Guild Wars 2

Xavori.3768:

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.

the spider dies faster than ever before. you just need some stability in your group and condition removal.
the same with kholer. he lost a good amount of hp and the adds are really easy to kill. and care when he raises his sword. you have to dodge.

dodge is key. when i go into ac with pugs, most of the level 80 dont know how to dodge and thats why they die at kholer and skip him.

MasterGeese.4756:

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.

Uh. It’s a level 35 dungeon that cannot be completed by level 35 players.

I’d actually be okay with all dungeons’ explorable modes going to level 80 only and being set difficulty-wise to that, but that’s not where we’re at yet.

Of course, in terms of difficulty that makes no freakin’ sense, we have to get to Caudecus’s Manor. Nothing like having a swarm of 20 mobs, half of them silver, rush you at once to make you realize there is at least one very sadistic dev. Prolly the same dev who decided to give the sniper mechanic to half the mobs in that dungeon.

And then at the other extreme you have CoF path 1. A bad group can finish that run in 15 minutes. The fastest group I’ve ever been in finished in less than 8 (I can’t be more precise than that because my ‘timer’ was my food which still had 22 minutes available when we were done).

Ghosteater … got the award of the most bugged encounter.
- Sometimes he stop moving.
- The traps are not always working
- He’s resetting when we are kitting him.
- The fight is toooooo long

NoTrigger.8396:

Xavori.3768:

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.

the spider dies faster than ever before. you just need some stability in your group and condition removal.
the same with kholer. he lost a good amount of hp and the adds are really easy to kill. and care when he raises his sword. you have to dodge.

dodge is key. when i go into ac with pugs, most of the level 80 dont know how to dodge and thats why they die at kholer and skip him.

Just FYI:

I’ve run AC a few hundred times at this point using every single class in the game. I’m well aware of the mechanics involved in the fights.

Last night when I was running the new AC, I was using my boon warrior (70% boon duration) who has two stun breakers. For the first time in a very long time, I died fighting the queen because eventually, you run out of endurance. I also died to a graveling pack because while I dodged the first leap, the second leap and my landing happened at the same time. I hit Shake It Off just in time to get hit by yet another graveling leap. Unfortunately, Endure Pain was still on cooldown from the previous fight, so I died.

I died again, twice, when we got to the Howling King because our group had no idea what to do with the changes. However, once we figured it out, I liked that fight as it was a lot more interesting than just beating a bag o’ hit points.

Path 2 I didn’t bother trying to melee queen, and no dying happened because it’s easy peasy to just run away from the circles instead of dodging and you have more time to react to the web beam. The Ghost Eater fight also went better as again, no idea what to do, but when you see those new guns on the ground, and ghostie traps, it didn’t take much for someone who grew up in the 80’s to immediately think “Who ya gonna call?”

Path 3 was a disaster at the boss. Even when we figured out the shield thing, we couldn’t convince Grast not to charge Colossus. So I went off exploring the little unfinished jump puzzle behind the fight rather than waste a bunch of money on repairs.

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.

Its not just that, I was in a group that just gave up on the last boss cause getting to it was a nightmare, aoe knockbacks seem to stack with the knockdowns. I actually got 100% to 0% without having control of my character at all. I blew Decoy (wasted cause of the new change to stealth) and blink which didn’t help cause they were on me in seconds and I had no endurance cause somehow the scavengers can track you while underground….

At most we got the boss to 50%, I really don’t mind hard bosses. but when ALL your tokens hinge on killing that boss… it kinda makes it a fruitless search.

Maybe changing it so the 1st two bosses give 15 each and the last gives 30 because as far as I can tell… I didn’t get rewarded for the two hours I spent in there.

Each graveling skill is very interesting and awesome to fight… but combined… this would be OP in PvP and there would be a patch to fix it in hours.

maybe changing the gravelings so that they don’t leap and knock you down if there is a scavenger about. Cause if your the 1st on the scene, you get two knockdowns then the scavenger seems to knock you back…. then the scavengers knock you down again…

please don’t make it as easy as before, but i think this is a bit of an over kill, interesting, but definitely overkill.

Edit: talkin’ about path 1

Chupey.2397:

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.

Are you sure that was invuln and not evade? They get evasion bonuses now if they hit you after the pop out of the ground. I thought the Stalkers were great.

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 test it on 100lvl characters?

I’ve yet to finish path 2 without the final encounter bugging out. Really fun changes. :trollface:

Zlociutki.9165:

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 test it on 100lvl characters?

nope they was busy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1ZCMWM_qUE

angelonero.6057:

Zlociutki.9165:

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.

This is what they do instead of properly testing their content.

Did you test it on 100lvl characters?

nope they was busy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1ZCMWM_qUE

azureai.9764:

Chupey.2397:

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.

Are you sure that was invuln and not evade? They get evasion bonuses now if they hit you after the pop out of the ground. I thought the Stalkers were great.

yeh I actually really liked that. It’s an interesting mechanic that punishes people for not dodging. Although its kinda hard to get my clones to get out of the way, and on top of that we had a necro testing out a minion build and a ranger in the group so that Stalker just after the Spider Queen was very very long, however very interesting mechanics.

After another round of “kick in the nuts” changes made by the folks at Anet I’m calling it quits. The Devs @ Anet seem to have their focus in the wrong place. Don’t get me wrong I like the changes to AC, despite the buggy and frustrating nuances, it is a job well done. (I had no trouble completing all 3 paths in 1.5 hours) But in the process they have broken PvE. The last part of this game that still worked right. There is no point to WvW, it leaves you unfulfilled and feels like a grand waste of time. Culling and zerging makes it pointless to play. Anet constantly takes great builds away from SPvP classes to the point that there shouldn’t even be any classes, just one profession and one style of play. TPvP now has no point now that there are no rewards. And now its the begining of the end for PvE. There was nothing wrong with AC so why mess with it? Why make arah path 4 so brainlessly easy? Why take away enjoyment and fulfillment from the player? Why does Anet constantly try to dictate to me, the player, how I must play their game? And most importantly why do I get silenced when I question it? Why don’t they focus on making new dungeons or hell maybe a raid or 2 instead of breaking what was never broken. After 1.5 legendary and 2100hrs played I quit. Thanks Anet, your spell is broken. Good Luck to everyone else that doesn’t realize that they are being dictated to. Watch as they “revamp” CoF, make sure-shot from CM even dumber. It’s a big red flag when the easiest dungeons to do now are SE, CoE and Arah.
Yours truly, Dungeon Master Siriuz B of Kaineng

AC is now jus broken and now utterly kitten The only fix AC needed was Detha bugging. While p2 is now pretty fun it blows since the Boss bugs and stays on trap. So p2 is till broken. while u ruined the rest of the dungeon. GG Anet way to fix what wasn’t broken.

I LOVE the new changes to AC. It was easy before … and I’m not just talking skipping content / exploits, I mean the entire thing was just easy. If you knew the mechanics (which in some cases was pure DPS) than you could do the entire thing without any real risk.

The new AC changes that.

Spider Queen
The additional mini-spider damage was ramped WAY WAY up. You’ll need to bring some projectile block or absorb to clean these out before you can fight her safely. The venom from the well’s was also scaled up, it means that non Tough/Vit builds will need to watch their step and probably use heals. Seriously I appreciate that there’s some more regular danger for Zerker builds

Kholer
His health/damage have been reduced (yay) but he spawns adds through out the fight. If you forget about them they overwhelm you, so it’s a balance between DPSing him and keeping the adds clear, while keeping everyone up. It’s a nice change

Troll, Traps, Graveling Burrows
None of these were changed much. I do wish the stalker evasion bonus was lower, or wore off faster. But nothing major here.

Howler
Really hasn’t changed much. I think the extra spawns he brings out are more dangerous than they were before, but it just means a lot of extra kiting. The Graveling knockdown jumps are still pretty rough though since they can chain and keep you down in the beam.

Ghost Eater
I LOVE the new traps! It’s… a bit buggy, but that actually makes the fight easier right now. If he gets stuck on a trap because of defiant stacks just knock them off after you charge one or two others without any danger!

Collosus
It would be nice if there was a bit more hint that you NEED to have the War Master to finish this fight. It’s nice to see that interrupting him should stop the rocks though (see the dev post above). I would also like to see some of the dome sanctuary effects that prevent enemies &/or projectiles from entering work like the War Master shield so your team might not need to be completely reliant on him.

I think AC can be done faster if you know what you’re doing, although there is more danger it’s … easier to handle if you know what you’re doing and emphasizes dungeon knowledge / dodge skill / preparation over all out DPS

Okay, my regular group and I just ran explorable, We had 3 lvl80s, not all had exotics, a 72 and a 44, and we really dislike what changes we came across.

Spider Queen: She’s fine. Actually, we 2-manned her. The hatchlings, however, deal ridiculous amounts of damage. If they focus fire on someone (which they do), your hitpoints will disintegrate at an insane pace. It’s stupid. The hatchlings were fine before, I’m not sure why you changed them.

The Graveling Scavenger after the Spider Queen is just annoying. He’s not hard, but he spends so much time underground and then, if someone gets hits, spends so much time invulnerable that the fight just drags on.

The Cave Troll is similarly annoying. His one attack is really devastating, yes, but that can be dodged pretty easily. The fears and the dazes are just annoying, though. They don’t make him harder because those attacks aren’t going to kill you. You spend like 25% of your time being CCed, but you need to dodge only once every now and then to never die. Does he even do anything else? I seriously do not remember him using some sort of regular attack like he used to. He’s all artillery now, and he’s way easier but more annoying because of it.

Kohler was in a good place before these changes. He wasn’t too hard and he wasn’t too easy. You had to dodge at the right time and tank his normal damage, and you’d be fine. Not dodging brought you a quick death, and that would happen sometimes, but you could recover. His adds put him over the top, though. We ended up giving up on the fight after 6 or 7 tries because we couldn’t beat him.

Yes, we know to dodge and what to look for. Yes, we know to focus on the adds when they come up. We just couldn’t handle the damage and conditions/cc coming from the adds in addition to Kohler.

His spin to win attack didn’t always play the wind-up animation. Randomly getting pulled in and murdered does not make for a fun experience. I’m pretty sure anyone who says he does less damage with his spin is either lying or wrong. People who say he has less HP appear to be in the same boat. We certainly could not notice any difference in those two things. The only difference we noted is that we were forced to deal with adds multiple times, and we could not.

We had come back to this dungeon last week after not having tried it since November. Back in November, we were able to complete it with some difficulty. The “protect the this and that while graveling mounds spawn” fights were always our biggest stumbling points in paths 1 and 3. When we tried it last week, we were surprised to see how easy those fights had become. Instead of failing multiple times until we adjusted builds and tactics, we got through them first try with a lvl 30 on the team. It was a pleasant surprise, though it was probably a bit too easy.

With this latest patch, though, things went in entirely the opposite direction. What went wrong with this patch is that difficulty was added to fights that didn’t need it, most notably Kohler.

We’re probably not going to try again. We don’t like wasting our time.

Pretty sure the idea of a level 35 dungeon, is that its endgame for 35’s. So, just like any other MMO, until you’re geared up, or leveled passed you should expect to wipe, especially on the final boss. There is also no hard mode or the like, so it needs to be straight up challenging, so, the likely hood of actually forming a team of 35’s without coordinating it specifically with friends and a guild isn’t very high, and if you choose to, well, you’re the one making it more difficult than it needs to be. If you’re leveling an alt, let the others bring their 80’s problem solved. It needs to be difficult for geared 80’s otherwise it is back to how it was and how CoF p1 is, afk/brain dead farm mode. Difficulty is a good thing especially for new players, so they can learn mechanics earlier and if its not grueling and punishing then they really don’t learn, and then hopefully they won’t expect to be able to rofldps things in 1 spot. Stopping them from thinking everything is going be so easy and gear is going to be handed to them on a silver platter.

Spider Queen is kinda frustrating with or without hatchlings up, but manageable as long as you keep your team spread out and know how to dodge, as long as you don’t go down in a poison cloud, quick revival from 1-2 players and you’re all back in the fight. Kholer is easier now (learn to dodge if you think otherwise), unfortunately didn’t encounter the troll, so I can’t say anything about him.

P1, other than discovering graveling hatchlings can roflstomp you with bleed was fairly easy. P2, well was ghost buster mode and took way too long and felt lame and unrewarding at the end, with a PuG could imagine how frustrating this could be. P3, wiped twice, but found a simple fix, lure colossus up 2 or 3 of the flights of stairs(at the back towards the hidden jumping puzzle) and fight there, keep you backs to the wall so he doesn’t send you flying, and then just loldps until he’s dead.

PS: be happy there’s less Graveling Scavengers, and the ones that are there now, don’t one shot you solo if you get caught off guard.

It seems to me that “hard mode” option would be a better fix for this. As someone who just hit level 30, I have been looking forward to finally getting a chance at the first dungeon in 5 levels. Now I’m reading it’s much, much more difficult to the point that people are questioning its viability for level 35 characters. I’m sorry, but there’s no other way to describe this decision but incredibly stupid. Creating a “hard mode” for level 80 farming makes much more sense.

I thought it was hard, very hard, almost impossibly hard, but I had a great time. We ended up skipping Kholer just because we couldn’t get a handle on it. There were times that I know I dodged his pull and still got pulled in, but not a huge deal.

The only problem I REALLY had was the we wiped on the Gravling King, and the guy that was protecting us died. If that happens when you res him for your next attempt he runs in like a maniac at half health so we had to focus on healing him up at the beginning, was tough but after about 4 tries we got it.

In the meantime, I’ll be doing CoF, HoTW and CoE. Alpha’s an absolute breeze compared to a graveling spam + knockback. There’s a limit to how many times we can dodge (even with endurance food, the amount of times I fly back is ridonkulous) and this only makes everyone in the party equip all break stuns in their utility instead of, say, using other skills that benefits the party.

I guess Anet just wants us to run CoF1 all day like good little drones, because AC is now a complete waste of time. No lodestone or core drops from the chests, no longer pug friendly, ugly kitten gear rewards, tokens can’t be turned into ectos at a decent rate. Did it with my guild once and never doing it again. I’d rather do HotW to get p/t/v gear at this point and that’s saying a lot because HotW is boring as kitten.

I was pretty excited to see the new encounters yesterday after reading the updates. I can now say that I am extremely disappointed with them.

I took a break from GW2 for about a month or two. I came back because I missed exploring the world and interacting with the other players in the game. A huge part of my continuous attraction to the game in recent weeks has been the amount of FUN I’ve been having in AC.

This is a level 35 explorable mode dungeon that was still somewhat challenging for the casual 80 and required the players attention for most parts, especially for some. Kholer 1-shotting you if you failed to dodge his spinning sword, the Troll nuking you if you got caught in his stomp, making sure you had at least one stun break in case a scavenger or stalker decided to eat your face, and then the boss fights.

The boss fights, although quite easy now that I’ve played AC a couple hundred times at least, were fun, enjoyable, and still challenging. Sadly, this is no longer true. They are now Hard, Long, and Frustrating.

Being a 35 level dungeon I don’t see the point in destroying it the way you did. It makes it far too challenging for a group of experienced 35’s with guildmates and near impossible with a group of sub 40 pugs. People complained before the patch about the lack of willingness for groups to bring anyone under 80 and I’m not sure how this is going to change that.

If getting exotic gear, or gold, or whatever else was too easy in AC then perhaps the best approach would have been to increase the cost of the items you purchase with the tokens, reduce the amount of gold you earn, or other great idea. The current approach, although newly implimented, is in my opinion terrible.

I don’t want to take a break from AC, but I am. I don’t want to quit playing GW2 again because I was having a ton of fun running AC daily, but things are not looking good. The fun factor was very appealing with GW2, and there is still a bunch of other fun things to do, but taking the fun out of the activity that generated the most amount of fun in the game for me is a deal breaker.

Signed,

Frustrated AC Fan.
You took something amazing and made it not amazing. 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.

Hi, Robert Hrouda! Thank you for responding to this thread.

I understand and respect this response. Of course, for anything new there is a learning process. I welcome new things and challenges, however I will still say that I do not think the changes were wise.

I really disliked people who (before the changes) used to insist that only 80s may join their AC group, a level 35 dungeon. These changes are like giving elitists ammo for that kind of attitude. I used to argue that all anyone needs is to be level 35 or more and have a willingness to learn. Now, I am not sure.

I have completed the new AC on my fully-geared level 80, yes it was still very doable. I’d even say pretty fun and refreshing for someone who has ran AC a bazillion times. Can I carry 1 non-80? Probably. Can a full group of level 35s (the level this dungeon is supposedly for) do it? Highly unlikely. This is where my dissatisfaction lies.

This move probably satisfied a few people who were whining about the dungeon being “too easy” without any consideration for new players. Perhaps introduce a “hard mode” for dungeons instead? I’ve done all the dungeons numerous times, I’m neither a casual player nor a hardcore elitist – I simply enjoy this game. Whether you “nerf”, “buff” or “revamp” something, someone on some end of the spectrum will cry – so please take it from someone who actually loves this game, not just whining for my own interests.

Thank you for taking the time to read my opinion.

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.

You made a bad decision. Just own up to it and figure out how to do it better next 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.

Well thanks for the insults at your players.Sorry but I don’t know if I’ll be doing any more AC runs.The thing took me over 2 hours to do with guild mates all level 80.The rewards were NOT worth going through all of it….

The changes to AC are BS, it’s suppose to be the beginner dungeon, not the hardest.

I want to know how is AC a level 35 dungeon. I was just in a group of 80s all top gear, weapons and jewels, it took forever to kill things..by forever i mean 3 hours. We had alts we were trying to level up but we had to keep changing into 80s chars but even then that took forever! How can level 35s do this if it takes 80s forever to do it without people wanting to throw in the towel?

The scavs pounce do so much damage you don’t have time to recover, the hatchlings hit to freaking hard. the blows they do when they come out of the ground..omfg!!

I honestly don’t think you mods were thinking when you made these changes..this is a horrible HORRIBLE decision and I’m surprised with you Arenanet. Please change AC back to the way it was…it was a good starter dungeon but you just ruined it for so many people.

I won’t be doing this dungeon anymore until this is fixed! I’ve never been so mad during a run before. i kept saying to myself it’s not the players fault it’s YOURS! Please do something about this!

This is my first time posting on the boards so please bear with me. I ran AC for the first time since the patch tonight with 2 level 80s, and 3 level 50’ishs. We first encountered the Spider Queen and were caught with our pants down and wiped immediately. After a few more tries we quickly figured out how to avoid her Root, Poison and Cone AE insta death and managed to kill her after our 5th wipe. Thinking this might just be tough but doable we trudged onwards to Lt Kohler and OH MY GOODNESS he is just rediculous now. This is how my fight went with him:

Got hit by Scorpion Wire→Popped a Stun Breaker and rolled to safety→Stunned by Ascalonian Warrior→(Kohler is charging yet anothing Scorpion Wire right after the last one)→Popped a Stun Breaker→Feared by an Ascalonian Necromancer→Caught in the second scorpion wire→Dead

I by no means think of myself as the best player or the worst. If I pop two utility skills to break out of stun and I still die because I didn’t manage to dodge once 5 seconds earlier which would have meant I had 1 more stun breaker to avoid that second PBAE is just frustrating. There is 0 forgiviness in this fight now.

So, after 2 hours of fighting Lt Kohler and a lot of luck we managed to have 1 Warrior left standing who delivered the finishing blow. Tired, frustrated but eager to finish the dungeon we trudged onto the next part of Path 2. After getting Detha to the hall where you need to lure the gravelings into the spike traps she stopped and stared at us all cute with her kitten eyes (I didn’t swear, she does have kitten eyes being a Charr. We gasped as we realized she was bugged and would not trigger the next step of the quest. Almost 3 hours wasted at this point is just gut wrenching. Defeated we disbanded and will not run AC again in it’s current buggy and impossible state.

Not even the Ghostbusters could finish AC without somekind of heroic montage first.

I understand that AC Explorable was easy for experienced level 80s in exotics (Not so much for level 35s). That being said, it was still challenging for a group of random folks to meetup outside the dungeon and venture forth into a ghost filled catacombs. 1 or 2 people that knew what they were doing could carry the party through the adventure AND it didn’t matter if you played with 5 Warriors or 5 Elementalists, you could still finish the dungeon. Guild Wars 2 is a game I fell in love with because random or friend felt the same to me. Play what you want with whoever you want and the game is just awesome. Not all my friends/guildies are level 80, so we can’t just simply play another dungeon. Now it’s progressing to turn randoms away in favour of premade guild groups of specific classes who are all level 80.

Whatever happened to the Hard Mode and Normal Mode mechanic introduced in Guild Wars? People cried the game was too easy, and their prayers were answered WITHOUT impacting the casual core or new players. It would make most sense to port this mechanic to GW2 and give everyone the best of both worlds. I don’t want to hear “Go play Story Mode, it’s easier” as it yields no dungeon currency.

I really hope this is temporary and there is a way to satisfy both hardcore and casual gamer and return Guild Wars 2 back to “Play what you want, with whoever you want”. Until then, the ghosts of Ascalonian Catacombs are truly dead to me.

Oh I love the P2 chain event, (I was the “bait”) and where EVERY SINGE kitten HACHLING has knockback… why ?

It’s not hard at all, I really have no idea why everyone’s complaining. I’ve done all 3 paths since the change and I find the changes completely refreshing. I got SO bored to death of the way players ran the old AC. “Run past everything, skip skip skip. kill last boss and get the chest”. I had to fight to do certain bosses in my groups because people would skip everything. All I would get from people is “Oh it’s not needed, all I want is my tokens fast” skip so and so…

As much as I don’t want to bring in another mmo but most of the people whining were probably coming from World of Warcraft. That game WAS challenging until they started releasing expansions. Then it got so easy you could sneeze and get epics. Is that what you want? Maybe Anet can introduce instant lvl 80’s too because that’s what WoW has now. Maybe a full set of exotics when you make a new toon! /sarcasm

The biggest problem is not the difficulty of the dungeons, it’s that new players join groups with people who’ve done them before and they don’t learn to run the dungeon properly, instead they only learn how to skip everything and get the dungeon done as fast as possible. They learn how to expoit walls and trees and anything else instead of running the dungeon properly. Then when those exploits are fixed they all cry “IT’S TOO HARD!!” The community is basically breeding poorly skilled players straight from the first dungeon. We NEED challenge in this game, it helps players build skill and teamwork and not how to cheat the system just to get it done faster.

Seriously, if you want easy, go back to WoW. They hand out the best gear to anyone, any guild now can do heroic raids. Hell you can pug raids now it’s so easy. Leave Guild Wars 2 to people who still want a challenge. Trust me, if you get what you want all the time you will find that it’s going to backfire on you eventually. Just look at Warcraft. Players whined and complained “it’s too hard” until they got what they wanted and ever since that game has been bleeding subscriptions.

LOL, so are we going to have dungeons change every 2 months now? Are going to have to deal with new changes in May with all dungeons again? LOL, people who said dungeons were too easy need to wake up. They probably the same who whine about this new change its too hard than week later say its easy like developers said.
Maybe if people play the game without whining about stuff too easy than we won’t be seeing changes every couple months in dungeons.
Hopefully all the whiners about easy dungeons are to them get the hardest time with new mechanics.
I am not a fan of new mechanics, just glad I don’t have to farm tokens here no more.

I, for one, enjoyed the overall revamp of the AC dungeon. What used to be, at the very least, a mediocre dungeon, is now a more challenging, compelling and fun experience.
That said, I think it invalidates the idea of it being an entry dungeon for either new players or lower level characters, especially considering the “recommended level” is 35 (an easy fix would be to make all explorable modes level 80-bound).

So, even if I like the added complexity and difficulty, there are a few key exceptions. Here’s what I think it worked great, and what simply didn’t work:

- Nerfing all trash mobs’ health (and damage?) was the right call. Some of those always felt too overpowered, or simply took too long to kill, being either tedious or overly punishing fights. Now, everything’s more fast-paced, with emphasis on the boss fights.

- Overall, all gauntlet-styled events seem more polished, which is nice.

- All the stun-locks, knockdowns, cripples and bleeds seem overly excessive. It indeed presents some sort of challenge, although a very annoying one, to the point of being a fun wrecking experience. There are other ways of making things interestingly difficult and challenging without such degrees of irritation.

- The Spider Boss had some welcomed changes. As a tanky elementalist, I used to simply stand in front of her while attacking, ignoring whatever mechanics there were. As it is, I now have to actually pay attention to the fight, and really move around.

- Kholer, albeit an interesting fight, is simply too easy – what once used to be a feared boss fight, mainly because it required a lot of observation and attention, is now a very toned down version of it, with lower health/damage and fewer grabs. Not even the added spawns during the fight make up for that, people simply focus on Kholer and they eventually die with all the AoE. Heck, even the Spider is actually a tougher challenge to overcome, and it probably should be the other way around.

- The bonus Troll boss, although fairly easy once you know his attacks, is now more challenging and fun, a welcomed change. Still, should it spawn near Kholer, it is still possible to make them attack each other, and some people will simply avoid attacking it normally, making him and Kholer walking lootable trophies that require no effort or skill.

- The final boss in P1 is a really fun and challenging fight – be it in melee or ranged. It actually requires positional movement and awareness of the overall surroundings – from the fire circles and the gravelings, to all the running around for escaping his screeches and kamehameha-styled beams.

- The final boss in P2, although I find the ghost-busters theme interesting, seems unnecessarily too gimmicky, PUG-unfriendly, and slightly buggy. Don’t get me wrong, I like the whole coordination idea, but it just takes too long and, by the time you kill it, you’re tired of it. Maybe reducing the number of oozes required to activate the traps would help make it better.

- The final boss in P3, even though buggy and unnecessarily punishing, if fixed, probably has some potential to it. Still, I’m not much of a fan of “hidden” mechanics, like getting rid of the Defiant stacks to make interrupting his rumbling AoE possible (which, as it stands, it doesn’t work). Also, I find it annoying having to rely on NPC skills to avoid certain-death situations, like the Warmaster’s protective bubble, especially NPCs that like to Leeroy-Jenkins-run to the boss and get stupidly and constantly killed.

- Lastly, a technical thingy. Just wanted to point out that there seems to be something in the dungeon that causes really awful FPS drops and lag spikes. In the runs that I’ve done, mostly everyone complained of these same issues, and I myself noticed it too. It was certainly a challenge to overcome, albeit an unwelcome one

On a more personal, final note, there’s something I’d like to add.
Even if the dungeon is now more challenging, compelling and interesting to run, I still feel like it’s not rewarding enough (as is the case with most of the dungeons).
Even if I enjoy doing dungeons just for the sake of doing it, I still need something more to fuel my interest for it. That’s simply not the case with AC (or, for that matter, most of the dungeons) because:
a) both bosses and treasure chests keep dropping worthless loot, with the occasional rares and the mostly nonexistent exotics; b) the AC armor sets are terribly bad looking, and the weapons, glowyness asside, are nothing but rusty pieces of metal; c) the gold one can get for a full run is simply not enough for all the trouble of doing it; d) tokens serve little purpose with very limited spending options e) even if I’m lucky enough to gather some greens to use with the mystic forge, seeing as the RNG gods probably hate me, I barely manage to get any rare items out of it, making it a royal waste of time and money.

Remove the knockdown “Leap Attack”! Seriously not necessary now with the cripple effects.. Being chain knockdown’d is poor mechanics.. basically you’re just making things more of a dps race. Ran the dungeon with all sub 80s and was hell for P1 burrows. The dungeon was more enjoyable pre-patch & also no lag pre-patch.. now anything to do with fair amount of mobs = lag. Before patch was fine, so no it’s not my graphics card/memory. Dungeon needs to be reworked.. it’s lv.35 after all I highly doubt a group of 35s can clear this unless it’s war zerg setup

Done full run twice now and have to say I like the changes, took few tries to figure out new mechanics. Ghost eater was pain at first run when half of the party didnt even understand english but we finally got it after couple hrs of trying and second run it didnt really take any longer than old boss with experienced group. Other than Grast being a bit too suicidal p3 was better too. Overall i dont think its much harder nor longer than previously tho I can see some pugs having hard time if they havent got used to these mechanics.

I don’t get why you guys revamped AC. I really don’t think it needed a change (my opinion).

Take a look at the other dungeons, specifically HotW or CoE, most encounters in these dungeons are just mind numbingly boring, and the bosses have way too much HP which makes them boring to do as you just stand there for 5-10 mins spamming your auto attack.

Then we also have underwater combat in HotW which is just annoying and no fun involved at all because of the low amount of damage that you do underwater, so killing trash mobs just takes ages.

Don’t get me wrong, I really do enjoy the dungeons but some encounters/bosses are really boring and have no mechanics at all, just a lot of HP.

Hi everyone

I’m new to GW but i have played a few MMO’s and a lot of RPG’s and i just hope a dev can answer some of my q.

Dungeons are supposed to be difficult and being in a party is what makes the difference but as all games work they should allow for the player/s to learn. Dungeons are a seperate entity from the other parts of GW2 and as such players definitely need to learn and therefore should have a starting point. I believe from asking other players that this was the case with AC but now it isn’t.

My question to the devs is what was the intended outcome of the recent update to the ac dungeon and did you achieve this?

From a new players point, this dungeon doesn’t allow for learning at all, we were all to busy dying lmao. BTW i was with experienced players many of them with multiple lvl80’s and they say its scary. Devs i don’t complain and love a challenge but is there strats that are available cause we were trying quite a few things and nothing seemed to work. As Galogon.4590 pointed out which i reiterate, you cannot call this a lvl35 entry lvl dungeon.

Btw i try do this dungeon everyday and have a laugh at all the lvl80 experienced players getting pawned and pulling their hair out, a BIG LOLS.

Path 2 is clearly bugged, i have no issues with the changes other than the fact that there’s some serious bugs in AC now. Ghost Eater which is now basically ghost busting, get’s stuck which makes it impossible to complete. Deltha randomly bugs out and doesn’t built the traps. We really didn’t have any issue with the difficulty, but when you get to the end and it’s a no go, it’s seriously frustrating.

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.

So how do you counter large groups of 4 seconds long knockdown when your only stability skill has a 90 seconds recharge?

I mean, good job on removing the howler’s instant kills…but did you HAVE to replace it with long lasting knockdown spams?

I was used with a friend of mine to do regularly this dungeon, we simply go there search for three more people, if none in the guild will join the run and then jump in, no level, armor, weapon, knowledge of the dungeon requested while we was searching.
Now this is no longer possible and we regularly fail every run for not enough dps, knowledge, etc etc.
I don’t like to, but you force us to search only for 80 level exotic people.

I just attempted a Guild Run of the new ac, and found that the new additions have made the dungeon way to tough, the graveling scavenges are way to OP and there are too many that spawn in the boss fight of P1, my personal opinion is that the new additions do not challenge players they drive players to the point of rage at a dungeon that is meant for level 35 players.

I dont pretend to be very good at this game. I dont understand why a team of lvl 80 players with more than 1000+ hours of play and geared out in full exotics, with multiple exp in all the game dungeons would get bounced around like popcorn, knocked down and held down until defeat by ….adds? How is that FUN? I ask. It is more annoying than challenging. We did complete our post patch curious run, but honestly it wasnt very enjoyable. We kept wondering the whole time what this experience would be like for/with pugs. How is this a lvl 35? Who thinks that constantly being kicked around before you can even get back up is challenging? If the goal was to prevent AC farming…which btw… why would anyone care if exp players ran the dungeon in 10 minutes? Not everyone who plays this game has all day to run dungeons. 2.5 hours in a dungeon? Please shoot me! Seriously?

Oh dear Anet why mess with this dungeon?
Now no-one wants to do it and its incredibly hard to find a group,
and most groups are asking for level 80’s only!?
That’s just horrible and discouraging for lower leveled players..

So, guys, anyone completed AC with group of 35 lvls?

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.

This is our game, and people DON’T like the changes. What is your thoughts on that?

Did p1 other night, found it to be mostly easier only real problem was I got lag and gravelings not loading. Never had lag in a dungeon before and the not loading issue has only happened in WvW.

And the Troll hits too hard for Story Mode, was doing it with a party of 35-50 and he instantly downs at least 3 of us, was doing 3-3.5k damage with one attack.

Was a mixed group of lvl50 – 80. It felt like doing the dungeon for the first time rather than being with a group that runs past everything. Overall I’d say its a like a new challenge and worth doing again.

Admittedly lvl35 will struggle but thats partly to not having access to all the skills yet.

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.

This.

Guild Wars 2 dungeoneering is a horrible experience the first time you do it, everybody does stuff, nobody explains anything and everything does loads of damage. I’m on about lower levels here.

AC is how I learned what to do, where to do it, when to do it, sure I died a lot but I learned. AC was my mentor. If AC was made harder so lvl 80’s have a challenge, that means there’s now NO more dungeon left that’s easy to get into and learn how to play.

Go on about skill and planning and communication all you like, for people without vice chat, and who don’t want to plan every move or fight, this is a very bad design decision.

Mindgame.7852:

I dont pretend to be very good at this game. I dont understand why a team of lvl 80 players with more than 1000+ hours of play and geared out in full exotics, with multiple exp in all the game dungeons would get bounced around like popcorn, knocked down and held down until defeat by ….adds? How is that FUN? I ask. It is more annoying than challenging. We did complete our post patch curious run, but honestly it wasnt very enjoyable. We kept wondering the whole time what this experience would be like for/with pugs. How is this a lvl 35? Who thinks that constantly being kicked around before you can even get back up is challenging? If the goal was to prevent AC farming…which btw… why would anyone care if exp players ran the dungeon in 10 minutes? Not everyone who plays this game has all day to run dungeons. 2.5 hours in a dungeon? Please shoot me! Seriously?

I am speechless that the entire brain-trust overlooking GW2 hasn’t addressed this.

How can difficulty/HP etc vary that much from open world to dungeon? Do they eat spinach in dungeons?

You cannot get anywhere near close to satisfying gamers with one difficulty level for instances. Some what GW2 dungeons harder, I would say though a lot more would like them tamed down quite a bit, we need choice please and like yesterday.

I don’t understand how a mob outside goes down in 5 shots but in a dungeon it’s 50. What is the lore behind this enhanced vitality? Drop the HP boost and just add more baddies instead.

dennie.9237:

So, guys, anyone completed AC with group of 35 lvls?

That’s like asking if you’ve met an ANet employee that doesn’t want to nerf everything in the game.

I will not touch AC again due to these changes. The KD, boss fights, and other things is just a little over the top for me.

I thought the revamp to the spider queen and kholer turned out well. Similarly, the health on the silver trash felt like it was in a pretty good place; they still aren’t worth killing since the drop tables suck, but they aren’t a tedious chore any more.

My criticisms would be:

1) too much CC / invulnerability spam. Getting juggled by packs of trash isn’t fun. My group was laughing at how troll-tastic the new champion scavengers are with their stealthing, blinking, and evade on hit abilities that work together to waste a bunch of everyone’s time; my groups used to want to kill the champ scavengers for the easy silver, now we don’t want to bother. The troll has its old knockback, plus a new daze, plus a fear; I wasn’t particularly amused by fighting to keep control of my character.

2) Ghost Eater is massively gimmicky. Whenever I see bundles or invulnerable mobs I cringe; both in one place soured me on doing this path ever again. I’m sure that with practice this could be completed fairly quickly, but this isn’t playing my character, or playing the game; it’s a dumb mini-game of kite the invulnerable monster while fumbling with bundle skills.

3). Colossus Rumblus has potential but is similarly massively buggy / untuned. The falling rocks landed inside the red circles in under a second from when they first appeared, which is not enough time for most players to get a dodge roll off; even if you do, it hardly mattered because the entire map would be covered in them instantly. Getting hit by one rock is a virtually guaranteed defeat, as there’s no way to assist a fallen teammate from the density of falling rocks.

The mechanic of staying under Grast’s dome is fine, if forced; it unfortunately forces your team into being a melee train (since spreading out is death from falling rocks), getting hit by the colossus (which sends you flying) occasionally being instant death from falling rocks, Grast dying fairly instantly (leading to a team wipe from falling rocks), or Grast not aggroing properly, or a ton of other AI bugs. I don’t think the mechanics here are obnoxious in the way Ghost Eater is, but this is going to need a lot of AI tuning and balancing before it feels good.

ceno.1584:

It’s not hard at all, I really have no idea why everyone’s complaining. I’ve done all 3 paths since the change and I find the changes completely refreshing. I got SO bored to death of the way players ran the old AC. “Run past everything, skip skip skip. kill last boss and get the chest”. I had to fight to do certain bosses in my groups because people would skip everything. All I would get from people is “Oh it’s not needed, all I want is my tokens fast” skip so and so…

As much as I don’t want to bring in another mmo but most of the people whining were probably coming from World of Warcraft. That game WAS challenging until they started releasing expansions. Then it got so easy you could sneeze and get epics. Is that what you want? Maybe Anet can introduce instant lvl 80’s too because that’s what WoW has now. Maybe a full set of exotics when you make a new toon! /sarcasm

The biggest problem is not the difficulty of the dungeons, it’s that new players join groups with people who’ve done them before and they don’t learn to run the dungeon properly, instead they only learn how to skip everything and get the dungeon done as fast as possible. They learn how to expoit walls and trees and anything else instead of running the dungeon properly. Then when those exploits are fixed they all cry “IT’S TOO HARD!!” The community is basically breeding poorly skilled players straight from the first dungeon. We NEED challenge in this game, it helps players build skill and teamwork and not how to cheat the system just to get it done faster.

Seriously, if you want easy, go back to WoW. They hand out the best gear to anyone, any guild now can do heroic raids. Hell you can pug raids now it’s so easy. Leave Guild Wars 2 to people who still want a challenge. Trust me, if you get what you want all the time you will find that it’s going to backfire on you eventually. Just look at Warcraft. Players whined and complained “it’s too hard” until they got what they wanted and ever since that game has been bleeding subscriptions.

I see your point but I politely disagree. I also personally hate any skipping and exploits in AC, I would jokingly tell my guild and groups to please do it “manly style”. I did all 3 new paths on my fully-geared level 80 with minimal issues, probably how you did it as well. Tell me, have you successfully done it with a full level 35 group?

Hardcore players crying “it’s too easy!” and casual players crying “it’s too hard!”, how about think of everyone when you formulate an opinion? Look at the big picture and see why the other side may be complaining. It’s time to realize that what is needed is a solution that comes the closest to catering to both. Make suggestions that fall under this category, like perhaps a ‘hard mode’ to dungeons.

Remids me of august/september.