Guild Wars 2

I agree with the above. As a dungeon runner, I switch out one for the other, depending on what I need for a given scenario. Sometimes, I use both on my swaps to lock mobs in place so my team can nail the mobs with AoEs.

Typically, I like GS for both the aesthetic and function. I prefer to “tank” by dodging and using damage mitigation/negation skills, especially because this game features dynamic combat. It feels more mobile (600 range leap) and being able to position mobs exactly where I want is nice. I feel sluggish with the hammer, but I respect it for being able to keep things in place and having nice protection uptime.

Your group should pull him into the middle of the room before engaging him, so you have room to move around. This scenario is the same as choosing to fight the mobs on the CoF p1 bridge (which is also a bad idea). If the mob can move, move it somewhere safe before fighting.

• I’d replace either 2h mastery or pure of voice with empowering might. This is another source of AH heal that you’re missing out on. I personally use soldier runes over using pure of voice as a trait, so I save a major trait slot.
• I’d run master of consecrations over consecrated ground for the wall of reflection uptime. Against slave driver, you should be in the frontlines, putting up wall of reflection right about the time the effigy starts hurling fireballs at you (refresh if the battle lasts that long).
• You’re honestly not supposed to facetank damage like general “tanks” in other MMOs (well, it works on certain bosses, but not all). Damage mitigation/negation comes from proper use of dodge and survivability skills. Against slave driver, you shouldn’t have to heal until he goes into quickness mode. Wall of reflection can cover you from the effigy for a bit. After that, you can stall with a signet of resolve heal, a few dodge rolls, renewed focus elite (activate virtue of resolve for a little heal before it refreshes), protection from hold the line, protection from virtue of courage activation, shield of wrath (optional focus on swap), and empower AH heal if enough of your allies are nearby (optional staff on swap).
• I wouldn’t stick to only using hammer and scepter/shield. Use weapons that help you deal with the current scenario best. Against slave driver, I personally like to start off with empower on staff before he goes hostile, and then I swap back to GS to DPS him down. I’ll switch back to staff if I ever have to blow all my other stalling skills to kill him. During the acolyte part, if your team runs to the safe spots, you could use staff to block away the mobs.
• You shouldn’t be having an issue at the brazier part unless, for some reason, you’re pulling more than the normal 3 mobs that each brazier defender should have. One common mistake that I see here is that people don’t pay attention to where everyone else is, and they just immediately start a brazier. The safest scenario for this part is to not touch any of the brazier rings until everyone is in the room. My static team likes to stack every defender in the middle of the braziers and go to 4 separate ones when everyone is ready. There’s no need to take unnecessary damage by triggering the braziers too early.
• I’m not sure what weapon you’re using at the braziers, but I personally like to use GS as the skills can kill a group of 3 mobs really quickly compared to the hammer. There’s a bit of a delay between each spawn, so killing them faster is what you want to do. You have the advantage of faster cleave hits, retaliation, and AoE control versus the hammer. Also, your most powerful hit won’t accidentally cause you to step outside the brazier. Aside from that, you have many ways to reduce damage, which I listed above for slave driver. If you blow through all of those, and the gate controller is still up, then the issue is probably the person on the gate controller. The person with the highest DPS should be taking it down, usually a warrior or thief (should go down in 3 seconds at most).
• You can only sustain against damage for so long, so I definitely recommend getting a bit more offensive power where possible. ~3k armor is really as high as you should go for toughness for more frequent mob aggro, and anything much higher than that is pretty much stalling the fight, since bosses have so much HP in this game. If you want to start somewhere, I’d suggest putting exquisite ruby jewels in your knight trinkets because, first, the jewels that come with knight trinkets, for some reason, don’t actually have toughness as its primary attribute, and second, because crit damage % is higher on jewels. You have a decent crit chance because of your knights gear, so why not take advantage of it over minor toughness?
• I forgot to mention this, but I find it helps to have a weapon set with a superior sigil of energy for survival, so you get a free extra dodge, which means a slight extra heal with your traits. I typically have this on my staff.

Sorry if I covered stuff that you already know, but this is what I came up with based on your information. I run pretty much the same build as you except I have more offensive attributes on my gear. I still have about 3k armor, 47% crit chance and about 15.5k HP. In my experience survivability comes from knowing how to counter the boss’s mechanics more so than stats.

P.S.: This is a neat build site: http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/guardian/

Kangataz.6842:

Lightrayne.7829:

If you’re going 30 in virtues mainly for the boon duration, you might want to use a boon duration rune set (in addition to/replacing your virtues investment):

• 2x Superior Rune of the Water (+15% boon duration)
• 2x Superior Rune of the Monk (+15% boon duration)
• 2x Major Rune of the Sanctuary (+10% boon duration)

wow do these runes stack?? that seems really cool in theory

Yep, I use these on my ele and engineer, who have +70% boon duration (40 from runes; 30 from traits). It even shows up on your hero panel.

I may get one for my guardian when I get my 2nd armor set, but for now, I’m using soldier runes for the condi cleanse w/ shouts, since my current build is based around that.

TooBz.3065:

Lightrayne.7829:

“but share the Warrior’s need to be in melee range to dole out maximum damage.”

Thanks, I needed a good laugh.

I hope you’re not implying I said that…. That’s a quote from the devs from December 14th when they gave their thoughts on each of the professions.

If you’re going 30 in virtues mainly for the boon duration, you might want to use a boon duration rune set (in addition to/replacing your virtues investment):

• 2x Superior Rune of the Water (+15% boon duration)
• 2x Superior Rune of the Monk (+15% boon duration)
• 2x Major Rune of the Sanctuary (+10% boon duration)

Other possible Runes to mix in: 2x Major Rune of the Water (10% boon duration), 2x Major Rune of the Monk (10% boon duration)

If you wanted to invest for an AH build, I would get your crit rate up with gear, so that you could take advantage of the crit damage that comes with the valor trait line. Also, I would drop the longer duration symbols and get empowering might (honor trait line) to have yet another form of boon application. Your boons should be lasting long enough before the next symbol drop, anyways.

Based on the dev views of a guardian:

“The Guardian is a heavy armor class who relies on boons to make up for their low levels of innate health. They focus on area control and punishing enemies for the position on the battlefield. We want them to feel very powerful when their boons are active, but if those boons are removed, they will start to feel pressure. They can remove conditions more easily than the Warrior, but share the Warrior’s need to be in melee range to dole out maximum damage.”

I’d probably say maybe not anytime soon, since I’m under the impression that they wanted guardians to be a melee-based profession, especially since many of its abilities are best at melee.

I don’t think a guardian wielding a bow would make much sense unless they enchant it with “guardian energy” or something when using the skills (think mesmer w/ GS). The scepter makes sense, since, in this game, it’s an instrument for channeling magical energy.

I’m not entirely sure how I feel about the ranged damage “issue” that keeps being brought up from time to time. I’ll agree that the scepter auto-attack is pretty bad. I would probably take a ground target attack (similar to engi grenades) over scepter’s current auto attack if I could.

Yep. It only changes the function, not the skin. The only time the skin changes is when you transmute another skin to replace it via transmutation stones.

Clarification:

• Changing any statistical components of weapons/armor have no effect on any cosmetic properties of that weapon or armor.
• Cosmetic properties of weapons/armor only change if you choose to do so via transmutation stones (the top row when transmuting).

I use the HotW chest and legs for the cloth look. My inspiration was Final Fantasy and various action RPG characters (one of my friends suggested for me to go black/red so I look like Dante :P). If it helps, here’s some screenshots of my character:

One of the things that has made the dungeon experience awesome for me was having a static dungeon team (friends or dungeon guild) that develops its teamwork over time. I do dungeons with my team pretty much every time I log on. It’s certainly not required to do dungeons, but I feel you may get a better experience from it.

If there’s any issue that you run into while doing dungeons, always ask for help on these forums as there are many helpful players who can give you great advice. Some people like to rant and complain something is “impossible” when they haven’t even tried to ask for advice, which doesn’t get them anywhere. This thread has a few linked videos for dungeon guides if you want to know encounters ahead of time: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Video-Guides-To-all-Explorable-Mode-Dungeons/first

Good luck!

Negrul.5423:

False. Try playing an Engineer and using that website, you’ll wait for hours to get a group.

False. I’ve been using my engineer several times within the last few weeks and got into a group within minutes. I’d make my own if no one was posting and that, too, filled up quickly.

There are non-elitist groups out there. Just because you don’t see them at your own convenience doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. Be happy that the elitist groups aren’t taking you because those are probably the people you don’t want to be playing with anyways.

Ashmite.8234:

Not saying its a problem that its on me, i’m just wondering why its Always on me, that seemed strange.

Yeah, the devs didn’t want to disclose the full details on aggro so players don’t find ways to bot it or something. Your guess is as good as mine, but the wiki explanation is pretty decent.

The aggro mechanics are explained on this page: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Aggro

My best guess is that you probably did more damage than your frontliners. I steal aggro from frontliners on my necro and other medium/light armor professions sometimes, and they’re all full zerker, traited for direct damage.

I’m not trying to be condescending here, but why is it a problem if you pull aggro? Having aggro means that you’re taking pressure off the rest of your teammates and giving them an opportunity to build up a DPS chain as long as you don’t frantically run away, causing them to chase the boss. If a boss is chasing you, use your dodges and any skills that will help you survive against their most dangerous attacks. If it’s melee, throw some roots/snares (your allies should help with this too) while kiting into your party members, so that they can get some easy hits in. If you think you might go down, make sure you’re reachable for an ally to pick you up.

I personally don’t think getting downed is the end of the world, especially when you do your best so that your team can make up for your hits while you may have to deal with the boss. That’s at least still more productive than those who just spam their skills and make no effort to stay alive. On occasion, even though you want to be DPS, you may have to temporarily give up a bit of that role to make sure your party members can damage the boss.

The boss aggro patterns may not always be predictable, so adapting via minor role switch is the best way to deal with it, in my opinion. I like to think of it as being accidentally more helpful to your team. :P

Indure.5410:

Really doubt that will happen. It may be get a cooldown or uptime adjustment, but there’s little reason to change it.

I agree with this. Spirit weapons had their own AI and being invulnerable offered very little counter-play when other “pets” were able to be destroyed (i.e. spirits, turrets, clones, elementals, etc.). They had some pretty powerful abilities (i.e. auto attack KB, continual projectile absorption, condi removal spam) for being able to persist as long as they did.

The closest thing I can see to an HP bar nerf is a limit on the number of projectile reflections, if anything. Spells like wall of reflection are limited on its capabilities. It’s a stationary, reactive ability compared to how spirit weapons could repeatedly use their abilities and move around like pets.

If I’m reading your questions correctly:

• Arah STORY MODE is needed to complete your personal story.
• To host EXPLORABLE MODE for a party, you MUST complete story mode.
• To join EXPLORABLE MODE with a party, at least one person in your party must be able to host EXPLORABLE MODE (see previous bullet point).

20 tokens isn’t DR. It’s daily repeat reduction. Your initial daily (until reset) is typically 60 tokens and any non-DR repeat of that path is 20 tokens max.

To clarify (assuming you did not hit DR):

• Initial clear of a given explorable dungeon path for the server day will reward 60 tokens max. (daily clear reward)
• Repeating that path for the day will reward 20 tokens max. (repeat clear reward)

If you get a token reward amount under 60 but above 20, you hit DR on the initial clear reward. If you get a token reward amount under 20, you hit DR on the repeat clear reward.

I’ve obtained all the skins I wanted since the last time I posted, so here’s an update.

I have my skill keybinds pretty much around WASD (which I use for character movement). I mainly use the mouse for turning my camera, target selection, target marking, weapon swap (too awkward for me to use on keyboard), and vent PTT.

I’m not sure what you plan to do with your Guardian, but I primarily use a greatsword, using the hammer and shield in dungeons for certain situations.

• I use the hammer mainly for AoE control in fights where you can’t skip trash mobs. I lead with GS 5’s pull and swap to hammer for skill 5 (ring of warding) to keep mobs in place. In general, its skills are great for AoE.
• I use the shield as another method of pushing mobs together, so that my team can AoE. I use it against Lupicus in Arah in case my Wall of Reflection is on cd to block his multi shot attack in phase 3. For me, it’s generally a weapon I use when the bubble can hard counter something for teammates or if I need to position mobs.

If a weapon offers valuable abilities that I can’t get on other available weapons of that profession, I generally keep those extra weapons on standby for situations where those abilities shine.

It’s basically the “boon duration” set, offering you the highest amount of boon duration. Superior Rune of the Water’s 3rd and 4th set bonus do not help with this at all.

2x Major Rune of the Water → +10% boon duration
2x Superior Rune of the Water → +15% boon duration
2x Superior Rune of the Monk → +15% boon duration

Total → +40% boon duration

Anet has different teams that specialize in different areas of the game. You don’t want someone who specializes in living story lore to balance fractals… Other things like SAB and pvp balance DON’T affect fractals. Those other teams never touched fractals to begin with and their contributions wouldn’t make a difference.

The more you know: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/colin-johanson-outlines-guild-wars-2-live-game-development/

CoF is currently the most profitable dungeon and requires the least amount of effort, so general PuGs will likely gravitate towards that. I generally don’t see PuGs posting for CoE unless they want to path exploit or someone actually has the patience to go through that with PuGs. There’s a lot of mechanics where inexperienced and/or uncooperative players can ruin the run for everyone else, making you spend a really long time in there when it should only take about 20 minutes to finish the paths.

I personally like doing CoE with a coordinated team. I do it quite frequently with my group of friends.

I’m pretty sure fractal rewards and SAB rewards were designed by two different teams. I feel that whoever designed the fractal rewards has seriously strayed from the usual GW style of rewards: can be dropped, can be purchased, and can be made — not just only RNG. This is why I’m pretty impressed by the SAB team being so small and making content rather accessible.

Are you expecting to facetank stuff in dungeons? I’m going based off of what information you provided and am not trying to be harsh. You’re not supposed to sit there and take damage like tanks do in other MMOs. You will eventually have to dodge/negate/mitigate damage to survive.

My traits are nearly the same as yours, and my gear is more offensive with a mix of knights and zerkers. Our skills are exactly the same except I use greatsword as my main weapon. I have ~3k armor and ~40% crit chance. Your setup is fine if that’s what you’re comfortable with. Perhaps it’s not a statistical issue?

One of the things I noticed when shifting to a build like this is that you will draw mob attention more frequently because of your armor rating, meaning that you’re pretty much taking more damage than those with less armor. If you want to come close to actual facetanking with this build, you probably want to use a hammer for its protection uptime on the auto attack. Otherwise, you’re probably better off timing dodges/skills to avoid damage spikes.

I survive well on my guardian using pretty much the same basic stuff you have by timing my dodges and renewed focus. The reality is that no amount of stats will make you invincible, but negating/reducing damage at the right time will help you survive longer.

I’d probably put empowering might as one of your major traits in the honor line because that will heal you frequently with AH. Also, it’s another form of support you can offer your team. Either replace 2H mastery or pure of voice.

Here’s a few tips that I use to keep alive:

• Having a sigil of energy on an alternate weapon set for swapping can give you an extra dodge roll, which, because of your traits, will heal you and your nearby teammates a bit. I usually put one on my staff, shield, and focus, since those are typically the alternate weapons I use for defense.
• For tougher fights, using skill 4 (empower) on a staff will tick your Altruistic healing trait multiple times on top of the skill’s actual heal amount. When you do this, you increase your team’s damage and you’ve healed yourself quite a bit. You can also use skill 2 for its sequence heal and skill 3 to tick AH (altruistic healing).
• If you feel you need more crit , pick up a sigil of accuracty for a 5 crit chance boost.
• Start learning which attacks hurt you more and how to dodge/negate/mitigate them. There are some bosses or mobs where a well timed aegis (retreat or virtue of courage) can simply block a lot of damage from a single lethal hit. I have used this to block a heavy swipe attack from Giganticus Lupicus, for example, which would deal a lot of damage to my team and send them flying across the room. If you know that projectiles are going to be a problem, wall of reflection and shield of the avenger make it trivial. The list goes on and on, but guardians have a lot of tools to help them survive.
• Against certain bosses, a focus may be more useful than a shield for its free blocks with skill 5 (blast finisher is a plus). You already have enough protection at your disposal, anyways, and bubble push is pretty meh for most boss fights.

I hope that helps. If you have more questions, I’ll check in later.

Also, if you could provide an exact scenario where you find yourself dying more often in a dungeon (Kholer fight, hellstorms in CoF, dredge, etc.), I may be able to provide more assistance. For now, I’m just advising in the general sense based on the information provided.

For the specific fight you mentioned, I personally don’t think it’s a fight where it’s worth it to go back and forth to melee him because of the terrain setup. I’d probably range him with scepter when he’s in the center and melee him when he’s off the center. You won’t find yourself in that situation too much, and even then, no amount of swiftness really helps, especially when you’re slowed down because of combat.

A: Useful if you take the time to learn how to use one.

I love having thieves in my group if they know how to play their profession or are at least willing to take advice. A thief isn’t my main nor is it my specialty, but I know how to melee with them and which skills to use for certain situations. They don’t offer general support like guardians and eles do, but they’re better off doing high damage and niche support (i.e. shadow refuge).

I’ve seen many thieves simply refuse to melee (which is how you can deal the most damage in dungeons) because they’re afraid of taking damage when the reality is that thieves are very evasive (when traited for high endurance return or use more evasive skills) and can survive well with proper usage of signet of malice’s passive (multi hits like pistol whip). I use d/d for single target damage (bosses or specific mob that needs to die quickly) and I use sword/pistol for cleave/control with full zerker gear. I use my shortbow mainly for running through trash for speed runs or for niche situations where you might need poison, weakness, blast finisher, etc. I never range a fight unless it’s something where melee is pretty much suicide such as the ooze boss in Arah P1, who pretty much pulses KD at melee.

If you like the profession enough that you are willing to learn everything about it and use every resource (i.e. switching weapons/traits/skills for the situation) you can to help your team, then that should be reason enough for you to run it if you’re just going for general dungeon running. Once you’ve mastered all that, a few reasons why someone probably wouldn’t take you is because of optimization for a purpose (i.e. highest DPS for CoF p1 farm time; 4 warriors + 1 mesmer), because the group has not witnessed a good thief, or that they are just used to professions that provide the standard conventions: general supportive boons (i.e. might, protection, etc.), strong anti-projectiles (feedback, wall of reflection), etc. I think you’re going to get a lot of mixed reviews on this one, so you might just have to go try it out yourself to really judge it.

The thief is one of my favorite professions (over warrior) to play in dungeons because I really love the mobility/evasion, easy access to control, and seeing the constant big numbers when geared for damage.

Forcing your play style on others is not the way to go. Make your own groups or join groups that don’t want to skip. This topic has already been discussed to death.

Skipping explained in a nutshell by Rob:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

It’s one of those human things to do something with the path of least resistance and danger, especially when there is a reward at the end. I could make enemies never drop their aggro on players and force them to fight every single mob, but I don’t see that as a viable solution right now.
I think the better solution is to look at why people are skipping things, and approach from a different angle. Trash mobs have too much HP, and can’t be counted on for lucrative drops from a Risk/Time vs Reward, so people interested in making money (most groups) aren’t incentivized to do it, whereas the end chest/boss are more guaranteed and accountable returns on time and risk. I also think there is something to be said about interesting trash mob mechanics making them more enjoyable of a fight.
I can’t make the rewards from trash mobs so lucrative though that people just farm the first couple trash mobs/boss in a dungeon and then rinse/repeat. We encountered this when people just farmed the first boss in an instance and then restarted it (earlier around launch time), and we had to adjust the content as a result. It’s a fine line you have to walk to encourage players to get to the end, but make the process of getting there rewarding enough as well.

I don’t imagine this next update will resolve all the skipping behavior. The path of least resistance is engrained in people, and even if I do everything I could to incentivize people, there will still be those who skip stuff. I have been fixing exploits that will require players to complete more of the events in dungeons, but I am sure people will still skip what they can to get to their end goal.

For now I would encourage those not looking to skip to find some folks who don’t like skipping and make a guild with them… or maybe look for guilds that are dedicated to not skipping, and tag along with them. I’m in a couple of them (anonymously), and it really is an effective solution to playing the game the way you want to play it: Find other people with similar interests and band together with them.

I’d say the guardian or the warrior if they melee and keep things in place for the ele to unload spells on the mobs. When I was leveling my ele, I always hated having to kite whenever my summon was on cooldown.

For PvE, it all really depends on who you play with and how it affects what you’re doing. If you’re by yourself in the open world, you could fight with a staff and no armor if you wanted. If you’re playing with other people, in something like dungeons, you’re affecting their progress and not just your own.

My personal opinion is that neglecting half your elements is like neglecting half of your profession’s capabilities. Every element has its purpose, offering you a wide variety of abilities. Whether or not you like them does not change the fact that they are useful.

You can use the tree ramps next to the walls to jump around the walls. It is not an exploit, but intended, so that experienced players can use it to their advantage once they understand the fractal more. There’s a dev post about that, but I don’t feel like looking for it at the moment. The walls are just minor setbacks, not permanent problems.

Jzl.8715:

TRON.1085:

Excursion.9752:

Make your own LFG post. There are a TON of people looking at the same page thinking just like you. Just because warriors and mesmers are taking the initiative of posting on the site and you are not does not mean that’s all that people run now.

Take the time and post I’m sure you will fill up fast.

Been there done that, isn’t the case…

Then I guess we haven’t been using the same gw2lfg.com site or playing the same game.

It’s probably because TRON mentioned Europe LFGs. I noticed Europe CoF listing are less than NA’s. Just throwing that out there…

Here’s some tips from my experience:

• Never bring MF gear into dungeons. That gear, as far as I know, is more or less intended for farming mobs with better drop rates, which are in the open world. MF does not affect dungeon chests, only mob drops (confirmed by Izzy, an Anet Dev). By equipping it, you are hindering yourself from being able to kill stuff faster or survive better. You are rewarded more from dungeons by being able to clear more efficiently, so you can get the chest loot and end reward loot.
• I think your team has a problem with large groups of mobs because of the lack of efficient cleave damage. If the mesmer could learn to use sword/focus and the warriors use axe/offhand and GS, you have more AoE power.
• I’m not sure if your elementalist is using frost bow, but its skill 4 can burn down burrows fast at the event that you’re having trouble with. Ask your party members just to channel skill 4 on the burrow and drop the bow to continue their regular damage (rest of bow skills are useless for the burrow scenario).

Sometimes, even though you’re very clear, people STILL have problems reading your ad. Here’s some examples from my experience:

• I wanted to start a group for CoF story, so that I would have more characters that could host CoF explorable. My ad was posted under CoF story category AND the description said it was CoF story. Four warriors had come and gone to the party asking why there weren’t other warriors in the party and thought it was a p1 farming group…… Now, I don’t have much of a problem with people that want to farm p1, but if every time you see the word CoF, you think p1 farm, then there’s probably something wrong here.
• My usual ad for CoF p1 and p2 runs say “any profession welcome” in the description because I like to work with what I have. On occasion, I get a person that tries to join my party and attempts to kick a ranger or whatever profession they don’t like. I ask the kickers to leave because, for some reason, “any profession welcome” wasn’t clear enough.
• My ad usually says “self-join” and includes /join <insert name here> on the description. Yet, sometimes people pm me saying stuff like “I would like to join”. If they had attempted the /join they would know the party is full and would stop asking why I won’t respond to them while I’m trying to do the run.

It’s frustrating, but at the end of the day, it’s the nature of PuG groups with strangers. There’s no standard that everyone follows like that of a well-organized guild. The best we can do handle the situation to the best of our abilities.

Probably the wallet.

Mob skipping has existed since GW1. Anet has even said that it’s a viable strategy if you can master it and choose to do so. Of course, one should learn the dungeon layout the first few times or skipping is not going to be effective. If one is skipping, it’s usually because one understands the dungeon layout and the dungeon rewards are needed in repetition.

Anet does play with random players. In fact, some of the PuGs you play with may be Anet devs hiding their tags (Rob is one that does this; he said this in one of his posts).

If Anet doesn’t answer this post, it’s probably because this topic has been debated to death several times already.

The verdict is this:
If you don’t want to skip, find other like-minded players that agree and make a group. Skipping is not an exploit and is an accepted choice, especially because you need to invest time to repeat for rewards. The keyword here is choice. Don’t force other players to play your way because by now we should understand where both sides are coming from.

One of the big threads on skipping (includes a posting by Rob H): https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Will-the-new-update-stop-skipping/page/1#post1205684

You know you’ve played guardian too long when aegis becomes your primary dodge roll to negate single hard hit attacks.

You can clear any dungeon using any setup, but when you want efficiency, certain professions are better, depending on the dungeon (I’m including fractals). The post above me explains an example.

It’s really all about intent and optimizing for that intent. Does the group want to clear as fast as possible? Does the group simply just want people and skip mobs for a casual speed clear? This is where players will filter for professions.

Just play your profession as best as you can, helping your team as much as possible. I play every profession in CoF (because it’s popular among PuGs), working with as many different combinations of groups as possible (professions, skill level, etc.). It helps me learn the profession’s role in the dungeon and how to adapt to any kind of team. When I want to do dungeons more seriously and efficiently, I have my own dungeon crew I can do stuff with.

If the limit of what you want to do is a casual speed clear, you have nothing to worry about, but if you’re trying to get into something like a CoF money farm, you’re likely dealing with optimal preferences. Casual speed clear groups just want to farm the daily tokens and get a decent amount of coin, so they’re happy as long as they have cooperative people and get the run done. Dungeon farmers are pretty much heavily in it for the rewards, so they want nothing but the best — no room for mistakes, screwing around, subpar professions, etc.

The elementalist, in my experience, is one of the best professions that work very well with dungeon teams. You can stack might (and other relevant boons) quickly, have access to many AoEs (damage, snares, heals, disables), and can easily cleanse conditions from teammates.

As far as game mechanics go, no. I’d probably write it down if it’s hard to recall for later. It would certainly be nice if they had bullet points under the achievement or something, showing you which paths you did, though.

Even more proof that the level argument is invalid and that if you take the time to learn encounters, you can deal with the new AC. Nicely done.

Stooperdale.3560:

I agree entirely that experience is more important than itemization. However with AC becoming so tough, where are new players going to gain experience?

Well, there’s plenty of helpful video guides out there (i.e. Strife’s dungeon guides on youtube), and there’s quite a few people out there who are willing to teach others. I’ve seen plenty of new 80s hitting the CoF p1 + p2 chain, and many aren’t ashamed to ask for advice. I’ll gladly show them the ropes, especially if it means increasing the number of more experienced players in the pool of PuG dungeon runners.

If the new players are patient and want to put in the effort, they can also learn for themselves. My dungeon crew and I didn’t just magically learn the encounters — we went through trial and error, eventually getting the hang of it, back when there were no guides, speed clears, and all dungeons were new.

We need something like this as a sticky as well as general group strategies.

I have been on plenty of PuGs that have done this without a mesmer. If you all were indeed lagging, why isn’t that the first thing to blame?

CaptainVanguard.4925:

Honestly, the hardcores have no second reason to go back to a dungeon because end game gear for a hardcore is in the ascended items from fractals. Statistically, they gain more from doing fractal runs while dungeon runs are not casual friendly, especially after the people who already “have” dungeon gear are effectivly making it harder for those that want it.

Why should a casual be denied their entertainment in turn? Does that mean a casual should spend the entirety of his carrear doing wvw, open world pve and pvp if he can be bothered? No, it means he should be allowed to do the same content at his own choosing.

I’m not casual, nor am I hardcore, but I believe dungeons set the stage for something like fractals. If it weren’t for the things that I learned through trial and error in dungeons, I think fractals would have been more difficult for me. When it comes to dungeon rewards, I believe only people that want to put effort into it deserve those rewards. Again, the stat acquisition is not limited to dungeons.

I, for one, do dungeons to acquire skins and to make coin (not CoF p1 spam) in a manner that helps me develop focused team play, which I enjoy. I can’t efficiently get this kind of reward anywhere else except dungeons. Fractal income gain is poor in comparison, and I find it less fulfilling in comparison to dungeons, especially because it’s mostly based on an RNG system compared to a dungeon’s token reward system.

How are casuals being prevented from doing dungeon content and why does it seem like you speak for all of them? This is why there are angry assumptions thrown at both casuals and hardcores. Define casual. I have many friends who can only play like 2 hours a day, and they do dungeon content with me just fine. It’s because they put enough effort to learn the content. There’s a difference between something you can learn and something that is impossible. It’s the person that denies themselves the content by not putting in any effort.

Like you said, people should be able to choose the content that they want to do. Mastering it is another thing. They’re not being denied content if they’re simply choosing not to learn and complete the content. “Casuals” are allowed to get their feet wet in dungeons. It’s up to them whether or not they want to put in effort.

Story mode can be for the lore and a casual walk-through, but explorable mode needs to be challenging as advertised. The only real reward that’s out of your reach as someone that doesn’t want to endure the explorable difficulty is skins. I’m certain plenty of “casuals” have learned to work with and without experienced players to obtain these rewards, and they did well to deserve them. There’s some WvW skins that I like, but I don’t like WvW, so I don’t deserve it’s rewards if I don’t want to meet the challenge to earn it. I’m not being denied because I chose not to collect badges for them just as one can choose not to do dungeons for the token rewards.

Enjoyment of dungeon content is subjective. I’ve stated my reasons above, and your suggestion sounds like you want to get rid of the content that only people like me can enjoy. “Casuals” and “hardcores” aren’t the only ones who play this game. I guess, since we’re using a labeling system here, I’ll call my group “competitive casuals”. We enjoy playing with other people, working on a deeper level to achieve a daily income and aesthetic rewards. I will not cross over to open world PvE content and say it’s too easy, demanding that bosses need to be super hard and beat new players down to the ground. I will not fail at jumping puzzles and ask for walking platforms to be added. Again, these game modes have specific groups in mind, so that there’s coverage for as many player types as possible.

Here’s how I understand some of the game modes:

• Open world PvE is for large-scale cooperative casual play and learning the game.
• Dungeons and fractals are for players that want focused small-scale teams to tackle challenging PvE content.
• WvW is generally for players that love large-scale cooperative competitive combat.
• PvP is for players that want small-scale cooperative competitive combat.

Let “casuals” have open world PvE and story mode dungeons. It is up to them if they want to move on to a higher level of play in explorable dungeons. All they are really missing is the aesthetic rewards which have a similar kind of prerequisite as other content such as WvW.

CaptainVanguard.4925:

The problem here is that one guys idea of greatness is another guys idea of pointless suffering.

I agree with the OP, dungoneering is “not” fun, and the real issue is that some guys who complained it was too easy have no consideration for those who didnt get the chance to “enjoy” the easy mode, so those guys who now have the best gear already, and thus have no real reason to return to dungoneering ANYWAY now have the best gear while others have to work EVEN harder to attain it than they did.

This, pointless, backwards, elite-based logic needs to die in a fire somewhere and never return, preferably in an inferno.

The fact is, the difficulty of dungeons should scale based upon the personal choice of the player, if the player doesnt WANT to try hard why should they be MADE to? Sure, im prepaired to take longer than the other guy to get my epics but that does NOT mean I should have no right to get them.

Dungeons have been advertised to reward coordinated players who were willing to face the “challenge” given by the dungeon, so I don’t know why people are asking for them to completely turn around on that. The stats you get in dungeon gear can be acquired outside the dungeon as well, through the TP or karma vendors, so the gear access is irrelevant. The only clear main reasons I see for running an explorable dungeon mode is to earn income and/or collect skins/collectibles unique to that dungeon.

No one is forced to do any explorable dungeon mode for ANY statistical advantage as far as gear goes, so I don’t understand why there is any complaint in that regard. I can understand the curiosity of lore as I care both about the lore and the challenge when I do dungeons, but really, the lore in explorable is really not that substantial, anyways. The lore in the explorable paths can easily be summed up in a few sentences, so you’re not missing much.

If the player doesn’t want to try hard, then why is the player insisting on doing dungeons, given the advertisement of it being for coordinated players who want challenges? Dungeons were designed to be mechanically different than the open world PvE. A player in a focused party of five has a lot more impact than a player ikittenerg in open world PvE. An open world PvE player wishing dungeons to be like open world PvE is like the stepping into sPvP and asking for opposing players to be easy AI NPCs.

We all have our own “sandboxes” of comfort: open world PvE, dungeons, PvP, and WvW. You won’t see me asking for open world PvE to have hardcore bosses because I understand that there needs to be a place like open world PvE for players to get started and play casually. There’s even casual mini dungeons out there if you want the experience (Vexa’s Lab and Forsaken Halls).

Dungeons are a place for players to feel a sense of PvE endgame “challenges”, which can start as early as level 35. Dungeons are one of the general areas of PvE where you can actually enjoy the proper coordination of a focused team. If you want good stat gear and/or a way to generate income, you can do that in the open world PvE content already, so that shouldn’t be a sole reason to do a dungeon. If your complaint is about obtaining the skins, then that’s a problem that occurs with many other modes. WvW, for example, has exclusive skins that you can only get with badges, so non-WvW players would have to work hard to get those by playing WvW just as those who want dungeon skins should learn and do dungeons to collect tokens for skins.

The topic of this thread was whether or not dungeons are fun. As others have said, fun in dungeons is subjective, and there’s no way to satisfy everyone. However, please understand that dungeons are a game mode that is targeting a specific group: those that want coordinated 5-person team grouping content in PvE. Trying hard IS part of this, and by removing effort, then there is no point of this intended game mode. If you don’t want to put effort into working with a team, you have open world PvE, which is intended to target a broader audience.

I’m not going to throw the casual/hardcore label around to make these points. The real label is the sandbox(es) you enjoy. The only real things that I think are restricted are skins and play style.

Dungeons in GW2: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/dungeons/

Stooperdale.3560:

You need to be very fast with an interrupt to prevent healing. So if you haven’t all got a handy interrupt on your weapons or are running out of range too much, the boss is just going to heal up. It’s also a fight where you can gain a massive amount of net damage from characters staying on their feet and avoiding revives.

Under superheated, you can interrupt him by attacking him. It’s a special quality of superheated and one of the reasons you should keep him under it.

This boss involves a strategy that relies heavily on the lava buckets. My group and I had troubles our first few times too.

The boss only takes relevant damage when under the superheated effect. Also, under superheated, the boss cannot heal effectively because your attack will stun him. You should aim to keep superheated (via lava buckets) on him as much as possible.

Try these steps next time:

• Have the entire team range him as you lure him to an available lava bucket.
• Make sure he gets hit by the lava to trigger super heated.
• Repeat the first two steps IMMEDIATELY, keeping him under superheated UNTIL his hp is low enough for you to burst him to death (~10% or whatever you think is low enough). One possibility is to repeat this clockwise around the room. Your range damage will eventually get him low, so keep this going.

From your post, it sounds like you tried to kill him after the first bucket instead of keeping up superheated permanently, which can cause problems.

I’m not sure about the combat log, but either many might stacks and/or many stacks of vulnerability might have been the cause of the high damage. I’ve hit 7k several times with WW when that happened.

The new trinity is support, DPS, and control, which every profession is capable of providing to some extent. We all have our favorite personal builds that we run in the open world, but for dungeons, it’s a game of rock/paper/scissors, so you need to make some sacrifices sometimes if you want to work as a team. If your team is capable of adjusting their skills/weapons that deal with the situation better and complement the capabilities of your team, you should be able to complete any dungeon task.

Totally agree. This is one of the top reasons that one should be using or browsing the forums.

They advertised the explorable modes to be challenging regardless of level. You can easily use this to level your characters at 35 once you figure out the mechanics. If you search these forums enough, you’ll see in a video that Maestro took a group of strangers playing level 35s and beat AC.

Players don’t have to do dungeons to level their character unless they enjoy the challenge. You can afford whatever gear you need at your lower levels by doing open world PvE. Dungeons are rewarding if you put enough effort into learning the content, no matter what level you are.

While it’s great to give feedback to the devs about the content, please at least try it for a month or so to give substantial feedback. Most people are just coming into the forums giving their initial shock reaction because it’s unfamiliar.

In fact, this response was given on the larger AC feedback thread:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

All new stuff in dungeons is going to be hard for the first few days. We see it all the time with new content – people fail and get knocked down when they aren’t used to that sort of thing, and they claim it is too difficult.
Give it a week or so for everyone to develop strategies, learn encounters, and build fundamentals, and they will claim it is too easy. Trust me when I say this, the numbers are punishing (but less than they were before), but knowing the mechanics will greatly mitigate the danger.