Guild Wars 2

I’ve ran numerous searches across different engines and I can’t find a current answer.

Can someone please tell me what is the best daily dungeon tour to do right now? I’m just getting into dungeons and will mainly be pugging.

Thanks!

There’s no easy answer because your completion speeds depend on your level of skill, and some of the most efficient dungeons are also among the harder ones. By level of skill, I’m assuming that your PuG teammates are useless beyond being meatshields and doing basic dungeon mechanics, and you’ll need to carry the games – none of them are hard if you luck out and find a good team.

So in any case, in descending order of rewards/unit time assuming you can carry any and all dungeons…

Arah Path 1
Arah Path 2
Crucible of Eternity Path 3 (24) [5cc, 1.05g, cLode, cCore, t5claw, t6claw, dLode, dCore] <Pre-locked>
Crucible of Eternity Path 1 [5cc, 1.05g. cLode, cCore] <Pre-locked>
Sorrow’s Embrace Path 1 (8) [5cc, 1.05g]
Sorrow’s Embrace Path 3 (10) [5cc, 1.05g]
Crucible of Eternity Path 2 (22) [5 cc, 1.05g, cLode, cCore] <Pre-locked>
Ascalonian Catacombs Path 2 (12) [7cc, 1.55g]
Ascalonian Catacombs Path 1 (11) [4cc, 1.55g]
Ascalonian Catacombs Path 3 (14) [4cc, 1.55g]
Caudecus’ Manor Path 2 (14) [5 cc, 1.05g]
Twilight Arbor Up (14) [4cc, 1.05g]
Caudecus’ Manor Path 1 (13) [3 cc, 1.05g]
Honor of the Waves Path 1 (Melee all bosses) [3 cc, 1.05g]
Twilight Arbor Forward [4cc, 1.05g]
Caudecus’ Manor Path 3 (15) [2 cc, 1.05g]
Honor of the Waves Path 2 [4cc, 1.05g] <Water>
Honor of the Waves Path 3 [4cc, 1.05g] <Water>
Arah Path 3
Citadel of Flame Path 1 [2cc, 1.05g] <Pre-locked>
Citadel of Flame Path 2 [1cc. 1.05g] <Pre-locked>
Sorrow’s Embrace Path 2 [8cc, 1.05g]
Arah Path 4
Citadel of Flame Path 3 [3cc, 1.05g] <Pre-locked>
Twilight Arbor Aetherpath

It’ll take some time to gather moar data. Order is an estimate, bracketed numbers are times, square brackets are rewards (cc = champ chests), triangle brackets are extra info.

Aside from stated rewards all paths also give tokens, which can be converted into insignia for some stat combinations via the exotics for all paths except CoF, whereby the most profitable route for that is to exchange for lvl 70 rare light helms and break for ecto.

Eliminate from this all the dungeons that you’re not capable of carrying, and you get your rotation.

I assume also that you get no Exotic drops worth mentioning, as getting a high value Aetherblade drop would change its place a lot.

This is very different from what most people run, as most people cannot/don’t want to carry pugs through the harder dungeons. I personally don’t want to carry PuGs through HoTW, Arah or Aetherpath, but I’m fine with the others. Most people simply repeat CoF 1,2 AC 3, SE 1,3, TA U as they are the easiest dungeons, but some of them, especially CoF 1 and AC 3, are slow regardless of your skill level due to mechanics you’re forced to wait for.

And if your PuGs cannot complete basic mechanics, some paths like CoF 1 and CM 2 can be uncompletable.

SE1>CoF1(when bug is fixed)>AC123>COE123>CoF2/CM13/TAFU/SE3>HOTW1/ARAH123>CM2/HOTW23>COF3>ARAH4/SE2

That’s how I’d rank them in terms of speed/ease with your genearl PUG groups. Arah can easily be up with COE but it’s just not consistent with groups, some groups might take an hour or more for example.

Thanks so much guys!

Curious Hayashi, SE1 so far down the list? Is there something I’m not getting? Personally I walk out with a gold and change + half a dozen champ boxes for like 5-7mins even in PUGs (good group we’re looking at ~4). Seems hard to beat to me unless I’m overlooking something.

The good thing about SE1 is the triple golem champ kills. The annoying thing about it is the amount of time it takes to wait for things to execute – waiting right of the first turret pair for the elites to pass, waiting for the champ golem to activate, killing turrets on the path that drop no loot, and the final legendary boss that drops no loot.

Arah is on top as their Gold reports are tripled relative to most other paths. CoE is next due to the Charged Core/Lodestones, and p3 has a special mention for the t5/t6/dlode bit in addition to the bit after the skipped champ that includes 40 trash mobs in a small area. CoEp2 is somewhat slower because of the gun-bomb golem bit which is even slower when pugs fire at your golem, making them less useful than if they did nothing at all.

Ideally you move from champion to champion, running/stealthing past elite groups you don’t intend to fight and AoEing the heck out of highly concentrated trash mobs.

ACp2 has an equivalent number of champboxes to SEp1, with trash that accompanies them – but is only this good if you kill them all, instead of skipping champs for no reason. Most groups skip 2 champs together with their trash.

CMs are fast in general with a lot of additional trash mobs accompanying champs for extra drops, where path 2 has the most to kill. The hunting hound is usually skipped but gives an additional champ chest for little to no extra time.

I don’t think I normally get 4 minute completion times for SE1. Getting past all the turrets from the initial waiting to the two-at-a-time nonsense tends to already take 6 minutes. I can do a quick run to check.

Edit: Takes 4 minutes to get to Nokk. Takes 8 minutes in total to finish. SE3 in comparison took 10 minutes. Not sure how you can finish the entirety of SE1 in 5 minutes.

How come TA is so high up there hayashi? The path for pugs is a nightmare because of blossoms and even with a organized group, it takes about 8-9minutes to complete where as AC p1 and CoF p1 takes less time and generally easier for pugs.

AC 1-3 4.65g
COF 1/2 3.0g
TA F/U 3.0g
SE 1/3 3.0g
CM 1/3 3.0g
COE 1-3 4.65g
HOTW 1 1.5g
ARAH 2/3 5.05g
Doing those paths each day nets you 27.85g from daily chests with the coin bags in each dungeon its over 30g

Maybe I should record timings for the various runs, come back and reattach timings. My impression of the timing might not be what the timing actually is.

I’ll let you know.

Muffin Nook.5923:

AC 1-3 4.65g
COF 1/2 3.0g
TA F/U 3.0g
SE 1/3 3.0g
CM 1/3 3.0g
COE 1-3 4.65g
HOTW 1 1.5g
ARAH 2/3 5.05g
Doing those paths each day nets you 27.85g from daily chests with the coin bags in each dungeon its over 30g

Why would you do Arah path 3 over path 1? They are both about the same length and difficulty, but path 3 give a lot less gold.

Muffin Nook.5923:

AC 1-3 4.65g
COF 1/2 3.0g
TA F/U 3.0g
SE 1/3 3.0g
CM 1/3 3.0g
COE 1-3 4.65g
HOTW 1 1.5g
ARAH 2/3 5.05g
Doing those paths each day nets you 27.85g from daily chests with the coin bags in each dungeon its over 30g

Aren’t those 3.0s actually 3.15? didn’t they all get boosted by 5 silver a while back?

All of them
be a man

Arah p3 over p1 because far too many pugs cant do the skips in p1, they fail at ooze far too often and tar usually ends up being a cluster ****. I will pug arah p2/3, but only do p1/p4 with friends/guildies.

The 3.0 are probably boosted I just copy and pasted from an old file I made for guildies.

Muffin Nook.5923:

Arah p3 over p1 because far too many pugs cant do the skips in p1, they fail at ooze far too often and tar usually ends up being a cluster ****. I will pug arah p2/3, but only do p1/p4 with friends/guildies.

As long as they help at Tar, I don’t mind solo or duo the rest of the path. It’s not like I expect pug to do anything in Arah anyway.

Worth stating that there are some cases where it’ll be more effective to drop party and redo from scratch under certain conditions with PuGs, as they are unlikely to be able to finish the dungeon alive (ergo, they can’t even act as effective meatshields):

Requirement 1: Nobody declares that they are new. If new players declare so, they’re open to being taught, and therefore can do well. If they are not skilled but do not ask for instructions, they’re expecting for the others to carry them, are non-receptive to instruction, have enough of an issue with pride to not want to be viewed as inexperienced, or any combination of the three. That tends to lead to the worst possible performance.

Requirement 2: Any of these indicators of extremely bad performance are met:

1. CoFp1 – If 4/5 people are downed at Champ Slave Driver.
2. CoE any path – If 4/5 people are dead at first Alpha OR champ wolf encounter.
3. TA F/U – If 3/5+ people are dead at the 6x wurm encounter.
4. AC – If 3/5+ people are dead at Spider Queen encounter.
5. CM – If 3/5+ people are dead at first boss for p1p3, and if 2/5+ people are dead at first boss for p2.
6. Arah – If 3/5+ people are dead at any of the first bosses.
7. HoTW – If 4/5 people die at elite wolves before getting to troll boss in p1, if 3/5+ people die at first boss in p2p3.

Additional consideration: If at least 3 of the people in the party are in the same guild.

In all other cases it is generally better to finish the dungeon than to attempt to reroll the PuG dice. In these extreme cases, you’ll have the approximate performance equivalent of 2 players instead of 5, so even if you COULD carry all of them through, it would take a really long time between having to race dps against a boss’s heal and having to repeatedly revive dead players.

CoF/Arah/HoTW can all do the rare thing iirc, though I think i’d have to check again but I thought I remember getting a better profit on undead potions for arah, may not be true.

Also, I like that you mentioned the pre’s, personally I have the worst time with COE on that, it’s not uncommon to do it 3X for a full run through all the paths… kitten megaservers.

All the lvl 70+ dungeons can do the rare thing, yes. A minimum of 180 tokens gets 0.9 ecto, 0.5 dark matters, 0.25 insignia and 0.5 runes in addition to unlocking a skin. On the other hand rare salvage uses 30 tokens and yields 0.9 ecto.

Given that each insignia is worth about 6 ectos, it’s about triple the reward for six times the token cost – whether it’s still worth it or not after you’ve already unlocked the all-skins meta achievement depends on how much you value dark matter.

I’ll need to check the undead potions though. No idea on that since all of mine have been going into skins. XD

AC-1/3 COF-1/2 SE-1/3 TA-U/F HOTW-1