Guild Wars 2

Just did AC path 2.

Deetha bugged out, even after we killed everything on our way there.

Fix the bugs before nerfing the dungeon.

so ive ran the new ac a few times and these are what i have observed

path 1 – well i havent really seen any bug in path 1 yet

path 2 – during the part where people skip mobs and head straight to the tower room. if detha unfortunately get aggro after the ascalonian ghost(the one who says “a charr its building some kind if nefarious device”) appears she bugs out and wont fix the towers. having detha killed wont fix it.

also sometimes the boss decides to go afk

path 3 – grast doesnt immediately cast the bubble shield immediately once the quake starts. this happens if he unfortunately does that charging attack with an attack animation that seems to take forever which in turn wipe the whole party

last but not the least
gw2lfg’s ac corner is dead now. if you by some chance see an ad it will be like 80’s only posts.

if you manage to get in a team. people will go like ohboyherewego.jpg and NOPE.gif even if you know what you are doing and good at doing barrel rolls during spider fight

kinda hard to find an ac group nowadays

carabidus.6214:

Here is the rationale for “fixing what is not broke” from a corporate standpoint:

1) Gem sales are down, so some mechanism is needed to increase revenue without it being overly obvious to the player base

2) In-game metrics show that AC was a very popular path for equipping exotics – maybe a little too popular (lower level toons saving tokens for their graduation to level 80, thus bypassing the TP)

3) Increase dungeon difficulty of AC to the extent that 5 level 35 toons in greens will probably rage quit

4) Frustrated lower level players (and even fully kitted 80s in exotics looking to outfit themselves in dungeon armor for pride and prestige)

5) Open wallet —-> buy gems —-> convert to gold —-> purchase exotics on the TP or the materials to craft them yourself.

6) Conclusion: more money for the corporation

I’m not even going to elaborate on the severe lag issues (new) and bugs (new and old) that continue to plague this dungeon and have yet to be acknowledged.

This is the most ridiculous post in this entire thread. With both the Jan and Feb content updates, Anet has made making money even easier than before. You have guaranteed rares from several world events. Each rare is worth between 25 and 35 silver and through salvaging, you can easily match or exceed this profit through ectos. With laurels, you have a guaranteed income of at least 2 gold/5 laurels from the 10 dye pack as well as having access to coin/karma/exp boosters, which were previously only available through the gem shop or BLC. Those boosters are insanely cheap too, at only 1 laurel each. Open world drops have never been better (which is not saying much granted); however, just by getting my daily gatherer achievement in Orr, I can pick up between 7 and 12 Heavy Moldy Bags, which is ~30 silver (~3s/ea on TP post) profit right there. That doesn’t include the T5 and T6 mats that drop along with the random porous bones + whites/blues/greens. If you don’t need ori/ancient wood, that’s easily another gold every day by selling those mats on the TP. Finally, the biggest money maker in the game, CoF P1, hasn’t been touched. Combined with an omnom bar + coin booster + gold infusion, you can pull in 75 silver/run + drops + end of dungeon reward. All in all, that equates to around 10-14 gold/hr, not to mention using the tokens to buy rares to salvage for ectos. In just two days of running CoF P1, you can easily buy 10 rares, which nets between 5 and 10 ectos. So add another 1.5 – 3 gold ontop of your earned earnings.

Money has never been easier to come by. The fact is that most high level stuff, outside of precursors, have been dropping in price. Lodestones have come down 10-15%, T6 mats have come down around 10%, pearl exotics have never been cheaper, ecto is down 15-20%, many sigils/runes are down 10-20%, etc etc.

Eerekai.9438:

-snip-

An interesting write-up. I would add one thing — too many bleeds. Spider queen procs bleeds, gravelings proc bleeds, troll procs bleeds, Kholer procs bleeds. As with everything ANet does, conditions are over-utilized.

/sarcasm on Maybe change the dungeon name to the Catacombs of Blood. /sarcasm off

I believe that the developers are having a hard time figuring out what the people want. Some say “ITS TOO EASY!” others say “ITS TOO HARD”. The problem is the definition of “difficulty” and “fun, and interesting”.

I dont think AC is difficult, my skills are more than enough to allow me to survive the entire run. But the constant knocks those gravelings do, the frustration of protecting the npc in path 1 with certain classes who dont drop the graveling burrows fast enough, the bugs that happen on p3 and p2, the increased HP for trash mobs and hatchlings…

Those things are NOT challenging, nor fun, nor interesting. It makes the normal player rage and leave. The elite players will say otherwise and spoonfeed their desire for ridiculous mechanics unto the majority of casual players.

I have defended the new AC but Anet lack of quality control and pushing out a buggy product in indefensible. Path 2 obviously buggy and has been since RELEASE. Lets say it one more time “SINCE RELEASE”. Sure you can get it to work but why do I have rifle butt the boss in order to wake him up out of his stupor? And poor Detha and her brain freeze we all know about that. Path 3 the Warmaster npc doesnt pop his bubble half the time….though maybe he just needs a well timed knockdown once in a while idk. Path 1 Hodgins is better but Hodgins is still a total idiot dropping the aoe randomly and without purpose.

The spider queen, troll, and kholer are the only good things about this dungoen at the moment. More that works as intended like that please. As it stands now I wouldnt recommend this game to anyone due to the releasing of crap.

Slither Shade.4782:

I have defended the new AC but Anet lack of quality control and pushing out a buggy product in indefensible. Path 2 obviously buggy and has been since RELEASE. Lets say it one more time “SINCE RELEASE”. Sure you can get it to work but why do I have rifle butt the boss in order to wake him up out of his stupor? And poor Detha and her brain freeze we all know about that. Path 3 the Warmaster npc doesnt pop his bubble half the time….though maybe he just needs a well timed knockdown once in a while idk. Path 1 Hodgins is better but Hodgins is still a total idiot dropping the aoe randomly and without purpose.

The spider queen, troll, and kholer are the only good things about this dungoen at the moment. More that works as intended like that please. As it stands now I wouldnt recommend this game to anyone due to the releasing of crap.

I recommend they should hire you as their chief Q/A to remedy the situation. You probably fire all the Q/A dept, if they have any to start with.

You could run a path of old AC in 15 Minutes and get upwards of 1,5 gold out of it. That was clearly not their intention.
Also I have zero doubt that soon players will speedrun it again (and normal/casual players will naturally get better at it as well). It’s a very old cycle, well known even from GW1.

Amodin.1092:

In AC, the new Cave Troll event is a prime example of stupid. I used to love to get this guy up in a group. Now, I avoid it like the plague and encourage everyone else to do the same. It was fine the way it was – fun, challenging, and not a one shot hit. It still took skill, knowing how to play your character and knowing what the mob will do so you could avoid (or try to avoid) being hit. Now, he just fears you off the ledges, or literally one-shots you (and I am nowhere near being a glass cannon type player).

You could just autoattack the old cave troll dead from a distance. There was literally zero danger of receiving damage.
ANet seems to have learned their lesson to not make bosses melee or ranged only, without any adds or other perks.

Freeburn.8135:

That said, is it true that ANet’s intention is that Explorable Mode is considered “elite content”? What does that mean, exactly?

They said it time and time again it in all of their interviews before the release. Explorables are the uppermost PVE “tier”. It’s surprisingly hard to find old articles with google, and I really don’t wanna waste more than the 10 minutes or so I already did trying.
That’s one that kinda concerns it, tho it’s from after release.
http://guildwars.incgamers.com/blog/comments/colin-johanson-on-dungeon-difficulty

Problem is that old AC already taught a lot of players bad habits and now they are angry because they can’t AFK face tank Spider Queen while standing in her AoEs or completely ignore Kholer’s adds by pulling him down the stairs or burn Ghost Eater without any threat of taking damage.

I won’t say that the dungeon is perfect. It’s not. I still think it’s a joke that people run through trash mobs. A lot of the events are bugged. However, most of the complaints here aren’t about bugs (with the exception of a few posts). Most people are complaining that this dungeon isn’t “casual” friendly or isn’t an easy 15 min per path exotic/gold farm.

Dungeons, and dungeon rewards (exotic armor/weapons), are suppose to be a sign of prestige. Where is the prestige in something that any bad pug can obtain from doing one weeks worth of AC runs?

Another thing people are failing to grasp is that ANet has been, from the start, all about playing GW2 the way YOU want to play it. If you want gold/exotics, then there are many ways to get them besides running dungeons. You can craft gear as good as any of the dungeon sets. Want gold? World Events, DE, farming materials to sell on the TP, etc. You aren’t at any point required to run explorable dungeons and the story mode dungeons are easy enough so that you don’t miss out on any crucial lore.

Honestly, any prestige that could come from dungeon armor sets is negligible at this point because anyone with a weeks worth of time could’ve gotten any exotic set they wanted with minimal effort.

Total BS!!

What was wrong with the old AC? Some ppl say it was too easy but it’s the first dungeon, supposed to be the easiest, doable by lvl 35 players, c’mon.

Now even tho it’s not the hardest it is very annoying not too hard but very annoying.

P1 on burrows you depend on the stupid useless NPC to stay alive, rest is not so bad but still the od was much nicer.

P2 last boss you depend on those stupid useless annoying guns, Im not doing it anymore.

P3 it’s just broken and quite hard too.

If Anet just wanted ppl to stay out of AC, well they did a great job but if the intention was to make it more enjoyable they did all wrong.

Keep on the lousy work Anet and soon more ppl will start to spend more and more time on the other games available like I already did.

Way to break the dungeon. I mimic all those who question just wtf went through the minds of the devs who thought a teir 1 dungeon needed a difficulty revamp. For those of us with lives, jobs, a family, … we play to have fun and the community as a whole benefits as this demographic makes up the vast majority of the population.

Go ahead and turn this game into an elitist hardcore game requiring utmost coordination and cooperation. I already struggled to find just wtf was the point of playing at level 80, and these latest changes to AC solidify my feeling that this game is a huge waste of time.

What’s even more ironic is I’m probably the type of player Anet wants…I have more disposable cash than free time. Guess you rather have hardcore nerds dictating your next move than some real world money coming your way.

Extremely disappointed with the changes to AC. If you were going to pick a dungeon to make harder why not hotw or cof, it’s ridiculous having the higher level dungeons be easier then the first one. I had planned on introducing some of my lower level guildies to explore mode but I can’t finish it on my main let alone my lower level alt. Congratulations, you’ve probably killed off AC since there is no point in chosing to do it over cof

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.

Okay my thoughts on this dungeon updates. I am a very experienced player and a loyal GW player of over 6 years. I have played all elite areas and am no stranger to challenges. I have done AC many times in the past and always did Kholer as a regular. I ran with a pug team today on the paths and was shocked by the ridiculous difficulty of certain sections. I think the new changes on the whole are great and inventive and make it less dull however…

What i do not find amusing or interesting is the Over Powered dps of enemies like Spider Queen and her entire swarm. The aoe filled the room there was practically no where to go. No amount of condition removal or “limited healing” is going to save you. So I am intrigued to know what strategy is going to be learned there other than repeatedly rez wp and die until you win. The party I was with were 70’s-80’s I went along on my level 80 exotic Elementalist and regretted the majority of the experience. Where as before I held my own and used evasion to survive. Now even that tactic has been rendered useless in certain areas and i just die repeatedly.

Seriously it feels like Anet does not want any other classes to exist other than Warrior & Guardian. Because it certainly looks like you design these updates based on them and forgot about the other lower hp and lower armoured classes.

One other final thought. I find it bewildering that you seek to make the dungeons harder. Because the end reward of the dungeon is tokens needed to get exotic dungeon gear… Yet you have set the difficulty to requiring exotic and ascended gear to achieve it. So to me its a serious case of “cart going before the horse”

If you feel the need to make things harder then you should just add “hardmode” instead of alienating the majority of your gaming base.
You rightly took away rez rushing, You nerfed level scaling and now overall you ramped up the difficulty of the dungeons. You should want ppl to play your dungeons not avoid them. Otherwise the average life span from a player starting this game to leaving it is going to be very short.

Honestly I stick with GW because of the history of the fun I had gaming with you. But even Im not having fun in GW2 anymore the more you do to the dungeons the less I enjoy my time here. “It’s turning into an unpleasant Chore which seems to be aimed only at elitists with very little reward”.

My main question is: why should a player spend ages making a specific build for their character and invest a lot of gold in exotic weapons if they end up using totally irrelevant bundled weapon skills on bosses? This is a game breaker for me and has completely put me off Ascalonean Catacombs.

In addition, as a guild leader, who organizes regular AC runs for level 35 characters to introduce them to dungeons, I find the new experience rather inappropriate. Not only is the dungeon considerably more buggy now in exploration mode, but the advanced mechanics of the boss fights make this dungeon a no-go territory for fresh level 35 players.

Do the developers seriously expect new players who have not yet unlocked top-tier skills and often reach level 35 with lower level armor and weapons enjoy being killed every few seconds by massively increased Queen Spider AOE damage? Or perhaps they think that fighting Kholer, who even before the update had the tendency to wipe an unexpeienced team a few times, will become more fun now that they added a whole bunch of additional ghosts to the fight?

I believe the new AC is a very poor dungeon experience for a new player. I certainly cannot blame my low level guild members for never wanting to do another dungeon after this.

Overall, in my opinion, if ArenaNet want to retain their playerbase and make further profit from GW2 – they should concentrate more on developing new maps, quests and encounters, rather than introducing uncalled for changes to the existing contents.

I agree that the first dungeon should not be one of the harder ones but i strongly disagree that it is not possible to do with a lvl 35 group. You mentioned the spider queen AOE being very strong, well it should not matter if it is strong or not. Player who want to run a dungeon should at least know how to dodge and therefore the spider queen AOE should not be a problem.
I agree that AC might be a little too hard as the first dungeon but i think that most of the groups fail because they either are not particularly good players or they just don’t communicate. They expect to find 5 people and run through the dungeon without any communication. Then they fail and fail and fail and….after a lot of failing they complain about the game.

As for the build/equipment thing. If you’re playing with one build all the time and you don’t want to change it just because you want to play your style then you’re doing something wrong. You can’t just run around with your build all the time. You should adapt to situations and the skills of the mobs. – thats another reason why most groups fail IMO.

Koi The Firebringer.6537:

My main question is: why should a player spend ages making a specific build for their character and invest a lot of gold in exotic weapons if they end up using totally irrelevant bundled weapon skills on bosses? This is a game breaker for me and has completely put me off Ascalonean Catacombs.

In addition, as a guild leader, who organizes regular AC runs for level 35 characters to introduce them to dungeons, I find the new experience rather inappropriate. Not only is the dungeon considerably more buggy now in exploration mode, but the advanced mechanics of the boss fights make this dungeon a no-go territory for fresh level 35 players.

Do the developers seriously expect new players who have not yet unlocked top-tier skills and often reach level 35 with lower level armor and weapons enjoy being killed every few seconds by massively increased Queen Spider AOE damage? Or perhaps they think that fighting Kholer, who even before the update had the tendency to wipe an unexpeienced team a few times, will become more fun now that they added a whole bunch of additional ghosts to the fight?

I believe the new AC is a very poor dungeon experience for a new player. I certainly cannot blame my low level guild members for never wanting to do another dungeon after this.

Overall, in my opinion, if ArenaNet want to retain their playerbase and make further profit from GW2 – they should concentrate more on developing new maps, quests and encounters, rather than introducing uncalled for changes to the existing contents.

Agreed !!

And for all of you that are defending the new AC just take a look at gw2lfg.com, before the changes AC was maybe the most visited dungeon, very close to CoF. Now just a few posts for LFG or LFM. That, you new AC lovers, can not deny!

IamDuddits.1692:

Problem is that old AC already taught a lot of players bad habits and now they are angry because they can’t AFK face tank Spider Queen while standing in her AoEs or completely ignore Kholer’s adds by pulling him down the stairs or burn Ghost Eater without any threat of taking damage.

I won’t say that the dungeon is perfect. It’s not. I still think it’s a joke that people run through trash mobs. A lot of the events are bugged. However, most of the complaints here aren’t about bugs (with the exception of a few posts). Most people are complaining that this dungeon isn’t “casual” friendly or isn’t an easy 15 min per path exotic/gold farm.

Dungeons, and dungeon rewards (exotic armor/weapons), are suppose to be a sign of prestige. Where is the prestige in something that any bad pug can obtain from doing one weeks worth of AC runs?

Another thing people are failing to grasp is that ANet has been, from the start, all about playing GW2 the way YOU want to play it. If you want gold/exotics, then there are many ways to get them besides running dungeons. You can craft gear as good as any of the dungeon sets. Want gold? World Events, DE, farming materials to sell on the TP, etc. You aren’t at any point required to run explorable dungeons and the story mode dungeons are easy enough so that you don’t miss out on any crucial lore.

Honestly, any prestige that could come from dungeon armor sets is negligible at this point because anyone with a weeks worth of time could’ve gotten any exotic set they wanted with minimal effort.

What you seem to miss is that Ascalonean Catacombs are designed for level 35 players, or so the in-game email and the door crier would have you believe. Are you suggesting that new players should be excluded from this ‘prestigious’ experience? Can you honestly say to the entire forum, that you would enjoy playing AC as a level 35 character, with only a few unlocked skills and none of your exotic armor and weapons?

Does that mail you received indicate that it should be at faceroll, almost afk difficulty?

Koi The Firebringer.6537:

IamDuddits.1692:

Problem is that old AC already taught a lot of players bad habits and now they are angry because they can’t AFK face tank Spider Queen while standing in her AoEs or completely ignore Kholer’s adds by pulling him down the stairs or burn Ghost Eater without any threat of taking damage.

I won’t say that the dungeon is perfect. It’s not. I still think it’s a joke that people run through trash mobs. A lot of the events are bugged. However, most of the complaints here aren’t about bugs (with the exception of a few posts). Most people are complaining that this dungeon isn’t “casual” friendly or isn’t an easy 15 min per path exotic/gold farm.

Dungeons, and dungeon rewards (exotic armor/weapons), are suppose to be a sign of prestige. Where is the prestige in something that any bad pug can obtain from doing one weeks worth of AC runs?

Another thing people are failing to grasp is that ANet has been, from the start, all about playing GW2 the way YOU want to play it. If you want gold/exotics, then there are many ways to get them besides running dungeons. You can craft gear as good as any of the dungeon sets. Want gold? World Events, DE, farming materials to sell on the TP, etc. You aren’t at any point required to run explorable dungeons and the story mode dungeons are easy enough so that you don’t miss out on any crucial lore.

Honestly, any prestige that could come from dungeon armor sets is negligible at this point because anyone with a weeks worth of time could’ve gotten any exotic set they wanted with minimal effort.

What you seem to miss is that Ascalonean Catacombs are designed for level 35 players, or so the in-game email and the door crier would have you believe. Are you suggesting that new players should be excluded from this ‘prestigious’ experience? Can you honestly say to the entire forum, that you would enjoy playing AC as a level 35 character, with only a few unlocked skills and none of your exotic armor and weapons?

Very well put!

I really would like to see this guy with a lvl 35 group enjoying the changes LOL.

Kanako Davis.5364:

I agree that the first dungeon should not be one of the harder ones but i strongly disagree that it is not possible to do with a lvl 35 group. You mentioned the spider queen AOE being very strong, well it should not matter if it is strong or not. Player who want to run a dungeon should at least know how to dodge and therefore the spider queen AOE should not be a problem.
I agree that AC might be a little too hard as the first dungeon but i think that most of the groups fail because they either are not particularly good players or they just don’t communicate. They expect to find 5 people and run through the dungeon without any communication. Then they fail and fail and fail and….after a lot of failing they complain about the game.

As for the build/equipment thing. If you’re playing with one build all the time and you don’t want to change it just because you want to play your style then you’re doing something wrong. You can’t just run around with your build all the time. You should adapt to situations and the skills of the mobs. – thats another reason why most groups fail IMO.

Yours is an opinion of an experienced player. I totally agree on dodging and avoiding the obvious red circles. But, like many other posters here, you seem to neglect the the new players, who are invited into the dungeon at level 30 only to be slaughtered there. How much fun do you think they have in there?

I did mention in my original post, that I happen to be a guild leader. We welcome new players and I personally introduce them to AC and try to teach them the game mechanics through these runs. Hovewer, after the recent update to AC I will be forced to stop this practice, as there is nothing fun and entertaining about getting killed a lot and then waiting on the floor for the rest of the team to decide your fate on your very first visit to a dungeon which is supposed to be your own level.

I will challenge you to play the new AC as a level 35 character with limited skills and whatever armor you gather from map exploration by the time you’re invited into the dungeon. Maybe you’ll share your experience then. To be continued?

I honestly can say that. I like hard content. I want something i need to work on. I don’t want to farm dungeons in 10 minutes but maybe i’m a hardcore player or i just want to torture myself i don’t know.
As mentioned above, i agree that AC is not the perfect entrance to the dungeon experience but i also think that people give up too easily.

EDIT: TBH i’ve been playing guardian since beta and i love it so i have a small advantage here. I just played a necromancer to level 40 and an elementalist to 30 so i just can tell you my very limited(in regards to other classes) point of view.
One thing to note though – melee is harder so ranged classes should not have a problem as long as there is at least 1 melee in the group.

Aden Celeste.3650:

I believe that the developers are having a hard time figuring out what the people want. Some say “ITS TOO EASY!” others say “ITS TOO HARD”. The problem is the definition of “difficulty” and “fun, and interesting”.

I dont think AC is difficult, my skills are more than enough to allow me to survive the entire run. But the constant knocks those gravelings do, the frustration of protecting the npc in path 1 with certain classes who dont drop the graveling burrows fast enough, the bugs that happen on p3 and p2, the increased HP for trash mobs and hatchlings…

Those things are NOT challenging, nor fun, nor interesting. It makes the normal player rage and leave. The elite players will say otherwise and spoonfeed their desire for ridiculous mechanics unto the majority of casual players.

Couldn’t agree with you more.

Koi The Firebringer.6537:

IamDuddits.1692:

Problem is that old AC already taught a lot of players bad habits and now they are angry because they can’t AFK face tank Spider Queen while standing in her AoEs or completely ignore Kholer’s adds by pulling him down the stairs or burn Ghost Eater without any threat of taking damage.

I won’t say that the dungeon is perfect. It’s not. I still think it’s a joke that people run through trash mobs. A lot of the events are bugged. However, most of the complaints here aren’t about bugs (with the exception of a few posts). Most people are complaining that this dungeon isn’t “casual” friendly or isn’t an easy 15 min per path exotic/gold farm.

Dungeons, and dungeon rewards (exotic armor/weapons), are suppose to be a sign of prestige. Where is the prestige in something that any bad pug can obtain from doing one weeks worth of AC runs?

Another thing people are failing to grasp is that ANet has been, from the start, all about playing GW2 the way YOU want to play it. If you want gold/exotics, then there are many ways to get them besides running dungeons. You can craft gear as good as any of the dungeon sets. Want gold? World Events, DE, farming materials to sell on the TP, etc. You aren’t at any point required to run explorable dungeons and the story mode dungeons are easy enough so that you don’t miss out on any crucial lore.

Honestly, any prestige that could come from dungeon armor sets is negligible at this point because anyone with a weeks worth of time could’ve gotten any exotic set they wanted with minimal effort.

What you seem to miss is that Ascalonean Catacombs are designed for level 35 players, or so the in-game email and the door crier would have you believe. Are you suggesting that new players should be excluded from this ‘prestigious’ experience? Can you honestly say to the entire forum, that you would enjoy playing AC as a level 35 character, with only a few unlocked skills and none of your exotic armor and weapons?

Yes, I would enjoy running AC on a 35 character. I draw satisfaction from the fact that I accomplished a challenging feat. Then again I’m also the type of person that thought Demon’s Souls was a fantastic game for just that exact reason. I’m also the type of tank that would chain pull in WoW dungeons to see how much aggro/damage I could sustain and the type of healer that would tell the tanks to do exactly that. Mind you these were LFG dungeons. Some people enjoy being challenged.

Old AC was not satisfying in anyway. You could AFK during some of the boss fights and still win. New AC, while far from perfect, at least requires you to think, coordinate, pay attention and learn.

People learn by being challenged, not by facerolling easy 10 minute paths. Old AC taught the player nothing through it’s mechanics. New AC succeeds in this respect by making it fairly obvious that you shouldn’t stand in red circles or that you should learn to dodge when you see a boss start glowing and doing an obvious charge-up.

I think all the boss fights, bugs aside, are a step in the right direction. The major problem areas I perceive being the P1/P3 graveling mound areas because they are very DPS dependent, which a ~35 lvl group might be lacking on.

Dungeons aren’t for everyone in the same way that WvWvW and sPvP aren’t for everyone. If you are incapable of learning from your mistakes, lack the desire, time or patience to improve your game play, or tend to blame repeated wipes on the incompetence of everyone in the group but yourself then dungeons might not be your thing. And an introductory dungeon is the best place for people to realize this rather than thinking they are superman because they facerolled through old AC.

I understand that some people want a challenge…but leave this level 35 dungeon the way it was before.
There are other dungeons which can be and are challenging…
I don’t understand…can’t at least one dungeon provide entertainment for lower levels and those who do not want to keep getting wiped over and over again…and for those who have no time to spend hours in it? AC was the only dungeon to which I could dedicate my free time, because it didn’t take ages to complete. It could have stayed the way it was.
And those who simply want a challenge can go do other dungeons, rather than this one…seriously, this is killing a lot of average players and new players who wish to experience the first explo dungeon.

Blur.3465:

I understand that some people want a challenge…but leave this level 35 dungeon the way it was before.
There are other dungeons which can be and are challenging…
I don’t understand…can’t at least one dungeon provide entertainment for lower levels and those who do not want to keep getting wiped over and over again…and for those who have no time to spend hours in it? AC was the only dungeon to which I could dedicate my free time, because it didn’t take ages to complete. It could have stayed the way it was.
And those who simply want a challenge can go do other dungeons, rather than this one…seriously, this is killing a lot of average players and new players who wish to experience the first explo dungeon.

And I could say for those that simply don’t have enough time to run a dungeon path that takes longer than 15 mins they can do DE and World events or any of the Orr Temple Chain events. What does “experiencing” the first explorable dungeon mean? Do you mean an easy farming area? Is that the old AC experience?

I’ve yet to see any argument as to how old AC was fine. Old AC was a simple dungeon that taught nothing. It lacked meaningful mechanics aside from a few dodge-or-die attacks. Other than that you could stand in AoEs and face tank bosses all day.

New AC has meaningful mechanics, but apparently an off-putting difficulty. Maybe instead of crying that they should change it back to your easy mode piggy bank, you could give useful suggestions on how they could make a simple dungeon that still teaches new players how to dodge, kite, avoid AoEs, work as a team, and handle adds properly. These are all things that new AC does that old AC either didn’t do or did poorly.

IamDuddits.1692:

Blur.3465:

I understand that some people want a challenge…but leave this level 35 dungeon the way it was before.
There are other dungeons which can be and are challenging…
I don’t understand…can’t at least one dungeon provide entertainment for lower levels and those who do not want to keep getting wiped over and over again…and for those who have no time to spend hours in it? AC was the only dungeon to which I could dedicate my free time, because it didn’t take ages to complete. It could have stayed the way it was.
And those who simply want a challenge can go do other dungeons, rather than this one…seriously, this is killing a lot of average players and new players who wish to experience the first explo dungeon.

And I could say for those that simply don’t have enough time to run a dungeon path that takes longer than 15 mins they can do DE and World events or any of the Orr Temple Chain events. What does “experiencing” the first explorable dungeon mean? Do you mean an easy farming area? Is that the old AC experience?

I’ve yet to see any argument as to how old AC was fine. Old AC was a simple dungeon that taught nothing. It lacked meaningful mechanics aside from a few dodge-or-die attacks. Other than that you could stand in AoEs and face tank bosses all day.

New AC has meaningful mechanics, but apparently an off-putting difficulty. Maybe instead of crying that they should change it back to your easy mode piggy bank, you could give useful suggestions on how they could make a simple dungeon that still teaches new players how to dodge, kite, avoid AoEs, work as a team, and handle adds properly. These are all things that new AC does that old AC either didn’t do or did poorly.

If I wanted to do that, I would have done it ages ago. I love doing dungeons, in fact I am only missing two paths in Arah for the complete achievement.
I wasn’t running AC for ’’farming’’, I was running it for the fun of it.
And to be honest, Kholer and other bosses DID require you to dodge and use your brain, as well as graveling KD (when they started ’’eating’’ you). As far as I know, even this was hard for some people.
I am not asking the dungeons to be ‘’Oh brain afk mode, just stand there and hit". No. I like when the dungeon makes you think. But I don’t understand how can it be ’’educative’’ and ’’interesting’’ when you end up tossed all over the room by gravelings which now have insane KD and to protect a weakling NPC in same time? Even with stability, it’s fairly, fairly hard…
Well experienced level 35’s might stand a chance here…but new players without a guide just won’t be able to go through this.

And like I’ve said in my previous posts, it would be ideal to add Hard mode to dungeons with better rewards compared to Normal mode. That would satisfy those who crave for challenge and those who are average players.

Blur.3465:

snip

There we go. Your post is so much easier to empathize with when you actually give specific examples of dislikes about the dungeon rather than saying the old one was better.

I’ll list some comments on the bosses and overall dungeon (some of this is summed up by another poster):

Queen Spider
-Spiderlings are fine. The added HP was needed because they died to the point of being negligible before. Their ranged attack, while devastating, can be easily mitigated with projectile reflection.
-The AoE and immobilize are the largest threat of dying. This fight is meant to be more centered around condition management than direct damage mitigation.

Overall I think this fight was an improvement. I don’t think there is really any argument that Queen Spider was a complete joke in old AC.

Kholer
-You can’t cheese his adds anymore by pulling him down the stairs. His adds have less HP and are used as CC to set up his Scorpion Wire. This fight is meant to teach new players to manage the adds before focusing the boss.
-Basic tank n spank with a dodge-or-die mechanic. The dodge has enough build to to see it coming and dodge or cast stability.

I think the spawned adds took a bland fight and made it into an interesting fight. Mind you they also decreased both Kholer and the adds hit points which also made it a less tedious fight. Improvement overall.

Troll
As another poster said, this is an improvement overall. Only real annoying ability is the AoE fear that is seemingly unavoidable but it generally isn’t a problem unless you engage him with adds.

Howling King
-This fight is all about add management. The knockdown from the gravelings, in my opinion, make this fight more difficult than the boss himself.

I like the direction of this fight. The seemingly random aggro makes this mechanic more complicated than it should be: (4 people DPS the boss while one person holds aggro on the mobs and kites them into the AoEs). You also need to dodge more frequently which means you need to manage your endurance. Improvement overall.

Ghost Eater
-As with spider queen this fight teaches you to avoid the AoEs. These are the biggest cause of wipes on this fight.
-The ghost busters mechanic is a nice touch, but does require reasonable coordination for success.

Overall and improvement over old ACs AFK tank n spank. Of the three I think he’s probably the most noob friendly simply because the only real threat of dying is from standing in his AoE. You have all the time in the world to charge up those traps.

Colossus Rumblus
-Bugs aside, I think this is a great mechanic for teaching new players to pay attention to their surroundings. Once they fix Grast and his bubble I think this will be a good fight.

I think this fight is an improvement over the old CR which was a less forgiving version of HK.

The bosses as a whole I think utilize more mechanics now than they did before. I’d go so far as to say the bosses are not what makes this dungeon difficult for new players, but rather the events are.

Events
-Path 1 and Path 3 graveling mounds could use a revamp. These events are too much alike and too heavily dependent on DPS more than anything. If a group of 35s with 35 gear are in these events I’d venture to guess they would hit a road block here. I’d like to see these events unique from one another and be less of a dps race.

-Path 2 I think is in a fine difficulty range.

Trash
-I still feel trash is too easily skipped. If content is skipped then it might as well be removed. From a new player perspective it’s an unintuitive mechanic and it’s a poor attempt to artificially lengthen clear times for dungeons. It adds no challenge overall.

-Stalker mechanics are overall a nice change up. The main problem is when the AoE knock back procs evasion when hitting pets and NPCs. This needs to be changed because as we all know NPCs and pets make no effort to avoid/dodge AoE. Essentially if you run this with a Ranger you will be spending a lot of time with Stalkers evading attacks.

I’d be interested to see what aspects old AC did better. You touched on some briefly, but I’d say that the update has improved upon these mechanics. Furthermore, I think that AC should be an easier dungeon but not an easy dungeon. A successful intro dungeon should provide enough of a challenge so that new players realize that they need to switch skills up, change playstyle and have an overall basic understanding of their class. Just from personal experience running with pugs I get the impression that a lot of players want the dungeon adjusted to their playstyle rather than adjust their playstyle to the dungeon.

IamDuddits.1692:

Blur.3465:

snip

There we go. Your post is so much easier to empathize with when you actually give specific examples of dislikes about the dungeon rather than saying the old one was better.

I’ll list some comments on the bosses and overall dungeon (some of this is summed up by another poster):

Queen Spider
-Spiderlings are fine. The added HP was needed because they died to the point of being negligible before. Their ranged attack, while devastating, can be easily mitigated with projectile reflection.
-The AoE and immobilize are the largest threat of dying. This fight is meant to be more centered around condition management than direct damage mitigation.

Overall I think this fight was an improvement. I don’t think there is really any argument that Queen Spider was a complete joke in old AC.

Kholer
-You can’t cheese his adds anymore by pulling him down the stairs. His adds have less HP and are used as CC to set up his Scorpion Wire. This fight is meant to teach new players to manage the adds before focusing the boss.
-Basic tank n spank with a dodge-or-die mechanic. The dodge has enough build to to see it coming and dodge or cast stability.

I think the spawned adds took a bland fight and made it into an interesting fight. Mind you they also decreased both Kholer and the adds hit points which also made it a less tedious fight. Improvement overall.

Troll
As another poster said, this is an improvement overall. Only real annoying ability is the AoE fear that is seemingly unavoidable but it generally isn’t a problem unless you engage him with adds.

Howling King
-This fight is all about add management. The knockdown from the gravelings, in my opinion, make this fight more difficult than the boss himself.

I like the direction of this fight. The seemingly random aggro makes this mechanic more complicated than it should be: (4 people DPS the boss while one person holds aggro on the mobs and kites them into the AoEs). You also need to dodge more frequently which means you need to manage your endurance. Improvement overall.

Ghost Eater
-As with spider queen this fight teaches you to avoid the AoEs. These are the biggest cause of wipes on this fight.
-The ghost busters mechanic is a nice touch, but does require reasonable coordination for success.

Overall and improvement over old ACs AFK tank n spank. Of the three I think he’s probably the most noob friendly simply because the only real threat of dying is from standing in his AoE. You have all the time in the world to charge up those traps.

Colossus Rumblus
-Bugs aside, I think this is a great mechanic for teaching new players to pay attention to their surroundings. Once they fix Grast and his bubble I think this will be a good fight.

I think this fight is an improvement over the old CR which was a less forgiving version of HK.

The bosses as a whole I think utilize more mechanics now than they did before. I’d go so far as to say the bosses are not what makes this dungeon difficult for new players, but rather the events are.

I’d be interested to see what aspects old AC did better. You touched on some briefly, but I’d say that the update has improved upon these mechanics. Furthermore, I think that AC should be an easier dungeon but not an easy dungeon. A successful intro dungeon should provide enough of a challenge so that new players realize that they need to switch skills up, change playstyle and have an overall basic understanding of their class. Just from personal experience running with pugs I get the impression that a lot of players want the dungeon adjusted to their playstyle rather than adjust their playstyle to the dungeon.

In my opinion

Spider Queen – poison op and cover too large area.

Kholer is ok.

Troll ok.

Howling King not too bad, too many adds and kd imo but not really bad.

Ghost Eater – Terrible, boring, Im not runing p2 anymore because of those stupid guns I HAVE to use.

Colossus as even you said bugged so at the moment crap, need to see working first.

Burrows as you said as well depends too much only on DPS especially for a lvl 35 group.

I would like to see a positive post from someone that actually ran all paths on a lvl 35 group with lvl 35 gear, did you do it by any chance? I doubt it …

I think they should keep the old AC and add the new AC as Expert mode, which gives you some extra tokens for ascended gear. The old AC is still a nicely balanced dungeon for new/casual/low-level players, why just dispose it? What a waste. More options is always better than none. This is an MMO and this should be what you do to meet the needs of a large variety of players.

Morpheus.6401:

snip

I have not done the dungeon on a 35 yet. In all honesty, I’d be surprised to find a full group of level 35s running AC unless it’s a group of people that you already know, which would not be a standard pug anyways. I’d be happy to post my input on my level 35 Engineer (whom I’ve yet to master) after I run the dungeon.

Also could you please elaborate on what Old AC did better? Was face tanking Ghost Eater really better mechanics wise? Notice I don’t mean easier, it’s rather obvious that old GE was a joke.

I have some responses to your other comments:

-Queen Spider: Poison OP? So is condition removal.
-Ghost Eater: While a nice change-up I think it gets old quick. Either length the debuff from the trap, lower the charge up from 3 to 2, lower his HP, add a nuke from the trap as well etc. The main problem here is that I find most people kite GE to the trap, then attack him and just use #1 on the guns to charge up the trap. It’s just easier. I still think this mechanic is better than old GE, which had absolutely no mechanic.

If they can’t manage the cond. removal CD & in low health, hide behind the gate wall (the narrow area where people fall if they miss the jump to the top of the pillar) The queen won’t chase you in there and you can manage the little spiders if they follow you.

But it’s pretty bad scenario if all 5 of you are in there.

I’ve just been into the new AC. Well done Arena, you’ve turned a fun way of spending an hour or so with my mates into a masochists’ death-fest. If this had been my first dungeon I wouldn’t have bothered with any others, even though the game is structured more and more around dungeon tokens. At the moment the other dungeons are available and are a lot more fun…..at the moment.

In the words from AD&D “the purpose of the game is to have fun and socialise”. Perhaps Arena should remember that not everyone wants to bang their head against a wall for entertainment.

Agfor.6213:

I’ve just been into the new AC. Well done Arena, you’ve turned a fun way of spending an hour or so with my mates into a masochists’ death-fest. If this had been my first dungeon I wouldn’t have bothered with any others, even though the game is structured more and more around dungeon tokens. At the moment the other dungeons are available and are a lot more fun…..at the moment.

In the words from AD&D “the purpose of the game is to have fun and socialise”. Perhaps Arena should remember that not everyone wants to bang their head against a wall for entertainment.

You can’t socialize running DEs, World Bosses, Farming Zones, running Fractals, WvWvW, sPvP, doing Guild Missions, doing Story Mode, getting achievements, doing jump puzzles or clearing for World Completion?

Are you so selfish that you expect them to cater every aspect of the game to such a single-minded demographic of people that expect the rewards (a majority of which have craftable equivalents) to be handed to them on a silver platter because they dislike a challenge?

Omer.5096:

You have guaranteed rares from several world events.

100% fiction. Rares are not guaranteed at these events. We all know that.

Omer.5096:

Each rare is worth between 25 and 35 silver and through salvaging, you can easily match or exceed this profit through ectos.

Ectos are not guaranteed from salvaging. In fact, many salvages yield NO ECTOS, especially rares.

Omer.5096:

With laurels, you have a guaranteed income of at least 2 gold/5 laurels from the 10 dye pack as well as having access to coin/karma/exp boosters, which were previously only available through the gem shop or BLC.

Are you actually suggesting that those random dye packs contain dyes worth up to 2g? Laughable…

Omer.5096:

Open world drops have never been better (which is not saying much granted) however, just by getting my daily gatherer achievement in Orr, I can pick up between 7 and 12 Heavy Moldy Bags, which is ~30 silver (~3s/ea on TP post) profit right there. That doesn’t include the T5 and T6 mats that drop along with the random porous bones + whites/blues/greens.

Oh, I know! I don’t know what we would do without all the vendor trash that make up the largest proportion of the drops in Orr by a very wide margin.

Omer.5096:

Finally, the biggest money maker in the game, CoF P1, hasn’t been touched

Well, that’s just grand. So we grind ONE dungeon for decent drops while ArenaNet has spent countless resources creating a huge and persistent world. Let’s just call the game “Citadel of Flame”, then.

Omer.5096:

Money has never been easier to come by. The fact is that most high level stuff, outside of precursors, have been dropping in price. Lodestones have come down 10-15%, T6 mats have come down around 10%, pearl exotics have never been cheaper, ecto is down 15-20%, many sigils/runes are down 10-20%, etc etc.

These items needed to come down anyway as they were astronomically priced and getting worse. These prices are now approaching “healthy” levels, not “discounted” levels, as you are intimating.

The “reasons” you cite above are not only half-truths, but have absolutely nothing to do with AC, which is the subject of this thread.

It is common knowledge that AC was the easiest dungeon in the game, and therefore, the most expedient way to obtain a full set of exotic gear WITHOUT GOING TO THE TP, and that’s was the “problem” from a corporate standpoint. If I had a dollar for every player I have seen with AC gear, I would be developing my own game company by now. AC was a leak that needed plugging and the simplest way to accomplish this was to festoon the AC experience with artificial difficulty and discourage and/or slow down the flow of tokens from that particular dungeon. It makes perfect sense from their end, but from a player’s standpoint, we are now left with an ostensible “level 35” dungeon that is clearly no longer a “beginner” dungeon.

my entire guild has pretty much decided that ac is not worth the effort and i have just given up on mediocre dungeons in this game. i actually thought the idea of this game was for fun arenanet!

Wait, people are having problems with knockdown here? How? I’ve run through that place on my Ranger and my Guardian and I’ve almost never gotten knocked down. Are people forgetting to dodge or something?

I tried this with an “at level group” or as close to it as we can get. It’s not do-able. I really wanted a true 35 group, but hardly anyone was insane enough to try it so it wound up with me being the only 35 and the rest were 40-48 range. Would like to point out all of us have done the new version of it as lvl 80’s a few times so we knew exactly what to expect and how it all should go down.
Here’s how it went:

Spider Queen- After carefully picking away the traps and little spiders (we wiped twice from the little spiders alone before we figured out we needed to keep kiting them backwards and killing them all the way back to the priory camp, because going to the bottom as 35’s is suicide at best) we wiped another 10 times on the spider queen alone. It was not noob wipes where people would get downed immediately and the rest die trying to rez them, it was 1 shot downs most of the time, or else we blew all our dodges/cc/condition removals and the poison finally got us. After all of those wipes we finally managed to beat her by shoving her so far back into a wall apparently she no longer had line of sight with us and wouldn’t hit us half the time but we could hit her with aoe’s. Ok Spider done.

On to Kohler:
1st 2 attempts, ran into the troll, insta death there, not possible as 35’s even if you time dodges perfectly on his slam his ranged interrupt attack now shuts the party down and does enough dmg to a lowbie level that you die from that alone. After picking our way around the troll we managed to do pretty well against kohler except when more than 1 mesmer add was there or a necro add, those usually resulted in wipes because it was either dodge them or kohler and eventually one would get us. A lowbie team simply cannot burn the adds fast enough <continued below>

Once kohler was done (and again I’ll say that fight was epic fun, but if you just get unlucky spawns a lowbie team can’t get those adds fast enough they need lowered hp or def or something) it was on to the graveling mound room (we tried path 1 first). We had an ele so we had access to conjured weapons, and we managed to get some of the mounds gone pretty much like we did in old AC, no problem there, but once we started getting knocked around it only took a few seconds for the graveligns to turn their attention on the npc and it was over. They weren’t even near him but once they had us bouncing like a dredge in a room full of rubber balls they would head directly for him. Only takes them a few seconds to finish him off. We never got past that part on that path. On to path 2, similar results with the first 2 bosses but we made it after numerous wipes, then the chain traps. It started off ok, but it became pretty hard to see the scavenger circles and it soon turned into another bouncefest. We had to literally rely on Detha to blow all her own bomb traps, sacrifice one player at a time to kite until we were down to a single chain puller, but we finally got it done. On to ghost/trap room:
Wasn’t happening. All I’m gonna say about that. No matter how hard we tried, no matter what tactic or trick we used, there was just no way to get through those ghosts at that low of a level, so we never found out if the boss was do-able (although having done him as an 80 I would bet he is, I love that fight, it’s a blast and the mechanics are amazing, bugs aside- but just CC spam him and he un-bugs, big deal).

We only started path 3 and just finished kohler before we ran into the troll again and called it quits, because at this point we had been doing it for close to 5 hours. So if this is the intended design of this dungeon now…either need to rename it to an 80, or gods rest the souls of those lowbies dumb enough to try it. THIS IS NOT A LVL 35 DUNGEON.

Just return from first run after update. Unrealistically difficult, without bugs it impossible to complete. It was my first and last time at AC. Thanks Anet for pushing out casual players.

You got 8 more dungeons to run, son.

Iehova.9518:

You got 8 more dungeons to run, son.

All others dungeons I went for several times, all paths – it much more easy than its supposed to be “35 lvl dungeon”.

SchuKadaj.7926:

Effect.6408:

Next they’ll make Kohler a mandatory fight.

see everyone ditch AC beyond storymode will be the next step then? except for achievement hunters

Yep all this did for my Guild of 500 players was to stop everyone doing it, if that was Anets plan great job, now you cant get a guild run of AC and no one even tries it.

Even though my review of a lvl 35 team was grim news, I would like to add I have done this at lvl 80 just fine, and on one of the classes that this dungeon hates on most, a necro. So all the people complaining about it being impossible at 80 didn’t devote the time to actually learn it. I will be the first to admit I QQ’d about it when it first came out, you can prob even see my whinefest in the first few threads, but I ate my words, sucked it up, and learned the dungeon. Are there bugs that make some parts really freaking hard? Indeed. But I doubt they are just going to leave it “as is”. It will be fixed. I find many of the fights more engaging and less mind numbing like they used to be. Yes they are freaking hard even not bugged, but they are not impossible. So suck it up buttercups and start practicing. The only disappointment I have with the new dungeon is them continuing to insists it’s a lvl 35 dungeon (see my 2 post rant above).

There’s a group in another thread that did this with a full level 35 group and no wipes. All of them new to the profession they played, and none of them knew each other prior to it. They have a video of the run. There’s also a video of a naked run up. The notion it’s impossible for on level people to complete it, is false. It has been done.

Path 3 prior to the latest patch was actually fun as it was. It required me to pay attention and move around while not getting knocked on the head. So what is it now? Stand in bubble and range attack, keep his defiant down so you can interupt when npc fails, or stack in one of the exploit spots. This is one fight that wasnt broken.

Well, I must confess I’ve run path 1 a few times with success now. Is it “hard”? Yeah, I definitely have to pay attention, and the entire group did wipe a time or two, but it’s definitely doable. I’ll also say the groups I ran with had at least 3 80’s in them as well. I was happy to help how I could, continue learning about how my profession works in group play, and be along for the ride.

All in all, I like for dungeons to be challenging like this, but I do think it’s weird that the lowest level dungeon in the game is this challenging. But yeah, if Explorable mode is intended by ANet as the highest level of PvE content, then I can’t complain about it. As long as I understand that is their intention I’m fine with this dungeon, and have plans to conquer the other 2 paths.

For all those people complaining your guild won’t do an AC run with you because they find it too challenging:

Find a better guild.

Here’s a c/c of what I posted in the sticky thread, since this one focuses only on AC :

Alright, time to post here. I will only talk about revamped AC, since it’s the major news. I waited to do it many times, over and over, to post a complete and thought feedback, not an emotional one.
Here we go :

- Globally, I think it’s a great success. It’s a turning point to what dungeons should have always been : very fast and easy for good and coordinated players, very fast wipes for bad players. Off went tedious fights with so many HP !

- Spiders : I like the change, now they are more dangerous, but still not so much, they fit perfectly, if you ignore them, you’ll die, but if you kill them, it’s easy.

- Graveling Hatchlings : Hmmm it’s kinda 50/50. I like the idea of making them more dangerous and a bit tougher but I think it’s a bit too much. Let’s say they had 2 ouf of 10 in HP./toughness (survivability) before and they had 2 out of 10 in damage (just imagine, just a matter of comparison).
Now, they sit around 8/10 for both survivability (especially) and damage.
I think either of those two stats should be lowered a bit between its initial and current value.
The best, imo, would be to lower their survivability around 4-6 to be perfectly balanced.

- Adds knocking down : Well, it’s kinda puzzling/disappointing to lose control of your character, especially in the final corridor to p1 boss, but I like this change, makes it more interesting in the process of destroying burrows.

-Spider Queen : Love it. Definitely. Can be killed so quickly, but can kill you very quickly if you’re foolish enough to stay in the cone AOE, or fall asleep in the poison AOE. Perfect boss now as it is.

- Kholer : I like the changes of having to fight with adds at the same time. I especially like the changes to his survivability as well. It’s just a shame that now, even more players skip him but meh, Anet isn’t responsible for players’ being idiots.

- Troll : I love the change to the jump attack, it’s very nice. Yet, I feel that spamming daze bolts AND fear are too much. Now he’s not that dangerous, he’s just annoying. I would say either remove fear (not best idea) or reduce rate at which he spams daze bolts. Or, last idea, have them be easier to nullify like making them reflectable. It’s the only problem.

- Boss path 1 : very nice and interesting. As for the Queen Spider, perfect boss, very funny (“hey come at me bro, ha ha you died in fire AOE noob !”). Keep as it is.

- Boss path 2 : I won’t talk too much about him since I don’t know exactly how he’s supposed to be. There seems to be many bugs around him so wait for that. Still, I like the ghostbuster like fight. Interesting

- Boss path 3 : I like it globally speaking. The rocks falling are very funny now. There needs to be some improvements to NPC’s behaviour but I know it will be fixed so wait and see. Also I don’t know if we’re supposed to be able to interrupt the scream while he has defiant stacks because if you can’t and NPC is dead, it’s impossible to keep interrupting him since he spams like hell (if he is interrupted). For the moment, lots of players just use “safe spots” but these are obviously not intended and need a fix. I’d like to have either a reliable Grast or an interuptable scream even with defiant stacks.
Also, I think his melee might use a slight nerf : bleeding and vulnerability and damage is quite a lot. He’s pretty melee-hostile now. Maybe have him be less agressive at melee and have another way to attack ranged players as well.

That’s it !
TL;DR: Very good changes ! Keep on the good work ! I would just see minor tweaks for a few (graveling hatchlings, boss path 3 and troll) but this is getting very interesting. I hope other dungeons will be revamped in the same quality

Guys, you must remember that this dungeon is first for most players..many of them not even in guild. Only this is important. Why Anet done first dungeon so hard?

The story mode is first. The explorable mode is meant to be noticeably more challenging, and so ANet should not turn the explorable into an easy experience just because it’s the first dungeon in terms of story progression.