Guild Wars 2

Btw thank you Miku! —this is his

• Bring back Forward/Up[/pre]
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Bugs:

Mechanics:

Bugs:

Mechanics:

• Tone down the difficulty of the Ooze puzzle. For instance add a second buff that attracts the elementals so we can control their pathing?
• Increase daily gold reward to 3-5 gold. Reasons : time it takes, increased coordination it takes, it is aswel a level 80 dungeon like Arah.
• Let us skip the dialogues betwen Caith and the Lionguard before and/or after selecting the path. They last for over 1 minute.
• After the Oose room is completed, let us enter the next room without waiting for Caith’s dialogue.
• Let us skip the Slick and Sparky cutscene.
• Let us skip the Clockheart’s death cutscene.

• The Holograms need to have a timed explosion instead of exploding on death. As of now, killing holograms means down state if you are within their range. This is not fun. Let them stop for X seconds before exploding. to allow counterplay (dodge).

Bugs:

• Spider adds and Malrona in Chamber of Envy are already spawned on the floor. They used to trigger upon entering the room.
• Nightmare Warden from the Nursery happens to stop attacking if stuck under the tree infront of him.

Mechanics:

• Make Malrona’s projectiles blockable or reflectable.
• Give Malrona a Bite attack to compensate (same as Spider Queen)
• Scale down her Poison mechanic so it doesn’t become game breaking when paired with reflects

Bugs:

• First group of 6 archers are already spawned and neutral. They used to appear when you reached the trigger point near far side door.

Mechanics:

Bring back Forward/Up is all I can say. Tone down the spiders at the final boss a little and it will be a daily path for me!

+ Bring back Forward/Up as a 4th path.

+ Aetherpath – Remove/alter ooze puzzle so it is more pug friendly.

+ Aetherpath – Increase daily gold reward to 4g-5g.

+ Aetherpath – Make dialogues run in background. They shouldnt halt progress through unecessary time gating.

+ Aetherpath – Make all cutscenes skippable. Maybe remove some cutscenes and dialogues.

+ Up path – Make malrona’s projectiles reflectable or blockable again.

Yeah it’d be great if we could have Tafu and Aetherpath and just let TA have 4 Paths, like Arah.

Bring back TAFU. You can even claim that it’s a new dungeon, I don’t care. Just do it.

spoj.9672:

+ Bring back Forward/Up as a 4th path.

+ Aetherpath – Remove/alter ooze puzzle so it is more pug friendly.

+ Aetherpath – Increase daily gold reward to 4g-5g.

+ Aetherpath – Make dialogues run in background. They shouldnt halt progress through unecessary time gating.

+ Aetherpath – Make all cutscenes skippable. Maybe remove some cutscenes and dialogues.

I agree with the ooze puzzle. It’s annoying if I am trying to help a friend through it and we have to pug, since most pugs yolo and have little to no communication unfortunately. The rage quit is funny though :P

Bugs

+ Up path – Spider groups and Malrona are already spawned on the floor. At release they dropped down from the roof as you approached and became hostile.

+ Forward path – First group of 6 archers are already spawned and neutral. At release they dropped down from the roof and became hostile when you reached the trigger point (walk near far side door).

spoj.9672:

+ Bring back Forward/Up as a 4th path.

+ Aetherpath – Remove/alter ooze puzzle so it is more pug friendly.

+ Aetherpath – Increase daily gold reward to 4g-5g.

+ Aetherpath – Make dialogues run in background. They shouldnt halt progress through unecessary time gating.

+ Aetherpath – Make all cutscenes skippable. Maybe remove some cutscenes and dialogues.

+ Up path – Make malrona’s projectiles reflectable or blockable again.

I think the only way to balance reflections is to have them scale with the person who cast the reflection’s power rather than with the thing being reflected’s power: This way you still get some extra damage and also get the protection from the attack. I agree with all the Aetherpath changes.. Pugging Aetherpath in EU = hell, everyone speaking different languages n’ all.

spoj.9672:

+ Up path – Make malrona’s projectiles reflectable or blockable again.

…but don’t make the poison amplify the damage of the reflected attacks. Maybe give her a bite attack on top of that just like the SQ has so she’s a little bit more dangerous even when having lots of reflects.

There was no problem with the reflect damage. I believe it was altered for another reason unintentionally. If the reflect damage is the reason then anet can just make the projectiles blockable but unreflectable. But the change was a terrible rushed solution.

spoj.9672:

There was no problem with the reflect damage. I believe it was altered for another reason unintentionally. If the reflect damage is the reason then anet can just make the projectiles blockable but unreflectable. But the change was a terrible rushed solution.

The reflect damage itself really isn’t. Malrona’s poison however amplified it and resulted in some pretty extreme numbers. I’d say this too played a role.

Just giving my thoughts because it really is a crappy solution.

Thats what I was talking about. It was an intended mechanic. So there was no reason to change it. They could simply just reduce the scaling on the poison buff.

Either way the projectiles should be blockable because at the moment they are completely unreliable to dodge in melee range.

spoj.9672:

Thats what I was talking about. It was an intended mechanic. So there was no reason to change it. They could simply just reduce the scaling on the poison buff.

Either way the projectiles should be blockable because at the moment they are completely unreliable to dodge in melee range.

I’ve been having decent success dodging (only fail when I fail timing wise), curious what issues you’re noticing?

Personally I kinda like Malrona more now that she’s more risky. I like fights that are doable but punish you if you do them wrong and Malrona fits the bill more now than when it was just throw a wall in front of her and win.

I think seeing a melee attack added as a 3rd attack could fill that role. And, Projectil reflects as a whole need to be looked at, they really should be adjusted to do more reasonable damage based on the user rather than the enemy. I’m not sure if it’s because enemies have a ton of power or if the coefficients are huge, but either make it reflect back a new attack (if it’s the coefficients) or make it use the players power (if it’s the power of the enemies).

For Forward, not so much a request but just a comment. THe Flower Jump, when I first learned about it I thought it was intended. I thought it was “you can do normal run/stealth skip or you can do a tricky jump” I thought it played well into the whole GW2 experience of jumping being part of the game. I enjoyed that, I actually thought it was something awesome the devs did by design. Well, turns out I was wrong, and I’m not so much asking for it to come back as much as just mentioning that it was something I enjoyed. It didn’t let us skip bosses (that I know of) but it let us skip stuff we just skip in other ways now, so it was just an option with the same effect and again, something I found fun.

spoj.9672:

+ Bring back Forward/Up as a 4th path.

+ Aetherpath – Remove/alter ooze puzzle so it is more pug friendly.

+ Aetherpath – Increase daily gold reward to 4g-5g.

+ Aetherpath – Make dialogues run in background. They shouldnt halt progress through unecessary time gating.

+ Aetherpath – Make all cutscenes skippable. Maybe remove some cutscenes and dialogues.

+ Up path – Make malrona’s projectiles reflectable or blockable again.

This sums up every change I was going to suggest for TA +9000!
Bringing back F/U path would have the highest priority along with increasing incentive of doing Aetherpath.

I’m back again to ease Lilith’s job with this thread, here’s the quote/copy/pasta so you can edit the thread ! Everything you guys said was taken into consideration. Read before you add more suggestions ty ~ If something didn’t make it, it is because I consider it being a global issue rather than an issue with TA (reflect scaling).

Insert above Aetherpath section for a new General section just for TAkitten

 
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div(flash). %{font-size:20pt}General%

---    

* Bring back Forward/Up

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Insert under Aetherpath mechanics

• Tone down the difficulty of the Ooze puzzle. For instance add a second buff that attracts the elementals so we can control their pathing?
• Increase daily gold reward to 3-5 gold. Reasons : time it takes, increased coordination it takes, it is aswel a level 80 dungeon like Arah.

Insert under Up path Mechanics

• Make Malrona’s projectiles blockable or reflectable.
• Give Malrona a Bite attack to compensate (same as Spider Queen)
• Scale down her Poison mechanic so it doesn’t become game breaking when paired with reflects

Insert under Up path Bugs

• Spider adds and Malrona in Chamber of Envy are already spawned on the floor. They used to trigger upon entering the room.
• Nightmare Warden from the Nursery happens to stop attacking if stuck under the tree infront of him.

Insert under Forward path Bugs

• First group of 6 archers are already spawned and neutral. They used to appear when you reached the trigger point near far side door.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

• The Holograms need to have a timed explosion instead of exploding on death. As of now, killing holograms means down state if you are within their range. This is not fun. Let them stop for X seconds before exploding. to allow counterplay (dodge).

If you damage holograms to low hp, then finish them off with warrior GS3 you evade all damage. So does Pistol Whip. The problem is that there’s no counterplay option if you don’t have either of these, and the situation doesnt let you kill them from range (electric floor). You can still dodge them, but… that risks getting killed by the electric floor, or it is extremely difficult do dodge when 5 ppl are killing holograms without coordination.

• Bugs:

At Sparki&Slick the ooze often gets stuck when reaching 10stacks of its buff.

The Clockheart’s room is big enough to run out of combat for a couple seconds without resetting the boss, and so making the waypoint available for allies.

PLease do not change Malrona, seeing people wipe there is kinda fun actually.

To make it easy guys,
When she is charging with tail Up, it’s poison eat it, and 5x damage
When she is charging with tail Down, wait 1 second, and dodge toward her. No wipe guaranteed.

Malrona’s aoe could be changed to an outright pbaoe with a different animation. There are plenty in the game, could just slap it on and be k.

It sucks that reflect part got taken away but if I had to choose between having reflects and the amplification mechanic, I’d take amplification simply because it’s way more unique.

She’s a mini boss anyway, more like a boss section with spiders on the way to her. Being low on different mechanics is okay here imo.

I love Aetherpath, so no suggestions there.

Most of my suggestions for the other two paths have to do with making the fights more interesting (which is what needs to be done with pretty much every dungeon other than Aetherpath). Also, they are just my feeble suggestions – Im not a developer – so Im sure someone at Anet could come up with better mechanics:

Forward (Vevina):

+ The nightmare ambusher fight is boring and repetitive. In addition to the 6 snipers, give us a boss (master ambusher) in this room that stealths, blinks and backstabs.

+ In the bubble room, fill the room with poison that damages unless you are in a bubble with a target. At the same time, change the mobs inside the bubbles to something more challenging and diverse (they are the elite guard and should be formidable) – and make the mechanics of getting into the bubbles more clear/easy to understand.

+ Laurent at the very least needs a ranged attack – shockwave from the hammer that knocks targets down. Additionally, link Laurent and his adds so they cannot be pulled separately.

+ On the boss fight, increase the respawn time on the vet oakhearts (but have them spawn at the very start of the fight) and have them create a stacking debuff on all players that reduces every players’ direct damage (but not conditions) by 10 percent per active oakheart – making it necessary to kill the oakhearts (primarily but not exclusively using conditions).

Up (Laurent)

+ Malrona feels like the best designed fight in the instance. Only recommendation would be a better telegraph on her one-shot attack.

+ Fyonna should leash back into the room if she is pulled into the hall (its way too easy to kill her and negates the impact of the egg sacs in the room on the fight). Then add more eggs and a dungeon achievement for not breaking any eggs (and a separate achievement for breaking all eggs before the boss dies ).

+ Last boss is mind numbing because it can be either simply ranged down or negated due to reflects. People should not be able to attack the boss from the entrance tunnel. In addition to stacking bleeds, the large spikes should “impale” the person they hit and hold them in place, unable to do anything, until the spike has been destroyed by teammates (if everyone is spiked, its a guaranteed wipe). Finally, the healing vines that spawn should be converted to anti-healing vines – instead of healing the boss, they should significantly reduce the healing that players can do to themselves.

Finally, I miss the bee puzzle from F,U (having to use the sap to get past the hall of bees) and would love to see it put back into one of the other paths somewhere (the puzzle – not the F,U path – I agree with it being removed).

Forward:

• Laurent, I kinda like that you can split the pulls up, it gives an easier but slower option. Personally my group pulls them all at once, I’m usually playing guard so I’ll lay a line of warding to stop the Knight, and a wall to nullify the archer while we burn them down, they’re pretty easy, but when I was learning I sure appreciated the slower but safer approach. I think it’s good design to offer harder but faster and slower but easier options.

• NIghtmare Tree, I kinda like the condition idea, but I don’t like it just for the last boss. To me that just promotes carrying another set of gear to swap on for one fight, or even just saying screw it and burning without it as it’s only one fight. Now, I wouldn’t be opposed to taking that twist to the whole dungeon though, raising all the bosses defenses and lowering their health to make power builds relatively the same, but making condition builds more potent as they’d avoid the defense, so having one or two condi builds in this dungeon would be beneficial. That’s something I could get behind.

UP:

• Fyonna, I don’t dislike your idea except for one thing. She constantly moves out of melee, so I can’t help but feel that we’d be better of just ranging from safe spots (spots without eggs) rather than trying to chase her around the room and position for melee only to have her move again. Melee is supposed to be more dangerous, BUT more rewarding, in this case I think it’d lose it’s reward. Make her movement out of melee happen less often and I think it could be decent though.

Other htan that I like the idea Blaeys.

Blaeys.3102:

+ Laurent at the very least needs a ranged attack – shockwave from the hammer that knocks targets down. Additionally, link Laurent and his adds so they cannot be pulled separately.

Laurent already has 2 ranged attacks and one semi ranged attack. He throws a greatsword which knocks down and he roots people with immob from range (he uses both of these in melee aswell). He can also leap to you. You just dont notice these because groups burn him down fast against a wall. Wont be as much of a problem with fgs being nerfed.

I think hes fine as hes pretty challenging solo. Hes trivialised by fgs atm though. No changes need imo.

Just to let you know I’ll be updating the OP sometime tonight. Been too busy lately but will do it asap

What about for aetherpath, a high chance of getting the aether weapons but account bound, while the end chest still has a chance of giving you a non account bound skin? This way dungeon runners get the weapon for themselves, while still mantaining the price value of those who don’t run this dungeon but want the weapon skin?

Lilith, my english is not perfect, i hope you can understand my suggestions and add them to the post.

Aetherpath

Rewards
- Increase reward from 2.5 to 5 gold due to time needed and difficulty.
- Add a reasonable way to get a 100% of dreams skin. Even if it’s to get 100 special Aethers tokens and you get 1 token per run. (I already did 300 and no skin…).
- Add a better reward from the chests at the end and change how that events works. Right now most people just do chests and leave other events unattended. Instead make a double-event; Completing all the other 4 events should make chests event appear and the 10m minutes would be used only for chests and not wasted on defending caithe/npcs.
— Add 20-30 secret locations for chests but only make 5 of them appear all over the dungeon, so we actually need to find them. Also increase the loot from it, 95% of the times, we get greens from something hard to find that you even need to have a key for and costs money from the BL. It isn’t fun or fair or rewarding enough.

Fixes
- Fix the reset of spiders in the first room. The petrifier constantly resetting if the players need to step back to heal is annoying. Make those spiders have whole room to fight, so either we win or wipe.
- Fix the ooze at Slick and Sparki not moving sometimes. It gets stuck trying an animation that never ends (we use Fears to fix it because other skills like Kick won’t work).
- Fix Electricity in final boss room while in generators phase. Right now if two places got electrified and you got damage from electricity in one of the sides, you can safely step into the second one and will never do damage to you.
- Fix the need to do a small step back if someone tries to get into clockheart room while others are already inside. Right now players will find the wall and going towards it don’t put you inside until you do a small step back.
- Fix the rare bug: Clockheart room gets locked after defeating it, teleporting you to the entrance of the room upon trying to exit from west… multiple times, same as the weapons facility fractal Cage room (i think u all saw that bug). It happened only twice in 300 clockhearts, but was not fun.
- Fix the infinite shield of holograms on clockheart room if he resets while someone is in combat (happens rarely).
- Fix the bug that sometimes makes hologram don’t appear if you get out of combat after a tier 30 attack. No holograms means no way to stop more attacks and pretty much a wipe if he got too much health.
- Fix Slick throwing oil to the walls, so high that i can’t be cleaned (Players fault for staying near a wall).
- Fix Foreman Spur whirlwind skill that sometimes aggroes you from 3meters behind and drags you all the way behind him in a weird whirlwind dance.
- Fix whirlwind damage if you get caught. As example, endure pain doesn’t really works, despite it should block it’s damage.
- Fix or remove the invisible wall in the East side of Central structure in Clockheart room. Most of the time it forces him to do a weird circle to move, sometimes you get “obstructed” throwing arrows and sometimes you die because you can’t exit electricity if thrown inside because that invisible wall is there.
- Fix Sparki so it cannot be aggroed outside his room. (After a wipe, with 1200 range, if he’s not close to slick or ooze, you can move it down the hill and just kill it there).
- Fix the porting to the platform in Clockheart fight if you die in electricity. People should self-rez in electricity so we can choose were to go. By moving us to electricity, gears at platforms usually means a 100% death.
- Fix the platforms in Clockheart room! sometimes a platform gets up and your character is locked down under the platform, where you can’t exit and then you die.
- Fix electricity in Clockheart room after a wipe. The electricity won’t always wipe out and sometimes you need to start the fight with the previous fight electricity ON. If you had all 4 areas electrified, that can block progression.

(So many fixes needed that i need a second post).

Make Malrona take higher condition damage when you’re poisoned to match the bonus from physical damage.

Suggestions
- Same as Lilith said, let us skip cutscenes for all 3 bosses. Speed up the opening door to start the path and also after ooze room, but i’d also add: electricity puzzle. Waiting 30 seconds for electricity to appear is boring, although I loved the story the first time. I guess Caithe story could been told later if you speak with her in the secret room? (Something like her telling us "while you were in the electricity room, i was fighting outside! And they caught me!).
- Don’t allow the Foreman Spur army to reset if they move too far. Since you need to jump down and you can’t move them outside, those enemies should have no reset range and would make the challenge… well, challenging.
- Do NOT remove the ooze puzzle, please, which is perfect to learn positional awareness, crowd control and condition management (In my guild we use it a lot to teach people and it’s quite popular). However i can see it tuned down with minor fixes for lazy faceroll players that disagree on teamwork, such as 1 of the next ones:
— Increase respawn time for elementals from 15s to 30s.
— Remove 2 elementals per side (4 in room, not 6).
- Remove or tune down the fear skill of Sparki and Slick. The room is challenging enough without that, and it only makes it annoying.
- Remove the flowers in Sparki and Slick room. The amount of times a newbie player started the fight while we’re not ready just because he was trying to destroy all flowers is… well, ridicously high xD.
- Add 3 invulnerability buffs to Foreman Spur each 25% that last about 15 seconds to remove the possibility of nuking him in a corner in just a few seconds and not dealing with the mechanics and the intended way a boss should be fought.
- Please PLEASE make holograms in Clockheart room never reset to their spawn position. This is probably the most awkward moment of the dungeon and sometimes the reason of a wipe.
- Autoenable the Clockheart invulnerability buff each 25% health, to stop groups that nuke him in 20 seconds in a corner.
- Steam machines should spawn enemies even if they don’t have line of sight.
- The captain after Clockheart should be able to Kick or push people down to add a little challenge.

For fun
- Add an achievement involving the 2 naked Aetherblade enemies in the pool! xD.
- Add something to do with the husks that run out of sparki and slick room.
- Add an achievement for surviving 5 tiers 30 attacks in the same fight.
- Add an achievement from stopping 5 tiers 30 attacks in a row.
- Add an achievement for dancing at same time as Slick (And let players figure out that they need to wipe at least once and then wait near the door to complete this one xD).
- Let me Beta-test the fixed Aetherpath!! (i can dream)

I’d like to see TA reverted to its original form (bringing backkittenpath), and the Aetherpath split off to become its own unique instance, accessible by talking to the NPC outside and choosing a new option (“We are here in response to Lionguard Turma’s call for help.”) This then sends the party into a unique Aetherpath dungeon path.

If you skip the nightmare pup spawn at some point it will start appearing on you like the risen spawn in Arah on the way to Lupicus. Which is kinda weird.

Please do not change ooze font puzzle. It works as intended. Do you really want to make everything pug-friendly? This game is too easy in its current state. It’s a learn to play issue, not a design issue. Even Caithe gives some tips for new players. Seriously, if they can’t do this it’s their problem, they are too bad. Why does the game have to lower it’s level to noobs, instead of noobs advancing their levels? If you can’t do something, you figure out what you are doing wrong, instead of deleting content.

Please, bring more coordination puzzles in dungeons. They are awesome.

Developers said that they wont introduce hard mode dungeons, because explorable dungeons are meant to be hard mode, and story mode is meant to be casual friendly.

On a side note, I agree with the dredge fractal revamp. Doing puzzles is much better than killing endless waves of trash mobs. That’s why I want Ooze Font to stay.

If someone in your party doesn’t communicate and yet you decide to keep him in your dungeon – it’s your own fault, not the design fault.
Look at dungeons this way: they are not meant for everybody. People shouldn’t expect “hardcore” content to be meant for everyone…

The issue with the ooze puddle is not the organisation requirement. Its the fact that its mind numbingly boring, tedious and unfun. Its a stupid timegate along with the electric floor room. Those types of puzzles are only fun once if at all.

Puzzles in dungeons should be quick and relatively simple. Or they should be combat puzzles during boss fights etc.

Well maybe they are tedious and unfun for you, there are people who really like them. No point of arguing which side is the right, I just wanted to share my opinion

Exactly what Sublimatio said. I sometimes join Aether groups in a row, do the ooze font puzzle and leave to join another Aether run, do the puzzle and leave.

Why? the simple mechanic it’s awesome, fun and i enjoy it. I laugh a lot when people die in the fire, i find interesting teaching people how to use efficient reflects and Crowd Control and i like the feel it gives to player when they accomplish it. And if i want to troll, i just join and say nothing, and then i watch them fail until i ask if i can Solo 1 side while they 4 do the other one… xDD

Short story: Spoj, a lot of people love it, my guild and my friends also share my thoughs with ooze font. If you don’t like that, i respect your opinnion, but you should also respect that it’s something unique that other people love, and removing it would be a huge kick in the face for that players (Same as it happened to the players that loved the removed TA old path. Please let’s not repeat the story).

Tweaking a puzzle which is only fun for a minority is perfectly acceptible in my opinion. Its no where near as serious as removing an entire path. I honestly cant fathom what you find fun about the puzzle. I certainly cant imagine that its the highlight of the dungeon. But i respect that you dont want it completely removed.

Changes to it which i think you will find more to your liking would be as follows:

- Increase time between elemental spawns
- Increase health/movement speed of ooze slightly
- Increase time window in which you can activitate each gear slightly. Ive experienced many times where one side was a bit slower and were unable to get the 2nd ooze in place in time (missed it by about 2 seconds).

A combination or selection of these changes would make the puzzle more pug friendly. Which would drive less players away from the instance. The movement speed increase would speed it up, making it a less frustrating timegate for people who dont like the puzzle.

10/10 such changes would be better than removing content

+1 bug, just found it:

Sparki and Slick seem to not know the stealth mechanic, so they start their idling animations whenever i enter stealth, and there is like 20% chance to reset their hp to full when i stay in stealth longer than 3sec.

Makes soloing pretty much impossible for thiefs. :/

As it’s Friday and I promised I’d summarize this beast I’ll be working on it after work. If you see me online and I still haven’t threaten to report me if I don’t hop to it.

+ bug, general for whole TA:
nightmare spiders’ stun cannot be broken with stunbreakers

sMihaly.1492:

+ bug, general for whole TA:
nightmare spiders’ stun cannot be broken with stunbreakers

Petrify doesnt count as a stun. Pretty sure its intentional.

spoj.9672:

sMihaly.1492:

+ bug, general for whole TA:
nightmare spiders’ stun cannot be broken with stunbreakers

Petrify doesnt count as a stun. Pretty sure its intentional.

:(
kitten
“reflects projectiles, except the unreflectable ones”…
“breaks stun, except the unbreakable ones”
this list is getting better

sMihaly.1492:

spoj.9672:

sMihaly.1492:

+ bug, general for whole TA:
nightmare spiders’ stun cannot be broken with stunbreakers

Petrify doesnt count as a stun. Pretty sure its intentional.

:(
kitten
“reflects projectiles, except the unreflectable ones”…
“breaks stun, except the unbreakable ones”
this list is getting better

Well basically Petrify isn’t even a stun, so I wouldn’t say its an exception.

Its basically like simins petrify. Except it doesnt have a cleanse and its short duration. And it can be blinded/dodged etc.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/TA-Aetherblades-Holo-Pirate-Generator-Bug