Guild Wars 2

So tell me what you all think of the new ac. My personal opinion of the revam kitten imple this. I used ac to level my guy from 35 all the way to 80. So its safe to say it was easy. Now tho it is impossible. I ran it with five groups an not one kitten group manage to get pass it. I’m talking about level 80 who all know the dungeon who were deck out who knew what they were doing an we still couldn’t get passed it. So thanks arena net for making your game liturgically enjoyably. I was ok with them making the game alot more challenging but now if you cant even beat the first dungeon then what will they do with the other ones. Soon you wont be doing any dungeons. Thats just my though on it no need to restate what ive said just tell me what you think about it.

It was made much, much easier.

I’m in a P3 right now with PUG. Well we have problems but not with the dungeon more with our teamplay/coordination. Still we managed to get to the boss.

I like the new AC, you need to focus much more than it was, and it was a little boring after 70th time…

I like new ac and hope that the other dungeons get changed just like ac got.
It surely isn’t for 35lvls anymore, but well, it wasn’t really even before patch…

q: What do you think of the New Ac?
a: the general idea is good, but the implementation and testing are really bad
not pug friendly !

It makes me angry that I’m now seeing lfg posts for paths 1 and 3 only. I hate it when one or more paths of a dungeon becomes obsolete for puging. I just ran this dungeon again today on my 65 necro (everyone else was 80 and they didn’t kick me, although some of them were pretty bad). We skipped Kholer and the troll (they didn’t even pull the troll to Kholer like a lazy group, outright skipped them) and we finished path one in fairly ordinary time. During the final fight (which in the past I would often see people downed) it was just a DPS spam fest while strafing around the room. It’s easier than it was in the past.

I still like the idea of being able to kill mobs chasing me by positioning myself on the other side of a ring of fire. I hate this mechanic the way it’s used in FotM (during the jelly fish fight and the dredge fractal) because the whole team suffers when one moron (I gave up sympathy for these people a long time ago) doesn’t move in the right direction. It’s incredibly frustrating for me as a player when 4/5 people in a party are doing everything right and we are getting no-where because the encounter was designed in a way where one person has the power to kitten it up by not doing the same trivial thing as everyone else. This kind of dungeon mechanic is one I abhor when puging.

We then did path three (the group chose not to do path two because pugs seem to hate it now) and everything was going fine until Tzark bugged in the Lover’s Crypt. He died as he began the audio to start the graveling event which is what I suspect caused the bug, so we disbanded as no-one cared to do the dungeon after the bug (I don’t remember stuff like this ever happening in WoW, progression bugs are far too common in GW2 – especially in AC).

The last time I had a group that fought Kholer I really enjoyed the new fight (it’s not too different from the old one), I really wish this encounter was necessary, I’m so sick of people skipping it. It’s still the best fight in the dungeon and it provides challenging group content that rewards the use of GW2 combat mechanics and understanding more than it rewards people who have voice coms or are good at syncing for the final boss of path two. Kholer has a hard counter accessible to every class – dodge roll. On top of that players can reflect his pull (elementalist staff earth three, mesmer Feedback, guardian Wall of Reflection etc), they can use stability to become immune (ranger’s Rampage as One, guardian’s “Stand Your Ground!”, warrior’s Dolyak Signet etc) they can block it (guardian Aegis from the virtue or even “Retreat!”, ranger greatsword four, warrior shield five, elementalist Arcane Shield etc) and if they get pulled, they can use their stun breaker as an “oh kitten” button and escape (ranger’s Lightning Reflexes, thieve’s Roll for Initiative, guardian’s “Stand Your Ground!”, elementalist’s Mist Form etc). The fight had general difficulty but it also was great at teaching players all the different kinds of skills they can use to not only help themselves, but help their party and deal with boss tells. It rewards all classes in a variety of ways (the pull skill is able to be dealt with in more than five different ways, of which most classes have access to at least two or three) and it taught you to pay attention to boss tells. It wasn’t some kind of gimmick which favours people who play a specific class or have a specific skill that was so much more powerful than other ones, it had a problem that had a variety of solutions spread across all classes could solve. The fight teaches you how to play your class in dungeons, it rewards you for knowing what your skills do and when to use them. To me that’s better dungeon design than anything offered by FotM (which seems to be the golden child of dungeon design – a large amount of their popularity was due to ascended gear, easy runs and good drops, not because it’s a glowing example of great game design).

The mechanics for that fight are foreign to everything else in the game and their difficulty varies greatly based on whether or not you are working with friends or strangers (or have the convenience of voice chat instead of feeling the need to type in the middle of combat).

Overall I dislike the new AC because it took away one of my favourite toys in the game. Finding groups in GW2 is already hard enough, creating another dungeon with another obsolete path and generally lowering the overall population of people running the dungeon isn’t worth the things they changed. It wasn’t bad before the patch (nothing like CoF path 1) so I find it hard to understand why of all places to change, AC was the one they went with. It’s still very buggy (I’ve detailed these in another thread) and feels unpolished which doesn’t help the situation.

I think they should have focused their efforts into making new, more challenging/involved dungeons instead of revamping old ones. AC was a nice, casual dungeon for those who aren’t MMO stereotypes. There was no reason to take that piece of content away only to appease the inherently contrary fools who demand content which ensures they have no gaps in their gaming time. The rest of us have better things to do than invest precious extra time into increasingly mundane tasks.

I miss the old AC…

The overall dungeon is easier but more annoying.

Breeder hatching and little spiders have much more health now.
Kholer is a lot weaker and just summons more mobs.
The troll really is a troll now with all his CC.

Path 1 Boss is incredibly annoying with all the scavs he summons. (1 knock down is close to instant down unless you are heavy tank build). His auto attack is now his short range scream with no CD and that is also pretty annoying.
Tip: Burn him down at the beginning asap before scavs appear. It will make the overall fight easier.

Path 2 Boss bugs too much still, but can be worked around. He tends to get stuck or stay in place unless you knock him around, and is occasionally healing while we get him unstuck. He is REALLY weak though once you get him out of the form. A decent party can burn him down with 2 phase outs only.

Path 3 Boss isn’t bad. Just keep the NPC alive by kiting the boss away from him whenever possible. Don’t bother interrupting his scream. Rocks will still fall and he will continue attacking while it’s falling.

I’ve pretty much given up on it. Too annoying for the payoff now. The whole game is moving that direction with each successive update, so I’m filling more of my time with other games, games that understand that fun should trump frustration. I seek out games to entertain myself, not to add more stress to my life.

tnarrant.9714:

I seek out games to entertain myself, not to add more stress to my life.

you are right, the only ones playing this game should be “elitists”.
the rest are not “mandatory”

Pretty much better than the original in every single way, barring the bugs.

The buildup to each final boss actually has a purpose now; Hodgin’s scepters actually DO something, the traps in Path 2 have a purpose besides window dressing, and there’s actually a reason why you’d be enlisting Grast’s aid for Colossus Rumblus.

Each final boss feels unique in their own way compared to Howling King and Colossus Rumblus feeling incredibly samey besides one single attack being different, and Ghost Eater just being bad in general.

Path 2’s mechanics took me all of two attempts to figure out with a PuG group who had never done the new path 2 before. A little communication went a long way. Having one person calling targets and lifting, and just having everyone else pull the called target makes it very simple.

Spider Queen’s poison actually feels like a threat instead of some slightly offensive perfume someone happened to use at the time. Her mechanics strike a decent balance between her beta state where the poison and spiderlings were just stupid, to AC before the update, where they were trivial nuisances.

Stalkers are a great idea to reinforce the importance of dodging, punishing players for not dodging properly without just taking damage as a punishment. Scavengers were toned down as they were over-the-top before, and other gravelings were made more threatening. Now, the balance may not be quite right, but I don’t believe the old AC’s graveling balance was any better.

Troll is actually semi-interesting, if a little annoying now. He’s actually a threat outside of melee range and his one AoE knockback.

Kholher is also a little more dynamic and interesting with constantly spawning adds, though the basic mechanics remain the same. Funny part now is that if you get Khohler and the troll to fight, the troll loses when he would win in old AC.

Most of the smaller enemies have actually had their health and damage reduced from what they were before, especially the champion gravelings and the ascalon ghosts. I remember fighting the champion scavenger on the way to path 2 before, and it was always a horrendous slog because of how much health it had, and how the old scavenger leap worked. Now, its much more palatable.

You watch. Once everyone learns how the new AC works and they fix the bugs, it’ll be easy and old hat again.

Very disappointed.

Not only are there way too many bugs (ghost eater gets stuck, the adds attacking hodgins are invulnerable, burrows get obstructed even though there’s nothing in the way — have the devs actually been TESTING this before making a release!??), but what really p* me off is the difficulty. I’ve finished it pre and post patch, but only with pre-selected groups. There is no way in hell you can do this with a pug team without getting your be-hind kicked at least a dozen of times, even with coordination.

If Anet wants to make this game only for the hardcore no-lifers, by all means. But for god’s sake, label it on the box it’s NOT a game for casual players. Having a 12 hour shift and limited time to play, I have no time (and definitely no desire) to make a bloody PhD on Ascalonian Catacombs to be able to enjoy or even finish it.

Easier with some groups. Harder with others.

P3 – never been a fan of relying on idiotic useless NPCs, this did not manage to change my opinion
never been a fan of ‘cover everything in red circles’ either, didn’t like it in TA, adding falling rocks does not make it better!

These kind of threads are only there to entertain those who agree. The vocal minority in this thread doesn’t matter at all really.

The rate of AC LFG are going down sharply, just look at the site. Guess how the people feel about AC.

I am very disappointed. I have to agree with the players who are complaining about the dungeon not being pug friendly. Think about it in a logical way guys. We need the first dungeon to be at least pugable. If not. I will discourage new players to avoid dungeons altogether. Also, we need to have one to be able to pug with if our friends are not on. I work 70 hours a week to make it in this depression-like economic crisis along with helping others who dont work to make it. Seriously guys, just think about it. Anet makes changes to bring community back together and then makes lowest dungeon almost undoable with casual/working players. At least lessen the reward before making it so freakin hard you cant even get through with your friends. My guild has given up on AC just from running path 1 over and over trying to do it. All of us are not elitest. Including me but I love to do a guild run once in a while and now Im stuck pugging it when I have guildies on. Major mistake on Anets part. And if you dont believe me watch and soon you no-lifers will be playing this game alone……..

Liquid Storm.8097:

I have no time (and definitely no desire) to make a bloody PhD on Ascalonian Catacombs to be able to enjoy or even finish it.

want to sell PhD in AC, just 2 gold !
who knows, maybe i will write a book with pictures