with the blows? Do it, grab that armor, level into that vitality and endurance, grab yourself a weapon you like and go to town. The beautiful thing is it works, you can take these heavy builds and learn the games , learn the fights and encounters, the patterns and attacks and take the hits and make the mistakes. Once you do, you get better and you feel it when you try to become a glass cannon, you either see the improvement or find out that you are not ready.

Where is that?

I don’t understand the complaint about the trash mobs being too difficult. It’s a dungeon all the content should be a challenge and difficult. You shouldn’t be able to run through all the non boss mobs like you’re OP to get to the more difficult content. It would make the reason for the mobs being there obsolete. I’d personally find it boring if the non boss mobs we’re a faceroll.

As was mentioned numerous times, the challenge isn’t the problem. Its the sense of no matter how you hone your skills, no matter how you dodge/use defensive cooldowns….it doesn’t matter at all since the amount of incoming damage/abilities is twice what you can use to avoid/mitigate them. Even if you do everything right, the mobs will still aggro you and kill you in 1 or 2 hits. You can say all you want that "oh its just a matter of moving at the right time or blowing all your cooldowns or even running away. You can’t run away, YOU. ARE. DEAD. One shot, no warning, often with no discernable reason why. I’ve literally stood in the doorway and aggro’d the boss despite being out of LOS and not having done anything and with my entire team beating on him. There is no strategy, the only current strategy in most cases is to bring a lot of money and run back from the waypoint.

Dorn, What dungeon is it that you’re referring too?

That was first boss in CM Story. He was down the stairs and I literally stepped through the door and WHAM, missile to the face.

AC was never hard nor was any of the explorable modes.. just saying

anyway its not the difficulty people are peeved about its the fact you get no rewards for your efforts, no guide can help that

Dorn.5867:

That was first boss in CM Story. He was down the stairs and I literally stepped through the door and WHAM, missile to the face.

We had no issues with the CM dungeons, Yes it took some time to figure them all out first time around but they were doable. I’ve not done them in a while though so I’m not aware of any changes they made. If you have a good team and understand your profession well you have ways and tactics to survive the fight.

I posted this in another thread but I’ll reiterate it here. Used to run CM Story with my guild, great way to make money (about 26 silver per run) and get good exp. I understand why they made the change in rewards because you could just do that instance in 15 minutes over and over again and make mad coin/exp. I’m ok with that because even we felt it was an exploit. However, a new guildy joined us recently after the patch and he just got level 40 on his elementalist. We figured we’d do Story to get him through and then possibly do some events/hearts to get him to 45 to get into Explore mode. Remember, we used to do Story in 15 minutes, maybe die a couple of times to unlucky attacks or not timing dodges properly etc. Well after 45 minutes we still weren’t on the last boss, I had died about 17 times and my repair bill was approaching the 15 silver mark. We make the final push, kill the last boss and our reward….11 silver. Are you kidding me? I’d also like to mention this was the FIRST time we did this dungeon that night. We didn’t farm it 15 times, we did it once and got next to nothing for our efforts. I’m glad he got his helmet and all, but what is the point? I got some exp and 4 silver for 45 minutes of frustration. I could have auto attacked everything outside in the level 15 zone and gotten that much for my efforts.

Dorn.5867:

I posted this in another thread but I’ll reiterate it here. Used to run CM Story with my guild, great way to make money (about 26 silver per run) and get good exp. I understand why they made the change in rewards because you could just do that instance in 15 minutes over and over again and make mad coin/exp. I’m ok with that because even we felt it was an exploit. However, a new guildy joined us recently after the patch and he just got level 40 on his elementalist. We figured we’d do Story to get him through and then possibly do some events/hearts to get him to 45 to get into Explore mode. Remember, we used to do Story in 15 minutes, maybe die a couple of times to unlucky attacks or not timing dodges properly etc. Well after 45 minutes we still weren’t on the last boss, I had died about 17 times and my repair bill was approaching the 15 silver mark. We make the final push, kill the last boss and our reward….11 silver. Are you kidding me? I’d also like to mention this was the FIRST time we did this dungeon that night. We didn’t farm it 15 times, we did it once and got next to nothing for our efforts. I’m glad he got his helmet and all, but what is the point? I got some exp and 4 silver for 45 minutes of frustration. I could have auto attacked everything outside in the level 15 zone and gotten that much for my efforts.

Oh the difficulty versus reward, Yea they mentioned that that is an issue they’re looking at fixing. They just put it in place to prevent gold farmers from ruining the entire economy of the game but they went a little overboard which they are aware of:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Dungeons-and-Dungeon-Reward-System-Overhaul-Needed/first#post193458

Yeah, read that post. Funny how they never mentioned increasing the difficulty of the dungeon. The only thing mentioned in that article is “Hey, we nerfed rewards because people were exploiting easy dungeons and getting a lot of money”. Did you see in there where they increased the number of silver mobs in CM. Or the number of gold mobs? The dungeon was fine the way it was.

jibs.8463:

so you have to figure out the way to beat it like Paragon does.

You just said that all players, average players, bad players, casual players, players new to the game, players new to their profession, you just said that all players that want to enjoy StoryMode, have to play and think like Paragon. Paragon, the top guild in the largest MMO, who are all very very good gamers, very hardcore, and can’t be beaten by anyone else.

Story Mode ? Way to go ! That’s how you keep customers playing your game. Awesome idea !

All those QQ threads are about certain exp bosses you know.Like subject alpha and others….

my main problem with Dungeons is the design of the encounters. CM Story for example, has a couple REALLY tough fights along the way (the one with the drunk guy passed out is a wipefest and QQ inducing for pugs). But when you get to the last boss fight it’s a cakewalk. The boss fight should, IMO, be at least as tough as the hardest encounter along the way. It should also be somewhat entertaining. Standing there for 10 minutes firing arrows in to a guy and dodging every once in a while when you see a red circle is not really all that exciting to me.

Deluxxe.9140:

my main problem with Dungeons is the design of the encounters. CM Story for example, has a couple REALLY tough fights along the way (the one with the drunk guy passed out is a wipefest and QQ inducing for pugs). But when you get to the last boss fight it’s a cakewalk. The boss fight should, IMO, be at least as tough as the hardest encounter along the way. It should also be somewhat entertaining. Standing there for 10 minutes firing arrows in to a guy and dodging every once in a while when you see a red circle is not really all that exciting to me.

I think that’s a fair opinion, though I personally like the challenge of trash fights just as much as boss fights. Trash is often a test of your support skills — crowd control, kiting, healing, ability to focus on one mob at a time as a group etc — while boss encounters are often more focusing on the boss mechanics which are unique (ie. don’t stand in the red circles, don’t attack during this phase, etc etc.). Both are important to a dungeon, imho.

Only thing I agree with is that the final boss fights should be tougher in comparison to the rest of the dungeon. A lot of times a certain “trash” set of mobs are harder to overcome. I don’t mind challenges throughout the dungeon but the last fight should be the hardest.

Don’t matter now no one running dungeons whatsoever now. So nothign to complain about anymore except complete lack of 5 man content.