Guild Wars 2

I did a search last night on topics about the lack of an ‘auto-follow’ option and while there was a discussion about why or why not and should be there or shouldn’t, I didn’t find any really constructive advice on how to deal with this feature being absent.

Our small guild just started running dungeons and our guardian is having a very hard time locating and locking onto the targetted mob while the graphics blitzkrieg is going off all around him. So far, he’s tried zooming way out, monitoring the white damage-inflicted numbers and even tried to make sure the red bar under his melee skills are gone, indicating he’s in range, but he’s still having difficulty in effectively maintaining melee distance in a very active and cluttered environment. He’s threatening going to an all ranged build or to level up another class.

My question: are there tricks to stay in melee or does it all come down to console-type reflexes just to get off a few skills and not run around just swinging haphazardly?

If there was already a topic out there and I missed it, can you please post the thread or at least mention that you’ve seen it and I’ll spend more time looking for it?

learn your cooldowns so you can focus on watching the animations of the boss
learn to post in the right subforum

I’m guessing your guardian friend, like your guild, is new to dungeons. There’s no need to worry, dungeons seem really chaotic for the first so many runs.

Try marking the mobs. That could help your guardian know exactly where a specific mob is in the chaos of particle effects.

There is also the possibility of everyone being in melee range, you all just stack on top of the boss. It shouldn’t run around much then and reviving can be a fair bit quicker although with some bosses melee range is a death sentence.

-Watch some videos on dungeons runs by strife025 (he has a fixed party and he is a dungeon veteran so u might not be able to reach his dungeon timing, but it is good just as a guide to what u will expect in that dungeon)
-http://www.youtube.com/user/strife025?hl=en-GB&gl=SG
-If he is uncomfortable at first, just use range until he is comfortable with the boss then swap to melee.
-practice more

Is there any specific dungeon he is having problem with now?

Thanks for the help, Sutcliffe and sinzer and thanks for the sarcasm kokiman. I know there is a good learning curve and we’re all dedicated enough to work the curve. I was just wondering what we were missing in terms of dealing with the wall of color that is an ele popping off tons of AOE and other effects that tend to make seeing anything, animations included, kokiman, tough. I don’t think anyone was born a great GW player so, yeah, we all know we’ll work at it and hopefully improve. We were all just used to playing other games, GW1 included, that helped with this. Thanks again for the help!

The guardian can just ignore the animation effects of the elementalist and just focus on the boss.

Boss normally swing their weapon to attack or use aoe effect.

If he uses aoe attacks, a red ring will be shown on the floor and normally u should dodge those, so he doesn’t have to worry about about those particle effects being created by the boss.