Guild Wars 2

http://pastebin.com/1XMsCyHi

You should make Abbadon either way.

If you guys still have hope that ANY patch will have proper dungeon changes maybe re evauluate your expectations.

Nothing.

Lets discuss!

Hello here .

Ive played this game far too much now, near 3k hours…, and I can say that not once have I been seriously challenged in PvE.

Ive never had to re-evaluate an encounter multiple times to defeat it; almost all dungeons had the same solution. More damage, maintain protection, group enemies up with line of sight.

The same techniques work time after time; its super easy and effective to pull stuff up into a clump, and AoE it with warrior melee dps. You never have to target anything specifically, you never have to time or save spells for significant moments.

Lupicus is the only exception, a fantastic boss to fight, requires players to be on the ball with evades.

Colin Johanson on the verge of inventing quest based reward and gameplay into an mmo?…

Some facts:

Hunt Down Canach
Join Kiel for a mission to capture the deadly, desperate Canach! In this all-new story dungeon, you’ll enter Canach’s Lair on a subterranean solo mission under the island. If you defeat the elusive sylvari you’ll unlock a challenging all-new group adventure!

Robert Hrouda, dungeon dev, was working on this update too.

Working backwards here, but one major complain about current dungeons was that the story modes were too difficult to get groups for, after the initial wave of completions after release. Making this story stage a solo effort solves some key issues.

Any thoughts? Why would they be sly to reveal it as a classic “dungeon” akin to what we already know?

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/releases/may-28-2013/

Go with 5 players, as recommended.

Learn the dungeon, then try to speed up.

Dont skip trash if you dont want the game to bug.

You can only blame yourself here.

April 30th update. (source: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/news/1119-flame-frost-retribution-updates-guild-missions-wvw-abilities-new-gem-store-items/)

April 30th will introduce a slew of new content, including a new dungeon (complete with its own unique rewards)

In addition to the events that will be added throughout the world, there’s a new dungeon that players will be able to experience. Unlike the original set of dungeons, this dungeon has a single main path; however, the dungeon itself will change upon re-entry. Voice-over dialogue will alternate, enemy combinations will change, and even the location of the dungeon itself will vary. New mechanics and challenges will also make their way into the dungeon to provide a fresh new challenge for everyone.The developers also made note of a unique instance of the dungeon that contains new dialogue and cutscenes to provide closure for the entire Flame and Frost story arc.

So to close off flame and frost story content, we get a whole dungeon, with 1 path dealing with the dredge/ flame legion alliance specifically. New rewards for the dungeon, a seemingly different method of having players experience different dungeon paths, so they now are given a varying path each time, rather than choosing.

pullnointer.1476:

Renegade.6325:

Wouldnt you enjoy earning the armor set like everyone else who wanted something?

If they gave it to you without any effort, it would be a pointless reward.

did you read my post? I said it takes too much time and it’s too easy. anyone can do that who’s willing to do that much arah. what would be optimal with presige gear in my opinion is a certain level of display of skill aka make it hard, but not this long.

Thats a fair criticism but requires a huge overhaul of their core game principles.

Wouldnt you enjoy earning the armor set like everyone else who wanted something?

If they gave it to you without any effort, it would be a pointless reward.

Brave Sir Ryan.1240:

Best way to get molten lodestones? CoF p1. Buy extra on TP.
Best way to get charged lodestones? CoF p1, buy on TP.
Best way to get corrupted lodestones? CoF p1, buy on TP.
Best way to get crystal lodestones? CoF p1, buy on TP.
Best way to get glacial lodestones? CoF p1, buy on TP.
Best way to get destroyer lodestones? CoF p1, buy on TP.
Best way to get onyx lodestones? CoF p1, buy on TP.
Best way to get ecto? CoF p1, buy on TP. Or salvage.
Best way to get any armor stat? CoF p1, buy on TP.
Best way to get any weapon stat? CoF p1, buy on TP.
Best way to get commander for WvW? CoF p1, buy on TP.
Best way to get holiday weapons (that aren’t account bound to RNG)? CoF p1, buy on TP.
Best way to get mini pets? CoF p1, buy on TP.
Best way to get a precursor, or any other part of the legendary? CoF p1, buy on TP.

Ah yes, Skaalds will sing of your legendary CoF p1 grinding forever! I’m sure I missed plenty, but you get the point.

This is downright silly, and way overdue for a nerf. It’s a bad situation when 99% of your game comes down to “gee, I could be mindlessly farming this easy path and making 10-20x as much as I am right now!” And it shows – this dungeon is clearly run more than any other combined. I don’t have the exact numbers Robert has, but I can see what is on gw2lfg.

If you’re going to have something in the game that’s so much more profitable than everything else, at least make it difficult (like high level fractals). 4 War 100b + mes is a problem as well, but not as much of a problem as this path. As others have pointed out, it’s entirely possible to get somewhat close to the efficiency with any good group, and still make far, far more than you do anywhere else.

I’m not trying to be negative; I understand things take time. But this is ridiculous, and it is crazy ANet hasn’t at least Smiter’s Boon’d it until they could get an actual rework going. A great bit of damage has already been done as gold grind skewed the entire high-level economy…and that damage won’t ever really go away, just as we are still feeling the effect of the (no bans!) goldskull exploit.

Please fix before it gets even worse. Thanks for reading.

Dont you think there is a deeper problem? All those top tier rewards you have listed are available purely through money, and so people will inevitably crowd to the best gold per minute. Nerfing cof1 will shift players round, and wont solve any genuine issues.

If we had something like this I wouldnt have been so disappointed this patch:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1b4pbu/we_didnt_get_any_dungeon_changes_so_here_are_some/

Discuss what? No dungeon changes have been made.

Robert Id love to do an interview with you, message me if that is something you would like to get involved with.

Zoef why dont you present some counter evidence to refute his claims and maybe even change his mind?

Again, these morons youve invented for the sake of a poor argument are not diminishing my point. I feel like im swapping between two major points here. Rangers cant do anything better than war mes guard, and this only is relevant to decent players. Each time I explain one you forget the other.

Zoef:

“My point is that ranger does both which makes the class a valuable supporting class. "

It does not bring enough support to compensate for the loss of dps. Ill budge on that conclusion if you can provide some things that you can do to keep people alive. 1 water field is not enough.

“Rangers are generalists not specialists. The keyword is versability.”

Ignoring the irony: sure. Rangers do a bunch of stuff. Warriors have a singular task. Out of balance, warriors are really really good at that 1 thing, and rangers have to be mediocre at all their things.

The key really is that teams should be stripping away as much defence away as they can afford to, in return increasing their damage. Content is so super easy that you can rukittenerker warriors who rarely need to even dodge, because the mesmer will boost DPS to a point where you kill a boss before he can kill you.

And for content that is ever so slightly more difficult, where you need that extra versatility/support, you bring a guardian. Aegis, protection, wards are far superior to anything a ranger can do. Sure you will be doing more damage than that guardian possibly, but that wasnt the reason you dropped 1 warrior. Teams werent craving versatility. They werent asking for a bear or a dog. They didnt want some ranged profession fighting away from the team.

You say rangers are very good at support. I am not convinced. A water field, a non significant amount of interupts, some lame conditions simply arent good enough. This is why they arent brought along.

The ranger isnt better than a warrior for dps, and not better than guard for support. And it does not sit happily in the middle doing a nice mixture of both, it simply fails to meet the standards of the other professions.

Am I wrong? Do rangers support well? What do they do to stop a warrior from going down.

To Zoef, this argument is about skilled players, not bad ones. Bad players playing badly is an inevitability, not evidence.

The whole point is that when you have 5 good players, there is no serious reason to bring a ranger for one of those 5 positions. Guard War Mesmer all fill the important roles much better, and rangers simply cannot compete in terms of utility, damage and support.

" Spent quite some time rezzing guardian and necro." Then they should learn to play better. Not swap to ranger.

http://www.twitch.tv/ren26

Some stuff Ive recorded its all live and good quality. Dungeons, fractals and all that jazz. Let me know what you think, and follow because ill be going live any kind of times.

http://www.twitch.tv/ren26

:)

I would genuinely, and meanginfully, want to today play with one of these good rangers. Ive tried before to play with rangers, hoping one day to be impressed. Its yet to happen.

Message me in game of you are one of these pariah’s of gw2 where you can play a ranger well and perform some meaningful task to a higher standard than some other profession.

Renegade Protection

Ioflux.4369:

Lexandro.1456:

I understand efficiency extremely well. However, stating that zerkers are for those who “mastered” content is a quiet honestly a lolworthy comment, seeing as there are thousands of “fail” zerkers in the game. Its equally true there are plenty of fail rangers.

No, mastering the content does not mean “all thats left is DPS”. It simply means playing the content in a different fashion. Whether thats from changing your build or from a different class its all the same thing. If you want to obsess on zerkers and use it solely that fine go right ahead, I dont care what class you use. I play the game for fun, not as a grind for kitten waving. I dont care if you can kill a boss 3 seconds faster, speed is not the be all and end all. Though playing through in a timely fashion without incident is what we tend to strive for.

It STILL does not make rangers crap by any stretch of the imagination. Particularly with so many players in the game of all classes who quiet frankly are atrocious no matter the class or build.

Yes they could do with a buff, but even still they do perform well in a group and solo when someone is a good player.

You’re getting defensive over my statement that “warrior do more dps than ranger, hence why ranger’s get kicked”. I could care less about how much fun and how you like to play the game. I find it very fun playing full cleric ele, cleric shout heal warrior, but I don’t run it if my party isn’t ok with it. I answered the topic at hand of the OP as to why ranger’s get kicked. You can bash full zerker warriors as much as you’d like, the point doesn’t change that his ranger got kicked for that reason.

This guy is making two good points you should listen to.

Warriors are outperforming Rangers in terms of DPS. This is mostly an undeniable fact.

Once you have mastered the content of a dungeon, you then need to maximise DPS and skill as much as you can. Bring enough defense to keep your warriors alive, bring a time warp to max the DPS during boss fights, bring a guardian to reflect/ protect.

This is the pve meta summed up. Learn the combat, dodge the big hits, rely on guard/mes to defend you and cleave with zerkers GS or Axe.

Rangers appear to be outperformed in this regard, providing subpar dps and protection. They dont fit.

This is almost as bad as not having the potion. A charged lodestone for 10 of these? Madness?

Anything It looks amazing.

Kashrlyyk.5364:

I get the impression that Anets idea of good game design is: “Here is a challenge, now beat it how WE want you to beat it.” while I think that “Here is a challenge, beat it however you like” is a much better design approach.

OFFTOPIC:
It’s the same with the once per day chests. That is Anet saying: “Play the game like this or you don’t get loot.” Anet stop harassing and annoying the players!

You still have the second option, but they reduced the effectiveness of certain overpowered cheesy items that people were relying on.

This game is really easy, no1 should be too hugely proud of clearing it all. Better than nothing tho.

Iures.2894:

Renegade.6325:

Sleeme.5893:

This makes me seriously consider trashing gw2 and never look back. There is nothing more in it for me than fractals, and even that they ruined quite hard now.

They ruined fractals? Just by making you play certain parts of it?

Except that the gear required to progress in fractals is increasingly coming from non-fractal sources. As it stands, there’s only one piece of gear that must be gotten from fractals (backpiece). Fully half of the ascended items aren’t from fractals at all, but are just a daily grind. I like the concept of laurels, but fractal gear should be gotten through fractals. . .

Thats an entirely different point from the 1 he or I was making.

Sleeme.5893:

This makes me seriously consider trashing gw2 and never look back. There is nothing more in it for me than fractals, and even that they ruined quite hard now.

They ruined fractals? Just by making you play certain parts of it?

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Writetyper.1985:

I think this was needed but kitten there’s got to be better ways to fix a boss than just number tweaking.

There is, but it takes time and resources that we allocated to Catacombs to work on those bosses.
I have ideas for Simin… like the one as follows if we keep the stealth mechanic and don’t change her much:
When she stealths, players have X seconds to get the 5 sparks to their slots around the statue. If she gets knocked out of stealth before that, she regains no health. If players fail the mechanic, she heals to full. The cooldown on the skill can be adjusted based on failure/success, and other things like a PBAOE petrification can be used to punish players for not suceeding with the mechanic. Just spitballing here, but yeah, there’s more than can be done. Just didn’t have the time to tinker with it.

Ye the issue atm is it is some kind of dps race that some professions cant compete in, or some players havent built for. Spark speed alleviates this significantly, but ultimately PVT and ranger type dps is going to make this a fight beyond some teams, no matter skill level.

Stop skipping trash

Robert Hrouda.1327:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAbaKWJ1CTc

That being said…

Subject Alpha is a tough cooky for sure. We have some cool plans for him in the future. When we are looking at bosses our intent is not to nerf them – but to make them a more enjoyable experience while keeping up with the challenge that we want our explorable dungeons to be.

One of the more interesting concepts I have for Subject Alpha is that every encounter with him is different, and that he has a wide array of abilities that he selects from before each fight randomly, resulting in a lot of dynamic play, and resulting in subject Alpha having tons of possible builds that he could randomly select from or morph into as the fight progresses.

Oh that sounds really good. Spells that deal with certain types of playing, like trying to hide at ranged, trying to melee only, trying to roll too much, etc. Forcing all players to play well at times, would be really good for someone like Alpha.

Thanks for fixing, will be cool to try.

Confirmation bias is a much more likely explanation.

JJBigs.8456:

play how you want. dont feel like you have to do damage over support, the support is there for a reason.

read this carefully and do the exact opposite.

dungeon metagame at the moment for warriors is to do as much damage as possible.

any alternatives are more dangerous and less efficient.

SynfulChaot.3169:

Sergoros.4398:

If I take them – good for them and they should be thankful that they so lucky. If not – thats how world works, not all ppl and not allways want to waste time on carrying someone.

Sub-80s do not need to be carried! And acting as if you are doing them a favour by taking them along is firmly elitist. I’d prefer a unskilled player over an elitist any day as at least they are not judgemental kittens.

Renegade.6325:

A lot of nonsense in this thread.

If you havent even got level 80 on your character, you do not know your character well, in almost all cases.

Knowledge of characters and classes does not come from level. It comes from experience, experimentation, and research. Sub-80s are well capable of all three.

…

“Knowledge of characters and classes " comes from playing. Playing gives levels. Therefore "Knowledge of characters and classes " comes from levels. Your mental gymnastics avoiding this conclusion are fascinating but flawed.

A lot of nonsense in this thread.

If you havent even got level 80 on your character, you do not know your character well, in almost all cases.

Sarcasmic.6741:

Iehova.9518:

Renegade.6325:

Which is why pve meta is berzerkers max dps

CoF1 does not PvE meta make.

The “meta” still heavily favors max available dps to any other utility spec. CoF p1 or Arah p4, doesn’t matter.

thanks for saving me time.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Iehova.9518:

I hereby summon Weth to this thread.

The Weth call: “This dungeon/boss is impossible!” That should get his attention.

That being said, dungeons are more about your personal skill and mastery than about gear. Sure gear helps – it either enhances your strengths or allows you the opportunity to mess up a bit without so much punishment. There are some encounters that can be a bit of a gear check, but overall it’s more about your personal skill. Solo is possible in certain paths – however some of them have required numbers mechanics: Like CoF path 3 where you need to light 3 braziers at once. Those may have a pre-req party count.

Which is why pve meta is berzerkers max dps

For alpha, if you got a guard at melee recommend the hammer, tell them to run hold the line and stick to auto attack. Now earth spike does 33% less damage.

If you dont, predict the timing, grab some vigor and start dodging, or experts tip, stand inside him to be outside of the first circle of damage.

Minimise stuff to spawn; illusions golems pets all grab their own ice circle. Less moron AI, less circles.

Its ascended gear with an infusion slot. Not sure where the rulebook is that says therefore we must be able to upgrade them

Gasoline.2570:

Well when you have a developer like anet behind the game, don’t think anything is not short-sighted.

Absolutely a pathetic job, anet. You are smarter than this! Why do you treat your CUSTOMERS like trash?

It could have been a decision, not an oversight.

Toughness and vitality wont help you last longer in CoE, may as well just run straight damage and play smart.

Learn the bosses and encounters, know when to dodge, know what spells are most useful (ie. reflect, stability, boon removal all have their place).

If all 5 players are at melee, then when 1 goes down, there are 4 others immediately close to revive. This advantage applies to AoE boons and other similar tactics.

Rangers are awful. You should be beating their dps as a necro ^^

Arkenigma.5930:

It’s not all too bad at all man =) I’m working on twilight now. Ive got everything done but Dusk (someone kill me now) and the 500 wvw tokens. Let me give you the lowdown here… It took me a little short of 250g and 80ish hours to get the lodestones. I got the karma gathered unintentionally. Dont worry about karma. =)

I made this thread four months ago, so of course after the vast number of changes, it is no longer accurate…

When I think of cheaters, my mind is drawn to the individuals who persist in exploiting map/ game weaknesses to circumvent game mechanics or even entire fights/dungeons, just to get the reward. To be clear, the kind of behavior that was not expected by the developers, and yet still intended NOT to occur anyway. Examples are any door skipping in CoE, any platform use that makes you invincible to attacks or hopping over walls in Arah. Here it is clear that these encounters have an intended structure. The doors are in place to stop you from walking around subject alpha fights, or into other paths to skip content for the final reward.

This is subtly different from examples where the developers did not intend on you cheating content (as opposed to intending for you to NOT cheat). To exemplify this distinction, we can look at skipping Kholer. Here we can see a case where the developers did not intend on you skipping. However, they did not purposefully intend on you not skipping Kholer, otherwise there would be methods in place to make it impossible to finish the dungeon otherwise. You can skip Kholer, and there is nothing in place to force you to kill him, but you need NOT break mechanics for this. Here the developers did not intend you to skip, but it would NOT be true that they purposefully intended for you to not skip. Re-read this previous sentence if this entire paragraph seems contradictory.

And so here lies the problem. The community has been plagued by players who dont see this distinction, or dont care for it. They are lacking the incentive to discern the difference between rushing past mobs and shadowstepping through doors.

There needs to be enforcement. If a player is involved in circumventing the intentions of the developers for personal gain, that player should be punished. Its harmful to the game and to the players who care about playing the game properly.

A simple, non-extreme method is to temporarily ban characters/accounts from entering dungeons on a temporary basis if they are caught. When people realise that they cant enter their favourite content for a week, they will quickly begin to take on the responsibility of their actions.

Tl:DR Skipping boss fights and dungeon encounters needs to be punished, if that content is intrinsically necessary for the instance. Harmless trash skipping neednt be affected, although should probably be incentivised more.

Can you put lodestones in?