Guild Wars 2

haviz.1340:

Where does it say it’s a beginner dungeon? It gives lvl 80 exotics.

When you receive mail at level 30 indicating you can now participate in this dungeon, it’s a fair indicator that dungeon is beginning level. It was poorly designed, and should either have a hard mode or have never given level 80 exotics in the first place.

Is it just me or is the new AC very buggy? In path 2, Ghost eater sometimes spaces out and refuses to agro and in path 3, Grast and his buddy have AI issues, if they died and you rez them they rush in immediately to fight the boss with half life, and grast sometimes doesn’t cast the shield.

jpsextra.7402:

Is it just me or is the new AC very buggy? In path 2, Ghost eater sometimes spaces out and refuses to agro and in path 3, Grast and his buddy have AI issues, if they died and you rez them they rush in immediately to fight the boss with half life, and grast sometimes doesn’t cast the shield.

It isn’t just you. I think the NPCs and monsters understand the gimmicks as much as my last PUG did…

haviz.1340:

Where does it say it’s a beginner dungeon? It gives lvl 80 exotics.

because it implied certain requirements before entering the dungeon. The concept is same as school prerequisite system which I’m sure you must have some at the least.
When a system implies a grade level required, it implies there are different levels with different difficulties which you have to qualify before taking it. Hence beginner levels, advance levels etc. Results from the course having no bearing on whether the course is for beginner or advanced level

I am suprised no one made a video just to show how easy this can be done.
or did i missed that post? the video at least it teach people what to do.

jpsextra, about P3 we had the same issues this night. Grast died a lot of times, didnt cast his shield and when we rez him he rush the boss on less than half of his health. And we have 2 low lvl people who started to play GW2 before a week, taht made the things harder even the fact they are good players. It is stupid your success to depend of NPC.
Edit: we tried to interrupt the rocks skill but it didn’t not stop them.

You’re getting mail for story mode. Lvl != experience

The new Ascalon Catacombs is amazing. It’s more challenging, felt rewarding for the time spent and I’m looking forward to these updates on the rest of the dungeons, especially HotW.

Proxcel.2596:

I am suprised no one made a video just to show how easy this can be done.
or did i missed that post? the video at least it teach people what to do.

Yup, I’d like to see some videos of level 40-50 groups completing any of the exp paths in AC. After all, it does say you have to be at least level 35 to ride this ride!

Why do people keep saying not doable by level35….

After the recent change a few weeks to “downscaling” A level35 and level80 pretty much have similar stats.

Of course you need to choose the right skill with your limited skill point. But there really isn’t much difference.

If I would to creat a new level35, I could honestly say the difference compare to my level80 is very small.

“But” I think I could honestly say, any new players will porbabaly have a hard time. Since they dont’ know which skill to use and learn with their limited skill points.

Why does everything have to be difficult?

AC was fun because you could join any almost any PUG and sweep through AC P1-3 in about 1hr20min. The perfect dungeon for a week night excursion into GW for those with limited time.

Now it takes about 45 minutes to do 1 path.

Some people don’t have 3 hours every night to play GW. AC was perfect for the casual gamer. Now it’s just a painful grind for a gold.

Goodbye AC.

P2, and P3 right now is just pure frustrating. I think it’s doable by pro guildies & player, but im more worried about new player. P2 can be really frustrating when someone doesn’t know how does it work (pulling golem on COE is much more easier), while p3 is pure annoying since pilar is much more reliable than gras.
tldr, current AC is designed for lv 80s, now i wonder why it’s set as lv 35? does Anet guys enjoy watching newcomer getting infinite wipe on dungeon they tough doable on their lv?

Im not going to scare y, but if all dungeon are going to be this annoying & buggy like gras. It will scare casual newcomer, and force other to rely on other income source, such as bots, and gold market.

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.

Give it a week or so huh? That must be why the Temple of Grenth still has an extremely high failure rate?

You geniuses at Anet seem to think that a brutal challenge = fun gameplay. You should take a lesson from Diablo 3 and why so many people hated on Jay Wilson to the point he had no choice but to step down.

There are more different types of players who want to consume the experience of playing a dungeon, than ArenaNet currently caters to with the balancing.

It seems, ArenaNet defines playing a dungeon within a rather strictly defined ruleset of “expert mastery over input controls and a refined ability to read/predict the game”.

So I never got the chance to do AC Explore before the changes (mainly because I was far more interested in doing story). But I just tried Path 1 with a group of guildies and wow that’s hard. We managed to make it to the end boss, but with little to no warning of where Hodge is going to throw those AoEs, and how short-lived they are, leading the spawns into them becomes a matter of luck and not skill. We got to the Howling King and called it a night. Took us 3 hours.

I couldn’t try out the changes to P2 because Detha bugged out and just stood in the middle without fixing the traps. I’ve heard that P2 bugs out the most, and well too bad for that.

I got the idea that “dodge” meant a second of “invulnerability”. Nope. Mid-dodge, I get tossed about by scavengers, pulled by Kohler and killed etc. My endurance got used to supposedly get me out of the way, but doesn’t matter; I die. I simply cannot dodge the knock-downs because somehow or other, the attack connects while mid-dodge (the point I had always assumed you would be evading). If I happen to be just on the edge of the red circle, I get thrown. If I roll to one side when the red circle appears, I get thrown.

Also, there are still scavengers with permanent knockdown and I can’t do jack as they chew on me. I have experienced using stun breakers just as I get eaten but the attack continues regardless and I get knocked down again. The latter part is prior patch, so hopefully it won’t be as bad now.

:(…..Can I get a shorter recharge on all stability powers for the new howling king?

Could I also get faster recharge on CC skills, like line of warding, ring of warding so they can be on par with the amount of scavs there are?

40 seconds of recharge in exchange for 5 seconds of ward on either those skills doesn’t allow me a chance to stop them and damage the boss.

kinda lonely seeing only 8-15 ac lfg/lfm posts in gw2lfg
mustve scared all the people

guys imho this dungeon is now awsome,
is simply not enaymore a farmfest!!
i dikd it with my main warrior, with a good team and was still farmable, did it wih lvl80 thief (gc) and was still enjoyable, did it with low level alts and was a bit of a pain..
only problem with this update is that cut of all new player from getting into groups to do this.
probably if experinced players were more likely to accept non 80 ppl now we’ll see more “lf1m full zrkr uber warr, no noobs!!” kittens.
Myself i’m always likely to accept new players in dungeons, but beforte i look at their achivement points.. l35 with 2000 points? sure why not.. lvl32 with 400 points? well are ypou sure about that? you eventually like pain? cause this player is definetly someone that appened around here and said oh what’s that shiny porta? let’s try!!
i know that because i tried myself to get in solo at level 15, “lvl 35? 5 playuers needed? nah i’m good enough!” end, ofc i got owned by the first spike trap!!!

this is not viable anymore by ppl leveling first char, that’s not law, we managed, also to clear with 4 good players (two warr, 1 guard, 1 ele, and a poar mesmer) but was hard!

main problem then is that now low level will get more stuff like l2p befor noob!! stuff and that’s not good, even an experinced player leveling alts will get to the same point and thats baaaad..
but the dungeon himself really roocks!! gj anet!

I have no problem with AC besides the fact that the spider queen is just annoying, and that CR is broken, spent 2 hours trying to kill him because relying on a NPC is about the stupidest thing anyone could have come up with.
Maybe if grast actually casted his crappy bubble on time, and stopped trying to tank down the boss it would have been fun.

I finally found the solution for P2 and P3 (last boss fight).

P2: Remove the 1st skill (the lifting one) cooldown. Make some ectoplasm keep spawning near ghost eater instead of having casted by him/her/it/whatever.
P3: Make Gras Prioritize shield over hammer if Colosus starting to cast AOE. Also make Gras Almost invulnerable to other source of damage and enter downed state instead of dead every 2nd time he cast shield, give more challenge for group to maintain damage, while resurrecting him.

Now THAT is the description of Challenge, instead of pure frustrating

My only problem is the mechanics on the last boss battle of the third path seemed to be bugged. From what I could tell, your supposed to run to Ghast during the tremor part and be protected by his shield. Problem is, he dies often and most of his death are from the attack he’s supposed to be protecting you from. Instead of putting up his shield during Rumblus’ wind up of the tremor attack, he sits there and does super slow hammer swings.

They seem to keep ratcheting things up to make them challenging for top-level players with exotic gear, but that is unfair to lower levels who want to do things at their stated levels, as well as to more casual players who simply want to gear up without being stressed out in a game.

Dog.1472:

Story modes are the introductory dungeons for new players. The only reason people have to do the explore modes is to get tokens needed for level 80 gear.

Then why does the armor merchant sell lvl 35 armor for tokens?

I am not against creating harder (or you call it interesting/fun) contents, but why would you want to change existing perfectly fine contents? FOTM has this ‘level’ system. Add that to AC and other instances if players want challenge.

Don’t fix that isn’t broken!

^I still think that is where the answers lie with instances in all games. You have infinite levels, with a better chance at better loot the higher up you go. You make the dungeon approachable for all to start and to reach top levels, you have pro teams. All based off some math calcs. Simple. Elegant. Everyone gets to play the content at their ability.

I enjoyed playing the dungeon with a group for story mode (lvl 30). It’s impossible to play with anyone not 80 for the lvl 35. I don’t see the point in saying it’s a lvl 35 dungeon, if a group of 35s cannot even hope to complete it. They should say it’s lvl 80. It’d be better to give 80s a “expert” mode or something.

OMG! Just played the path 2 of AC. LOVED it. It took FOREVER. When we got to the end we had no idea what to do. We figured it out though slowly. It was very frustrating, but VERY rewarding when we finally beat it.

Love the mechanics. Requires lots of teamwork. Keep doing this kind of thing with the dungeons. Dpsing the boss till it is dead is just boring and stale. I like this new style much better!

Cheers!

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.

What strategy are we supposed to develop for p3 where the entire zone is filled with oneshotting falling rocks with no safe zone, blocks doesn’t work etc?
Sorry but inevitable mass AoE oneshot isn’t good design.

Learn the encounters, practice makes perfect i defy anyone to come on here and complain after only one day. Maybe after a week you have a right to make informed constructive critisism but imo not before. In other words suck it up guys c’mon give it a go

I agree that there should be some kind of tutorial dungeon though, before all the current dungeons for low levels to practice and get half decent gear for there level etc. But thats a whole other thread I think.
Actual bugs, which i beleive there are a few like warmaster not bubbling fast enough or not at all on path 3 collosuss but thats different.

GL everyone! xxx

Just played path 3 of AC, and while I like the greater difficulty, (I used to think spider queen was insane, but dodge red circles and remove the immobilise quickly and you’ll be fine). That being said the final boss of path 3 is far too buggy, the NPC regularly fails to deploy the shield, which means instant party wipe after some frantic dodge rolling. We spent about an hour just trying to kill him, resulting in all of us taking interrupts with the goal to catch his skill without fail. We eventually did it but in compared to path 2, path 3 is considerably more punishing and needs a little bit of tweaking and or bug fixing to make the defensive shield more reliable.

Kerotan.8326:

Just played path 3 of AC, and while I like the greater difficulty, (I used to think spider queen was insane, but dodge red circles and remove the immobilise quickly and you’ll be fine). That being said the final boss of path 3 is far too buggy, the NPC regularly fails to deploy the shield, which means instant party wipe after some frantic dodge rolling. We spent about an hour just trying to kill him, resulting in all of us taking interrupts with the goal to catch his skill without fail. We eventually did it but in compared to path 2, path 3 is considerably more punishing and needs a little bit of tweaking and or bug fixing to make the defensive shield more reliable.

Totally agree with you here

You forgot to mention some things about the boss in path 3:

- The rocks AOE cover the whole screen, there’s no way to run away from them, and if you’re caught, you’re dead.
- The NPC Grast will create a barrier when the rocks are falling, however, you can’t tell when he will make it, in my experience, he may make the barrier after you’re all dead so it’s useless, or he might make it in time and get shelter, you never know.

AC was the dungeon i enjoyed the most, now i don’t want to go there anymore, their idea of fun, is what i consider frustrating, especially for a level 35 dungeon.

Although I really hated all the “skipping” players (because I ran AC for loot not tokens), I’ll have to say that I really did not like the new Ghost Eater path 2 final boss for a few reasons.
1. I can’t imagine a lvl 35 group doing it, you get one shotted and you “can’t use exotic armor” so no way for you to compensate for the more powerful enemies.
2. The Ghost Eater was too easy to kill I’ll admit, however I hate bosses that require you to change weapons. After all I should be able to use the weapons “that some lvl 35s are just learning how to use well”.
3. I like teamwork, but I think Anet should focus on keeping people from “skipping” encounters. especially Kholer, which would have made the dungeon fair to people who are not there just for the “end tokens”. This makes pug groups less cooperative since they can have thier own agenda going in.
4. You almost need a “vent system” to coordinate the ghost eater now, and pug groups are too easy to argue over nothing in dungeons.
5. I get the mechanic for path 2 end boss, just “pull” the ooze that has been lifted, however this required targeting, and pressing T while dodging the ghost eater attacks. A lvl 35 group will get one shotted and wipe.
6. Did I mention "this dungeon is supposed to be for lvl 35s in much less than exotic armor? I think Anet can inspire team work without forcing us to give up “the weapons” we enjoy playing with and the reason we chose the class we are playing. (not fun Colin).
7. Did I mention how many groups just skip kholer “and his chest of loot” which is the reason I go to AC. I mean I already have 2000 AC tokens. Bosses should not be “skippable” when it forces players to miss out on loot if more of the team is just lazy or only there for tokens.

What strategy are we supposed to develop for p3 where the entire zone is filled with oneshotting falling rocks with no safe zone, blocks doesn’t work etc?
Sorry but inevitable mass AoE oneshot isn’t good design.

Wow I haven’t tried path 3 yet, but gravelings are cheap enough already. They hit you from 10 feet away with a melee attack and that 10 second immobilize was always a super cheap “cheat”. I mean we only have a few skills that break stun, and too many pugs like to run through these creatures and leave others without a single word. This can lead to one person having to run by several of these “super cheap” one jump killers and they will jump you twice in a row sometimes.
Anyway I don’t think one shot AoE is good at all for lvl 35s. If you can’t survive one hit “by design” and there are these random rocks “as stated above” that can’t be good or even doable for lvl 35s except for getting lucky. I think dungeons should be based on skill, not luck.

Faenglir.1502:

I enjoyed playing the dungeon with a group for story mode (lvl 30). It’s impossible to play with anyone not 80 for the lvl 35. I don’t see the point in saying it’s a lvl 35 dungeon, if a group of 35s cannot even hope to complete it. They should say it’s lvl 80. It’d be better to give 80s a “expert” mode or something.

I totally agree. With the new lvl of difficulty this dungeon can not be called lvl 35 since everything can one shot people at those lvls. I haven’t tried the new story mode yet “if it has changed” but I agree that the new stuff could almost be “hard mode”. So how can a “newbie” do the first dungeon in hard mode when it is now designed for exotic amor?

I don’t care what the elitist said before, but AC was very challenging for lvl 35s already.

the new AC is kinda… i think the best way to put it is that it is schizophrenic.
while the obvious objective of the new change is to ramp up the difficulty, it swings from one extreme to the other, neither of which leave a good taste in the mouth.

first, kohler. kohler is just an exercise of SHEER DUMB LUCK at the moment. if he spawns 2 trash mobs, everything is fine. if he spawns 2 necs, or 2 rangers, or 1 nec 1 ranger, SOMEONE is going to go down and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. with all the knockdowns and fears going on, sooner or later, someone is going to get caught with his breakouts on cd when kohler decides to do a scorpion pull. the only thing that can save you at that time is if a guardian casts syg. i mean, really? you make a guardian mandatory because if there isn’t one, you are GUARANTEED to go down if you’re unlucky with the add spawns?

for some parts, it’s simply a matter of ‘lets put in 3 times the previous number of mobs’. like in path 1. it’s just adds. more adds. more adds. more adds. the boss practically does the same thing. just that throughout the fight, it just, you guessed it, spawns more adds. more adds. more adds. and more adds.

and more adds.

then in path 2, it swings to the other extreme of being ‘too creative’. pick up a strange weapon, one person picks an ecto out of like 5(?), everyone figures out which ecto he is targeting, he lifts the ecto, everyone else pulls it (hopefully in the same direction), do it 4 times to charge up a trap, lure the boss over, everyone drops their funny new weapon, beats him up for a bit. then pick up the weapon again and rinse repeat. it’s, frankly, bloody convoluted.

then there’s path 3, and grast. which is nice and fun for the final boss fight. unless grast decides to go rogue, ALWAYS casting his bubble late. running at the boss at half life. etc. it literally took me as a guardian, all my heals and aegis to keep him alive. and that’s with an ele, banner warrior, and engi healing him as well. and because his domes were always late, which made him VERY vulnerable to getting knocked down by the falling rocks and causing a team wipe. i had to use the shield summon to keep the rocks off him, and if that wasn’t enough, i had to use syg right after that to give him stability. all the while hoping our heals were enough to let him take 1 rock to the head so he wouldn’t die. meanwhile, everyone has to figure out for themselves how to keep themselves alive among the falling rocks. the second time the boss made the falling rocks, my shield was on cd. if it wasn’t for a lucky timely knockdown from the engi when the boss’s defiance stacks were down, we would have wiped again.

and all the while, i’m thinking “this is supposed to be the FIRST dungeon players set foot in. what is going on?”

it’s a level 35 dungeon. it’s not cof, or arah. i understand the need to ramp up the difficulty so that it’s unfeasible for players to ‘farm’ it, but the new difficulty imo is way overtuned, lacks a clear focus on HOW additional difficulty is achieved, and overall, pretty poorly executed.

I used to use this dungeon to level up my characters past 40, i doubt any parties would take me now, as this dungeon is right now, no one wants someone lower than 80.

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 guys took one of the most casual friendly dungeons and turned it into something not your average pug can do. I’ve easily ran AC well over 300 times before the patch, and it was infact in a solid place. I didnt mind grabbing non-lvl 80’s, or casuals and explaining to them the fights, not anymore. It seems as though each patch you guys step further and further away from what you had originally marketed and expressed how you wanted the game to function.

Also lol @ you guys saying the learning curve for this game is pretty big and you wonder why?

I found path 1 to be very hard, we were 5 80 lv’s with exotics and wiped like 4 times before completing it. I run a fighter with thoughness/vitality based build and I still can be downed in just a few seconds.
Didn’t have any issues with path 2 though, apart from boss being stuck in the traps, thankfully one of our group knew we had to knock him back to fix this.

This is no longer a level 35 dungeon. You have to be level 80 if you want any hope of completing it.

It might just be my personal experience, but i ran all paths multiple times with pugs now and only once a person quit. Everyone else tried and eventually succeeded to see it through in the end.

Path 2 seems fine now, and Grast still seems to be a little buggy, but it might just be Colussus hitting him at the wrong time. Other than that it seems harder at times, but at least that means it challenges you.

Allthough I liked that AC was a quick and easy dungeon, this more challenging version is much more rewarding in the end. The boss fights are completely different from each other now which is nice and also forces people to think about how to approach the fight. And actually talk as well. In comparison, previous runs where never as vocal for me. There was almost no talk, apart from “skip kohler?”.

It also completely changed my view on the warrior class for example and forced me to really look into what option I have to actually benefit myself and the party.

So all in all, yes they take longer and they might be a little frustrating at times for now, but I think the changes are improvements. The dungeon is more fun than before.

As for the lvl 35 problem, I think it’s just a made up one, admittedly a level 35 only party will find it tougher than a lvl 80 exotic, but that just makes sense anyway, and it will feel like a real achievement to finish the dungeon. The fact that some people don’t want to play with non 80-exotics is out of the hand of Anet anyway. I for one have no problem playing with a non maxed party and I’m sure it’s the same for many others.

So thank you Anet, for me AC is now less convenient, but more challenging and rewarding and in the end, just better. (Who you gonna call?…)

lezard.6071:

I used to use this dungeon to level up my characters past 40, i doubt any parties would take me now, as this dungeon is right now, no one wants someone lower than 80.

Currently leveling my guardian in AC and CM. It’s slightly more difficult than my 80’s, but not by a significant portion. However, if you’re inexperienced, lvl 80 or not, AC is much more of a wakeup call than it used to be.

Just finished path2. It only took 3 hours with the last hour spent on ghost eater……… Oh and no rares just lots of greens and blues. This dungeon isn’t even worth the time anymore and a team of 35’s can only dream of completing some paths. I’m just sad that I still have to do 3 more runs till I can get my ghastly greatsword

Did AC really need to be “tweaked”? Anet clearly doesn’t care about PVE and decided to throw in a token “rebalancing” for a perfectly fine dungeon.

I’ve seen a lot of people here posting that you can’t do this with lowbies anymore and I just wanted to say that I did this last night with a group of 2 80s and 3 sub 60s. The other 80 and 2 of the lowbies had not done AC since the patch—one had never been in a dungeon before. However, they all knew their class and performed remarkably; listened carefully to instruction and did exactly as they were told. The result? We got through P1 and P2 very successfully. The key to success is a) understanding the fights and b) knowing how to play. If you don’t know what to do, you’re not going to survive. If you can’t dodge or use your survival skills, you’re not going to survive. Low level people can do this dungeon if they are patiently coached by veteren players and teachable.

The problem here isn’t the dungeon but rather the community that is too busy in their own little world to care for the lowbies. If lowbies are learning that dungeons are “no fun because all you do is die,” it’s because the community is conditioning them to think that way by yelling at them instead of encouraging them through the rough patches. If you don’t have the patience to teach new players how to play, don’t take them with you. But remember that we all were new players once and were grateful when others took us under their wings.

If you’re a new player, seek out older players who are patient and kind. Also, have a teachable spirit. If you have an arrogant attitude, it will turn off older players who may be able and willing to help you. Don’t be afraid to admit you need tips—it’s okay. Someone said this in the dungeon last night: “It’s not noob to not know what to do. It is noob to not ask.” Also, seek out fellow new players and learn together. It’s a lot more fun to screw up together, laugh, and learn from your mistakes than to screw up alone in a group of veteren players. Build off of one another, learn from each other, and encourage one another. This is what makes a good community.

I just want to say we did this as a guild (4 lvl 80’s with exotic/ascended, and 1 lvl 50 with greens/golds). We are not a bad group. This same group does lvl 30 fractals and has no problem.

This dungeon is doable, but it is way more difficult. People have said it all before, so I won’t repeat everything, but my suggestions:

- Increase Grasts’ HP pool / toughness and make him res with the party.
- chain KD on scavengers is almost impossible to recover from.
- Troll is not fun. Fear/fear/knockdown/etc, makes him a ranged-only irritating fight.
- P1 Graveling event is HARDER even without the breeders due to the new knockdown mechanic for scavengers.
- Detha STILL bugs out and refuses to start the events at all sometimes.

I wont’ run AC anymore unless I have at least two eles and a guardian for the heals/protection/ice bows.

Pros:

- Kholer is much more fun.
- Spider Queen is more interesting and fun!
- I like the CONCEPTS behind most of the new events, they are just too difficult/buggy.

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.

The only problem with this is that I’m not sure what strategies you can develop for the boss fight at the end of AC Path 3 when the ceiling fall is pretty much insta-wipe of the whole party and the encounter is entirely structured around an NPC (Warmaster Grast) who is supposed to provide a shield, but does not do this to instead focus on trying to hammer-melee the boss and either being killed in melee, or dying from the falling ceiling.

Sure, I understand the idea is to use interrupts, but there comes points in the encounter where skills are on cooldown and defiance can’t be cleared from the boss fast enough. Warmaster Grast doesn’t provide his bubble and the party wipes again.

The only strategies we came up with were to leave the path unfinished and decide to not play that particular part of AC anymore.

JNetRocks.3652:

I wont’ run AC anymore unless I have at least two eles and a guardian for the heals/protection/ice bows.

Sad.

Anyway, bugs aside, the new AC is fun. I love that many of the encounters are more “in your face”. No more sleeping through AC tripples FTW.

Kysus.4290:

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.

The only problem with this is that I’m not sure what strategies you can develop for the boss fight at the end of AC Path 3 when the ceiling fall is pretty much insta-wipe of the whole party and the encounter is entirely structured around an NPC (Warmaster Grast) who is supposed to provide a shield, but does not do this to instead focus on trying to hammer-melee the boss and either being killed in melee, or dying from the falling ceiling.

Sure, I understand the idea is to use interrupts, but there comes points in the encounter where skills are on cooldown and defiance can’t be cleared from the boss fast enough. Warmaster Grast doesn’t provide his bubble and the party wipes again.

The only strategies we came up with were to leave the path unfinished and decide to not play that particular part of AC anymore.

I agree that this fight needs a lot of work. Currently, I’ve managed to complete this fight by zerging the boss and attempting to draw him away from Grast. Then we just get in the bubble ASAP when it comes and pick each other up as needed. A DPS race and quick movement is the best strategy right now. The other option is to bring people with some serious heals and keep Grast alive while chipping away at the boss. I don’t recomend that strat though.
I hope they will put in some fixes to this fight soon.