Guild Wars 2

Prezzy.2783:

I don’t mean to be a killjoy but i know from experience levelling my alts that as soon as you enter a party with a Char that is less that lvl 80 you will get a swift kick.

Unfortunately this is the state of the game with way too many ‘Eliteists’ running around – best thing about these eliteists is that the only aspect of the game they are good at is skipping mobs and completing a dungeon quickly.

Your mileage may vary. One of my last PUG runs of TA was with one other person at level 80, two in the mid 60s and one who had just dinged 55 to do the explorable. I was the only one in the group who had done the dungeon before.

I will not call it the fastest run I’ve ever had, far from it, it took 90+ minutes for Forward / Up, but…. the group succeeded, everyone got tokens, and the new guys learned a great deal over the course of the run.

My advice to anyone who is new to dungeons, be up front that you are both new, and not level 80 when looking for a group, ask if people are willing to help you learn, and then get down to the business of doing dungeons as often as you want.

Avoid teams that say “LF_X_More, Fast Run / Speed Run / Money Run….” etc, as these are usually farming teams that want to optimize the run. Use gw2lfg.com and post that you are ‘new to dungeon, willing to learn.’

Believe it or not, I’ve actually seen people say “LF_x_More, be experienced or willing to learn”

It may take a little longer to find a group, I’ll give you that, when you’re lvl 80 and fully geared, you can jump in most groups and people don’t blink too much or ask too many questions. But if you keep your eyes and ears, and most importantly your mind open, you’ll do fine.

DeathPanel.8362:

Kirbyprime.2645:

Meh, to be honest I think it’s fine… I mean, I did this with a D/D bunker Ele, a condition necro, a zerker war, an engie and a thief. The setup is a bit everything so it’s not like it’s DPS heavy, just need to learn to target the assassins asap while dancing around the regular mobs.

It’s more about your gear than your class, although your class is a big part of it too. (Fyi, your team is a very good setup except for maybe dd bunker ele.)

From my experience it’s almost undoable if you have 2 or 3 sub geared people in team because they will drop dead quickly.

There is so many mobs with leap type attacks that knock you down, archers and shamans that gear(dmg mitigation and hp through gear) becomes a deciding factor in whether or not you can survive. (There’s only so many times you can evade with clumps of mobs spamming attacks constantly on you, no matter how “skilled” you are.)

Just wanted to jump in on the gear bit as I’ve done this with a lvl 76 mesmer in blues. Frequently I’ve had teams complete without full exotics, but they’re skilled players, generally on alts.

I think too often we get a combination of New Player + Character w/o Exotics, and while the lack of exotics may be easy to identify, the lack of experience isn’t…. and the gear gets blamed.

Don’t get me wrong, it got notably easier when I dinged 80 and cleared out stacks of dungeon tokens on exotics for my mes, but it’s possible @ dungeon level, with gear at dungeon level.

There is a known issue, described as a visual bug, that can cause an XP bar to stay ‘stuck’ at it’s current progress, even though you continue to accrue XP. Usually this happens when you level (or gain a level’s worth of xp) and the bar doesn’t reset…. at least, that’s the only time I’ve seen it.

Can’t say that I’ve heard of that bug not displaying xp numbers when you kill things though. Might be worth mentioning in the bugs section.

Svarty.8019:

LinseyMurdock.4165:

We can’t have any recipes that are karma/coin only due to the ease in earning karma and coin.

This makes no sense.

The real answer is to make them expensive in karma and coin.

No, this makes perfect sense. What is expensive one day, is less expensive the next. At launch, 1M Karma felt like it was a huge hurdle for some…. now, people flush 1M karma on jewelry boxes at the drop of a hat. Near launch, a precursor could be bought for 50-60G, now, such things are in the 500-600g range. If a recipe must include an element that has to be gathered, or that is produced via RNG, it limits the amount that is available to a greater extent and prevents people from using crafting to convert currency.

I second the coment about doing everything else first…. all of the other things you have to do to get a legendary will give you more $$, when all you have left to do is get the precursor, you can decide if you want to straight up buy one, or play with the forge.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Hey guys,

Just a quick update on where the whole scavenger hunt system stands since I know that’s a topic many of you have brought up recently. We’re not currently actively working on building any sort of legendary precursor scavenger hunt, this is something we want to do in the future and we’re in the midst of designing how this would function, but no one is actively building this feature and you should not expect in the Jan/Feb/March releases at this point. …

Link to full post: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Where-s-the-Scavenger-Hunt-post/first#post1190541

Not happening in Feb / March.

Noerknhar.3826:

That was a month ago. In terms of a game that is on the market for about 5 months, that’s like a decade.

Right, a month ago, we knew it wasn’t on track for the Jan / Feb / March patches.

So…. why do we expect continual updates saying ’It’s still not happening in Jan / Feb / March…’

And in the lifespan of an MMO, a month is a short time compared to the total life cycle of the game’s live support and content updates.

Answers from Colin….

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/How-many-crowns-for-precurser/first#post1217085

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Where-s-the-Scavenger-Hunt-post/first#post1191312

Drop rate of Vanilla vs Spawn timers of Omnomberries was also adjusted, bringing Vanilla down to it’s current point from a high of 4s / bean when the community said they wanted the limiting factor of Omnomberry Bars to be the Omnomberries and not the Vanilla.

Honestly, butter is at a good place now, as is chocolate. If you’re progressing chef via heavy spam crafting and not heavy use of discovery, look into alternative recipes. If you’re cooking for your own use, the cost of mats for the duration of the buff is not out of line.

4 Months ago, butter drops were so bad, we had mystic forge recipes just to get butter out of the market…. you’d open a loot bag and get nothing but butter. Butter was worthless and you got no leather, or other mid range crafting mats from those loot bags. The change in butter also brought down the price of several other fine crafting mats which are found in those loot bags.

So, because of a change, somethings that were hard then, are easier now, and some things that were easy then, are harder now.

I’d hardly say that anyone in a ‘post patch’ world is out of luck because of the changes to butter and chocolate.

Some advice:

1) I suggest your first explorable dungeon be Ascalonian Catacombs (lvl 35.)
2) Gear wise, I would recomend you look into at least a masterwork (green) set that is the dungeon level or higher, a rare (yellow) set if you can manage it.
3) Let people know that you’re new to the dungeon, listen to advice, ask questions, and learn.

Explorable dungeons are meant to be challenging, and can hit you pretty hard at first if un-prepared. Arm yourself with knowledge, the wiki is a good place to start, but talking to your team will help a great deal.

If you do dungeons frequently as you level, then by the time you hit level 80, you will have enough tokens built up to buy a few pieces of exotic armor and some exotic weapons, without giving up your hard earned gold, so it’s definately worth doing.

How often you farm / repeat a specific dungeon depends on if you like the look / stats of the gear from that dungeon. A one handed weapon is 300 tokens (60 tokens per path completed), so running all 3 paths of a dungeon twice will get you a level 80 exotic one handed weapon with some left over. Armor pieces vary from 180 tokens for exotic armor to 330, depending on the piece. Off hands are 210 (focus, shield), and 2 handed weapons are 390.

The most important reason to run a dungeon though is that you have fun with the dungeon. Don’t put yourself on a dungeon grind fest treadmill that makes you hate the sight of the dungeon walls, or cringe when you see a dungeon mentioned in /map chat Have fun, and GL!

saul.7246:

That’s y im here…

Im a elementarist 30 earth, 20 water, 10 arcane with power tough vit and a lil condition, full exotic,like my friends ,and i have NO PROBLEMS with ARAH and OTHER DUNGEONS. But if i dont get a guardian ou 2 warriors with me, i prefer to give up path 2 cof. I failed 2 times in all history on the survivor mode before update when it was respwaning by the waypoint until 100%. Now with the assasins, ive died like 1 million times when its on 97%. I think they implemented it by testins with 5 guardians before put this kitten UP.(OH SEENS EASY WITH 5 GUARDIANS , LETS UPDATE THEN!!!!PLAYERS WILL GONNA LOVE!)

WEll, ty arena net to make my daily cof be reduced to 120 tokens.

Sorry mate, but if you look through the responses, no one is saying this needs lots of guardians, people are succeeding w/o guardians, w/o warriors, and with a variety of tactics.

Since you’re running an Earth focused Ele, are you running Rock Solid to provide Stability party wide? Stability is one of the key reasons to bring a guardian, but you can supply that for your party as well. Are you making good use of crowd controll to keep trash concentrated for AoE?

You may need to adjust your traits for the encounter if you don’t have a guardian handy, but there are ways to get the job done.

SkyChef.5432:

I did this path the old ways, both kill & kite so yesterday was our 1st try on path 2 after patched and did we fail spectacularly, mostly around the 80s completion. We didn’t have problem killing the mobs but magg was always killed by the assassins because we didn’t spot them fast enough and with all the mobs around, it became very hectic. When we stopped and reassessed the situation, we did it again in 3 tries, failed at 93%, 97%. The name of the game is we assigned 3 players camping at the assassin’s 3 spawned positions. Doing whatever they have to do to kill the mobs, stayed away from magg but always have their eyes at the spawned position and call target the assassin immediately when they appeared. Everyone jumped the assassin then killed and kited back to their position, until the next assassin showed up. The other 2 players were the last line of defense and kept an eye on the 3 other players so they could provide support if any of these 3 was overwhelmed by the mobs.

I love seeing this because it is completely different than how my guild does it, and still 100% viable!

We tend to group at the beginning with a Ranger right next to Magg and everyone in range of ‘Stand your Ground’ and Timewarp…. Eles are our most forward with a guardian on the midline and the mesmer towards the back. Targets are called as soon as they appear, but responsibility for the assassins while at long range falls on the ranged characters… as they get to the mid range, splatter AoE tends to take care of them, and failing that, they rarely survive setting off the Ranger’s traps.

In the end, there are several viable ways to do it, but if your group doesn’t communicate, you can’t just face roll through it.

And that’s how dungeons should be. Teamwork should be required and some level of planning for how to handle an encounter. GW2 is very forgiving by allowing you to repeat the failed event and continue to progress. In GW1, if an NPC you had to protect died in FoW or UW, you were done!

LieutenantGoogle.7326:

Old mag room was pretty fun, it was hectic and felt like a race against the clock battle (if you were to fight it out that is).

To me, the new battle still has this feel, but doesn’t feel so overwhelming that you have to bring a highly tuned group to do it. Still takes some focus, still takes some know how, and some times, takes a 2nd or 3rd attempt, but doesn’t feel so far out of reach.

My Zodiac Longbow… even thoug 90% of the time, all it got used for was pulling.

Also, would give my left arm for a simple skirt for a light armor character. My monk rocked a 1k woven skirt (dyed black) with 1k kurz top for a long time, and I loved the look of having a simple short skirt for the character.

Lots of response to this already, but I wanted to tag in a bit: If your team fails the event twice, STOP, reassess and evaluate why you are failing. Then make changes and try again.

I’ve only struggled once with a PUG in this dungeon, and that was largely with a person who clearly didn’t know what he was doing, and stubbornly refused to make the changes the group requested of him. Once he did, insta-win.

But seriously, communicate with your team, and take time between events if need be to get skills off cool down, and make a good second attempt.

As an asside, my static group for this is 1 guardian, 1 mesmer, 1 ranger, and 2 eles…. The people in the group who run Warriors for p1 will actually relog to eles for p2

Every profession can accomplish good damage, good support, or good control. How each profession does it is different. If you gear and trait a Necro the same way you gear and trait a Ranger without regard to the profession’s specific strengths and weaknesses you will not get the same results.

If you haven’t seen a Mesmer hold the line with warriors and guardians, they you haven’t seen melee mesmers, but they’re out there (I prefer to stay in melee range as long as I can with mine) and the work quite well. Eles can bunker along with several other professions. Some professions have a more intuitive method of doing a given thing, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t do other tings.

Signet of Forums.4397:

John Smith.4610:

This post is evidence that their methods are effective.

It’s also evidence that crafting legendaries probably should not have been based on highly specific items which are very rare (relative to demand) random drops. It’s not exactly like they would be super-easy to make without that factor added in. I know the topic has been discussed to death and changes are incoming at some unknown point in the future. In light of how “bling” gear was obtained in Guild Wars 1 (like Tormented weapons, for example), I still don’t really understand what the thought process was behind how precursors are currently obtained.

I have to insert a comment on this…. Torment Weapons were one thing, but how about a Voltaic Spear? Amethyst Aegis? A dozen other coveted skins in GW1 that were RNG in end game areas…. Tormented Weapons were probably one of the only non-RNG items that held value for an extended period of time, and their value plummeted during the days of ‘Ursan Way’ when a larger segment of the community had easy access to produce their own. It largely rebounded when it became a HoM eligible item. And not only did you have to RNG a skin, but for real value, you also had to RNG a low req, the right req, and heaven forbid you were working for Zodiac Weapons where you also had to RNG a desired inscription.

GW1 elite items did not have less RNG than legendary items, if anything, they had more.

If you want High End exotic weapons, (Volcanus and the like), Karma – > Orrian Jewelry Boxes – > Lodestones – > Exotic Weapons.

Honestly, if you could snag 4x exotic greatswords for any amount of karma…. that would make gambling with the MF for precursors way easier…. as someone who has flushed 1M karma at a time, I don’t think you could put a karma value high enough on exotic weapons to not have them wind up in the mystic forge and still be reasonable.

The great moa hunt is ON!

Kirbyprime.2645:

Beginner runs? I would say maybe 2 hours for the first few times if you get all the very long ones and need to learn different mechanics.

Advanced / Expert? I would say 45min to 1hour would be the average. “If” you were to RNG it and go for Swamp first ( and everyone knew what to do ) I suppose 35~min would also be doable. Kind of hard to go any faster do to walking times.

And that’s the sort of time expectation that has largely kept us out of Fractals. Well, a month or two of weekends should get us where we’re headed. Thanks for the feedback!

So, I’m finally getting around to organizing FotM runs for my guild (I know, late to the party) and I’m curious how long the average clear of a scale 1-10 set takes.

Time is one of the most important things for our group, and one of the things that has kept us out of Fractals is a fear of lengthy time commitment. With a standard dungeon, guild members can opt in for a single path, complete in 20-40 minutes, and walk away between paths if need be, but FotM really encourages you to do 3-4 fractals in one fell swoop, else your tier doesn’t progress.

We did FotM back in November, and it seemed to take approx 20 min per fractal, 60-90 minutes for a full run. Is that about the norm, or, do teams tend to pick up speed as they get into a daily FotM 10 routine?

For experienced teams running scale 10 daily, about how fast is a run?

Convert Karma —> Gold via Jewelry boxes.

Last time I burned 1M karma on jewelry boxes, I walked away with around 10g after selling the lodestones I didn’t keep. 4g on the ‘vendor trash’ items from boxes alone. If you don’t need Karma, but do need Gold, it’s a good means of converting it.

If you really want to abuse it, light off a karma booster, guild karma buff etc, and spam through all the liquid karma you get back with boxes, and keep cycling till you flatten your karma. You’ll be amazed how much you get from doing so.

If you want a stack of charged lodestones specifically… don’t hold your breath, but you tend to wind up w/ 1-2 lodestones in any given category over 1m karma. Your Results May Vary, GL!

Justin.7163:

Normally I’d say this is a little silly to expect new armor sets so soon and considering how many there are in the base game, but being as I’m not overly impressed with a lot of the current armor designs I’d really like to see them put more in as soon as possible. Not sure what happened since GW 1 had so many incredible designs (mostly post-Prophecies).

You got it between the ()s. GW2 is at the same state as prophecies. New skins are undoubtedly in the pipe line, I keep thinking that the reason we don’t have ascended armor yet is because new armor skins will take longer to build and QA than new trinkets. Even weapons are easier to build and QA then armor sets.

Give it time, I’m sure we’ll get some options. I think we are destined though to see our first ‘new’ armor sets in the Ascended tier…. just my hunch.

DeathPanel.8362:

How do you know when you’ve violated a rule when the rule isn’t clear in the first place? The very fact there is a contentious discussion over this means people have different perceptions of what constitutes “cheating” and what is legit.

My guild has talked around exactly this topic. One of the things we go back to is Robert’s post here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Exploits-and-Glitching/page/2#post1213057

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Just for the record, standing in a place where you can hurt the boss but the boss can’t hurt you back / can’t fight back is considered an exploit, and we are working on a solution for that problem. As is exploiting terrain like teleporting through walls/closed doors, and getting under/above the map to skip content and get to a place where you can take advantage of bugs or events not requiring previous completion in the order of events (skipping directly to Giganticus lupicus from the start of the arah explore chain for instance).

These are things we patch and fix as we discover them and figure out solutions for. As I have said before, if you see something say something by emailing this alias: Exploits@arena.net

With that as a basis, we try to evaluate a tactic that feels ‘hinky’ with the questions:

1) Are we vulnerable to damage here? Is the boss able to reach us, does the boss appear to go ‘inactive’ … could I afk here?
2) Does the use of terrain prevent an event from triggering that should trigger?
3) Does the tactic require unnatural play (avoiding the use of specific types of weapon skills to prevent mobs from spawning)

In general, if it feels odd when we try it, we talk about it, and the group comes to an agreement on weather things feel okay, or not. When we’re unsure, we ask. (was very happy to get Robert’s answer on the Ooze bosses beign accessed from CoF p1 )

2/3rds of the time when I’m in a dungeon it’s with a majority of the group being guild mates. We’ve had generally good luck when a PUG that we picked up to fill a spot positions for an exploitive method and we say ’We’re old school, no doing X…’ and if we need to, explaining the mechanic we use to down the boss.

The other 3rd of the time, I’m the lone man in a PUG, and I’m open to learn how the group wants to do things, but I’ll apply the above criteria to any thought I have about repeating those tactis with my static group. Some times, I learn cool new things I can bring back to the group… some times, I bow out after one path when I see that a group wants to stand in funny places and gimick a boss down.

I don’t think banning people is the answer. I think reporting exploits so they can be closed is the best answer for now.

Leo.2850:

If ANET release more dungeons where careful single target mob pulls is useful, a thief will become a very valuable addition to the group.

Good to know that scorpion wire works in high level fractals. I gave up on it when I tried to do this sort of thing to break key mobs out of groups in CM and saw ‘immune’ to every pulling skill the group had (tried the necro pull too, got the same result, and I think someone else had one, but i can’t remember what…. don’t think it was guardian GS#5, but I can’t think of what else it might have been.)

I had come to the conclusion that A-net was forcing those packs to be dealt with as packs.

Deniara Devious.3948:

Thief’s cluster bomb is amazing. I think it is the biggest damage spammable 1200 range AoE skill in the game.

I’ve always felt that it’s less spamable at long range due to the high arc, and using it as a blast finisher at long range is difficult for the same reason. Takes forever for the CB to get where it’s going. At close range, CB is very spamable, but at the range limit…. not so much.

I think Warrior Long Bow > Thief Short Bow for long range encounters, because only CB has 1200 range, while the entire warrior longbow (if traited) becomes a 1200 range weapon.

don’t get me wrong, thief SB is mobility and damage and conditions all in one potent tool kit, but for times when you need 1200 range, it lacks a bit.

Because the definition between good play and use of terrain vs exploiting is blurry at best.

If I find a rock to hide behind where the boss can’t hit me, and I can’t hit him, that feels like using terrain in a smart way.

Then I decide to equip a ranged weapon, duck out from behind the rock and shoot everything I can at the boss, then jump back to cover…. still feels smart.

Then, as I refine my technique, I find a sweet spot…. I don’t seem to get hit, but I can still get my shots off.

Hmm… now my team is hunkered down with me and we feel like we’ve found an old west shoot out… some times someone ducks out a little too far and takes damage, sometimes other mechanics of the fight cause problems, but in general, it feels like good game play….

Right? Or not…..

But you see how a person gets there, how a technique develops. There is a wide world of ‘grey area.’

Doing a dungeon ‘as intended’ is also flawed. The devs are few, and their creativity limited (Love you Robert, but you guys are a small team.) Throw tens of thousands of players at what they built and stratagies that were never envisioned will spring up within a week. It’s not as intended because the Devs know that they can’t envision every way for something to be done. If all we were going to do is slog down the paths they built using the classes and builds they used to test things… what’s the point?

That’s the difference between Dungeons and other aspects of ‘cheating’ in the game. Exploiting a mechanic en masse (snowflake salvage) is easy to track, and to measure someone’s use of the mechanic. Who would you have review hundreds of thousands of hours of game play for where people stand in a dungeon?

If you think something is an exploit, alert the devs so they can work on closing it. Then, move on.

JJBigs.8456:

I really dont think the people posting have played warriors, as I was a disbeliever before I got mine to 80. I never really wanted one, but after I made it, other DPS looked like a joke. Id perfer to play a thief, I loved gw1, I was an assassin to the core, but it is what it is.
As for that 8-9k damage in one chain, in PVT gear thats about my end burst for 100blades, not to mention, the 8 or so hits before that doing up to the 9k end burst. So yes 9k damage is actually great, few classes can hit that number, but in the end, theres always another class that can do it better

This right here. I was very excited by some of the crit numbers I could pull off my thief, the damage that looked significant. It took work, stealth, maneuver, burst…. but I could pile on some serious damage…. Then I finally finished leveling the warrior I had discarded because it felt slow and clunky compared to my thief…. and promptly started seeing damage numbers I’d never managed to achieve on my thief.

Unload feels godly, but it’s single target, vs things like 100b that are multi target. Down the boss hard, or down the boss and sweep up his adds at the same time?

One of the things that got me off my thief was the lack of access to 1200 range for encounters that required (or are easier with) ranged attacks. Pistols and SB bring you in close, and while CB has 1200 range, at that range, it is slower than snot due to the high arc.

In terms of ‘tankyness’, I will admit, I never run out of dodges on my thief, and I drop caltrops on every dodge, so I can hang in melee range for long, sustained periods without having to drop out, and it maintains bleeds + cripple. I feel like a bouncing betty some times, but the DPS is sustainable while hanging in melee range.

The more I look through the responses, it feels like the answer for thief really is centered around things like Black Powder, Headshot… using Smoke Screen as a means of applying blind….

Lots to think on. The class is viable without a doubt, and frankly anyone who’s got a thief with their face in the dirt all the time…. it’s not the fault of the class. The class has plenty of survivability, and SoM is godly.

Thanks so much everyone for the feedback, lots of food for thought.

dani.1956:

1 question : do you want thief > all ? You said its your main in pvp and wvw so that means thiefs are good there … so.. you want them to be better than all classes at all things ?

Not looking for better than all classes in all things. Struggling with what strengths to bring to dungeons from a thief platform.

When I play games, I tend to work my way up to a max level character in each profession, then bring whatever character is best suited to the situational need.

I want to say a huge thank you to those who have mentioned some of the condition pressure (blind, poison, vulnerability, weakness.) I had left P/P and S/D behind in my early days of mostly open world PvE and I think I may have gotten myself into a D/D & SB rut without realizing some of the opportunities I’d left by the wayside as AoE seemed to be king in Orr and elsewhere.

Back to the drawing board I go on my thief, and thanks for the advice!

Ursan.7846:

But I just have to point out it’s an exercise in futility if you want to compare one class to the best parts of several other classes.

That’s what I’m looking for: The best part of thief in dungeons. If I want a strong defensive and support character, I grab my guardian. If I need to pour damage out the end of a sharp implement, I grab my warrior. What is the situation that should be crying out to me: “Go grab your thief!”

For me, the strongest part of thief has always centered around sustained mobility. The class is slippery as all get out, very good for hit and run, and getting quickly where it needs to go. In open world, and WvW, that’s a huge asset…. not so much in more confined dungeon areas.

Poison: Poison I like, and it is a condition I see lacking in many dungeon groups… lots of people stack bleed, and several classes can stack duration on burning, but Poison is frequently neglected.

I feel pretty self contained on the Thief. I’ve tried leeching venoms and a few other things to focus more on party benefit, but I tend to feel that the thief brings an ability to be independant that isn’t as needed in the dungeon group.

If dungeon design focused more on splitting, I think thief would be huge, but how often do you split your team to cover two objectives simultaniously?

Ursan.7846:

1. Easy, spammable blast finisher
2. AoE projectile block (smoke screen)
3. Shadow Refuge ressing

Yes, you listed classes do specific things better than a Thief, but which class brings everything to the table? You can’t compare thief to some aggregate of 5 different other classes: that’s just not fair.

Jack of All Trades / Master of None? Single platform to cover any gaps left by other people in the group?

I know a thief is viable in dungeons, and I’m not really wanting a discussion of ‘should they go or not. Kick thieves or not.’

I have 4 lvl 80s so far, and my Thief is as close to a ‘main’ as I get. I love my thief for open world play and WvW. Just not so much in dungeons.

In CM, when I find myself tossing out smoke screen to deal with snipers and the like, I keep missing my guardian’s wall of reflection.

I felt like I had found a niche in boss DPS, but frankly, my warrior hits harder.

I’ve started taking my mesmer to dungeons, and I feel like I offer more group utility from the mesmer….

So, I went back and asked myself: What can my thief bring to dungeons that I can’t offer as well or better from another platform?

The biggest utility I see in the theif is Shadow Refuge, which is really only useful if you skip stuff, and as a stealth res or for a life steal combo field…. it’s a great skill, but the thief has to offer more than one great skill.

Really interested in input, seriously looking for reasons to dust off my thief!

Lots of info on roles, support vs. control vs. damage has already been covered, so I won’t get into that.

What I will suggest is that the key to getting started in dungeons is to arm yourself with knowledge. I suggest taking a look at wiki.guildwars2.com and reading over the info in the guide before moving into the dungeon. The wiki does not contain 100% of what you need to know, but it does contain some useful information that is better than going in unprepared.

Discuss priority targets with your team, having one person responsible for calling targets and making sure the team follows those targets can be a HUGE help in quickly eliminating the most dangerous threats in many encounters.

If you find your party is struggling, back up, and talk about it. Try to avoid throwing yourselves at an encounter repeatedly…. if it failed, see if you can figure out why and look at your skill bar to see if you need to make adjustments.

I will also mention that if you went into the Ascalonian Catacombs explorable mode at lvl 31, you’re a touch under level, the dungeon is set at lvl 35, and that’s going to impact you as well. Ascalonian Catacombs (Story) is set for level 30.

Browse the forums for tips on specific dungeons as you go, there’s a great deal of information out there. Also, it doesn’t hurt when you see groups that are LF More to whisper the person chatting and ask if they’re willing to teach a new player. I frequently find myself teaching people how to do Oozes in CoF p1 because most groups don’t even know they’re there.

Cheers, and GL!

Copain.1926:

Because if you already almost never go down and you only go down in “That time” when your group does something wrong and should be punished for it, and you don’t want even that to happen and instead just be able to still get a free win… we have a problem.

Individual accomplishment vs. Group accomplishment. My personal opinion is that as long as the individual is contributing to the success of the group, that is game play worthy of receiving reward in a cooperative multi-player game.

If one player dies at the beginning of a fight, and is ressed by the team before the fight ends, but another player dies near the end of the fight and the team is not able to res that player before the boss dies, is the first player more deserving of loot than the second?

The expectation that flawless performance is required needs to go away. It’s okay for players to die. You do your best to make sure it doesn’t happen, you do your best to res your teammates when downed so they don’t become defeated, and if the team succeeds, the team gets rewards.

Armor repair and being forced to sit out while your team gets to play the game is punishing enough.

Believe it or not, I play enough that the occasions where I’ve been disqualified for boss loot are memorable because they’re few and far between, and because in some instances (not getting loot because I was ressing a defeated player) the mechanic struck me as odd.

That being said, it makes me pretty kitten mad when I’m organizing groups for my guild that include people that play once or twice a week and they’re discouraged by mechanics that feel overly punishing. Watching some of them walk out of a dungeon with a 10s+ repair bill and a lack of boss loot is painful because they’re frequently disinclined to come back.

I can support a lack of res zerg. I really can. Parties shouldn’t become endless waves of people running back from waypoints. The punishing part should be when the entire party wipes. Then the group (and the encounter) reset, and the group has to come back and try again, hopefully with some lessons learned.

Raphael.2064:

The hard res really isn’t a big deal to me, it’s more the fact that ressing the dead takes too long. Shorten it in an attempt to meet the players half way. That alone would really make a lot of people happier. It’s too dangerous, laborious, and in the end, possibly counter productive to everything the player and the developers are trying to accomplish.

^ This ^

Hard res might not be the answer, but if A-net makes Change A: No use of waypoints during combat, then it should spark consideration of a Change B: Is the current res mechanic where it should be, post Change A.

My argument is that the current res mechanic is not where it needs to be for the current environment. Hard Res is a possible solution. Change to the existing defeated state is another possible solution.

Another solution I wouldn’t mind is to at least let the defeated player be loot eligible…. right now, half the motivation to get the player back on their feet is so they can get boss loot…. Paying armor repair + sitting with your face in the dirt + not getting boss loot if your party finishes the boss while you’re defeated = over harsh punishment for going all the way down. It frustrates the defeated player no end.

I know there’s a follow on to that that rewarding failure does not encourage people to L2P, but that’s why I’d like to see it easier to get them back on their feet so they can earn it.

Joey.3928:

Would a GW1 challenge mission be a good thing to add? Something that has a leaderboard and is all about who can have the best time/score?

This is something I’ve wanted for a while. Spent weeks in Glint’s Challenge to beat the quarterly best score…. was awesome to see the names of my team mates at the top of that list for 90 days solid. The fact that we got cloth of the brotherhood and destroyer cores along the way was bonus, but after ten runs, you didn’t care about the cloths and sold them….. we pushed hard, not because there was ‘sweet, sweet loot’ but because we were chasing an ever higher score.

Ursan.7846:

BTW this is a L2P issue. Not you, but your party members who obviously aren’t used to Alpha’s attacks (which are easy to dodge once you figure out its timing).

Just curious, what do you do to help your party with a L2P issue?

John Smith.4610:

marnick.4305:

John Smith.4610:

It is just a spread forced by us, but you can look at it as a fee too.

Is there a reason gem>gold is over an exchange instead of through buy and sell offers? I wonder what the formula behind this is, in GW1 the traders were known to have ridiculous prices because the formula made no sense.

Yes, many, many good reasons.
I don’t currently have the time to go into the reasons as it’s a vast discussion. I think it may have been discussed some time ago on these forums, I don’t particularly remember.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Who-sets-Gem-prices/first#post435944

I think that’s the post you may be referring to John

Ursan.7846:

I’m confused. You’re somehow saying that a “Res from Dead” will make things easier as opposed to “Res from Downed” skills we already have now?

I’m saying that a Res from Defeated would be useful in addition to Res from Downed.

As you say, it’s about Time. It takes significant time to revive someone from Defeated.

I’m sorry, but when dev’s make comments that they “like to create content that kills people…” I think that having an expectation that people never get killed is expecting a bit much.

Copain.1926:

Guardian is my main as well. Greatsword as well (with staff sometimes used). I’m not even building super bulky (though I do go for a bit) and I can use my skill five to get mobs to me, keep my group alive, and never die myself easily. I’ve yet to have a problem and I’m not even in the best gear—- more so for a tankish playstyle.

If you honestly think playing a Guardian and using a greatsword gives you an excuse to die, you’re dead wrong.

Not an excuse to die. Things are situational. Generally, I don’t go down on my guardian, even when lasoing a ton of trash…. sometimes, I’ve been slammed on enough by something else that NOW is not a good time to do it, but it needs to be done NOW before the event fails.

Not all the time, not every time, but that time.

Why is it that if you talk about something resulting in a death people think you die all the time?

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Awesome.6120:

I was being completely sarcastic Robert.

… although I have been giving thought to a system that also reflects our personal story reward structure, where you could potentially choose one of three things offered at random. Again, just thoughts, but I’m always trying to develop better ways to reward players in dungeons.

If I can suggest a reward mechanic from some GW1 dungeons… there were some GW1 chests that you had a 100% chance of 1-2 items (lockpick, diamond, hero armor) + a randomly determined rare drop.

I hate bringing up lodestones / cores, but I know a lot of people that run dungeons for the specific cores / lodestones that drop there and having those in an end of dungeon chest would be cool. Also, if a chest had a garunteed random rare item at the end of the dungeon, I think you would get a lot less ‘I get better loot off the trash than the boss’ feeling.

How often did we throw ourselves at Slaver’s Exile in GW1 for a Voltaic Spear? We knew the odds were insanely slim, and yet we did it over and over again because even if we didn’t get one, we were getting other things out of it.

I do, however, want to say that I really enjoy the tokens as a way to get garunteed loot out of the dungeon. Consider the suggestion above a way to make something that is already very good even better.

Ursan.7846:

Cassie, you’ve yet to really describe why exactly reviving “dead” players is better than reviving “downed” players. Pretty much most of the things you’ve said can be applied to the current skills we already have, and so leaves me utterly confused as to why you want a “res out of dead” on top of the “res out of downed” we already have.

You already have a safety net for failure in the downed state, and skills like warbanner. Why not use it?

Reviving a Defeated player is not better than reviving a Downed player. It is always preferable to catch them before defeated. It is not always possible.

Some boss mechanics (Kholer) can move a player very quickly from downed to defeated. Crystals that chain stun and bounce around a player (CoF p1 boss, some of the nightmare court in TA, Concentrated sniper fire in CM.)

I’m fine with having to revive in combat and killing the WP zerg…. I like the end of the 1 – 2 – 2 nonsense in CoF p2.

At the same time, I think the res mechanic in its current state can be very punishing. The delay of being able to dodge from reviving a player can leave an attempted resser downed right next to the person they were trying to help.

Part of a huge reason behind this is caused by a loot mechanic that Defeated players get no loot, regardless of contribution. I had a party work very hard to get a defeated player back on her feet last night before the boss died because no one wanted her to loose out on boss loot. 4 man or 3 manning the boss down would have been faster / more efficient, but no one wanted to decide to ignore a fallen ally and have her miss out…. but there she is, in the middle of 3 nightmare vines worth of red circles.

We have good tools. We could have better tools.

If you run in groups where players are never out of position, never caught flat footed, never unprepared for a boss mechanic they’ve never seen, never had 2/5 or 3/5 people in your party in the dirt around you and thought “there has to be a better way….” That’s where I’m coming from.

ZilentNight.5089:

Please move this to the suggestion part of the forum.

My thoughts, this is not needed and the professions who have a utility skill that res, should be instead also be allowed to also res dead players at a slow rate ofc.
Also they should increase the cooldown on those utility slots if it resses a dead player vs a downed.

Dead player res = double cooldown time.

Using a utility skill that provides a res to res a defeated player would be a welcome change, and exactly the sort of thing that I’m looking for in the current dungeon environment. I think Warbanner would be an amazing elite skill if you could revive multiple defeated allies. As is, it’s a nice elite skill, but I think it sits dead on my bar too often because I question ’is now the time that I need it….

I like the soft res utility skill on my guardian more because even though it’s single target, it’s not tieing up my elite skill.

My only reason for not putting this in the suggestion sub-forum is because I think the need / desire for a hard res is really most felt in response to the change in dungeon res…. open world PvE it’s less of an issue / need.

Crossplay.2067:

I’m not going to quote Cassie because he said quite a mouthful but he has a point. If we were able to instantly revive someone whom had been defeated, even on a 5-minute cooldown, dungeons would be easier. The way things are now just places too much risk on anyone willing to revive.

I also agree that Twilight Arbor sucks balls!

^ This ^

If having a hard res option isn’t about promoting teamwork, I don’t know what is.

For the L2P coments…. yes, people who go down and go down frequently have some experience to gain and some lessons to learn. This is without question.

The question is: When working with groups at the low end of the skill / experience curve, could something be done that would make the experience of learning less painful / frustrating?

This is not about having a ‘push buttton = win.’ Groups that function with players at the higher end of the experience / skill bell curve should have faster, flawless runs. A flawless run should not be the expectation at the opposite end of the curve.

My goal is to have a better means of getting people from one end of the curve to the other. I think a hard res is a good tool to be able to slot when needed. Obviously, a hard res takes up space on a skill bar, forces you to give up utility, and will result in a sub-optimal run. This was the case in GW1, and experienced, veteran teams cleared w/o access to a hard res frequently because they were exactly that: veteran teams that had learned the ropes well enough to not need a hard res anymore.

The question I would pose to those who see it as an L2P issue is this: When you have 2-3 players in your group that are going down frequently and struggling with the content, how do you address the issue? With 2 people in your group defeated, do you res them? Do you 3 man the boss and leave them to sit in the dirt? Do you reset the encounter, breaking out of combat so they can waypoint? (seriously asking here, L2P applies to me leading the dungeon every bit as much as the rest of the people in the group, and I’m always happy to learn from better leaders.)

Just finished a TA run tonight with several guildmates who had never done it. Working on the nightmare tree, and my wife is running a D/D ele. We’re working the nightmare tree at the end and BAM! Spike hits her at the wrong time, and she bleeds out fast…. most of the rest of the party is further back, working things at long range, but she’s been working a hit and run to drop the thing…. before we can get to her, she goes from downed to defeated.

Okay, np. Hunker down, get her ressed from defeated, and start falling back…. spike hits her again, and she’s parked in a spot that a few turrets have decided to spam on her. It’s not pretty, she’s having a rough night.

I’m running from my guardian, and the cool down on my ‘soft res’ is 4 minutes… not available again yet from the last time I popped it.

The warrior in the party has fallen back from trying to work melee range and getting stomped on to a mostly rifle position, but the first few minutes were rough. Our engineer is suffering a distinct lack of truly long range, but has hunkered in with some dedicated flame thrower time and yes, she slotted Elixer R.

3 of us are playing in the same room, the warrior is on vent with us.

The boss isn’t the first rough patch we’ve hit, and it’s been 90 minutes to clear Up / Up, skipping nothing the entire way. Things were rough on the vines at the beginning, had some bright moments, but the spider boss after the vines ripped us a number as well. That time around, we weren’t able to revive the engineer before the boss died, despite the fact that both my wife and I stopped working the boss to try to get her up…. one of those ‘boss likes you’ poison blasts did a number on her in the final minutes.

We’d been chatting about this concept going into the boss fights, we slotted soft res skills to help offset some of the problems. We worked our kitten off to get to people as they were downed, help people rally when able, and keep everyone on their feet.

Sometimes, you play well, and bad things happen. The boss crits, you’re skills are on cool down, you’re just a bit over extended, and things happen. I’ve run in groups where everyone is on top of their game, and no one goes down the whole run. I’ve run in groups where the boss drops an AoE and 3/5 of the party are downed in the same instant.

At the end of the run, my g/f looks at me and says ‘I love you, and I’m not letting you talk me into that again’, a guild mate that had been eyeing The Howler says ‘I never want to go down there again’ and the warrior in the group says ‘wow, that was rough.’

Reviving a downed player that’s in the middle of nightmare vine attacks of doom is rough. Getting through those attacks to revive a defeated player is rougher.

I like dungeons. I live in them as much as I can. I work my kitten off to teach mechanics to my guildmates who want to do dungeons, but dislike being the ‘new guy’ in a PUG. The level of frustration that I encounter really saddens me because these are my friends, family and co-workers.

So, maybe I’m looking for some training wheels I can slot to make things a bit easier on the rough end of the stick… or something less punishing than watching 2-3 of my friends sit back and do nothing because they’re defeated, and there isn’t a good way to get them back into action.

I dunno. Sometimes downed feels like just what you need to get back into action… sometimes it feels like the prolonged agony that proceeds defeated.

I’ve slotted warbanner when I felt like the party was in a rough spot and having people go down frequently (TA explorable in a group where we only had one other lvl 80, and no one had done it before.) I’ve slotted the guardian res signet, and I’ve done stealth res via Shadow Refuge.

Honestly, recovering a Downed player isn’t the problem. Recovering a Defeated player is. Depending on your class, you have different options in a Downed state. Some classes (thief, ele) can move while downed and get out of AoE zones that are dangerous and difficult to recover a player from. Other classes (guardian) have no movement while downed, and may move from downed to defeated because they dodge rolled into a trap and can’t get out of it.

Part of why we had ‘res zerging’ is because getting a defeated player back into combat can be exceptionally time consuming / risky. Res downed / defeated runs back.

And people need to understand, a request for a Hard Res is requesting something that is fundamentally team oriented. It’s choosing to look for a skill that allows you to better assist other players.

I think this may be a win for WvW. Get the bads (myself included) that were only there to check off their 50 kills out of WvW and leave it to the people who enjoy it.

Rotate in the kill requirement occasionally to encourage people to give it a try… or put in a ‘Complete X WvW events’ component….

I’m excited about this one… no WvW…. I finally won’t have to wade into PvP that I prefer not to do.

We all have preferences, no one is forcing you to do the monthly. I missed it all but one month because I don’t PvP….

You don’t want to do what’s on the menu this month? You don’t have to!

Freyr Sieverson.8193:

I like the idea of something like this. I tend to think that it should be a little more complicated than this though. I would still like a little bit of utility with my res. So like a hard res for each class that offers some sort of class specific utility. Anyways they have to do something and i’m confident that they will figure it out.

GW1 had several different ‘hard res’ mechanics…. Res Signet was universally available, but you also had Sunspear Rebirth Signet (revives target ally and teleports them to your location.) You could do fun things with different classes and their core mechanics to enable different forms of hard res… but the goal would be that every class had one.

Res signet anyone? Utility skill available to every class, insta-res a fallen ally, recharges when you kill a boss….

Teams that run without it gain the use of all utility slots, teams that decide to slot a hard res lose a little utility.

Just a thought to deal with how hard it is to res someone who’s defeated and standing under a dungeon boss.