Guild Wars 2

AC is very far from a training mode dungeon. COF is more a training mode dungeon. AC has mobs that can easily 3 shot any character in a party. tons of crap to run into while kiting. A bit of a maze with mobs aggroing everywhere. Plus it has the 2 lovers boss which is a nightmare.

Out of all the dungeons AC is the one I have the most trouble. If my character is level 35, it is nearly impossible to stay alive during any fight.

I remember a few months ago I would come on here raging at my experience in CM and AC; stating that dungeons were completely imbalanced and not PUG friendly at all. Then I went to SE, COF, and Fractals and realized. It was just AC and CM that were broken.

The Downed System is near perfect in my opinion. My only gripe is the amount of damage a downed player can do, especially against cloth a medium armor characters. You’ll beat a character with 20% health left and while you attempt to finish the player, he can actually down you and leave you both on the floor if he spams his #1 skill.

But this talk about not being able to take out 2 people because they rez each other, is just silly. Why? Because the only people who have issues stopping another player from rezzing are DPS junkies who spec all their skills for raw damage and do not carry any short cooldown CC spells. It’s funny watching Great sword Guardians who are unable to stop me from rezzing my partner as they desperately spin around slashing at me in hopes of stopping my rez.

Of course there are those players who do so much damage that it becomes useless to try and rez you partner. As a guardian I have run in for the rez only to be forced to cancel because the enemy is doing so much damage to me that I could not ignore him.

Moonrabbit.1543:

Urrelles.4018:

Elementalist already come with 24 different abilities with each weapon kit. 5 × 4 for the weapons and 3 utility. Giving them the ability to weapon swap and gain another 20 abilities seems a bit much.

The way I combat the lack of range and melee versatility is to keep a conjured weapon in my utility list. If I have a D/D build going, I’m going to have an Ice Arrow ready. If it’s a Staff build then I’m going to keep Electric Hammer.

That’s what the conjured weapons are for. Their damage is not as high as the primary weapons but you do get to some emergency variety of ability when the calls for it.

Also to fix the problem of the conjured weapon running out too fast is simple. Use about 4 or 5 skills of the weapon then run over and pickup your other weapon on the ground and continue another 5 or 6 abilities. By time you use both weapons your cooldown will almost be up.

Is this really true? I have seen numerous posts espousing the use of the lightning hammer for damage. Someone recently posted weapon coefficients showing the auto-attack of the hammer to be greater than the auto-attacks of elementalists’ other weapons. I believe that conjures now provide stats comparable to equipped weapons and that the sigil on the elementalist’s primary equipped weapon applies to any conjured weapon. (I tested the latter last night.)

You are right……to a degree. The Lightning Hammer has insane damage. However after level 65 many people say the Frost Bow damage drops. Other than that, the Flamesword is the only other high damage conjure people speak of. I personally can say the hammer is excellent damage. It’s my primary weapon now.

Rfreak.6591:

@Urrelles.4018:

As kits are right now they are merely used for a “fast-switch” to get either utility (elixir gun, flamethrower or toolkit) or time-limited strong DPS (grenades are not meant to be your all-time weapon, yet they force us to specialize into it to get the damage, ‘coz they aren’t rly for utility…), the bomb kit is the only exeption, thought it NEEDS the forceful explosive trait and I read it’s still half bugged, plus you just can’t go up close to everything in pve, only really useful for running AND doing damage at the same time while being chased… pretty situational to need a trait isn’t it?.

While it is true that they actually let us change the combat style, it’s not exactly so ‘coz our traits do not exactly synergize, but specialize instead of what we should be meant to… So instead of switching ’coz of the situation you simply switch to get 1 or 2 skills and then go back to whatever you were doing, just like elementalists but worse I’d say.

I must say that combat-style switching is mostly effective in pvp, which is why engineer can still prove worthy of battle, but it becomes useless in pve where you mostly have to “specialize” to actually be useful to your party.

But the big difference here is if you run into a situation where you must fight a specific style, an engineer can switch easily and do some decent damage.

Example: A boss that destroys anyone in melee range. A D/D Elementalist will be utterly useless during that fight. Many Eles don’t use conjured weapons as backup so in most cases an Ele will just have to sit in the background and shoot off support abilities till the battle is over or the team wipes.

An engy in the same situation can switch to his default gun.

Basically, the way Engy kits are setup in conjunction with their default weapons, allows them easier access to different playstyles without getting “stuck”. A mage on the other hand can esily get stuck in the useless box if they do not know what type of combat is coming in the near future. You don’t know how many times I’ve seen a mage cursing at the game as they struggle to use a staff during a fight against highly mobile enemies who are being kited and running about ain every direction. You don’t know how many ties I’ve seen dagger mages getting destroyed by anti-melee bosses too. I never seen an engineer in those situations though.

2 things that drive me crazy about the Norn story arch.

#1. “After I do this, my legend will grow.”
“Sure I’ll help you if it improves my Legend.”
“Yes I could go out and help the weak to make a proper Legend for myself.”
“The Skalds will sing my name!!”

SHUT UP!!! Stop talking about how you’re gonna be some Celeb and start worrying about the 100ft Dragon that is capable of utterly destroying a city just by flying over it. Seriously there’s more to life your stupid Legend. Besides Trahearne is just gonna steal it from you anyway. Geeez!

Seriously the Norn and their deep seeded craving to be Hollywood Celebs completely makes me hate my own hero. But suddenly once you meet Trahearne, your character suddenly shuts up.

#2. Eir Stegelkan always saying “Oh I’ll just let you do that. My tie of fame is over.” “No don’t rely on me (even thoguh I’m utterly kitten and can make this mission a cakewalk), I’ll just leave that to the Slayer. He helped me kill a big worm btw.”

I understand why she constantly avoids any serious role now, but during the Norn story arch it is never hinted at an in any way why she is like that( aka Snaff killer). So she just seems like some slacker who pushes everything off to you.

I personally don’t mind the difficulty of the story missions. Once I found out my friends could join in, then I didn’t mind how hard they were. It is an MMO after all.

In future story missions I want more Boons from NPCs while I fight. I want to see Trahearne throw down a bloodwell or 2. Sword and shield soldiers to prvide prtections once in a while.

If the NPCs are not going to do any real damage, then let them support our character so we can take an onslaught of 4 or 5 minions at once, all spamming abilities.

If I could summon 10 elite Necro minions at once, I bet I could solo wander Orr pretty easily like Trahearne.

Wow!! All this hate!!

The only thing I hate about Trahearne is his ugly looks. Hes a yucky black and green leafed character with no special features. Other than that the guy was pretty good.

The way the story is presented makes it a little impossible for “The Commander” to be the one in charge. The amount of decisions just couldn’t be done in such an MMO sense. Especially if you want an open world where you have hundreds of Commanders running around.
So the next best thing was to make another character push the bulk of the story decisions and leave you as secondin command to lead specific important missions. In essence you were Commander Shepard, Master Chief etc. You were the main frontline fighter; not the tactician.

Also Trahearne didn’t lead the assault on Zhaitan. He just weakened the Dragons hold and cleansed Orr. Destiny’s Edge lead the assault on the dragon with your Commander and his pose helping him.

Lastly you must remeber that this is the story that started the counter attack aginst the Dragons. It’s the first story of probably 5 expansion packs worth of missions. 9 Dragons I believe?

Trahearne’s lack of character progression is probably a poorly implimented story telling design to make your character the life of the party. Too bad the Commander is not full of any jokes or anger either. Then again, maybe someone with no issues was needed to get the ball rolling and unite a nation.

One story point I thought was going to be in the game was a huge failure mission where Trahearne makes a bad call and starts to lose allies. then the commander has to step up and bring up people’s hopes again so Trahearne can continue leading. But somehow that great mission never came.

Rifle is highly useful in low level areas. but after level 20ish it just didn’t do enough.

Pistol / Pistol I never really use. The AE effects are not mys tyle I guess.

Pistol / Shield is my standard setup. gives you decent damage and good defensive moves.

Elixir Gun is my standard weapon of ranged choice. Great debuffs. Same damage output as my pistol. Sometimes more. I can escape, heal, cleanse, and debuff people.

Bomb Kit is my second standard close range kit. Blow up anything that runs into melee range of me.

Miomooki.3812:

I don’t have any max level characters yet.. But I wanted to add my own opinion about engineer, of course it’s fully subjective..
So I had my share of engineer. I leveled it up to over 20 and I didn’t think of anything special about it, it was ok to play. But in some point it hit me – I could beat up anything couple levels higher easily with my mesmer, but with engineer I was struggling all the time.. It didn’t seem any fun and I realized that there was something wrong with me or with the profession. The damage wasn’t sufficient enough, the kits were disappointing and healing was lousy.
So I thought engineer was too weak for my playstyle.. I deleted it and made a warrior instead, and never regretted doing so. And after reading this thread I’m even more happier that I deleted it. Engineer was not for me, but maybe it works for others. Personally, I want something different.

I ran into the same situation with my engineer. Luckily it was my first class I played, so I didn’t have another one to go off of.

You did miss out however. The engineer becomes a PvE wrecking ball after level 25ish. Once you obtain a bomb kit or elixir gun, the game becomes easy mode. Especially if you invest in tier 10 or above trait points. Healing bombs would have put your mesmer to shame. you literally just aggro a bunch of mobs, pull out a bomb kit, then just sit there spamming your bombs and watch everything die within 10 seconds or less.

The problem you ran into was the lack of guild builds for this class. Relying on guns, and flamethrower is just bad. Anything not bombs is bad. This is what I want changed. I want all the kits to be viable in all play fields in this game; not just PvE.

nakoda.4213:

Urrelles.4018:

1. You cannot ground target and control your camera at once. Once you right click the mouse dissapears and all ground attacks go to the position where the mouse was last scene on screen. This is bad control design. So the engy is not able to be mobile while throwing out sustained damage.

you and i disagree here. this is one of the best parts about the grenades and kiting.

you position cursor behind you 10 meter or what have you, then hold right click and WASD around, you know exactly where your grenades are, and can circle strafe around groups, kite them, even change directions mid fight because your AD turns into strafe instead of turn (that is, unless you were smart enough to already make that the default action, in which case no change).

when that group is dead, you … move your cursor! chances are you have breathing room again and can ranged nade some newbs by leading them to you, and then circle strafe all over again.

I. do. not. see. what. the. problem. with. controlling. your. character. is. yes. this. is. an. L2P. post. so. … L2P.

Thankyou for your L2P post. Now here’s mine.

Why go through the trouble of taking the extra time to position your cursor behind you to kite a bunch of newbs? Just pull out a bomb kit and do the same thing with a larger blast radius, more lingering effects, more damage, and healing on top of that?

That grenade tactic will work great on newb players, or PvE. Now what about pro players. You can default you mouse 10 feet away from you but a thief just has to F1 dash you and hes in your face. Now you have to either jump away and attempt to keep him 10 feet from you or re-adjust your mouse.
What happens when that same thief teleports behind you?
What happens when you have multiple enemies all around you?
What happens when you are playing against a character with zone control, like a necro. You gonna just walk into the big dangerous mark and take dmg so you can keep him in your grenade zone? Nope. you will have to stop pivoting your camera, readjust your mouse point, then start bombing again. Oh wait, that Necro moved again, and now has more marks.

The enemies are always moving and dodging your attacks. They have targeted you and now they are just holding down their Right mouse and focusing their camera on you. They are shooting abilities at you that auto lock as long as they stay in range and keep their camera looking in your general direction. If you get too close, their ability will still hit, if you jump away, it will still hit. It is auto targeting you.

You however are trying to move your camera in a way so that your Grenades land on them. Those grenades will only land in that one spot on your screen. If the enemy is closer or farther, those grenades will miss. You are attempting to manually aim all of your attacks, like a FPS, to hit your target. You are playing at a huge disadvantage.

I prefer to play smarter and just use a Bomb kit and a Pistol. You can play harder and try to keep your target in a tiny grenade circle.

Joshua.9346:

I’m making this decision based on the balance design philosophy going forward.

So basically versatility is both their “thing”, except that ANet recognizes that Engi’s sacrifice damage for versatility whereas Ele’s have phenomenal AoE damage. So are they using the higher skill ceiling for Eles as a legit reasoning for making Engineers an inferior class??

From what I see personally playing both classes.

ENGINEER is lower overall damage.
Their kits allow them to adapt to a situation. example: range enemies? Use your guns. Group of enemies? Use a flamethrower. Melee enemies? Use bombs.

Also the Engy is kinda that hybrid class that does not truly master anything. You can build them anyway you want but you wont be Godlike in anything.

ELEMENTALIST is higher damage but horrible defense.
They adopt much differently. They are designed to constantly switch attunements depending on the needs of the team. Example: Need healing? Swap to water. Need defense and condition damage? Swap to earth. Speed and crowd control? Swap to air.

Typically you will excel in 2 attunements but in the end you must use them all and constantly switch playstyles in combat.

the limitations of Elementalist are in the weapon choices. Staffs are medium dmg and long ranged with lots of ground targeting. scepters and Focus are single target. daggers are close range nuke. Once you choose that weapon, you are stuck in that combat style. That is where the Engy is better; they can change their combat style completely. An Elementalist cannot. They can only change the attributes of their combat style.

Isslair.4908:

Urrelles.4018:

Elementalist. They are also considered underpowered.

Lolwhat?
D\D eles are one of the most OP pvp professions.
Every high-end dungeon runner I know loves to have ele in a party.
Their versatility is awesome. I’ve never seen anyone saying that ele is underpowered.

Sure, I’ve seen a lot of useless eles in PUGs. But that just means that a skill ceiling for that class is rather high.

I see it a lot. Go to the Ele forums. You’ll see many post there talking about D/D being he only viable damage build with risk being too high for the damage it produces.

Of course an Ele is great in a group. The skill ceiling is the highest of all the classes in the game. But a Warrior & Guardian is still better at dishing out close range damage than a D/D Ele using any build.

Maybe the problem isn’t Eles or Engys being too weak. Maybe its Guardian and Warriors being too strong. But people don’t like nerfs so hitting those classes dmg potential hard will not go well int he community at all. But buffing the others will.

blurps.2340:

Problem with grenades is the travel time, not the controls. The target can basically make a sandwich, have a coffee, read their favourite magazine and still have plenty of time to simply walk out of the circle without even actively dodging.

Longbow Rangers used to have the same issue, but ANet increased the speed of arrows and that simple change made a pretty big difference.

I truly believe grenade control needs an update. In PvE it’s a great weapon. In PvP it is terrible. An all ground target build does not work in any high mobility gameplay.

The necromancer using a staff is nearly al ground target. However, there are two major difference that make a staff necro work in PvP.

1. An auto attack that targets an enemy. This allows the necro to use his Right mouse to track, dodge and strafe while still dealing a sustained damage. when the time is right the necro can then throw out another ground target.

2. The groun target abilities are ranged traps that stay in place. This turns the battlefield into a mine field which still benefits the Necro when it comes to zoning his target even if the abilities miss.

Now an Engineer lacks all of that in their Grenade kit.

1. You cannot ground target and control your camera at once. Once you right click the mouse dissapears and all ground attacks go to the position where the mouse was last scene on screen. This is bad control design. So the engy is not able to be mobile while throwing out sustained damage.

2. The Poison grenade is the only ability with a lingering effect for zone control. The kit does not have nay hard snares, so enemies will always walk or roll out of the poison zone. all other grenade moves are gone right after use. so you either hit or miss.

Killer Parakeet.9435:

Seems like a lot of you are doing it wrong.

Just because you’re not good at a class doesn’t make it bad. It makes you bad. Go play your “easy mode” warrior and thief.

I’m not saying this class isn’t flawed. Truth is all the classes are flawed, it’s still a new game especially considering anet spent their time during the holidays working on holiday events for obvious business reasons and taking vacation like real people do.

Engineer is not an easy class to play. I am constantly switching kits and lining up combos. I even read into situations before I get to them and change out utility skills/weapons/armor to deal with them accordingly and you know what? I ALWAYS excel. 5/10 times I will send a flavor of the month mesmer or thief running for the hills because they’re not used to being countered. 4/10 they stick around to die. And that 1/10 they actually take me down. It happens. Why? Because there is balance between classes, and the engineer is just as good as any other.

TL;DR – Engineer isn’t bad, you are bad. Go play your “easy mode”warrior class.

The fact that Warrior and thief are considered easy mode shows there are in fact huge class imbalances. This is not acceptable.

Engys have kits for a variety of situations, but they only have one truly good damage / support build. It involves bombs.

You know what class is even harder than an engineer? Elementalist. They are also considered underpowered. However they do have a variety of builds that are all viable. What’s really funny is the fact that an Elementalist doesn’t have to quickly swap out utility skills before combat to adapt to the situation. As you stated you are constantly switching out before each battle. Why? Because an Engy works 3 times harder to take down one foe. They not only need to switch to a new kit, they need 2 or 3 kits and different equipment to counter every class build out there. It literally takes your whole arsenal of abilities to fight one person. As a Guardian or Elementalist, I can just switch my weapon or attunement one time and use 5 specialized skills to take out my target. Not all 14 like an Engy does.

Bottom line, if a ranged hunters comes at me spamming his 1 – 5 keys and maybe using 1 or 2 utilities to kills me, with a controllable pet. I shouldn’t have to counter it by:
— Switching to gun, hitting him with 2 good abilities.
— Switching to bombs. Jumping in his face, and hitting with with maybe 2 abilities again.
—Then sacrificing my camera control to switch to grenade and ground target a few shot (which will probably miss because hell run behind me out of view or just strafe). —- Then going back to gun to use my 2 only viable moves for damage.

……and so on and on constantly switching kits and using 1 move here and there. The whole while my turret is shooting an indestructible barrel and not contributing to the fight.

RaynStargaze.6510:

^not sure if troll or just really bad player hmmmm

The things I stated have nothing to do with how well I play. They are design flaws.

I’m a kitten player because my turret decides to shoot a rock instead of my enemy?

People don’t PvP with grenade. Why? The control scheme does not support kiting and attacking. Guess I’m a bad player because I can’t ground target and swivel my camera at the same time huh.

Standards weapon do crap damage. What does that have to do with skill.

Are you the troll here?

Engies really have only 1 build. Bunker bombs. I find the class easier to support with than most but I cannot tank or kill anything nearly was well as the other classes.

One problem I see with engy is the crappy utility spells. I really don’t want any of them except maybe 3. Otherwise I’m just rolling around with different kits.

-Healing kit needs to change. Preferably double the power on those med packs or toss out heals like grenades.

-Flamethrowing is horrible with damage. Completely unusable in PvP due to the moving targets everywhere inturrupting your combo.

-Grenades need a targeting autoattack. I can’t kite at all with them making them near useless in PvP.

-Standard weapons all have horrible damage potential.

-Shield abilities are too situational and slow.

-Conditions have extremely short durations. Only the Elixir gun has decent condition damage and time. Everything else has 2 second or less condition timers.

-The class doesn’t have enough buffs. Even the elementalist can attribute dance and keep about 4 buffs on themselves at all time. Engineers only get an occasional swift, protection, or regen with most of their abilities.

-Turrets do nothing. Even when specced to make them powerful, they do nothing. The earthquake turret is the only one I use because its the only one that will take hits and has decent utility. Most turrets spend their time shooting indestructible background objects. Animation and particle effects for turrets are lackluster and make it hard to see what the turret is hitting or whether the turret has performed its special ability.

-toughness and vitality don’t do enough to make the class semi tanky. A cloth wearing Necro can with the best Warriors and Guardians. A Juggernaut Engy will die to a thief in less than 5 moves.

-Bombs and Elixir gun are the only things good on engineers right now.

I keep trying to go back to flamethrower, in hopes that I was just ignorant of some obvious build to make it viable, only to find myself disappointed by the unreliable damage and impossibility to hit targets during PvP.

What adds salt to the wound is the fact that my Elixir gun does slightly more damage than the FT. Just auto attackign with the Elixir gun will constantly stack a bleed on my target that just gets worst and worst the longer I shoot, then add in the chem spray to layer even more debuffs…………the FT is just garbage when a debuffing / healing gun is doing greater damage numbers than it!!

teg.1340:

Do not overrate other classes option to swap between melee and range weapon sets. While it is nice to have both swappable in combat, you become a master of none.

For example take a look at the warrior. To be competitive in melee you are forced to equip 2 melee weapon sets.

greatsword + rifle/bow = no CC/interrupts, no block
hammer + rifle/bow = mediocre melee dmg, no mobility, no block
axe/shield + rifle/bow = no mobility, mediocre CC/interrupts
sword/shield + rifle/bow = no CC/interrupts, mediocre melee dmg
mace/shield + rifle/bow = no mobility, mediocre melee dmg

As you see swapping between melee + range weapon sets is a trade-off for warriors.

Ele is fine. We must decide between (near) melee and range. In turn we get 20 skills with all the goodies (CC/interrupts, burst damage, condition damage, heals, mobility) other professions can dream off.

The grass is always greener on the other side!

This guy understands it all perfectly. For Elementalist the Conjured weapon fills in your weakness.

Elementalist already come with 24 different abilities with each weapon kit. 5 × 4 for the weapons and 3 utility. Giving them the ability to weapon swap and gain another 20 abilities seems a bit much.

The way I combat the lack of range and melee versatility is to keep a conjured weapon in my utility list. If I have a D/D build going, I’m going to have an Ice Arrow ready. If it’s a Staff build then I’m going to keep Electric Hammer.

That’s what the conjured weapons are for. Their damage is not as high as the primary weapons but you do get to some emergency variety of ability when the calls for it.

Also to fix the problem of the conjured weapon running out too fast is simple. Use about 4 or 5 skills of the weapon then run over and pickup your other weapon on the ground and continue another 5 or 6 abilities. By time you use both weapons your cooldown will almost be up.

I’m currently running an AH build on my Guard. It focuses on soaking damage and, of course, providing boons. So my dilemma is which final skill is better to get.

“Pure of Voice”
or the adjustable combo of “Indomitable Courage” / “Absolute Resolution”?

I’m going for survival boons. I’m unsure how well Absolute Resultion heals. I frequently pop my virtues in combat.

If you want to hold aggro in PvE then you need toughness. If you want to just survive, get vitality.

Toughness also lowers the physical damage you take but it scales off pretty badly in high levels. I personally only grab this stat so I can hold aggro in dungeons. You can even test it out. you will notice that monsters target you much more often if you have a decent amount of toughness on your armor.

If you plan to tank, I would replace the GS with a Hammer or Scepter +focus.

If you plan to tank, put toughness in your gear so you can hold aggro. Otherwise pickup Vitality for survivability.

Altruistic Healing is an excellent trait to work up for dungeons or any team based play. It heals you for every buff you place on people. These buffs also include weapon symbols, signet buffs, shouts, extra buffs you may place after a borken Aegis etc.

Those are the basics I can share to get you started. There are a ton of builds online that use Altruistic healing.

“The hammer is boring in solo PvE.” It can be at times, but I have 3 extra moves on standby at all times for saving my butt.

The Mace is nearly impossible to use in PvP. But that doesn’t mean it needs a change. the hammer is great in PvP and the mace is great in PvE. >shrug<

The big problem is nothing in the story ever states whether the Charr absolutely don’t think there is a higher authority above the current dieties or not. All we know is that the current higher authorities that are present arn’t cutting it as gods.

The other problem here is that people are putting our own reality of the situation of gods into the setting a fantasy game.

In GW2 there are extremely powerful dieties running around. The Charr figured out how to kill one. Therefore, in their eyes, it’s not a god. Nor are any of the other beings of the same power.

I’m sure if we people of earth ran into some aliens posing as gods and we used nukes to utterly own their kitten we’d have a clearer understanding of the Charr Athiest / Thiest position.

Basically, if it ain’t all powerful, it ain’t a god by Charr standards. If it can die to a bunch of cannons and arrows, then it ain’t a god by Charr standards. So far, nothing in Tyria represents the almighty, so according to the Charr there arn’t any gods.

Sounds a bit Thiest to me.

Because, the Charr have stated a definition of what a god should be. Nothing is reaching that definition.

Nothing in the story ever states whether the Charr absolutely don’t think there is a higher authority above the current dieties or not. all we know is that the current higher authorities that are present arn’t cutting it.

The Charr culture looks balanced to me. It’s impossible for a society like the Charr to thrive if they are all so warlike that they can’t even get along with each other and have fun. I see the Charr as “Take no crap” kind of beings. they say whats on their mind and fix a situation directly without all the nice run around junk that everyone else does.

So I think its perfectly normal for a Charr child to be loved, playful, and happy like any other kid.

I think the Asura have the most messed up culture of backstabbing, stealing, and never getting along.

SiNoS.2147:

Problem is the feed back is by puggers in general. These dungeons were not made with puggers in mind.

The problem is puggers were advertised that they could do these dungeons and that their own made up class role would matter. they entered their first dungeon and realized that the only things that matter were stability, blind, dodge, and kiting skills. All those other roles and abilities out made little to no difference in how the enemy could be controlled.

The other problem is that the enemies are programmed to act jsut like they do in the world PvE, but were given stats that require “holy trinity” style gameplay to control them.

As a support engineer my job is to shoot and throw down regen and buffs. I have a decent amount of HP and toughness. Problems arise once a mob decides to aggro me. What can I do? well, I can’t do my job of buffing and healing my team. Now I have to spend the next 1 – 5 minutes kiting and self healing. If I mess up (by running out of space to move or not timing my cooldowns) then I will die in literally 3 hits. In a situation like that a tank is needed to pull aggro. Why? Because there is no way in hell I can solo kill this enemy nor can I take his damage while supporting my team.

Other problems come into play like spell effects not being clear. Especially for melee character who are in the thick of multiple layers of spells and effects. The stability stacking on bosses that is not clearly defined. No one has time to hover their mouse over a boss name to read the stability stack buff during combat. There’s also the problem of having absolutely no explanation about aggro in this game. Very few people know that toughness stat increases monster aggro chance. Then there’s the length of the dungeons and their reward systems.

There are a ton of problems that make these dungeons very unfriendly for average players.

Wolfheart.1938:

Urrelles.4018:

But Dungeons in general require people to use only a specific set of tactics and not a large set like every other part of the game.

What?! Specific set of tactics? You can bring any class with almost any spec/gear and as long as you make up with for it with coordination and strategy you can suceed. I did CM EM with 4 thieves and a guardian (me). Four. Thieves. Guess what? We died sometimes, but we made it. First time, no knowledge about the dungeon, 3 of them were random players.Isn’t that awesome? Gone are the times of “lf x class y spec”

If by “specific set of tactics” you mean things like "you have to separate the lovers/kite x/focus y " or even “have loads of condition removal” well then, that’s just the mechanics of a fight. And you can accomplish what is required in many different ways.

Really? Then why do so many “experts” here say I was wrong for bringing a Tank / Support Guardian into the dungeon?

Did no one actually read the original post and soak in what he said? He doesn’t think dungeons are hard. Mobs are not killing him. He’s not using the roles of tank, healer, damage.

He is saying the programming (which I also said) sucks in dungeons and completely negates everything the game promotes. It forces you down one path of skill sets.

People want to chose their own role and enter a dungeon and contribute. Not respec everytime they want to run a dungeon into a different holy trinity of Ranged Damage, ranged CC, ranged Support.

Someone mentioned stacks of stability. Where the hell is the interface that shows these stacks or even explains them. If this is a general thing that all bosses do, then shouldn’t it be stated. I mean other MMOs state that there is an aggro system and they place in their move descriptions ways to draw aggro. This game has stability stacking and doesn’t explain in any way at all. When I PvP, I don’t have to peel a layer of multiple stabilities before I can snare the player. In Open World, I don’t peel off stability stacks on veteran mobs.

I look at a bosses HP bar and I see:
Name
Health
Special Description
Debuffs and Buffs
If there is an icon for stability stacking how the hell would I know. Id have to hover the mouse over it to read the description, which means I am standing there dying form AE effects.

People keep trying to support this trash system yet more and more of the player base is coming here giving dungeons a negative review. The system is jacked up! From rewards, to enemy stats, to programming. It is all jacked up, and something needs to be fixed and brought in line with the REST OF THE GAME. These dungeons feel like they were ripped straight from another game and reskinned to look like GW2.

You do know there are like…..200 other MMOs out there and not just WoW. Everyone who joins a new MMO doesn’t come from WoW.

Story mode does require people to be able to play. But Dungeons in general require people to use only a specific set of tactics and not a large set like every other part of the game.

Quote Nihilus: “You didn’t really say what the problem is, are they too hard?”

Once he states what he thinks the problem is, the dungeonn gurus will flood in stating how they took a PUG and easily cleared it and that the dungeons are fine.

Then they’ll state that it was a “big mistake” of him going into a dungeon with a team oriented setup, that this game is not about being a “role” its every man for himself. YET, you have to perfectly organize without group, at the same time, to perform combo abilities and layered disables. But it’s a mistake to enter a dungeon with a team play build though.

Gordunk.7289:

I disregarded your very first post when you tried to play a Guardian like a WoW Tank, and I disregarded your posts later when you claimed Colin said dungeons are “For the elite”. Colin DID NOT say that. His comments were in reference to EXP MODE dungeons, which yes, ARE supposed to be hard.

Now back to the first issue-It really boils down to your playstyle. Am I a really good player? No. Have I died numerous times on story mode dungeons? Yes. Have I cleared all that I’ve attempted? Yes. The story mode dungeons ARE NOT HARD. They require you to play the game with only SLIGHTLY more intelligence than regular open world PvE. They require things like dodging out of the clearly labeled red circles, watching for the obvious charging animations on bosses. Instead what I read is that you stood there trying to soak up all the damage on your guardian like a traditional tank. This game is about MOVEMENT. Except in cases that were already stated in this thread, such as enemies dealing more damage to moving targets, there is no reason why you should NOT always be moving unless you are channeling a spell that requires you to be stationary.

TL;DR-You have not yet adapted to GW2 combat, don’t hate the game because you seem to fail to grasp simple concepts.

Well, the only reason I tried to play my Guardian like a WoW tank was because of my first experience with my engineer. Mobs were hitting so hard that I saw it impossible for any melee class to just walk in with Power Precision gear and survive. So I looked up guides on Guardians builds and crated him to be a team supportive player. Sadly people are saying it was a “mistake” to orient myself for team play and for a tank style of combat. Guardians don’t come with a lot of debuffs, just a ton of burning damage. So the only viable dungeon build I could think of was a buffing tank.

It’s a mistake on Arena Net to think that the common player is going to suddenly figure out that they need to turn their heavy armor melee fighter into a glass cannon debuff fighter, on their own without guidance from earlier game experience.

Disregard it all you like but the game makes you think you need to be tough and tanky to survive. Classes like Mesmers and necros have obvious builds that promote the use of conditions like blindness etc. But in general, Arena Net underplays the importance certain conditions, like blindness, a lot throughout the game and promote much use of Protection, Regen, Vulnerability, Weakness.

The second thing you decided to disregard is in fact something that should be paid heavy attention to. We were told dungeons were meant for everyone. Then later in a Forum post were told “Oh explorables are made for the elite though.” Well an explorable dungeon is still a dungeon. But my beef is not with explorables. The hardcore gamers gotta go somewhere for their challenge.

Oh and I don’t hate the game. Just SM Dungeons. The rest of the game delivers 100% perfectly. I chose my character roles (as advertised) and I played them in PvP, WvW, and Open PvE successfully, and had a blast.

So in another thread I just heard that aggro is determined greatly by toughness. This seems true since my guardian did get way more aggro per a pull than my engy.

Therefore as a damage dealer, if you want to be hardy and not draw aggro, then vitality is the way to go. It makes sense, since in most of my group, my engy was the first to draw additional aggro in a fight over all the other fighters. I thought it was the healing, but I’ve seen other engineers not get monster attention so often.

Gunzwei, that explains a lot.

When I was in Ac with my Guardian I was rolling with mace and shield and a bunch of toughness gear. Every fight I had a mob on me or the other warrior while our elementals were aggro free for a while.

However in pulls of more than 2 enemies aggro seemed very random.

Nethelli.4023:

I’ve actually seen a greatsword guardian do a fine job of holding off NPCs while the rest of the group unloaded on them. It’s not unheard of for a single character to build and play tanky, but it’s not feasible to believe you can be the sole defender of the group in all situations.

The swords don’t seem to work for me. Now I’ve tanked quite a few times using a 2 H hammer. It’s hard to use as Guardian but it does deliver in CC and adding protection buff constantly.

Gies.3824:

Urrelles.4018:

It was easy to break free of it in City of Heroes / Villians. But then agianst mobs didn’t just run up to you and hit you 3 times for a kill in that game either. they just swarmed you in mass.

For someone who plays alot of MMO’s you are negative as all hell. I don’t think I have seen a "this works for me " post from you yet. Just BLAH BLAH I CANT DO IT THEREFORE ITS BAD BLAH BLAH.

I did in the Guardian thread when I was figuring out my build. Right now I’m quite vocal about the poor state of dungeons in one of my post I made. So all of my post are gonna be pissy.

BTW I haven’t gotten any real feedback except one post telling me info on what I could do to improve my situation. All I’ve heard is the same thing over and over.

“BLAH BLAH BLAH, Its so easy. Why can’t you learn like me. BLAH BLAH BLAH. You all whine. It’s fine as is. Here’s some mundane general tip that all MMO gamers know.”

Hellkaiser.6025:

first up, hi Urrelles, welcome to the I can tell how they’ve overtuned the monsters in Gw2 club.

Hey thanks for the feedback. I’ll try the vitality stacking over toughness for sure.

Xlore.9234:

Urrelles.4018:

All of those games had an obvious easy progression into the mode of gameplay the devs were pressing. GW2 just ruins your whole world by not giving you any warnign of what dungeons are like. Any build you can think of will work in osme way in every aspect of this game except dungeons.

A minion spec necro will not work. Most Mezmer builds won’t work. Offensive melee warriors don’t work. But there is no progression to introduce this. Jsut an instant crash and burn; and a majority of the people don’t know how.

As for guides.

http://guildwars2grandmaster.com/builds/guardian-boons/

http://guildwars2warrior.com/warrior-builds/gw2-warrior-defensive-heal-and-tank-build/

My Main is a mesmer and unless you are using sceptor, I don’t know what you are talking about.
People in other MMOs don’t level tanky, they level with damage and switch.
If you can’t do that for a dungeon on here, you’re the problem not anet.
The only time ive had to change my build is to figure out how to better help allies so we could clear faster.
I have never had problems surviving in a dungeon because i know my characters mechanics and how to live well without dying.
And if i do go downed, i don’t have a team that doesn’t know the meaning of reviving with f.

Read my very first post and tell me where I built up damaged based character. Both my characters are built for team support.

All of those games had an obvious easy progression into the mode of gameplay the devs were pressing. GW2 just ruins your whole world by not giving you any warnign of what dungeons are like. Any build you can think of will work in osme way in every aspect of this game except dungeons.

A minion spec necro will not work. Most Mezmer builds won’t work. Offensive melee warriors don’t work. But there is no progression to introduce this. Jsut an instant crash and burn; and a majority of the people don’t know how.

As for guides.

http://guildwars2grandmaster.com/builds/guardian-boons/

http://guildwars2warrior.com/warrior-builds/gw2-warrior-defensive-heal-and-tank-build/

It was easy to break free of it in City of Heroes / Villians. But then agianst mobs didn’t just run up to you and hit you 3 times for a kill in that game either. they just swarmed you in mass.

Xlore.9234:

Please give me an example of how other MMO’s held your hand for how to do dungeons before the trinity was the standard.
Because if I remember correctly you had to figure it out yourself.
Why play a game if you aren’t going to invest time in playing it better?

DAOC had enemies in dungeons with strong Area Effect sleep. They introduced it by having you fight 1 enemy with the effect. Once you realized you were doomed to jsut watch your teammates get beatdown by this mob people then learned to use healers and other means to break the effect. Same went for poisons.

WoW used the deadmines to teach players about their roles. 75% of the dungeon was an easy to run slaughterfest. Once you got near the end you had to use more organization, till finally you were facing off against organized pulls that required players to use CC and stun enemies pick specific targets.

Warhammer Online taught players in their World Events to use both the friend and enemy tab targeting system and to use a wide variety of support spells and not just the big heals.

GW2 made it obvious that healing casting direct heals is only a secondary effect and that regeneration spells are way more powerful.

GW1 taught in the arena to use abilities that turn Hexes and Poisons into boons or to make them backfire on their enemies. Trying to fight with them was not an option at all.

Every Korean MMO slowly introduces every aspect of their game before pitting you agianst other players in PvP or Dungeons. Like 75% of the leveling proccess is just a bigkitten tutorial.

Yet, GW2 led us to believe that our class role we decide to do would fit perfectly well into any situation. If you wanted to heal it made a huge difference. If you wanted to soak damage, you made a difference by tanking World Event bosses or soaking up damage in PvP. Then when you entered the dungeon you got your face planted in the dirt within the first 10 minutes and was left wondering why your super build you worked on for the first 30 levels suddenly doesn’t work.

“O maybe its my gear. Oh I’m not high enough level. Level 30 is the minimum. Ill wait till level 50 then. I’ll practice in PvP on new team oriented builds then try the dungeon again.” Enter again and it’s another faceplant.

The reason this happens is because A Net decided not to program specialized enemies that werre made for dungeons. They just took the standard enemies they had and made them all supermen and figured that people could take it.

“Well an Ascilonian Mage does instant cast rain of fire outside. Well just up all her stats by 5x and drop her here with 4 other mobs. Nevermind trying to adjust her cast time or animation to support team play.”

Xlore.9234:

Urrelles.4018:

Another interesting trend I am seeing on these boards is that all the people who swear these dungeons are easy and for A Net not to change them are the ones farming explorable dungeons.

So, why defend keeping Story Mode the same? How does changing Story mode affect your Explore mode gameplay?

the reason these companies make forums is for feedback. right now these dungeons are under heavy fire by the community. If A Net was smart they would get the clue and adjust something. You can call us whiners, but feedback is feedback. People are posting their party makeups, builds, and tactics and stating that it is frustrating. That means A Net messed up.

I checked the WvW and PvP forums. Not much complaining there except on the part of the usual class balancing. not much complaining in the class forums either. But come here and 50% of the post state “I hate Story Mode dungeons!” This is an issue that needs fixing.

I like how you leave out the part where the majority of the whiners aren’t playing the game properly.
You went on a long laundry list of how you were trying to be a healer, tanks couldn’t aggro properly, and how you needed “proper” gear to do the dungeons.
This game isn’t set up like that and you are playing it with the wrong mindset.
That is why you are failing. Not because Anet messed up.
People complaining doesn’t change that.
It just shows that we have a large player base of people from other MMOs that don’t realize this game isn’t other MMOs.

Wait….so my heavy set guardian is wrong. I’m not supposed to be able to survive mob aggro? I see a lot guides online about the Boon heavy tank Guardian.

For a game where everyman has to be able to take their own aggro, why am I not able to take the aggro I get with my toughness healing Guardian and engy. My Guardian can only tank 1 person at a time and my engy doesn’t have neough tricks to effectily kite a mob for 5 minutes straight.

If A Net wants me to drop the trend of the holy trinity, then maybe they should not give me Holy trinity tactic mobs. As Guardian, I HAVE to build tanky and supply Boons, and disrupt enemies. As engy I HAVE to build support. If I don’t, not only will I die but all my team members.

I mean seriously, what purpose is a Mace and shield guardian if it is not for tanking and buffing the team.

Gies.3824:

Apparently the “for highly skilled and highly organized players” statement about dungeons is flying over a lot of peoples heads. For every person who says “I TRIED THIS WITH 4 RANDOMS THAT I PICKED UP OUTSIDE THE INSTANCE AND FAILED MISERABLY NERF NAO”, a kitten dies.

Watch the guild wars video about dungeons. Around 4 minutes they clearly state that dungeons are fore everyone. Not the few or the elite. Yet in one of the forum post 3 weeks later Colin is stating it is for the elite. So now Anet is either lying to their customers and falsely selling features to people, or they jacked up their dungeon system and need to fix it.

Another interesting trend I am seeing on these boards is that all the people who swear these dungeons are easy and for A Net not to change them are the ones farming explorable dungeons.

So, why defend keeping Story Mode the same? How does changing Story mode affect your Explore mode gameplay?

the reason these companies make forums is for feedback. right now these dungeons are under heavy fire by the community. If A Net was smart they would get the clue and adjust something. You can call us whiners, but feedback is feedback. People are posting their party makeups, builds, and tactics and stating that it is frustrating. That means A Net messed up.

I checked the WvW and PvP forums. Not much complaining there except on the part of the usual class balancing. not much complaining in the class forums either. But come here and 50% of the post state “I hate Story Mode dungeons!” This is an issue that needs fixing.

Ennarian.4620:

The main problem here is that you’re trying to keep people alive. There is no tank. There is no healer. There is no aggro, taunts, threat, or any of that. Everyone is responsible for their own life. If you want to play support, that means you buff your allies and send a little regen their way. You can not heal them through anything. Don’t even try. If they don’t move, that’s their ownkittenfault. You have to drop the mindset that someone is going to keep mobs off you. They can’t. That’s when you utilize your cc and conditions to survive.

If you missed out on the part where they took out the traditional trinity, you should probably go watch their manifesto video where they say there are no tanks or healers.

In place of these there are three roles that should be filled:

Control (utilize dazes, stuns, blinds, cripple, immobilize, knockdowns, causing weakness, chill, fear)

Support ( Spreading boons, dropping regeneration fields, removing conditions, causing vulnerability)

Damage ( stacking conditions and high damage output)

This is the biggest problem with the dungeons. This new playstyle is flawed in programmer execution. The mobs are perfectly programmed in a way that forces every man to fend for themselves. However, their stats and execution of special attacks is not. When a regular ol elite ranger suddenly has 3x the power and 10x the HP, you can’t simplly just say “Everyman for themselves on aggro.” Squishy people will die. You cannot make an effecting mage tank in this game. you can make a hardy mage but not one that can tank. Guardians and Warriors just do it better.

My engineer is setup to survive. I survive Structured PvP like a beast. I survive WvW well enough to save people around me and hurt my enemies. I survive open world PvE; soloing skill point bosses with easy and 3 manning champion encounters. But go into a dungeon and all those survival skills just don’t mean kitten. Because in the end, you can only run so long, while, healing and dishing out damage.

If 4 people on your team each have aggro and their all focusing on themselves then how the hell are you going to win the fight? Especially when each person is under the threat of dying within a few attacks if caught.

I would rather A Net drop the insane enemy stats and just give me more targets. Instead of 2 rangers with 10k HP and 900 attack power, I’d rather deal with 5 Rangers with 4k HP and 200 attack power.

Twaddlefish.6537:

First time I ran AC it kicked mykitten We didn’t even get to Nente. There was no co-ordination.

I understand what you mean about story mode being for the story, but the argument for making story mode easier is that you essentially can’t play your class properly. I apologise for saying that, but that is all I’m getting out of OP is just that.

Ah my favorite comment. there one where you’re told you suck without actually stating why you suck. I just spent 15 minutes writing out my stat build, abilities, level, and tactics and this is all the feedback I get on average.

So half the people say its easy the other half say its hard.

One thing I do notice. Most of the people claiming these dungeons are easy typically state grouping with friends, or being over leveled, or having some form of voice chat.

I haven’t seen one comment on here where a person said. “I joined a PUG of all lvl 35s and I beat story mode with minimal deaths!”

Has anyone here beat the dungeon within the level that the dungeon is supposed to be played. That means level 35ish, with 10 point trait skills, 35ish gear, and other similar players in your team, (preferably a PUG), minimal deaths (10 or less)? Anyone?

Now if I recall at around 14:10 of the dungeon video Colin said that all content including dungeons are made for everyone. Well, I am a 30 year old male who has played a large amount of MMOs in the past. I am not a twitch gamer, I am average. I’m as average as they come. I am only support in all games I play.

I’ve successfully played LoL, WoW, Aion, Rift, Warhammer Online, Star Wars TOR, GW1, and DAOC. All of which I played support successfully and made a difference. In all of these games I could play the first dungeon of the series with ease and learn the ropes easily. In all of these games I could see when a boss would do a big attack by either text warning or clear visuals. If visuals were not present, then the apropriate classes were able to buffer the damage of said special attacks.

Yet, somehow, in this game I am unable to pass the first dungeon and see the story content. This is supposed to be for everyone?

Apparently, if I want to see how the story in this game goes, I’ll need to become an elite gamer. So I’ll need a guild group with vent or teamspeak, scheduled raid times, twitch gaming skills, and absolute perfect knowledge and awareness of all abilities in the game. Lets not forget to have level and gear that is 10 levels higher than the dungeons at minimum.

Here’s my experience with AC story mode. I’ve attempted it 8 times now with PUG on 2 different characters. None have gone through the whole experience. Each time I joined had at least 1 level 50 and 1 level 40. Some groups were 3 level 50s.

The Engineer: Level 30 – 40

Gear stats in order: Healing Power, Toughness, Power, Vitality

Abilities:
Elixir Gun
Radiation field
Net or Thumper turret

Experience: As a support character I do an excellent job of keeping the ranged characters healed from splash damage. Enemies are constantly debuffed with poisons and weakness.

However, the tanks of the group have it rough and even with my layered regen and AE heal on them they will eventually go down if they are holding aggro from more than 1 mob.

The problems arise when:
1. I’m instantly killed by multiple AE. Most of the time I can’t dodge them all. Or I don’t see them coming because there are too many similar effects floating around.

2. I get aggro. Once I have aggro I must kite by using my elixir gun dodge ability and perform my own dodges. In between maneuvers I let the enemy hit me once (which drops me by half life) then continue kiting while I regen health. Sadly I am now unable to focus on healing my team and more on myself. So I’ll either die by getting stuck on a wall or my team dies and I get mass nuked by the remaining mobs.

3. Thumper turret does not pull aggro. In the open world, dropping a pet or turret near an enemies would instantly aggro them. In dungeons, enemies just ignore puts completely.

Conclusion as Engineer? I cannot support my team once I have aggro and I cannot shake the aggro. With all that toughness and healing power I can’t be a good enough healer; nor can I take damage at all.

The Guardian: Level 33

Gear stats in order: Toughness, Healing, Vitality, Power

Abilities:
Mace and Shield or Mace and Focus
Scepter and Focus for ranged combat

Hold the Line (always present in my list)
Retreat (always present in my list)
Healing Dome (Sanctuary I think)
Stand your ground
Save Yourselves

Experience: I can actually tank………..1 mob. I die in about 4 hits if I do nothing but attack. however, I can negate damage about 4 times easily and supply 2 to my team. So this allows me to successfully tank a mob for as long as I want.

the problems arise when:

1. 2 mobs aggro me. I die in about 10 seconds or less with no chance to fight for survival. It is literally instant death.

2. I can’t see akittenthing except the thing I’m attacking. It’s a closed space, so the camera is close. I’m typcially hit by all Ae effects once before I notice them and move. AE effects blast through my shields with ease. The #5 skill ont he focus blocks 3 attacks. It will drop instantly in most situation I use it. That means I’m getting hit 3 times at once in many occasions.

3. I can’t hold the aggro I have. If the mob leaves to attack someone else, there is nothinng I can do. I’ve tried chasing it down and blocking its path but I am typcially knocked on mykitten or can’t keep up. My buffs do nothing to help the other players survive in this case. My barriers and knockbacks only keep the enemy at bay for 1 second.

4. When a player is down, they stay down. I can rez, but the mob will just hit them right back down again till they are completely dead. Dome of healing is not large enough for my big Charrkitten to fit in there and rez a player. The mobs hit through it and still hit me or the person I’m trying to protect.

Conclusion: Guardian is uneffective as support or tank in situations where more than 1 enemy is present. No aggro control system. Not enough hardiness to tnak multiple targets. Spell effects are sloppy in dungeons and do not prep players for the attacks about to happen. All I see are more red circles and more enemies with glowy effects around them that don’t accuratly reflect when they are going to trigger their attacks.

Yeah, I saw that vid. Dungeons are NOT for everyone.