Guild Wars 2

Glad to have you guy’s input on this. I agree that it should be implemented universally in dungeons.

Also, using CoE as an example, putting a little silver as reward for the first 2 Alpha fights, and then say 15s for finally offing him, would be a great way to motivate people to struggle through it their first time (And help me finish my CoE gear xD)

I reallllly hope I’m not shooting myself in the foot here, but devs are you guys aware that in Detha’s path of AC right after the trap event on the way to the cannon room there are two gold mobs that drop 5s a piece 100% of the time? And that the boss drops 15s 100% of the time? With the Omnomberry buff that’s 7+7+21+26 (end reward) = 61s for this run, not including vendorable greens for 1-2s a piece.

Yet, you don’t see the same pattern in any other dungeons? Personally I think the champ gold drops are fair and balanced, it encourages not skipping them, but I’d like to see this implemented in all the other paths of all the other dungeons which would be nice for 2 reasons:

1. To offset repair costs, even if you run things poorly.
2. To add that extra reward for no-wipe runs.

So devs, would you consider either buffing this across all dungeons or nerfing this specific one. Obviously I strongly urge you to consider the former, but it’d be nice to have a bit of resolution on this issue.

If you really want EZ mode on burrows, bring an ele and ask them to use the ice bow. #4 ability has a 20 sec CD and does about 2/3rds or more damage to the burrows as well as royally demolishing the adds that spawn. Since casting ice bow also puts another on the ground you can trade off the #4 ability every 10 seconds on burrows while the other 2 finish killing it.

Oh man, dont do these in order haha, I dont think I can wait that long for CoE front door path haha.

Hodgins path is the fastest for my guild, followed by Tsark (if the boss goes smoothly) and then Detha (because the turrets take forever).

It’s all about knowing the encounters bud. There are some good resources to figuring out how and in what order to down the burrows.

Regardless of what people say to discourage you (“There’s no strategy” “It’s just graveyard zerging” etc) they’re wrong. It is a team effort through and through. No one on your team should be specced for pure damage. Everyone should have ways of dealing with aggro: cripples, chills, immobilize, warding, stun breaks, properly timed dodges, etc. Everyone should have ways to mitigate damage, and everyone should be communicating, even if its as simple as calling targets on high priority enemies.

The key to succeeding in dungeons is knowledge. The first time my group faced a lone knightmare court knight we got stomped. This one trash mob murdered 4 people in a blink of an eye. But we came back, swapped some skills and traits, used our CC and conditions and slaughtered him. Dungeons at the beginning are rough, but once you learn them they become simple.

Know your teams capabilities. For instance, in one dungeon we had a mob who built up might up to 25 stacks throughout the fight. He’d 1 shot anyone when fully buffed. I just asked our necro to focus on constantly removing his boons, them bam, simple fight.

List of counters:
Immobilize
Chill
Cripple
Fear
Daze
Knockback
Push
Pull
Stability
Dodge
Stun Breaker
Long Range

Sounds like youre trying to avoid the AoE by getting out of it. NO! Stop doing that. Dodge when it hit, roll comfortably over ice and rock spikes. As long as you are rolling and you time it right, you can dance over his AoE without sweat.

First thing, you learned the encounter, you may not have it mastered, but you learned it. That alone makes you far more valuable than any specific profession on this run.

Second, in order to do this dungeon with ease and finesse you NEED group members who know what they’re doing and can communicate. Alpha’s earth attacks are brutal, but if your team can pop AoE heals while keeping the damage up on the boss all his attacks can be completely mitigated.

Crystals, as an ele you get a free ride on this one. Crystals pose much less of a problem if you have 4 on top of Alpha. If one get crystals that leaves 3 in immediate range to bust him out. Your frost bow #4 has a short cast time and can nearly drop a crystal in 1 cast. Lightning flash is a quick trip back into the fight.

When you see greenish-yellow globs fly from his body, wait a second then have your team lay down heavy AoEs. That’s when he is summoning his essences. They travel at kitten near Mach speed to reach alpha, but AoE slows and cripples work wonders. Each one you kill keeps Alpha stunned for a bit, so lay on the murder.

Edit: Also if one person marks and damages a tendril near Alpha, if a member goes down all they have to do is hit ‘t’ and attack. Mostly I die when I can’t find a tendril to rally off of, so this saves valuable time.

Double Edit: My b, I thought you were the Ele. Advise your ele about what I said, and tell him to run scepter-dagger and trait for endurance. The Fire #3 on scepter gives 5s of Vigor when the Phoenix returns. I never run out of endurance unless things get super hectic and I mess up.

Beware of front door. I refuse to do it until I have a really good group.

Yeah, we stacked 4 people in the face of the boss so if anyone went down we could res them before the next attack hits.

Another tactic which would be interesting but a havent tried, is to mark a tendril as a target, have the ranged player get it down to low hp so if anyone gets downed all they have to do is press ‘t’ and attack to rally.

I did NOT know you could do multiple activations at once.

Wow so: get 2 done, murder 6 golems, have one person kite, 1 guardian defending and do 3 at once.

Oh God, not this again. You realize the topic isn’t any different, there is no justification to be had here. Personally I wouldn’t mind seeing ANet fix the stacking issues or make them a currency, or let us redeem them for karma, but making a universal token would make my CoE armor trivial. No thanks.

So I did my 5th run of teleporter, went fairly smooth even though we had 2 randoms and one guildie who I’d never run with.

Also, did my second ever run of Submarine. Subject Alpha was glorious, we had a diverse team, didn’t have to worry about floor covering AoE, and got him stun locked with his essences at the end.

But to make that “farmable” I need to better figure out how to do the ‘Bypass the Security Lock’ event inside the Control Nexus. It’s the 5 stage lock that proceeds to summon harder and harder mobs. The mobs have heat vision and one little wisp of strong breeze is enough to make my ele get off topic like an ADD kid at a rave party.

So I’mma layout what sorta worked and what flatout sucked for us. Add your own stuff.

Don’t:
-Go 100% kiting strategy, you’ll eventually lose aggro and 1 mob is enough to shut it all down.
-Try to stealth your hacker, it wont help, the golems will still charge in and AoE the place. (However I think you won’t be target by single target attacks, so paired with a guardian that might be useful.
-Try to kill the mobs, AFAIK they respawn indefinitely.

Do:
-Have the hacker have an escort, someone with strong CC and strong AoE is ideal. Guardians make great escorts, especially with their ability to provide stability and aegis.
-Kite as many mobs as you can away from the console. If you can pull them all back to the corner, then chain CC, cripple, chill, and immobilize you’ll take huge pressure off the hacking team.
-Abuse CC; nothing in this event has defiant and people often just forget about it. Necro’s fears are beautiful for this.

Anything to add, tips, strategies, post it here.

Problem is allll those little weapon abilities and utility skills you never gave more than a passing glance, many of those become useful in dungeons. Your team simply doesn’t know how yet, but dont stress it comes with time. Hell youll be doing explorables soon enough but you gotta take a step back and progress slow (hint hint: Target ghostly rangers first, dont open too many coffins at the start, use BOULDERS)

Odd, I thought it was ~500k with clovers and you needed only 100 shards for the gift and however many more for the clovers.

I recognize that laugh at the end, its the laugh of triumph.

"I"" am on DR :P

Jesus, we’re getting smoked…

Lets see, ~4-7 “events” per dungeon path, award level appropriate karma for each one (300+ at 80) = 1200-2100 Karma for a run.

CoE tele runs take me about an hour and 20 minutes (less if we dont mess around at the lasers for the lulz) Alpha 1, Advanced Golem, Alpha 2, husk, and Alpha 3 makes for 5 events, 6 if you include the lasers. 1500-1800 karma seems fair for around 80 minutes of a dungeon. It’ll by no means shoot you up to the 250k or w/e for a legendary, but its a nice supplement for those who enjoy dungeons.

I support.

Kryadan.2465:

I haven’t run a dungeon yet. How do you get L80 gear on any dungeon? The Loot is scaled to your level in all of them? Like AC (level 30 or 40 from what I recall) can still drop 80 gear if your real level is 80?

Yes, I get 75-80 gear every time I run AC.

“The dungeons are also too long. Look at WoW for example. The dungeons are short and not too hard. Please Anet, make the dungeons easier and shorter. And make more dungeons as well. I love doing dungeons, but not when they are too hard and too long.”

No, don’t look at WoW, don’t make dungeons stupidly easy. Fix the bugs, fix the overtuned enemies, maybe lower trash health. Make the ‘afk’ bosses harder with diverse mechanics.

If its too hard then get better. I log on each day to run dungeons, some of them are too easy already, but if ANet nerfs CoE (exception: evolved destroyer) or Arah or any of the difficult ones, I’m out. The challenge is fun. Every new boss is like a puzzle. So if you cant figure out the mechanics you aren’t trying hard enough, you aren’t communicating, or your or your team is just inept.

It’s just nice have have someone in the face of the mobs, squishies go down pretty fast.

Good stuff BlackToof. You left out his earth cone attack though. Only thing I have to add is that if you’re meleeing him (as an ele I stack right on top of the boss) the aoe will always be overlapping so dodge everything but dragons tooth. It takes timing and good endurace control, but I’ve managed to go the entire fight right next to him without being downed. If you have 4 stacking right on him and one ranged, whenever someone goes down all 4 can rez him before the next attack lands. Plus if someone gets crystalized you’re likely to free them before they take much damage.

Idk guys. People talk about getting bored with dungeons, but that hasn’t happened to me and I’ve prolly run AC over 50 times. Im contantly impressed with every fast clear or boss kill, every run with no wipes, and eventually a run with no downs.

Done CoE 4 times, all paths except front door, and I think it only gets more fun as we learn how to more efficiently murder that rat b*stard subject alpha.

Our group had no problem stacking conditions on him, his healing was pathetic, especially if we kept poison up. The most important thing in this fight is defense and uptime. Being able to safely get your teammates up is invaluable as are condition cleanses.

I know if you try CoE explorable in a first time group without coordination you’ll find yourself in a world of hurt. Doing Hodgins path in AC but don’t know the order, it’ll be much much tougher.

There may be no dedicated roles, but each person should have 3 or 4 “roles” he can swap into on the fly. These roles aren’t the generic trinity roles either, but encompass a much broader spectrum.

Using subject alpha as an example, a well timed interrupt can give you time to rez a downed player as well as stop him from consuming his essences, a ranged instant rez can bring party members up from the downed state, everyone going in with abilities that grant vigor can keep your party up close and personal for much much longer.

Ranged rez’s, interrupts, and res while invulnerable.

Coordinate guys!

First off, breeders should never take priority over scavengers. The one exception is if its a gold scavenger, too much hp to whittle down. Second, you need to adapt to the encounters, that means bring a stun breaker. Every class has at least one. Yes your team can interrupt him, but it should lie on your to be prepared for his stun. Third, he channels the attack, when you see him glow dodge roll.

You give way too much emphasis on breeders, they’re pathetic. Only in tsarks graveling event should breeders even be an issue. When dealing with packs of gravelings we stay in close, keep them all together, pop our aoe cc’s and right after pop our hard hitting AoEs. You should be able to burn these guys down with no problem. After the first round of skills usually one scavenger will be dead and another close to dead. Finish off the last one, then the breeder will be between 0-25% hp and all his adds are instagibbed because of the AoEs. Howlers are last because they’re weak, stupid, and nobody loves them.

Yup yup, would fight again if I got tokens for it haha. hE’s a lot of fun, but also a very painful and frustraing beast if your team isnt specced right. Everyone should have a cleanse, a ranged rez if possible, and if someone in your group has team reflection or wall of reflection you can pop that just before ressing a downed ally to do so safely.

Cogbyrn.7283:

I may jump on the case of those who Chicken Little all over the forums, but the game isn’t exactly “fine”. It needs a lot of bug work, more sPvP features, and then a strong analysis on the meta once more consistent competitive matches evolve it beyond where it is currently (whether that’s a much more refined version of the current strat, or if counter-strats develop etc.).

Game isn’t fine, and the sky isn’t falling. People need to keep pressure on the important issues while still just remembering to breathe.

Very well said. The game has a solid core. With further development it can be a shining star…..or blow up like a supernova…

Not to mention elementalists would be even more UP. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen some good ones, but they are good because they can pop 6-10 skills in just a couple seconds, not because they have a “spam me, i win button” ala heartseeker. A limited pool of skills resource would mean eles get 4 abilities off, do 15% of an enemies hp and cry in a corner while waiting for a quick death.

You aren’t the only one suffering with this encounter man. I’m usually gung ho, no nerfs type of person, but from what I’ve read it does seem this encounter is a bit buggy and overtuned. Def not an issue of being ‘casual’.

Oh and apparently another thing that helps is to turn off auto targeting. Best of luck.

Yes, only everyone. Yeah it’s a bug. Yeah, they’re gonna fix it. Until then try that nice little search feature and learn that you’ll hit them if you keep moving.

Shiren…you obviously haven’t the slightest clue what you’re talking about. Fast respawning skills? Like what? Why dont you roll and ele and try to solo a burrow when your meteor shower or frost bow is on CD. Christ….

gwzog.6418:

Don’t take the term “locked out” literally. He means that
it takes a lot longer than 45 minutes for an average group.
Long enough that many may pass on it.

Could it be that the average player has not found as
many balls as you think you have? :-)

I understood perfectly what he meant. Still no one is locked out, his entire argument is based on the fallacy that dungeons take people 4 hours to do. Bullrabbit. It’s one thing to not do dungeons because you, yourself, are incompetent, and are unwilling to find a group and learn the encounters, its another to make up blatant rabbiting lies about the average run times of the average person. No one is locked out because everyone is capable of learning how to play, those who are unwilling deserve no pandering to by the devs.

Roctod.7290:

afflaq.3947:

average pug isn’t the intended demographic or the metric that 45 minute mark is designed for. Organized groups can do pretty much any of them well within that 45 minute mark, if not under.

Hate to break it to you, but the “average” player doesn’t want to spend four hours in a dungeon. And locking a huge majority of players out of content is something that just about every other MMO has figured out is a Bad Thing as it ultimately drives a huge portion of the playerbase out of the game.

No one is locked out of anything. Either you have a group who can run it or you find some balls, get a group and learn the stuff. Furthermore, I have NEVER once spent 4 hours on a dungeon, even CoE explorable with no prior knowledge going into it. I consider 2 hours the epitome of inefficiency and if I hit that mark its not because the dungeons are bad, its that myself and my team dont have enough experience to successfully run the well, YET.

MagnusLL.8473:

You do not have to learn your part, there is only one part and at best it differs from boss mechanic to boss mechanic (of which there are too few). For example, take Lieutenant Kholer, this is a ranged encounter. You have to pick your ranged weapon, learn how to dodge him if he attacks you, learn how to dodge his AoE pull (group encompassing attack) and that is it. Spam damage, dodge until he looses interest, watch out for his animation. IF your cooldowns were instantaneously, you could play the encouter on your own, but they are now, this is why you need other players. So you can pass aggro and trigger your defensive skills in a giant merry-go.round. Next enemy, same thing, new pattern, if there is a new pattern.

A properly traited guardian can deny 4/5 of Kholer’s pulls using group-wide Aegis and Stability.

This is just one example. There are many specific class effects which are OP in the right fight and can essentially deny 50-75% of the boss mechanics. Not everywhere, I’ll give you that.

Yup, a properly traited ele or mesmer can do the same with feedback. Ele’s are basically easy mode on burrows because of the Conjure Frost Bow ability, but new players dont really know any of that.

IMO, the best thing you can do for dungeons is read up a little bit on some boss mechanics and events then grind it out. It WILL get progressively easier as you learn the dungeons.

I like this boss too, I dont like his ocean of hp, but his mechanics are fun and unforgiving. As the OP said the biggest threat is group inexperience, and that something my guild is working on getting better at. My only 2 issues with his mechanics are that 1) He seems to exclusively aggro me, an ele, with his earth cone and the telegraph (if there is one) is too short making them very hard to dodge, and 2 you dont know that he’s spawning essences until those little black kittens are traveling across the floor at mach speed.

Id imagine that with good coordination, good knowledge, and getting the stun everytime he spawns essences he could be burned down in a matter of 5 or so minutes.

But for you guys having trouble: keep heart. Took us 40 minutes on this boss alone the first time (tele path) and only 20 the last time we fought him (sub path).

I wouldn’t be so sure. It’s an entry dungeon, one that many people have a lot of trouble with. (Even heard people claim that Tsark and Hodgins were “impossibru”). Sure its easy if your group has done it 20 times, you spend a lot less time being downed and waypointing, you know where the scepter pieces are, you know where the burrows will spawn etc.

I think the difficulty is fine right now. Its a great dungeon for people to cut their teeth on, and the Kohler fight is a good intro for people to learn that in dungeons they NEED to work together and pay attention. The burrow events emphasize teamwork and coordination, and the various gravelings force a group to figure out which effects are the most deadly and focus fire certain enemies first.

“No, the devs said they will continually tweak the dungeons so that the fastest possible time to clear them (with a good group) is 45min, and anything under would be due to exploits. Pugs will always take longer.”

The only way I see for them to make the fastest POSSIBLE time be 45 minutes is to add more unskippable trash and give them tons of health. Did 2 back to back runs of AC with the same group and the 3rd with 3 people from the first group and 2 pickup. Tsark and Hodgins were the first 2 and both were easily cleared in under 30 minutes due to the fact that everyone knew the encounters, knew their class and we had 0 wipes or resets. Kohler was cleared in every path in around 3-4 minutes, we pulled the graveling trash on top of the spider queen just to finish it faster, skipped the troll because he’s useless, burned down the burrows with ease and murdered every breeder on the way to the bosses in around 10-15 seconds a piece.

Didn’t really require planning, we just knew the encounters and vent was suddenly a place for trash talking and cracking jokes instead of planning out the game. It was fun and lighthearted but I don’t think its indicative of anything needing to be artificially lengthened.

Maif.7594:

However I was just using it as an example of an attack that has huge range, instant effect, 1 shot capabilities, and little to no telegraphing.

Can’t tell if serious. He spends like 5 seconds channeling while orange or yellow or whatever colored kitten is all over him like Goku in DBZ before unleashing his incredibly easy to dodge frontal cone of death.

Kudu in CoE Story probably has telegraphing too, but you can’t see it because explosions happen everywhere thanks to players hitting him, and he’s a midget rat person.

Have you even done tsarks path? It’s not a frontal “cone”. The kitten thing hits you even if you are just behind him. There is no “5 second channel” it’s 1.5 at most with an animation extremely similar to the one he uses when he calls down rocks, the notable difference being that he flails more when he calls down the rocks. Ran him again last night, the only time I was downed was when I was hit by his scream, while standing comfortably BEHIND him.

What I love: The huge options of combo fields, the great utility of our conditions, the frost bow, pre-nerf glyph of renewal.

What I hate: The fact that every other class has more utility in dungeons and can still do much more of both burst and sustained damage.

As much as I hate to say it, we’re pitiful. We COULD be good, we could be great. With some numbers tweaks we’d still be the hardest class to play as far as manual dexterity goes, but we’d actually get rewarded for it. Our damage is abysmal, our control is so-so, our healing is nothing to write home about, our survivability ranges from non-existent to meh…

My guild runs dungeons with me because they know I learn, adapt, and communicate over ventrillo, not because my ele had anything special to bring to the party (the one exception being AC where the frost bow murders burrows, but hey the way things are going next week they’ll nerf that skill so you cant give one to your allies, cant have the elementalist being useful at anything now can we?)

Christ, the current state of our class is pathetic and AN is either blissfully unaware or they simply dont give a f.

The problem is that if I dont have the bow, I dont have the burst damage to destroy crystals trapping my allies. But yeah, since GoR is pointless now I could prolly get arcane shield or some low CD cantrip on my bar. Perhaps get glyph of storms and use it in water for the chill effect. (One of the best conditions in dungeons IMO).

I still wish I could see that kitten attack coming :/

Staff ele traited into healing toughness and arcana.
Utilities are:
lightning flash (for escaping crystals, bugs sometimes)
frost bow (for destroying crystals)
[was using glyph of renewal, thanks anet for making that completely useless]

And we did get in his face a good bit which really helped, but even then I had to run when hp got low

The ENTIRE kittenING GAME is push buttons 1-5, sometimes you might have to even push buttons 6-0! In fact every PC game ever made is pushing some combination of buttons and mouse movements.

Dungeons, at least the way my guild runs them, are strategic encounters where preparation and communication determines who wins. If we find ourselves resorting to WP zerging we stop the fight and let the boss reset and analyze our plan. Christ so many people have lost the art of learning something and then mastering it. If your opinion is so jaded that dungeons are nothing but exploitation playgrounds then you need to play better and play with better people.

ELTopo.1506:

These dungeons are trash and everyone knows it.

It’s a bit disingenuous to substitute your shallow, pathetic, opinion for those of people, as or more qualified than you on the matter.