Guild Wars 2

Hi

Now i may be just, plain bad at the game or lack tactical insight but the difficulty of dungeons is quite demotivational.

We did arbor bay yesterday for example and some mobs are either very weak and others are just insanely hard. The fact that we’re all downscaled but enemies still have a higher status like veteran or bosses that are champion hit insane amounts of damage sometimes and can wipe a group quite fast.

This makes dungeons not only tedious but a quick way to flush your money down the drain with armor repairs.

Is it me or is balance a bit far off in some places?

You are not alone. I have been running Ascalaon Catacombs and out of the 3 paths one can take, I have only completed the second path…twice. The other 2 paths are so ridiculously hard it makes the PvE aspect VERY unappealing.

I have read threads and comments on other sites and they pretty much say the same thing — dungeons are very difficult. I am not above a challenging experience and in all honesty, the dungeons are very challenging, which I enjoy, BUT they are grossly unbalanced and need adjustment.

Take AC for example, the mobs are actually more difficult than the bosses and prove to be the barrier between a successful completion and and long frustrating night. Some of the problems I have seen are:

• Mobs have either too much Defense or too much HP, and sometimes both.
• Many Veteran and Champion mobs have a “one-shot kill” ability. The Gravelers in AC come in two varieties: Stalkers which will knockdown and HP drain you in seconds and Breeders which will spawn so many smaller adds, you will become overrun in seconds > Miss a dodge on the Stalkers and you are dead, period.
• Some mobs will respawn after being killed in groups. I saw this happen after wiping on the last cannon before fighting the Ghost Eater several times.
• The animations (tells) and AoE circles of mob & boss attacks are nearly impossible to see, because of the intensity of spell effects. If we are going to be required to pay attention to the slightest detail or animated effect, we have to be able to SEE them.
• The “protection” fights in AC (Story), where you guard the NPC from attacks in the 1st and 3rd paths are near impossible to complete w/o the perfect player setup and communication. Unless you can talk to the other players and they know your playstyle, you will lose over and over and over again. The reason why players are now only doing the 2nd path is it has the use of spike traps which makes killing the mobs 10x easier.

Overall I am enjoying the game, but the PvE dungeons are disappointing. I am not new to MMOs and I expect difficulty, but if average players who understand the mechanics of the game have this much difficulty getting through the FIRST dungeon, then there is a problem. What makes this so confusing is the dungeons in GW1 were much better designed than this. It seems to me that ArenaNet spent more time fine tuning the WvW elements and ignored the PvE side altogether.

I am only happy that you find it hard. I would be disappointed if you completed the dungeon this early. If a dungeon is this hard, it only gives you that much more prestige from completing it.
I honnestly do not want the dungeons in this game to be easy farm-able or anything remotely related to that, if dungeons are too hard for you, then maybe you and your team is doing something wrong. I had no problems thus far with any dungeon. Infact I find some dungeons too short, after you completed them you are left with an empty feeling, was that it?.. So making them hard is only a good thing, I don’t want Dungeons in this game to be like Dungeons in WoW, they are not the same thing at all.
Of course bugs are never intented as a part of the Dungeon experience. :)
We all have our own opinions, thus came the forums to be.

same here… first of all i want to say that game is gret, but…

in dungeon there is no play, mobs hits you for 10k dmg so u are on 2 hits, i wont say about some bosses when i get 33k and im 1 hit… ok boss is boss, i udnerstand but pack of trash ? this is game where you dont have a healer like in WoW, so why doint mobs like in WoW? pointless.

they are too strong

and mostly the way to do anything with them, is by ranged wapons, forget about melee and probably you will lose more monay for repairs than you should, as me today.

and BTW zIRaX… im old WoW player, from very beginning, so i can easly compare. im with you when you say dungeons shouldnt be easy farmed, but its way too hard, not because you dont have skill, its because mobs are to stron for anything… like in cruciable of eternity, some mobs shooting energy that is going after yoy and hits for 9k, you can escape when there is nothig on your like wall to stop projectile, and you are too slow for it.

First, this isn’t a game bug. I would make a request to be moved to players helping players?

Also, these dungeons must be seen like 5-man raids. Those are intended to be rock hard and take a lot of time for groups to overcome. It would be disappointing if Blizzard released a raid that could be completed in 2 weeks. (Dragon Soul, anyone?) Same deal here, I don’t think Arenanet wants us to clear their hard mode PvE 2 weeks after the game’s release, especially not with all the pre-release worries that this game would lack in PvE due to no 40-man raids and become a PvP-only game.

I do have some worries about dungeons, especially with the viability of defense specs since it seems that defense or not you get two-shot in melee anyway and nobody has enough blocks, dodges and interrupts to stay alive, not even mace/shield warriors. It doesn’t mean that the dungeons are too hard though, just that a spec or two might need help.

I think it’s a bug, any problem with the game is a bug in my eyes seeing as there’s not much forum choices to pick from.

Players helping players is for hints etc. There’s no hint to do dungeon better. It’s just a zergfest where you constantly die over and over and keep trying till you kill everything.

No tanks and no healers in pvp is fine sure, but in dungeons? As a thief with good dmg you’ll pull aggro instantly and since no tanky class wants to run in to melee stuff (cause they’ll instantly die and be unable to dodge anything because THERE ARE NO ENEMY CAST BARS… <- another major BUG… aka problem) You’ll just be constantly dying the whole instance unless you hide like a coward and do no dmg.

If you want no tanks and healers arena net then make instances not require them. Aka every attack is avoidable 24/7. No heat seeking projectiles. No knockdown insta-kills etc.

And for the love of god give enemies cast bars we can see, so we know when to interrupt or dodge.

It’s like Bearhugger said.

& well, regular mobs in good raids are more often then not pretty tough, I’ve seen quite some raids in different games were they a raid had a few easier bosses then trash.

That’s just what makes it fun to get through. :>

Shinarika.5642:

It’s like Bearhugger said.

& well, regular mobs in good raids are more often then not pretty tough, I’ve seen quite some raids in different games were they a raid had a few easier bosses then trash.

That’s just what makes it fun to get through. :>

Obviously our definitions of fun are different.

When I’m challenged I’m having fun.

There’s no real challenge to these dungeons far as I’ve seen, it’s just like banging your head against a wall until it finally crumbles.

If you die (which you will, a lot), you just get back up and rejoin the fight to die again and rinse and repeat. No strategy required, just zerg stuff down and die alot. Booooring.

If arena net wants some tips on creating a challenging dungeon using active dodge techniques. (V) They should invest some time watching or playing “The Secret World” nightmare dungeons, but you should also bring back tanks and healers for dungeons at least.

Nokturnal.8973:

no tanky class wants to run in to melee stuff (cause they’ll instantly die and be unable to dodge anything because THERE ARE NO ENEMY CAST BARS… <- another major BUG… aka problem)

That is why I said there could be a problem with the viability of defense specs because whatever you do, you can’t survive, so why go defense? As someone who likes defensive playstyles, I’m worried that I won’t like exploration mode dungeons because I won’t be able to go in melee to use my block/counter skills without risking to be one-shot.

I understand that there’s no tank but when a boss decides to aggro me and I invested my points into defense, I shouldn’t be 2-shot as soon as Shield Stance falls on cooldown. This isn’t to say that I should be able to picnic in front of a boss and just take damage, there are plenty of games with tank/dps/healer and GW2 doesn’t need to be one, but I think that when they decided to trash the trinity, they didn’t seem to care a lot that some players enjoy defensive playstyles.

But once again, it doesn’t mean that dungeons are too hard, just that maybe defensive players are gutted in dungeons.

I had the same issues with Caudecus Manor. First path, near the end; 7 mob pulls that are all ranged elites with AOE attacks that one-shot you. the four AC paths were actually quite challenging (but doable) with a coordinated group, so we were expecting more of the same in Manor. I don’t think many of these dungeons have been internally tested for balance and difficulty; rather they just require zerging enemies down and other lame strats.

I would have to say the dungeons are too hard its that simple. Compare AC to Arah and AC is a good 2-3x more difficult in both modes. thats compareing the first dungeon to the last and the first is the more difficult by a large margin……i do love the difficulty but its just too much im a veteran player, I have GWAMM and Champion of the gods, I have played games like this most of my life and am very good with strategy and not that it matters but I have an IQ of 153….soooo lol trust me its too hard. Whether its a bug or not eh idk its just something that needs tweeked a bit once the developers have the time. Right now though I randomly cant even access the game after being permabaned for aparently hacking their servers lol….in my sleep….lol so ya im a tad more worried about those issues and know they will get down to the rebalancing last or close to it. we just need to be patient ^ ^ Dungeons arent the only area either there are major issues primarily witht he downleveling as far as i know, something about lvl 30s have better stats in a lvl 30 area with lvl 30 armor then a lvl 80 thats being downed to lvl 30 with lvl 80 gear on does. now i think my lvl 80 ele should be down leveled so that i cant just one hit everything with lavafont but to be less then another player at lvl 30? nah that needs tweaked, if its even true i never got a chance to test it.

I am curious for those that managed to do the ghost eater path in AC, what strategy did you use to protect the npc with the traps? I had a group several times attempt it and each failed with multiuple ways of doign it using only the traps using the traps till the champion then jumping down and killing it etc etc.

Ian Angelos.4681:

I am curious for those that managed to do the ghost eater path in AC, what strategy did you use to protect the npc with the traps? I had a group several times attempt it and each failed with multiuple ways of doign it using only the traps using the traps till the champion then jumping down and killing it etc etc.

Have 2 tankier classes stand where the traps are and bring all the mobs to them. 1 person on middle trap and 1 person on each of the two top traps (alternate between them both). The champion dies real fast when he’s getting hit by 3-4 traps at once.

It’s not that they are overly hard, it’s that they are bug ridden and filled with progress blocking glitches

hey everyone glad to see i’m not alone
and yes, i didn’t know where to quite put it but still i just wanted to mention it
the thing is that some mobs have insane mounts of HP
in some cases it’s justified (shadow behemoth & co) and in others it isn’t (a random champion cave troll)
so it still needs some balancing on those fields

Nokturnal.8973:

Obviously our definitions of fun are different.

*When I’m challenged I’m having fun.

There’s no real challenge to these dungeons far as I’ve seen, it’s just like banging your head against a wall until it finally crumbles.*

We experienced that, too. We tried to do Ascalon Catacombs and we decided to leave after we did not succeed in killing Ralena and Vassar. We tried that point for around one or one and a half hour and it was way too hard.

If you die (which you will, a lot), you just get back up and rejoin the fight to die again and rinse and repeat. No strategy required, just zerg stuff down and die alot. Booooring.

Yeah, you go into the battle, they hit you once (sometimes a second time) and you were killed. Then you have to start from the waypoint, go back and so on. In that time they just healed themselves again and again and again.

That didn’t make any fun!

It was our first try to do a dungeon (in storymode) and it was really annoying and demotivating.

By the way it makes you poor Everyone of us had to spent over 7 silver to keep the armor repaired during the fights.

Yes, it is not comparable to GW1, but there we enjoyed the dungeons and the challenge they gave us.

Crono.2374:

Ian Angelos.4681:

I am curious for those that managed to do the ghost eater path in AC, what strategy did you use to protect the npc with the traps? I had a group several times attempt it and each failed with multiuple ways of doign it using only the traps using the traps till the champion then jumping down and killing it etc etc.

Have 2 tankier classes stand where the traps are and bring all the mobs to them. 1 person on middle trap and 1 person on each of the two top traps (alternate between them both). The champion dies real fast when he’s getting hit by 3-4 traps at once.

The traps were dealing damage to it? All they did for us was slow it down literaly no damage at all. maybe another bug lol. cuz we did something similar i had a mesmer friend use portal jumping to keep the small mobs getting owned byt he traps whichw orked fine but couldnt do anything to the champion.

least you were only spending 7 silver navi lol costs me about 15 silver per repair. and even the zerging only works if you cordinate it right so that there is always at least one person fighting the boss so they dont heal. irritating and not even really a game i like to compare it to fileing paperwork over and over and over lol.

Navi.7142:

Nokturnal.8973:

Obviously our definitions of fun are different.

*When I’m challenged I’m having fun.

There’s no real challenge to these dungeons far as I’ve seen, it’s just like banging your head against a wall until it finally crumbles.*

We experienced that, too. We tried to do Ascalon Catacombs and we decided to leave after we did not succeed in killing Ralena and Vassar. We tried that point for around one or one and a half hour and it was way too hard.

If you die (which you will, a lot), you just get back up and rejoin the fight to die again and rinse and repeat. No strategy required, just zerg stuff down and die alot. Booooring.

Yeah, you go into the battle, they hit you once (sometimes a second time) and you were killed. Then you have to start from the waypoint, go back and so on. In that time they just healed themselves again and again and again.

That didn’t make any fun!

It was our first try to do a dungeon (in storymode) and it was really annoying and demotivating.

By the way it makes you poor Everyone of us had to spent over 7 silver to keep the armor repaired during the fights.

Yes, it is not comparable to GW1, but there we enjoyed the dungeons and the challenge they gave us.

Catacombs is not very hard, assuming you are coordinated and pay attention to what is happening. The Lovers, for example, need to be seperated first of all, and you need to watch out for debuffs like confusion that are put on you throughout the fight (which will kill you fast).

A lot of the encounters are bugged which makes them unfun, but I think in this case you are wrong in saying the dungeon is too hard. The Lovers encounter is actually pretty interesting compared to some of the other stuff I’ve seen in this game, you just have to be aware of game mechanics and have a well-coordinated group. AC as a whole is pretty fun and challenging, in my opinion.

Ian Angelos.4681:

Crono.2374:

Ian Angelos.4681:

I am curious for those that managed to do the ghost eater path in AC, what strategy did you use to protect the npc with the traps? I had a group several times attempt it and each failed with multiuple ways of doign it using only the traps using the traps till the champion then jumping down and killing it etc etc.

Have 2 tankier classes stand where the traps are and bring all the mobs to them. 1 person on middle trap and 1 person on each of the two top traps (alternate between them both). The champion dies real fast when he’s getting hit by 3-4 traps at once.

The traps were dealing damage to it? All they did for us was slow it down literaly no damage at all. maybe another bug lol. cuz we did something similar i had a mesmer friend use portal jumping to keep the small mobs getting owned byt he traps whichw orked fine but couldnt do anything to the champion.

There is no bug, you have to keep the champion in the traps and spam them, and it will melt.

Crono.2374:

Ian Angelos.4681:

Crono.2374:

Ian Angelos.4681:

I am curious for those that managed to do the ghost eater path in AC, what strategy did you use to protect the npc with the traps? I had a group several times attempt it and each failed with multiuple ways of doign it using only the traps using the traps till the champion then jumping down and killing it etc etc.

Have 2 tankier classes stand where the traps are and bring all the mobs to them. 1 person on middle trap and 1 person on each of the two top traps (alternate between them both). The champion dies real fast when he’s getting hit by 3-4 traps at once.

The traps were dealing damage to it? All they did for us was slow it down literaly no damage at all. maybe another bug lol. cuz we did something similar i had a mesmer friend use portal jumping to keep the small mobs getting owned byt he traps whichw orked fine but couldnt do anything to the champion.

There is no bug, you have to keep the champion in the traps and spam them, and it will melt.

Tryed that and nada just slowed it down, could easily be a bug and were just on different servers. same as there was a bug with the lovers for awhile that navi could have had trouble with where they were impossible to seperate and every single time u got their circles apart even slightly they ran together and healed again and the message invulnerable is spammed. same as a few other monsters like drakes where if there agro zone is messed up and you move them even slightly you start getting invulnerable over and over and they just heal.

Well, you could be right, Crono. And if we were experienced more, we would have done that in a few minutes.. Yeah.. but that is not the point for me. It was our first try and even after one (and a half) hour which we spend on that point of story we were not able to kill them and that did not make any fun.

The lovers were quite hard to seperate and not the debuffs killed us (maybe one or two times, but we died a lot time more).. we were nearly instantly killed by the attacks from these two lovely guys before we had the chance to do more than one or two hits to them.

However, for us it was not challenging or fun and we found it pretty hard for your first dungeon.

Probably the biggest disappointment with explorable dungeons is that half way through someone gets frustrated and rage quits.

I have to agree that no casting bars for the one shot kills is completely stupid and interrupting them with all the animation effects that are going on is pure dumb luck. Also if mobs can die to traps then the dungeons will be ruined when the idea catches on. You will see your precious prestige gone and everyone will have them on stupid easy farm.

Navi.7142:

Well, you could be right, Crono. And if we were experienced more, we would have done that in a few minutes.. Yeah.. but that is not the point for me. It was our first try and even after one (and a half) hour which we spend on that point of story we were not able to kill them and that did not make any fun.

The lovers were quite hard to seperate and not the debuffs killed us (maybe one or two times, but we died a lot time more).. we were nearly instantly killed by the attacks from these two lovely guys before we had the chance to do more than one or two hits to them.

However, for us it was not challenging or fun and we found it pretty hard for your first dungeon.

I say for a first dungeon especialy the storymode it is a tad too difficult. i took an exsperienced team through and blazed through everything but then spent a good hour or more on the lovers trying to kite the dang things apart…its first dung….reallllly should be a bit easier. no new player is gonna enjoy dieing that mucha nd getting drained of their money. ide say the damage is fairly ok all i would do is increase their agro radius so its easier to get them apart and reduce the size of the circle that determines whether they get buffed or not. should be a small fix will keep the difficulty and just make it a tad eaier to kill them how you are supposed to.

• The “protection” fights in AC (Story), where you guard the NPC from attacks in the 1st and 3rd paths are near impossible to complete w/o the perfect player setup and communication. Unless you can talk to the other players and they know your playstyle, you will lose over and over and over again. The reason why players are now only doing the 2nd path is it has the use of spike traps which makes killing the mobs 10x easier.

I did AC story with a full group of noobs myself included and we beat it with 0 communication other than watch out for traps on the ground that spawn adds. I had never seen the dungeon before and yah we wiped a lot on trash but in the end we beat it without much effort. A large part of a sucessful group is making sure it is somewhat balanced.

While it was just a random pickup group, as a Guardian going into my first dungeon my traits were heavily focused on healing as were my abilities. I didn’t know how to heal in a group setting I was basically mashing buttons at first. I guess the point I am making here is that each profession needs to know what their best setup is going to be for a dungeon which generally means bringing more defensive and healing abilities and less offensive to obtain a balance of both.

Also keep in mind that many fights can be ranged and kited while you are waiting for abilities to refresh. I learned that early on while solo questing. If you get in trouble find an escape route and if you can kite without agroing more adds then do it. Rezz often, I can not stress that enough! I brought a Sword/Shield combo and a staff for ranged for my first trip into AC as a Guardian.

TL;DR: Some of us can do and enjoy the content at its current difficulty. The entire rest of the PvE in the game is easy or semi-challenging; play that if you can’t handle dungeons.

I’m sorry, but I completely disagree on nerfing the difficulty. The absolutely wonderful thing about this game is that it accommodates a variety of different playstyles. Everything from the most casual PvEer to the most hardcore PvPer is taken into account in this game. The only few notable exceptions that this game doesn’t really have is:

- FFA PvP
- Difficult Large, Organized Raid Content
- Strong Vertical Progression Motivator

Out of all of the things that are standard in MMOs today, those are the three things that GW2 lacks (and for two of those I say good riddance). While the game doesn’t have difficult huge raid content, it does have difficult small group content. Let’s face it, the open-world dynamic events and content is quite easy and doesn’t really require much effort. The PvE in this game is not hard at all (not necessarily too, too easy, but relatively easy). If you take away the difficulty in the dungeons then those people looking for meaningful, fun, and challenging PvE content will have absolutely nothing to pursue in this game. The difficulty of the dungeons is the only thing which really prevent the PvE from being tossed aside like an afterthought in this game.

Let me say that I’ve only done AC Story (twice) and two paths on AC. We successfully completed AC each time.

I was surprised how difficult Story mode was (I expected Explorer to be difficult) and was actually quite pleased by it. We did wipe many times, but we did eventually make it through it.

NOTE THERE MAY BE SPOILERS
Different group did Explorer (Colossus path). When we first fought Kholer we were like “wtf.” An AoE pull, followed by an AoE stun, followed by an AoE whirl (you die in less than two seconds). I was like.. “Wow okay, let me put on some stun breakers then for when he pulls in” [playing Elementalist btw so I used Mist Form and Cleansing Fire]. Next encounter he pulls me in and I successfully Mist Form away (with like 15% health). I notice when I pop out of Mist Form that his attack ALSO adds a few DoTs… so I die anyways. I was like," Wow.. seriously? That’s a bit.. extreme." (Note that I did manage to escape with my life once by popping BOTH Mist Form AND Cleansing Fire). So after that I became really confused on wth ANet wanted from us. I decided to take that time to actually pay attention. By using my eyes and brain, I saw that Kholer does an extremely noticeable wind-up before he uses his AoE harpoon pull (his freakin’ hand glows gold and he takes literally 4 seconds to wind it up). Wow! Easy. All I had to do was watch him the entire time. When I saw him doing his wind-up, I would prepare to dodge. Now note that I’m not the best player so I did miss a few dodges, but I dodged probably 85% of them after I started noticing the wind-up. Once you figure that out, Kholer becomes EASY and you wipe the floor with him.

Next!

Okay now this next part was the hardest part of the entire run. The guy sets up two collectors that you have to protect… except that the room is being overrun with gravelings who pop up from graveling burrows which pop up all over the room (you have to defend two sides with a group of 5). This was.. difficult.. to say the least. We wiped and wiped and.. wiped. After every wipe, however, the percentage collected would increase (we were.. you know.. getting better). I decided to switch from my Cleric healing gear to pure damage gear and DPS down all of the burrows as fast as possible. If I got attacked, I would kite the mobs (they’re all melee). I noticed that if you kill a burrow fast enough, the dangerous Graveling coming out of it won’t spawn (usually a Breeder or a Howler). When we went all out DPS and managed to survive, we successfully completed the event.

The rest of the dungeon (including the final boss) was actually quite easy in comparison.

The point of the text is that if you actually adapt a strategy instead of complaining how difficult it is, then you may actually beat the content. When I ran AC again (Ghost Eater path with a group that dominated Story mode with one death), it was way easier than the Colossus path yet this group was extremely vocal about their dislike of the difficulty (their first time doing explorer). We still managed to beat it, yet they were still unhappy with how hard it was (I still don’t understand this but whatever).

My only complaints are as follows:

-In many of these cases, the bosses are way easier than the trash. The final bosses Colossus and Ghost Eater in Explorer were VERY easy (comparatively).

-Trash should be toned down JUST A BIT and easy bosses should be toned up.

-Possibly eliminate repairs or make damaged equipment more rare in dungeons (since you die dozens of times the first time you learn an encounter)

-Better rewards (but still non-unique, maybe something like a choice of rare crafting materials like Orichalcum, Ancient Wood or Ectoplasm upon completion. Or a Mystic Coin)

-Maybe make Story mode easier and allow Story mode repeats to give some tokens so that the people complaining about it being too hard can have a way to play the dungeons and get the tokens without trying to nerf the challenge for those of us who enjoy it

Basically to the sum it all up: many of us really enjoy the difficulty level of this content and, should it be nerfed, would have no meaningful and challenging PvE encounters to work through. Open content (yes even in Cursed Shore) is easy PvE. Dungeons are the difficult PvE option that many of us enjoy. If you don’t enjoy it then PLAY THE REST OF THE GAME THAT IS DESIGNED FOR YOU!

P.S. As for the person who said that you keep spawning and running into the event until it’s completed, I would partially agree that is true. You can do that throughout Story mode, but in Explorer you can’t beat Kholer without dodging and using skill and the ress and run trick does NOT work on the timed graveling events (which is probably what really makes them so hard).

P.P.S. As I have not tried many of the others yet; I cannot say if they are “too difficult,” but I can say that the difficulty of AC is fine and it only needs MINOR tweaks (difficulty increases in many places).

I’m okay with the challenge. My problem is that some mobs are a bit overtuned. Nothing without a clear tell should be one-shotting, and auto-attacks should not be hitting for 9,000 or more damage.

But if I had to choose between big nerfs and the current difficulty, I would choose the latter in a heartbeat.

Here are the problems as I see them:

In Explorable mode, the paths often vary wildly in difficulty, with options X and Y being nearly impossible and Z being pretty well balanced.

Story modes often have extremely challenging trash and laughably easy bosses. That seems so very backwards to me.

Dungeon difficulty in story mode varies heavily between the instances as well. One of the most prominent examples is how difficult AC is (particularly trash) and then you go to Arah and kind of laugh your way through the bosses…. and then cry at how easy it actually is to kill Zhaitan…

One-shot mechanics are never fun, but especially so when you can’t see them through all the spell effects. As we’re all aware, the larger the boss, the larger the spell effect is on them, which makes fighting some things extremely frustrating.

I can’t bring myself to really enjoy the dungeons as they are currently. I just run them out of a desire to get decent-looking gear. That’s pretty much it.

Catacombs is not very hard, assuming you are coordinated and pay attention to what is happening. The Lovers, for example, need to be seperated first of all, and you need to watch out for debuffs like confusion that are put on you throughout the fight (which will kill you fast).
A lot of the encounters are bugged which makes them unfun, but I think in this case you are wrong in saying the dungeon is too hard. The Lovers encounter is actually pretty interesting compared to some of the other stuff I’ve seen in this game, you just have to be aware of game mechanics and have a well-coordinated group. AC as a whole is pretty fun and challenging, in my opinion.

From my experience i can tell that this statement from Crono is true for me and other from my Guild. The first try of the very first Dungeon was like hell for me and my group but we lerned many things, we discussed about it, we made our minds up, and the second try was really nice to play and after the dungeon was cleared we all had the feeling that we had done something great.
So in my opinion the Dungeons are not to hard and i dont wish that they get degreade to something like „to cut the grass“. But i also understand that other people think Dungeons are unbeatable hard.
Thats why I propose, because of the different imaginings of the Dungeons, why not implementing the Hardcore-Mode from GW1 to the Dungeons? The Normale-Mode is for player who wants to take it easy and HM is for player who wants a hell of a fight. From my personal opinion that would be the best opportunity to satisfy all.

best regards

i think dungeons should be made like GW dungeons
here we have 3 mobs or something with insane dps capabilities that really give us a hard time and no other strategy than kite and rush
in GW enemies were just in larger numbers and your chance of succeeding was about quickly eliminating key opponents in the enemy’s ranks so victory would be easier (in GW2 these would be guardians and elementalists i think)

I’ve only done the first two dungeons and preferred the difficulty level of the Catacombs (I was actually disappointed at how quickly and easily we blew through Caudecus’s Manor), but some things do deserve a look over.
I’ve had party members claim that Kohler never did a “charge-up” animation, which I can’t confirm directly but I have had my own spell effects disappear before, so it sounds reasonable.
Ranged enemies hit just as hard as melee, which shows in a couple spots packed full of ranged trash that gibs your party one by one with no real warning.
I have no idea how enemies pick their current target (or if this is intended behavior), but it’s kinda frustrating to see someone get downed by a boss, have four people run up and unload CC and try to pull their attention, and STILL fail to peel the boss away from running back and mauling that downed person to death.

To be quite honest, I truly see PvE dungeons as the equivalent of what “raids” are in other games – they’re supposed to be super hard and really cater to organised team-play. I would be highly disappointed if the (8?) dungeons in the game were even moderately easily completed by a PUG, even on story mode.

The way I see it, “Story” mode dungeons are the “this is our organised group’s first or second time in here, and we’d like to learn the basic ins and outs of this instance”. Whereas “Explore” mode dungeons are the equivalent of a heroic instance that should require almost perfect execution.

Based on your description in the OP, Story mode sounds like it’s right on track: The moment I see PUG groups being able to somewhat easily complete them I’m going to be disappointed – that’s what the outdoor world event bosses and the like are for. Dungeons should (and hopefully always will be) catered towards organised teams (for Story mode) and highly-skilled organised teams (for Explore mode).

That being said, if you ARE with an organised team and you keep failing – I’m willing to bet at least 3 people in the group are thinking of dungeons as things akin to dungeons in WoW where you literally just facetank everything.

I really, really, really love that they’re so challenging, and the moment they make them easily accessible to the disorganised (not elite, just disorganised) masses I will be a sad, sad panda :’(

Dynamic Events: Random players in a group more or less rofl-stomping.
World/Meta Events: Random players in a group actually having to pay attention on an individual basis.
Story Mode Dungeons: Groups that are pre-organised and looking for a more structured challenge to test their teamwork (not just “we all individually dodge things and l33t dps”, but “my x will combo with your y ability”).
Explore Mode Dungeons: Groups that are well-seasoned and looking for the toughest PvE content available (ie, players that want to practically have a synchronized dance of skill).

^ is how I feel things are intended to work, currently do work, and is perfect for it to be.

I hear all this talk about “tanks” and “healers”. Have you not noticed yet that in GW2 there is no such definition?
Some are squishier than others, some can heal a bit more than others, sure, but that’s as far as it’ll go imo.

I did AC for the first time last night with the guild. We did take quite awhile. We did die quite a lot! But we also had a LOT of fun; no one quit either.

My view is people need to get into the mindset that this is not WoW. Dungeons are meant to be tough, not a breeze. You will not get the holy trinity and you won’t get “aggro” or “heals” nor “battle rezzes”. You need to learn to coordinate your skills with that of your team, as well as plan your actual movement in a given situation. Learn what the mobs/bosses do. Learn to adapt. Be prepared for situational awareness that completely breaks the normal flow of combat – ie: “rezzing” a downed player.

I do agree there needs to be tweaks though, and Srondon.3642 couldn’t have laid it out better. But never made easier!

While I do have complaints, a successful dungeon runner gave me this tip:
If you are specced for damage and nothing else, you are hurting your team.

There are five of you in a dungeon, and you’re going to end up doing damage naturally, even if the damage isn’t quite as high as you want. So instead of damage, you need survivability. You need group buffs. You need combo fields, especially healing combo fields and stuff that applies immobilise. You need to be using every ability you have that helps your team.

Obviously this is easier to do for some classes than others; for example, I’m a ranger, and the hard CC I have is a little lacking. But I help my team much more if I take Sun Spirit instead of Signet of the Hunt, and if I take Healing Spring instead of Troll Unguent.

Dungeons are where the defensive stats and healing power matters, because you can’t 1v1 out-DPS a dungeon mob all the time, instead you need to work together to survive.

Hard CC sometimes isn’t even helpful in dungeons, as many bosses seem to be immune to a number of cc abilities.
I agree though – supportive builds seem to be much more sensible in dungeons. And no , that does not mean “get the water mage for heals” – he dies so fast from hits and heals so little that his skills are better spent otherwise.

However, I also have slight gripes with dungeons – and I only just did AC in story mode (I don’t feel like I want to do explorable mode). Our group wasn’t too thrilled that “trash mobs” were often harder than the bosses, and the lovers seemed buggy at times (they couldn’t be knocked back with boulders although they were standing in the middle of the room or got stuck at pillars and other environmental elements), making the fight against them more frustrating than necessary. King Adelbern was a breeze in comparison.
A little balancing here might make things more smooth – especially since the story mode originally wasn’t designed as all that challenging, if I remember correctly.

Even though I’ve only done Arah story mode with a melee heavy pug (3 warriors, guardian (full offensive spec), thief) I agree with Nethelli.4023 and Srondon.3642 the most. I was actually laughing a good amount myself, but not for the reason one might assume – just because every fight was basically someone “tanked” for a hit or two and then someone else took over (except the last dragon fight which was… less than epic – MMO designers in general tend to diverge from the main game mechanics too much in way too many cases and it ends up just being plain annoying). Needless to say even though we barely communicated we never wiped though individual deaths were in the 6-10 range.

Difficulty in general is often hard to define for people. I realize they want to make use of the evasion/energy mechanics but it is just tedious when most are slightly delayed hits take away 40-60% of someone’s health.

Also respawn rates for trash seemed… bugged for my group. It didn’t matter where we went, trash was back in seconds – we survived because we sort of intuitively abused the heck out of “cool down resets after a mob dies” mechanics – particularily the guardian one with virtue of justice and the trait that gives it might (25 stacks with 3 warriors and a thief gets anything down fast apparently). There were parts were it made some remote sense for trash sense to respawn fast but others… not so much.

We were all clearly wearing rare gear upgraded with rare orbs or whatnot, gear tends to make a difference in these discussions. Speaking of which, even for story mode, the loot drops were laughable (literally, I was laughing) – I got one green, the rest blue.

I can understand how some people find this kind of difficulty fun – personally I don’t and prefer soloing a dynamic event with a champion class mob. At least then I’m guaranteed the default reward from the event. Personally, I wish it was more like the eye of zhaitan personal quest fight (though toned up with a bit more variety) where it gives players new to the dungeons a breather rather than the constant “most of your health” attacks that tends to pigeonhole people into certain builds and forcing people to use the same tedious slowly regenerating energy rolls all the fight.

Back in the beta weekends I would have agreed that dungeons on explorable were too difficult, but now I think it hits a nice balance. It won’t be appropriate to just dive in and have a go chaotically. My main experience is with Ascalonian Catacombs, I have so far completed 2 of 3 paths relatively without hassle. Once you see what goes on in each area, you just need to plan what to do. It might take 2 or 3 tries, but it is well-doable.

The only thing I did notice, gravelings seem to sometimes have a permanent knockdown skill of some sort. I’m not sure when it hits, but all of a sudden, I’ll be on the floor and not get up for well over 3 seconds. I do wonder if this is a bug, as it just doesn’t appear on every run through (I’ve completed it about 5 times now).

Guys seriously, the dungeons are not that hard considering the game has been out only a week or so.
There are still many bugs in the dungeons which may or may not
have an effect on the overall difficulty though
BUT it is not like the bosses or mobs are (when they are working correctly) that hard themselves.

This is a game where dungeons are meant to be played so that you can get better with the game, they are a challenge for you
(unlike the normal quests or events etc.) remember that this is a MMO.
People just need to learn the game with time and when they do the game becomes easier and easier

I’m sure in a couple of months or maybe after a year or so
you all think that they need to add more hard dungeons etc.

This thread is a bug thread so I think it would be better for Arenanet and the game
if everyone just reports bugs (like if some boss becomes stuck or invulnerable without a reason)
not things like “this is hard, make it easier”.

Ian Angelos.4681:

I am curious for those that managed to do the ghost eater path in AC, what strategy did you use to protect the npc with the traps? I had a group several times attempt it and each failed with multiuple ways of doign it using only the traps using the traps till the champion then jumping down and killing it etc etc.

The Ghost Eater path is much easier. All you need to do is have 4 people man 4/5 of the chains to pop the traps. The 5th person kites the Gravelings around, while the others pull the chains damaging the mobs as they run through the spikes. After a few minutes, they are all dead. You win.

But unlike this path, the other two paths have no trap mechanic and you are forced to
defend the NPC yourselves, which proves to be extremely difficult.

Many of the replies are spot on and it is good to know that I am not alone. Again, I want to stress that it isn’t that I (or others) are advocating for easy-mode dungeons, but it is clear that from the response, that many players are not having “fun.” I love challenging mechanics, but this isn’t about the lack of a challenge, but a lack of balance.

There are too many inconsistencies and problems associated with running the first dungeon to be merely a skill-based problem. What I believe may be the fundamental issue at hand is the problem associated with ArenaNet’s implementation of a non-Trinity based game. This is a good thing, as I think it provides new and interesting ways to play the game, BUT it also introduces a host of new problems associated with a very different style of gameplay.

Nothing is perfect out of the box and it is apparent that ArenaNet could not conceive of all the issues and missed quite a few problems. The professions may be redesigned to exclude the Holy Trinity, but the mobs don’t seem to be. They act as if groups have a dedicated tank who is designed to mitigate damage, a healer to heal through severe spikes in damage, and DPS to eliminate threats. But as we know that isn’t the case.

I commend ArenaNet for changing the game, but such as change requires constant testing and feedback, which I assume could only be done after the game was launched. It is my though that the only way for ArenaNet to know if the dungeons were tuned properly was to just throw us in the lion’s den and see what happens. Now that we have been thrown in, it is time for us to respond.

If players are actively avoiding certain paths, because of difficulty, then the problem is real, whether you are experiencing it or not.

some will kill me for that, but i would compare it to Diablo 3…

well in diablo, on hell dificulty, everything is being seen as challange, on inferno you arr one hit and there is no fun from that… just go from waypoint to waypoint… no fun.

same here… when im one hit for trash, its not funny, and there are mobs like in Twilight Abor… knights ? with stuning aoe abillity and then fast killing hit, two hits but you can count it as one, cuz you wont be so fast to use your stun break abillity and leave area of effect before he kill you. you are not a robot to do that so fast. so ? so there is no fun in dieing even when you play really good with your class…

sure i want to face a challangable foe, but not mob with one hit abillity and randomly attacking you. its not challange, its brainless dieing over and over and zerging.

Right. So I have been wondering exactly the same myself. Is it really supposed to be that hard?

BUT. Here is the thing. After beeing in some dungeons with some mature and nonflaming people, we have changed a bunch of skills of ours so we can kite, bleed, cripple, and so on. And above ALL. DODGE! And after we did this.. Just started to use our tools correctly. Things is not that hard.

We all have to remember. This is not WOW. THANK YOU GOD FOR THAT! And Easymode is NO FUN.

It’s all a new type of gameplay we all need to learn and adjust to. And Really. Try to use some other skills, and even go ranged if so be it. It’s not all about the DPS, rather the prolonging of the fight and avoiding death. Then slowly take them down instead.

If they nerf the instances to WOW and back again, I will seriously quit this game aswell. I have missed a challenging MMO for a LOOOOONG time now. So all you 12 year old kids out there. L 2 P! I wiped at Razorgore in Blackwing lair for 3 weeks straight. Imagine the joy when we first got him down.

Way to go Arenanet! This game rocks. And after you have tweaked abit here and there it will rock harder than Jack Black!

The fact that players are beginning to coin the term “death zerg” is a clear indication of a problem. =/

I really hope they dont make this game into a new “WoWcasual” where you can run the instances blindfoldet. I hope they will keep the instances hard and gives you a challange. I don’t see why a game should be so easy that you dont die.

As it is now a PuG that have basic understanding of teamplay and cooperation and basic knowledge of their caracter and what each skill do, will more or less run trough the instance.

So please dont make instances into “WoWmode”.

This is not a game bug. Currently the forums are not open for general feedback. Please be patient, as the forums are only available for support issues at this time.