Guild Wars 2

If you range everything, you probably won’t need reflection. Ranging is a fantastic strategy, it’s just abysmally slow. And there are mediums for players to learn dungeon mechanics rather than having to have them explained by people trying to farm tokens etc. I’ve personally grown tired of explaining the same encounters over and over when all it takes is watching the boss / what other players do and reacting.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I think its unfair to expect players to understand game mechanics that are never properly explained.

And no dungeon should demand reflection. Only a few classes have access to that. I want to be able to do a dungeon with my friends, and not force someone to re-roll a guardian.

It’s sort of trial and error. But what I have noticed with PuGs is that they don’t change their approach if it failed. They continue to bash their heads again and again and again until it magically works or people leave.

Mesmer, elementalist and guardians are far from being the less played class. And even if you are in a party without them, a necromancer and a thief can greatly help. (Don’t know anything about engineers and rangers).

I love CM, I would play that dungeon a lot more if playing with PuGs in it wasn’t that horrible. Not because they are bad (some PuGs are pretty good) but because they generally want to exploit everything…and while I’m fine with skipping monsters in any dungeons, exploiting in CM is simply awful.
Just like exploiting Frost…A tip : stand in melee range and circle around him. You can easily dodge his beam and kill him. And it works better if all of your team does it.

It is indeed an L2 kitten ue.

2 things kill you in CM:

1. Bleed stacks.
2. Killshot from Riflemen.

People still do CM?

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

But how do you get past the tunnel with the ranged bandits, and all the spikes coming from the ground? Suppose you are playing a class that doesn’t have access to deflection or blocking? Those spikes instantly down you, and the enemies do a lot of damage. There’s no way to shut down the trap, and you can’t pull the enemies, not even with pull-skills. Running isn’t fast enough, the enemies and the spikes get you before you reach the other side. Some ranged attacks hit them, but they do far more damage than you. But they are out of range of ground targeted attacks.

Honestly, what is the intended strategy for this bit? I’ve completed it myself through trial and error, teleporting and speed boosts, but that was pretty dodgy every time I did it. (Plus I had to hide behind the door opening once I got to the other side, just so they wouldn’t instantly kill me) Is there something I’m missing here?

This hallway is a problem, in my opinion. Especially because the trap activation pattern looks like you might be able to run through the hall with swiftness if you time it right, but you often can’t. And if someone gets downed in the spikes, trying to save them is Dying Pointlessly. (Plus the three mobs at the end tend to see you coming and drop you before you get there…)

The best solution I’ve got are long-range teleport or invulnerabilty skills. Your group sacrifices 1 utility each and makes a coordinated dash from about half-way through the spiked area (you can usually travel that far quite safely.) Whoever is leading the charge will optimally also have a way to deal with the first two shots / bombs from the mobs at the end of the hall.

Classes that I know can do something like this: (Range in brackets)
Guardian – Judge’s Intervention (1200)
Mesmer – Blink (900, 1200 if traited. A mesmer can also Portal their entire group across!)
Necromancer – Flesh Wurm / Necrotic Traversal (1200) if you have fast fingers or
– Dark Path (900)
Elementalist – Lightning Flash (900)
– Ride the Lightning (Might work. I’m pretty sure the traps can still hit you, but you’ll be moving fast enough to make the window?)
Thief – Steal (900, 1200 if traited.)
– Infiltrator’s Arrow (900)
– Shadowstep (1200)

Which leaves Rangers, Warriors and Engineers. I honestly don’t know if they have options there or not. What really irks me is, even after some people in your group make it to the end of the hall, they can’t deactivate the traps.

I know warriors and rangers both have blocking options, but I don’t know if that works on the traps or not. It would certainly work on the mobs at the end, meaning at most you have to traverse the spikes without dying.

I haven´t tried it but if endure pain works on the spikes, a warrior should be able to make it past them.

I’ve been really lucky occasionally by teleporting with Flesh Wurm. But that doesn’t teleport you all the way to the other side. So you also need to quickly acivate a speedboost and dodge roll, and hope the spikes don’t get you. Then the enemies on the other side will quickly make short work of you, so I hid behind the door post (but not too far, or I’d aggro more enemies), and then kill them from behind the door post. Its a bit of an exploit really. They really should add a way to disable those traps. There’s a whole basement with tons of rooms with enemies in them… and none of those rooms has a switch to disable the traps! You’d think placing a switch randomly in one of those rooms would make sense. But there is no switch, and the rooms in the basement are a waste of time.

Yeah, part of the trick is that your entire group needs to rush/port across in about a 10 second window. If only one person makes it across, the 3v1 (Is there only 3? I can’t remember) will kill them anyways. But if your allies are there, it’s not too hard to rally you and win the fight.

Hiding behind the door is a good idea, what with their complete immobility. Fighting from behind the door I’m not so sure of, but a quick hiding spot to use your heal and such is valuable.

I don’t think Endure Pain works on environmental traps. :c

Softspoken.2410:

What really irks me is, even after some people in your group make it to the end of the hall, they can’t deactivate the traps.

The traps are deactivated when you go further down the big room, a little before you can aggro the big group.

Softspoken.2410:

I don’t think Endure Pain works on environmental traps. :c

Does shield blocking work? Haven’t done CM in ages. . .

is cm path 3 hard? just did path 1 and 2 today, don’t seem too bad

laokoko.7403:

is cm path 3 hard? just did path 1 and 2 today, don’t seem too bad

It’s similar to p1. The trap corridor seems to be hard, but I don’t know, most of the time we skip that part by having someone wait at the doors. But the times I failed at that simple task I don’t remember my team having a hard time get through it normally.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

But how do you get past the tunnel with the ranged bandits, and all the spikes coming from the ground? Suppose you are playing a class that doesn’t have access to deflection or blocking? Those spikes instantly down you, and the enemies do a lot of damage. There’s no way to shut down the trap, and you can’t pull the enemies, not even with pull-skills. Running isn’t fast enough, the enemies and the spikes get you before you reach the other side. Some ranged attacks hit them, but they do far more damage than you. But they are out of range of ground targeted attacks.

Honestly, what is the intended strategy for this bit? I’ve completed it myself through trial and error, teleporting and speed boosts, but that was pretty dodgy every time I did it. (Plus I had to hide behind the door opening once I got to the other side, just so they wouldn’t instantly kill me) Is there something I’m missing here?

Unless they patched this out, the traps deactivate when you aggro the next group that comes after the three at the end of the hallway. I usually run with a thief, so I would SB and Steal or something to the guys at the end of the hallway, run over and shoot at the next group of mobs and then stealth back.

I ran CM again for the first time in a long time yesterday, and it looked like alot of the cheesy strats have been fixed. It’s entirely possible this one had been changed as well.

Elm.8169:

Unless they patched this out, the traps deactivate when you aggro the next group that comes after the three at the end of the hallway. I usually run with a thief, so I would SB and Steal or something to the guys at the end of the hallway, run over and shoot at the next group of mobs and then stealth back.

I ran CM again for the first time in a long time yesterday, and it looked like alot of the cheesy strats have been fixed. It’s entirely possible this one had been changed as well.

You don’t have to aggro the next group for the traps to deactivate. And how is deactivating traps a cheesy strats ?

But is there a way to deactivate the traps BEFORE your party does a suicide run to the other side? Is there any way to avoid casualties? I’d really like to know. Because maybe we’ve simply misunderstood the mechanics all this time… or maybe it was just really badly designed.

Mobile invulnerability skills like Mist Form, and teleportation skills like Blink work well for that hallway. Using those types of skills, you can definitely get to the safe spots to either side of the far doorway. Before doing that, though, you need to coordinate the timing and the strategy with your team and point out where those spots are while the red trap circles are visible so everyone knows where they’re going. In addition, if you don’t have reflection, repeatedly blinding the three mobs works well, too.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

But is there a way to deactivate the traps BEFORE your party does a suicide run to the other side? Is there any way to avoid casualties? I’d really like to know. Because maybe we’ve simply misunderstood the mechanics all this time… or maybe it was just really badly designed.

Try communicating with your party members, maybe. Tell them to stay back so you can go in and deactivate it yourself.

RedStar.4218:

And how is deactivating traps a cheesy strats ?

Oh I don’t know, maybe the devs put the traps and the three mobs there so we’d actually have to fight the mobs while dealing with the trap? Having a single thief/ele run to a certain point to deactivate the traps without killing the mobs completely trivializes the gauntlet. That was probably intended to save the groups some trouble running back after a wipe. I might buy it if there was an object you had to activate to disable the traps or something but having the traps mysteriously disappear when someone gets to a certain point sounds like it wasn’t meant to happen during the fight.

Elm.8169:

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

But is there a way to deactivate the traps BEFORE your party does a suicide run to the other side? Is there any way to avoid casualties? I’d really like to know. Because maybe we’ve simply misunderstood the mechanics all this time… or maybe it was just really badly designed.

Try communicating with your party members, maybe. Tell them to stay back so you can go in and deactivate it yourself.

RedStar.4218:

And how is deactivating traps a cheesy strats ?

Oh I don’t know, maybe the devs put the traps and the three mobs there so we’d actually have to fight the mobs while dealing with the trap? Having a single thief/ele run to a certain point to deactivate the traps without killing the mobs completely trivializes the gauntlet. That was probably intended to save the groups some trouble running back after a wipe. I might buy it if there was an object you had to activate to disable the traps or something but having the traps mysteriously disappear when someone gets to a certain point sounds like it wasn’t meant to happen during the fight.

It still sounds like very sloppy design. See volatile blossoms in TA that never go away for another example. If they feel that it shouldn’t be necessary to run through it after a wipe once they have cleared it then they could just put a WP after the traps.