Guild Wars 2

After my second Arah run with members of my guild, I’m up to a grand total of 3 Arah tokens. This is from a combined 9 hours in that kittening dungeon.

Since the first run I have upgraded my gear to a mix of rares & exotics, w/ upgrades continuing towards full exotics. I have a nearly complete set of ‘survival’ jewelry to swap in for higher Armor & Vit on boss fights (looks at Lupicus). Didn’t make a kittening difference.

All of this said (& pages of potential frustrated ranting unsaid), I’m not here to suggest that Arah be retuned. Let the top tier, hardcore players have their dungeon! It’s just as important for them to enjoy the game as any of the rest of us, & this is probably the only spot left in the game that could really serve that purpose.

What I would propose, however, is that the token portion of the two Legendaries which require Arah, Bifrost & the spear, be moved to another dungeon. This would provide a more equitable difficulty between all of the Legendaries.

For comparison:

3 hours in CoF with guild group: 198 tokens.
Tokens/hour: 66.
Projected play time to complete 500 tokens: 7.58 hours

I ran story mode & all 3 CoF paths last weekend w/ my guild – so the same group of casual gamers could run CoF once a night, 5 times a week & have the 500 tokens needed in less than 2 weeks.

9 hours in Arah with guild group: 3 tokens
Tokens/hour: 1/3
Projected play time to complete 500 tokens: 1,500 hours

So the actual calendar time to finish this portion would be kittening long. I can’t even dedicate enough time to do an Arah run except on Sundays, sometimes Saturdays; there is no way I can get through the 3-4 or more hours needed for our casual group on a weeknight (& that’s just to get to Lupicus & wipe a few times there before calling it, & hope oh HOPE to get a few bonus tokens before then – got ZERO for the 5 hour investment yesterday).

So… Bifrost is approximately 200 times better than any other Legendary (& note that’s just the play time, not calendar time)? o_0

I understand that Legendaries are not an ‘every player should have one’ item – but as it stands, I CAN earn every Legendary except Bifrost & that spear just continuing on w/ my guild. I doubt there’s a plan to move all of the tokens to Arah, so the alternative to provide an equitable difficulty would be to move the tokens for Bifrost & the spear to other dungeons.

(P.S. Yes we’ve read guides, yes we have people who’ve gotten past Lupicus before, & really how the KITTEN do people dodge every single thing as the answer to Lupicus; is there a hack being used to have an ever-full endurance bar or what?!)

I got my tokens for Bifrost back in November. That’s when the Hunter boss was farmable. You got I think 6 tokens and 20-30s every 10 minutes. Insane farming.

I felt bad for everyone else after the patch that fixed it ;/

What path were you doing?

Experience makes a big difference, the first couple of times in Arah will always seem very hard. But it gets very easy after the initial couple of runs.

Start with path 3, it’s the easiest. Starting out that could maybe take just over an hour but with a bit of experience you’ll be able to do it in 20mins.

If you tried to do path 1 first I can understand why you’re angry enough to make this post. It’s not newbie friendly. The first few skips are very hard and the res wp for lupi is back near the start.

If you run path 3 fast, you get ~66 tokens in .5-2 hours(You get faster as you do more). Of course, you need a good group (which is hard to find unless you’re in a pro guild or know the right people). But yeah, Arah isn’t as farmable as the other dungeons since the easiest path is harder than the hardest path in a lot of dungeons.

Arah really isn’t that hard. First off bring a guard to hold agro and kite him around. It will make life much easier(I’ve done Arah with an all squishy group quite a few times and it’s doable but kind of a pain). 2nd range is your friend, if you are low on hp just back out of his range and you will drop combat and can fast regen as long as you aren’t the guy kiting him. You don’t need to dodge all his atks since really if you stay at range, the only one that can get you fast is his single target shot he does which you need to dodge. His aoe can easily be avoided by walking inbetween the red circles(the atk does hit alittle outside the circles so make sure there is room).

We ran path 3 both times. 4 hours first time & called it on Lupicus. 5 hours second time & called it on Lupicus. I don’t know what alternate universe people live in, but this content is not ‘easy’ for casual gamers. And, as I acknowledge in my first post – it probably shouldn’t be! Keep hard content!

My point here is not to ask for an Arah nerf, but simply to make the dungeon token requirements of legendaries equitable. It makes NO sense for two (Bifrost & the spear) to be ‘pro gamers only’ when, as I’ve seen w/ my guild, casual gamers can manage to obtain all of the others.

Arah is every bit as farmable as other dungeons, albeit it slightly longer. I would honestly consider it easier to get arah tokens than say, CM, or even HoTW tokens (as you can quite easily do path 1,2,3 in arah, whereas HoTW 2,3 are long, boring, and thus no one does them)

Also as for lupicus.
Pay attention to him right as he shifts to phase 2. Lupicus is one of the few bosses that has designated targets. Whoever he starts to shadowstep to is his shadowstep target until they die. That person needs to constantly be moving, and also be as far away from other people as possible. When he enters phase 3, he has 2 moves that will always be on the same target if possible, a life drain, which can 1 shot you if you’re not ready to double dodge roll, and the bubble. Find out which player is being targeted by what. The life drain target NEEDS to keep their endurance full at all times, or they’ll be going down often, as well as healing lupi. The bubble target needs to be again constantly moving, as well as avoiding other players as much as possible. We’ve found that in phase 3, the bubble target is usually the player with the highest toughness, that’s good, make sure it’s someone who can handle it.

Arah doesn’t really feel hard so much as long. The main reason I don’t do it is because I never really want to dedicate 2+ hours to any given run because it’s not worth the reward.

A lot of people will get downed or die during a newbie run at lupi. One thing that can make all the difference is managing downed players until you get more experience at the content.

Always res cautiously, don’t res near lupi, If lupi is clearly targeting one player they should keep their distance from any downed players. It’s generally not a good idea to have more than one person try to res another player unless lupi is really far away.

Snapdragyn.1238:

After my second Arah run with members of my guild, I’m up to a grand total of 3 Arah tokens. This is from a combined 9 hours in that kittening dungeon.

Since the first run I have upgraded my gear to a mix of rares & exotics, w/ upgrades continuing towards full exotics. I have a nearly complete set of ‘survival’ jewelry to swap in for higher Armor & Vit on boss fights (looks at Lupicus). Didn’t make a kittening difference.

All of this said (& pages of potential frustrated ranting unsaid), I’m not here to suggest that Arah be retuned. Let the top tier, hardcore players have their dungeon! It’s just as important for them to enjoy the game as any of the rest of us, & this is probably the only spot left in the game that could really serve that purpose.

What I would propose, however, is that the token portion of the two Legendaries which require Arah, Bifrost & the spear, be moved to another dungeon. This would provide a more equitable difficulty between all of the Legendaries.

For comparison:

3 hours in CoF with guild group: 198 tokens.
Tokens/hour: 66.
Projected play time to complete 500 tokens: 7.58 hours

I ran story mode & all 3 CoF paths last weekend w/ my guild – so the same group of casual gamers could run CoF once a night, 5 times a week & have the 500 tokens needed in less than 2 weeks.

9 hours in Arah with guild group: 3 tokens
Tokens/hour: 1/3
Projected play time to complete 500 tokens: 1,500 hours

So the actual calendar time to finish this portion would be kittening long. I can’t even dedicate enough time to do an Arah run except on Sundays, sometimes Saturdays; there is no way I can get through the 3-4 or more hours needed for our casual group on a weeknight (& that’s just to get to Lupicus & wipe a few times there before calling it, & hope oh HOPE to get a few bonus tokens before then – got ZERO for the 5 hour investment yesterday).

So… Bifrost is approximately 200 times better than any other Legendary (& note that’s just the play time, not calendar time)? o_0

I understand that Legendaries are not an ‘every player should have one’ item – but as it stands, I CAN earn every Legendary except Bifrost & that spear just continuing on w/ my guild. I doubt there’s a plan to move all of the tokens to Arah, so the alternative to provide an equitable difficulty would be to move the tokens for Bifrost & the spear to other dungeons.

(P.S. Yes we’ve read guides, yes we have people who’ve gotten past Lupicus before, & really how the KITTEN do people dodge every single thing as the answer to Lupicus; is there a hack being used to have an ever-full endurance bar or what?!)

GL is one of the hardest bosses in this game and requires some knowledge to beat. I highly recommend you and your group to do some extra research into specifically dodging GL’s moves. I know you said you have READ guides, however I find reading to be very different from doing the actual event (this is common sense). It would be a much better idea to watch videos, especially the solo videos for GL put out by others.

That being said, 3 tokens in 9 hours is extraordinarily bad. Also, many of your comparisons are not accurate. I seriously doubt Anet wanted you to farm the 500 tokens in a day regardless considering the path to making a legendary is on the scale of months for the majority of people. Cof is really 130~ tokens for path 1 and 2 everyday, which takes approximately 30 minutes or less for even pug groups. Arah Path 2 and 3 should take a semi-competent group approximately 2-3 hours to complete both paths, for a total of 130~ tokens as well.

If I were you, I would concentrate on first gearing your character (full exotics / ascended) and learning to play it well. I am pretty tired of watching these trash players with legendary weapons running around.

From the thread title, I thought you were going to suggest we eat the zombies

No.

Bifrost should keep it’s Arah token requirement.

Why?

Because it does not require any lodestones.

In fact the bifrost is incredibly easy to make save for the precursor.

I’ve read so many posts about Lupi and how he is soooo hard and no one but the uber leet pros could kill….then I did Arah… I thought he was pretty easy. His second phase is no problem when you see the pattern of his attacks. I did Arah with 4 noobs and a person who was some what familiar with the mechanics of the dungeon, no wipes at Lupi (ranger,guard,2 ele, warrior). The hardest part of Arah is skipping mobs. Tbh I really think this is a l2play issue. Eles are really nice in arah with all the defense utility skills btw, if you can’t for the life of you dodge his red circles maybe you should level an ele and use mistform.

Snapdragyn.1238:

After my second Arah run with members of my guild, I’m up to a grand total of 3 Arah tokens. This is from a combined 9 hours in that kittening dungeon.

Since the first run I have upgraded my gear to a mix of rares & exotics, w/ upgrades continuing towards full exotics. I have a nearly complete set of ‘survival’ jewelry to swap in for higher Armor & Vit on boss fights (looks at Lupicus). Didn’t make a kittening difference.

All of this said (& pages of potential frustrated ranting unsaid), I’m not here to suggest that Arah be retuned. Let the top tier, hardcore players have their dungeon! It’s just as important for them to enjoy the game as any of the rest of us, & this is probably the only spot left in the game that could really serve that purpose.

What I would propose, however, is that the token portion of the two Legendaries which require Arah, Bifrost & the spear, be moved to another dungeon. This would provide a more equitable difficulty between all of the Legendaries.

For comparison:

3 hours in CoF with guild group: 198 tokens.
Tokens/hour: 66.
Projected play time to complete 500 tokens: 7.58 hours

I ran story mode & all 3 CoF paths last weekend w/ my guild – so the same group of casual gamers could run CoF once a night, 5 times a week & have the 500 tokens needed in less than 2 weeks.

9 hours in Arah with guild group: 3 tokens
Tokens/hour: 1/3
Projected play time to complete 500 tokens: 1,500 hours

So the actual calendar time to finish this portion would be kittening long. I can’t even dedicate enough time to do an Arah run except on Sundays, sometimes Saturdays; there is no way I can get through the 3-4 or more hours needed for our casual group on a weeknight (& that’s just to get to Lupicus & wipe a few times there before calling it, & hope oh HOPE to get a few bonus tokens before then – got ZERO for the 5 hour investment yesterday).

So… Bifrost is approximately 200 times better than any other Legendary (& note that’s just the play time, not calendar time)? o_0

I understand that Legendaries are not an ‘every player should have one’ item – but as it stands, I CAN earn every Legendary except Bifrost & that spear just continuing on w/ my guild. I doubt there’s a plan to move all of the tokens to Arah, so the alternative to provide an equitable difficulty would be to move the tokens for Bifrost & the spear to other dungeons.

(P.S. Yes we’ve read guides, yes we have people who’ve gotten past Lupicus before, & really how the KITTEN do people dodge every single thing as the answer to Lupicus; is there a hack being used to have an ever-full endurance bar or what?!)

Are you assuming that you’re never going to be able to complete any arah exp path? Because if so, that’s silly. They’re a little harder than the others but this is not some daunting task. Thousands of terrible players have completed some arah exp paths, you can too.

Try joining an arah exp group using gw2lfg.com instead, see how it goes. If they’re saying “EXPERIENCED PLAYERS ONLY” just ignore that one and join another one. Or start your own. After you complete a path (which you will), instruct your guildmates on what to do next time.

It really isn’t that big of a deal. If you want to just chip away at it, path 3 is the easiest. Hit up gw2lfg.com in the evening and knock that one out for 60 tokens a day. Path 3 groups form pretty regularly.

If you’re still working on getting full exotics, you obviously don’t have a lot of money. As such, you’ll have long long LONG since gotten these 500 tokens before you can think about completing a legendary.

Keep in mind that you’re trying to run the most difficult dungeon with a combination of rare and exotic gear…

Not impossible, but I definitely think you’re making life harder for yourself bud.

But good luck

The OP has a point in that Arah’s rewards are disproportionately bad to the difficulty and length of the dungeon. If you get as far as Lupy and wipe, that’s probably at least an hour of your time. You can wipe multiple times, spend hours in the dungeon, and you get nothing for what you accomplished.

Heck, even if you complete the two hour dungeon, you get the same thing you get for any other dungeon. And it’s not like you can purchase something super cool with Arah tokens. Aside from the skins (which are neat but not amazing), there’s nothing to write home about when it comes to the armor or weapons.

The rewards just don’t make Arah worth it.

i’m no pro gamer so i know what you mean, but cm’on i my gf finished p2 and 3 you can definetly do it.
snd lupicus is simply bull***, don’t get scared is only big and if you have an average group you want fail, try to avid zerker warriors;)
and agreed, arah should stay this way, a full set of arah (1300 tokens?) is far more legendary then legendaries in my eyes!!
you know, a monky farming earth elemental in orr for 1000000 years at some point will have found 100 lodestones and 1000g for his legendary, someday, the same monky can farm arah for the same time frame and never get a token.
so yeah i vote for ara set to become the true legendary!

Instead of splitting up each Legendaries into different dungeons, they should all cost a set amount of tokens from all dungeons. Or just make it so that you need to have Dungeon Master title in order to get a Legendary. That way it’s more fair, and more skill involved instead of grinding one same dungeon for your “Legendary”.

It’s as challenging as any dungeon the 1st few times- as long as you are paying attention to what an experienced player is saying, you should do fine. My 1st experience in Arah was with a group who had run it many times- I told them it was my 1st arah experience & they had said they couldn’t believe it was my 1st run because I listened. But like most 1st timers they get wiped at Lupi. But I’m sure eventually, my group could take lupi down with minimal knockdowns.