Guild Wars 2

Is the new dungeon more designed around all classes or the favored Three ? discuss. I will post my feedback on it playing as several classes below.

Ok most of the dungeon, form running it on ele, necro, guard, mesmer, warrior, and engi (sorry thief and ranger, I only have so much time in one day) i’d say for those I did run it on, it’s much more multi-class friendly than previous dungeons.

The only encounters I can think of was maybe a few of the Aetherblade trash groups that (despite their insistence they reduced their stun-spam) was nothing short of a stun-lock-fest. Took a few tries on every class I tried to clear those. Maybe instead of reducing the stun skill frequency further, they need to just reduce the number of stun spamming mobs??? Just saying…… Anywho, the only bosses that gave us real trouble were the Slick and his sidekick boss (and it was always the degen from the oil slicks, which was half un-coordination/unfamiliarity with content amongst the teams and half range of effect of those things….being well over halfway across the room should be more than enough to break off the stacking, but it wasnt). Once we conquered that, after more attempts than was feasible as easy as the encouter could have been given that one skill wasn’t so…well, read my paraphrased report above…..we moved on to the rest.

A few stun spam Aether groups were a problem but do-able with intelligent pulling instead of braindead “stack here and dps” tactics that run rampant in this game. Final boss (clockwork oak) well…that one needs some work. We finally resorted to stacking on him (except when I ran guard and did a block-spam build with shout heals and the engi elixer-bomb heal builds) as for when I ran it on necro, it was nothing short of yet another dodge-fest. As a necro this was the biggest letdown in this whole dungeon. The whole rest of it I had an enormous blast (same thing as the last Aetherblade dungeon…hmmmm……) but the last boss demands too much excessive dodging as a necro unless your team performs flawlessly. We finally beat it after attempt # 12 when I used necro once we got 2 guardians in the party (big surprise). The original team content was: mesmer, necro (me) warrior, thief, ele. The thief and warrior left after the first attempt. Then we got in a guard and ranger. We did pretty good whit those for a while, getting the boss all the way to 1/3 hp, but just couldn’t cut it (and yes I was always the last standing, trying to kite while rezzing…which btw wouldn’t have been needed were my rez signet not on a 3 second casting time…just saying

The ranger eventaully switched to another guard so we had at the end: 2 guards, necro, mesmer, and ele. Took us 3 tries with that seutp, but we finally got it.

So my final conclusion of the final dungeon: At least there were no nearly-unavodable-1shot mechanics….because holy kitten I was getting tired of that. Well done anet, well done. I would say the spamming of skills on that final boss needs dialing back a tad, other than that, the dungeon was not at all easy, nor was it so hard I wanted to punch puppies. You guys did good. Please don’t get complacent on it though, listen to all the feedback (well the non-troll ones) and continue to tweak it. While it took us a long time to get through this place, it was a blast, and after a few more times of running it, we could prob do it in a more efficient and timely manner while still not blowing through the content and have fun in the process.

I did it once in a Necro/Ele/Guardian/Engi/Mesmer group yesterday and we actually took down the final boss on the first try. Maybe we were just lucky, but he didn’t seem all that hard tbh. Spectral Grasp was a big help to pull the holograms to him (I still had it on my bar after trying to pull the hologram in the security room that way and it turned out to be a pretty kittenet). Contrary to what most preliminary guides suggest now, we mostly ranged him (my guild doesn’t exactly keep up with the latest meta, so we end up falling back to ranged pretty quickly when something looks like it could give us a hard time. That also means we didn’t exactly abuse projectile reflects and the like at all.). In this case, it was a fairly good thing as all you have to do is stay clear of his spinning blades thing. (And if you see you’re going to fail to prevent his supermove, you can easily run out of range.)

Only part where we wiped (and we did a few times) was the Slick and Sparky part, due to the oil degen. After killing Sparky the first time and then wiping to Slick, we tried it the other way around a few times (we wanted to get rid of the oil asap) but we always wiped when slick was around 0-5%. Something that we then figured out and isn’t mentioned in the guides either: the bosses get harder at lower health, not solely when they enrage when their partner goes down. Sparky pretty much never does his spinning fire thing when he’s at high health and Slick increase the oil thingies at low health whether Sparky is alive or not. So we switched back to killing Sparky first (he goes down a lot faster), engaged them on the side of the plant (so one guy could dedicate himself to kiting the ooze without much downtime) and with only Slick still alive in the hard part (like 10% to 0% health) it was a lot easier.

All in all, I didn’t see anything that blatantly disfavors either necroes or conditions in this dungeon.

Nay of the Ether.8913:

…instead of braindead “stack here and dps” tactics that run rampant in this game.

Those tactics work well in this dungeon, did it twice and while the bosses wiped us sometimes, we never had trubble with the trash. Tbh, the trash is so easy, I dislike the fact you cant skip it.

Well, they work as long as you dont try them braindead….

Necros control conditions were pretty good for the ooze puzzle part. But then so are projectile reflects/blocks. I decided to try it first time round with my necro and ended up switching to my rampager set for the amount of trash and stuff that needed to be aoe’d. Being able to do damage to slick while kiting the ooze was helpful. But then ive already come up with ideas to pretty much melee every encounter. Just have to see how well they work out in practise.

All forms of control, (especially fear since it makes the holograph at the last boss move closer to the shield) are very useful in the new path, so Necros are a good fit for it. From what I saw basically every boss encounter favors melee over ranged, so the favored three are still going to be the way to go for speedruns. Every class can do it with little problems though.

Its a favoured 5 actually.

I did the new path on my first try and we finished it in 40-50 minutes, wiping only twice. Not bad for a new dungeon.

Most of the dungeon is great for a necromancer. We are great at the ooze part. Our Ds #3 is great control for the lava elementals. But I just used my non-cleaving dagger and axe and killed them. Never ever thought I’d want that as a feature.

The first boss is a duo of bosses that can be epidemiced. Unlike the flame and frost duo, they do not regenerate hit points on death, ant it was nice to spread weakness and vulnerability around.

Then you have tons of mobs to Aoe, which we are great at. Then you have burrows to kill. Flesh golem, axe and dagger are good. Anything but scepter really.

Then there is a boss to kill inside a small bubble. Going outside the bubble=pain, like one of the gauntlet bosses. Wells were nice here.

Theres a puzzle. Time for l33t standing on a button skills.

More burrows to kill, more mobs to kill, and you are at he final boss.

I thought th final boss was nothing but pain, bringing all of the weaknesses of the necro back into play (no sustain, no finishers, no vigor, long cooldowns, little protection, no reflection or blocks…). Go into range and he throws high damage gears at you (really wells that stay around for a long time). Even if you stay ranged but close, your team will trigger this by going to get the electricity. Stay at melee and you can’t damage him from the side or back and can’t take a hit from the front. I hoe you get good recognizing the attacks. It’s a lot like the old F/U boss that you had to perfect to beat.

Some other groups were just hundred blade down the boss and putting up invulnerable for the bosses’ 30 attack, and I fear this will become the pug way to do things. It’s easier to ignore the mechanics and if that happens Necro will be shunned.

The post boss tasks are easy for necro. Just equip your signet of locust to get them all done in time.

Yeah the trash was pretty easy but they would wipe you if you went in leeroy style, which was good. And I liked the fact you couldn’t skip in here, but that they didn’t make the trash have 8 million hp to plow through either. I still think stacking on bosses is bad tactics, but if it works, it works. Just makes for really boring fights. As some mentioned, bringing spectral grasp was invaluable here, especially on the last boss when the holo’s were in the back daydreaming about whatever holograms daydream about. Only annoying thing was when the boss would step directly in the path of the grasp mid-pull and ruin your shot ( he did it to me more than once). I absolutely loved the post dungeon scavenger hunt and tasks. Flesh wurm and sig of locusts helps you speed around easily in there.

The trash can all be los’d and burst down in melee. They stopped us from skipping most of it which tbh I dont like. Its forcing us to play a certain way. But atleast all the trash is faceroll and dies really fast.

It worked really bad the first time, I guess we hadn’t learned tactics. Ran it again yesterday it was lovely. Went super smooth except for me accidentally using a fear to the wrong direction on last boss and making us wipe.. woops!
We are not a regular party for sure, this last run was 1 warrior, 1 necro, 1 ranger, 1 thief, 1 mesmer. This dungeon seems to work fine without being the perfect 5. Thief + necro is good on last boss to really pull mobs to it.

DownPour.5903:

It worked really bad the first time, I guess we hadn’t learned tactics. Ran it again yesterday it was lovely. Went super smooth except for me accidentally using a fear to the wrong direction on last boss and making us wipe.. woops!
We are not a regular party for sure, this last run was 1 warrior, 1 necro, 1 ranger, 1 thief, 1 mesmer. This dungeon seems to work fine without being the perfect 5. Thief + necro is good on last boss to really pull mobs to it.

Stuff like that is indication this dungeon was designed well. I’ve been waiting for this for a long time.

The boss mechanics are better. But it doesnt rectify the problems with why classes are picked. Mesmer focus is more than enough for pulling the strikers into the clockheart. Until conditions are made better you wont see necros and engis as a popular pick for organised groups.

Did the new path 1 time,now i’m done and waiting for the next update to come out.

Its ok for pugs, great for actual teams that dont try to cheeze encounters (god how i loved when 4 idiots pulled the commander charr guy whos name i forgot and he turned them to minced meat (it forced me to solo him, melee, but he is ok with proper kiting and if you position yourself and pull him back to the valves).
Only parts i didnt like in the new dungeon is the kinda rng ish nature with where the electricity pops up on the ground/no time to get out without blinks, that oak throw is very buggy and ungodly stupid ai of the holos.

You can full melee slick and sparki without kiting the ooze btw. Blind spam op.