Guild Wars 2

Aank.4837:

@ Geoffroy. thanks for your 1st post. kept me from typing out pretty much the same thing.

Glad to be of some assistance

Aank.4837:

Only thing I could add is how silly I find “Joining on a character lower than 80 when you have one or multiple 80s”. I have no problems with a LFG that say 80s only, that’s fine but I’ve had plenty of smooth runs with full groups of low lvl players, total disasters with full geared 80s, and vice versa. Sure, good gear and having traits open certainly helps but the proper tool in the hands of someone who doesn’t know how to use it is still useless. Skill counts for a lot in this game. I seen a ton of low lvl alts do just fine, I enjoy lvling alts like this myself and it’s never been a problem.

A lot of people think that showing a toon with full gear and max level is a guarantee of efficiency. It’s not. You can fully gear up by doing easy PvE content and wander for the first time in a dungeon not knowing better.

(It happens a lot with map chat recruiting for Arah, with people freshly anointed “Savior of Tyria” for downing Zaithan in story mode.)

We’re sufficiently far from release to have a lot of dungeon hobbyist leveling up their third or fourth reroll. It’s not a perfect metric either, but I find looking at the achievement points far more telling than a gear check :
- 3000+ points on a lvl35 AC runner = this guy knows his stuff most of the time,
- 600~800 points on a self declared “pro runner” with shiny zerker exotics kicking out low lvl joiners left and right = prepare yourself for a hard time.

I’ve been proven wrong from time to time, of course. But not often enough to invalidate this metric.

Funny story:
A couple of days ago I was trying my hand with my necro reroll (lvl 60 at the time) on AC story. The pug consisted of a couple of newcomers (lvl40ish first char), two freshly leveled to 80 first chars and me. After boasting about “having finished Arah a long time ago” (his words, verbatim), one of the lvl80 proceeded to make us wipe time and time again running around in melee like a headless chicken until finally rage-quitting after dying from using Vengeance (I promise, I have nothing against warrior as profession, it just tend to attract a lot of bad players from my experience) on the Ascalonian captain (in the corridor before meeting with Eir) while I was rezzing him.

Of course, he had around 600 achievement points to show for his feats.

Luciusbrimstone.7925:

Basilisk venom is really amazing in pvp, though I’m not sure if I’d run it in pve. As for hounds.. well, I just think each class has a better alternative. I can see someone justifying hounds in the world for a class like warrior that doesn’t summon pets if they wanted that but past that I don’t think there’s much utility there.

Actually, I agree with you. There’s generally a more OP option in the choice of elite. I don’t see it as a big infraction though. It’s way lower than the selfish 5-signet warrior zerker that insults the party for not buffing him efficiently enough to survive in the pyramid of Pug obnoxiousness in my opinion.

Luciusbrimstone.7925:

Personally, for ele, I run tornado and almost never use it. I try to save it as an oh-kitten button if we need to spread mobs out, or if I need extra health for some reason. Almost always backfires and gets me killed since I lose access to my normal skills, but whatever. Flaming sword is powerful but I’m not built for it (currently playing around with an auramancer, so losing one or two auras from my weapon skills hurts). Elemental.. I just see it as a more viable alternative to the hounds. The elemental, even earth elemental, still dies a lot in dungeons though, and that’s when he isn’t running off by himself to solo the dredge boss we’re trying not to aggro (I swear I don’t know that guy).

I have mixed feelings too with my alts elites. I started the game with a mesmer and still exclusively use her for my high-end dungeon running. Time Warp (and Mass Invisibility in a mesure) brings so much to the table that I cannot help but feel underwhelmed by my Ele and my Necro elites.

Back to the Elementalist. I tried tornado, but it usually end up with me being down, so scrapped it enterely (the underwater variation is awesome though).

My ele guild buddy loves greatsword because, let’s admit it, it’s super fun to play, even though it generally means death for both him and the other poor fellow that couldn’t resist wielding the extra one (usually my regular Arah-running compañero whom happens to be a thief – you can’t get any more squishy).

For my part, I defaulted to the elemental, though I generally take it out only in hairy situations where the extra tanking of the Earth one (I only use this one) may make a significant difference in the outcome of the fight (making my classes with TW and its huge cool downs forces you to be considerate with elite timing).

On a side note, I actually thought about this thread yesterday evening during a notably horrendous Arah run (we didn’t even get to Lupi… that says a lot), and unfortunately can no longer say that waiting for someone to run across three maps never happened to me…

It also made me realize about a bullet you forgot on your checklist :
— Don’t lie about knowing the run.

You should focus on the class you enjoy most rather than the one that is the flavour of the month.

Zerker warriors are in huge demand for the 4 warriors / 1 mesmer COF1 speed farming gimmick right now, and it’s bleeding in the other dungeons by less educated players that think this build is OP for dungeoning. I suspect a huge drop in demand when it’s nerfed.

I suggest you stick with guardian if you enjoy the play style. Played well, it can be a huge asset in an average pug, upping the chances of completion for the party and yourself considerably.

On the other hand, don’t force yourself on this class if you don’t like it, there’s plenty of viable setups and you’ll always be able to find a party whatever the class you play. I, for one, will always prefer a good whatever profession rather than a bad heavy armor anytime.

Joining a dungeon-oriented guild should be considered also if you plan to do daily runs, you’ll have a better time playing with a static team rather than taking your chances with a random pug everyday.

Linguistically Inept.6583:

i think thieves guild is better that hounds of balth (minus the leap finisher), but havent tested (basilisk venom turns enemies to stone; which bypasses defiant afaik)

Noted. Basilisk Vemon sounds interesting, I’ll have to try this one out.

Linguistically Inept.6583:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Glyph_of_Elemental
- they have extra effects (unless your friend is capitalising on the absorbtion shield?), recharge faster and last longer

I thought the skill were nearly similar and therefore swappable. The elemental usually dies before the end of the skill duration in dungeons, so the difference in duration doesn’t matter much… the longer cool down on the other hand seems like a no-go. I’ll have to ask him.
I think the shield golem may be doing marvels on Lupi though…

For the elemental the water variation doesn’t heal enough to be viable, and the air variation’s stun isn’t reliable enough to be useful. That leaves you with fire (raw DPS) and Earth (Tank) as viable variations, but have to switch to the corresponding attunement to launch them, which can be an inconvenience, as you have to adapt your attunement rotation to cast the one you want (not too much of a hassle, but my guildie seems to prefer the other option).

Linguistically Inept.6583:

plague is amazing in dungeons; aoe blind spam and massive increase in the ability to take hits (if anything can hit you with all the blind you pump out)

Usually there’s always a mob outside of the AoE that ticks away at my HP and most of the PUGs doesn’t know about blindness spamming in plague form, so they don’t take advantage of it. I don’t know the actual numbers, but DPS seems to take huge drop comparing to the usual axe/focus vulnerability spamming / death shroud might building rotation also.

EDIT : On the other hand, offhand Dagger skill #4 has a 6 sec blind on 15sec CD that can be extended with the right traits (shorter CD) et and the right runes / food buff (extra cond. duration) with great direct damages (dagger auto attack, or axe in main hand). That may be worth some time to investigate.

I haven’t run a lot of dungeons with my necro (she’s freshly levelled to 80), so I don’t have much experience to share there.

Kuishen.6140:

As for Hounds of Balthazar: It ALWAYS takes the spot of an elite that is beneficial to the party.

On the top of my head, I can think of :
- Elem : elite are either tornado, greatsword or elemental. Tornado isn’t useful in PVE, greatsword is situational and Elemental is extra DPS (fire) or weak tank (earth). That’s why one of my guildies now prefers the golem invocation asura race skill rather than the elemental (same DPS, same tanking ability, no need to change attunement to invoke the right one).

- Thief : invoked thiefs = Extra DPS, twirling blades = Extra melee DPS (not sure about the third one, I haven’t unlocked it on my thief yet, but I think it’s a glitched poison buff ?).

- Necro : Plague form isn’t very efficient, Lych form = extra DPS, Elite minion makes only sense when accordingly traited (Minion Master builds).

I think each of these classes can use hounds without removing anything major to the party.

On the other hand, using hound instead of tomes for a guardian or instead of time warp / mass invisibility for a mesmer is majorly detrimental for the party.

Kuishen.6140:

EDIT: @ Geofrroy: All of those points are things that you’re assuming we’re being unreasonable about. We get that crap happens and we don’t expect perfection and you’re taking some of those points way too literally.

That’s why I said I agreed with the content, but not with the tone employed.
Please note that I’m not arguing for argument’s sake. I’ve added a couple of tips in there that weren’t in the OP, and I tried to add another PoV / mitigate where it was a bit exaggerating.

That said, I’m pretty sure I’ll enjoy pugging in your party. The follow up posts totally points toward you and your buddies being an efficient and courteous party of dungeon runners.

I agree with most of the content, but not with the tone employed. To elaborate :

—Joining and immediately leaving
No harm done. You come in, don’t like what you see then leave. No time wasted.

—Arguing about how the dungeon is being run
Unless you have a perfect knowledge of the game (hint: no one does), you might actually learn something here.

—Wearing magic find gear
Agreed. Please remember that magic find doesn’t work on chests. If sacrificing a major stat for a marginal green/yellow drop on trash mobs looks like a good deal, stick with open world farming, please.

—Consistently not raising
Not agreed. I’m ok with the intention, not with the way you express it.
Priority to rez is a must. Being flamed by a party member that we didn’t rezzed because he was sitting in a high damage aoe field that meant instant down isn’t fun. Not taking the last few tics of the HP of a mob to stop and rez someone isn’t smart either.

—Misusing timewarp
That’s a matter of inexperience. I’d rather give a few tips for the player wanting to learn here.
On another note, when I run with another mesmer I always confer on whom does TW first.

I also find it quite useful to link [Time Warp] in the channel a few seconds before launching it to let party member prepare themselves.

—Going afk
As long as it’s announced and not too long, I don’t mind.

—Not having access to the area
Agreed. It never happened to me though.

—Not following targeting
Most of the time inexperience. Can be fixed with a “please press T to follow target”.

—Fake Politeness
Don’t understand this one. As long as you say hi at start / gg at the end, answer when you’re directly addressed and don’t flame / boss around the party channel, I’m okay.

—Glitching
We usually follow the majority here. On the other hand, don’t assume that people glitch / don’t glitch, ask. Same goes for Kohler. I used to always ask something along the line “Kohler, or skip?” to be sure everyone is on the same page.

—Moving crystals away from players during the Jade Maw fractal
Never happened to me, but I usually run fractals with guildies.

—Complaining about class/group setup
Yep. Worst that happened was a pug kicking out sub lvl80 in my party. Either leave right away or don’t complain.

—Ranged attacks, Scepter Guardians, Pistol Thieves, Rangers, Rifle Warriors, Thieves
Contradict the point above. All classes well played has a place in a party, and there’s a world out of the OP builds min maxing everything that can work brilliantly in a dungeon set up. I agree that most of the misconceptions about class efficiency comes from a lack of knowledge of the said class.

For example, one of my smoothest runs of Arah P3 was done with a thief guildie, a “ranged ranger”, another mesmer and a necro (yep, no signet warrior or guardian).

From experience, some perfect group setups can go terribly wrong and some “no way it’ll work” setups can end up working brilliantly. My favorite dungeon moment so far is a run of TA with 3 other mesmers and an elem.

On the other hand, I pugged in a CoF1 party advertised as “fast run exp. only” with 3 warriors and a thief (I was playing my Ele) that wasn’t able to down the slave driver. The group collapsed after three tries.

—Hounds of Motherkittening Balthazar
Seriously? As long as it doesn’t take the spot of a major party-beneficial elite, I don’t care.

—Entering the instance
As it has been pointed before, if you make me go out to own the instance, I’ll instantly suspect something fishy.

—Commander tags
Never happened to me. I usually find it hilarious to see these in PVE. The equivalent of a fake rollex / vuitton. You want to appear wealthy ? Show me some cultural T3 armour instead. It’s easier on the eye and it doesn’t pollute the mini-map.

—Joining on a character lower than 80 when you have one or multiple 80s
Don’t agree at all. I’d rather have someone enter with a sub 80 char rather than switch to a way below required lvl alt during final boss fight. If you’re pugging, ask the party if they don’t mind, and if they want a quick run or are in a narrow “no sub 80 mindset”, switch to your main. Another thing to consider is that a dungeon runner alt = a more experienced player. I usually have it easier with a sub 80 alt than a freshly levelled 80 main in my party.

—Splitting up mobs
I’d rather have a PUG take the cautious approach rather than rushing forward agroing all the room and making the party wipe.

My 2 cents. Thanks for taking the time to post this, that would justify a well earned sticky if it was written with just a tad more neutral point of view. More of a tutorial than a rage/rant feel, if you follow my drift.

You have to transmute it with a white rarity piece of armor. A lvl10 headpiece sold from any armorsmith will do (you can use a basic stone).

Once you transmuted it, the new mask is now account bound.

You have to transmute it again with the character that will wear it (you’ll need a fine transmutation stone for lvl 80 gear). The new mask is now account bound to the new character.

Did it a couple of weeks ago.

Knoclin.3180:

Geoffroy.3685:

I use a 0/20/20/20/10 build for Staff / Sword-Focus with Rabid armor + Berzerker accessories :
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mmmc0mz9MMGnbmMGnbm0GGGamamamRV8070q7ofD70m8ofj

I’m not min-maxing anything, but after a lot of trial and errors, it seems the perfect build for my playstyle : mainly dungeon running as support mesmer with a decent amount of dps. I tend to shatter quite often, but clone production isn’t an issue, so I have some traits on for illusions up too.

Sounds a lot like my play style could you send me some more information about that please? if you can include pictures too like what armour and armour bonuses and what kind of staff are you using that would we awesome

I use Rabid Twilight Armor with original runes (Runes of the Nightmare), maybe not the most efficient runes, but I never got around to change them (they seem good enough right now).

For the weapons, I have a set of transmuted T3 sylvari, so I kept the Sigil of force that went with them (+5% damage if I’m not mistaken) with berzerker exotic stats.

For the play style, I mix ranged with staff and melee sword according to what work best with the current encounter, with a lot of F1/F2 shatters for raw DPS / confusion.

For utilities, my main set up is :
- Arcane thievery for extra condition cleaning (healing already cleans one condition), or boon stealing for long lasting boons on some bosses/mobs (e.g. champion gravelings in AC, every dredge, etc.),
- Feedback up as much as can both for projectile reflections and for a combo field that grants Chaos armor for my party and me (with Focus #4 when feedback is down for reflection),
- Decoy as a failsafe when I’m out of dodges.
- Time Warp is my go to elite, generally provides a “yeah! time warp is awesome” from my guildies

I switch sometimes to :
- mass invisibility : for skipping mobs in TA (with a bad pug) and Arah (works great in conjunction with the Shadow Refuge of my thief guildie),
- mimic : extra stealth for some tricky runs,
- portal : to make the “rugby” part of arah p3 a bit smoother with some groups.

Hope it helps.

I use a 0/20/20/20/10 build for Staff / Sword-Focus with Rabid armor + Berzerker accessories :
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mmmc0mz9MMGnbmMGnbm0GGGamamamRV8070q7ofD70m8ofj

I’m not min-maxing anything, but after a lot of trial and errors, it seems the perfect build for my playstyle : mainly dungeon running as support mesmer with a decent amount of dps. I tend to shatter quite often, but clone production isn’t an issue, so I have some traits on for illusions up too.

Eliyahu.1467:

Geoffroy.3685:

Kasama.8941:

I don’t think it’s needed. People only want this for traveling, and there are already enough ways to get more movement speed as it is (focus, runes, sigil, food). If the Mesmer had 25% movement speed, on top of clones, stealth, and teleportation, it would just end up making the Mesmer feel too overpowered.

I’d much rather see them improve Signet of Midnight to having 25% boon duration..

Agreed. Temporal Curtain (focus skill #4) = nearly perma-swiftness that you can share with your party.

8-13 seconds of downtime is not even close to “perma-swiftness.”

That’s right, thought you get it down with Inspiration VIII (+20% focus CD) and some points in the Chaos line (I personally have 20 for the Chaos X’s staff buff).

Kasama.8941:

I don’t think it’s needed. People only want this for traveling, and there are already enough ways to get more movement speed as it is (focus, runes, sigil, food). If the Mesmer had 25% movement speed, on top of clones, stealth, and teleportation, it would just end up making the Mesmer feel too overpowered.

I’d much rather see them improve Signet of Midnight to having 25% boon duration..

Agreed. Temporal Curtain (focus skill #4) = nearly perma-swiftness that you can share with your party.

Himei.5379:

I think Anet is doing the right thing in making dungeons harder BUT in the wrong direction. They should have started on the higher level dungeons and work their way down. Punishing new players can alienate them from doing any dungeon again from their first experiences at a level 30/35 starter.

Highest lvl dungeons are great as they are (CoE/Arah). I agree that they should have started with the broken ones (CoF P1, HotW). AC was great before, not so great now.

Darksanity.1690:

If people are having difficulty on path 3 due to Warmaster Grast getting killed, send me a PM and ill tell you the tactics
You absolutely DO NOT NEED warmaster grast in p3.

If you have anything to share, why not share it here?

I totally agree. Dungeon loot tables should be on par with world events, and Fractal chests :
- World event : 5/15 min attendance = 1 gold almost every time + fair chance for an exotic,
- Fractal daily 10+ : 30/90 min for completion = chances for an ascended ring + gold / exotic drops throughout + fractal skins (20+) + Fractal tokens,

and…

- Dungeons : 30/90 min for completion on average, 60 tokens + blue drops…

Lupi. With a phase 3 health divided by 2, it would be the perfect boss for an end-game dungeon.

Both variation of Kohler (old & new) even if he has no place in a lvl 35 dungeon.

Cof P2 Acolytes / stones. (Easy, need coordination).

The other bosses are either easy/fast/okay (some variations of nightmare tree, CoF effigy, etc.) or tedious (especially CM, HotW and above all every new AC bosses).

Nothing currently suggest the add of an agony mechanic in regular dungeons.

Ok, I now have an official opinion on the “new and improved” AC… The improved part is clearly debatable to say the least.

I wont paraphrase what’s already been said in this thread with an in depth review of what’s bugged, what’s infuriating and why I would stay clear of this particular instance until there’s palatable changes being made.

I would summarize my experience for your reading pleasure though:
- spend around 1.5 hour in path 1 on patch day. Unable to finish it with 3 guildies and 2 PUs due to bugginess and tediousness of the Ghost Eater,
- spend 2 hours to clear path 2 with a competent group of players. That was my 3rd group. The 2 first parties raged quit on the spider queen. Wiped / failed around 15 times on the burrows, and then around the same amount on the howling king.

I can’t stress enough that I was in a party of competent dungeon runners and that we were trying to clear the lvl35 intro lvl dungeon.

Needless to say, I’m pretty pleased to be done with my AC tokens currently. I must have been collecting something around 2000+ tokens since I started playing the game.

The armor skin is horrendous, but at least, that was reasonably farmable to get entry lvl PVT exo gear for alts, that could be transmuted (that’s how I geared my ele). Now it’s nowhere near rewarding enough. I’d rather go wipe on Lupi with PUGs, at least it’s somewhat rewarding when I down it.

On a final note, I’ve always been in favor to always accept sub-lvl80 people in runs, especially in AC that was the intro dungeon. I won’t blame anyone refusing to enter without a full group of max lvl properly geared people anymore.

I love this game, I spend a good chunk of my free time in Tyria since launch, and more so in the 5-manned darkest parts of it. I hope you guys won’t ruin the other dungeons the way you ruined AC, or I’ll have to reluctantly say goodbye and sail toward brighter horizons.

Blaeys.3102:

I agree with this in spirit, but isnt this exactly what people are doing in COF path 1 now – afk facerolling easy content to farm tokens.

I guess they do it for the gold rather than the tokens. With the DR as it is, repeated farming for tokens isn’t that efficient (Cf. “10g/Hr CoFP1Guide Still going strong xD” thread in this forum).

What about something in same flavor of the new “mentoring” daily? Giving tokens in story mode, but only in a party with some sub-lvl80 characters? I can see it working splendidly, don’t you think?

Oglaf.1074:

I appreciate the Ghostbusters reference, but please just change him back already…

Pretty please?

I haven’t tried Path 1 & 3, but though I agree that most changes on path 2 are actually good (spider, new mechanics on scavengers, overall reduced health pool, …), I must also point out that the new ghost eater is horrendous. Spent half an hour on it after patch, and I’m really really happy to be all set on AC tokens. Seriously, do you really think that adding such a tedious and demanding mechanic on the first dungeon of the game was a good idea ?

I’d rather go wipe with PUGs in Arah than doing it again.

I don’t really think the 6~9 tokens you can get in bags when you re-run enough to actually being considered a sufficient reward for running it. (to be true, I actually forgot about these).

Let’s be clear. We do dungeons because it’s fun, and because we’re here for the rewards. The main incentive to go back to a dungeon is to farm the tokens needed for the associated gear. We do so by running time and time again the explorable mode of the instance we’re interested in.

On the other hand, we have the story mode. Story mode is quite fun on the first try, but we have no incentive to go back there, because, well, no tokens. What doesn’t help either is that it’s quite hard to find a PUG for them.

Then, I’m asking myself, why not give tokens for this path too ? Maybe not the same amount as explorable mode, something along the lines of 30 or 40 tokens on the first daily run and then 10/15 with DR.

Advantages :
- Another path to farm (= some extra daily tokens — yeah!),
- Incentive to veterans to go back there to help rookies get the ropes of dungeon running,
- Incentive to actually run the story mode on alts (not only to unlock explorable),
- Possibility for casual players to work toward their exotic set without having to wipe and wipe again on harder content,
- No downside for hardcore players, that can keep running said harder content.

I’d like to hear your thoughts, dear fellow forumers, on this. Good idea ? Bad idea ? Did I miss some huge drawback ?

ComeAndSee.1356:

My Thief is DD/Shortbow and built as a mix between survivability and damage. I do 4x the damage my Guardian does with plenty of mobility, AOEs, and single target damage. You feel weak until you get lvl 20++ gear, but after that you can start two shotting mobs with dagger skills or you can mob up like 5++ mobs and AOE them down with the shortbow.

I took you on your word and I got mine up to lvl23. I geared it with lvl20 blues +toughness, and I must admit, I don’t die as much, and it’s actually getting quite fun to play.

Vinny.6924:

Today I was about to gear up my thief using dungeon tokens I had been farming for some time. Well I must have been distracted because I bought the entire stat set that I wanted but in the wrong type. Heavy instead of medium.

I feel your pain, it happened to me a couple of days ago. I was in a rush because my guildies were waiting for me to start a dungeon. Bought a chest and a pant part from HotW in medium rather than in light. Salvaged it for ectos / ori, not too much of a loss, I was after the stats rather than the looks, so I could cover my loss in a couple of days in AC.

Lesson learned. I double check now every time. Maybe if there was specific tabs in the vendor dialog for light / medium / heavy, it would be (a) easier to read, (b) harder to buy the wrong stuff, don’t you think?

Also, why doesn’t the stuff is account-bound on acquire rather than soulbound ?
I understand the “on acquire” part to prevent resell on the TP, but since the tokens are account bound anyway… it would make sense to soulbound it on equip.

I main a mesmer too. My personal experience with alts goes this way:
- leveled up a guardian all the way up to 80. Great survivability and decent damage output. Leveling it wasn’t painful. I maxed it way faster than with my mesmer, don’t know if it’s inherent to the class or the fact it was my second character, and I didn’t have to figure some stuff out this time around. However, the class never really clicked with my playstyle, and I soon got bored with it. I enjoy burning stuff with the sword / torch combination from time to time, but I know it’s far from an optimal build, so I don’t bring it in dungeons (which is my main focus).

- leveled up a thief up to 20, but it was quite a pain. I’m not a big fan of the initiative mechanic, and the class feels really squishy… at around lvl 15 I raided the TP to get some blue gear, so that I didn’t die so much… It didn’t help that much. I guess it gets better at higher levels, but right now I have little incentive on going further on this particular class.

- created an elementalist. Fell in love with the class. Switched to D/D from staff at around level 5 and never looked back. Got it to level 80 in a few weeks and I’m now in the process of gearing it up in exotic (I’m just two rings short ATM). I really enjoy the dynamism of the gameplay, being in melee but too weak to properly tank, going in and out of the midst of the fight, with the fast attunement swapping according to the situation + the support it gives with aura sharing and water attunement healing. I really enjoy taking this one in dungeons, it’s a lot of fun to play there. Oh, and the mob tagging with all the AoE skills makes it really efficient for farming in high player density areas. I was really astonished with the quantity of loot I could gather (way way more than with my mesmer).

Dolan.3071:

Never underestimate the WP, when doing path 1 there’s always at least ONE person who gets hit by the fire on the way back.

Agreed. And it’s usually me :p I did this path somewhere in the double digits count and I still haven’t got the timing right… Not to mention the runs where we do Kohler after the burrows event.

@Oranisagu — Love your signature

On a note related to the OP, does everyone suffer terrible culling on the 2nd Scepter scavenger hunt in the north of the map? I’ve been experiencing being mauled down to death by invisible scavengers a lot lately in there.

Izuna.5307:

….

There’s a lot of good advice in there. I only wished it wasn’t punctuated with “idiots” and such on every other sentences.

Velkyn.5168:

Same here. Plus we ask if everyone has done that path before or if someone might need explanations.

Yeah, I have a couple of funny stories on this kind of behavior too…
On a particular run of TA, with 3 guildies + 1 PU, we asked the fifth-man if he had any preference on the chosen path. He told with some authority (or at least that’s how we perceived it) that he wanted to do “Up”. About 3/4 of the way into the dungeon, after several wipes due to an unfathomable erratic behavior from our fellow PU, one of us finally had the brilliant idea to ask him whether he knew the path or not. Turns out that he never ever sat foot in this instance before…

Velkyn.5168:

Hurts my heart to see how the human aspect doesn’t seem to matter at all to most people in this.. I guess I enjoy MMOs because you meet actual people in there, rather than running around with NPCs.

You perfectly summed it up. MMO are social games, that’s what I enjoy most about them. If I want to do only solo RPG, I’d rather pick a solo RPG title.

ComeAndSee.1356:

I want to do Fractal’s on my Thief, but my Thief is only lvl 2 which means I cannot do my lvl 20 & 30 dailies without having to grind. My mesmer is almost lvl 80 as well.

So right now I just do it on my Guardian.

Same here, I’d love to run it on my alts, but have to stick to my main to get the right reward. I understand that may be problematic on higher lvls, but isn’t AR already there to act as a gate keeper ?

I don’t understand why we have to grind the same content we already cleared on another char. Same goes for story mode being character specific. Always fun to have a bunch of players wearing fancy dungeon exotics that can’t launch exp. mode for the life of them because none had cleared story mode with this particular toon.

I don’t understand why anyone would kick a low lvl in AC, especially when the party is already composed of 4 experienced lvl 80. Seriously guys, this particular instance is easily 4 man-able with a reasonably geared group with a little experience. Even if the party is going for a fast run, the cleaning time must differ by a few minutes, if not seconds.

It happened just yesterday in a PUG and I could do nothing but apologize to the player that was kicked, and that was particularly depressing, being the one initiating the party…

The rule of the thumb is that I always check the achievement points rather than the actual lvl to know if I’m gonna have a hard time or not. I’d choose a 2000+ pts anything over a 700~800 zerker warrior any day.

That being said, when I run with guildies, we always take along anyone’s coming, with no distinction of lvl, achievement points or profession.

iHungeri.4096:

need to try 3+ mesmers, engineers or necros one day

I did a 4 mesmer + 1 ele run in TA a while ago, and had a lot of fun.
4 synchronized TW of the Nightmare Tree + the ele meteor rain was just awesome.

It depends on which role you enjoy most. As it has been pointed out, most PUG enjoy having a couple of Guardians or Warriors in the group, it makes it easier for everyone.

However, generally speaking, the roles are generally this :
- Mesmer for the unique abilities (faster kills with “time warp” elite, portals, group stealth) and support (reflection + confusion, clones that takes some of the damage away from players) with decent DPS it bring in the group (My main is a Mesmer ;-) ),
- Guardian for support via boon sharing and tanking,
- Warrior for survivability and point-blank DPS,
- Elementalist for the DPS and the best party healing skills it provides,
- Thief has great DPS bursts, stealth skills (refuge is great for rezzing a downed player),

I don’t know these classes as well (feel free to correct me, fellow forumers), but I guess :
- Ranger for ranged DPS and control skills via traps,
- Necromancer has great survivability, good DPS and decent healing,
- Engineer for DPS and some mix of support and mob control.

I tend to experience at least one bad reset by run, mainly with my guildies as we tend to wipe a lot on Lupy, with our disparities in mastering the mechanics of this particular fight.

Usually it happen when someone tries to desaggro to reset. It either follow the last man standing somewhat out of the room, or keep sending adds. It also happens sometimes when you try to rez a party member that died a bit too close from the initial position, to spare him the painful run back. Most of the times, he manages to keep one or two stacks of grubs that doesn’t reset either, since there’s no one to tend to them in the room… (someone has to suicide himself and come back from the TP to reset him right).

We also ran into a couple of random resets during phase 2, but that didn’t happen too often (but it can be infuriating).

The best avoid it is to wipe fully when you wipe and come back from the TP, with can be quite a pain right now (it’s far far away)…

No, you can’t. But you can enter from anywhere in the same zone, providing one of the party members is next to the entrance to launch the dungeon.

@Dee Jay: Great list. I’d also add the bullet point:
- Don’t balance the health pool / toughness on full berzerker. A solid team with rare / exo stuff shouldn’t take ages to put a boss down.

Darkever.9732:

- Gigant Lupicus in Arah. […] Only problem is health, that is stupidly high.

The main problem in the health pool is in phase 1, I think. Once you got timing for dodging the grub production or the 4 DPS / 1 on grub duty strategy, this phase is really too long and boring.

I also concur, as many of us do, on the HOTW bosses and their gigantic health bar. The rest of the dungeon is quite enjoyable though, I run it frequently.

LONGA.1652:

The patch broke Ascalon catacomb waypoint.It was Priory camp waypoint that got moved out of map.so you end up porting in a wired zone

http://i1081.photobucket.com/albums/j343/LONGA0813/gw108.jpg

I concur.

Also, I tried Path 2 of AC yesterday night with guild mates, and the event when you have to protect Detha in the Flooded Cathedral didn’t launch. We couldn’t progress so we had to abort. Trying to talk to her only gave a generic greeting response.

One of my guildmates told us that the same thing happened to him with Path 1, when you have to protect Hodgins.

On the record, I totally agree with OP whom pinned the problem in a really comprehensive way.

Oh, and I’m 32 from France.

UnderdogSMO.9428:

Path 1 in SE is buged and the Mobs will spawn on themself over and over and fallow you all the way back to the waypoint

Ok that explains this one.

I’ve also heard one specific Arah path takes at least 5 hours to complete. I understand that no one in their right mind would run this one when there’s 3 other paths with a more reasonable run length.

Shiren.9532:

Problems specific to explorables that FotM doesn’t have to deal with is path equality. There is an imbalance in the time and difficulty of the different paths in explorables. If you are looking at original dungeons and spicing them up, rebalancing the path equality might be another thing you can do to improve them.

I can’t agree more with this. I’ve been trying to unlock all paths and I’m yet to find a group willing to do some of them, namely :
- Sorrow’s Embrace – path 1 (and I had a really hard time finding groups for the other paths),
- Citadel of Flames – path 3,
- Arah – path 1 & 4.

I’ve managed to clear all paths of Crucible of Eternity but there was a disparity there too, I recall.

On the other hand there’s no issue with Catacombs, Caudecus or Honor of the Waves.

When I ask my fellow PUGs why shouldn’t we try the aforementioned paths, the answer is always that’s “it’s not worth it”.

On the other hand, I’ve tried the new FotM dungeon and my feelings are quite mixed up. Some of the mini-dungeons are more than tedious (Swamps and Underwater) while other are very fun (Snow, Sentient Statue or Ascalon) while remaining challenging. I’m not on board with the mandatory grind for the gear threadmill, and can’t see myself repeat runs on this one.

So, yes, rebalancing the paths equality of the original ones would be a good thing.

Mungrul.9358:

Two, set the player limit for zones connected to one-time events a LOT lower than it is currently set. While I appreciate what you’re trying to strive for, and admire the spectacle you’re trying to create, your technology obviously isn’t capable of accommodating your vision.

Four, and this is personal opinion but reflects a lot of the community’s opinion, roll back the new gear tier, leaving exotic stats as the top. You’re going to lose a lot of players if you don’t.

Five, consider moving the entrance to Fractal of the Mists away from Lion’s Arch.
Thanks to dungeon runners, few will ever be able to access the Lion’s Arch of their home server reliably ever again. Move the portal to Southsun Cove or somewhere equally as accessible.

Overall, if I were to grade your work for this event, I would say that while your ambitions were big, you failed to deliver a satisfactory experience. Must try harder.

I agree with most of the feedback, and more especially with the points quoted here above.

To quickly summarize my personal experience of the Lost Shore events :

I tried and failed to join the event on Friday, crippled with lag as it was, so I stayed away from the events of the weekend only to discover that the third phase was rewarding precursors (for the lucky ones that didn’t get dc’d, got the good dice roll or didn’t get into a game breaking bug that is). I felt quite cheated with the bad communication about the events schedule and I’m sorry to have missed out the potentially fun part.

I’m an avid dungeon runner but my experience with the fractals has been quite atrocious so far. I tried to run it two on the weekend (once friday night at opening and later Saturday morning). The game crashed twice on entering the first fractal and I couldn’t join my team on re-launch. It was next to impossible to join a lvl 1 group later on the weekend, and the other instances were nearly deserted.

I also don’t understand the decision to put a put a dungeon entrance on the already crowded Lion Arch map. Finding a group on an overflow server is not fun, and the map chat was already quite crowded with other stuff. Putting a dungeon here only achieved to make it worst.

I’m also very concerned with the new tier of equipment and the mandatory grind to obtain it. I won’t expand on that, a lot of people already gave valid feedback on this point.

I really hope Anet will sort it out. I’ve been enjoying the game so far, but all the later additions seems to worsen the experience that adding to it. I can’t say I didn’t get a fair $60 share of enjoyment but I really hoped that this game would have lasted more than 3 months. I can only see it going downward from this point if Anet persists on this path.