Guild Wars 2

Pretty disappointing changes in AC. Ran with a PUG this evening. Burrows in P1 and spike event in P2 created a ton of graphic lag with graveling spawns, this was not isolated to me as everyone in our group was complaining about it.

NPC still bugged before boss fight in P2. Unbelievable difficultly was turned up and a glaring bug is left in unresolved, with potentially more issues introduced.

I’ll give AC another chance, but thus far it feels like the changes weren’t tested much nor did they take lower level players into consideration, unless your goal was to turn a fun and relatively short dungeon into an outright chore.

This will mark the first time I haven’t been able to run through AC P1-P3 in an evening with a PUG in well over 100 runs.

Agree the new graphic lag is awful, please take a look and fix.

I’m also very disappointed by the changes to AC. I’m kind of confused by the logic. The dungeon was doable by a 35 who knew what they were doing probably in a party of 80s. Now… not so much. The dungeon’s recommended level is 35. So what’s gonna happen when 5 people buy the game and say “oh hey, we can do this”? It’s not gonna end well. I see a lot of people say they hate dungeons. They have their reasons, I’m sure you can read their reasons. But instead of making AC “fun” the idea was to make it harder since people grind it for money or easy gear. I understand you want people to buy gold through you but some people can’t. They 100% can’t do it for various reasons. They instead chose to put in the hours of dungeon grinding to make gold. I think the aim of the game is really just to stay poor. Some days I just got an AC group together for fun. I found it fun. Now I don’t think I want to touch it again. Very very disappointed.

The fact of the matter is, is that it was easier for them to destroy the one instance nearly everyone could run than fix the seven others. It would be my assumption that at least a fair amount of people want/wanted some type of endgame besides legendaries which could include pve content, but their reaction to that desire appears to be to severely increase the difficulty of a level 35 dungeon further reducing the opportunity of the leveling players/pugs to have alternatives from questing/gearing up etc. It’s not stupidly difficult no, but it would be a significant aid to have some communication such as a voice service that they do not offer, not to mention LFG opportunities actually in game. I suppose their intent was to allow people to actually do their other content for once, but in reality, I feel hardly anyone will be running anything anymore. Though, to my knowledge, it hasn’t been entirely confirmed that you can’t do a full path CoE, but if so, it’ll likely turn into everyone only running CoF p1&p2. Personally I find all the skins besides AC and CoE for weapons to be absolutely atrocious, so I’m at a loss of what to even run anymore. AC was the quick way you could get some survivability with PTV and now it almost seems just as quick to get as the horrendously slow-paced badges of jumping in WvW. If you weren’t with survivability. it’s likely that you’re glass/dps, so it was ideal to run CoF/CoE (Berserker’s or Rampager’s), so if all path CoE fails I guess I’ll see you guys in the only two plausible paths of hell.

At the end of the day if they’re basing their game off of pure aesthetic and no endgame, don’t give me awful skins leaving me little to no option to choose from, and if you’re going to make great skins, let them all have the ability to have all the different stats so I can be satisfied with my choice no matter traits/build I’m running.

Cheers.

I’m personally kind of indifferent to the AC changes. I like the novelty of the new fights, and it overall feels more interesting and immersive, but the hard-hitting, instant-kill nature of attacks like Kholer’s spin (weaker, right?), and the King/Rumblus’ shouts made me get better at dodging. I feel like there’s less incentive or opportunity to learn good technique in AC now, which was where many people got their start in explore modes to the best of my knowledge. I know I did.

What I’m not indifferent about is the framerate drops. 40-60 FPS everywhere else, including big Orr events, then 7-10 FPS whenever masses gravelings show up (P1 burrows encounter, Howling King, second P3 burrows encounter, Grast walking backwards and attacking a bunch of breeders). This wasn’t the case before, so I’m assuming this is to do with the patch. The rest of my PUG suffered this as well.

Simply tell me how does this dungeon pass QA?

Not sure if anyone figured this out yet, but for Path 1 the final boss, you can get rid of the gravelings by pulling them into the flame circles (which kill them instantly) as long as you have a dedicated kiter who is kiting them into the flames then the howling king isn’t as hard to deal with.

and the basic keep away from his super kamehameha blast.

in the end im done with AC till they decide to fix it its not worth basically desensitizing myself to the game just to get some lvl 80 armor or a weapon.

iv just returned after a long break and was pleasantly surprised that they made dungeons more doable then they where when it launched but now they screwed that up.

there is a saying “if its not broken don’t fix it” there is a reason why u don’t try and fix not broken things but if some ppl are to stupid to see that then i guess we will see perfectly fine things get destroyed and abandoned im officially going to discourage anyone below lvl 60 to attempt this instance because its not worth it anymore put that in your pipe and smoke it devs.

dev rolls dice he rolls a 20 what does he discover a new way to kitten the player base off gj now fix it NOW!!!!! i paid for the game i have a right to make demands regardless they don’t all have to be met but making it so your players are having fun is a good way to keep money coming in “u attract more bees with honey than vinegar” o and just cuz u made the stuff interesting to u doesn’t mean its interesting to us its more like annoying and if u find that interesting than i hope u end up in a card board box.

Not really crazy about these changes.

It’s not that it’s excessively difficult, it isn’t. But I thought AC exp was right where it should be for the easiest of the explorables.

I saw this mentioned earlier and I’m not sure if this is a bug or what but my group also had all 3 traps sit at full charge before we could down the boss. I know someone posted that he sometimes breaks the traps but I’m not sure if the break is permanent or if it eventually resets. In the end all 3 traps sat full no matter how long we waited and kited him around.

Edit: As a side note the encounter also didn’t reset after a wipe. The traps that were stuck full remained so even after we wiped. I’m not sure if this was intentional either.

Some guildies and I ran through all three explorable paths (SM too but that didn’t change). We had all done AC before, but we were not a regular group or anything. 4×80 + 1×35. I personally haven’t run AC in over a month.

Anyway, in general we found the spider harder and Kholer actually easier. The Spider’s AoEs hit hard now and actually need to be avoided. Spider hatchlings seemed tougher too. Hard to say though. Over all though it wasn’t that difficult. On our second run he wiped us twice. Other then that though no problems. Kholer, on the other hand, was a breeze. Sure he has his adds now, but that really doesn’t make him that much harder. Plus he seems to pull less often. We didn’t wipe to him at all. No problems.

We got the Troll once and got him to fight Kholer… and guess who won? Wasn’t the troll. Wasn’t Kholer. It was us (after Kholer trashed the Troll).

In Path 1 the burrows section was different. It wasn’t harder, by any means, it was just different. Strategies needed to change. We failed 4 or 5 times before we figured out the magic formula and simply spread our team around the room. Rushing the two burrows with 4 people while one guy defends doesn’t seem to be a viable tactic anymore. Mind you our groups DPS was average at best. Spreading out with one person one each of the first four burrows and one person on the NPC worked brilliantly and we completed it on our first try with this plan, easily.

The Howling King was nothing special. He sent waves of adds at us, but two party members took care of those while the other three took him on. He went down first try without any party members downing.

Part 2 was fun. I kited the gravelings around the traps on my thief while the other four spammed traps. Done first try. Nothing different.

Ghost Eater was fun. It took us a while to figure out what we had to do, but we did not wipe. We farted around for a quite while but eventually one of us noticed that you could pull the blobs while another was lifting. It was easy after that. We noticed the trap removed his buff and we killed him, first try. It didn’t really take that long to do either.

Also, the ghosts before this fight were SIGNIFICANTLY easier. They didn’t even seem to be a threat anymore.

Path 3 was the most difficult for us. We had no issues with the lovers den completing that on our first try. The boss fight with Colossus Rumblus was challenging though. We lost a party member right before the fight too and were unable to replace him due to people being on different builds. So, we four manned it.

The falling rocks are brutal. Rumblus’ tell that he is going to drop the rocks is obvious and you need to watch for it because you do not get a chance to dodge the rocks. You need to see this tell and get under the shield granted by the NPC. If the AOE hits you will be knocked prone and after that you don’t really stand a chance.

We noticed that after we wiped once the NPC with the shield didn’t revive to full HP before pulling a Leroy Jenkins on Rumblus. When we finally completed the fight it was when we somehow got the NPC back to 100% HP and got ourselves and the NPC pinned up against a rock which in effect negated Rumblus’s knockback and kept us together as a group. When we actually beat him none of us even went down. It seemed easy after probably 10 wipes.

The only other thing we noticed is that there seems to be a safe zone under the arch in the room. We didn’t really exploit this though as we noticed it on one of the last runs before we completed.

I don’t really get why we have to rely on an NPC though. It would have been much more interesting if there was an item one of the party members could carry that generated the shield. That way you can rely on our team and not Leroy Jenkins.

So, overall is AC harder or easier? IMO is isn’t really either. It is more interesting though. I, for one, like the changes. I think once people get used to the changes they will be doing it as quickly as they were before. One of the main problems my group ran into was that were were applying strategies that no longer worked and were slow to adapt. Once we figured it out though we got it done.

Path 1

It is not clear that the little gravelings have to be kited into the flames in order to die. If you fight the big Howler like most groups did in the past up top on the raised ground above his little “arena” you’ll completely miss out on the fires down below (like our group did).

I’m not even sure how people are managing the kiting as is, what with every Graveling Scavenger having a knockdown and there being literally dozens of them running around. A few seconds of stability only go so far.

numark.3620:

Path 1

It is not clear that the little gravelings have to be kited into the flames in order to die. If you fight the big Howler like most groups did in the past up top on the raised ground above his little “arena” you’ll completely miss out on the fires down below (like our group did).

I’m not even sure how people are managing the kiting as is, what with every Graveling Scavenger having a knockdown and there being literally dozens of them running around. A few seconds of stability only go so far.

I can solo the boss. Just be at max range and never stop running so that the scavengers won’t reach you when they leap.

The scavengers essentially die in two hits from the flames in path 1, An organized group can just remain inside the fire fields, and occassionally put up stability.
THe best way to do it is to go to the furthest field and have the army of gravelings walk through multiple fields such that they die as they arrive of even before they arrive.
The boss itself is easy now that its aoe attack has a smaller radius and is significantly easier.

Um am I the only one raging about rumblus?

Araito.5869:

I found kholer to actually be quite easier and his little whippy skill not to be a one hit ko anymore..

but path 2 on the other hand, the ending boss fight is just terrible and takes much longer than the others. definite avoidance for speed runs.

Just reading about the mechanics of the final boss from path two makes me feel sick. The two worst bosses in FotM (all of which use mechanics I am beyond sick of because I’ve repeated them so many freaking times) are the dredge fractal boss (also the worst fractal) and the water fractal. Dragging a boss around a map has got to be one of the least fun and most frustrating experiences this game has to offer. They really need to stop doing this. Path two’s final boss was always the weakest, but this is a horrible change. Few things are as frustrating as DPSing the Jelly Fish while standing in an electric field from a cage while some moron ignores the group and holds aggro away from the electic fields. Now we get to experience that rage in a dungeon that was otherwise fine.

abelooi.9156:

Zookeeper.2513:

RageQuit.5687:

Emperor.1360:

Dresden.1736:

Zookeeper.2513:

Effect.6408:

Next they’ll make Kohler a mandatory fight.

I would like this actually….

Ditto. Only nubs skip Kholer. He’s so incredibly easy, there’s no reason to skip him, either.

This. Kholer is insanely easy. Unskilled players skip him all of the time, and he should be mandatory to complete the dungeon.

Actually skipping kholer is more to do with not wanting to waste time on a non mandatory fight. Nothing to do with skill. He gives nothing of value.

Make him mandatory i say. Why give people the option? He’s not a chance encounter like the troll.

A chest, waypoint, 3 tears, extra silver, and a bit of karma. Sounds pretty worth it for a fight that takes less than 5 minutes…

Not if you can skip doing that 5 minute fight and then slot in a 5-min cof speedrun in between, which now grants you 3 chests instead.

If you are going to farm CoF, why bother going into AC at all?

I thought the bosses were going to be more interesting. Kholer summoning adds at intervals of his health dropping isn’t so much combat phases or boss mechanics, it’s just busy work. The fight was already a contest of chiseling away his large health pool, hit, hit, hit, dodge, hit, hit, hit, dodge, only now you get to hit other enemies as well between those dodges.

Also, according to the patch notes:

Rebalanced the graveling dungeon army to make them more interesting and fun to fight.

But, from what you said OP:

Normal Gravelings know knockback with their leap. they don’t just cripple.

Really? Knockback now constitutes as interesting and fun…
When I first read the patch notes I thought… “hmm, maybe they will have synchronous abilities, like perhaps one will buff the others, while another causes bleeds to those close in melee, whereas another teleports between graveling allies to do range attacks.” You know, something different and actually interesting… Giving them knockback isn’t really fun and interesting.

It’s a good thing that the final bosses have had some thought placed into them, but I don’t get why the rest are being neglected.

I’m not sure if the new Ghost Eater fight is buggy or not, but I’m not entirely clear on when he becomes vulnerable. I think the new mechanic of pulling oozes to the traps is fun and a great homage to Ghost Busters (especially because one of our guildies likes to play the Ghost Busters song during the ghost fight right before it!), but after the traps are full it seems like the Ghost Eater can be standing right on top of it for a while and still have his shield up.

Do all of the traps have to be powered to some degree at the same time? Or maybe just the two he’s closest to? It’s very confusing, and Detha doesn’t seem to explain it fully. It would make sense if you just need to charge one trap and make him activate it to make him vulnerable, but if that’s the case then it’s hella buggy right now.

So I just ran AC all paths with what I suspect was a very dungeon experienced group (all level 80s, kitted out, fractal weapons) we had a ranger, warrior, ele, guardian and something else (I think a duplicate of guardian or warrior) so it was a decent party.

Path one was fine. The final boss is a little easy but for the most part I didn’t mind it. I liked watching the gravelings die as they ran into the fire rings and I liked that instead of making the entire group’s success dependant on everyone leashing the mobs into a certain direction (like the Jelly Fish fractal or the Dredge fractal boss) this fight used the same mechanics, but you herd mobs attacking you into the fire. Your success is dependant on you and you alone. I don’t need to worry about any baddies who don’t listen or are just terrible – they can continue to strafe mobs or be defeated by them. This is how I prefer to see the leash mechanic used, if at all.

Path two is one of the worst dungeon experiences I’ve had in the game, and I was doing dungeons back at launch when people didn’t have a clue, I’ve also tried to four man AC SM with 35s that were undergeared and had no idea what they are doing, so when I say the experience was horrible, I mean it. The final boss was so incredibly boring and tedious, I couldn’t stand to be in there fighting it. It took a very long time for the people who wanted to operate the guns to figure out how to work it. In the mean time people kept getting downed and then two other people would die resing the downed because of the ridiculous AoEs (both the amount of damage, but mostly the duration). The actual encounter wasn’t really engaging, the only challenge was getting two/three people to sync up two skills. This was really boring to sit through and I lost my patience with my party after about 15-20 minutes. We made it, but no-one enjoyed it. I’m sure the meta will evolve and will make this encounter less frustrating once people get used to it (I suspect dragging the boss on top of the trap and charging the trap he is standing on will be the eventual meta) but even then this encounter is enough to kill path two for most pugs. People just won’t want to deal with the random syn fails on those pull weapons. I personally don’t get any joy, pleasure, fun, satisfaction or w/e from successfully syncing the lift and pull on those skills. The challenge it provides is solely to communication, something I don’t think should take place in AC. I hated this encounter more than most I’ve done in any dungeon. I also hate that this appears to be another encounter which dramatically favours high DPS teams who can get the boss down before the shield comes up. You guys are doing a very good job at pushing out lower DPS builds out of the meta when you design DPS rush encounters like this.

On top of all that, it clearly isn’t ready for release. I have no idea how it was approved by QA because it is really buggy (and the last thing AC needs is more bugs). We had the boss mob on top of the east trap and it triggered it, but it stopped moving. Once it became immune again, it continued to stand still and we were unable to pull it off. It got stuck on top of the trap and even once we charged the trap, because the boss was already standing on it, it wouldn’t trigger. I had to use ranger longbow 4 to knock him off of the trap so that he would become unstuck and we could continue the encounter. All of this added up to a very long and frustrating experience for all of us. None of us want to do it again, not because it’s hard, but because it takes too long and we didn’t enjoy it.

Path 3 felt better. The scream before was an incredibly lame skill. The falling rocks were very frustrating to deal with because the AoE circle appearing and rock falling were too close together. I enjoyed the new boss better, simply because I found it easier. We were lucky, Grast didn’t die so we were able to stand in his shield for most of the fight. In that sense, it felt a little too easy but I enjoyed it nontheless (I guess after the frustration of two I just wanted to get out of AC).

Cleared it in slightly over an hour yesterday minus breaks.

1. Took a whopping 5 minutes to figure out Ghost Eater.
2. Howling King and Colossus NoHPus pretty much applied themselves out of the fights.
3. Kholer got Aldus’d as I bloody well predicted and now can spawn necros. What FUN and joy.
4. Unskippable spider queen with spider vomit like ye olde Colossus. Meh.
5. Ghosts have way less HP and apply themselves with 2 warriors.
6. Remove that kittening FPS feature on Hodge defense event and Detha’s spike trap events. Do it now.
7. WHY OH WHY did you make mini Alpha trashmobs with mondo evasion? It’s just wasting my group’s precious time. Think of all the Lupus kills we could’ve gotten in the time it took us to kill a pack with 2 stalkers.

Verdict: Still an easymode joke for anyone with IQ > 50. I give the changes no points, and may Kormir have mercy on your soul.

All the mobs appear to have less health (I don’t know about hatchlings or spiders, they seem to be buffed) and that is one of the most welcome changes. The knockback of the gravelings is obnoxious, I’ve never been a fan of big CC moves on normal mobs, but this one isn’t too bad. Still, I don’t feel like they make the experience better, but not getting knocked down and eaten was a huge improvement. Going invulnerable when they are no longer tunnelling was infuriating and made no sense. It felt like a bug and regardless of whether it is or isn’t, I hope it isn’t here to stay. Neither the mob nor I was doing any damage and it wasn’t underground, this is just wasting time.

Kholer is better. His health drop makes this fight less tedious (I assume he has less health, maybe my party DPS was just higher). The spawns are annoying and I was never a fan of having to keep on eye on them when Kholer’s pull requires so much attention, but we seemed to manage OK. Because of the adds he is much worse for pugs now, which is a shame because he is a great learning boss in a level 35 dungeon (this doesn’t feel like a level 35 dungeon any more). I’m not sure if it was a bug or if the monk healed him, but during our fight he healed to full health (from around 50%). It was annoying but his health pool seems lower so we managed.

I have mixed feelings about the spider. The small spiders seem to be more resilient (I’m probably wrong here) which makes them more annoying. The change on the spider AoE is a mixed bag for me. On one hand, I like that you can’t just stand in them and auto attack like before (the damage was that low), on the other hand I hate that this encounter is yet another one which results in cowering pets 90% of the time. I hate it when boss AoEs do this. On the other hand it was nice to actually be able to avoid the AoE circles and not be attacked with another one a split second later. The spammage of the old one was very problematic for people with low health or lacking condition removal and very unrewarding to dodge rolls.

I also got a lot of lag and FPS problems (so did my entire group).

Overall I’d say they did a nice job. I hate path two final boss, it’s not the kind of experience I’m looking for from a casual AC run. I am fine with those kinds of mechanics in high level fractals or Arah but that level of finite co-ordination was a whole world away from being fun. Lots of improvements in the other areas.

Side note: boss AoEs persist even once they are dead. The spider one lasts too long in the first place (I’d say the same for ghost eater) but it’s awkward getting killed by a boss that is no longer around (this also happened with Rumblus after we killed him, people were killed by falling rocks).

I can only play around 4 hours a day and I loved spend a bit of that time doing AC any path, it was fun I really enjoyed.
I just finished doing P1 and thinking WTH did they done? Why change a fun, fast paced instance where PUG groups could come together quickly and have a really good time into this NERD challenge where only the most coordinated groups have a fair time?
Anet coulden’t possibly tested this changes in a 35ish group. U just removed the low levels toons from this instance. Good job Anet. U removed ppl like me from doing it, I won’t bother anymore to get a PUG group only to fail inside 4/5 times at Scepter/Colossus/ etc. and someone go ragequit (because ragequit is very real on PUG groups) – it’s not worth the work.
Basically, Anet, u just prevent ppl of different levels and abilities of coming together to do AC. Meaning now AC will be done mainly be lvl80 toons (it’s supposed to be a lvl35 instance and the first instance you have acess ingame) and skilled/good comunication groups (meaning guild groups).
I love guild groups, don’t get me wrong, but at the time I can play it’s difficult to get a full guild group to this instance.
So GG Anet – awesome job <3

Getting alot of FPS lag when fighting masses of gravelings that I never got before.
Not sure what’s up with that

I’m using Nvidea Gforce 560ti.

Time and time again i go from mmo to mmo and I find that devs feel the need to change something that was working or people enjoy, while it will not kill GW2 these kind of action tend to anger the player population as a whole.

I have seen way too many mmo’s go under with poor decisions made by devs I hope that gw2 devs are not heading the dame direction with poorly though out decisions.

I mean going through on path 2 na having ghost eater just stand there not moving for 2+ minutes was frustrating to say the lease.

They problem is not that it’s hard and challenging for lvl 80 team. The problem is that it is SUPPOSED to be the EASIEST and FIRST dungeon that you do at LVL 35, to LEARN how to do dungeons and mechanics and teamwork, and all that. What was wrong with the other AC ? It was easy, of course, for lvl 80 people who had done it a hundred times, but it was still hard and challenging for lvl 35 begginers, so it was the way it SHOULD be, right ?

So why change it ? Just why.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

All new stuff in dungeons is going to be hard for the first few days. We see it all the time with new content – people fail and get knocked down when they aren’t used to that sort of thing, and they claim it is too difficult.
Give it a week or so for everyone to develop strategies, learn encounters, and build fundamentals, and they will claim it is too easy. Trust me when I say this, the numbers are punishing (but less than they were before), but knowing the mechanics will greatly mitigate the danger.

that’s what i was trying to say, just the difference between the new dungeon and the old one is huge, and players not being used to certain game mechanics makes this “hard”

fantasy.8395:

Time and time again i go from mmo to mmo and I find that devs feel the need to change something that was working or people enjoy, while it will not kill GW2 these kind of action tend to anger the player population as a whole.

I have seen way too many mmo’s go under with poor decisions made by devs I hope that gw2 devs are not heading the dame direction with poorly though out decisions.

I mean going through on path 2 na having ghost eater just stand there not moving for 2+ minutes was frustrating to say the lease.

The devs aren’t making bad decisions, they are fixing exploits in the game. Skipping trash mobs aren’t exploits, but tricking into walls and such are. AC did not have too many exploits, but some none the less. Dungeons are not supposed to be a walk in the park, they are supposed to challenge players, to learn the mechanics and use that knowledge to beat this dungeon

I will miss the casual runs of AC, but with time, new strats will be developed and shared making this dunegon “easier” over time

Robert Hrouda.1327:

All new stuff in dungeons is going to be hard for the first few days. We see it all the time with new content – people fail and get knocked down when they aren’t used to that sort of thing, and they claim it is too difficult.
Give it a week or so for everyone to develop strategies, learn encounters, and build fundamentals, and they will claim it is too easy. Trust me when I say this, the numbers are punishing (but less than they were before), but knowing the mechanics will greatly mitigate the danger.

It sure would help if the new bosses weren’t prone to bugging out (Ghost Eater) and every single event dropping your FPS to a snail’s pace….

The problem I see is that you can’t balance all the dungeons to make them equally farmable as AC should be easy as it is meant to be completed by lvl 35 characters. I understand that if one dungeon is easier than the others it makes it easier to farm but these were supposed to be for certain level groups and not all endgame dungeons like they are now. The solution isn’t easy but making them all equally difficult goes against the idea of the dungeons themselves which were supposed to be good for lower level characters to learn some lore, level a bit, and equip your character… and of course as an introduction to dungeons in GW2.

One solution (good or bad) is to leave it as easy as it was (or easier for low levels, it was still sorta difficult for the intro lvl 35 dungeon (ac)) but reward fewer monetary rewards. Leave the tokens the same as it just makes that skin less rare but doesn’t provide any real advantage over any other exotic gear.

As a game designer, what is the appeal of finding something people are doing, enjoying, and finding rewarding and then changing it. I can understand the desire to polish and the hope that the changes will make things “better” … but why not start with underutilized locations and areas that people avoid because they don’t like them.

Your own response says what you did was pointless; you counter the comment that ti’s too difficult by it’s only difficult until you figure it out. In a few weeks people will be saying it’s too easy. Well … if this change is only going to fix the perceived problem for a few weeks, why bother? Are you going to up the difficultly again in a few weeks? Then again a few weeks after that?

What about new people who want to figure out the mechanics on there own without going to a web site or inviting experienced players. This is the first opportunity to do that, after all. Why make the mechanic so unforgiving that they don’t have this option without the best possible gear in the game.

Understand I haven’t done the new AC and have no comment on it’s current difficulty, I’m asking about the logic behind scaling up and how your response of “everyone will just think it’s too easy in a few weeks” works into your game design strategy.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

All new stuff in dungeons is going to be hard for the first few days. We see it all the time with new content – people fail and get knocked down when they aren’t used to that sort of thing, and they claim it is too difficult.
Give it a week or so for everyone to develop strategies, learn encounters, and build fundamentals, and they will claim it is too easy. Trust me when I say this, the numbers are punishing (but less than they were before), but knowing the mechanics will greatly mitigate the danger.

Did you guys play test with a group of 35s in level 35 gear? As much as I personally love the changes, it seems to be a bit rougher, especially if the group is at or close to the minimum stated requirements for the dungeon.

Honestly though the only level 35s who will be running this will be with friends or a guild run. I have never seen a group of pugs accept anything but a level 80 for a explorer dungeon unless its with friends or guildies.

It’s a video game.
For entertainment.

Not an Olympic activity asking for elite reflexes and hours of studying strategies. Plus, it’s the. First. Dungeon. Asking. For. Level. 35. Characters.
If the point is to be level 80 all geared in exotic, then you should scale the level in it too. As far as I know, if I wanted to do a real 80-like challenge, I would have chosen Arah.

Bearlover.8501:

Honestly though the only level 35s who will be running this will be with friends or a guild run. I have never seen a group of pugs accept anything but a level 80 for a explorer dungeon unless its with friends or guildies.

and that is the point! AC was designed to be the first dungeon. storymode is fine but the explorer mode? for sub 80´s? never. imagine, you are just lvl 35 and have completed the story mode and now want to check out the explorer mode. most groups would not even let you in. and if you finally found a group, you would get killed by.. well, everything. I had no real problems doing this with my lvl 80 full exo guardian. it was new, but not too bad. but think of the poor sub 80´s…

I want to know why Robert seems intent on punishing players for playing the game?

Making AC harder is not a good move. Making dungeons like CoF harder is a better idea, since ya know its for 70+ characters.

I would love to see Robert actually play AC with a group of sub 50 pugs and then say its “fine” when his party leaves him on his own because the rest of them wiped.

Lexandro.1456:

I would love to see Robert actually play AC with a group of sub 50 pugs and then say its “fine” when his party leaves him on his own because the rest of them wiped.

ROFL…well played!

I was going to make a thread about the new AC but I figured I should just add my thoughts to this one.

I did all 3 paths of this tonight with 4 guildies and 1 PuG. 3 80s and 1 46 and 1 60.
Overall, I loved the changes! Way to bring a faceroll dungeon up into the realm of challenging like explorable modes are meant to be without making it long and tedious. There were some things, though that probably should have been done better.

Spider Queen
I like the fact that she requires some kind of skill now more than just dodging out of her AoEs, however, her + the spider hatchlings is almost overkill. They are not exactly squishy and can easily zerg a person down in any small number. I would suggest either nerfing them in some way or keeping the queen from spawning until all hatchlings are dead. Of course that could be exploited so perhaps a timer after all hatchlings have spawned of maybe a minute thirty is better than all hatchlings being dead.

Kohler
So. Much. Better. Thank you for taking away the 5minute mindless spam.

Cave Troll
I only ran into him once and we let him and Kohler duke it out but from what I saw, he looks like a lot more fun.

Final Bosses-General
I love the way these were revamped. It’s fun to see the storyline actually being part of the final boss fight. The whole point was to help these guys find a clever way to take out the graveling king and now to see them actually using what we worked so hard to help them get is cool.

Howling King
Wonderful work here. It took my group a couple tries to figure out the mechanic but we had a great time doing it and now we know for next time.

Ghost Eater
I love, love, love the concept here. There are a lot of bugs though that need to be worked out. The traps don’t always activate and that leads to a fair amount of frustration. He also gets stuck when he has stacks of defiance up or at least that’s what my group was observing. He’s not easy to move around and he doesn’t react well to the traps.

Colossus Rumblus
(In another thread about this boss specifically, I read that his skill is meant to be interrupted and if that’s true then what I’m about to say may not be applicable.)
The concept I saw here was really good however, my group spent probably about 30min on this boss alone. Why? Based on what we saw in the first two paths, we thought we were meant to depend entirely on Grast. However, there are currently a lot of problems with this approach.
First, when you wipe, Grast does not reset. I believe this is a bug because Tzark does. So we constantly restarted with Grast already at 50% health.
Second, Grast and Tzark’s AI causes them to pull before we do resulting in combat starting before we’re ready.
Third, Grast is melee and the boss hits hard meaning he takes a lot of damage.
Fouth, Grast’s health pool is ridiculously low. He is probably one of the squishiest warriors I have ever seen and he doesn’t have the sense to stand in healing aoes or get away from the boss when it’s beating up on him or dodge anything.
We finally managed this with two eles with staves equiped as well as the resurrection signet spamming heals and a guard with healing gear also spamming heals. However, that is not a fight I would soon repeat. I would suggest fixing the bug on Grast, updating the AI on both npcs to stop ninja-pulling and giving Grast a bit more vitality and toughness.

Obviously, there’re some kinks and bugs that need to be worked out but overall, I think the changes are really good. I’d love to see something similiar done to the other dungeons.

I haven’t got the chance to play AC last night… too busy with group events.
how is the rewards? any change to those? or its mostly greens again?

That is the reason I am turn off so much by path 2 especially. I mean I spent more time explaining to 80’s mind you the changes to the AC dungeon, I am only 40+ on my 3 alts and they died more then me on most runs today.

But still the difficulty level on the spider queen is not challenging it frustrating I have had groups wipe several times over and people leave several time to either disband or find replacements.

Other times like the Ghost Eater boss fight even after people understood the fight. Ghost Eater would either stand in the middle of the room and not aggro to anything we did after charging all 3 traps or he would bug out for 2-5 minutes at time at one trap after he would go invincible again. Many people in many of my pug groups were very unhappy and stated they would not be running AC or path 2 especially again.

While you might want to fix bugs what was the point of tuning a starter dungeon to the degree that you did. If it wasn’t for all my runs so far last week and my mmo experience as a whole I might not be doing so well, but I can hardly imagine that AC is meant for 35+ characters just starting out on their first dungeon.

This kind of thinking makes me just /facepalm. I mean what the point of making a starter dungeon tougher then a some of the 60+ dungeons out there? Other then to make it less farmed by level 80’s? Just boggles my mind because what is the point of making something enjoyable harder just to drive people away that might not be at that skill level especially people just trying dungeons for the first time.

Honestly you would of been better trying to fix the bugs that still persist or the new bug on some of these boss fights then trying to update the dungeons. As it stands I’ll still keep going in but I can tell you I have run into quite a few unhappy players after this patch.

Go figure. I guess some people don’t like change — even if it’s for the better.

I ran all three paths of the catacombs a few times each yesterday with different groups (some random, some guildies) and characters (some 35-ish and some 80s) and after the initial shock of the changes (I swear the burrowing gravelings scared the beejezus out of me the first time), I actually found the runs significantly easier overall.

Once I’d figured out the mechanics and could explain them to others, the runs were much quicker than they’d ever been before (even if people did seem to get downed more often in certain parts). After the fourth run through path 1, I was seriously starting to question whether things needed to be made more difficult.

So I’m going to have to disagree with the majority on this one. If you’re thinking these are difficult or taxing tasks in any way, take a beat. Come back after you’ve learned the new mechanics and revisit the opinion.

If you’re still under the impression things are too hard in a week’s time after you’ve played the content a little more, I’d be very surprised.

Also, kudos to Robert Hrouda on the changes. They make the entire dungeon a bit faster and a bit more fun. There’s still some bugs (my guildies and I drop to around 5 fps in the traps part of path 2 and the Ghost Eater traps sometimes fail to trigger even when charged), but overall… A lot of good changes here.

You need the comment of a newbie sub 80 that go for the first tijme into a dungeon? Here I’m =) I’ve do i today with some 80’s from the guild aaaaand.. We wipe like hell! Now I really loved some strats from boss but im also died so much fast, at last I don’t know how to do with the poison from the Spider Queen becouse I was dead all the time. And is the Ghost Eater is supposed to get stuck in a point or it’s a bug?

Last night I crafted my level 15 warrior up to 35. Bought the level 30 norn gear and jumped in a run with my guildees. It was challenging. No wipes until thr last boss when we were figuring out what to do with adds. Even on a 35 in yellows and the only person in melee range the whole time it was fine and really enjoyable. Other paths went just as well few tries on the last bosses to figure it out but when we did it went perfectly. All in all its actually fun now.

I ran AC P2 last night with guildies, mostly on their lower level alts. We wiped on the Spider Queen on our first encounter, but adapted by the next time and nuked her.

I thought the new graveling builds were a lot more entertaining. The scavengers were espeically fun to watch frantically burrow around.

The Ghost Eater boss was frustraiting to figure out, since little explanation was given in game (the theme of GW2). I ended up killing one of the oozes in a trap ring by accident and made the connection. But it wasn’t easy to play around and puzzle while the Ghost Eater was nuking us with cripple and vulnerability! We ended up filling all 3 traps (which I now realize was unnecessary), and finally caught the Ghost Eater in one. Unfortunately, at some point, even though the trap was full of energy and going off, the boss’ ghost shield wouldn’t remove. He also couldn’t seem to move out of that trap and into a new one, at least for a good while. After a long bit of coaxing, he moved into a new trap and we finished him off. It was a frustrating boss fight, but overall I enjoyed the dungeon. It was definitely neat to see Detha’s traps actually be integral to the fight (instead of near useless). And the reduction in mob HP was a fantastic decision.

Overall, I was pleased, I had fun and look forward to the new paths. But I do have concern what would happen to a group of Lv 35s in the supposed “easiest” and earliest dungeon. My group never wiped on the boss, but we know each other and had higher level people with us (myself being on a Lv 80). Without those bonuses, I’m sure we would have wiped multiple times while searching for the way to beat the boss. Further in-game explanations next time would be much appreciated.

ac has been nerfed tbh. its even easier than before. its so easy its not even funny. it actually makes me cry to see how with every update the difficulty leaves this game more and more.

arah p4 got nerfed to the ground. enjoy ur free dungeon master guys.

i guess soon we will be able to finish dungeons by entering them and going afk.

NoTrigger.8396:

ac has been nerfed tbh. its even easier than before. its so easy its not even funny. it actually makes me cry to see how with every update the difficulty leaves this game more and more.

arah p4 got nerfed to the ground. enjoy ur free dungeon master guys.

i guess soon we will be able to finish dungeons by entering them and going afk.

Not everyone is on the same level as you buddy. Maybe you have a great guild with people that are on top of their game. But I can tell you the average player is not going to agree with you that on the whole that AC or even the other dungeon P4 you mention were nerf at all but in fact had added complexity.

But like everything people have different opinions on the matter and different skill levels, just wish the devs would remember that when revamping things that are not broken…….

Bearlover.8501:

Honestly though the only level 35s who will be running this will be with friends or a guild run. I have never seen a group of pugs accept anything but a level 80 for a explorer dungeon unless its with friends or guildies.

Of the half dozen PUG runs I’ve done of various AC paths, one was started by a level 20 (fortunately he bailed after dying a lot and we recruited someone else), and none was all 80s.

Good to know that having the Ghost Eater fail to go vulnerable at a charged trap was a bug, we fought him for an hour and a half trying to figure out what the key was to making him go vulnerable since this was so inconsistent on our run. We gave up on one trap entirely, it never seemed to work.

Nnene.7231:

They problem is not that it’s hard and challenging for lvl 80 team. The problem is that it is SUPPOSED to be the EASIEST and FIRST dungeon that you do at LVL 35, to LEARN how to do dungeons and mechanics and teamwork, and all that. What was wrong with the other AC ? It was easy, of course, for lvl 80 people who had done it a hundred times, but it was still hard and challenging for lvl 35 begginers, so it was the way it SHOULD be, right ?

So why change it ? Just why.

No it’s not. AC Story is supposed to be the first dungeon you do. AC Explorable is an entirely different dungeon. It’s meant for people who already have experience with completing at least one dungeon and is meant to be a step up difficulty-wise. Think of it as a level 80’s version of the lv 30 starter dungeon. Even though you can do it as early as level 35, it’s meant to challenge even the good dungeon-goers.

My main issues with AC now is that the Gravling Stalkers spend far too much time tunneling and have a weird few seconds of invuln after doing so.
The Ghost Eater is far too concerned with staring into space instead of trying to attack, leading for a 30min+ fight
Dethas Traps for the Ghost Eater triggering not being reliable. They would sometimes trigger as soon as the boss walked near them and other times wouldn’t trigger for 10-15 seconds.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

All new stuff in dungeons is going to be hard for the first few days. We see it all the time with new content – people fail and get knocked down when they aren’t used to that sort of thing, and they claim it is too difficult.
Give it a week or so for everyone to develop strategies, learn encounters, and build fundamentals, and they will claim it is too easy. Trust me when I say this, the numbers are punishing (but less than they were before), but knowing the mechanics will greatly mitigate the danger.

Uh. There is no mechanic for dealing with cc spamming gravelings. Eventually you will run out of endurance and stun breakers.

The spider queen has the same problem. Once upon a time, I would melee her. Now, that suicide as she’ll drop that poison/acid pool right before her web maintain and if that hits you and locks you in the pool, you die.

The boss fights are better (except Grast bugged into kamakize mode which made path 3 impossible), but everything else got worse. Even Kholer (you do know players skip him because he’s a pain, right?) got worse as he keeps spawning new ghostie adds.