You’ll get used to forward forward. Its maybe the 2nd easiest path in TA. I’ve run TA a lot on my mesmer who is in full TA gear now.
You can pull 1 or 2 of the knights provided your group doesn’t run up and get mowed over. Sometimes you get just 1 other times you’ll get 2 at the same time. They dont have a lot of hp so they die fairly quickly. If your group is melee heavy you’ll have a more difficult time due to all the knockdowns and damage from the knights. With range and snares its not that hard at all.
Get everybody to back up and 1 person makes the pull. Everything will come but there is always 1 or 2 knights that will come out further than the rest. Its a bit of a fine line between killing the knight and have them all reset if you move too far back. But with practice you’ll be able to do it nearly every time. Many times just as a knight is dieing the others will reset leaving you plenty of room to finish him off. Imho the key might be to have your melee range attack until you have 1 knight singled out and the rest reset. Otherwise melee just get eaten up on this pull. And you will waste a lot of time reviving downed players.
Kill 2 knights then finish off the last knight with Laurent. Laurent isn’t much of a worry compared to the knights. Funny how the trash mobs are more difficult than the boss but the boss has a ton of hp……………………….oh wait, nvm
Some valid points and some venting there. As for the CoF event I dont think it takes as long as 30 minutes. What I do is use gw2lfg because I can group with people from other servers so if the gate is contested on the server I’m on there may be a chance that it could be open on one of the other group members servers.
Myself I dont mind the dungeons being a grind for tokens. Its guaranteed gear vs. random boss item drops. And I dont mind some dungeon mechanics being simple. At least you can get the gear. I think about some mmo’s and how hard it was to get gear and the big investment of time it took to do that content. Many times gear was just completely unobtainable if you couldn’t play 3 dedicated hours an evening 3-4 nites a week.
Agreed some aspects of dungeons could be make more interesting with not too much work I guess. But I do have some really fun groups and I ’ve had some really bad ones. Some PUG groups take 1 1/2hrs to complete a dungeon path that normally takes 30 minutes. But I do like that dungeons dont often keep you in them for much more than an hour.
I enjoy path 3 but I dont need any gear from SE so I never bothered to try for path 1 groups. Maybe if I ever got the bug to chase the Dungeon Master title I would. But its enough that I’ve seen a little of the content and enjoyed it. But admittedly I’m somewhat of the more casual player and have to pick and choose what my time goes towards in game.
I’ve been in PUGs that killed rather than kited. Granted thats a bit rare since PUGs are generally undergeared and played rather poorly. For example, I’ve been in PUG groups that couldn’t kite that event.
Err never seen one blink there, but using a Telportation Gun is common.
And Oakhearts are better placed in the back of the room. Gives whoever is glitching them there much more space to maneuver, and you can still melee the boss down.
I couldn’t figure out how to blink or jump over, thought maybe it was just me. I was wondering about the Teleportation Gun. I hear people are using them a lot in Arah too.
I always try to recommend putting the oakhearts in the back of the room too, its much safer than sticking them on vines imho. In the group I was in we were on the forward up path and they just didn’t want to deal with the spiders. They didn’t type english very well so they kept typing… mesmer portal leaf …. o_O
Seems like you’re just mad you don’t get a easy ride because you can’t afford it. If I wanted something bad, I’d pay for it. 15g isn’t a lot.
Not mad at all. I enjoy running dungeons and from my point of view to pay for something I get anyways doesn’t make sense to me. I’m indifferent to the entire thing and as I mentioned…. if someone wants to go that route then more power to them
I’d keep trying to do dungeons if thats what you want to do. Just dont expect level 80s to be happy there is a level 30 in group. BUT you can join with other non-80s and run it to your hearts delite!
So I’ve been running lots of TA for the past couple weeks and have nearly everything out of there I could possibly want. I’ve gained a lot of experience and learned a few tricks. But this morning I was in a group and we were on the final boss in TA forward-up and I had a group keep telling me to blink onto the leaf that is near the mouth of the cave closest to the boss and to portal our group up. Well I wasn’t able to do it on my mesmer. Anybody else seen this done?
The only time I’ve seen this done was when a warrior put the 3 oakhearts up there but I could never figure out how he got up there himself.
I dont see a problem as long as you can dodge. Then again I’m a mesmer so I can use illusions for kiting/tanking. Oh and btw I think there are vid’s of people solo’ing Kohler. I remember it posted here not too long ago.
must be your server. not a “lot” of mesmers around in pve or pvp. And most mesmers I do see just like to spam #1 GS skill and play with phantasm builds. warriors however is another story. you couldn’t swing a purple butterfly net without catching a half dozen at a time
TA is still one of the, if not the fastest Dungeon (incl all 3 paths) where none of them take more than 30minutes…
While this is very true I’ve also been in pug groups that took over an hour to run one path. So of course mileage will vary.
TA mechanics are like most of the dungeons. The mobs have simple mechanics. The events aren’t too elaborate. But the dungeon is so accessible I dont know how you can put it down. If TA has any flaw its that so much of the content can and normally is attempted to be skipped. Skipping inevitably leads to one or two of the group dying sometimes repeatedly so…… guess what skipping resulted sometimes in taking a lot longer than just killing the mobs. And those mobs aren’t that hard to kill.
I see TA as an opportunity to get gear that I want vs. trying to find a group that can do Arah. I have no issue with it. Its a nice dungeon. Adding another WP inside would be nice though. Having a group have to wait 8 minutes for someone to run back from a death seems a bit much.
Thanks very much Katsuya Jou for trying to include me on one of your Arah groups. Its too bad I’m on a US server and can’t join you on the EU servers. I would have enjoyed it.
For now I’ll hope and try to find a group like yours on the US servers. Thanks again.
I dont suppose you might have room for another dungeoneer like Xuro would you? Like Xuro I’ve watched a lot of video’s (particularly path 3 and Lupicus) but I find even trying to use gw2lfg that all those people want people experienced in Arah. I’ve run a lot of dungeons so my mesmer is well geared so I wouldn’t be running Arah just for the gear but rather the desire to do that dungeon. Thanks.
… most people will have quit running Fractals because they have the items they want from it, they have completely given up on it, or they have forgotten about it all together. By the time this “fix” comes out, it will be too late….
Isn’t another big content patch due out in January?
I noticed that many of the posts say “experienced only”. I dont blame people for wanting experienced people so they can finish a run. But I guess they forget that they had to do it for the first time too.
I wouldn’t mind doing Arah. I’ve watched as many video’s as I could for path 3 and my character is full exotic and I have plenty of dungeon experience. But after looking at the listings on gw2lfg it makes me wonder if I want to even try it. I dont need the gear so I’d be doing it just to do it. Guess I’ll just consider it for now.
I don’t see any way to change the skipping culture and I take it for what it is. There are 2 reasons I keep doing dungeons and its not about gear at all. First, I enjoy the dungeons I think Anet did a nice job and they look great. Secondly, every now and again I get lucky and group with the nicest people and we tear up the dungeons every bit as fast as the “speed run” crowd. And when I get in great groups like that I wish I could group with them ALL the time because they GET IT. Its not about racing to the end of the game and getting everything then complaining “ok so whats next?”
So what stops you from grouping with those people all the time? Lack of guesting? That seems like a much better thing to fix.
Fixing/adding game features/mechanics is also MUCH easier and simpler to do than trying to fix people’s attitudes.
I wish I could group with them but like I mentioned I tend to use gw2lfg a lot so its cross server and its hard to get together with those people again. I’ve tried but like you might guess everybody is off doing different things at different times.
I agree that the only thing to do is fix/tweak/modify dungeons but I just try to take them for what they are today. There will be some positive and negative aspects and its best just to roll with it. The designers do seem to have an ear for the public comments. They just dont change everything that is suggested. But maybe it will show up in future content.
i run arah daily with a lupicus one shot. i love this dungeon. gw2lfg.com was a huge win for me because i started getting lots of legit, speed clear arah runs now i just need boots and my mesmer will have the full set.
I was beginning to lose hope that I’d get to do this dungeon but maybe I’ll have to give it a try.
Gw2 seems to have a skipping culture… they respond : “lulz fast runz”
As much as I hate to say it one of the first things I noticed about the dungeon culture was that they want it easy and they want instant gratification. So many of the players I’ve grouped with (and I use gw2lfg so I group a lot with cross server players) have the worst grouping skills and some players are just downright ignorant.
I don’t see any way to change the skipping culture and I take it for what it is. There are 2 reasons I keep doing dungeons and its not about gear at all. First, I enjoy the dungeons I think Anet did a nice job and they look great. Secondly, every now and again I get lucky and group with the nicest people and we tear up the dungeons every bit as fast as the “speed run” crowd. And when I get in great groups like that I wish I could group with them ALL the time because they GET IT. Its not about racing to the end of the game and getting everything then complaining “ok so whats next?”
I only seem to have performance issues in GW2 at certain times. I can WvW or run dungeons just fine (my hard drive working hard all the time) and then all of a sudden I’ll hit a big stutter spike where things just freeze on my screen then jump ahead as my pc catches up. It only does that occasionally but it never did it prior to the Wintersday patch.
I did some searching and uninstalled a couple things hoping it would help. I dont think it has. The hard drive still runs constantly.
I played SWTOR, MWO, D3, SC2, WoW all with this setup and never remember a time or any game that made my hard drive run all the time. At certain times I could hear my hard drive working but then it would be quiet again.
Dont misunderstand my concern. I dont care that my hard drive is making noise. I’m worried about it working constantly which could lead to a failure. Replacing it wouldn’t be a problem. Loosing all my stuff would be. Thats my concern. To me it doesn’t seem normal for a hard drive to work this hard all the time due to running a game. What do you all think?
8gb of ram. I thought the same thing about the pagefile but it looks like I’ve got more than enough ram to spare.
edit: Ram usage appears to never go above 5gb. I’m looking are resource monitor and everything looks normal.
edit: according to resource monitor gw2.exe has the most usage by far but I dont see any other apps running other than firefox when I have browser open. puzzling.
When running the game my hard drive is buzzing like a bee hive. Why is this? I mean in other MMO’s sure you have the hard drive working but sometimes while I’m playing GW2 I’m listening to my hard drive working triple over time. I’ve played a lot of MMO’s and other games and never heard a hard drive work this hard ALL the time. Has anybody else experienced this?
Oh and when I alt tab out of the game the hard drive is fine. At first I thought it was my AVG running a scan in the background because I was starting to get bad framerates and stuttering in game. And I dont think its my hard drive because I have no symptoms running anything else.
Ever since Winterfest started I get some really wicked lag sometimes. It happens in dungeons, in Tixx and WvW. Only started after the whole wintersday thing came out.
I think its more about the player bringing the skill rather than “is my class good in pve”. I do a lot of dungeons and there are so many really poor players who just hit the same 3 or 4 buttons (one of those being there heal skill). And most players dont use there group skills at all. I’ve grouped with good necro’s and have no issue with that class. Other professions have the potential to do a lot more in some respects but fall short.
A good for instance is about 6 weeks ago my profession was considered “useless” in dungeons. Now they are desired in groups. The profession has received nothing but nerfs and broken skills since then yet the community views them as good now. Go figure.
So, the Wiki states that the Story Mode for a dungeon should be relatively easy for any makeshift group to get through…… we got absolutely trounced…… all of us were sufficiently frustrated. In total it took us close to two hours.
So what is the secret we’re missing? Why was it so kitten difficult? If that’s the wiki’s idea of “easy” then I dread to imagine what the Explorable Mode has in store. And even more I dread the higher-level dungeons.
Like the others, I’ve found that in many respects the story mode dungeon is harder than the explore. The story mode does prepare you for explore mechanics.
I’ve run a LOT of dungeons over the past weeks and two constants I’ve noticed is that people stand still too often not dodge rolling or evading…. and they are trying to do dungeons in a traditional group makeup with a tank, dps and healer/support role. Level and poorly geared people (relative to there level) just add to that. Also a lot of players have the “zerg” mentality. The lets run this fast and get our loot type of thinking really can make things messy in a hurry.
At a certain point level and gear make up for the shortcomings of other poor players. Once your geared up, lvl 80 and experienced you’ll find your the anchor to even a bad group. Then again even that sometimes isn’t enough.
I wouldn’t mind the tokens from story mode BUT the only reason I’ve ever run story mode is…
1. I really hate it when your in a group ready to run a dungeon explore and nobody in group has done story so you sit there trying to sort it out. When your running a particular dungeon for tokens this gets a bit annoying after the 5th or 6th time!
2. I like the dungeons. Its a nice diversion from wvw’ing all the time. I like seeing them and its nice to run story once in awhile. Besides I never run story mode more than once. And its because I am normally farming tokens like everybody else is.
My tip for finding a group is be flexible and use gw2lfg. You can stand at your soapbox all day and say “well I’m not going to do it because Anet should put something like that in the game!” or you can take a step back and realize you just want to run whatever dungeon and there is a great tool that you can use. I use it a lot and have rarely had to wait too long to get a group. And its cross server access gives you better odds when your trying to do CoF but the gate is contested on you server.
I put little value in professions being called Overpowered. Good thieves or elementalists can fight 10 people at a time. So you want to talk about imba? And thieves just got buffed.
I would think either 2 shatter mesmers or one of you go as a confusion build but playing similar tactics. Either one sounds like fun. If the 2 of you are roaming in wvw it might actually be more interesting if you each had different setups. If you both went shatter opponents would die so quickly it might actually turn into something boring unless you could find 5-8 opponents running in small groups to attack.
So we get inside, and 2 or 3 pulls into the what I understand to be the first instance, on its “easiest” setting, and its a total cluster!&@k mess.
I don’t want the game to be easy. I’ve had enough of easy. But I don’t want it to be hard simply because I don’t know whats going on. Any suggestions?
The dungeon crowd, for the most part, aren’t what I was used to. A lot of players are only focused on speed runs while others are purely farming gold or tokens. I didn’t get much help or explanation either. Mostly I just rely on youtube video’s of the content to make and sense of it.
Dont let a bad experience or two put you off doing dungeons. I’ve grouped with some great people and had a lot of fun. And I like the dungeons. Most of them dont chain you to your computer for 2 – 3 hrs. Good luck with your future runs!
I think the first dungeon you can do is lvl 35 Ascalonian Catacombs. You’ll get a mail telling you about it and it should show up on your map when it does. GW2 is different. And if instanced a lot in that “other” mmo then you’ll have to adjust a little bit to this one. Roles are a little different.
Checked this out running all 3 paths of AC and the bezerkers 2nd pass is always misses. Also I’m not sure but warlock dmg seems to be even less. Still observing it though.
This notion has baffled me since the release of the game, since clearly one of the major long term goals for your money is obtaining the highly desired legendary weapons- a goal which may currently translate to -“if you wear magic find and gimp yourself to make your group suffer,you become legendary”.
I had a CoF run with someone who had “Sunrise”. It looked very cool. And he was one of the worst players I’ve ever seen. He pretty much just autoattacked doing very little dps. And he was in downed state a lot.
I’ve had runs with groups that had dismal dps. Maybe they were wearing magic find gear.
Just tested against target dummies – beserker is wtfpwning the target dummies again without missing. Haven’t taken a close look at damage but at least he’s not whiffing anymore.
Good to hear. I’m also interested to see how the Warlock does. Maybe it was just me but the damage felt like it decreased some after the last patch.
On Anvil Rock its pretty steady “Fractals this and Fractals that”. Server has gone Fractals crazy and I guess for good reason. I still run CoF, AC and SE all the time. Very few on server are doing these. I use gw2lfg to find groups. Or else I’d be in same boat as you having to wait 30-45 min. to get a group together. I’m beggining to think I will start focusing on Fractals too for the same reasons as everybody else
I rolled a Charr as my first character because I’ve always been drawn to the rough beastly kind of characters like Worgen or Tauren. Charr fit the bill nicely and very glad I went that way.
PUG groups are such a roll of the dice. I’ve run a lot of dungeons recently and found that the majority of the players want it quick and easy. They dont group well or use there group benefitting abilities at all. They dont know the dungeons and they want to skip content a lot. And some are just plain rude.
Then every once in awhile I have a fantastic group and it makes me wish I could run everything with them. They are polite, they revive, they know how the play their profession and they know the dungeons.
As someone who has PUG’d a lot over the years in different MMO’s my only advice is dont let it aggrevate you when you get a bad group. Keep quiet, dont get engaged in a battle of words, finish up the dungeon if you think its possible with that group and move on as quickly as possible. Dwelling on a bad experience just makes things more sour.
After a few weeks of play, and going as high as 57 on my Mesmer, I did my first dungeon today,
So tell me, am I missing something? Is this what I can come to expect as I get higher, or at 80? And with fractals? Maybe I’m just a traditionalist, and I enjoy my standard roles a bit too much. Which is fine, as I enjoy wPvE enough to continue playing this till 80.
You have to let go of the WoW way of thinkin when it comes to groups in gw2. If you cant do that then you probably wont enjoy dungeons at all. I WvW a lot so dungeons are a great change of pace for me. Some aspects in dungeons are better than others. I do enjoy that I dont have to spend 30 minutes in a dungeon just clearing trash mobs.
If you are from different servers you can enter the LA overflow and type /join whateverthenameis and then run fractals. So yep you can use gw2lfg to find cross server groups. Awesome stuff
