Guild Wars 2

I’m by no means the best player in this game. I’m by no means a super hardcore player. So why should I be punished with dungeons that are near impossible for my friends and I to complete? So what are we supposed to do? Grind dynamic events in Orr over and over? That was fun for the first few times, but it gets boring fast. So what next? Play the story mode dungeons over and over? What’s the point when the only way to get exotic tokens are from explorer mode? Play WvWvW? Sure, we enjoy WvWvW, but when one server literally owns the entire map, what can 5 of us really do?

I like a challenge, but what I don’t like is smashing my head against a wall. There is literally no room for mistake in these dungeons. You have to be 100% perfect or else you’re going to fail. Stop pushing your casual fans away.

There are enough topics regarding this subject already. There’s plenty of advice, and a multitude of these types of thread being pointed out as common fallacies in party as well as player. Try the dungeons again, again, and again, and eventually you’ll be doing them in no time.

It has nothing to do with being “hardcore” or not..
I’ve seen casuals log on a few hours a night, and do a dungeon… Its about learning how to adapt to each boss, and teamwork is essential…
You are not supposed to plow your way through Arah if you havent done it before.. Its hard because it acctually takes some skill and teamwork to get it done, unlike the previous bugged dungeons where you could skip entire sections and bug bosses.

We need more posts like this so that the devs will hear about it. People are not happy. The lopsided WvW. The dungeons that don’t require tactics other then kill 1 NPC, die, repeat until you get to the end. Kiting fails, healing is minimal, knockback wipes entire groups over and over. I cant find anything fun in this game anymore and I am just hoping that things change in the next patch.

Just out of curiosity Piccolo… I know you say ur not hardcore, but how do you learn in a game like this? Do you watch youtube vids, bust out a spreadsheet, scan forums for strategy?

Not saying if you’re not do this you’re not doing it right… but there tends to be a disconnect with people between how folks learn, and my hypothesis is that many casuals (regardless of inherent skill) learn by doing. This isn’t a bad learning style, but when these types of learners have little-to-no exposure to dungeons and combo fields and such…. or even a graduated system of learning and paying from making mistakes…. you can’t really blame them for having a hard time in these dungeons.

I know one person isn’t gonna confirm my hypothesis, but the point is there are players that learn like this and the game doesn’t do a good job at teaching/revealing all the mechanics available to them; even at the most basic level…. The only way I knew about combo fields was someone telling me what they noticed in the beta and by me actually trying to shoot through a field to check it out. Without that prior knowledge, I probably wouldn’t have really noticed it for awhile.

The dungeons are hard content. Hard content in video games requires thought, observation, trial and error and perseverance. GW2 dungeons are intended to be hard content. They should remain such.

The hardcore players may succeed more quickly than others. They may have put more thought into their builds, which can help. However, the hardcore fail in hard content also as they are learning. Players who play less often may take longer in real time to learn as they try less often. If I can succeed in dungeons, anyone can.

The real problem with dungeons has been that rewards did not match the time spent to master the content, and that is being addressed. As you say, other aspects of GW2 do not appeal to you. Why not take the time to learn the dungeons?

Limulus.4380:

We need more posts like this so that the devs will hear about it. People are not happy. The lopsided WvW. The dungeons that don’t require tactics other then kill 1 NPC, die, repeat until you get to the end. .

More like you die because you use no tactics.

Also we really don’t need more post like this, there are PLENTY.

well in all fairness since there is nothing else to really do for endgame PVE since raiding doesn’t exist for high end PVE players like other MMO’s there has to be SOMETHING hard to strive towards. Raiding in other games is essentially the same thing as these dungeons except 10+ people instead of 5. Theres wipes. lots of wipes. these places are intended to be extremely challenging to the high end PVE players otherwise there is literally nothing to. Its all about execution in these places. Same as the high end raids in other games

Agree with Rinbox.2570 , we have to approach these dungeons with the raiding mindset.

Research about them, spec correctly, get food buffs, and expect to die a lot of times.

As a former wow player i am approaching dungeons from wow players view. They r supposed to be easy, ur supposed to clear them in one go and puggable. I was so wrong.

However GW2 dunegons r totally different. They r the hardest things you can do this game. They r as difficult as wow raids. Bcuz they r just 5man and there r 24 of them they don’t feel epic. So when you say “hey i cleared all 3 paths in AC” it doesn’t carry the say weight as “I cleared heroic deathwing”.

Dungeons aren’t just for the hardcore. I have done dungeons with people who are doing it their first time, who will definitely down/die a few times, who probably could’ve been that much more skilled in not drawing aggro, etc. However, none of those things make a dungeon impossible. What makes a dungeon impossible is not going in with a plan, rushing content on your first time, not listening to party members who have done the content before. If I’m with new players, I don’t have in mind a speed clear, but I do expect them to follow instructions if I’m going to show them how to clear a specific path of the dungeon.

I love the difficulty of these dungeons and hope they remain unchanged. wiping many times in order to figure out the mechanics of a fight is more than rewarding.

Whiskers.7835:

I love the difficulty of these dungeons and hope they remain unchanged. wiping many times in order to figure out the mechanics of a fight is more than rewarding.

The silver spent repairing is so rewarding eh?

This is an elitist mentality that trolls this forum for reactions where there are serious issues of difficulty scales at hand.

OP:

Your definitions for casual and hardcore are not correct. Those terms relate to how much a person plays generally.

GW2 is skill based. How good you are at the game isn’t going to be strictly based on how much time you spend in it.

Playing more often will generally mean you get better. “Practice makes perfect”. Honestly though, “Perfect practice makes perfect”.

The explorable modes are hard, really hard. Get better at the game if you want to beat them.

Also, don’t start with the lvl 80 explorable modes, and try to play with a group of people you know.

If you are casual don’t expect to clear the dungeons at the same speed as someone that is ‘hardcore’ or in the middle. People will clear at the pace that they play the game. This is not as much as a numbers game as it is skill and co-ordination to learn boss ‘tells’ and tactics. Numbers do help, as more gear and being level 80 will make things easier, but not to the point where you don’t have to pay attention.

Here are some dungeon tips I found from my runs. In no particular order and they may or may not be what you use, this is just from my experience:

1. Design the group to get all the boons you can: regen, protection, vigor are good defensive ones to keep you alive; fury and might, to kill mobs faster (again to keep you alive). These are the ones I remember off the top of my head.

2. Use conditions to help your team; blind, daze, crippble, immobilize, weakness. Weakness is extremely useful; reduces your foes crititcal hits to normal hits and normal to glancing blows (50% dmg) combine that with protection boon and your group is now a tank.

3. Try and have more than one person for healing/Support; almost every class that i’ve seen can do this. Even warrior with his shouts can heal and support.

4. Have someone that can remove boons from a target; protection or regen on a boss is going to outlast you.

5. Watch for major boss ‘tells’ (a signature move that it will do before an attack) charging or flashes will usually give it away from what i’ve seen. Save a block/Dodge/Repel for these situations. Don’t waste your dodge on minor things.

6. Have some kind of toughness stacked character to be the focus. Get this character to stand in the way of enemy projectiles or block big attacks. Someone that can keep the mobs together without dying fast. (this character will still have to dodge the ‘big’ attacks) This character will also be a good resser; being able to stay in aoes to rally an ally

7. Do not try and ressurect dead characters; downed is priority if you see it. Assign 1 or more people to this task. A dead character will take to long and they are better off teleporting to the closet way point and running back.

In general build your character to help your team. Can’t stress this enough. The stuff you use to solo farm may not be useful in a group environment.

Am I doing the wrong dungeons? I’ve cleared TA, HotW, and AC and just breeze through them are these 3 just real easy compaired to the others? Because I pug them all three paths with almost zero wipes?

^^^ What Xhaine wrote

I know ANet said they removed the trinity and that you can make a group with whatever make up of classes. However that doesn’t mean roles are gone forever. You can’t expect to clear a dungeon efficiently if you’re all running Berserker’s Gear in full solo DPS specs.

Dungeons are group content, tackle it like a group. They did remove the need to MUST HAVE a certain class. What you still need though, is a balanced group make up.

1: Learn your Combo Fields. Combo Fields can make/break a run. For a little help you can visit http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo to learn more about the different sorts of fields/finishers. Once you get the hang of these you can breeze through dungeons in no time.

2: Make sure you’re not in a glass cannon spec. If you’re only geared/specced for damage with little thought to durability then expect to be in downed state, or worse, the majority of the time. If you’re in a good group then you can easily get by with Berserker gear, but seeing you’re posting here I’m betting you’re not so you’re better off with Knight’s gear.

3: Bring Food buffs and Potions. Potions, at 80, reduce damage of a specific type by 10% and increase your damage by 10% against that mob. There are multiple levels of these potions and they can be a huge asset. Potions only last until you are downed, but they are cheap so you should be able to afford a LOT of them for next to nothing. Food buffs are a tremendous help as well. I like using the Salsa’s while doing dungeons as I get 100% downed health and 20% more damage while downed. The damage itself is useless to me but the extra health means I have more time for someone to come and rally me.

4: Communicate with your team. This doesn’t mean get Vent or something similar, it just means use the chat. This is perhaps the biggest reason pugs fail. They go in with little knowledge and never speak to each other and when they wipe they just continuously die over and over again without trying to figure out why that happened. Then people come to the forums and say X is too hard and should be nerfed.

5: Don’t dodge every possible attack that comes your way. There are loads of attacks that aren’t going to really do much to you and if you waste your endurance you’re not going to have it when you actually need it. Most 1 shot attacks have a nice animation that gives it away. Use your dodge then. Learn which attacks need to be dodged and which don’t. Once you get these down you’ll find yourself staying alive a LOT longer.

My pizza just got in so I’m going to leave it there. Those tips should help you out a lot, but they will do nothing if you’re not willing to learn to play better. Dungeons are meant to be challenging content for a group of coordinated individuals. If you don’t want to work as a team then don’t expect an easy clear.

I am not going to say the dungeons are perfectly balanced and don’t need some tweaking, I’m looking at you TA with your death blossoms of super quick respawn times that seem to always be “obstructed” from my attacks even when I’m right in front of you. When you adapt to the challenges you’re going to find these dungeons to be a breeze. Give it some time and actually try to improve before saying everything is too hard.

Thank you Artorous for bringing up combo fields. That slipped my mind and it’s extremely important! learn the fields and combos that fit your group.

One I like is water field plus leap finisher = ice field that freezes everybody around myself. 66% less cooldowns on boss/mbos.

- Xhaine

Yeah, my fav field is water + blast. I generally use Healing Rain + Arcane Blast to get some nice healing for the group. Second fave would be fire + blast for might stacks.

Someone with good english writing skills (not me, I’m just a math brained programmer) should compile a list of tip and tricks for this dungeon thread and try and get it stickied

- Xhaine

I’ve tried helping people out but most people just don’t seem to want to learn, sadly. They’d rather just have everything nerfed instead. And generally they’ll toss the “elitest” word around when you try and show them just how easy something is and why it doesn’t need nerfed.

Some people like to brag how ‘easy’ things are when other cannot complete. For me the bragging rights is when people see my armor in game and associates that with the difficulty of the dungeon. I just want to help people get prepared for the dungeons and how I’ve learned how this game is played. For all I know this could be completely wrong and there will be a new way to make it easier. Humans are all about finding the most efficient path.

- Xhaine

If you are “by no means a hardcore player”, then by asking that all the content in the game be tailored to you, you are basically saying that the game shouldn’t have any content that appeals to hardcore players, which is obviously silly.

The problem with most GW2 dungeons isn’t the difficulty, anyway (I’ve seen a lot of people go through them easily on their first attempt), it’s the fact that they’re just not much fun (boring bosses that just stand there, mobs that will randomly either do no damage or 1-shot you, etc).

I respect players who already have full sets of armor.

I want people to respect me when I finish my armor skins.
Unskilled, misguided players need to quit asking for nerfs, and step their game up if they want these armors.

I wouldn’t be surprised if eventually groups that have the explorable mode dungeons down don’t start offering to run people through them for a fee. In a way, I’m surprised it hasn’t happened already.

Rpgtabbycat.5869:

I wouldn’t be surprised if eventually groups that have the explorable mode dungeons down don’t start offering to run people through them for a fee. In a way, I’m surprised it hasn’t happened already.

I usually go with 2 guildies and 2 pugged players. We show them how easy it can be so they can, hopefully, pass it on. The only time we die a lot is thost god forsaken death blossoms in TA! Once you know the dungeon and have the patterns down things become easier and easier. It’s just a matter of trying to learn them instead of getting mad when you die once. If memory serves me correctly, ANet said they aren’t going to do any nerfing, instead they are going to let people adapt to the difficulty, much like they did for GW1.