Guild Wars 2

Blaeys.3102:

[…]

tldr: Players of any commitment level can still usually find a party willing to attempt an ultra hard 5 player dungeon. They wouldn’t be able to do the same with set number large scale raids. They would never even get the chance. Take that into account when implementing raiding in GW2.

I don’t want to crash anybody party, but I’m also concerned about implementing larger group instances (a.k.a. “Raids”) in the game.

A party of 5 seems the perfect number for this kind of content, and I really like to see more of them added to the game, rather than 20 people raids that won’t be accessible to most of your playerbase (we’ve all seen how it ended up in Wildstar).

An official response / a quick hot fix would be nice.

I am boycotting Mai-Trin frow now on and I’m currently considering stopping doing fractal altogether until it’s fixed.

The game is 100% enjoyable with exotics. I will leave it that ever change.

For my part, I don’t think I’ll go full ascended until there’s some separation between the cosmetics and the stats (transmutation crystal are not sustainable).

In any case, I’ll stay clear of the headstart insanity of mats price jumps and gear grind that is sure to happen next week.

That would be fun to watch (in a diabolical way)… or I would learn how to finish lvl33 in a timely manner and without using repair kits.

To be more precise, what I’d like to hear / read is a justification of the changes to Dredge fractal from a dev / designer point of view, and how it did enhance the length balance to get them more in line with the other fractals.

@Ropechef : the tiers actually are :

level 1 – 10 = daily chest. with gold, Pristine relic, and other loots.
level 11 – 20 = daily chest with Gold, Pristine relic, chance at ring, small chance at skin and other loots.
level 21 – 30 = daily chest with gold, pristine relic, chance at ring, chance at infused ring, small chance at skin, and other loots.
level 31 – 40 = daily chest with gold, pristine relic, chance at Infused ring, chance at skin and other loots.
level 41 – 50 = daily chest with gold, pristine relic, chance at infused ring, chance at skin, and other loots.

From my experience.

If you have enough AR, the best course seems to be : 10 – 20 – 30 – 40 – 50, since the instabilities at 40 and 50 are only a gear check (agony applied regularly).

You seem to need 50AR for fract. 40 and 70AR for fract. 50 (though the consensus is that 64AR is enough and relatively easily attainable — you only need each of your 3 agony slots equipped with +8 infusion).

Seveleniumus.5973:

making fractal shorter doesn’t equal nerfing it. Shaman fractal is arguably harder, but no one is complaining about it, why is that? Because it’s difficulty centers around interesting boss mechanics, people need to adjust to overcome, it’s difficulty doesn’t come from endless waves of trash mobs and cheap mechanics, requiring specific classes to be able to do reliably.

Exactly that. I don’t complain about this fractal’s difficulty, it isn’t by any stretch difficult but about its length and tediousness.

What about removing the clown car and champion altogether along with the bomb path?
You’ll get switch room —> laser guns —> last boss ?

That would put the length more inline with the other fractals and only keep the good / interesting part, no ?

povV.5681:

iRedisko.8413:

so far “Outflanked” was the hardest, as some enemies could oneshoot even heavily armored party members with a big HP pool, which sometimes resulted in an entire party getting wiped.

“Impaired Immunity” wasn’t so hard to pass, as most party members naturally had some condition removals which helped minimize our trouble.

but i’m not really an expert in high level fractals and am going to pass lvl 34 – “Fleeting Precision” – for the first time tonight. can someone tell me if the critical chance reduction on this level is significant or not? i mean, if i have a 50% critical chance, how will it be reduced once i enter the fractal? will it be like 40% or… 0%?

ive done a 34, 3 or 4 times now. i dont know the exact % but its nothing to worry about. 34 is a great level to go from 30-34 on.

Yep, I’ve heard that’s 25% crit chance reduction. A walk in the park after clearing 33 with the combo Dredge/Mai Trin AKA “everything one shots, namaste and good luck”.

My personal policy on dungeon selling :
1. Never buy a run.
2. Try to run full guild, if not possible, complete with pugs.
3. If running with pugs, try to open the dungeon, if not possible, temporary add any pug to friendlist.
4. Report offending player if getting kicked.

It didn’t happen to me directly, but it did happen a couple of times to some of my guildies. It’s enervating to say the least to drag a couple of bad pugs to the other end of way too long run, only to get kicked out and have your place sold.

The problem is, for a couple of groups that solo/duo it legitimately, most seller either grief other people or exploit bugs.

Currently, most of the LFG for Arah is over-runned by sellers. I’ve recently seen people trying to sell CoF 1 and AC 3 for 2 gold or more… Two of the most easy-mode ten minutes runs. I don’t see anyone in their right mind either selling or buying this, and I’m pretty sure these aren’t legit runs (mandatory 5man event for CoF 1, anyone ?).

I’d rather have this behaviour banned than become the standard.

Yes please. Great idea!
/15chars.

Ayrilana.1396:

If that group did it the normal way from the start, they would have beaten it in roughly 35 minutes at fractal level 31. There are numerous things they could’ve done a little better to get sub-30 minutes.

Ok, now we’re technically at 35min, with hypothetical optimizations to get it under 30min. Which is still 10/15 minutes more than the 20/25 minutes you announced earlier in the thread.

And guess what ? 35min — ok, let’s say 30min, for an optimum runtime is still way too long and just confirms most groups are currently dragging there for at least an hour.

I did it this weekend on lvl33 (mass damages when getting flanked — yep, the already infamous one), and it was hell. Did we manage to clear it ? Yes. Did we spend two hours in there ? No. Only one hour. Did we enjoy the run ? Not at all.

By the way, what do you find so enjoyable in this particular fractal in the first place ?

Currently there, third time in a row at 30+…
This one needs to go, or be completely overhauled. Now that the fun temporary content is back in the game, can we have the not fun permanent content out ?
I’ve never heard anyone saying anything nice about this one.

I’d love to see a dev. livestream doing it a 30+. That would be fun.

Agreed. It has been repeatedly suggested for some time. I’d love to see some community designed armor. Beats the “jpop music video” constest we had a couple of weeks back, IMO.

I don’t care about the reset.
I don’t base my worth on a number on the top right corner on the screen or the time I spent in game or the number of rez kit I used to glitch my way up to 80 (I didn’t glitch above 50 at all).
What I care about is new content that seems good so far (livestream + announcement).
What I care about is having fun and challenging content that is more than a larger health pool or one shot attacks.
And guess what ? we also get the cherry on the top with better reward on forth.

I mostly voted against RNG boxes, not for Thaumanova let alone against Abaddon.

I get that’s what you get when you ask for a vote for :
- some lore / story driven plot,
- an epic-sounding /not so epic new fractal,
- a poll of opinion on RNG boxes,
all in the same bulletin !

Korossive.7085:

I’m a mesmer and see things from a different perspective. I’m wanted in groups… but only 1 mesmer. Then there are kick-votes even before swamp started.

Ironically, with 2 mesmers you have a lot of reflects, and alternating TWs. Don’t understand it. I’ve done tens of frac 48’s and some of the best runs were with 2 x mesmer… oh well.

Agreed. My semi-static HL group is 2 mes / 1 guard / 1 or 2 rangers (yes, rangers – please go watch some Brazil [DnT] videos and stop stigmatizing this class for no reason please) and one whatever. We do more than ok, but we had a couple of pugs leaving because there was “too much mesmers”.

Wait until the new fractals are released and freshly 80 players decide that they’re max level so why not join a 38/48 group? Everything should work out ok right?

Buttercup.5871:

Edit: even if it “only” adds another 12 percent (2% times 6 armor pieces) on top of the other ascended bonuses, this brings you to roughly a 30 percent increase in DPS on damage oriented builds – versus the exotic variants of the same gear.

You’re counting it wrong : 2% on a piece doesn’t add up. If it’s a 2% increase, it will be a 2% overall. Which is a bit much but manageable for me (i’d rather have no stat increase, just infusion slots).

What about changing your keybind for looting?

1. Precursors, loot, and other RNG mechanics
2. Alt-friendliness and Ascended items
3. Living story (addressing concerns about the last updates — Tequalt / Twilight Assault / B & M)

Bonus : for a game oriented around cosmetic rewards, a gear locker would be really nice.

There was a thread a while back in this subforum with a lot of design ideas for new legendaries.

I like the idea of player designed weapons, that would be a great way to engage creative players in the game.

Anyhow, I would love to see some new legendary skins, having only one option for your favorite tool of the trade is quite limitating, even more so when some of them are a matter of an acquired taste (pony shooting bow, disco ball mace, etc., I’m looking at you)

Snoozy.6701:

As a ranger, i understand ranger is a class that is least needed in this dungeon because of the pets are unable to control, and without pets, rangers have lost half their firepower. Luring prove difficult in the last boss, Clockheart, because the holograms will target your pet first.

I’ve run it three time, once as a mesmer and twice as a ranger, and this dungeon is quite ranger friendly. The boss health pools are quite small, therefore the full dmg zerker wars in all slots strategy isn’t really worth much there.

Actually, I found the aggro system to work as intented (for once), would it be the ooze or the holograph / clockheart kiting. I did most of the kiting duties in each of my runs.

May I suggest you try to learn to play with you pet in “avoid combat” behaviour at all times ? It require an extra push of a button (F1 or F2) to make it engage, but you’ll find that the pet dies a lot less and you won’t frustate your teammates (and yourself) with unwanted aggro anymore.

Kaisharga.5647:

Noob: A person who is new to the game or has fewer achievement points than you or just entered the dungeon for the first time or dies more than you.

You forgot to add to your dictionary :

Elitist : A person who has spent way too much time in the game or have more achievement points than you or just entered the dungeon once or die just as much as you, but for some reason it’s always because of someone’s else mistake.

ElenaDragon.8401:

The accessory should be dyeable like the rest of our armor.

Agreed. I’m quite annoyed not being able to match the hair accessory with the other dyes I’ve unlocked / buyed (sometimes for a hefty gold coins tag on the TP).

Also, please keep them coming. If you can spit up new hairstyles every month, you’ll secure a steady income from me (and other so inclined players I’m sure) :p

rfdarko.4639:

Please, please devs, read and post in the dungeon subforum once in a while.

Yes please. I miss the old times when Robert Hrouda used to come and talk to us.

1. Make the path undoable by most groups
2. Gather data about how this now the least played dungeon path
3. Remove the path
4. ????
5. Profit.

Seriously, why did you remove the path? You just had to fix the spider spawn / no reset issue and the path would have been back to be okay. (while you’re at it, can we have the old Ascalonian Catacombs back?)

Also, adding a new lvl 80 path in a lvl 55 dungeon? Isn’t it going to be confusing a couple of months from now when new players won’t have gotten the memo?

I really hope the new path is worth it.

Dingle.2743:

Tequatl’s difficulty comes for the wrong reasons. He requires more organisation than you can expect from a random group of players, but the only way to gather specific players is to camp out a server or overflow until only players that are worth having around are there.

That’s exactly the problem here. The game doesn’t have the communication tools / server capacity for an event this scale and with this kind of required organization.

I tried to kill it again yesterday (against better judgement), and spent most my afternoon just trying to get on the main the server. When I finally managed to, it was after the third organised try of our big PVE guild (MOCO on Jade Sea), and 2 failed attempts for 1 victory.

I had to wait on the map for almost two hours just to get a fair chance of success, not counting the time I spent trying and failing to join the map (one hour before the event, I was already put on an overflow).

We failed at 25% life. I should be happy to have come this far, but I feel like I’ve once again wasted my time.

I have no problem with some difficulty in GW2, such as the Queen Gauntlet or even the Scarlett Invasion (it wasn’t a guaranteed win, but was reasonably doable on overflows).

Dingle.2743:

What the fight needs is some way to properly organise it, like a researchable guild mission that creates a personal instance which is invite only, with the fight able to start on demand. So instead of waiting for up to 2 hours for the dragon to spawn, the players go to sparkfly, join the guild instance and just… fight him as soon as everybody’s ready.

Sounds like a reasonable idea. I’ll take anything that doesn’t require me to wait for 2 hours on the map.

That, or, you know, nerf the kittening dragon and put hard content in its right place i.e. instanced solo, party, or guild stuff, not the open world.

Did anyone saying the path is okay did actually run it in the last couple of months ?

It used to be the most challenging version of the nightmare tree, yet it was still reasonably feasible, but they ninja-buffed the spawn rate of the the spiders adds at some point. I went there last week, and my (usually quite efficient, inb4 l2p noob, thanks in advance) party wasn’t able to down it (some of them were first-timers in this path).

I wish I took a screenshot of the room, it was literally littered with spawns when we decided to leave, and not in a “yeah, good challenge, let’s do this” way, but in a “omg, this encounter is so bugged it’s broken” way.

So, yeah, something need to done.

Lathrall.9180:

And after all these countless posts of the issues going on with this event with overflows, guesting, afk, and displeasure in what has come from this event, we still have silence from Anet.
It would be nice to even have just one developer come in and make a statement about this, if there is something they have learned from it, and a fix is on the way.

What is likely to happen is that they call it a day, leave the world bosses in this half-broken limbo for months and we never get to hear from any of the devs on the forums on these issues from now on.

That’s what happened with the Ascalonian Catacombs revamp fiasco.

Dungeons are 5 men instances (you can strategise and coordinate) with no time limit.
This is a 80+ men open-world event with very good chances to end up on overflow with an unforgiving timer.

This is not a learn to play isssue.

TamTiTam.9574:

It might be a little too hard, but -please- do not nerf it to the ground…
People will try as long as the fight is fun and/or there is nice loot.

Having to WP from the other side of the map because you can’t rez people (massive AoE everywhere) isn’t fun.

Trying like a mad men for 15min to see the bar go down to around 90% in an overflow server isn’t fun.

Having the HP of the other boss upped to make it “more difficult” isn’t more challenging nor fun.

Not to forget that you get the same loot you used to with a tiny chance to get a color variation of the only ascended weapon skin.

Making it the single event of the bi-monthly update means it should cater the majority of players.

Looks like Anet tried to fix something that wasn’t broken again. I hope there will a be a quick reaction from their part, or the world bosses will soon become ghost towns. It’s what happened after the Ascalionian Catacombs fiasco a couple of months ago, that led to the dungeons being altogether abandoned by the dev team (save for the TAFU random troll).

Seen the loot.
Doesn’t worth do it more than once, for the achievement.

A waste of time.
Scarlett invasion wasn’t a guaranteed win, but was doable.
This one is just stupid. Thanks for entertaining the utopia that 80 ramdom people on an overflow server can cooperate to finish an mathematically unfeasable feat.

I hope the nerf is coming sooner rather than later.

Njordfinn.4921:

just make it character bound…

Yes please!
I used to run the easy paths with my alts (I have 8 lvl80 chars), Anet have taken away any incentive to do that anymore.

Moreover, I think it’s a bad move to implement this nerf (and please, don’t make us believe you’ve made the dungeons “more rewarding” — we’re not stupid) without a LFG tool. I’m on summer break so I don’t actually tried to find a group, but I don’t see the prospect of TPing from dungeon to dungeon to make a party a very enticing prospect. If I could LFG “whatever path I haven’t done yet” for the day easily, it wouldn’t be so bad, I guess…

Thanks for this quality of life addition!
I’m grateful:
- my two dungeon tokens bank tabs can now be put to better use,
- no more major city trip to offload my wallet / tokens / karma jugs,
- account wide karma !

On a side note, how can anyone complaint about this huge improvement ?

Great review, I wholehearted agree with most of your points.

Blackwyn.8127:

My mindset on this dungeon so far has been, ‘the moment I complete these kitten achievements, I’m out and never doing this again’. That’s just wrong.

My mindset was more in the line of “no way I submit myself to this again for the sake of collecting achievements”. Once again, the last boss is rendered a tedious grind by absurd life bars and an unnecessary repetition of the same phases artificially lengthening the fight. And you make sure you don’t let crippling bugs on top of this already somewhat challenging content.

That’s a shame because the dungeon was really an overall pleasant experience and the mechanics behind the boss fight could have been really cool.

I’ll also add that, once again, we’re thrown in with no clues about what to do. The path up to the boss(es) should act as a tutorial about the mechanics, IMHO. It’s no fun to have someone in the party go find a strategy guide on the net or subject your PUG to repeated wipes every time there’s new content added in the game.

Never ever going down means you’re not taking any risk, which in turn means you’re making a sub-part effort or down right get carried by the rest of the party (I’m looking a you ranged players pew-pewing in the back — and no I don’t think only about bad rangers, I got my share of skill #1 spamming GS mesmers, staff necros, staff elems and even scepter guardians or SB thiefs).

However, going down on every encounter says a lot on a player competency too (I’m looking at you, five-signets zerkers warriors)…

zacharias.5437:

Edit: didn’t realize that about the rezzed Hunter. will have to give that a try if we don’t have enough reflection.

Neither do I.

Usually, when I pug it, I end up being the last one standing, so I run to the other room to reset them and allow the group to wp. What happens is the mobs follow me, and we do them in a pre-patch manner, without silver spawning or the crusher rezzing.

Not sure if it’s really working as intended though.

nowitsawn.1276:

Kudzu -> Rosethorn. Instead of pretty pink flowers, this would have dark roses (with similar particle effects and footsteps) and caws like a crow when drawn.

I would definitely invest my time and money on this one, to go along the Twilight I’m currently working on for my ranger.

Happened to me yesterday too. 4 rare greatswords gave back a rare shield.
Something broken here?

I suggest you try, in no particular order :
- Twilight Arbour, path “up” (entry level is 55, so you can bring your lvl 50’s in),
- Citadel of Flames, path 1 (path 2 is doable too, but there’s a “defend the NPC” event towards the end that can be tricky for rookies),
- Honor of the Waves, any path, but note that path 2 have extensive underwater combat, you should update your underwater gear before trying it.

Trying Sorrow’s Embrace may also be an option, it’s been quite nerfed a couple of months ago, especially if you have a full party ready, since not a lot of people run it.

Let’s beat this horse to death once more, with feeling.

Old AC was fine. Easy, nice introduction to dungeonning, Kohler was a fun fight for organized group, you could go in and out in less than half an hour for reasonable rewards, and it was altogether rookie and pug friendly.

New AC is a chore. Unorganized pug fail it massively, organized groups struggle with tedious/bugged boss mechanics, and it’s no longer rookie friendly as you need to expertly dodge, purge conditions, keep on your toes not to get repeated knocks backs from trash mobs.

Is it more challenging? Not really for someone who already finished multiple times the other dungeons in the game.

Is it more fun? I, for one, find it spectacularly tedious. Ghostbuster fight was fun for two minutes the first time. I don’t want to go through it ever again. Howling King (and the burrow event) lags horrendously on my system (it used to work as intended), so it’s not fun at all being mauled to death by invisible adds. Never tried Grast, but from what I’ve heard it’s the most bugged of the three flavours, so no thank you.

No wonder then no one want to run it anymore, except experienced players that have no way around farming tokens for legendary weapon crafting. HotW is now a better farm spot for PVT exotic armor.

TW nerf was warranted, as it used trivialize a lot of content. I’m glad they did it.
A tad shorter CD would have been nice to compensate, though, so that we can switch elite without waiting for CD.

I rolled a warrior a couple of months ago, leveled it to around 15 and lost interest.

Seriously, TW nerf doesn’t change much, really. Our favorite class got buffed instead.
Sword CD patch makes it almost as good at clone production as the staff is. I’m really pleased overall.

… and for those who think that TW is the only thing of substance we could contribute, well, go roll a warrior to spam 100b indeed, your mesmer won’t be missed in a party anyway.

pahldus.1678:

We didn’t get the talked about nerf to Shatter, however every other profession that has a quickness skill got a time duration increase except Time Warp. I call BS on that, because ours is an elite, and now just how useful will it be with the reduced ability speed from 100% to 50%.

Looks like CoF farming is now officially 3 warrs / 2 mesmers…

I guess the nerf was bound to happen, with so much people abusing the skill with full zerk parties.

As a matter of a fact, every quickness skills was actually nerfed, it’s just that TW was nerfed more drastically (you actually have to double the duration time in order to cancel the 50% speed reduction).

As side note, I’m glad for the bug fixes and the buffs we got, especially the iLeap getting the right CD. That sure will buff up my Sword / Focus rotation a lot.

Usually it happens when you forget to take the chicken in the cage during the run between Lupi and the altar. Someone has to stop to trigger the cutscene. The instance goes on as intended then.

Happened to me last week, and I admit the party members scratched their heads for quite a while when the ritual of the chicken didn’t start.

Hope it helps.

Dahkeus.8243:

The only thing that really diminishes from consecutive runs is the tokens that you get at the end.

XP, Karma, and gold awarded at the end of the run are also affected.
See DR article :
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Diminishing_returns

… and the illustration for DR rewards on the dungeon wiki page (bottom right):
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dungeon

It uses CoF to illustrate the principle

ZilentNight.5089:

Now if we want to keep a price of a lodestone around 1-1.5g, it should be 100-150 tokens per.

Charged Lodestones skyrocket at 3g70s currently :

http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/24305

It would be nice if the extreme drop rarity was addressed one way or the other indeed.

60 tokens a piece sounds fair to me: 6000 tokens (100 runs) for the 100 needed for a legendary is still a legendary grind, but with the obnoxious RNG variable removed from the equation.

Your proposition doesn’t address the wild disparity of the acquisition length though :
- molten kind = CoF, easily farmable,
- onyx kind = TA, easily farmable too,
- charged kind = CoE, not so much…

I’ll summarize what I’ve already said in similar threads here. The so called OP team of zerker war / guard / mesmer is only OP at speed running content in a highly organized group dedicated to this kind of gameplay.

The 4 zerkers war + 1 mesmer is only viable at speed farming easy content such as the popular CoF1 farming spot.

Don’t worry about playing an ele, you’ll be welcome in most Pugs anyway, and if a group insist on kicking you out, don’t worry either, take the next one, you won’t be missing anything for avoiding these parties.

Khyber.2693:

Really matter that much in a dungeon? I know the best ones are Guardian, Mesmer and Warrior… but are the other classes really that bad?

Because I could totally see a Necro being totally amazing in dungeons, actually pretty much any class. Yet people are always so picky :/

Wtf.

Full zerk 4 war / 1 mes is only optimal for speed farming CoF 1.
3 war / 1 guard / 1 mes has gained popularity thanks to some popular speed-running videos and the DPS check in Arah P4 (Simin fight before being fixed).

Can you complete any dungeon in a reasonable time with virtually any setup? Yes.

Ioflux.4369:

Ethics.4519:

swiftpaw.6397:

Teleniel.1809:

all I can say is WOW you guys run a harsh group.

lets see….

magic find gear… do you ask for all gear ping before a dungeon? I mean… that’s elitest right there, can’t deny it. I’m not going to say I wouldn’t rather nobody ran it, and that it’s not selfish, but hey if we can clear the content than fine.
.

Unfortunately after many many many many hours of my time wasted by magic finders I am forced to gear check to avoid incident. This is not something I wish to do, but history has not been kind to my parties.

Stats =/= skill

MF = person performing less than what they could be regardless of their skill being higher than the rest of the party.

… and even if it didn’t impact noticeably the performance of the party, I can’t stress enough that it’s just not worth it :
- MF doesn’t affect chests,
- MF doesn’t affect tokens,
- Every skip-able trash mob is skipped,
- Drop rates from trash and even bosses are abysmal anyway (e.g. two blues on Lupi and an odd green when the gods of RNG are particularly clement these days).

On the other hand, repairs on exotic armor are 1s64c a piece. Do the math.