Guild Wars 2

Liquid Storm.8097:

Alright, Maestro, fine. You managed to finish AC with a 35 mob and maybe a further 10 % of GW2 players will do the same. What about the other 90 %? AC is already losing players due to the difficulty, I don’t think I need to tell you what will happen to other dungeons when they get harder.

As a player of GW1, WoW and other, less known MMOs, GW2’s post-patch AC dungeon is bull. If I compare the dungeons to WoW, at least you had a difficulty ladder there. You had easier dungeons at the beginning, followed by mediocre to hard ones. Dungeons were fun and basically every player of every skill had something to do in them. If you were more of a noob, you could always do lower level ones and have fun at it – like I said, we don’t all have the time or patience to input 100s of hours into a game to be able to finish a dungeon.

Whereas GW2 is favourizing elitists. You can’t deny that. Dungeons (will) have only one difficulty level – hard, which in the long run will remove GW2 of its playerbase. The only people who will stay are gonna be very experienced players and even they will get tired of the game sooner or later and move on to something new/better.

WoW is popular because it’s not only for elitists, it’s not only for noobs and it’s not only for casual players. It’s got everything for everyone, it’s got areas for casual and experienced players, it’s got dungeons for new and old, good and bad, and that’s what’s kept it going for the past 8 (?) years.

GW2 has a LOT of potential, but it seriously needs to stop favourizing only one type of players. Make something for everyone to enjoy – AC dungeon for new, less experienced players (but still being a challenge to do – pre-patch AC was OK), followed by other dungeons.

Are you saying that EVERYTHING ELSE, the HUGE open world, the event chains in Orr, the World Bosses like the Shatter, NONE of that is for casuals? This ENTIRE GAME has been geared towards casuals from the start, despite Anet’s intention that the explorable mode dungeons be skill-gated. So I really don’t think they’re favoring the extremely skilled. In fact, I’d have thought that they developed the game entirely with casual completion in mind.

If you don’t like the dungeons, just don’t DO them. I don’t get what’s so hard about that. There are no stat sets that can only be obtained in dungeons that can’t be purchased elsewhere. Sure, you have cosmetics, but really, if you’re going to start griping about LOOKS you might as well start griping about that in any OTHER MMO where the equipment ISN’T normalized by rarity and that robe you might really like is actually also the same rarity but of worse stat distribution.

Hell, they’ve even spent the last few months making Story Mode Dungeons MORE accessible to casuals. What the hell more do you want? The entire game can’t be casual…because of course, then we run into your problem of equal distribution of attention. You could do all the story mode dungeons in the game before going back to do the explorables. There’s nothing that says you HAVE to do content at a certain level or you miss out.

Honestly…I don’t know why it would matter if dungeons decrease in population. Is Anet somehow charging a separate USD$ entrance fee for every admission into dungeons? It doesn’t affect them, it doesn’t affect you, why are you complaining?

Oranisagu.3706:

but ok, if you all insist, lets separate the player base between elitists and noobs, with selfish people like you around, I stopped caring about the player base anyway.

None of us are being elitist. Arenanet clearly stated that Explorable Mode dungeons were not for noobs, and if you think that the player-friendliness of the other EX mode dungeons is indicative of their intentions, they’ve already said they’re revamping ALL the dungeons to make them more challenging.

Oranisagu.3706:

congrats. you managed to do what only a few people even doubted and raised a strawman argument against the very valid complaints. also, you completed the only path people were not complaining about, because that’s the one which works perfectly.

the main complaints are still:

• very unfriendly to new users (especially for being the first dungeon)
• bugged npcs/bosses make it unnecessarily hard without abusing safespots etc
• new players will have a hard time finding a group

I’ve tried several runs and with experienced players it usually was a breeze (80s or not), only path 3 still gives problem, because even decent player seem to be unable to understand the concept of defiant.
add a few new players to an otherwise experienced group though, and you’re in hell. maybe I just always get unlucky and get people who really can’t play at all, but before the patch, it was possible to take someone new, explain each fight in a few sentences and they wouldn’t drag down the team too much. that that mean, most groups were welcoming new players so they could learn the dungeon. now I won’t take newbies anymore (except guildies), because it’s just too frustrating.

Path 1 and the impossibility of defending Hodgins was probably one of the more-complained-about “issues” with AC.

Bugged NPCs is not something that people are really complaining about in terms of the dungeons being “hard.” It’s accepted that these bugs will be fixed at some point.

If you’d like, we can run the other paths.

silklash.6154:

So out of curiosity…is there a video up for this yet? :P

Somebody doesn’t read the topics on the first page of the Dungeon Subforum :P.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/AC-Ex-35-Run-Video-and-Impressions/first#post1611262

There’s the thread.

SwickHobo.5096:

Maestro.5376:

SwickHobo.5096:

Maestro.5376:

Direngrey.8376:

Maestro.5376:

Several threads have already been made about this subject, including a video thread with a party of level 35s in masterwork gear going through it.

Request close/merge, please.

Sorry but, are you part of anet? No? Then don’t comment, it’ll get auto deleted soon.

There’s no need to get in a huff about it. Sometimes the forum managers need a little help sifting through all the threads.

sounds like u just want more attention drawn to your thread. His thread is no less valid then yours. on topic tho, yes AC is not that hard. Except path 3 is buggy as kitten the other two are still a cake walk

I don’t really care about attention. Half the threads on the front page of the Dungeons subforum are redundant and should be merged/closed.

If there’s too much junk for the forum mods to sift through, that in term hampers the message that players want to send to the Devs, which means they might not make the correct judgment calls when modifying/creating new content.

This is why there’s that comment that if you want to make a new thread, you should search whether the topic’s already been made first.

Is that why you have 3 topics of your own on the first page of this subforum? Seems awfully contradictory to your previous statement. All three of those topics should be merged too yet you don’t mention that there. shrug just saying.

The first is a call to arms, the second is (was until recently) an announcement of run time, and the third is a video post detailing our results. each for separate purposes. This thread is specifically for the purpose of telling people AC is not hard. In which case, there’s already at least one other thread specifically saying that.

SwickHobo.5096:

Maestro.5376:

Direngrey.8376:

Maestro.5376:

Several threads have already been made about this subject, including a video thread with a party of level 35s in masterwork gear going through it.

Request close/merge, please.

Sorry but, are you part of anet? No? Then don’t comment, it’ll get auto deleted soon.

There’s no need to get in a huff about it. Sometimes the forum managers need a little help sifting through all the threads.

sounds like u just want more attention drawn to your thread. His thread is no less valid then yours. on topic tho, yes AC is not that hard. Except path 3 is buggy as kitten the other two are still a cake walk

I don’t really care about attention. Half the threads on the front page of the Dungeons subforum are redundant and should be merged/closed.

If there’s too much junk for the forum mods to sift through, that in term hampers the message that players want to send to the Devs, which means they might not make the correct judgment calls when modifying/creating new content.

This is why there’s that comment that if you want to make a new thread, you should search whether the topic’s already been made first.

Jabiacas Horologium.4976:

WonderfulCT.6278:

Maestro.5376:

WonderfulCT.6278:

I still don’t get why you did this, but I’m sure it was fun so I can’t really say it was a waste.

Because if you look at the first page of the Dungeon subform, 30% of the threads are about how the new AC is too hard and it’s impossible for a group of level 35 players to do now.

They don’t back up their claims with anything so you could have just ignored them.

I feel this did need to be done, and ignoring the “too hard” posts is not a good idea. I am seeing more "I heard AC is too hard, is it? " posts from new players being scared away by the forums. Standing at the gates of AC lately has also reflected how players feel and what they have read in these forums due to the lesser number of player base at location. A lot of groups I have been in have many players leave at the Spider Queen and the tactic this group utilized would help a lot of people out, most try to kill two gargoyle heads from the wall and jump down to face the full amount of mini spiders. I have also joined a lot of groups that were stuck at the spider when I joined until I brought condition removal to their feet. Thank you for making this video, as I said hopefully it will bring some numbers back. It would be awesome to be able to find a group around when I get my next alt up to 35.

Oh my god. You just made my day.

When we were looking at the Spider Queen fight, we specifically talked about whether we should hop up to the wall and kill the Gargoyle Heads that way, but we finally decided that it was too “exploit” or “glitchy” use of terrain and decided to pull the spiders up the stairs instead.

WonderfulCT.6278:

I still don’t get why you did this, but I’m sure it was fun so I can’t really say it was a waste.

Because if you look at the first page of the Dungeon subform, 30% of the threads are about how the new AC is too hard and it’s impossible for a group of level 35 players to do now.

Direngrey.8376:

Maestro.5376:

Several threads have already been made about this subject, including a video thread with a party of level 35s in masterwork gear going through it.

Request close/merge, please.

Sorry but, are you part of anet? No? Then don’t comment, it’ll get auto deleted soon.

There’s no need to get in a huff about it. Sometimes the forum managers need a little help sifting through all the threads.

Several threads have already been made about this subject, including a video thread with a party of level 35s in masterwork gear going through it.

Request close/merge, please.

danbuter.2314:

Levistis.8356:

Once again, watch our video and tell us that we are elite players.

---

oh dangit. You can’t hear us.

Wow, you are so amazing you don’t even realize how l33t you are! Not to mention condescending. Do you really expect people to go to YouTube to watch a video of you playing a game?

If you’ll actually take a look at the video, you’ll see that we actually had pretty relaxed form through the entire dungeon. There is nothing “1337” required to run AC Ex. In fact, the entire time we were joking about how we were “MVP” because half the time we didn’t know what any of our skills did. We ran the dungeon in that video with fresh lvl 35 alts that we really didn’t know how to play extensively, and only had theoretical knowledge of.

akamon.2769:

can’t wait to see this. regardless of outcome – though i can tell it went quite smoothly, i think what’s even greater is that you seemed to have made new friends and thoroughly enjoyed some new content that ANet gave us.

this is what PuGs can be – given, you guys clicked and had stuff to talk about, etc etc.. hopefulyl you guys will be doing more dungeons together. i’ve been invited to a guild because i partook in a pug. i’ve made many other friends that we dungeon, WvW together because i joined a pug.

grats folk!

Thank you. And actually, the entirety of the dungeon was run with me screaming my head off in TS because I was the only one that really talked XD.

If I’m on voicechat I tend to do running commentaries of what’s happening, it’s a habit XD.

Leo G.4501:

Well it was certainly easier than I expected. I had my coffee and everything ready, thinking I’d need a bit more twitch to get by but I was able to relax the whole way through.

I wasn’t trying that hard and still we made it through with 0 wipes. One thing I noticed is my damage was decently close to what my lvl 80 could manage and just as survivable. Using Impale + Rip was about 1.5k dmg and bleed ticks were 38-40 and I think at most I only had 3-4 stacks from my corruption sigil.

For the most part, I’d believe an appropriate level character is more than adaquate to run with full 80 groups even on speed runs as the difference is literally what you can eek out from traits. My other bleed warrior would have a bit longer bleeds and Last Chance (quickness on low HP foes) and that’s about it.

Also remember that the difference in a stat from Traits between a lvl 35 and a downscaled lvl 80 is not 300 – 100, but 300*[scale factor] – 100, which is probably a lot lower.

Levistis.8356:

OMG I can’t believe I forgot to ask you this:

Maestro, are you a male teacher?

Haha, no, although I have taught at various times in my life, and am male XD.

I’m slightly amused, because we essentially WERE a PuG. We haven’t played with each other until we ran the dungeon.

Going back and watching the video, I see where I choked. It was rezzing someone when we got poisoned XD.

First of all the video link:
http://www.twitch.tv/aliettefaye/b/376274889

Secondly, Impressions:

Our group makeup was:
Guardian
Mesmer
Warrior
Elementalist
Ranger

The run went a LOT more smoothly than runs with other level 80s I’ve been with. In fact, everything seemed to die a lot faster than I remember it, since this is the first time I’ve properly cleared trash in a very long time. We did not wipe, and had only one defeated (me since I’m pretty bad at Ranger XD).

But overall, I felt like it was just another dungeon run. It wasn’t OMG over the top, and felt like a pretty fun experience that I’d want to do again.

Softspoken.2410:

First path cleared. Time was about 42 minutes, essentially no skipping, only one player ever defeated that I noticed (who managed to be revived during the fight) and an all around solid run.

That would be me, the absolute nub ranger who’s not used to managing pets and playing a mini-RTS in the middle of a fight. I got overwhelmed T_T.

But I’m glad we didn’t wipe!

Starting now, stream link here:

http://www.twitch.tv/aliettefaye

Run’s in 10 minutes!

magom.3275:

Levistis.8356:

magom.3275:

Change de Ele for a Engie or the Guardi for a Thief (or change both) and maybe i take this seriusly. Not all the pugs has an Ele and an Guardi so conveniently for the icebow and the stability that they may bring to AC.

Well then, not all PUGs would have a thief for their stealth or an engie for their amazing versatility now would they?

My Build:
[http://s11.postimage.org/7b4inwtgz/gw008.jpg]
http://s2.postimage.org/hhiawjjsp/gw009.jpg]

Exactly, you got my point.

Actually I think he just shot your point down, which was that you didn’t have a point, you’re just placing pointless stipulations on this.

In more positive news: Stream starts in 2 hours guys!

I’m going to say something in here that a lot of experienced CoE members probably already know, but is worth sharing since people who come to the forums might not know this already:

ALL of Subject Alpha’s Ring AoEs (excluding the earth spike line) can be walked out of. Yes, even the double rings. This fight can be completed without ANY vigor or Swiftness.

You just have to know where to stand.

Hint: watch the ground closely, it tells you more than just where the red rings are!

There are also some situations in which it is safe to leave someone in a crystal, and you can actually manipulate the safety of the person in the crystal. Knowing when to make these judgement calls may actually save the life of the person trapped.

Don’t worry about rune/sigil usage. It’s all a hodge-podge anyways.

I made a change to the Rune and Sigil requirements since Karma gear already has runes and sigils on it. Just don’t put separate ones into the slots.

WonderfulCT.6278:

lol now I wanna come too bad I don’t have an alt at 35. The real issue is if troll spawns is it better to pull it to kholer or kill it separate : P

I suggest you all go glass cannon style just to keep the challenge going : O

We won’t be doing anything glitchy or things that can be counted as “exploity,” so if we do run into the Troll we will likely be pulling it to a safe place where we can’t get sent off edges to our deaths and fighting it there.

lezard.6071:

Can’t wait to watch the hodgins/burrow part.

Yeah, that part has us the most worried as well. We’ll need to do some creative thinking because we can’t just quick-DPS down the burrows anymore. We’ll see what happens!

Thanks for all the well-wishes everyone!

DeathPanel.8362:

Maestro.5376:

DeathPanel.8362:

Maestro.5376:

DeathPanel.8362:

deSade.9437:

I look forward to seeing the second streak of endless tears on the forum.
ButbutBUT you had the sigils on your WEAPONS! You died ONCE! You’re not in blues!
IT’S NOT FAIR!!!!! AC IS IMPOSSIBLE YOU CHEATED!!!! Wahhhhh….
/pulls hair
It’ll be fun to watch. Both the stream and the forum, I mean. Buena suerte.

This is just a baseline test of whether or not it is POSSIBLE for those levels to do it.

Keep in mind the people in the team already have extensive experience running AC so it’s not a valid test to see whether a normal pug team can do it.

Of course, Anet never intended the explorable mode dungeons to be easily doable with a normal pug team, so I think our run is going to be a fairly good test of how well their intentions have worked out.

Also keep in mind that while we may all know what’s going on in the dungeon, all of us are playing professions that we are unfamiliar with. In other words, we’ve only had 35 levels’ worth of experience playing these characters, and I think only one of us has had actual dungeon experience with his/hers (AC Story so he/she could unlock Ex for us).

Knowing the mechanics and encounters makes a huge difference. Even full teams of 80s with best possible gear can still wipe if they don’t know the mechanics first time around.

Of course. But I’m not sure the dungeons were ever designed to allow players to go through with 0 risk of wiping, even if they knew the encounters. That’s what makes them challenging and fun, after all.

The point is, your team is going in with preknowledge of the mechanics and events of that dungeon as well as preparation time and voice chat.

This gives you an advantage over normal pug teams which usually don’t have very good knowledge meaning it’s not a valid test of whether or not a normal pug team can do it at 35 but rather if it’s POSSIBLE for a lvl 35 team under ideal conditions to do it.

Why are you continuing to insist that it should be possible for a normal pug team in blues to do it? It clearly wasn’t Anet’s intent for that to be possible, as has been their platform from the start.

DeathPanel.8362:

Maestro.5376:

DeathPanel.8362:

deSade.9437:

I look forward to seeing the second streak of endless tears on the forum.
ButbutBUT you had the sigils on your WEAPONS! You died ONCE! You’re not in blues!
IT’S NOT FAIR!!!!! AC IS IMPOSSIBLE YOU CHEATED!!!! Wahhhhh….
/pulls hair
It’ll be fun to watch. Both the stream and the forum, I mean. Buena suerte.

This is just a baseline test of whether or not it is POSSIBLE for those levels to do it.

Keep in mind the people in the team already have extensive experience running AC so it’s not a valid test to see whether a normal pug team can do it.

Of course, Anet never intended the explorable mode dungeons to be easily doable with a normal pug team, so I think our run is going to be a fairly good test of how well their intentions have worked out.

Also keep in mind that while we may all know what’s going on in the dungeon, all of us are playing professions that we are unfamiliar with. In other words, we’ve only had 35 levels’ worth of experience playing these characters, and I think only one of us has had actual dungeon experience with his/hers (AC Story so he/she could unlock Ex for us).

Knowing the mechanics and encounters makes a huge difference. Even full teams of 80s with best possible gear can still wipe if they don’t know the mechanics first time around.

Of course. But I’m not sure the dungeons were ever designed to allow players to go through with 0 risk of wiping, even if they knew the encounters. That’s what makes them challenging and fun, after all.

DeathPanel.8362:

deSade.9437:

I look forward to seeing the second streak of endless tears on the forum.
ButbutBUT you had the sigils on your WEAPONS! You died ONCE! You’re not in blues!
IT’S NOT FAIR!!!!! AC IS IMPOSSIBLE YOU CHEATED!!!! Wahhhhh….
/pulls hair
It’ll be fun to watch. Both the stream and the forum, I mean. Buena suerte.

This is just a baseline test of whether or not it is POSSIBLE for those levels to do it.

Keep in mind the people in the team already have extensive experience running AC so it’s not a valid test to see whether a normal pug team can do it.

Of course, Anet never intended the explorable mode dungeons to be easily doable with a normal pug team, so I think our run is going to be a fairly good test of how well their intentions have worked out.

Also keep in mind that while we may all know what’s going on in the dungeon, all of us are playing professions that we are unfamiliar with. In other words, we’ve only had 35 levels’ worth of experience playing these characters, and I think only one of us has had actual dungeon experience with his/hers (AC Story so he/she could unlock Ex for us).

The Ancient One.1895:

I dont want to hear that people need to change players or that your just not good enough to run the AC. That is hog wash. I have run that place over a hundred times and it was hard enough before with all level 80’s in exotic gear. It upsets me when I hear people say you need to be better. IT IS NOT for level 80’s in exotic gear, it is for level 35s in 35 gear. So when I go in after the last patch with my level 80 buddies and we can not finish it or we glitch out after battling for hours you have to realize that there patch was terrible. I know for one I do not wish to waste my time in there until they fix it. A game is supose to be challenging yet fun and enjoyable, it is not supposed to make you angry and depressed. When you get past the spider [if you do] you might as well forget Kohler just run past because you cant fight him anymore. So after trying six times you may decide to run past but then the hatchlings have been increased 100% and they have 4 times the health and half the time they are invulerable. After 2 hours you give up and say you will never come back cause really……what is the point. If arenanet wants you not to play there game they are sure doing a good job of driving us away.

Either that, or they’re trying to raise the standard for players who are actually able to complete the dungeons. The fact of the matter is, there will be people who are good enough, and there will be people who aren’t. Dungeons aren’t for everyone. They are, like you said, supposed to be a challenge, not only for you, but for the myriad of other players that play this game. Thus, your definition of what might be “incredibly frustrating and difficult” might be a cakewalk to others. Perhaps your bar is just set differently from Arenanet’s.

DeathPanel.8362:

Where’s the link to the video? I am having trouble finding it.

I just made a new thread with all the info you’ll need.

Hello everyone.

This is just a reminder that there will be a stream of a party of level 35s in Masterwork gear attempting to tackle AC Ex path 1 post-patch.

When:
Sunday, March 9, 2013
4:00 PM Server Time (7:00 PM EST)

Who:
Maestro – Ranger
Mourningtyr – Guardian
Leo G – Warrior
AlietteFaye – Elementalist
Levistis – Mesmer

Gear:
Level 35 Masterwork
EDIT: Since Karma Gear has Runes and Sigils already in it, I suppose no SEPARATE Runes and Sigils.

Stream Link:
http://www.twitch.tv/aliettefaye

I hope to see you all there!

EDIT: Completed, the video link’s here!

http://www.twitch.tv/aliettefaye/b/376274889

Oh, and one more thing. If you want to check out a group of level 35s (hopefully) clearing it, look in the other thread with the Stream link and hopefully we’ll be able to show how to complete it at the minimum level.

NotOneToRidicule.2340:

My guild just took 4 lvl 80’s and a lvl 63 into AC explorer path 1 and could not get past the Champion Spider (mostly because of the little spiders)…after running this dungeon many, many times. Wait, before you say we’re built wrong…we’re all accomplished in PVE (with 100% world completion, daily farming in Orr, and able to hold our own in WvW).

IMO, it has become way too hard since the latest patch on February 26th. I feel that this game is becoming too frustrating. Since there are other options in the MMO world, I’m thinking of branching out and trying others because of this. Is anyone else feeling as frustrated as I am?

Few things:

100% World completion means you know how to walk around until things on your map light up. This is not indicative of performance.

Daily Farming in Orr is usually accomplished with large groups of people. This is also not indicative of performance of 5-man groups.

WvW is usually accomplished with large numbers as well. Again, not indicative.

If you are having issues with the Spider Queen (who I believe is one above Champion in monster grade, I think), consider pulling the small spiders up onto the stairs and then jumping via the shortcut on the wall back down, forcing longer pathing and allowing you to whittle them down.

Distaste.4801:

Maestro.5376:

This. Arenanet doesn’t design their dungeons around shoddy gearing, and especially not EX dungeons. They design them around proper gearing and preparation. So saying that AC Ex should be doable with a team that is undergeared is like saying a Major League Baseball game should be winnable with a team that uses all plastic bats.

That’s all fine and dandy, but designing a dungeon around being well geared is extremely poor design for a low level dungeon. You see dungeons while leveling up are usually designed around an average gamers gear at that point, which for most is a hodge podge of current level gear and lower level gear. Gearing up for a dungeon at level 35 is a huge waste of time/money considering in a few hours of play you’ll have out leveled that gear and replaced it.

You’re trying to equate this to a professional league baseball game when it should be a neighborhood pickup game. In a pickup game you play with whatever is available(trashcan lid is 2nd base!), including a plastic bat. Pickup games are how kids learned to actually play the game and the same is applicable to AC. AC should be where players learn how dungeons work and is doable with average gear and average specs. The second you need to have certain gear, certain specs, and/or certain classes the design has become incredibly bad.

If you guys wanted to actually test with average gear it’s quite easy. Level up to 35 without using the TP. You can use any gear you loot and you can only craft gear with the mats you find/harvest on that character. That would be an average players experience.

Actually, the game becomes quite punishing if you don’t keep your gear up-to-date, especially if you go back to lower level areas. Because the scaling doesn’t take gear level into account and simply scales your stats back by multiplicative factors, you’re going to be severely kitten if you’re wearing gear 10 levels lower than your current level, and go back to a lower-level area.

There’s also the fact that in many games, there are quests that will award level-appropriate gear to players as they complete them so as to gear them out appropriately for the dungeon they are about to run. Since this game doesn’t have traditional-style quests, it’s up to players to browse the Karma vendors and such to provide themselves with their own gear.

Thus, it invites abit of research and planning before setting foot in a more advanced dungeon like AC Ex, which I am not averse to. I think the challenge is nice, and definitely not impossible.

As an example of MMOs that have roll-like mechanics, Dragon Nest and Vindictus both have fairly roll-like moves.

Mourningcry.9428:

Hillaan.6904:

Mourningcry.9428:

Ioflux.4369:

How many lvl 35’s actually had Lvl 35 Rares when they ran AC explorer? It pretty much is a standard to be undergeared because thats what low levels do.

Assume for a minute, this is “standard”. All that proves is that the player making the attempt at the instance is just handicapping themselves (or looking for a challenge).

If you want to take it seriously, you’ll do everything you can to give yourself the best chance of success.

Also, level 35 masterwork is trivial to obtain, so, it’s not beyond any reasonable expectation to assume a player wouldn’t equip themselves accordingly.

Nothing wrong with not being optimally geared, just nothing exceptional about being properly so.

What you are failing to take into account is that most people do not upgrade because you have to do it so often until you reach 80. I was under-geared most of the game until I reached 80

No, that type of play is completely accounted for in what I said.

Simply put, a player does not have to have optimal gear at any point in the game. However, by choosing not to do so they are knowingly creating a more challenging situation than they would otherwise have to deal with.

This. Arenanet doesn’t design their dungeons around shoddy gearing, and especially not EX dungeons. They design them around proper gearing and preparation. So saying that AC Ex should be doable with a team that is undergeared is like saying a Major League Baseball game should be winnable with a team that uses all plastic bats.

Ethics.4519:

Maestro.5376:

Ethics.4519:

I completely agree with Ralena and Vassar. They are ridiculous. They are hard enough as is, and last time I did AC story, twice they were far apart, bugged, and teleport right on top of each other. Then, no matter how many boulders I threw, they would just fall down and not get a knock back. The only thing that dungeon taught me was that boulders are OP

Well, they do teleport back to each other when one of them hits like, 50% health? And must be separated again.

However, pull mechanics are HORRIBLE in that fight, and often will not cause them to move, only to be knocked down.

So do you do you think the dungeon redesign that I mentioned would be better or worse than what it is now? Easy would be barely more difficult than story mode. Medium would be about what it is now (for some dungeons) and hard would be around arah path difficulty 1&4

So this runs into the issue that Robert mentioned earlier where people always take the path of least resistance. People would rather spamrun the Easy path for tokens, even with Diminishing returns. But if you eliminated tokens altogether past the first x runs in a day, then of course you get people complaining about that too. There’s no easy solution.

I feel like the current difficulty rampup from Story to Explorable in AC is fine. I also think that for level 30s, SM is probably harder than most people are saying right now (since “most people” are level 80s talking through rose-tinted glasses), and the difference in difficulty between the old Ex and the new Ex isn’t as large as people think. I don’t think Explorable now would be “impossible” for even a first-time group of players. It might take a TON of time and cooperation, but it could be done. Even in beta, I wasn’t convinced that Ex was impossible, even when the Spider Queen did 3k ticks every half a second with her poison pools. For me, it was a matter of playing better, because that fight relied on fundamentals of positioning and dodging, and otherwise was fairly straightforward.

I thought there were threads on this already, but I used the handy dandy search function and there doesn’t seem to be a thread about this at all.

I’ve noticed that a lot of Pull/Push skills (Scorpion Wire, Spectral Grasp, Illusionary Wave, Temporal Curtain) when used on Ralena and Vassar at the start of the encounter do not seem to work as intended. They knock the defiance-less champions down, but do not move them in any way.

This is the same with the Boulders used on them.

However, once they are disengaged from their initial positions (and pulled up the stairs onto the platform next to their tombs), these repositioning skills start to work as intended.

Thus, it is my conclusion that there’s a bug going on with the initial floor/stairs of this encounter that is causing them to be rooted in place when faced with repositioning skills.

Ethics.4519:

I completely agree with Ralena and Vassar. They are ridiculous. They are hard enough as is, and last time I did AC story, twice they were far apart, bugged, and teleport right on top of each other. Then, no matter how many boulders I threw, they would just fall down and not get a knock back. The only thing that dungeon taught me was that boulders are OP

Well, they do teleport back to each other when one of them hits like, 50% health? And must be separated again.

However, pull mechanics are HORRIBLE in that fight, and often will not cause them to move, only to be knocked down.

Ethics.4519:

I see the issue as more with what Anet is intending

So this is probably off-topic to the thread, but I was just curious as to what you would hope the solution would be. That Anet gate off AC Ex at lvl 60? That they make AC Ex easier again?

Honestly I don’t see the harm in saying “This is a dungeon. We’re letting level 35s in, but don’t expect it to be easy at all; enter at your own risk.”

So the problem really is that at level 35, players really only have one thing that even comes close to AC Ex: AC Story. It’s a lower level dungeon (for level 30s) that prominently features silver-border mobs, and is likely the first time players will encounter a purple-border mob (Adelbern).

That being said, we have to look at what the difficulty jump from AC Story to AC Ex here is. I don’t think what people say about AC Story, that it’s face-rollingly easy, is as accurate as people think, and honestly I think that people are viewing it through rose-tinted glasses. Like AC Ex, it’s pretty easy for a party of level 80s going back, or even hopping on level 30 alts.

But I ran AC Story on my level 30 Necro with a bunch of other lvl 30-35 people and parts of that dungeon gave us hell. Most notably, Ralena and Vassar if you don’t continuously knock them down/know how to get them away from each other during the initial pull. There are also a few other things that get introduced in that dungeon that players won’t have seen anywhere else until then: Heavy amounts of cc, a melee mob that can wipe your party in one attack, and double champions with unikittenfects.

Gate Guard Nappa and the Ascalonian Lieutenants (Both the Bow and Hammer versions) will spam knockdowns and knockbacks, and novice parties often do not have a grasp of how important it is to avoid these, or how to counter them with judicious use of Stun Breaks. In fact, without experienced members in the party who know how to react to these mechanics, it’s extremely easy for party members to wipe. In fact, these fights haven’t changed drastically since release, and if it weren’t for Waypoint-Respawn abuse, these bosses would have been the cause of many wipes for level 30 parties.

Later on, the Greatsword version of the Ascalonian Lieutenant has an extremely punishing AoE whirl that will both carry her a fair distance and pretty much 1-shot any medium/light armor classes in your party. Keep in mind that at level 30, players are probably not used to the concept of “Res downed players extremely quickly or you risk losing someone for the rest of the fight.” Removing waypoint-spamming has probably encouraged new players to learn this, now, but back at release, this probably wasn’t the case. So again, you pretty much have everyone of medium/light armor dying to the lawnmower attack, and probably going into defeated states to subsequent collateral damage from the GS AoE afterwards.

And Ralena and Vassar…yeah, let’s not talk about them. Even parties with experienced 80s prefer to exploit the door and bug one of them out on one side, or spam boulders to keep one of them knocked down. At release, when they couldn’t be continuously CCed, it was pretty much instant death for any party that didn’t have their stuff together.

So honestly, I think AC Story is probably enough of a teaching tool to allow parties to go on and do AC Exp at 35. That being said, AC Exp is meant to be comparatively harder to a party of 35s than AC Story is to a party of 30s, which means that it should be more challenging.

If your issue is with the dungeon system being entirely too difficult for level 30s onwards at appropriate dungeon levels, then I’m not sure what to say. Trait limitations will necessarily make lower level dungeons more difficult to appropriately-leveled parties than high level dungeons, simply because build diversity isn’t that high at low levels yet.

Besides, if you ran Story Mode you were guaranteed at LEAST one rare piece of equipment at 35.

Ioflux.4369:

Leo G.4501:

Ioflux.4369:

How many lvl 35’s actually had Lvl 35 Rares when they ran AC explorer? It pretty much is a standard to be undergeared because thats what low levels do.

Where is your proof of this? And before you collect your data, define what a low level is and what constitutes as being ‘undergeared’.

I consider undergeared as wearing gear thats more than 5 levels lower than the monsters you are killing. This includes accessories/armor/weapons.

I dare you to survey every level 80 you find and ask them the questions:

1. Did you do AC exp at lvl 35? If yes go to Q2.
2. Were you wearing level 30-35 gear?

That is, if you care so much about proof.

I certainly said yes to 1 and 2. Then again, I was in the Beta and I knew that Exp mode Dungeons weren’t cakewalks for lower levels.

Since we’re streaming this and it’s probably going to be REALLY BORING having a silent playthrough, do any of the nay-sayers mind if some of us hop into voice call? Or do we have to do everything through typing?

haviz.1340:

Another thing, will you equip jewelry at all? Most pre 80lvl chars don’t do that all. Rest of the gear should be blue around 25 lvl.

I love you. I can’t stop. You’re too good at this. The sad thing is a lot of people will probably take you seriously/think you’re serious.

It should be noted that these are all alts that we have pulled that we already had lying around. Nobody was going to level an alt from 1-35 expressly for this purpose, especially in the week-long timeframe that this thread has been alive.

It should also be noted that almost all of us have little to no experience with our class in dungeons. This will be my first time playing my Ranger in a dungeon :P.

Ethics.4519:

Levistis.8356:

Team Make-UP afaik
Me: Mesmer
Alliete: Ele
Mourningcry: Guardian
Leo G: Warrior
——
What are you running Maestro?

Wow, I could have guessed this team make up a mile away.

You also forget that Mesmers are one of the most late-blooming classes in the entire game. Pre-40, they’re considered one of the weakest classes.

Ethics.4519:

Levistis.8356:

Team Make-UP afaik
Me: Mesmer
Alliete: Ele
Mourningcry: Guardian
Leo G: Warrior
——
What are you running Maestro?

Wow, I could have guessed this team make up a mile away.

I’m running a Ranger. Can’t be any more underpowered than that.

Essence Snow.3194:

bravoart.5308:

Protip: Cultural tier 1 gear is lv 35, yellow and has great stats for your first dungeon run.

There’s no reason to not be in yellows by 35 other than being unable to afford it.

Lionguard weapons at 40 for karma, pirate jumping puzzle weapons… there’s lots of vendors that have stuff fo you to level up in assuming you don’t spend all your cash/karma on junk.

There’s a lot of ways for you to stay out of blue gear problem being that most players don’t know this stuff exists.

Tbh I think that masterwork gear is more reasonable till 80. Why would anyone want to waste currency on rare gear that’ll just be out leveled in a few hours? Considering how much coin things cost post 80, I would advise against wasting coin pre 80 and skip the <80 rares all together.

I’ve found that using Rares is usually more efficient if you’re levelling a crafting profession/don’t want to regear every 5 levels. When you hit 35, your Rare gear will last you until 50, and then until 65, etc etc. So you really only have to regear every 15 levels or so.

akamon.2769:

Aragorn Son of Arathorn.4015:

lol just glanced over this thread a bit. There is nothing hardcore about any of the dungeons in this game. If you need another person, let me know.

love the name. and this made me happy. one of the good things in this thread.

Maestro – i support your cause. and if anything, it’ll be a challenge. why everyone else is practically screaming bloody murder, i… at this point, do not yet understand.

Run is still happening this Sunday at 4. Stay tuned for the stream link!