Guild Wars 2

Hi,

we recently run into issues finding enough people for our dungeon/fractal runs. Usually we end up with 2-4 people. Using pugs from the lfg does not really work. Most just leave within a few minutes.

Many of us do not play meta-builds, is that the problem?

1) Use meta builds, I would go insane if you were doing only like 10k dps, dying a lot and failing mechanics.

2) Pick up who you can from your guild then post an LFG saying exactly what you are doing with the words “casual run”

If your guildies don’t want to join and you don’t like pugs you can call a gg or learn to do fractals/dungeons with short man parties.
Some of the dungeons/fractals needs an specific number of players because mechanics, do all others.
Have fun and good luck.

Sorry, I have no advice. However, your post reminded me very much of why I swore I would never raid (10 or 25 player) again.

pug everything and expect to solo. this always works.
i mean, it’s worth it to learn meta and soloing stuff in the long run. you’re more independent

At least I now know what goes wrong. Thanks for your answers.

This is a problem with every social group since humans started hanging out with each other. No one has any magic formula to resolve it. In this case, size doesn’t matter — you can have 2000 people in a guild, with 423 online and still have no one or you can be in a six person guild and always have five except when someone’s RL interferes.

For MMO guilds, there are a couple of strategies:

• Get better, so you need fewer people to do the stuff you like.
• Find other things you like doing that are enjoyed by more people you know, so that you never run short of party members.
• Offer training, so that you have more potential party members for the stuff you do like.
• Recruit more people who share your passion for specific content.
• PUG, and enjoy the other aspects of your guild
• Find a new guild.

It’s quite simple as I said, if you are looking for people that are open, i.e to using different builds then you just need to start a LFG to fill out party saying “fractal blah blah blah casual run” or “T4 daily fractal casual run” then you wont get elitist meta sheep joining and leaving your party. I see plenty of groups doing “casual runs” and weird comps with like 3 necros a theif and whatever else. To be honest without sounding rude it seems like you’re just a bit salty mate x)

As for meta builds I think what we and at least I mean to say is that, if you play them along with optimal composition’s you are optimising your speed/efficiency/survival or whatever you want to call it so yeah it does solve a few problems. For instance running a group without a PS warrior wont keep you capped at 25 might stacks or running without a chrono wont give you the quickness you need for speed runs.

OP, now I am more interested about why you are changed your post every time than the post itself.
Now it is totally different than the one you started.

Leon de Damasco.8105:

OP, now I am more interested about why you are changed your post every time than the post itself.
Now it is totally different than the one you started.

Clearly he was just a little triggered maybe :P

At least for daily fractals people (including me) want to be fast and efficient. Thats were meta builds come in, people dont wanna spend an hour on daily fractals just because someone wants to play his own build that doesnt synergize or has terrible dps.

Unfortunately the only solution to playing w/e u want without salt or drama or w8ing is to go with full guild group and not pug at all.

Itz Jay.8941:

Leon de Damasco.8105:

OP, now I am more interested about why you are changed your post every time than the post itself.
Now it is totally different than the one you started.

Clearly he was just a little triggered maybe :P

Actually, I don’t see any difference in the question — OP just left out the less-important background info. The issue remains the same: how do you find enough people to do the stuff you like to do, even (or especially) while in a big guild.

HnRkLnXqZ.1870:

Many of us do not play meta-builds, is that the problem?

Probably not. (see my other post above)
Running meta builds makes it easier to join PUGs and easier to bring a PUG along last minute. However, knowing the mechanics is far, far more important than which build people are running.

The presumption of many is that people who run meta are more likely to know mechanics (because they at least know the meta builds), but I haven’t seen much evidence that this is true. Plenty of folks great at mechanics run non-meta builds; plenty of people running meta don’t understand the mechanics.

@OP contact me in game. I might be able to offer some ideas that fit your particular circumstances. Are you NA or EU? what times do you play?

HnRkLnXqZ.1870:

Hi,

we recently run into issues finding enough people for our dungeon/fractal runs. Usually we end up with 2-4 people. Using pugs from the lfg does not really work. Most just leave within a few minutes.

Many of us do not play meta-builds, is that the problem?

It is several issues for dungeons or low level fractals

• Timezone, some timing just has lesser people, naturally lesser people means even lesser people will join
• Old game. A lot of players are at the end game stage so they most pretty much quit doing dungeons or low level fractals, they have very little reasons to. What’s more, the numerous new contents spare little to no time for any of those old players to help you. So, the amount of people gonna join you is lesser
• Not rewarding. Dungeons used to be rewarding but the nerf to it while competing against the newer contents lead to old players not wanting to do it anymore.
• Declining game. Gw2 isn’t as popular as back in the days, the number of newbies you will find is lesser than the past, naturally means lesser people joining you
• Declining game 2. Gw2 isn’t as populated as the past.
• Story mode. If you are doing story mode, expect very little people to join you.

Having dps meta-mixed build will allow you to do dungeons and low fractal without full party, so instead of waiting, perhaps get those builds.

dont say dungeons aren’t rewarding because it’s a lie. people don’t play dungeons because they’re either bored after years of doing them or because of not knowing that they can be very lucrative

I actually enjoy dungeons when I can, but where I run into trouble is people expect you to know the mechanics even if you’ve a) never done that path before, or b) maybe did do that path once two months ago. If there are mechanics I have a hard time finding groups that won’t just boot me for not knowing them already.

I’ve done every dungeon path once. ONCE. Took two years to do that much and I am still very hazy on the specific mechanics of most. Usually I wind up taking the default approach of ‘hit it with everything you have and try not to die’.

I’ve died repeatedly because I couldn’t run past the trash. (Been booted for that, too.)

Yes, dungeons are lucrative and they can be fun, but not when the party you’re with just wants to get in and out as fast as possible.

Mostly the same goes for fractals. I can do T4, but I actually stopped doing fractals at all at that point because T4 was where I ran into a huge amount of “we clear this thing perfectly in five minutes or people start leaving/getting kicked”. It stopped being fun so I stopped doing it, profit be kitten ed.

My experiences in both have had me eyeing raids like a vanilla lover eyes a BDSM closet. I mean learning new things is great! But…am I game for that much grief from other players?

Usually, no.

Larathia.5284:

Yes, dungeons are lucrative and they can be fun, but not when the party you’re with just wants to get in and out as fast as possible.

Ummm no. Dungeon rewards scale with your speed so only ultra fast meta rush dung tours are very lucrative. If you complete 5 paths in 30 minutes it’s much more gold than 1 path done in 30 min.

I like fast, proper and lucrative runs therefore I disagree with what you said. I mean you can enjoy slow runs but don’t call them lucrative ;p

Sublimatio.6981:

dont say dungeons aren’t rewarding because it’s a lie. people don’t play dungeons because they’re either bored after years of doing them or because of not knowing that they can be very lucrative

Sublimatio.6981:

Larathia.5284:

Yes, dungeons are lucrative and they can be fun, but not when the party you’re with just wants to get in and out as fast as possible.

Ummm no. Dungeon rewards scale with your speed so only ultra fast meta rush dung tours are very lucrative. If you complete 5 paths in 30 minutes it’s much more gold than 1 path done in 30 min.

I like fast, proper and lucrative runs therefore I disagree with what you said. I mean you can enjoy slow runs but don’t call them lucrative ;p

I don’t know how it is more profitable comparing to fotm 40. Can you explain in terms of math?

SkyShroud.2865:

I don’t know how it is more profitable comparing to fotm 40. Can you explain in terms of math?

He wrote it’s very lucrative and hadn’t compared to fotm 40. And I have to agree, dungeons are very lucrative if you have a proper set up and people knowing mechanics by heart and how to play their classes.
Additionally, it’s less boring to do a dungeon tour with friends than doing one fractal with pugs (because I would expect it’s hard to find 4 friends for this grindy stuff) over and over again.

To call something very lucrative, it means you have compared it to something. Also, if you put it into context on my post he replied to, then the point is debatable, such that older players will choose the more rewarding things and dungeons just isn’t as rewarding. Thus, if it isn’t as rewarding, expect lesser people to do it.

The FotM L40 farm is worth (at current TP prices) ~1.5 gold per run. The most efficient teams can complete 21 rounds in ~33 minutes, so it works out to just under 30 gold in half an hour. At 5 min/round, that would drop to 9g in the same 30 minutes

The quickest dungeon runs end up with roughly 100 tokens, half dozen blues & greens for roughly 10-20s, silver bonus of 35-100 depending on path, and an extra 100 tokens & 5 gold for every 8 paths. Most tokens can be converted to gold at roughly 50s/100 tokens (Arah tokens convert at 1g/100). Adding it up, eight dungeons would be worth around 14-20 gold (20 for Arah & AC & TA/aether, 14 for skipping those). At 10 minutes/dungeon (which has to include travel time), that’s roughly 6-7g in 30 minutes.

SkyShroud.2865:

To call something very lucrative, it means you have compared it to something. Also, if you put it into context on my post he replied to, then the point is debatable, such that older players will choose the more rewarding things and dungeons just isn’t as rewarding. Thus, if it isn’t as rewarding, expect lesser people to do it.

He replied with “don’t say dungeons aren’t rewarding” because you said so. It’s a common mistake that people think the dungeon nerf is still existent but with the latest changes to dungeons it got reverted.
Before HoT farming Silverwastes was already more worth it, still people were running their dungeon tour and then turned to SW for a single reason: running dungeons isn’t as boring as doing the same stuff over and over again.
Are you losing a little bit gold due to not doing the most profitable thing for a moment? Yes, definitely.
Are you losing a big amount? Definitely not.

zoomborg.9462:

At least for daily fractals people (including me) want to be fast and efficient. Thats were meta builds come in, people dont wanna spend an hour on daily fractals just because someone wants to play his own build that doesnt synergize or has terrible dps.

Unfortunately the only solution to playing w/e u want without salt or drama or w8ing is to go with full guild group and not pug at all.

whenever I organize pugs on LFG, unless we’re farming. I add the keywords “casual/friendly run” to avoid salty people as even if me and my friends are running meta builds (and trust, me chances are we easily outdps you), though not always. The average so called “elitist METAer” (see what I did there? xP) can be a pain to deal with.

Sometimes things go fast, sometime slow, but hey it is fun, that’s the point of a game, I rather make fun of that ele that forgot to avoid the AOE, instead of blaming him/her and rage-quit(ing) in the middle of a fractal or kicking that necro cuz he/she ain’t running a zerk build (seriously, see what I did there? xP). If your reason for doing dailies is just to get rewards in 20 minutes or less, then clearly YOU should be the one considering getting into a constant party instead :/

that’s my opinion though, everybody has their own way of playing/enjoying the game, however the fact that the salty “elitist” METAer stereotype gives a bad image to (des)organized pugs is a reality that unless arenanet add something like random-LFG-queuing is and will continue to hurt the fractal/dungeon(ing) fan base.

your average new player miss dungeons/fractals because they’re afraid of messing things up, hell even I avoided them for months because of people like that (not like I’m blaming you though, please don’t misunderstand) as it’s happening right now with the raiding-community.

this is a problem that “other games” addressed incorporating “mythic difficulties” aka hardcore mode to almost every dungeon or raid. messing on a hardcore pug? GTFO from my raid noobster!!! … however going full kitten for messing up in a trivial difficulty thing as dailies are? pfff sorry kiddo you’re what we call a “rat kid” over here. (again, i’m not talking about you, it’s just an example, don’t misunderstand)

that’s why I avoid, make fun of and block so many “METAers”

Absolutely. If you’re going to be the kind of player that gets in a fritz after a wipe (or two, or three) because you MUST get through the whatever (fractal, dungeon, raid) as fast as possible…just effing say so on the LFG. Or get some friends you won’t yell at.

I’ve learned to avoid dungeon LFGs that say ‘fast’, forex. I don’t need the headache and neither do they. I welcome the ‘casual’ tag or comments like ‘howevermany wipes’ because those are the players I love grouping with.

SkyShroud.2865:

To call something very lucrative, it means you have compared it to something

so you basically assumed what was going through my mind and decided that’s what i said/meant. thats not how conversation works. i never compared dungeon rewards to 40 farm. i meant “very lucrative” in terms of feeling the gold gain and having the general idea of what is meh gold gain and what is not. from a typical basic dung tour you will get around 40-60g (after liquidating everything) and it can take you 2h, depends on skill. i’m assuming a pro party before raids existed and people didn’t run trash healing druids etc and you had to coordinate stuff

plushiesoda.8150:

whenever I organize pugs on LFG, unless we’re farming. I add the keywords “casual/friendly run” to avoid salty people as even if me and my friends are running meta builds (and trust, me chances are we easily outdps you), though not always. The average so called “elitist METAer” (see what I did there? xP) can be a pain to deal with.

Sometimes things go fast, sometime slow, but hey it is fun, that’s the point of a game, I rather make fun of that ele that forgot to avoid the AOE, instead of blaming him/her and rage-quit(ing) in the middle of a fractal or kicking that necro cuz he/she ain’t running a zerk build (seriously, see what I did there? xP). If your reason for doing dailies is just to get rewards in 20 minutes or less, then clearly YOU should be the one considering getting into a constant party instead :/

that’s my opinion though, everybody has their own way of playing/enjoying the game, however the fact that the salty “elitist” METAer stereotype gives a bad image to (des)organized pugs is a reality that unless arenanet add something like random-LFG-queuing is and will continue to hurt the fractal/dungeon(ing) fan base.

your average new player miss dungeons/fractals because they’re afraid of messing things up, hell even I avoided them for months because of people like that (not like I’m blaming you though, please don’t misunderstand) as it’s happening right now with the raiding-community.

this is a problem that “other games” addressed incorporating “mythic difficulties” aka hardcore mode to almost every dungeon or raid. messing on a hardcore pug? GTFO from my raid noobster!!! … however going full kitten for messing up in a trivial difficulty thing as dailies are? pfff sorry kiddo you’re what we call a “rat kid” over here. (again, i’m not talking about you, it’s just an example, don’t misunderstand)

that’s why I avoid, make fun of and block so many “METAers”

The main issue are not “toxic elitist meta players”, it’s the people who are not able to read and respect LFGs properly.

Too many players want to get the loot piñata and they want to get it as fast as the full meta group can achieve. There would be no complaining, no kicking or toxicity at all if people just go into the groups they fit in or open up their own LFG.

Indeed, the “casual/friendly” run can indeed be a smooth thing, a couple of minutes later but no problems/wipes or anything but it’s a grab bag. I’ve opened it several times when it was corrupted and hell no, that’s no fun at all. There are groups out there that don’t get T4 levels done and then, for me personally, I wasted a ton of my valuable leisure time + lost my nerves because people can’t execute the easiest things although it’s T4 and they should at least have seen the basic levels before! For example, you can’t end dredge fractal even though you are the best solo player in the world if people don’t pull the boss into the right spots + are tanky as hell dealing no damage and don’t die either.

@Sublimatio.6981
Feeling isn’t logical to me, sorry.

I don’t understand where the 40-60g per 2hrs comes out from. Illconceived Was Na.9781 calculated about 7g per 30minutes which is 28g, speed run I assume, a big difference between 28 and 40.

@Vinceman.4572
The nerf was great and even the buff, it is still not as rewarding as back then. It is a rough estimate of 40% golds difference. For reference, you can check https://wiki.guildwars2.com/index.php?title=Dungeon&oldid=1074111

Yes, sw was more profitable than dungeons back then. Sw was about 20g per hour, iirc. So was about 50% more profitable than dungeon back then.

Now, you compare to the current value. Illconceived Was Na.9781 estimate it to be 14g per hour. FotM 40 to be 18g per hour if 5min per round but normally ppl do it for 2.5minute, at least my guild do it 2.5minute on average, so I will calculate 36 per hour. That’s 60% difference or 22 golds different. 22g is a lot, it is also 50% more than the difference of sw-vs-dungeon of back then.

I already said and will continue to say, many old players don’t have reason to do dungeons. Dungeons popularity will be as it is until anet put the reward back to the same level it was.

Edit: Incase people forgotten, dungeon was nerfed in favor of raid.

The first problem is you are referring to Illconceived Was Na.9781 numbers where he said “At 10 minutes/dungeon (which has to include travel time), that’s roughly 6-7g in 30 minutes.”
Good groups don’t need that much time per path. For reference: I’m running AC story with 4 beginners in 10 minutes. Plus there are some other stuff you can do. I heard about some weird AC P6 path in which you magically run all three paths at once, all counting for the 5g achievement. I could only imagine but I think there’s more stuff out there waiting for some people to explore. ^^

Your 2nd lack of knowledge is you just look at the flat gold reward at the end of the dungeon. Some of the dungeon mats were rising in price heavily with introduction of HoT and balance changes since then. Back in the days you threw leather away because it was worth nothing and I can tell you, you got stacks out of it and you didn’t know what to do with it. Now it’s very pricey. Same goes for dust, AC is one of the best sources.

So yeah, 40-60g is very much possible for a skilled group.

SkyShroud.2865:

Edit: Incase people forgotten, dungeon was nerfed in favor of raid.

And they reverted it after finding out that dungeons got abandoned from one day to the other although they left legendary collections requiring tokens and people complained about not finding enough players to get them.

Of course the old times are over when people ran AC 1+3 (maybe 2), TA Up + Fwd, CoF 1+2, SE 1+3 and perhaps CM 1 and stopped. But that has never been the complete “dungeon tour” of the better players because you included Arah full as well as CoE + others.

SkyShroud.2865:

@Sublimatio.6981
Edit: Incase people forgotten, dungeon was nerfed in favor of raid.

Actually, that was once true; it’s not true anymore — if people do 8 unique paths often, the current rewards are slightly better than before, due to the increased token amounts; the liquid gold amounts are marginally less.

The facts noted in the rest of the post were largely correct: FotM40 done slowly is already more lucrative than best case Dungeon Frequenter; FotM40/quick is much better and FotM/Optimal is one of the most lucrative farms in the game.

Farming, by its very nature, is repetitive and boring for a lot of people, so it’s not the only consideration. I do T4 fractals because it’s fun, there’s a lot of variety, and I can continue to challenge myself by trying different builds/strategies. That’s definitely absent from FotM/40 farming (one size fits all…it’s the only size, too). Dungeons, for me, aren’t any better because they are largely trivial with a good team and tedious with a bad one.

SkyShroud.2865:

I don’t understand where the 40-60g per 2hrs comes out from. Illconceived Was Na.9781 calculated about 7g per 30minutes which is 28g, speed run I assume, a big difference between 28 and 40.

Edit: Incase people forgotten, dungeon was nerfed in favor of raid.

1. It comes from experience. What Illconceived said isn’t entirely complete.
Aetherpath gives you a daily guaranteed skin that can sell from few gold up to 20g.
SE gives MUCH more champion bags. And you also drop lodestones and rares which Illconceived didn’t even mention. “few blues and greens” is a big understatement.
Liquid gold rewards are up to 126 silver, not 100.
Tokens for CoF, CoE, HotW and Arah liquidate for 90s-1g per run if you assume the worst scenario of not having any recipes. (Selling ecto or potions) gw2efficiency.com/currencies/dungeon-tokens
Dungeon recipe unlocks 2-4g (some even more) per dungeon path.

On top of that dungeons don’t take 10 minutes per path to complete. It’s usually 5 minutes in CM, AC takes about 5-8 minutes except p3 around 10 because of graveling burrows. TA will take about 8 minutes, aetherpath about 16-18. SE takes around 5-6 minutes per path (except p2 – ~9min – because of forced waiting) CoF takes 6 minutes except p2 again forced waiting. HotW takes 5-6 minutes. CoE and Arah takes about 9 minutes except p4 which takes like 20.
I’ve been generous with these times, record runs are in some of them 2x faster than what i wrote.
gw2dungeons.net/Records many of the records are even made before hot power creep

2. Raids are very unrewarding. Repetitive rewards are few blues and greens and you only gain like 60-80g per week, divide it by seven and compare to casual daily dungeons. Even if you add ghostly infusion profit it’s still bad

@Sublimatio: Sure, Illconceived didn’t mention collateral rewards from dungeons, but he also didn’t mention them for the L40 fractal. For every run you get 12 relics, and you have a chance for mists essences, ascended rings and ascended salvage tools to drop. Those give you matrices you can sell. You also get karma which can be turned into gold, and agony infusions.

I guess in the long run, the extra rewards from L40 Fractals are higher than for dungeons.

btw, for me, farming either content sounds more like work than playing.

Right now, we could add LD leather farm to the list of the best farms, but that might change when the leather prices drop even more. Yesterday, I made about 8 gold in 15 minutes there.

again i don’t compare the rewards to fotm 40 in any way so that’s very much irrelevant.