Guild Wars 2

The instances are challenging, isn’t that what you want?

It seems very similar to DCUO in that people really struggled with PvE instances early. People cried about too much damage and only guild/league runs would get anywhere. Once the majority of the playerbase learned to hit their shift key and block when a big move was telegraphed, it became much much easier.

Learn the fights. Learn your class. Learn your combos (this is important).

I found combos made a huge difference. My guild struggled a bit the first time we ran AC. The second time, our mesmer and guardian respecced and got some combo fields (don’t remember their names). Now when they are down, we all combo finish through their fields. We get chaos armour (gives you a boon, gives target a condition) and retaliation. HUGE DIFFERENCE. I’m willing to bet PUGs don’t do this at all, and then cry because something is too hard.

It’s not too hard, it’s just that the majority of the playerbase haven’t learnt how grouping works yet.

Once more players learn that a big yellow casting animation means ‘dodge the hell away’ and how to identify combo fields then finish through one, I’m betting PUGs will get a lot easier to manage.

In the meantime I really hope ArenaNet don’t bow to the knee-jerk “zomg this is too hard” crowd and nerf everything so it’s too easy.

I think of these dungeons like the old wow raids. My guild spent WEEKS on Razorgore when Blackwing Lair first came out. We had no idea what was going on. Two eggs that controlled the boss mobs? 4 spawn points? WTF man? We had people rotating around the edges of the map sitting on chairs seeing if that had any effect on the fight.

Then Vael. That took weeks as well. Once we had that fight worked out, you then had to rely on the tanks having the actual SKILL to pull off the agro transitions (this was way before that game had agro meters).

The point is, we did it. We loved it. We worked hard and worked it out. That’s how these dungeons are but on a much smaller scale. Once you’ve worked it out you can progress and farm the crap out of it.

Why is there an expectation that we should breeze through every instance?

They’d be better if they didn’t fly in the face of “Be whatever spec you want”

Since apparently Dungeons do not permit that at all. Greatswrod Guardian? Enjoy your repair bill.

And really, insta-gib mechanics are lame no matter what game you’re playing. It’s the most unimaginative way to make a game hard. Ever.

And no amount of L2P and character diiddling will ever prevent the boss looking at you and saying “You know what, You’re gonna die” Golem boss in CM is like trying to grab a chainsaw bare-handed.

On top of all the blatant Melee hate, the Nintendo Hard tuning knobs, and the genereal relative ease of the rest of the game, the Dungeons are the odd mans out. Sure, they’re easy if you got 5 buddies with vent and have specific build setups. Outside of that, they’re barely as peachy.

The “having the right spec” part wouldn’t be nearly as bad if GW had some form of Dungeon spec template like they did for PvP.

I’m not asking for nerfs, I’m asking for content that challenges my skills as a player, not my skills as a trait builder. Mock WoW all you want, but they have their difficulty tuners set to the right knobs, even if they are low ones.

these dungeons are great and they’re hard, honestly its how they should be. i think people have gotten to used to wow’s easymode dungeons.

I agree, story mode dungeons should be much easier to complete. However, what everyone who is against threads like this fail to understand is that we want the story mode version of the dungeon to be easier so just about everyone would be able to complete it to experience the story. We haven’t said a single word about explore mode which was made to be very difficult and for the hardcore players, i am all for them making explore mode hard, i honest don’t care since the majority of the armor from completing those don’t really appeal to me.

So again, story mode was made so everyone can enjoy a nice fairly simple story based dungeon while explore mode was made for the hardcore players who like dungeons to be hard. I am completely for making them hard, i am however against making the story mode as hard as it currently is.

AC on story isn’t too bad, we wiped a couple times but once we learned the fights it was fairly easy. The second one on story (the mansion one, i forget the name) was super easy and we beat it with little trouble and was pretty darn fun imo. The third one is where the difficulty really hit the fan and after our group wiping 20+ times i straight up gave up on it and dungeons all together, have yet to try one since. (this was a couple days after the game came out)

The dungeons may be easier when you are well above the level for it and thus have the gear advantage, but if you are roughly the same level and not decked out in top of the line gear for your level they are pretty darn tough and often make you want to give up and spoil them for you completely so you don’t even want to attempt them at all any more.

Strategies are sound and make sense, but some of the numbers they throw at you are a bit high for a not specified group to handle such a situation, mostly with the large spawn events. And I want any instance, at least story mode, to be doable with any kind of setup, with some allowance for groups and synergy. There should not be a short list of profession setups just to get into an instance that all players have to adhere to.

My instance runs up to 80 should be cakewalk where I can watch and learn mechanics without having to die to them. Once you start talking end game then everything here sounds reasonable.

Also we could use a better LFG tool.

If you have any heroic experience in “another game” explos are pretty much the same with difficulty. Loving it.

poot.5487:

Creepjack.2851:

For who you ask?

I’ll tell you. Not for you. This not WoW. You are NOT guaranteed to succeed in every aspect of the content. If you can’t complete a dungeon, then it’s either you are not good enough or this type of content is not for you and you should find other activity in the game that suits you.

Dungeons are designed in the way not everybody can finish them – this you should accept. Whether they change it or not it’s up to them.

Personally I think dungeons, especially explorer mode are.. too easy.

I’ll tell you who dungeons aren’t for: they aren’t for people who want to play with a certain trait/weapon setup. I’m sure I could sleepwalk and auto-strafe my way through dungeons using a bow or a rifle, but frankly I find that type of gameplay snooze-worthy. GW2’s combat system is not competitive with a polished FPS, which is what I’d play if I wanted to concede that ranged is hands-down superior to melee in every way.

Melee Damage is not a viable role. I’m not interested in playing a game where a significant chunk of the “skill” involved is back-loaded onto simply picking the “right” spec. If that “right” spec were different for every boss fight and trash pack, then maybe it’d be justifiable. However, it’s not. It’s not even close to that. It’s “ranged unless there’s a very specific anti-ranged gimmick.” It’s “support/control are infinitely superior to damage.” It’s “if you want to play melee, spec full tank or prepare for a gibfest.”

Ultimately, GW2’s combat system didn’t solve a central issue of MMORPG’s and ARPG’s, which is that dealing melee damage is tons of fun, but isn’t complex or engaging enough to actually require any skill.

With the way dungeons are set up right now, I personally don’t think players should be able to spec out of support/control, ever. It’s clearly not intended for them to do so, so why dangle the carrot of glass cannon builds, which a huge chunk of the playerbase finds so much fun?

Melee is king in Dungeons. CC is godlike.

If you don’t have enough teamwork to secure maximum uptime of melee on a boss, then my friend, you do not deserve to finish it. Difference in mele vs ranged for some classes is HUGE.

For example, I’m doing 5 to 6 times more damage with 2hand sword than with a rifle on my warrior. That’s NOT an exaggeration. It’s pure math. So you ARE kittening you’re self AND your team when you run around with bow or rifle when you could melee. You should use ranged weapons ONLY when you can’t physically get to boss.

USE THE POTIONS. They give you 10% more damage done and 10% less damage taken. It’s plain stupid to go on explorer mode without them especially when they are so cheap.

I also can’t get my head around the idea how people can die in story modes or on a trash pulls since almost every godkittenweapon in a game offers some kind of CC. And you know what? I don’t want to know….

Creepjack.2851:

I also can’t get my head around the idea how people can die in story modes or on a trash pulls since almost every godkittenweapon in a game offers some kind of CC. And you know what? I don’t want to know….

because if you just miss your cue for ONE MOMENT they will drop you like a rock.

AsteriskCGY.5931:

Creepjack.2851:

I also can’t get my head around the idea how people can die in story modes or on a trash pulls since almost every godkittenweapon in a game offers some kind of CC. And you know what? I don’t want to know….

because if you just miss your cue for ONE MOMENT they will drop you like a rock.

First, there is no ability in any of the dungeons that could one shot you. That means you must get hit few times to be dead.

Second, if you missed your “cue” few times, you deserve to die.

Sry Creepkjack but i know 1 Mob who can 1shot u :P
Its a normal trash mob named “Deadeye” in Arah explorable Mode.
Designed → The farther u are away, the more dmg u get. Complete Melee standing in him ~1k dmg. I was standing in the first time pretty far away and i got 70k^^
Well now i know it and know how to avoid it

Creepjack.2851:

AsteriskCGY.5931:

Creepjack.2851:

I also can’t get my head around the idea how people can die in story modes or on a trash pulls since almost every godkittenweapon in a game offers some kind of CC. And you know what? I don’t want to know….

because if you just miss your cue for ONE MOMENT they will drop you like a rock.

First, there is no ability in any of the dungeons that could one shot you. That means you must get hit few times to be dead.

Second, if you missed your “cue” few times, you deserve to die.

If I walk in with no clue what this “cue” is and just die without warning, how the freaking hell am I suppose to be able to watch for it a second time?

someshta.3809:

You introduce them to us through the mail system. You introduce the story of the destiny’s edge group into our personal story.

Then you design the dungeon with cheap mechanics and a hair-pulling difficulty, and then afterwards you take our hard-to-hold-onto gold from us in repair costs. Most of your player base (the casual base) is not running your dungeons. Even though they want to see the story, they have rejected your content.

Why did you add this content, in this fashion, when what is probably ~90% of your player base is avoiding it?

CHEAP MECHANICS. That’s the real issue I’m having. Difficulty is not the problem, but the way that difficulty is achieved here: 3-shotting mobs with huge hp pools.

What I particularly like about this thread is that the amount of kids that have nothing better to say than ‘l2p lol’ or dismiss this as ‘whining’ is very small compared to the amount of people who have something helpful and constructive to say. This fact alone is enough for me to like this MMO more than any other.

And on topic, I agree the damage on some of the mobs is over the top. I, too, would like to see one-shotting without warning removed.

Ok, let’s look at this from our point of view maybe?

Us “kids” (I’m 29 old, have a wife and family) who scream l2p would like to have something to do in this game. If you remove the difficulty (which already is pretty low) from dungeons you have removed content from us.

So let’s propose this:
- nerf difficulty of story modes
- rise the difficulty of exploration modes

This way, people who refuse to learn will still have content to do and people who like challenge will be satisfied also.

Better?

What I see here, is just a bunch of people that are denying the truth. Truth that they just dont want to think and improve their gameplay, dont want to get out of their glass cannon builds, think nothing about combo and synrgy with rest of the party, and so on. Being told that, they rant something about rudeness and being polite to others. We are actually doing you a favor by telling to improve your gameplay. But, you all want dungeon armor. Not gonna happen, guys. You all HAVE to l2p, or completing dungeons will happen only in your dreams. Sorry for straightforwardness, but thats it.

With all that being said, I personally think that dungeons may drop a little more tokens.

Making enemies have tons of HP and do Tons of damage in a game with no healers or tanks. Better learn to dodge! Except wait, you don’t have enough endurance to dodge everything, you can only do it twice and then afterwards get 1 shotted by a stray fireball or stunlocked. But dungeons are really easy when I do them with my friends and we’re on vent formulating strategies and making calls and working out builds, you guys who run them with people you don’t know and aren’t on vent with just need to L2P! Dungeons are too easy Buff them IMO.

Jakeshipton.6520:

@ Gryz your problem is “I had a “glass cannon” build on my Thief.”

By having less survivability presumably that means you have a higher damage. That means that mobs are A more inclined to attack you and B you can take less hits. Simply put glass cannon builds in dungeons don’t work (speaking about pug groups here, I’m sure there are ways to make them work in organised groups).

You have to remember unlike many other MMOs there is not a single ability to make a mob focus onto you at all times so you cannot expect someone else to take all the hits while you wail on it with really high damage, it simply won’t work.

People need to be responsible for their own survivability, I’ve seen far too many people moaning about how their paper thin build gets one shotted and that means the dungeon is too hard. No, just because normal PvE is easy as heck does not mean you can just faceroll into mobs with no armour and expect to live in dungeons.

End rant.

Remember, we’re talking about storymode here. Glass Cannon is totally viable for normal levelling at mid 30. It’s a possible build. It’s an otherwise viable build. Then along comes AC and just frustrates the hell out of you.

And it’s not only the glass cannons who die. I had a res-fest on my necro when specced into toughness / vitality. Anything but staying as far out as possible would get me killed fast. Yes I can dodge, but when there’s three mobs chasing you, two dodges are only gonna help for so long.

Also, this is the first dungeon you enter. It has to be balanced not only for long-term “raidpros” who insist they killed Zaithan naked with one hand on the keyboard only while playing with the cat during BWE1. Its job is to introduce 5-man-content to everyone. That includes below average players. Let’s face it, “below average” that’s half the playerbase (actually that’s “below median”, but the difference should be unimportant).

AC storymode for a slightly sub-par PUG – that should be doable. It should be possible for them without special builds. It should be possible without researching the ‘net first, only using in-game ressources. Currently, it’s not. At least the lovers will be too tough for a group of mildly unprepared noobs, which should be the target-audience for the lowest level dungeon in storymode.

Ironically, the later dungeons are easier. That’s a balancing-issue and it’s not done correctly, ATM.

Are people really having this much trouble with the dungeons? I haven’t done the last few but I pug’d up the first three and rolled through them all with the same group. Sure we died a few times but none of us cried. We just went back at it. AC was tough but doable (having a hammer guardian for the Lovers fight was a godsend), Manor was really easy and TA was pretty simple up until the last fight, and even then it was a matter of “Oh, these guys don’t have much health, let me just grab my greatsword and yank them all in for an AoE fest.” The best tip I can give is get to know your weapons and be ready to swap them out before a fight. Just because you have two quickswap slots doesn’t mean those two slots are all you’re going to need for a fight. As a guardian I’ll have in my inventory a greatsword for AoE, sword/focus for single target, hammer for CC and staff for utility fights (I spent a lot of time kiting the nightmare mobs during the third boss fight, the symbol of speed and the line of warding was helpful there). Know your utility skills, elites and weapon skills. Its a hard mindset to break coming from WoW but when you’re limited to 10 skills per fight, you have to make sure you’ve got the right ones. That being said, after every fight evaluate what happened and what you can do the next time. Redo targeting, swap up roles, take the time to analyze instead of just charging in again and again.

my first few run through AC i was all power and spinning axes. that was great for PvE it very bad for PvD.
so i went through and got all my gear to level. this was hard as i want some of those fancy drop pieces… but i bit the bullet and bought all new gear off the black lion. Then i learned out to use defensive weapons.
then i took some health regen utility.

and the next time i went through i was full health often.
I was too defensive. i was tanking some of the damage with my passive health regen alone.

the flip side to this long story is that now i can do PvE content easily 10% higher level than i am. which i was not able to before because the mobs would plaster my glass cannon.

I am a better player. thanks to AC.

Why does re traiting cost so much at lvl 80 when you have to adapt properly for dungeons?

poot.5487:

Creepjack.2851:

For who you ask?

I’ll tell you. Not for you. This not WoW. You are NOT guaranteed to succeed in every aspect of the content. If you can’t complete a dungeon, then it’s either you are not good enough or this type of content is not for you and you should find other activity in the game that suits you.

Dungeons are designed in the way not everybody can finish them – this you should accept. Whether they change it or not it’s up to them.

Personally I think dungeons, especially explorer mode are.. too easy.

I’ll tell you who dungeons aren’t for: they aren’t for people who want to play with a certain trait/weapon setup. I’m sure I could sleepwalk and auto-strafe my way through dungeons using a bow or a rifle, but frankly I find that type of gameplay snooze-worthy. GW2’s combat system is not competitive with a polished FPS, which is what I’d play if I wanted to concede that ranged is hands-down superior to melee in every way.

Melee Damage is not a viable role. I’m not interested in playing a game where a significant chunk of the “skill” involved is back-loaded onto simply picking the “right” spec. If that “right” spec were different for every boss fight and trash pack, then maybe it’d be justifiable. However, it’s not. It’s not even close to that. It’s “ranged unless there’s a very specific anti-ranged gimmick.” It’s “support/control are infinitely superior to damage.” It’s “if you want to play melee, spec full tank or prepare for a gibfest.”

Ultimately, GW2’s combat system didn’t solve a central issue of MMORPG’s and ARPG’s, which is that dealing melee damage is tons of fun, but isn’t complex or engaging enough to actually require any skill.

With the way dungeons are set up right now, I personally don’t think players should be able to spec out of support/control, ever. It’s clearly not intended for them to do so, so why dangle the carrot of glass cannon builds, which a huge chunk of the playerbase finds so much fun?

Why would someone ever not go glass cannon if there wasn’t much of a chance of dying? If you ROCK and know the dungeon, know how to dodge and have allies that give you buffs – a glass cannon build can help clear the dungeon faster.

What you are wanting is the ability to play the way you want to play despite not having the skill to do it. And since you dislike this you want to ruin other people’s enjoyment of the content. There are literary dozens of other MMOs you can “DPS HURRR HURR” through to your hearts content. Go play those.

Story modes aren’t that hard, people have to get used to the fact this isn’t WoW, look for animations of bosses and use dodge.

Vanisher.9216:

Story modes aren’t that hard, people have to get used to the fact this isn’t WoW, look for animations of bosses and use dodge.

Well that is part of the problem. You got very few good tells and a camera that’s way too small for what we need to do. Most melee have problems watching normal sized mobs cue anything because of their proximity and flashes from all the spells being thrown. Compound that with anything that’s happening off screen and you’re left with your head scratching wondering what went wrong.

Now so far I’ve ran story mode AC, TA, CM, and SE. So far AC was the only one that gave me any serious trouble, where I’ve actually had to graveyard zerg a boss. TA had us have to rerun the spider boss, and SE I think everyone else on my team had to rez at the last boss while I had to fend for myself. Outside of the AC ranger traps and the lovers most fights I was able to grasp and stay alive for. I would say the Golems in SE story boss fight with Kulu the first time have too much health, cause I had to dodge the same three moves for way too many times per boss.

I think the most obvious tweek is to turn down the number of spawns the spawning events give. Cause I usually feel the most overwhelmed during the few events involving those mechanics the most. Namely Lover’s AC Explore and that spider boss in TA Story.

Creepjack.2851:

Ok, let’s look at this from our point of view maybe?

Us “kids” (I’m 29 old, have a wife and family) who scream l2p would like to have something to do in this game. If you remove the difficulty (which already is pretty low) from dungeons you have removed content from us.

So let’s propose this:
- nerf difficulty of story modes
- rise the difficulty of exploration modes

This way, people who refuse to learn will still have content to do and people who like challenge will be satisfied also.

Better?

I’m a 31 year old mechanical engineer with wife and a kid. Are we on par, may I speak my mind now?

I don’t want dungeons easier. Nor do other people, I suppose. I want dungeons to be hard not because mobs/bosses have insane HP pools and have 2-shotting abilities who come with no noticeable warning. That’s cheap. Just like horror movies use those cheap moments when something pops up on the screen to startle you. That’s not scary, it’s cheap.

I want them to be REALLY difficult because the AI is exceptionally well designed, mobs force you to really develop strategies for them on the run (ie not every encounter is the same, even the same mob type can play in several different ways depending on it’s “character”), they force you to use all your skills and utilities and work closely with your team.

More depth and complexity is what I wish.

Raging Bull.5048:

I don’t want dungeons easier. Nor do other people, I suppose. I want dungeons to be hard not because mobs/bosses have insane HP pools and have 2-shotting abilities who come with no noticeable warning. That’s cheap. Just like horror movies use those cheap moments when something pops up on the screen to startle you. That’s not scary, it’s cheap.

Except the mobs and bosses in dungeons all have tells for all of their attacks. Some are easier to spot than others, but they all can be spotted. Since AC is the example most people are familiar with, and the Rangers in AC is one of the most common complaints, lets look at them. They shoot arrows, kinda obvious what the tell is here, the arrows flying through the air at you. These arrows poison, so having condition removal for that is very good. These rangers also throw spike traps, which can be spotted as a ball thrown by the ranger.

I can go on like this for every single mob in all dungeons I’ve played. If you feel like you die too much, it’s either because your build is wrong and you didn’t bring enough endurance refill or survivability to be able to handle the attention of mobs, or you are simply not skilled enough yet. If a mob 2-shots you, learn the tells so you can get out of the way, ask your party members for help with cc, use LoS, etc.

Lowest common denominator balancing is gone. I am now in Love with GW2 developers and wish to have their babies.

someshta.3809:

Most of your player base (the casual base) is not running your dungeons. Even though they want to see the story, they have rejected your content.

Why did you add this content, in this fashion, when what is probably ~90% of your player base is avoiding it?

I seriously doubt you work for Anet and are able to see the data that would/could prove your claims. Just because you find the dungeons to be beyond your ability, does not mean you can make mass vague claims that “most” everyone else shares your opinion. My guild runs dungeons nightly and has a blast doing so. Dungeons in GW2=Nut up or shut up