Guild Wars 2

Ender.3508:

Ensign.2189:

I’m surprised people find path 2 to be the hardest. My regular group finds it to be the fastest and most profitable path in AC, just put on your man pants and mow everything down in ~20 minutes.

AC is one of the easiest dungeons in the game. Citadel path 1 and HotW path 1 are the only ones that are consistently faster and easier (I guess Citadel 2 is easy too, but we avoid it because having to stop while Magg’s AI bugs out is infuriating).

Not hardest, just longest for us. We sprint through all the graveling events without wipes in the other paths, but defending the cannons has a static time completion even if you do it perfectly.

Actually popped in to make the same reply lol. It’s not that it’s the hardest path, they are all pretty easy. Path 2 is just the most time consuming.

Ari Kagura.9182:

@GrayGhost.6857

If anything, the gear obtained from raids should be aesthetically (not statistically) better than Exotic but lower Legendary. How do you measure “aesthetically better”? More shiny bits with sparkles, spikes, and smoke? Honestly, that would be up to the player to figure out.

And here we have an example to counter what others have said. Some have said it’s fine to have no increased or special reward, I said those wanting the raids are going to want and expect “special” rewards and low and behold…

I enjoy the dungeons, I want more variety and chances for more difficulty. I simply can’t support the raids though. It goes against the games core principles. If you want something like this I’d support open world dungeons with unique DE’s and world bosses that could be initiated by “rituals” or other triggers.

And again if added players that do the raids are going to want and expect better rewards and those that prefer to steer clear of the raids due to preference or due to not belonging to a guild that does them are going to feel shafted.

I have yet come across an Elite skill that has felt even remotely elite. It’s like having a bad 4th utility skill. It doesn’t do much and it takes forever to be able to reuse it lol. I’m only using RF for my virtues, even then it’s usefulness is low. I’d rather have that extra utility slot if this is the best they can do for “Elite” skills. Hounds of Balthazar… lol!

Easy solution is to do what many did and switch to hammer and use Ret to the fullest to demonstrate that what they were doing was not an attempt to fix ret. They wanted to nerf GS and didn’t want to explain why. I went from 20-30% up time on ret with my GS to about 80% up time on ret with my hammer and new build.

Here’s the deal, if you make 10 man dungeons give out rewards that can’t be obtained in 5 man dungeons you just kitten off the majority of your player base that specifically came here to get away from quest hub and raid centric MMO’s.

If you make a 10 man dungeon give the same rewards given out in 5 man dungeons then you just created a situation where a ton of people will complain because they feel they should be rewarded more for doing 10 man dungeons.

So it’s a lose, lose.

Aside from that one of the things Anet itself promoted was the fact it didn’t have raids, as another poster above stated it’s a selling point in the game.

What it comes down to is the above, you open that door and it’s lose, lose for all.

@Godorn

Mitigation/Regen in dungeons does keep up with the DPS. I can sit there and go toe to toe with bosses without needing to dodge anymore. Again, I have no idea how this would play out in WvW, but saying it doesn’t work in dungeons is false because I can even sit there toe to toe with Kohler while he has me stacked with weakness and doing his spin attack in my face while I continue to wail on him like nothing happened.

Even the screams only take me to half life now lol which quickly goes back up.

While I don’t know how it plays out in WvW, in dungeons it works quite well. It requires Rune, Sigil, Armor, Weapon, Trait, and Ability synergy.

mentalist.3120:

Im not 1 to moan and i don’t want flaming. Im loving Gw2 its a breath of fresh air. But 5 man instances are a little small.

I know we can do open world events but its not really skilled based its all about the more players the easier it is.

Can we have maybe a hardcore mode of instances that require 10 men. I don’t care about stats maybe a nice econic armor to show off that we did the harder instances. (happy medium) that way no one has an advantage we jus get bragging rights on a cool style. ?

I am in quiet a large guild and i know alot of us would like to take on hard instances together in our own little battle rather than 60+ players zerging a boss

Keep up the good work Anet loving the game

God I hope raids never make it into this game. Nothing like 10 people zerging a boss down.

I’d rather see it remain skill based.

It’s okay 2 out of the 8 are still alive so the boss hasn’t reset so just run back…

What I’d rather see is a harder mode added than requires a well organized team of skilled players to complete.

Riellan.2590:

Hi i am rolling a support guardian for WvsW and was wondering if healing power is stat to go ,since you need alot of it to have minor boost in healing for some skills.

So healing power yes or no?

It depends honestly for me healing power is worth it and and it isn’t worth it. If you are traiting and or using sigils to boost healing power so that you can heal others with healing skills then it’s a waste, if you are boosting healing power for regen effects for youself it’s extremely worth it. I use AC dungeon armor and all my gear and such are set for Power, Toughness, and Vitality. My traits are 0/5/5/30/30, combine that with the runes on the AC armor (Superior Rune of the Monk), I end up with a fairly nice buff to my healing skill. This though has proven to not help a great deal accept for with my Virtue of Resolve passive, Skills like Save Yourself and Hold the line, and my Sigil of Water as well as my healing from Symbols. Direct heals don’t seem to get a great deal of boost from Healing Skill, but the minor heal over time stuff seems to be greatly affected.

I know this for a fact, without the boost to my healing skill my ability to survive takes a huge hit as I’ve come to rely greatly on my regens and my symbols to keep me up and fighting.

Though this is from the perspective of a dungeon runner.

The problem comes down to what is needed and what a few want. Whats needed is a simple system that has your level, name, and what kind of group you are looking for with maybe a path option for dungeons. What a few seem to want is a dungeon finder system like in WoW which most that have come to GW2 will not find acceptable.

Being able to open a lfg that you can sort to show those looking for a specific dungeon and path is what is needed and that is all.

@Mr eX

And as I and others pointed out moving while attacking is a simple fix until they do fix the bug. It’s a non issue if you aren’t standing in one spot…

Don’t argue with people for the sake of arguing lol.

ThunderStorm.3140:

Yes, dumb, because gravelings hit harder than champion mobs in other dungeons. How is that logical? I am a full exotic geared Norn Warrior and got two hit by ONE single graveling. Wtf? Also, neither my bow or two swords are able to hit the burrows most of the time. This is a clear BUG. And no, couldn’t report it, middle of trying it out with hundreds of zerging gravelings on us. We gave up after a dozen tries and a massive repair bill. There is NO fun in not being able to even hit the burrows ANet. Always getting MISS, OBSTRUCTED or OUT OF RANGE (when standing right in front of it). Only my bow’s aoe skills are able to hit them.
Please fix this. Doesn’t make sense that AC is 3 times harder than CoF! (And CoF is quite hard as it is, but at least doable with good coordination.
Thanks!

AC isn’t hard by any means. I strictly pug AC daily and it’s cake regardless of path. It’s not possible for a Warrior in full exotic to get 2 shotted by a single graveling to my knowledge. I’ve never seen it happen and I’ve done hundreds and hundreds of AC runs with nothing but pugs. Path 1 is very easy, Path 3 is even easier, for me the hardest path in AC is path 2 but people do it because it’s easier to rez zerg with no strategy.

Number 1 thing that helps is stability. Some of the gravelings can pounce and knock you down and simply gnaw away at your health. It takes awhile to get back up from that knock down. If and when that happens pop a skill that gives you stability and you pop right back up and can get out of the way.

Number 2 as far as the mounds go, keep moving around it while striking. This tends to keep the “miss” issue from happening. AoE skills work good as well.

Number 3 if the Scepter part is your issue then you need to let someone else run it that has swiftness and stability abilities. It’s mad easy for me to solo grab all the pieces. I use my staff for swiftness and I skip the first piece, when I get close to the second piece I pop stability and another swiftness ability. Grab and run. 3rd piece I run and dodge and grab. 4th piece my stability is back up so I pop it and another swiftness skill. I grab the 5th piece is another dodge and grab. On my way back down the stairs since I skipped the first piece no mobs are there and they don’t spawn until I approach and grab the first piece, but I’m down the stairs before they’re out of the ground.

Number 4 if the issue you are having is with the mounds and protecting the NPC then it’s something that varies depending on party makeup. Most should be burning down mounds only leaving the one near the NPC untouched. One or two people should stick by the NPC and kite/protect him until it’s time to kill that mound near him. Then everyone should burn down the remaining mounds.

It’s extremely easy, the hard part is generally figuring out how to get your pug to sync well. Look at the classes you have, assign tasks accordingly and things should go smooth. If no heavy armor classes get 1 medium and 1 light armor class to protect NPC .

Fiesbert.9816:

urtv.8791:

youre a baddie as well since you got no experience doing dungeons.so you dont want to be grouped with other baddies but you want others to be grouped with you.thats some nice logic there

Quite a daring assumption. I’ve been a succesful raidleader in several MMOs, know all 8 Professions and their abilities and I’m a baddie for not knowing the dungeons yet? I don’t think so.
Its just that I can’t be bothered to look for groups like its the MMO stoneage.

nemeth.4196:

…
Just a small addition, SWTOR’s dungeon finder was added 6 months after release, WoW – WotLK expansion, no idea about DC universe. If those releases are the examples, then having dungeon finder on release is not the standart, as you’re trying to say.

You can expect a game released in 2012 to meet the standards of other MMOs that are out now. It doesn’t matter what WoW was like in 2004, its 2012. It matters whats out there today.
SWTOR paid deerly for this 6 month delay. They lost the majority of the PvE crowd to waiting too long with implementing a dungeon finder.

In general content has to be just one button away. GW2’s developers seem to know that, having their travel (instant travel without cooldown to every waypoint) and PvP (again instant travel without cooldown, automated grouping) systems in mind. I can’t wrap my head around why they wouldn’t approach instanced PvE content in the same manner.

Don’t get me wrong, there should be content you won’t be able to just faceroll your way through with a PuG but it should be at least possible to try.

Whoa there my friend, until you have experience in the dungeons you can’t judge your own ability. Just because you have done ok in another game doesn’t translate to you will be good here. Firstly the dungeons are the first real showing of what the lack of a trinity is all about. Being that deep rooted in a different style of play isn’t a good thing.

Secondly, I’d like a lfg system of some kind simply so I can go off and do other things instead of sit infront of the dungeon waiting. But thats the only reason most of us want a lfg dungeon type of system or a better one I should say.

If you can’t be bothered to look for a group without the tool though… thats on you, until you have experience you aren’t anything special. Get over yourself, get out there and either shout or wait for a shout. If you won’t thats on you.

Someone mentioned mini’s, I like that idea. So far the chests and drops are useless and outside of the tokens, coin and exp. there really isn’t much in the way of possible worthwhile reward. Adding something like possible mini’s, items off of the store like armor repair canisters, buffs, etc. would be a welcome addition. Make them rare drops, I don’t care, but most of that crap that’s currently dropped is well… crap.

@RoRo

So true, if someone is requesting a Guardian what it means is that they are running a glass canon build and are relying on others to keep them up and alive. This means they will constantly need rez and be utterly useless in the dungeon. On my guardian I will avoid any party specifically looking for a guardian because I know it’s going to be bad lol.

Oddly enough after doing months of nothing but dungeons the best class by far is simply the one that is geared and traited for group play and specific dungeons and played by the experienced player. If you are going to do AC exp you know there will be poison, you know there will be mobs that will knock you down and keep you down, you know certain paths require a speed buff.

I’ve done just as well on my level 35 War as I have on my lvl 80 guardian and it’s because I simply know what I’m doing and know what to expect. I go in geared and specced for it and change traits and skills before specific encounters.

@Eveningstar

I agree Zeal needs work, but this nerf again did break symbol builds. GS Symbol was the only Symbol build that had you fully invest in Zeal, and no Hammer and Mace did not utilize symbols as well as GS because again, GS Symbol was the only one to fully utilize Zeal. Hammers line is a different line entirely.

GS Symbol gave you Symbols that inflicted Vulnerability on foes, Extra damage from Symbols, An extra symbol of wrath when life dropped to a certain point, 5% extra damage from GS, GS attacks now also heal with each strike. The second part was Honor which increased symbol size, longevity and 2handed weapon recharge by 20%. Fully investing in these made a symbol build, I’m not talking about builds that play at Symbols or use them as a minor thing like a Hammer Symbol build.

Hammer Symbol doesn’t come close to that kind of synergy or combined damage output . Zeal didn’t need a buff until the GS Symbol synergy was broken.

You are speaking from the perspective of someone that dabbled in symbols, me and others are those that fully invested in symbols., so its understandable that you and I don’t see eye to eye.

Fildydarie.1496:

Thread is at the point of tl/dr content, so forgive my butting in here.

This doesn’t apply to people complaining about retaliation or that sort, just those that insist the argument is over symbol traits.

If your great symbol build was just shot to pieces because of the greatsword nerf, why were you kittening yourself using a greatsword for a symbol build in the first place? Hammer and mace both do a better job of keeping a symbol on the ground.

If this is about the GS being rendered useless because you can no longer run a GS symbol build… respec? It costs 3s50c at level 80. There are a lot of good builds out there for someone that wants to use a greatsword. That particular build had synergies that rendered it too good, so it was addressed in the least invasive manner possible.

Hammer is slower and doesn’t get the damage buffs that GS does from Zeal which is the Symbol line. Again, Zeal which is the line that buffs symbols also buffs Great Sword. Aside from that I found and do still find mace and hammer to be extremely slow and boring.

So tldr;

1) Why use a great sword in a symbol build? A) Great Sword buffs are in the same trait line that symbol buffs are in. It seems it was designed that way, so …

2) Hammer and Mace do a better job of keeping symbols up so why not use those? A) They don’t utilize those symbols as well as GS does, not to mention Hammer simply pumps out retaliation buffs with it’s Symbol field combo which is what Anet is intending to nerf/change while GS dishes out Condition Removal. Mace doesn’t output the damage that GS does.

3) Respec? A) That doesn’t negate what people are complaining about. The changes did “break” symbol builds.

Phoenix the One.4071:

Well let me try to stat it more clearly.

You can either try to adapt to the new playing style, which maybe tou at first… But hey in the beta most of the testers who posted vids played GW2 as a traditionel mmo.

Or keybind. Yes I know the CD doubled, but hey lesser seconds on the gap closer, that is wonderfull when in a team. The keybind will give you same set-up keywise.

Reroll. I know this sounds insane to reroll and waste another 60hours lvling a new profession, but that could be one choice. And soo far it seems like warriors are safe to roll.

My post might not be to constructive, but it is reflecting your OP I think:) Why ask for gold back… It is waste of a topic imho;)

On the sidenote I agree with people who are against the nerf.. Not because of the guardian nerf.. But I just hate nerfs:) focus on fixing bugs first, then try to balance:) But that is just my sole opinion and have no valid or reliable source behind it.

Yeah, I actually re-rolled. My Guardian lost a great deal of fun in it’s combat with the nerf to the SoW. Could care less about Ret but the increased casting time and decreased duration on SoW has killed the fun. Now it’s devolved into auto attack and wait for the CD which is not how I wanted combat to play out lol. It’s boring as hell.

So due to the changes I began leveling my warrior. Now I’m fairly happy with the changes because it got me to give warrior a fair try and I like it. Better support, better damage, better health pool, shields that actually work like shields, whats not to love lol!

So yeah, if you don’t like the changes might as well re-roll. The grass sadly really is much greener this time

Tenicord.9803:

(Just a quick question and there is too many posts to comb through.)

If I run path 1 of a dungeon with a lvl 80 can I run path 1 again with a different character and still get the +40 token bonus or is that bonus account bound?

Thanks

It doesn’t seem so. Unless it is a bug I end up getting 30 tokens on completion after running a path I just completed with a different char. I’m hoping it’s a bug because, otherwise I will lose much of my motivation in leveling an alt and the game will grow stagnant fairly quickly.

Without the rewards from the dungeons many of us would have stopped doing them after the first or second run. I liked the dungeons the first time or 2 through but after that it’s about the reward. Removing the reward removes the motivation to replay leaving you in the lurch because you will find it hard to find those wanting to run through the dungeon. Now if you want people to take their time and run through it with you then you will need to form your own group with friends and guild members. I do think that silvers and such should have a chance at dropping tokens, this is for other reasons though.

There are still bugs with the dungeon rewards. I can start doing runs after a couple of days of not doing them and still end up getting 20 or 30 tokens instead of 60 like I’m supposed to. It seems to even affect my other characters if I did a run on a different character. Path 1 on my level 80 guardian made it so that path 2 on my 36 Warrior only gave 30 tokens. They have a lot of testing and work to do considering this bug or different variations of this bug have been around and continue to remain.

As yes I am talking about the first run of the day for a given path, not repeat runs. Its bugged, has been bugged, and still seems like it will remain bugged for a bit.

Psybunny.8906:

One can dream that they’ll add some in expansions. Luckily I still have some dungeon paths to see and a lot of them to master to keep me occupied.

I certainly hope they do lol. Haven’t been this hooked on dungeons in a long while. My time in game is either spent running dungeons or working on a new build/gear setup for dungeons.

Dungeons have quickly become my favorite thing to do as far as PvE is concerned. The rest of the content has been a nice change from the standard fare but I am a dungeon runner through and through even in my UO days. Good dungeons make me happy, but the system here leaves me wanting for more.

I want a solo farmable mode for those morning hours where I’m in a gaming mood and not many are on.

I want harder mode options for groups for the current explore modes that offer greater challenge and reward because lets face it, once you hit 80 dungeons like AC lose much if not all of the challenge.

I want more Dungeons both instanced and open.

I want more variety in the dungeons.

I want jumping puzzle filled dungeons.

I want puzzle filled dungeons.

I want dungeons that will amaze me, fill me with a sense of awe and kick my butt.

Simply put… I want more.

I was fine with the rest of the content until I did the dungeons, now all I care about is leveling my characters to a point where they can start doing the dungeon runs.

They were organized by cool down before and they are organized by cool down now oO. It changed when the cool downs changed. It was a nice theory, but the CD change was the actual culprit.

I don’t know, if Retaliation is to be an on demand tactical thing why not make it a virtue? Passive gain retaliation once every 20 seconds, activate Virtue of blah to give self an allies retaliation for 3 seconds. Remove it from the symbols and restore the symbol of wrath back to it’s intended use. Give it a might buff instead of ret.

It would give us a fairly useful but not OP virtue on top of keeping symbol of wrath usable.

Nevron.9413:

The fact that they were going to be changing the retaliation mechanic has been known since near launch. Your continued investment in that mechanic and assumption that it wouldn’t be touched is on you, in my opinion.

And the impact on Symbol builds was expected as well then? So since ret was going to be changed in the near future we should have expected it to effect many builds that weren’t based on ret as well?

If ret was the only thing changed or affected I don’t think so many would be here complaining or discussing it.

SportingSCP.2834:

in other words, they have no idea how to balance the class.
You’re useto playing fighter???
Well… give Support a chance!! is what they really want.

Doesn’t that negate one of the selling points of the game? I get to play how I want due to the variety of play styles allowed with each profession. If I want to be support I can be, if I don’t, then I don’t have to be. If what they really want is for me to play support then I will simply roll warrior where I can be support, fighter ranged or melee. Removing options doesn’t change how people play a profession, it will simply reduce the number of players playing that profession.

This is an excellent idea and has been used a few times very successfully. UO had caps in place for PvE and PvP. Damage inc could be 100% in PvE but was capped at something like 50% in PvP. It made balancing easier and PvP changes had little to no effect on PvE and vice versa.

And also like someone pointed out it worked well in GW1.

When you make changes like you recently did with Guardian it wouldn’t actually be bad if you gave some good news with the bad. You’ve tweaked GS and retaliation and the combined minor changes have decreased the effectiveness of a lot of builds. This will only generate negative feedback.

If on the other hand you made another weapon or build type more viable such as Scepter for example the feedback wouldn’t have been overly negative.

PvP – Guardian is constantly at a disadvantage at range by not having any decent ranged weapon options on top of having little in the way of snares and roots compared to others that actually have a better option of both and with a large number of condition builds out there Warrior actually has better defense due to a much larger health pool considering condition damage isn’t effected by toughness and regen isn’t doing much to keep us up there in survivability.

A change here would have gone a long ways to making the ret change and the longer CD’s on GS acceptable.

PvE – Again here in dungeons specifically, many relied on Symbols for survivability and damage. More specifically Symbol of Wrath. Not only was it a source of defense, but it was also a source of damage and condition removal. You’ve severely limited the effectiveness of multiple things here without giving any kind of alternative solution. Poison spam is awful in some dungeon paths and the limited health pool makes constant cleansing a must, but we have so few cleansing options that don’t hamper us severely in other ways. I was able to go with AoE regens and cleansing abilities because GS and symbol of wrath allowed me to still be effective while going a more support route.

Another option would have gone a good ways towards making the changes acceptable.

In the end I don’t mind changes as I can generally adapt. Unfortunately there aren’t a great many options with my Guardian. It really shouldn’t be overly hard to do a fairly balanced Guardian build but there are just so many ineffective or useless traits, skills,and weapons.

All I am asking is with so few options when you make changes like this please consider areas where a profession is weaker than it should be and look at buffing something there to counter balance things.

For now I will simply play my Warrior until I figure out a build that I like for my Guardian. I didn’t even worry about retaliation much, I didn’t trait for it but in the end these changes still effected me because I do use a GS and most of my build and strategy was based around Symbol of Wrath.