Guild Wars 2

RyuDragnier.9476:

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?

You don’t have issues with knockdowns on 2 professions with the best access to Stability? This is my surprised face.

You still can dodge most of the knockdowns without stability. You just have to time it right. Well and other classes do have stability too and if you’re one of the unlucky classes with elite stability only you could ask your guardian (party)friend to help you out with it in some situations.

Hate depending on idiotic NPC’s who take 5 hit’s on them while casting 1! Right after we revive them the attack the boss like idiots with 1/2 hp!

There is more, the NPC’s are so stupid that they need to finish their auto attack long-as-hell-cast rather than put a protective bubble.

I find the fight itself good but 2 hours of wiping becouse the stupid NPC won’t put down the bubble it rather use auto atack and die is so stupid id hurts my eyes…

I’m a casual PvE player and my friends and I tried the first exploration path of the new AC over the weekend.

I will be the first to state that we’re not min/maxers/career players and are definately not the best players in the game.

We are, however, a group of friends who have been playing various MMORPGs for almost ten years and usually can figure things out.

We’ve done all the dungeons in story mode at least once, not without team wipes or difficulty but always been able to finish. We’ve done a couple of the later exploration paths successfully as well.

AC path 1 was so frustrating for us, we’re now reluctant to even bother with running dungeons much anymore which is not a good effect.

At any rate, to get into more detail:

The Spider Queen and Koheler were both very challenging and somewhat frustrating at first but ultimately effective strategies were worked out and we were successful. (We didn’t even have the Troll spawn to help.)

Then we got to the phase where we needed to defend the NPC from the gravelings (with the burrows) and it was an afternoon of frustration.

Our team makeup was 2 warriors, a ranger, thief and a necromancer.

1. We spent probably 3 hours on this part and never succeeded. Our fifth player (the second warrior) had some experience with the dungeon. It did not help.

2. We tried a number of different tactics and some of them seemed to work, up to a point. Some of the issues appear to be bugs (listed below).

3. The NPC just kinda stands there, yet in the previous encounter, he actually fights. I know he’s supposed to be ‘studying’ in this encounter but at the very least he should do some studying animations and perhaps make some effort to move away from attackers.

Possible Bugs/Issues:

1. A number of times, players fighting a burrow got moved to the other side of a closed door which pretty much meant that the encounter would fail.

2. Ranged players (ranger/thief with pistols) attacking burrows often got ‘obscured’ messages making the encounter much more difficult than it should be. Melee weapons worked ok (especially non-targeted ones) but more vulnerable classes not being able to stay ranged is a problem.

3. The knockdown the gravelings do takes the player (or NPC) out of action for a rather long time and the fact that they can chain this effect is just frustrating. (A number of MMOs put a special buff on a character when effects like this are applied that makes then immune to another application of it for a short time window – 30 or 60 seconds.)

4. We tried a number of tactics including particular players ‘guarding’ the NPC. Oddly, the warriors had a lot of problems holding aggro with large groups of gravelings. Ranger did not have this issue. Not sure if this is intended.

Parting Thoughts/Suggestions:

1. If there is a working strategy for the encounter (and obviously there is since others succeed), it should be a little easier to discover. Some kind of clue somewhere maybe.

2. There are definately some issues for some classes (targeting burrows, players being pushed beyond a closed door).

3. Ideally, dungeons should be designed to be able to be completed with various class combinations, varying player abilities (casual, experts, newbies), varying gear, varying skills and should be able to be done with everyone “at level”. I realize, as a software engineer myself, that this is a tall order with the sheer number of combinations but this should be an goal that ArenaNet strives for.

I like the new AC mostly, but there are a few things that just seem a bit off. (I’ve only done path 1 & 3 a couple of times so far.)

In general, there seems to be an incredible number of attacks in AC – particularly from the various gravelings – that stun, knock down or knock back. A few too many imho. For example if you get caught in a chain of those attacks you are in a world of trouble.
I know about the problem so my utilities always include a stun breaker and/or stability. Even then these can be on a cooldown and i’m back to being a billiard ball. Even worse for someone who doesn’t know about this or doesn’t have one availlable yet because of a low level and therefore lack of skillpoints. They will find this tremendously frustrating. Having to watch your character flung across the room for some time, then being downed/dead is not fun.

Another problem is how hard some of the (new) attacks hit. An example is the spider queen. Yes, pre-changes she was too easy, but now the poison fields are a bit too much (again imho). If you are downed while in one of the fields, it usually means you’re dead. Because anyone trying to revive you in time will be downed by the field as well.
I know “why did you get caught in there anyway?”. Simply put: It happens.
Same reason why Kohler might get you with his harpoon attack thingy. You know the tell, you know you have to dodge, and still even the best player – which I most certainly am not, granted – will be caught in it from time to time.
Maybe you simply botch the dodge, maybe you are stunned by an add (in Kohler’s case), maybe you are already down due to spider hatchlings or the queen singling you out beforehand and then the field drops on top of you. As I said: It happens.

Giving the troll ranged attack options that hit this hard is another thing I quite don’t comprehend. Especially the shockwave thingy because it can down a character with the first hit.

However, the thing that bothers me most is the final boss in path 3. I’ve seen many wiped groups and frustrated players on this one because the npc warmaster just doesn’t throw up the shielding bubble in time for the cave in.
As far as I can tell he has some sort of charge up atack with his hammer, and if he’s doing that one when the cave in starts, he won’t abort that to cast the shield. The first volley of rocks will knock him down as well, delaying the shield even further. Add in a knockback or a second volley of rocks knocking down the warmaster and you have a recipe for major headaches.
By the time the shield finally comes up – if the warmaster actually survived all that plus the cleave damage he might have taken due to the fact that he enters melee combat with the boss – one to five player characters will already be down or dead.
The scenario get’s worse if you don’t down the boss in your first try. The shielding ability seems to be even more out of synch with the cave in on later tries. In addition, in 8 out of 10 cases the warmaster will immediately after his revive charge the boss while still at 50% HP, thus increasing the risk of a downed warmaster just before a cave in starts. Or even worse, with the first volley of falling rocks downing the warmaster.

I did new AC p3 with 4 players, we were experienced players that had never done that path, took like 30 minutes and nobody ever died. Guess we are elitists.

Vorch.2985:

• AC got a lot more challenging. This is no longer a level 35 dungeon

I agree with this. I feel bad for anyone new to the game who tries this, especially with a pug group. A bit of a harsh intro to exp dungeons if you’re not familiar with them.

I really don’t mind most of the changes that were made, that being said, I’m never going in there again if it’s not a full guild run. I have no problems running it with guildmates but I’ve tried to go in there since the patch with full pug groups and only finished any instance 2 out of 5 attempts.

I tried path 1 twice with lvl 80 pugs the other day. 2 of them being elementalists. the outcome was no matter what we couldnt finish the burrows in path 1. which usually have been easy with 1 elementalist in the group before the update.

the players in the group wasnt really good, I admit that, however, there is way too many knock downs compared to the stability and stun breakers everyone have.
and whats up with the kitten mobs that focus on the npcs the moment they spawn from the burrow and dont want to aggro on anything else despite being hit and nearly killed ????++

to do path 1 you need a regular group. pugs wount do, especially now that there is few people left to do the dungeon and less skilled.

path 2 is fubar and path 3 is the only good and quick path to do nowdays. the new mechanics of the boss isnt so bad. if the npc with the bubble worked properly the path would be great.

spider queen is a problem with all the heavy hitting aoe attacks if you have low lvl characters in the party. they die quickly and you cant even heal them inside hte aoe area without dying yourself. 2 people wasnt enough to heal a lvl 41 guardian, we were only able to keep him alive in downed state while losing our own hp. except from that the new spider queen isnt so much more difficult than hte old one.

Path 2 needs to be fixed! We did an AC run last night and it went smoothly with the usual number of deaths now and then, but my god…Fighting the Ghost Eater now has never been more frustrating than before! Keeping him busy is one thing, but him resetting at random places and his regen is just too much. We brought him down to literally nothing, but out of nowhere, he just decides to reset and gain ALL OF HIS HEALTH BACK!

My suggestion is to nerf the regen on this guy (Because it took a long time to even get the traps settled, nobody needs to be slowed down by an undying boss), and fix this reset problem. We almost wanted to quit after seeing him jump from zero to full health out of nowhere.

I went through the new AC a few days ago with some guildies, I usually run dungeons with pugs but this was just to check out the new content.

We got through all 3 paths, wiped at the spider once, nothing noteworthy except that path 2 (ghostbusters scene) was nothing but annoying, and tedious, This may sound crazy, but I would often welcome a path of AC every now and then, even used it for levelling up my warrior from 53-80, now I just couldn’t care less for it.

I did all 2 paths yesterday on my level 40 guardian (turned 40 after).
Path 2 was first.
- Wiped at Spider Queen & Adds
- Skipped Kholer
- 4-manned Breeder traps
- Boss glitched (was stuck)
- Managed to free the boss after 10 minutes…
- Owned boss
CONCLUSION:

• Nerf Spider Queen.
• Nerf Spider Queen adds.
• Kholer should be deleted.
• Final boss shouldn’t glitch.

Path 1 was second.
- Wiped by Spider Queen & Adds
- Hodgins & Burrows: 5 tries:
> 1 defending Hodgins, rest killing burrows; Hodgins died
> 1 defending Hodgins, rest killing burrows; Hodgins died
> 2 defending Hodgins, rest killing burrows; Hodgins died
> 2 defending Hodgins, rest killing burrows; Hodgins died (CLOSE)
> Went for my elementalist (lvl 80): Success
- Managed Scepter pieces easily
- 3 people died in the tunnel toward final boss.
- Retry: 2 people died in the tunnel
- Final try: we portalled everyone to the end of the tunnel with mesmer
- Final boss got killed easily.
CONCLUSION:

• Nerf Spider Queen
• Nerf Spider Queen adds
• Give Hodgins more health
• Make the Gravelings in tunnel weaker.

Total Review:

• Worse than before
• Path 2 easier
• Path 1 harder
• Can’t complete with low levels (had to switch to elementalist for path 1)

Extra information:
All my partymembers were level 80 with full exotics. I went on level 40 guardian for 2nd path, had to go on my own level 80 with full exotics for 1st.

kitten YOU ANET
/vent
AC is now stressful as hell, and after i get my 300th token i will NEVER RUN IT AGAIN – EVER.
I hate it now, and ive done each new path atleast 3 times each, and the old paths 50+ times.

One person i just ran with said ‘I didnt die this much, even on fractals 36’
And this was with a fairly balanced group of 80’s in full exotics.

This is the first dungeon, and probably second most popular, and in one fell swoop you manged to drive new players away from dungeons and drastically cut the AC population. Good work.

in my opinion:
9/10 for the ideas
2/10 for testing and implementation

overall, the new AC is a big disappointment, but nothing i didn’t expect
(thinking about when gast was dead from meleeing some mobs and the boss spammed happily the impossible to stay alive rock rain)
tip: sometimes i am glad some safe spots are missed by the aoe, you can actually finish your dungeon without depending on an unreliable NPC ! )

AC is totaly horrible now. Even after month full 80lvl exotic grupe is able to fail even on spider quine. Please make some changes. Dungeons can be more challenging but it does not mean that 70% of grupes have to fail.

Yesterday, I ran AC exp path 2 with 2 80s, a level 45, and… a random level 30 ele who had never been to the new AC before. We cleared the dungeon in just over an hour with no wipes.

Yes, the fact that one of the 80s was a mesmer, the other a guardian, and the 45 was a mesmer made it easier. However, said guardian also three-manned path 3 with a warrior and a thief. So having a ton of mesmers/guardians isn’t necessary.

For Spider Queen:
-The Queen and all the extra spiders spawn when all the level 2/3 spiders are dead. Therefore, proceed carefully, killing the spiders in the back of the room first without aggroing the ones at the doorway. Once you’ve cleared out as many as possible, along with the gargoyle heads, kill the last lowbie spider to spawn her.
-Anyone with a projectile nullifier (eles with focus air 4 or aurasharing and Magnetic Aura, mesmers, guardians, theives with smokescreen, lucky engis) should slot it. Take turns using the blocks so they don’t all get wasted at once- when one block is about to go down, step in and put another up. Meanwhile, focus down the little spiders one by one.
-When all of the little spiders are gone, go for the Queen. Dodge out of poison the moment it appears- projectile blockers do destroy the poison shots if you can place them. If a melee gets immobilized, jump in and cure them. If you’re uncomfortable going melee, use a ranged weapon.

The hardest part was the troll, though he wasn’t so much dangerous as annoying due to fear and daze spam. His waves can also be blocked like projectiles, or you can hide behind a pillar between attacks. I suspect they can also be dodged with the right timing.

Kholer isn’t an issue if you focus down his adds while keeping an eye on him in case of a pull- he actually pulls less now to make up for the adds. Then again, other groups skip him.

The champion scavenger got nerfed. Its attack no longer hits as hard and can still be dodged if you pay attention.

For Ghost Eater, the entire group charges one trap at a time. One person zaps the Ghost Eater with a beam from afar to spawn globs- this typically doesn’t aggro him. That person then marks one glob, lifts it, and the other four pull it over. Repeat. For the actual fight, projectile blockers once again help a lot, but again aren’t necessary.

tl;dr the new AC isn’t bad with proper coordination. The main issue is that many PUGs won’t slot useful skills to match the situation, or can’t coordinate their way out of a paper bag.

daros.3407:

Even after month full 80lvl exotic grupe is able to fail even on spider quine. Please make some changes.

What exactly is the problem with that? Why do you have to be able to beat a boss without the possibility of failing? I don’t understand.

Well, difficulty for some people mean “I-win-faceroll”. Anything dangerous, if even slight capability to kill you. is “artificial difficulty”.

Wethospu.6437:

Well, difficulty for some people mean “I-win-faceroll”. Anything dangerous, if even slight capability to kill you. is “artificial difficulty”.

Pretty sure most people use that term when the only thing killing you is increased numbers that you can’t help. Such as going deeper into fractals. Same attacks killing you just because they have higher numbers. There are some new mechanics, but that’s not what’s killing you. That would be artificial difficulty. At least to me.

AlietteFaye.7316:

daros.3407:

Even after month full 80lvl exotic grupe is able to fail even on spider quine. Please make some changes.

What exactly is the problem with that? Why do you have to be able to beat a boss without the possibility of failing? I don’t understand.

There shoud be some ,,border of difficulty" but now AC is totaly over it. If i do everything what i am supposed to do i shoud have guaranteed succes. But now how AC is made people dont have it. There is to big chance of faling even if you know what and how to do it.

daros.3407:

AlietteFaye.7316:

daros.3407:

Even after month full 80lvl exotic grupe is able to fail even on spider quine. Please make some changes.

What exactly is the problem with that? Why do you have to be able to beat a boss without the possibility of failing? I don’t understand.

There shoud be some ,,border of difficulty" but now AC is totaly over it. If i do everything what i am supposed to do i shoud have guaranteed succes. But now how AC is made people dont have it. There is to big chance of faling even if you know what and how to do it.

I don’t think you fully know what you’re doing, then. People have posted videos of them soloing Spider Queen. There’s a video of level 35’s doing it in greens. I don’t think you actually are doing it correctly, because people that know what they’re doing aren’t having those issues. (Aside from Grast, and even then there’s safe spots.)

AlietteFaye.7316:

daros.3407:

AlietteFaye.7316:

daros.3407:

Even after month full 80lvl exotic grupe is able to fail even on spider quine. Please make some changes.

What exactly is the problem with that? Why do you have to be able to beat a boss without the possibility of failing? I don’t understand.

There shoud be some ,,border of difficulty" but now AC is totaly over it. If i do everything what i am supposed to do i shoud have guaranteed succes. But now how AC is made people dont have it. There is to big chance of faling even if you know what and how to do it.

I don’t think you fully know what you’re doing, then. People have posted videos of them soloing Spider Queen. There’s a video of level 35’s doing it in greens. I don’t think you actually are doing it correctly, because people that know what they’re doing aren’t having those issues. (Aside from Grast, and even then there’s safe spots.)

Spider quine was just an example of how easily can things go wrong in AC now. I did that dungeon ,,hundreds times" I know it well but still after patch most of grupes i am in fail. This is not my fault it is just more challenging than it shoud be.
I just whant to log in do some dungeons for relax and then go of i dont need to be frustrated by dungeons diffculty becouse some people like things ,,insane"

daros.3407:

AlietteFaye.7316:

daros.3407:

AlietteFaye.7316:

daros.3407:

Even after month full 80lvl exotic grupe is able to fail even on spider quine. Please make some changes.

What exactly is the problem with that? Why do you have to be able to beat a boss without the possibility of failing? I don’t understand.

There shoud be some ,,border of difficulty" but now AC is totaly over it. If i do everything what i am supposed to do i shoud have guaranteed succes. But now how AC is made people dont have it. There is to big chance of faling even if you know what and how to do it.

I don’t think you fully know what you’re doing, then. People have posted videos of them soloing Spider Queen. There’s a video of level 35’s doing it in greens. I don’t think you actually are doing it correctly, because people that know what they’re doing aren’t having those issues. (Aside from Grast, and even then there’s safe spots.)

Spider quine was just an example of how easily can things go wrong in AC now. I did that dungeon ,,hundreds times" I know it well but still after patch most of grupes i am in fail. This is not my fault it is just more challenging than it shoud be.
I just whant to log in do some dungeons for relax and then go of i dont need to be frustrated by dungeons diffculty becouse some people like things ,,insane"

It’s more challenging than it should be? How can you even judge it? There’s not a measurement of what it should be like. This is how they originally intended the dungeons to be. Difficult. Not brainless facerolling your way to getting gear. The dungeon isn’t even that hard, especially if you go in with a coordinated group.

The dungeon is not difficult. I was worried after the revamp but after doing all of the paths, they didn’t really change much. Most of it sums up to just learning to play. You see those little red circles when fighting the spider? Get out of them! Notice the spider shoots an immobilizing spray? Get out of it and keep from being in front of it. Notice those fire rings when fighting the last boss on path 1? Make the trash mobs follow you into them. Path 2 at the end just requires a little coordination so that not everyone spams 1 at once.

Ayrilana.1396:

The dungeon is not difficult. I was worried after the revamp but after doing all of the paths, they didn’t really change much. Most of it sums up to just learning to play. You see those little red circles when fighting the spider? Get out of them! Notice the spider shoots an immobilizing spray? Get out of it and keep from being in front of it. Notice those fire rings when fighting the last boss on path 1? Make the trash mobs follow you into them. Path 2 at the end just requires a little coordination so that not everyone spams 1 at once.

Now i have to realy say ……OMG! Did you even read what i writed before??? I did this dungeon ,,100 times" I know how to play it!
You just dont understand what i am writing here…..Before update it was just relax dungeon. There are other dungeons which we can go if we whant to do something more difficult like Arah. Which i sometimes doing too…if have mood for something harder. Thare is 8? dungeons and fractals can you tell me one realy good reason why one of it cant staly little bit easier? Just dungeon for relax like it was before…
Now do you understand what i am talking about??

I love the new AC and can’t wait for similar changes to hit all the other GW2 dungeons!

daros.3407:

Now i have to realy say ……OMG! Did you even read what i writed before??? I did this dungeon ,,100 times" I know how to play it!
You just dont understand what i am writing here…..Before update it was just relax dungeon. There are other dungeons which we can go if we whant to do something more difficult like Arah. Which i sometimes doing too…if have mood for something harder. Thare is 8? dungeons and fractals can you tell me one realy good reason why one of it cant staly little bit easier? Just dungeon for relax like it was before…
Now do you understand what i am talking about??

That wasn’t me. That was somebody else. Don’t know why you didn’t read my actual response right above it, but oh well. The point is that no dungeon was supposed to be a relaxing cakewalk. They wanted them to be difficult content for a coordinated group of five to tackle. Not some part of the game that you group up with random people that don’t know how to play and can still breeze through.

AlietteFaye.7316:

daros.3407:

Now i have to realy say ……OMG! Did you even read what i writed before??? I did this dungeon ,,100 times" I know how to play it!
You just dont understand what i am writing here…..Before update it was just relax dungeon. There are other dungeons which we can go if we whant to do something more difficult like Arah. Which i sometimes doing too…if have mood for something harder. Thare is 8? dungeons and fractals can you tell me one realy good reason why one of it cant staly little bit easier? Just dungeon for relax like it was before…
Now do you understand what i am talking about??

That wasn’t me. That was somebody else. Don’t know why you didn’t read my actual response right above it, but oh well. The point is that no dungeon was supposed to be a relaxing cakewalk. They wanted them to be difficult content for a coordinated group of five to tackle. Not some part of the game that you group up with random people that don’t know how to play and can still breeze through.

Responce was not on you but on Ayrilana :-) And i read your respoce above ofcource…
I just think that hard dungeons shoud be those for hight lvl and those for low lvl shoud be easier. But they are trying to make everything harder and harder instead of making sure thad players will use all dungeons in ballance. Becouse thare are still dungeons which are absolutely unused compare to AC and CoF.

After running all 3 paths in AC I must say I like the changes overall, other than the final boss in P3, Colossus Rumbles, the rest of AC isn’t impossible, or even very hard once you understand the mechanics of the fights. A lot of fights are way too similar to how they’ve always been, like where you defend Hodgins in path 1, when you defend Detha in path 2 (with the traps) and most of path 3, parties who had no issue before, shouldn’t have any issues now on those parts.

As for the changes:

The main reason any party might fail at the spider (while they could do the old one) is going there with the false expectation of getting the same easy-mode fight. Dodge the aoe web and get out of red circles, the basic of the basic tactic in this game, nothing extreme or unique.

I really liked the Path 2 boss. It is one of the few bosses in the whole game that actually require more than one person to defeat, can be done rather easily with two people. Basically, one person needs to use skill1 to lift an ooze, and another one skill2 to pull it near the trap. Once the trap is charged, the Ghost Eater will take normal damage. It takes a bit of coordination from the party, who will lift and who will pull, but the fight can be done very quickly once you know the trick.

Path 3 boss was frustrating. Basing a whole boss fight on an npc with worthless AI is terrible design, last I checked there is no healer in the game, how are we supposed to keep Grast healthy so he uses his kitten bubble? He is also always charging on the boss, his hammer attack has a ridiculous activation time AND he has absolutely no stability, so he is NEVER when he is supposed to be to block the rocks.

It’s not a matter of party composition, team coordination, just blind luck that Grast is where he should be, and this is terrible design.
The other way of doing this boss is by interrupting his channel, that’s well and good, but he reuses the attack on a 20sec CD, it’s impossible to interrupt him all the time, so unless you have 4 Wars and 1 Mesmer, to do the usual “kill in one TW” tactic, that the whole game is based on, it’s a very frustrating hard fight, it is obvious that most groups will find safespots to do the fight properly, there is no other way.

daros.3407:

Ayrilana.1396:

The dungeon is not difficult. I was worried after the revamp but after doing all of the paths, they didn’t really change much. Most of it sums up to just learning to play. You see those little red circles when fighting the spider? Get out of them! Notice the spider shoots an immobilizing spray? Get out of it and keep from being in front of it. Notice those fire rings when fighting the last boss on path 1? Make the trash mobs follow you into them. Path 2 at the end just requires a little coordination so that not everyone spams 1 at once.

Now i have to realy say ……OMG! Did you even read what i writed before??? I did this dungeon ,,100 times" I know how to play it!
You just dont understand what i am writing here…..Before update it was just relax dungeon. There are other dungeons which we can go if we whant to do something more difficult like Arah. Which i sometimes doing too…if have mood for something harder. Thare is 8? dungeons and fractals can you tell me one realy good reason why one of it cant staly little bit easier? Just dungeon for relax like it was before…
Now do you understand what i am talking about??

I wasn’t responding to you post but the entire thread. The number of times that you do a dungeons does not mean you know how to do it. There are a lot of paths in dungeons that people did that time but only knew how to do them by glitching. The ability to glitch gets removed and they can’t get through the path anymore (at first).

Also, it doesn’t matter if you did this dungeon 100 times before the revamp; the bosses have changed. You can no longer facetank the spider queen and just stand in the poison rings without taking hardly any damage.

You’re going to have a lot of groups that fail because you have people that have no idea how to play effectively. They’ve played solo where they just facetank whatever they’re fighting and have no idea how to play as a team. I stated in my previous post simple things that players should be doing. It’s what a lot of us learned many months ago from playing the game.

Ayrilana.1396:

daros.3407:

Ayrilana.1396:

The dungeon is not difficult. I was worried after the revamp but after doing all of the paths, they didn’t really change much. Most of it sums up to just learning to play. You see those little red circles when fighting the spider? Get out of them! Notice the spider shoots an immobilizing spray? Get out of it and keep from being in front of it. Notice those fire rings when fighting the last boss on path 1? Make the trash mobs follow you into them. Path 2 at the end just requires a little coordination so that not everyone spams 1 at once.

Now i have to realy say ……OMG! Did you even read what i writed before??? I did this dungeon ,,100 times" I know how to play it!
You just dont understand what i am writing here…..Before update it was just relax dungeon. There are other dungeons which we can go if we whant to do something more difficult like Arah. Which i sometimes doing too…if have mood for something harder. Thare is 8? dungeons and fractals can you tell me one realy good reason why one of it cant staly little bit easier? Just dungeon for relax like it was before…
Now do you understand what i am talking about??

I wasn’t responding to you post but the entire thread. The number of times that you do a dungeons does not mean you know how to do it. There are a lot of paths in dungeons that people did that time but only knew how to do them by glitching. The ability to glitch gets removed and they can’t get through the path anymore (at first).

Also, it doesn’t matter if you did this dungeon 100 times before the revamp; the bosses have changed. You can no longer facetank the spider queen and just stand in the poison rings without taking hardly any damage.

You’re going to have a lot of groups that fail because you have people that have no idea how to play effectively. They’ve played solo where they just facetank whatever they’re fighting and have no idea how to play as a team. I stated in my previous post simple things that players should be doing. It’s what a lot of us learned many months ago from playing the game.

Still i dont agree with changes and i will never agree. I think they shoud concentrate to make something what will make people to play all dungeons instead of ,,Improving……" one becouse it is one of three or two which people play most…
Most people run only AC and CoF so it is easy for them to get bored in it and foud it easy. If they would play all they would not get bored int it so easly and not asked for changes so soon.
It will not take long and people will start asking for ,,making AC more challenging again…

Have just attempted path 2 after the change and found it very hard indeed. We were a semi co-ordinated group but the oozes at the ghost eater just didn’t seem too connect to charge the traps. The red circles seemed to also be excessive whereby they would chain together and be impossible to evade. Would I run it again? Probably not at the moment.

i have done all 3 paths of this AC many times over 75 times for each path .. but now after the “fix” i really dont care for this AC any longer .. i feel that each boss is fine but the last boss on each path is STUPID AS !#$%%# &$ ! I DONT LIKE IT AT ALL and i have no plans of ever running AC again !
its just not FUN !
way to go in wrecking a nice Dungeon .

and i did not run this dungeon for money or tokens i just liked it the old way ( maybe kholer hit too hard ) but you could dodge his attack with a little skill ,

but now this is just way to frustrating to do with lower levels
and i have 6 level 80 so im not new to this stuff .. i just dont like the way the path is any longer … the knock downs the 20 lizards that spawn on the last boss theyknock you around like a pin ball machine ,, its just NOT better wow … lame now .. oh well there are other dungeons .. i will do them but now AC

bummer

I love all the claims of this being the first dungeon most people will do. Correct me if I’m wrong but the changes are AC EXPLORABLE not AC STORY MODE which is the topic of the message everyone gets at 30. Explorable modes were always harder and for more experienced players, because they’re all about the farming and the grinding for completion instead of, you know, story mode.

And I’m sorry that you can’t faceroll through the dungeon with zero skill for muh grinding anymore, but if you’re literally in the game to have no fun and just grind cash then you’ve always got TP flipping, CoF farming, or Orr farming – which I do from time to time when I need money. Some of us enjoy challenges that require us to play with hands on the keyboard instead of merely rolling our faces about on the keyboard for a while and seeing money pop out at the end.

It’s like you hate fun. I mean really, you may as well just go play Farmville because that’s the same deal: no risk, full reward. Patience over skill.

shonn.5037:

i have done all 3 paths of this AC many times over 75 times for each path .. but now after the “fix” i really dont care for this AC any longer .. i feel that each boss is fine but the last boss on each path is STUPID AS !#$%%# &$ ! I DONT LIKE IT AT ALL and i have no plans of ever running AC again !
its just not FUN !
way to go in wrecking a nice Dungeon .

and i did not run this dungeon for money or tokens i just liked it the old way ( maybe kholer hit too hard ) but you could dodge his attack with a little skill ,

but now this is just way to frustrating to do with lower levels
and i have 6 level 80 so im not new to this stuff .. i just dont like the way the path is any longer … the knock downs the 20 lizards that spawn on the last boss theyknock you around like a pin ball machine ,, its just NOT better wow … lame now .. oh well there are other dungeons .. i will do them but now AC

bummer

Yes you are right. And i also feel like ping pong ball sometimes becouse of those ,,lizard". Especially when destroing burrows. It was much better and much more FUNNY with breeders. Yes we can use knockdown imunity, but it not last forever…

I just noticed I posted in an old thread for an old update.

Just wan’t to say what I don’t like.

AC Explorer is recommended level 35, and it says when you choose to enter that it is recommended level 35.
If this dungeon or even Explorer modes should be “only” for elitists who can do this instance in 30 min with only for players, then it should say “Level 35 instance; not for PUG’s or casual gamers, you go do something else!”

Kholer (Before update): We managed him with 2 lvl 80 and 3 level 45-ish after about an hour trial and error.
Kholer (After update): 3 level 80 and 2 level 65-70-ish, we tried to beat him for around 3-4 hours and never succeded, we got him to 20% at best. As I said, we are not the best group out there but c’mon we are able to compleate all CM and TA explorer’s.

In the end we skipped him, though we didn’t wan’t to do that.

Did path 2 so
Ghost Eater: Way to strong puddles and impossible to succesfully dodge, if you out of dodges you are dead if youre not a Vitality build and with level 80 gear.
We was so tired after Kholer fight so we where realy not in the mood to try to many more times so why didin’t figure out the best way to do it, but I beleave he is possible in the end with our group.

About the Gravelings with knockdowns: It’s too much, getting unlucky or being a ranger(For some reason they agro alot) they you are perma knockeddown to death and since you have lot’s on you you diediedie and die some more.
We managed the trap room with attacking gravelings just barely since I was lucky tanking them all by the traps and succesfully dodged all knockdowns.

As we can see there is lot of people which like changes, but also same amount of people which real does not like it and will never like it. This is not about time we need to learn how to deal with changes. Time already past and we still dont like it. So there is tons of people which hope this version of AC is no final. Perhaps some compromise between this ,,Harcore mode" and between what was before could be solution.

People used to complain about the swamp fractal just as much, now it’s considered one of the easiest and most preferred, give it some more time to get used to the new mechanics and such

Though I’ll admit I have an intense hatred for those gravelings playing ping pong with me lol

Remember as some of you have mentioned wanting a hardcore/easy version. Explorable is supposed to be the hard version and story mode the easy version. Maybe asking for better story rewards would be more to your liking?

I return in GW after 7 or so month, no exotic gear, not even full rare. Completed all 3 AC paths with guildmates (all running first time) and then few times with pugs to grind tears. No idea what exactly is hard there.

Phenomen.9052:

I return in GW after 7 or so month, no exotic gear, not even full rare. Completed all 3 AC paths with guildmates (all running first time) and then few times with pugs to grind tears. No idea what exactly is hard there.

I am very sorry, I won’t say you are lying but I suspect some bendig or some facts are skipped.

1. Did you skip Kholer or not?
2. How much time did you put down each time especially with the PUGs.
3. How many ragequitters did you have?
4. Compared to the other Dungeons this Dungeon was … what?
5. Exotic or not, where everyone level 80 with 80 gear?

As I said before, as for my groups last encounter we was exhausted after 3 hours trying to defeat Kholer so getting stuck at Ghost Eater for 30-60min was enough.
If we skipped Kholer from the start we might have had enough Energy+Time to take down Ghost Eater since he seemed much easier than Kholer.

Oh and Edit: If we all would have been level 80 with 80 gear, yes I beleave we would have been able to defeat Kholer after just a few tries.

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

I am very sorry, I won’t say you are lying but I suspect some bendig or some facts are skipped.

1. Did you skip Kholer or not?
2. How much time did you put down each time especially with the PUGs.
3. How many ragequitters did you have?
4. Compared to the other Dungeons this Dungeon was … what?
5. Exotic or not, where everyone level 80 with 80 gear?

1. Skipped with guildmates (once again – everyone run exploration for the first time). Killed him with pugs once (4-80 and 1-35; first try), then skipped every run because it’s not really worth. His burst is pretty high (pre-80 instakill I guess) if you fail to dodge or use shield. But it’s still possible to dodge damage right after he pull you so your equip and level doesn’t matter much.
2. P1 is fastest (less than 10 min) but pretty hard. Party needs really good damage output to do P1 properly.
P2 is longest (15-20 min) because of tricky mechanics and boss trap respawn delay.
P3 is easiest. Last boss is extremely easy to kill staying within crack in the wall. You don’t even need to dodge, just spam attack (or heal in my case).
3. Zero. I did 12 AC Exp runs and never had ragequiter.
4. No idea. Haven’t run other dungeons yet.
5. Not speaking of others, but my support guardian has mix of rare \ green 80 equip. Prety sure all 80 pugs I run with had rare \ exotic.

I haven’t been playing for a while, so the new AC came as a surprise to me. I’ve done path 1 a few times, and did path 2 yesterday. Wasn’t able to find a party for path 3…

-Spider hatchlings being tougher seems like an unnecessary change to me. They were fine before. It just made it more annoying.
-Spider Queen is a lot better now. She was way too easy before.
-Gravelings have too many knockbacks now. It gets really annoying to get chain-knocked around. They were fine before, I don’t see the reason for the change.
-I kinda like the change to Kholer’s fight. What I don’t like is how it encourages groups to skip him again. I remember people started doing Kholer again after the updated dungeon loot. Getting people to do Kholer in its current state is harder… I wish he was just made a mandatory fight… Either that, or bring him back to his previous version where people were more willing to give him at least a try.
-Howler King fight seems to be better now. He was fairly bland before, it’s more interesting now.
-Ghost Eater fight… I kinda like the group mechanic going on there, but the fight itself is really boring. He doesn’t seem to do much besides some AoE fields here and there. It feels more of a fight to get your team to understand what to do, rather than a fight against the boss itself.
-Having skimmed through some of the posts on the 3rd path, the change doesn’t seem to have done well. Haven’t been able to find a party for path 3 yet…
-The Troll fight is a lot better now. He used to be pretty boring, he’s more interesting now. What I don’t like is how melee is still discouraged by getting hit by both the stomp and the shockwave attack (or you can dodge the stomp, but still get hit by the shockwave if you don’t move out of stomp range). I also feel the fight is a bit too stationary. It would be nice if the Troll was moving around a bit.

Conclusion: The new AC is a mixed bag. Some good changes. Some bad changes. Some (in my opinion) unnecessary changes.

i don’t care about the difficulty of the dungeon. i’m sure i could do this. what i care about is that now the most difficult part is to find a group with lv35. people only looking for lv80, only caring about the lv, because of their own incompetence. you literally get mobbed out of this dungeon, because of your lv… my lv35 char can dodge as good as a lv80 char and that’s all i need in order not to die, no? i really would like to take on the challenge of this new harder AC, but yeah no1 will take my low lv char with them. :o

Bleak.5796:

my lv35 char can dodge as good as a lv80 char and that’s all i need in order not to die, no?

so you just want to run around dodging red circles while group of 80 tank for you, damage for you, support and heal you?

@phenomen: a level 35 cal also heal, deal damage and use support so hes proberly doing the same tho in a less degree as the scalling with a level 80 to level 35 is to strong compared to a 35 tho that dont mean he cant do the same thing.

and as far as i know there is no need to tank if you use the consept of someone taking all the damage and others dealing the damage and healing the tank.
and if he dodges red circles he can deal damage to when he dont need to dodge;)

Korsbaek.9803:

@phenomen: a level 35 cal also heal, deal damage and use support so hes proberly doing the same tho in a less degree as the scalling with a level 80 to level 35 is to strong compared to a 35 tho that dont mean he cant do the same thing.

and as far as i know there is no need to tank if you use the consept of someone taking all the damage and others dealing the damage and healing the tank.
and if he dodges red circles he can deal damage to when he dont need to dodge;)

thx for explaining <3
people dont seem to understand that the lv isnt everything by far^^

I had a smoother run playing path 1 with a bunch of level 30’s/40’s/50’s yesterday, than I had on the same path today with 3 level 80’s.

I need another 240 AC tokens for my Legendary. They and 200 badges and 100 Obsidian Shards are the final items I need to complete. I haven’t done AC since the changes – ran it multiple times beforehand favoring P1.

Is there a guide to the new version? How doable is it with PuGs? If running with PuGs, how good do they have to be? How long does each path now take? How likely is it that they will /ragequit?

I am Guardian with full exotics and ascended, but haven’t run any dungeons in a couple of months while grinding out the Legendary.

Thanks for advice.

PUGs seem bad for AC now. This is partly because you need group co-ordination rather than the players all just getting their stuff done. I’m also guessing that the people who know the dungeon and/or like the dungeon aren’t going back (think up your own reasons) so the PUG community is short of skills and knowledge. It’s also still the first dungeon that many players try so you are likely to see PUGs with poor gear and low skills when AC needs something better now.

My advice, find a decent group of players in guild or elsewhere and get runs done together. You can still kill everything and clear the dungeons in a reasonable time with a good group.

It varies. For path 2’s final boss, if you wait long enough then it will come to you. Let it stand on the trap and just summon the ghost oozes. Have everyone use the number 1 skill on them and its an automatic charge to the trap. No need for coordination. I will add that it’s not that difficult to tag a target and assign who will lift and who will pull.

As far as not having enough endurance to dodge his poison circles, what else are you dodging? There’s absolutely no reason to not have enough.

Ac path 3 final boss fight
when your on the floor as a Enginer you can not/ out run / out dodge/ survive the falling rocks !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fXUFcTMwXs