Guild Wars 2

you could also do a hybrid condition/pet necro (0/30/20/20/0), for a touch of healing and some cc/dps on the side. Yes i know their AI is pretty garbage (golem especially), but it’s a permanently active (ground) elite that does decent damage and cripples. plague is nice mostly to get away, and lich form is a magnet for focus fire.
it does make me sad that plague form is our only water elite, but i despise water combat anyway and avoid it like the plague (hur hur pun i know)

Riot Inducer.8964:

Ascalonian light armor, there, enjoy your skinny jeans. That is unless you’re female, in which case, quit complaining, you’re lucky to get pants of any variety in the first place! :-P

what?? What if I AM a female, looking for pants?

mesmer has access to multiple invul as well (sword and f4 shatter), multiple invis, good condition and boon control and either high survivability or high damage.

They’re great at 1v1 and even better (imo) in groups.

So to me, this does sound a little too strong.

I can say for a fact I have a much easier time playing my mes (and I really am quite new and pretty terrible on her) than my 80 necro (which I have many, many more games played with varying levels of success)

plague form really? that’s bizarre, you’d think ‘stability’ would prevent ALL cc… i call BS

well it’s a 3min cd, but yes it’s OP as hell.

Any confirmation on whether this is also the case for ranger pets, thieves guild and guardian spirit weapons?

Idk if there are more ‘pve-oriented’ servers, but I’ve been on 3 total (Darkhaven for a while when I was low level, then Jade Quarry, now Sanctum of Rall).

I recall Darkhaven having a lot of instance groups, but it was pre-rewards nerf for story mode, so that is probably no longer the case. JQ had a modest amount of EM groups spamming through the day (but they do a lot more WvW than pve iirc), and SoR is also modest, but you can usually find an EM group for almost any dungeon during peak time (might take a while for the crappy/long ones like arah though).

I’m almost always up for any instance run (still have to finish SE SM cuz of the bugs, also CoE and arah) during my usual play hours (8pm+ EST weeknights and most of the weekends). Feel free to pst me whenever.

GankSinatra.2653:

Oh and pray that you dont end up with 4 mesmers instead.

shudder

every time i hear that chaos storm noise i cringe IRL

maps do get repetitive, but I assume there will be more in later updates/patches/xpacs.
you can also vary your strats so its not like every specific map is always the same

AC and TA EM are your best bet, from what I understand (most paths are <2hrs)
one of TA paths is bugged currently (Forward/UP or whichever has the mesmer chick end boss, she crashes your game).

i think your solution is to play tpvp, not spvp.

I’m against having any overall numerical advantage via gear. The presets exist for a reason.
Unlocking new stat combinations with rank… I guess I’m not against the idea.
And I assume rings and such will be added eventually.

if you want to stroke your kitten with better gear, play wvw, or wow-clones.

condition eles when I’m on my necro

how about: don’t change much, but let story modes drop companion pets (chance to something like 5%).

bam, lots of people running them.

3 necros mes and guardian.
boss crashes at a random point during the encounter, both adds down. can’t remember what she was doing at the time.

so fear is the issue? good to know

it’s annoying but the truth is, 80s in exotic gear DO have an easier time in EM.

they were still jerks about it for not saying anything, but yea.

The traps in EM AC are OP ^^ I’ve probably died to them more than the fights on my first playthrough of that place; until you memorize their locations you always risk dying (and not getting rezzed unless thief or mes).

this is especially true for story modes where you don’t even get tokens. There is 0 reason to run them except as ‘attunement’ for EM.

They should also have the chests drop an occasional bag of crafting mats imo.

also, i’m really quite tired of the mob ‘loot bags’ dropping only coin… 4c to be exact.
I mean… really, 4c from a lvl 70+ mob? Are you mocking me?

I don’t agree with making them soloable (that’s what personal story is for), nor them giving tokens.

What they SHOULD do is increase chances for decent loot (or coin) rewards and reduce the time they take to complete (trash HP, mainly), and introduce an LFG tool.
The way it is now, I can level faster, get more cash, and probably find better loot while questing, and while some instances (and running stuff with friends) is fun, I cannot see myself repeating things like CM or SE SM. Ever.

5g says you will be posting the same kitten in a MoP thread in a month or 2.

my suggestion would be to try Tera, I heard that game is grindy as hell.

SE SM with the dredge at the kudu door spawning indefinitely (not to mention the Kudu fight itself is overtuned, but thats another story)

Patching anytime in the 2hrs of the patch instead of when it’s announced: your party broken, congrats you can’t zone into the same instance as your group, gg no re

TA EM up fwd path: leurent crashes the game (for the whole party) mid fight, resetting the encounter.

This is extremely irritating, spending an hour of your time figuring an instance out only to find you just got kitten blocked by some code error and won’t get kitten for your efforts (hats off to the recent badges-at-the-end patch). Cool stuff

I hope that to mean they actually look better than that, because that staff…. egads

ironically, trident and spear are the only ones i find semi-decent and i HATE water combat -.- (why would you make a water-only legendary anyway?)

they may not realize this is happening. They just get their loot and leave the party. It should just not autodisband upon leader leaving, that’s dumb.

if it can be done outside dungeons, why not in them?

they could’ve added jumping puzzles, or some other tricks like environmental tools to deal with some bosses (pillows and air guns in CM EM was a good idea, too bad the rest of the instance sucks), instead of ‘go here and kill X’. Protect npc events are OK I suppose, but there isn’t anything requiring strategy for them.
I want actual puzzles in my dungeons.
I forget if it was Skyrim or KoA where there was a mini instance where you had to light the torches in a very specific order to get them to all light up at once and open a door. Something like this would be neat. Hell, even something akin to the pirate jumping puzzle/quest in LA (not going to spoil it for anyone) would be really cool.

necro can do pretty decent damage (condition) if you’re not competing for bleed stacks with 3 other people.
ele also has some pretty good support in dungeons (more for the buffing of group and combo fields rather than in terms of cc or mob debuffs)

it really depends on your playstyle. I’d argue mesmer is best for spvp, however. All 3 are good for wvw

fully agree
/15

oh, so story mode?

i would advise your ‘brick’ friend that she may feel a lot… softer than a tank in any other game. While being very defensive does help, there are certain mobs/bosses (first ‘mini boss’, the champion chick eir is tanking, troll event and some others (melee trash, esp. fighters) that just hit too hard to sit there and eat it all. Lining up blocks and using stuns may be effective, I’ve seen some warriors do this fairly well.

Blind is one of the most effective cc’s you can bring, use it as much as possible (especially on non-kiteable ranged mobs, like rangers, eles). Rangers knockbacks do a lot of damage, anti-projectile abilities (or blinds) help a lot. Eles just do nasty aoes that should be avoided, and necros spam crap tons of conditions and fear (condition removal fields are nice here).
so i’d say the trash order would be: ranger > ele > necro > mes > monk > fighter if you can keep the fighter perma snared or otherwise shut down/kited.

for the lovers, use boulders to keep them perma knocked down and keep them apart. having a lot of blinds, blocks and regen/protection is nice here due to lots of splash damage between the two of them.

ranger guy: really easy, just make sure to cc/kill his wolf adds asap.

necro chick: condition removal and stability, as well as some coordinated healing make this fight a breeze.

last guy: can be tricky if you haven’t seen it. his ranged throw does a lot of dmg to clothies and knocks down; best bet is trying to stay behind him, or dodging when he gets the tell (red circle around HIM). He also summons ground aoe (red circle on the ground, can be hard to see if other people using aoe) that does A LOT of damage, get out of this asap. otherwise he’s fairly easy.

story or explore mode??

I assume explore, since story is fairly easy and puggable.

the initial traps in EM are DEADLY. As in, they will down you in 1 pulse, and finish you in another shortly (the wall ones). Avoid them like the plague.

Kite Kohler away from adds so you dont have to juggle them and his wire both at the same time. Or pray that the troll spawns and aggroes him, then it’s easy mode.

Spider: easy, dodge the poison stuff.

Gravelings: scavengers (i think) do a channeled knockdown/focus fire. They WILL kill a teammate if not cc’d or stability used asap. Otherwise, breeders make more so kill them first.

Most of the rest of the stuff is fairly straight forward like people have said. The ‘protect npc while X happens’ can be annoying, but it’s fairly easy to rez and run back even if you do die.

The graveling boss that spawns oozes is really really easy, just dodge his un-burrowing and you’re set. oozes can be pretty much ignored.

Crunchy Gremlin.5798:

If you want to get good at dungeons then try fighting tougher overland content first.
its hard as the scaling system is against you.
But dont fight your own level.
you’re 45 then fight content that is at about 50.
in a group fight stuff that is much higher.
5-10 levels higher.

IMHO that is what is wrong with the dungeons.
The overland content is so easy that people learn terrible fighting and grouping habits.
Spend 30 levels breezing through content thinking they are good and then get their kitten cut off.

you get ‘glancing’ at 7+ lvls higher. So about 5-7 is right. Also group would be better as you can’t learn anything about synergy by yourself.

this would allll be 1000x easier if there was an actual LFG channel that was server-wide (instead of /map spam).

but this is an excellent work around!! There should be such a guild on every server at least until they implement better LFG
Sanctum of Rall LFG anyone??

Kakihara.9273:

Kohler doesnt actually need stuff like that because the animation is really easy to notice. on subject alpha i struggled really hard. i dont want bossmods like in wow. but i want to be able to notice if the boss is doing is oneshot ability and be able to react to it. i dont care if its voice text or an animation thats easy it so see.

it’s easy to notice if he’s not standing in 3 layers of AoE and a norn/char warrior orgy.
It also gets a bit harder the farther you are from him due to poor camera fov. I’m sure it would be better if I was meleeing him, but as a clothie, I don’t feel particularly inclined to do so.

They could also just make his character model larger, so the effect is visible regardless of where I am.

I wouldn’t mind some subtle audio cues for some fights (Kohler being a prime example) because of the clusterkitten of spell effects and body clutter that’s usually on him. Just a whirring noise or something else to cue me off taht I’m about to get wtfpwnt. And any other really small humanoid boss with similar properties.

As for actual ‘raid warnings’ on screen… no.

Rosen Myst.7641:

There are a couple of threads with dungeon tips and advice. I’d like to see ANET create an official sticky thread combining all these posts. Thanks for the great ideas; it really does help. I know it’s helped me for sure.

pretty much this.

GW2 dungeons are a whole another beast from WoW. The only way to really learn is practice.

Cosmo.8176:

My problem with Dungeons is that they are not skillbased enough. Make us actually use the knockback skills against some hard-hitting fast monsters, make us actually need to chill a boss to slow down its vital skill enough for someone to interrupt it, in short, make me think more of just when to dodge.

Dodging is fine and it’s a nice skillcheck, but really, aside from that i’ve rarely seen something that actually demanded us to make better use of our weaponskills, let alone our utility/elite.

I agree and disagree at the same time.
I agree that this is the case in about 75% of the boss fights with “Dodge X Move” mechanics, it makes them boring, and devalues skilled play.

I disagree in that many fights (trash mobs especially) are made substantially easier if people know how to use their utilities and synergize with their team (combo fields, cc, shouts, group buffs). I can 100% tell which members of a group are ‘solo heroes’ and which are actually trying to play as a team, and it does make quite a difference when the majority is of the latter type.

hmmm I think juggling earth attune and vapor form you shouldn’t be getting downed that often. Your team needs to get you up in the odd time you do.

Also, run a staff build and stay far away from harm in the first place. daggers is a death sentence in dungeons (unless maybe S/D, but I prefer staff personally)

ThiBash.5634:

Are they fun? No. Are there too many instant-kill mechanics? Yes. Are the waypoints too far away when you’re an Elementalist.

Yes.

wat… ele has one of the highest uptimes on swiftness of any prof :S

I do agree that not enough encounters are actually ‘fun’, difficulty aside. The last CoF boss was a refreshing change from the prototype “dodge X move” mechanics.

I agree it doesn’t have to be a 1 person job. Some professions just have exceptionally good support skills vs. others. That’s all I’m saying.

Zietlogik.6208:

Disconnected.9253:

Did CoF SM for the first time the other day.

Overall fun place, and I gotta say, props to whoever designed the last boss. Man that was one of the better fights of any SM or EM I’ve done in some time.

Iirc, that was the one with the lava boulders and the transformations? Yes, this is definitely an example of a fun boss encounter, that still was challenging, this is the type of thing I want to see more of in the future.

yea, I died once (didn’t know wtf I was doing at all, got punted off the ledge…), but after figuring out the whole throwing the fire core thingies part, I was having quite a blast (pun intended). 10/10

An example of a very poorly designed boss that could have been made 10x better:
The nightmare tree in TA exp UP path (last boss). The aoes are a oneshot, the turret seed thingies have too much hp, and THE BLOODY THING DOESN’T TRIGGER MY STAFF MARKS!! WTF?? So the solution as it were (certainly not intended) is to stand there at max range (1200) and spam your auto attack, which for me happens to hit for diddly squat. Also ignore his aoe since it doesn’t hit you at this range.
Worst fight ever. 0/10

An example of an overly easy fight: First guy in AC SM. Such an obvious, easily dodgeable attack (yet I still see people go down all the time… sigh) and absolutely nothing else. Also the cat guy in TA. I actually like the idea, but the rest of the fight is just too easy; he hits like a pillow and dogs don’t do much other than attack you in cat form. Make them buff him or something so you can’t be near as long as a dog is up… or something.

An example of an unnecessarily hard, annoying (not fun) boss: Kohler in AC EM. could really use a more obvioius telegraph or audio cue due to all the spell effect clusterkitten or giant Norn warriors blocking my FoV… Otherwise if my stun break is on cd, I’m kittened. He does absolutely nothing interesting otherwise, is not challenging except for this one, poorly designed (imo) ability.

no they kill you regardless of what you’re doing. The only salvation is LoS (if available).

Did CoF SM for the first time the other day.

Overall fun place, and I gotta say, props to whoever designed the last boss. Man that was one of the better fights of any SM or EM I’ve done in some time.

I love challenges but sometimes it feels like certain fights (in the same instance) are too easy while others are overtuned and too long.

Even in story mode: CM trash is 10x harder than any of the bosses. Like way, way over the top and annoying death zergs. I get that it was too easy before, no need to make it undoable for fresh 40s as punishment to those who farmed it at release.
TA: spider guy and last fight might be a little over tuned for story mode, while the spider boss and the 1st/3rd champions are a complete faceroll.
SE: mostly fine except… Kudu fight is too long and too many opportunities for a wipe; golems could do with quite a bit less hp. It also bugs the most of any place I’ve been to and haven’t even finished yet.
CoF is actually quite consistent (decently challenging without being TOO over the top… except maybe the whirling sword boss, that fight is annoying as hell for a clothie to get randomly chain ganged by swords and his whirl thing) and a pleasantly interesting/unique end boss fight to boot.
HoTW… perfect example of inconsistency. Some bosses (second last one) total pushovers, while others (the frost aoe/missile spamming one and the last bird guy) are corpse races unless you have a pro group.

I don’t think story modes in general are all that hard, just inconsistent in many parts, and should be made ‘accessible’ to the general public in their entirety, without needing a choreographed guild group to finish. That is for EM.

For any explore mode, my only complaint is death by RNG. It’s fine to have a perfectly telegraphed one shot move … on a boss. Trash (especially packs of multiple trash mobs) should never EACH be able to oneshot you, or chain cc you into death. Completely random oneshots of untelegraphed moves (and ranged abilities that are spammable), also not fun or challenging, just really frustrating (and expensive).

And yet any time I run a group with no ‘support’ roles (primarily dps warriors, rangers, thieve), people will go down a lot more frequently than if I see at least one person doing a bit of healing and buffing (often myself, when I run on my ele).
Rotating aoe condition removals/fields for fights with constant condition spam is much better than relying on your own (often 20+sc d) condition removals, especially for things that also kitten your dps (chilled/weakness).

Providing support does not prevent you from doing dps, you may sacrifice some of it sure, but having dead party members is a significantly greater dps loss and higher risk of failure for the encounter. No one is advocating running a 5-support team, just 1-2 is usually fine, especially if one of them is an ele and people understand combo fields.

Cabbage.4085:

Maybe it’s just you.

When I ran Story Mode when I first got the mail, I was doing reasonably okay. Nobody in our team was above 55.

If you’re talking about CM at release, yes it was faceroll easy.

It has since been tuned up significantly, and can be quite painful with fresh 40s PuGs

good points but several things:

you don’t always need a ‘tank’. It’s nice to have someone distract the mob (especially a ranged mob that kiting does nothing for) but illusions, pets, elementals and so on can be used to do this as well.

Ele’s are hardly tanks, in any attunement. Their pets can be, but even a full toughness spec ele (which is a silly tree to put 30pts in, tbh) won’t “tank” anything for very long. A water ele with high arcana is much, much more useful due to healing/condition removal.

water and ice are different combo fields. Water fields tend to give healing/regen finishers and ice gives chilled/frozen armor finishers. Blast finishers tend to be the most useful, so any time you see an obvious opportunity (field) up, abuse your blasts. Otherwise, knowing when (and where) to toss up a field is handy, for example necro dark fields in an aoe scenario (give aoe blindness on blast and leeching projectiles), or the lightning field from ele and leap finisher on a boss or heavy hitting mob for a daze, or smoke bomb where melee can blast it for an aoe stealth, and so on.

CC is crucial. Blindness, cripple, chilled and weakness are some of the best ‘soft’ cc (most mobs won’t be immune to these*), and obviously daze/knockdowns are good hard cc, usually on long cooldowns, but to which most elites are immune. Like the OP said, still useful as an interrupt sometimes. Use cc as an opportunity to put in some dps, or pick up a downed teammate (any time a mob tunnel visions someone and downs them, like the graveling kitten in AC, I go plague form and chain blind them while someone picks that person up).

Condition removal: VERY important for many dungeons. Burning, bleeding, poison, chilled can all screw you if not taken care of promptly. Knowing your own as well as other classes condition removal skills is important. For instance: necro marks and wells have various uses: if you see it being cast on the mobs, it’s probably a debuff, but if you see it being cast closer to the group, chances are you should probably stand in it and good things will happen. Also most guaridan combo fields are light, which has a condition removal finisher (projectile and whirl). They also have a ground aoe condition removal that looks like a circle of blue fire: stand in it (also fire field combos). Engis and eles can remove conditions around them, so standing close to them is usually a good idea. (I’m sure there are others, I’m only giving examples).

Avoidance: dodge is only one way to get out of crap. Blocks (guardian and warrior), any invul abilities (ele vapor form, mes sword abilities and shatters that give invul), stealth, or even ‘soaking’ tactics like necro death shroud or mesmer soaking phantasm are all viable ways to avoid incoming dmg. Don’t rely on dodge alone.

*dredge are immune to blind<

+1 to the OP. everyone new to exp mode (or dungeons in general) should read. actually I request sticky!!!

having 80s in your group helps quite a bit (despite the scaling, their stats are still quite a bit higher).

Nonetheless, well done. Most people find the lovers (duo boss) quite challenging their first time, was surprised to hear it was the necro chick for you guys. Any condition removal and group stability makes this fight pretty easy (light fields or well of power, guardian shouts).

the problem is DS is only marginally useful to non-power (condition or MM) necros.

The autoattack damage is quite low, fear is very short /situational, spectral grasp is ? for a non-dagger spec and life transfer does nothing for 1v1 (granted it’s quite nice for groups if traited, or for aoe tagging mobs… which could also be a bad thing).

For a pet necro, other than traited life transfer, it’s ENTIRELY useless. You can’t even control your pets in it (and the golem actually stops moving completely), which is just silly.

I agree with the OP. DS needs to be more useful to non-DS oriented builds, and a LOT more useful for DS-oriented builds, than just 4 buttons of which only 1 is really good.

I assume the knocback you’re talking about is the golem charge (that’s the only knockdown pet necros have that I can think of).

the golem is very bad at negotiating broken/rough terrain, use that to your advantage. If you keep him at a distance, you can usually see the charge coming long enough ahead to dodge it (it’s on a 1min cd). It also goes into full passive mode when the necro is in DS.

Also don’t let the bone minions explode on you, and condition removal is your best friend if he’s scepter/dagger or staff.

Let’s all agree on one thing: DS in water combat makes us cry

it was an almost guaranteed knock-downed in the beta. Well it was, if you were thief.

None of the other ones were (maybe human cuz of the adds).

Currently, they’re all more or less a joke.

permanent condition removal ftw!