Guild Wars 2

I’m also in favor of this suggestion.

/signed

Signed! Would be so happy to have this!

-Kinto

I’ve recently switched to Kick, Stomp, and Bulls Charge combined with 2h Hammer, and I’ve been loving it! So much CC its crazy. Also since your sharing this, I thought I’d share a tip for you WvWers. You guys should totally try traiting your “Death From Above” trait when defending a gate in WvW. It is absolutely AMAZING!

All you have to do, is run up to your walls, find a group of players, just jump down, watch the destruction and repeat! It even knocks people off any siege equipment they’ve got going. Combine this trait with some fears, stomp, and Hammer CC, you will ruin people’s days.

How this elite’s shout should be.
Just from 0:12 – 0:17. I rest my case.

I honestly feel that the dungeon difficulty is fine at the moment, although I’ve only done Ascalon Catacombs and Caudecus’s Manor (Story + all 3 explorable modes).

In all seriousness, yeah, these dungeon’s were not designed for PUG’s. First time visiting CM Explorable on the first path, was with a PUG and one of my friends. We wiped about 3 – 5 times before even getting to the second boss. Eventually, we were able to finish the second boss and try and make it past the group of mobs in-between the second boss and the final boss. Our group could not kill them. Instead my friend and I use all kinds of speed boons + movement skills to dash past them making us the only ones of our group to make it to the boss before disbanding the group.

2 hours later, rest of my friends log on and we try again. This time, cleared the whole dungeon in ~30 minutes with zero wipes. I feel in order to do these dungeons, it’s not just experience, but communication too. They are both equally important in order to successfully do these.

But don’t get me wrong, PUGs are totally possible, just much harder. And for people complaining about rewards, if your running it without deaths, your making ~50 silver per run from AC, ~75+ silver per run from CM because of drops + end silver reward. Just NPC everything. And use master salvaging kits on any 70+ Rare you get. That’s another 20 silver right there if you get the Glob of Ectoplasm.

By comparison, after having months to play the game and the time our alpha was complete, some of our better dungeon groups felt the explorable dungeons were too easy for launch, we decided not to make them any harder given the expected player skill on launch.

I feel like this is already starting to happen to our guild for AC: Ghost Eater’s path. I feel like we’ve completely mastered this path to the point where we do it having casual conversations about each others day.

Hell, there is videos on YouTube of people running Citadel of Flame in ~17 minutes.
Here is one.

Total Barrage.3570:

It would be great idea, however only if I can start running around with rifle and dual wielded maces as a thief, and maybe 2h hammer too

LOL! I would find this idea to be hilarious if they implemented it. Imagine tiny little Asuran thieves running around dual wielding giant maces. Wait. Scratch that. They can’t run with maces cause they are too heavy. They would have to slow walk! BUT SINCE THEY ARE WALKING, they can be stealthed! And their #1 skill on the maces while stealthed is a insta-kill.

/end ways to break the game.

Tase.3294:

I found myself going ranged when I first did AC, but now I do dungeons and I spend most of my time in melee. I use the greatsword (I tried other weapons but I don’t like them) and I’ve used a glass cannon build and a tank build, and with the skills I have (whirlwind mostly) and my endurance bar, I can get in-out of fights pretty easily once my health goes below 50%. A cc-breaker helps when you get immobilized/crippled by that odd boss/mob. This last thing, noticeably cripple, is how I usually get killed.

You just can’t stay there and take hits, you have to get out when you are taking the heat, use bladetrail if he’s after you and heal+rush+whirlind, or switch to your ranged weapon if you’re too low.

He speaks the truth. You have to learn to move and adapt depending on the situation of the fight. If you fall below 20% health, just back off and wait for heal to come off cooldown. ALSO, remember to use your heal AS SOON as you drop below the required amount to get back to full hp. It really helps a lot if you haven’t been doing it and is much more efficient.

Leaving this here =D.

That Other Guy.7351:

Why would that be a problem? All of the other professions have utility skills that heal with the exception of the Mesmer. Also the warrior is one of only 3 professions that doesn’t have a utility skill that revives.

The only explanation I can come up with is that they wanted to have battle standard revive fallen allies and decided it would be OP for a warrior to have both. Personally I’d rather have “I will avenge you” back and remove the effect from battle standard. Then I wouldn’t be obligated to have battle standard as my elite skill and wouldn’t be forced to wait for players to need revived before placing it when I do have it.

I kinda feel the same way. I almost always wait for my party mates to be downed in a dungeon before I even have to use my battle standard =(.

Huh… honestly scratching my head here….

Not trying to be a elitist or anything, honestly, but do you guys really have trouble getting around Orr solo?

Well, just in case a few of you didn’t know, if you turn off auto-targeting in options, you can use all of your rush, escape, and leap skills freely without flying into mobs. Makes travel/combat escapes pretty easy and efficient.

I just find the

“Can’t take 3 steps without getting jumped on by ten mobs.”

statement a little exaggerated.

Seems to be working for me o_O. Transmuted into a 80 exotic too. Did you guys make sure you were on your official server and not the overflow? For some reason, overflows will not show the igniting effect for me =(.

And for your guys’s sake, I really do hope its a bug. That shouldn’t be happening.

YXRomeo.9438:

Just hoping Arenanet will consider removing the -10 token penalty..

feeling particularly sore after farming for my ascalonian shield and seeing it not glow at night.. is just one big

It glows, just has to be at a certain time at night. Also it seems to only work at night for your actual server. Haven’t gotten it to glow on overflows =(.

Combination of a fiery blue sword and red, hot, fiery, lightning gloves looks cool =D.

Renegade.6325:

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/60739-ascalon-explorable-guide/

Cant copy the entire thing into this forum, because it doesnt allow posts of any decent length.

All of this is true. Actually surprised to see other people had the same strategy as us in the trap room. As for the howling king path, an alternative to killing the burrows/breeders in the lovers crypt, is to not kill anything at all.

All we did was run circles with swiftness around all the burrows attracting aggro until he finished his artifacts. Doing it this way is probably the easiest way to be honest =P.

But overall, awesome guide!

If anyone is curious about how this weapon looks and IF it actually glows, here ya go!

Link!

You actually don’t even have to destroy the burrows. Just make sure everyone has a swiftness boon and a melee weapon with some arc spreading and run circles around the map. Whenever some of the gravelings go and attack any of the artifacts you need to protect, just have one person run over there and smack a couple to attract aggro and run away. Honestly, doing it this way is MUCH easier then having to kill anything. While doing this, my group just has a casual conversation. I’ll upload a video of how to do this a few hours.

Hopes.4512:

Earlier this morning I had in the upper register of 900’s. Might have broken 1k.

Same boat as this guy. Jeez I love this game! Anyone else playing this way more then anything else they’ve played? I can already guarantee myself a couple years of gameplay =D.

I agree. And while they’re numerous other topics about this, I feel like we must really show that we want it in order to get it. Let ArenaNet know what the community wants. I’m sure they will listen =D.

I’m at school at the moment, so I cannot show you all the exact proof of profit but, if you are doing the dungeon properly, you should be making 50+ silver per run. Depending on how your group is set up, you can complete each run ~40 minutes with no deaths.

Screenshot of my inventory

I would have more, but I keep giving my money out to guildies so they can craft/buy trait books. Just the end boss and chest alone provide 30 silver alone, not including the extra money you can make from NPCing the rest of the junk equipment/items.

Welp, as a promised update, we ran enough Catacombs on all modes enough times for us to get one Ascalonian Greatsword each (390 Tears). Here are some screenshots!

Our total tears
Price of Greatsword
Both of us checking out our swords
Kazul just being a kitten.

Unfortunately, we just finished getting the tears JUST as it was turning day. So we didn’t get to see our weapons in glowy awesomeness. But this overall proves that the dungeons are possible with teamwork =]. We did all of this in 2 days.

Cry moar ghosts! Your tears bring me joy! Quite literally.

Kaiyang.4209:

I’ve tried AC explorable mode again today, and still wiped many times without clearing the dungeons. And this is what I concluded from the run, CC is an absolute must for group, as well as AOE condition removal. Support abilities are also crucial to the team dynamics. I am kinda seeing a new kinda trinity where there must be damage dealers, supports, and CC for the run to be successful. For the spider queen run for example, I can’t count the number of times my shout help to counter the poison due to my traits. The warrior in my PUG also keeps alternating CC together with me when fighting the troll boss. I keep knocking the troll back if he comes after me, while the warrior chain cripples him, knocked him down and knocked him back. His shout also keeps healing me, and I always save virtue of courage/Retreat when we cant get out of aoe jump skill in time. The hammer ward skills for guardian is also amazing as a CC, it was the first time I really appreciate hammer as a weapon because I always thought the DPS on hammers are just so bad.

Anyway, with the warrior and I chain CCing, the first 2 bosses were very doable. But we still wipe on the liutenant non-stop. We tried to prioritize killing the elementalist and the rangers first but we always die before we can do anything.

Anyone got a specific strategy on how to go against this boss?

Our part 2 of this run is basically how we started doing it. What is your team composition? You guys would probably have to do it differently then us depending on what professions you have.

Was too tired after the runs we did to reply, but for everyone that saw my post and agreed, thank you.

And thank YOU Arena Net for the amazing dungeon design in Ascalon Catacombs! I’m not being sarcastic here either. As we were running it, we started realizing the amount of teamwork that went into these dungeons. I’ll explain in case anyone wants to know.

So as I said before, the Thief will be in the front lines using his offhand 5 ability on pistol to provide a blinding smokefield that applies blinds to anything hit from a character within the smokefield. Now, for those of you who aren’t familiar with Thieves, Black Powder costs 6 initiative per cast. I believe, if I’m not mistaken, Thieves can get a maximum of 15 initiative. So from a quick first look, our thief should only be able to use Black Powder about 3 – 4 times in a consistent row without running out due to initiative regeneration.

So how did we fix that problem? Again, teamwork in this game is amazing! Our Thief grabbed the trait Infusion of Shadow. If you didn’t read that, with this trait, Thieves will instantly regenerate 2 initiative every time they go stealth. Black Powder itself IS a smokefield. Smokefield + Blast Finisher = Area Stealth. Our Guardian is rolling with a hammer. Skill #2 on hammer is Mighty Blow(hurhur). For myself, I had my hammer burst skill Earthshaker and the blast finishers for both summoning my banners AND picking them up to press 5 again. Our Thief was not having problems keeping Black Powder up 100% of the time. It was amazing!

This is only ONE example of the amazing teamwork that went on in this dungeon. I mean hell, everyone in our group was doing an equal share of work. Our Mesmer would pop Feedback whenever Lt. Kholer was about to megadaggerstorm so we can just sit and lawl as he spins for no reason.

Now, I’m not saying all this to say that THIS is the only way to complete Ascalon Catacombs. I’m absolutely, positively sure that there are MANNYYYYY other ways to do it with different profession combos and builds. This is just how my group of friends and I figured out a nice way to run the dungeon smoothly. Now then, I’ll probably be back on this thread later tonight after we get out sexy Ascalonian Weapons so you guys can see them =D. Going for Greatword!!
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TL:DR: Teamwork.

Hmm. Well it seems you don’t enjoy the dungeon because you don’t care about the cool dungeon skins. I can’t help you there =(. I’d honestly say you should just skip dungeons in this game then. I wouldn’t do them for experience or loot.

Edit: In reply to ComeAndSee

ComeAndSee.1356:

Kinto.9485:

It’s not really the dungeon loot you should be after, but the tokens =].

Which is just going to be replaced by gear I can craft anyway.

The tokens don’t seem worth the effort. You get what? 20 a run? Weapons need 200? Gear like 60? I rather just finish leveling to 80 than put any more time in these overtuned dungeons.

Not sure if you realized it yet, but you do NOT grind for gear in this game. You grind for skins. In fact, you can get the best gear( level 80 Exotics) in less then 10 hours after reaching max level. At least, I could if I wanted to spend the rest of my money.

It’s not really the dungeon loot you should be after, but the tokens =].

Looked at this thread yesterday, and set out on a personal quest this morning: Let me try and prove that Ascalon Catacombs Explorable Mode is doable without wipes when people are working together. So, after consulting with some guild mates, we strategized and theory crafted ways to make an ultimate teamwork composition with guildies who volunteered to do Explorable Mode with me.

Lets break this down.
Me a Warrior
A Thief
A Mesmer
A Gaurdian
A Elementalist

We looked at our vastly different profession composition and looked for which weapons for each of us could either support the party, debuff the enemies or even both! We then realized, “Hey, why not throw combo fields into this!? Lets get all hardcore with combo fields!”. We even took it a step further. “Lets trait ourselves to be more supporty!” We all payed no more then 3 silver 50 copper to respect into more supporty traits.

At the end of all this character building, we ended up with:
A supporty Warrior
A supporty Thief
A supporty Mesmer
A supporty Gaurdian
A supporty Elementalist

Dear god. We flew through Catacombs. In fact, each successive run got even faster. So here is how we did it.

Warrior: Mace/Shield &Hammer for swap
Thief: Dagger/Pistol or Sword/Pistol
Mesmer: Staff
Guardian: Hammer
Elementalist: Staff

Warrior, Guardian AND Thief stay front lines. The Thief will constantly use the offhand pistol 5 skill to apply a smoke field in between him/her and the enemy. Now the trick is, to get your Warrior and Guardian into that smokefield and have the warrior spam 1 while the Guardian goes apepoop. Each hit that anyone does to any enemies WHILE in the smokefield will apply blind. Now think for a second: If 3 people are constantly hitting the same enemy with each hit applying blind, how does that enemy hit you? Now, for the off chance that the enemy IS able to hit you, that is what that Warrior applying weakness is there for. Regen Banners is a plus!

Elementalist in Water Attunement: COMBO FIELDS EVERYWHERE!!! No seriously, we were regenerating like crazy!

Mesmer was awesome at applying conditions to our foes while granting boons to our party! We were able to give ourselves 25 stacks of might + the other boons when he copies over his boons to us. His Wall of Reflection was amazing for deflecting the Lieutenants Daggerstorm ability.

Okay, I meant to only type a bit, but this is turning into a full on novel. So instead I’m going to post a recording of one of our runs so you guys can see =].
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TL:DR: AC Explorable Mode is doable without wipes. Here is video proof: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_zRO2FfSL4
About a 45 min run through the whole thing over 3 parts.

How many tears we got today: http://i.imgur.com/gR9lT.jpg

I agree with this. Would be a nice little addition if you get the chance ANET ;D.