Guild Wars 2

This is mostly a problem with PuG groups at the moment. When I started, I did dungeons with a few friends myself, and we built our team through inviting friends of friends. Now, getting a group is nearly effortless because we just easily invite the people we know. My advice is to either join a good guild that facilitates your playstyle (perhaps create your own since most just want to fill their guilds with numbers) or create a team from reliable people you meet. If you’re caught in a PuG cycle of inviting new faces every day, you’re not really progressing and will always have to find new people over and over again. Hopefully, one day, GW2 will have a decent group finder tool like they did in GW1.

That will be possible once guesting is implemented. Still patiently waiting for it… :P

On the other side of the spectrum, some players can’t get groups to do story mode because everyone else has their own agenda. This scenario pops up quite often and spot selling for story mode balances things out. Paid dungeon running greatly helped a lot of people who could not finish their dungeon requirements in GW1. If this is what the spot selling helps out, I support it.

However, if people are being exploited out of a run, then it’s a serious problem. PuG grouping already has enough of its own problems. I really wish everyone valued the company of others when doing group content, but it seems personal agendas can turn one against their peers quite easily.

The dungeon master achievement’s text shouldn’t even mean more than the fact that you personally experienced the dungeons first-hand. Some people probably got carried by some friends and have no idea what happens in every dungeon path. That already cheapens the title, anyways, so the little fancy text above your head shouldn’t matter if it was obtained from spot selling because it’s just about the same cheap way to obtain the title. What should matter is the fact that you personally took the time to understand and complete every dungeon path for yourself. Other people can’t always tell that from your fancy title. I maxed every profession to level 80 and have a good understanding of every profession’s capabilities for every scenario in all the dungeon paths. I don’t get a fancy title for that, but it’s very useful when I teach newer dungeon runners and that’s how they know I’m experienced.

There’s tons of other achievements/titles that can be cheapened, too. People could look up all the solutions to the jumping puzzles, people could look up all the goggle locations, or people could rezone in LA for the cold weathered friend wintersday achievement. The title/achievement itself means nothing to others, but the experience of getting it should matter most to you. You cared enough to get the title and you did it in a way that mattered to you. Sometimes, with titles like dungeon master, you carry some great knowledge with you. People won’t truly know that until you demonstrate — that text by your name is not enough to prove it. Think about level 80 players. Are all level 80 players very experienced at playing their professions? Maybe they found a way to level quickly and avoided learning their profession. Maybe they zerged events and just facerolled their skills, putting no thought into it. It’s not the text next to your name that matters, it’s what you gained from it.

I honestly don’t see why people need to type LFG. Players should either advertise that they need a spot in their group or wait until someone else is advertising that they need players in their group. Sometimes I see like ten people spam LFG and I’m scratching my head wondering why none of them are forming a group. Sometimes, there’s one player typing LFM and a few other players spamming LFG for a few minutes. Do they not see the opportunity to whisper or self invite?

Players who make groups should be the only ones advertising and players searching for groups should be inviting themselves to the group maker’s team to avoid a lot of crowded text on chat. A player spamming LFG is the equivalent of walking in the middle of a mall food court and saying “Looking for food!”. You’re more likely to get food if you stand in line for the food you want, correct? Typically, if you’re in the food court, you, like many of the people around you, want food, too. When it comes to grouping, why not just wait for someone to advertise a group or start your own? A person starting a group is more useful than a bunch of people who want to join a group. They’re creating the one thing everyone wants, even if they start alone. If you don’t post for unnecessary attention, you won’t find those “weirdos” pm’ing you that they want to join your group. Am I wrong?

Sorry if I sounded harsh there, but I think the problem exists from just posting LFG in the first place. Posting text draws attention from a crowd that does not always follow what many of us think is “standard”. Of course, sometimes you have a valid reason to post LFG such as having a lack of experience with the dungeon, but it may be better to just wait around until someone posts LFM.

All dungeons are doable at their minimum requirements — it’s just that the “popular” PuG mentality is preferring the advantages of level 80 characters, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, since people prefer success as much as possible. If you really want to play dungeons to learn your professions and dungeons layout/mechanics, it can be much easier if you have a team of friends or a guild that you can run the dungeons with. You may find yourself spending less time looking for groups and more time playing with builds, learning the dungeon layout, etc.

I’ve been doing dungeons with my team since we were low leveled on our mains, and since then, we’ve taken alts at minimum level requirements at various dungeons. The dungeons are easily doable if you understand your profession and the layout/mechanics of the dungeon.

I feel that level is not a restriction once you reach about the minimum level of the dungeon requirement. While having a higher level does give you access to additional perks, your personal skill with your profession and the dungeon matters more. Most people want level 80s as a safety net because they’re trying to run with people that they don’t even know. I’d honestly prefer player skill over level, but that’s not always easy to filter. I play with a group that I can grow with, so that’s not a problem, anyways.

If this is something you really want to do, don’t give up. Someone out there will appreciate what you are determined to offer.

Azix.4123:

MY question is, why Skip when it takes longer?

Skipping has been around since GW1. Check out some of the speed clear videos from back then. People only killed what was in the way. Killing everything was something you would probably do if you were new to the instance or did not fully understand how the instance objectives worked.

The way I see it is that those groups with people unable to skip properly should not skip. My team and I have done AC so many times that we know all the mob patrol routes and their AI. When we go to fight something like howling king or colossus rumblus, we drag the trash breeders onto the boss to kill them all at the same time without any deaths (or downs, even), rather than killing the trash one by one until we get to the boss. We generate income faster by hitting all the key targets in AC (champion gravelings, queen, kholer, and legendary gravelings). We’re past the exploration and learning stage of the dungeons, so why should we have to kill trash that doesn’t provide any purpose? There’s no loot incentive, blocked doors, infinite aggro range, etc. We don’t die from skipping the unnecessary mobs because we know how they behave and how to counter them (ex: anti-kd or fast kiting skills vs. AC graveling scavengers in the trap hallway). Our AC runs take 15 mins or less, and 30 mins or less for most other dungeons.

I’m assuming your skipping problem happened with a PuG. One of the reasons that it doesn’t work out in PuGs is that people have different ideas as to what qualifies as a speed clear. Sometimes people skip Kholer and the champions because it’s a waste of their time. To some, those things are more profitable because of effective killing and use of omnom bars. When you skip things with an actual organized group, everyone should be on the same page. Skipping can make runs slower or faster, depending on how well the team understands the situation. In any case, it’s already been officially stated that skipping is an option (old thread; Rob H posted). People just need to be more cooperative and make sure they don’t leave people behind. Otherwise, the people ahead can finish the dungeon with their ego and an empty party.

Story mode is probably something that is more challenging to organize because there is not much incentive in comparison to explorable mode. Most dungeon runners are probably running explorable mode for generating income and/or obtaining tokens for aesthetics/exotic stats. Story mode is mostly there for unlocking explorable mode for hosting an instance or catching up on the lore behind destiny’s edge. Unfortunately, the general population will gravitate towards their own needs. These people likely play for their own personal goals rather than playing because the enjoy each others’ company.

The last official response I saw was that FotM has no DR. The dailies are based per character, so you can do the daily multiple times a day. My team and I typically like to use FoTM to wear down the DR from doing regular dungeons.

The novelty of dungeon exploring only lasts for so long. People revisit several times for different goals whether it’s generating coin income or tokens. Killing trash mobs in the current state of dungeons does not facilitate that.

I still find dungeons fun because my team and I try to change up strategies every once in a while. Sometimes we change profession setups. Sometimes we try a different approach to a boss. This can sometimes lead to clearing the run faster. Either way, it’s a nice way for us to hang out and discuss GW2 stuff for the day with our limited time.

As always, to each their own.

Malediktus.9250:

If just one person in the group wants to kill something you do it. Theres no reason to have something like democrazy in groups.

So if there was a path with mobs completely away from the main path and someone wanted to kill stuff there, everyone should kill them? I thought people joined groups to cooperate and agree to a single goal, not perform a rogue action to dictate what everyone else should do.

I’d also like to add that skipping was done in the original guild wars as well. It was facilitated even more so back then (shadow form anyone?). You typically fight the mobs on your first few runs to learn their capabilities and because you lack the experience of the dungeon, but once you know what you’re doing, fighting every single mob just becomes a waste of your time if your goal is to farm tokens/money/etc. (at least with the current system).

I just checked the wiki, and karma boosts will stack if they are different types of boosts.

Here’s the page for reference of the different karma boost types: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Karma

Strangely enough, I was able to earn this in frostgorge sound while doing some hearts for map completion and then reviving people a lot during the claw of jormag event.

It depends on what level you are. If you’re level 80 its 21 per 1%.

Otherwise, wiki has the formula here: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Precision

Doing the wintersday jumping puzzle daily can get you a flask/gulp of karma daily per character. It gives like 3k karma each I think?

As the others have stated, you can also do your dailies, your monthly, and dungeons for karma. For dungeons, it drops as a consumable and you earn near 2k karma for initial path completion for the day. Make sure to get as many karma bonuses as you can when you consume the karma consumables.

There’s no limit to how many times you can run a dungeon, only the limit of your tolerance of the rewards.

Rewards follow these rules:
-On your initial clear of a specific path of a day (see below), you will get full rewards.
-Subsequent clears of that same path on the same day will give you reduced rewards.
-Clearing several dungeon paths in under an hour will result in “diminished rewards” on your rewards. You can remedy this by taking a break. (My group alternates to fractal runs to pass time while we wait for diminishing returns to wear off)
-Full dungeon rewards reset on a new day (4PM PST)

Here’s an example using AC Tokens:
-You clear AC path 1 for the first time of the day (60 tokens)
-You do path 1 again on the same day (20 tokens)
-You do path 2 on the same day (60 tokens)
-You do path 1 again on the same day (20 tokens)

Basically, your rewards are tied to your path progress of the current game day. It’s basically full initial rewards or reduced repeat rewards. Diminished rewards only shows up if you complete the runs very quickly in under an hour.

(If you’re curious, the diminished rewards are a safety net that attempts to discourage exploiters until a better solution is found.)

I played a bit of the final fantasy series and various other RPGs before looking into MMOs, so I’m used to portraying a human character. Maining a character away from human seems too strange for my tastes, but I like alting other races based on what I can make out of them. For example, one of my asurans is a small ele because he reminds me of a black mage from final fantasy, which I thought were pretty neat.

If you have not already, I recommend testing the skills of other professions in the mists, since you have access to all your weapons and skills. This works for some people, since you can get a feel of the profession without using up too much time leveling. I did this during beta to decide that guardian was the profession for me.

For AC runs, this gives quite a boost in money. Some of the champ gravelings drop 5s, which becomes 7s with omnom bar. Spider queen, Kholer, and troll drop 10s, which becomes 14s with omnom bar. The legendary graveling drops 15s, which becomes 21s with omnom bar.

At the very least you will probably encounter spider queen, Kholer, a champ graveling, and a legendary graveling, which is a total yield of (14+14+7+21) 56s. In terms of just coin rewards, you can get 82s (26s from inital reward) from an initial AC clear, and this isn’t counting loot drops. If your team is fast and efficient enough, this is just 15 minutes or less.

Your 3s bar essentially turns into 2g in two AC runs.

I’ve heard that the group finder from the original GW wasn’t implemented until much later, so the case may be the same for GW2. They still don’t have guesting, so I’m guessing that still needs to be implemented first before a group finder. The group finder from the original GW moved you to the appropriate player district when you joined a group via the the group finder. Guesting may be used in a similar manner.

I’ve been playing Anet’s games for a while, and in my experience, they add some good stuff, but sometimes, it just takes a while. Sometimes, the stuff they put out still needs refining (i.e. fractals). I’ve taken several breaks during the original GW and was surprised every time I came back to see a lot changed. I suggest to either wait patiently (giving feedback), take a break if you lose incentive to play, or move on.

My group has done every other dungeon, learning all the strategies and boss cues. The only reason we did arah was for the dungeon master title. Most of the paths took us about 2 hours if not 3 for our first time. Simin in the seer’s path alone took us over an hour before we decided to quit. The next day, we re-evaluated our strategies and finally took her down.

There’s quite a few areas where you can skip mobs, provided the people in your group can utilize limited space to dodge roll and not aggro everything. If we knew this, we probably could have shaved 40 mins or more off some of the runs. I found arah more challenging than most of the other dungeons, so if you have not mastered your profession, learning mob cues, found efficient ways to switch your traits/weapons/skill, etc. it could be a tough dungeon. We had no one to guide us, but our prior experience with dungeons has helped us through Arah. We tried not to use the wiki to make “puzzle” parts more interesting. :P

It’s not an exploit. One of the devs has already confirmed this. Also, there are random mobs placed in areas out of the way of the main path. You’re technically skipping those aren’t you?

Inexperienced groups (especially in PuGs) should not attempt to skip mobs as that will greatly increase the necessary time required to complete the run. Mob skipping is optional and should be utilized by players who are familiar with the dungeon layout if they choose to do so. My team and I have done AC too many times to count and fighting unnecessary mobs is a waste of our time. We know how to kill every boss in AC without downing, we know which mobs drop coin. We just farm it to generate income and level/learn alt roles.

As far as I can tell, it’s more or less an advertising tool that would work best in the open world, where you can share it with others rather than in an instance that is just limited to your party. You can just plant the banner outside the dungeon entrance, anyways, so how is this a problem?

Skipping is an option and is subjective. When it comes to pugging, you should be the one to make and advertise for the group if you want to run it a specific way. As mentioned above, we all have our own preferences of doing fractals.

I personally don’t PuG. Grouping with randoms can be inconsistent and you can’t expect randoms to follow a “standard”. People will leave groups in the middle of run, randomly AFK, argue about strategies, leave you behind, etc.

My personal group and I just want the fractal relics, so we have an agreement to skip unnecessary mobs to save time, so we can do other dungeons instead of just fractals. No one gets left behind and dies because we’ve done all the fractals killing every mob several times and now know where to go.

My point is that you shouldn’t expect PuGs to do things your way unless you made the group yourself, advertising that you don’t want skipping or whatever other criteria you have. If I were in a PuG, I wouldn’t skip because I don’t know their capabilities or knowledge of the runs. I don’t think forcing a run preference on other people is the answer. You forcing your preference on them is just as bad as them leaving you behind for your preference. Grouping with other like-minded individuals should be a sufficient solution. Vox explains this better than I do in the post above.

If you open up your contacts list and click the tab with the magnifying glass, you can see all the people in the map who are looking for groups. If you set your status to looking for group, you will appear in this list and have a blue LFG icon appear above your head.

People barely use this as it’s not very noticeable or intuitive, so hopefully, the improvements will touch on it.

I gotta say… there’s a lot more positive threads in this forum since fractals.

I think the only thing I dislike from fractals is the coin income in comparison to AC and some other dungeons, but when it comes to the fun factor, fractals does the job. I will definitely aim for the exotic 20 slot bag and maybe grab some obby shards for my legendary wep in the future. Fractals is a nice dungeon for my team to start our daily dungeon marathon: Fractals → w/e dungeon people requests → AC. At the end of the night, we’ve had fun and made some good coin.

lol I thought your title said leveling “complaint”.

I’d be interested to know if it’s even viable to level a low level in this dungeon. One of my friends doesn’t get to play much, but he’s really excited to do dungeons. I would be delighted if he could come with us in fractals to get his levels up and eventually start doing the regular dungeons with us.

Fay.2735:

Lightrayne.7829:

We just did all 3 AC paths twice, and we noticed that if you get the special “unique” masterwork item, it seems to replace the bag. Otherwise, we’d get the bag every time. Also, it only dropped from the legendary bosses: Spider Queen, Kholer, and whatever end boss you had for that path. The masterwork unique seems to rob your profit from one of the bags, but at least the boss drops 10s in coins.

They did say that only 3 sub-bosses drop the bag not the others. They selected 3 in each dungeon to drop the bag so, don’t think it’s anything to do with masterwork items.

What I’m saying is that I got the bag every time, except when there was the unique masterwork item, which seems to have replaced the bag. The same situation happened to the other people in my group. On most of my runs, I got the bag every time from the spider queen, kholer, and the end path legendary.

UnrepentantProcrastinator.7420:

Lightrayne.7829:

He also drops 10 silver in addition.

Is this a guaranteed drop or just random? Some of the Champ howlers you don’t have to fight drop 15s or nothing.

Guaranteed. We ran all AC paths twice (6 total runs) and they dropped at least 10s every time. Before the update, any champion past the one in the trap hallway would drop ~5s, and the endboss would drop ~15. Now, almost all the major bosses drop a decent amount of silver (only the champion in the trap hallway and the breeder champion in Detha’s Trap Room lack a consistent coin drop).

For speed clear purposes, you can still skip the unnecessary trash, but killing the spider queen and kholer net you some extra coin and bag rewards.

He also drops 10 silver in addition.

We just did all 3 AC paths twice, and we noticed that if you get the special “unique” masterwork item, it seems to replace the bag. Otherwise, we’d get the bag every time. Also, it only dropped from the legendary bosses: Spider Queen, Kholer, and whatever end boss you had for that path. The masterwork unique seems to rob your profit from one of the bags, but at least the boss drops 10s in coins.

People shouldn’t even try skipping mobs with other people they don’t know. How can anyone even be sure that a team of strangers can reliably avoid the consequences of wiping and possibly not even completing the dungeon?

BrunoBRS has a valid point that some PuGs are just irresponsible with their choices, but poor decisions are a risk when you group up with strangers. I’ve pugged in other MMOs where people leaving the dungeon either slowed us down a lot or forced us to give up the run. PuGs come from so many different backgrounds, so you don’t always know what to expect. Not all of them understand basic dungeon ettiquette (i.e. politely thanking the team when done, not abruptly leaving the run with no warning, etc.). Some runs will be good, and some will be bad. The fact of the matter is you take a risk by picking up strangers.

If your goal is efficient runs, it would most likely be better to join/develop a dedicated dungeon team/guild. At least, when you run frequently together, you know what to expect, you’ll probably take time to improve working with your team, and you’ll probably take less time forming groups.

Also, if people don’t like being kicked by a leader leaving the instance (since this topic has been brought up by many), why aren’t those people making the group? It’s the most reliable way that you won’t be kicked by someone else’s poor decision. If you have a preference for how the dungeon should be run, you should be leader.

Don’t let yourself be a victim “party poopers” and take control. Enforce proper dungeon ettiquette and lead by example.

Here’s a bunch of mystic forge stuff you can make in part with skill points:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mystic_Forge

Some of the recipes use items that you get from Mayani, which requires skill points.

I think, at the very least, something like GW1’s system would be nice for PuGs, especially now that trade isn’t clogging it up. I think this time around, you would maybe need only three categories: Dungeons, DEs, and general/miscellaneous groups. Also, instead of being for one district, this could span across all servers. Once guesting is implemented, people could probably group up for DEs and other open world stuff across servers.

In any case, I hope it helps the PuG grouping process.

I like Tequatl because that fight seems to give you a lot more to do than the other fights. Also, it has a megalaser.

I think this page should help cover it more in depth:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/PvP_reward

It’s pretty much random, but at least you can break down your extras to keep trying to make something new.

WvW counts as part of world completion.

Supervillain.8617:

I honestly don’t mind skipping enemies in dungeons, but the arguments in favor of it really irritate me. “It’s usually not necessary” is the forefront, implying that everything beyond will go smoothly, and anyone who gets downed or defeated will be revived to avoid the hassle of running back to rejoin the group. More often than not though, in my experience, the skipped enemies either get pulled into the next fight, or the group ends up getting wiped out because there’s less room to maneuver, or a couple members opt to use a waypoint, meaning they most likely get defeated running back, or put the rest at risk by pulling the skipped enemies into the fight.

I understand the reasoning behind it. For one dungeon run, sure, it’s great, but most groups I see prefer to run multiple paths in a dungeon. For the majority of dungeons, blazing through and successfully skipping every non-vital fight only results in a greater potential of encountering the diminished returns, unless they take a break between paths. Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of skipping enemies to save time?

Skipping mobs should only be for people that can reliably avoid the consequences. Suffering the consequences implies that they need to memorize the enemy placement, the leash range, etc. This option is best used on organized teams who practice this.

As far as I know, AC is the only one that doesn’t get hurt through DR, in terms of coin, much because of the consistent 5s and 15s drop from the champion (detha path has 2) and legendary graveling, respectively. With omnom bars, this is a total of about 28s (35s on detha path), which is 54s total with the normal dungeon rewards without DR. Running all three unique paths, this is about 1.5g in an hour before DR hits. At the very least, even with DR, you are making 28s per run, which takes 15-20mins minimum. This is without exploiting and just skipping unnecessary mobs. We took a dev with us to confirm this.

Some may disagree with me on this, but I would grab all skills in the case that some may be changed in the future. As someone coming from the original GW, I’ve experienced skills completely changing in function, usually to the point where they outshine previous skills. Depending on what you do, you may find yourself with an abundance of skill points, anyways. I’m a frequent dungeon runner on my guardian with all skills unlocked, and I have an excess of 300+ skill points.

Did you get chantry of secrets in bloodtide coast? The instance counts as its own map containing only a PoI. I had 174/175 on my way to world completion and this was the one I was missing.

Well, I mainly like playing with my friends, so I just do what they’re doing. The game is more entertaining if you have a goal in mind, so you feel a sense of progression. For me, my current goals are to level all professions to 80, hoard 200g to get a title and gear up the alts, and get dungeon master. There’s plenty to do at endgame, but that depends whether or not you want to do those activities. It’s not for everybody.

If you go through the list of things to do in GW2 and can’t find yourself enjoying it, then you’ve probably reached your limit of enjoyment for the game. Maybe you need to take a break and wait for the new content. GW1 and GW2 PvE endgame, in my experience, has been about setting a goal and achieving it within the game. Some would call it a completionist’s paradise.

Here’s a few things off the top of my head for activity ideas:
-WvW
-sPvP/tPvP
-Achievements
-Aesthetic Collection
-Rerolling For New Profession/Race Perspective
-Dungeons (story/explorable)
-Mini Dungeons
-Jumping Puzzles
-World Completion
-General Farming
-Crafting
-Legendary Weapon
-Mystic Forge Experimentation
-Alternate Personal Story Paths

The above is essentially a majority of the game’s features, and for the most part, level does not hinder you from doing most of these activities. Level is mainly a barrier for better equipment, map/instance access, and traits. If none of the above really interests you, then you may be one of those players who want some kind of content progression, so you’ll probably have to wait for a content update of some sort.

I think the “feeling of progression” is the key phrase here. For sPvP players, they can probably feel it when they get better at defeating their opponents. WvW players may feel it when they have a better grasp of the map layout and learn new strategies to take down their opponents. PvE players have a larger spectrum of variables, whether it’s aesthetics or player skill in instances.

Oh I forgot to mention that they can turn their red tag on/off. I think it works like a guild tag, only they get a red logo instead of a guild tag.

It shows a formula on each condition’s page, saying it does X damage per second (pulse).

Bleeding, for example: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bleeding

For might, the formula applies to both power and condition damage. You would plug your total condition damage into bleeding’s formula to figure out damage.

Might: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Might

If this isn’t what you’re looking for, then I guess I don’t understand your question. I tried. :P

I’ve seen Jon Peters and Jonathan Sharp in the mists discussing sPvP stuff on occasion, both in beta and sometime during live. Boy, do they get swarmed with questions. lol

Sounds like you’re in Orr. It’s a pretty annoying place to be, and it seems hardcore solo farmers love that place more than others. I mainly go there on my alts to level them to 80.

Is this what you’re looking for? http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Condition_damage

For now, people don’t really do dungeons for specific loot. It’s done for the tokens that can be traded for exotic equipment in LA. In some cases, it’s done for the nice coin income you can get.

If you’re willing to put the time and effort to master the dungeon and create/join a good dungeon guild/team, you can do efficient clears in about 20 minutes, earning coin equal to, if not more, than you would get farming on your own. When you perfect your capabilities, you avoid a lot of repair costs and unnecessary time spent in the dungeons.

Your motivation to do dungeons, if your intent is material profit, would be to either earn the aesthetic(s) of a particular dungeon via token farming or earning quick coin, assuming you’ve learned the dungeon routes/strategies. Dungeon token reward armor and weapons are another option to earn exotic gear aside from crafting, WvW rewards, or buying from the trading post. Some dungeon stat combinations are not available through other exotic options.

@seventhson

The point I think Asagi was trying to make for some of us is that someone was trying to tell us how to play the dungeons. I’ve made a large post above explaining that skipping is an option, but for some reason, people irresponsibly use this option in PuG groups and suffer the consequences. I skip mobs with my dungeon team because we already know the ins and outs of the dungeon after running it normally SEVERAL times, and we don’t die ahead like some people do in random PuGs. Like I said in my post, if anyone wants to run things a certain way, they should run with that kind of group. However, they should NOT define how other players should prefer the dungeon experience. Everyone has their own preference and deserve to play with people that have that same preference.

Using AC as an example, we always hit the champion and legendary gravelings because they specifically drop coin loots that can be enhanced by omnom bars. We skip all the other unnecessary things because killing those specific bosses/boss groups generates significantly and reliably more income than killing trash.

In your post, you gave a good example of a mechanic that forced people into killing trash. That’s good design that clearly shows that the developers intended for trash to be killed. However, in its current state, GW2 has a lot of dungeons that don’t force you to fight your way through trash (unless you die by skipping, of course).

In AC, we learned how to skip the spider queen, time the traps, and run past the gravelings to deactivate the traps. This is done by only killing spiders on the way to the trap hall door, having one person follow the graveling patrol through the traps (hugging the right wall, traveling to each gap as the traps fade in/out), and when the last set of traps disappear, this person uses some combination of stability, speed boon, leap or blink ability to pass the gravelings as they turn around. These are all game mechanics and requires precise timing. (Disclaimer: Please DO NOT try this in unorganized/PuG groups. I’m just trying to make a point here. It seems we have enough problems with poor decisions in PuG groups already.)

We brought a dev in several times, so he could see how we did this. He agrees it’s not an exploit, since the queen is a dynamic event and we used normal methods to cross the traps. On another note, Rob replied to a post about skipping Kholer, pretty much saying it’s not an exploit and people have valid reasons on why they should do so. They realize it’s happening and they will try to find some way to provide incentive for not skipping content. From these two instances, it seems that the devs probably did intend for people to clear the mobs, but because of a few flaws, it is discouraging players from killing the mobs. Knowing this helps them realize that they need to do something about it.

I personally feel bad about skipping the mobs because I understand that effort was put into designing the skills, AI, and placement of those mobs. I’m going to go ahead and speculate that they might use GW1’s loot drop rate/quality for the trash mobs to encourage players to slow down their dungeon clear times, making it harder to hit the DR. I would gladly fight trash mobs if something like this, if nothing better, is implemented.

One more thing: For those of you who like to fight mobs, do you actually clear every inch of the dungeon, even those mobs that are not on the main path (especially in other MMOs)? If not, aren’t you technically skipping mobs? If your response is something like: “It’s not in the way” or “it’s not required”, then I would say that you have proven that skipping mobs is an option. While I don’t speak for the others who skip mobs, I feel it is not necessary to clear mobs that don’t stop you from your objective. They are not required. As a person that skips mobs because of my belief in the flaw of dungeon design and as a person that communicates this problem to a dev, I believe, in its current state, dungeon mob skipping is an option that is decided by the player. The irresponsible use of this option is also the fault of this player if they do not coordinate with the rest of the group. Again, we have our own preferences and reasoning of how we approach dungeons, so join/create a group of people who share the same perspective, and please don’t dictate that for other players.

Sorry for the long read, but I felt a polite, substantial debate was in order. :P

You have more skills and traits at your disposal from leveling. I don’t know about you, but I can kill mobs faster and/or survive better with the help of those traits in comparison to actually being that zone’s level. Also, DLA puts your level above the mobs that you are fighting. I feel the progression comes more from the traits than the “numbers” (attributes, level number, etc.).

I like it, but I would rather prefer an animation like shield of wrath to more visually show the character is being protected by magic.