Guild Wars 2

Thundercleese.4210:

Definately happens to thieves, so maybe a medium armor issue.

Though I’ve been fortunate though, both times I had no problems finishing the dungeon.

Unless it’s happened to classes other than ranger, thief and engi, I would say it is possibly a medium armor issue and should be addressed by anet as such.

I would agree with above post, take your time to go through the first 9 lvls, and you shouldn’t really worry about having AR til 20+

I had 5ar til I was on about level 28 LOL and I did just fine (45 now :P)

I have never got 6-10 rares / exotics from fotm except a few times maybe, if this happens you to it’s either the luck of the RNG or you are wearing mf gear. That’s it.

Did you try to log out/in? This fixes a lot of issues, I don’t play ranger though so I’m not familiar :/

E: Just found this thread that is relevant https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Missing-skills-in-Ascalonian-Catacombs/first#post2058932

I’d also recommend ele, I haven’t leveled one yet but they seem to be a fun class to play and to have a nice learning curve, if that’s what you’re in to.

Yes one of the comments from the poster says they don’t go to that level after the update. This was before the cap was put in place.

Pure Heart.1456:

@Me Kill You

I’d be inclined to agree to some extent.
In GW1 I remember having some people “run me” to wherever, but I also remember that that was not a horrible experience.

Having someone “run you” through a dungeon in GW2, say Arah for example, is not exactly the same thing; It can be brutal, unforgiving and costly—for both the ‘runner(s)’ and those hitching a ride.

Ultimately, skipping will probably always exist in some form, but if it becomes the main goal of a dungeon such as it is now, it implies there are a lot of design problems. If it becomes the norm forever, Anet may as well just immediately place everyone standing right in front of the final boss in every dungeon. In fact, why have dungeons with any content at all?—just make “boss fight rooms”…

Well yes “running” was a big part of gw1, but that’s not what I was refering to.

I meant more alone the lines of having an assassin run a whole 2-3 quests of an area on their own which usually involved skipping 90% of the mobs they came across. Or in some missions like for ex. Gyala Hatchery in factions the ‘alternate route’ which involved running around the back and not triggering the mission start thereby allowing you to skip a whole bunch of mobs (although I think in the end you ended up killing them, just not the way it was intended and in a much easier way)

Justdeifyme.9387:

Expressing critism without solutions is like telling a person who got shot that he is gonna bleed out if nobody helps him in time.

Lol xD

-I don’t want to sound like I’m making any criticisms, just putting my opinion. I agree that many of the enemies are a little too beefy at the moment and they don’t necessarily need to be to make them any more difficult, just more tedious and long fights.

-‘skipping’ however, is something that persists in many games and if you look at gw1, a LOT of runs that people did involved this kind of gameplay, just on a different scale because that’s how the game evolved. Look at FoW/UW runs for example, while it was completely possible for a full group to clear all the content, those groups were overshadowed 20/1 by groups running specific setups that allowed them to simple bypass many enemies and whole areas in order to make the run faster and more profitable. Using tricks that would ‘stuck’ enemies or allow you to exploit some mechanic was just another way to accomplish the goal.

No one was shouting at them that they should be doing it the ‘normal’ way, because going through every enemy was simply not worth the time if you could do it in a faster manner, and people accepted that if you wanted to do it the ‘normal’ way you could just join a group doing that.

Gw2 is the same, It’s my opinion that the game isn’t old enough for this view to be accepted yet and to become viable in many people’s eyes. That’s not to say anet won’t make some changes in the future that will make people more willing to fight through more enemies that they would have skipped before, but only time will tell I suppose. For now we can keep making suggestions to them and hope they listen.

I would not trust any email from a supposed credible source that make no grammatical sense at all in the first place >_>

But thanks for the warning

Well, in most dungeons groups are not as strict as to what classes they want to bring in, if you are good at your class and can play/dodge well then you will be accepted by most groups, CoF is a great exception.

And the fact is you can still play any class in CoF because not all groups are the zerker ones, they’re just the majority. I agree that running with people who know what theyre doing and aren’t dying much but are cool about people making mistakes and aren’t elitist is the way to go

I’m not sure about this one, I only stick to 48 because, I dont really see the point at this time of trying to go higher, I assume the drops are not phenomenally better at that lvl, the skins probably drop more, but I’m not sure how people would overcome Maw agony.

I always see those advertising for 50+ though and I can’t decide if they have found a magic way to do it (multiple guards timing tomes of courage exactly right maybe?) or if they’re just trolling.

Either way it’d be cool if someone could shed some light on this because I as a “fractal frequenter” would like to know as well!

Nikaido.3457:

Me Kill You.9035:

People need to ditch their elitist attitudes and realize it’s just a dungeon (and a very quick one no matter what group you run) and focus on making it fun as well as profitable instead of just the latter.

But it is fun and profitable to do speedclear inside optimized groups. That’s why I joined a guild dedicated to that in the first place when I got the opportunity to.

What is not fun is running in groups with a lot of people wearing full PVT and some other trash builds that have no place in PVE. CoF is the only dungeon that is even remotely fun to pug, because even if you’re pugging with bad players chances are they’re running better than average builds and gear and the runs are like clockwork.

Let me give an example in Ascalonian Catacombs, optimized vs PVT kittens :
The very few times I’ve had optimized groups running full berserker, we killed the boss in the new AC before the new mechanics introduced even started to matter. In path 1, the boss dies before the adds attack you.
Join any random pug, do path 1, be ready to kite adds toward the circle of fires.

I hate CoF – the dungeon. I don’t find running it fun. I do like the pugging culture around it though, and wish it would spread to other dungeons, particularly AC since it’s one people in my guild and friendlist aren’t running much (we mostly do CoE/Arah/FOTM).

CoF has the best pugging culture in the game. It’s just too sad that these players are not seeing the potential of having an actual pugging culture for other dungeons.

Ya you are right, if you can fill an optimal role and do it well while having fun, more power to you. I was just in a CoF run on my mes and after 3 of the not-so-great zerk wars died on the last boss and me and the last war managed to bring him down from 20% health in under 3 mins, I do consider that fun and pretty exhilirating (also bringing shouts of how OP mesmer is ofc, as well)

And I agree people need to take the popularity of these speed runs in CoF and apply it to other dungeons as well. Some like to run CoE and while I dont have as much exp on that one, I understand its comparably profitable to cof assuming you have good luck with chests/drops.

Unfortunately anet made the difficulty of different dungeons/path wildly out of sync which is unfortunate and I / we can only hope that they are adjusted in the future so that people like to play them all

I agree with you on most of your points. 4 zerk wars and a zerk mes is the optimal build for this dungeon atm, but I dont agree that it is a MUST. Any group can run cof with ease and only slightly less fast than a full zerk group.

In gw1 the elite areas were almost always made up of a set team of classes that worked well in unison to complete the area and were able to do so because of their (mostly) unique class skills and skill categories. It was accepted because mismatched teams simply couldn’t compete with the speed of these specifically formed teams at all.

But in gw2 this isn’t the case. All classes can mostly perform the same duties as the others (of course some classes are better at some things than others). In gw1 the speed clear groups were almost completely dependent on everyone fulfilling their role correctly, or it could cause a chain reaction that would fail the whole team, which was the source of nearly all the ‘raging’ and quitters in those runs.

Gw2 works differently though, if someone fails the team you can all just res and take a small setback but still continue with little consequence (no death penalty is much more forgiving as well).

What I’m trying to get at is while dungeons can be difficult if you’re not 100% sure what to do, its so much easier and quicker for people to always work WITH the team rather than against, which is what Justdeifyme is saying too. Would you rather kick someone who’s died a couple times, or didn’t use an exact skill at exactly the right time (seriously?? this has happened to me) and find someone to take their place who may have to warp over and load the dungeon, run to the group if wp isn’t available, etc?

People need to ditch their elitist attitudes and realize it’s just a dungeon (and a very quick one no matter what group you run) and focus on making it fun as well as profitable instead of just the latter.

Eldiora.5836:

A tip from me. Just dont run higher than 26. It simply is not worth it.

Not sure where you get 26 from and as someone who runs 48 and 38 dailies almost every day I completely disagree.

At higher lvls it is a fact that the rate for getting skins increases and you will be getting more relics to use for free 20 slot boxes, backpieces for your other chars if you want.

It’s also excellent training for pve and at higher lvls (40+) you will find some of the best pve players in the game, imo

That’s exactly what it seems like, the opposite of rubber banding

And it happened to me when I was going for maw too, luckily it usually ends after about a minute, at least

I’ve had a couple problems involving moving to wps that are quite annoying

The first is I’ll move to a crowded wp in town or elsewhere and my char will be invisible with the camera stuck on the wp. If I move around, it won’t show any movement until after about a minute it will suddenly ‘load’ and my character will appear wherever I had previously tried to control it to.

The other issue is more rare, and mostly seems to happen in LA. In this case the camera seems to get stuck wildly off point and If I try to move it just crazily moves around but still doesn’t show my char or seem to move much at all (If I go to mystic plaza wp the camera will get stuck in the water canal directly below it)

Has anyone else experienced these issues and is there anything that can be done about them? I am undecided if they’re the result of a bug or simply some weird lag

I too used scepter when I first made my mes, and quite enjoyed it during early leveling because at low lvls the clone from auto atk and the confusion is actually useful.

However when I hit about 40, I went GS and sword/focus and never looked back

PyrophoricX.7540:

Yes, melee characters can make it through almost everything in this game. However, due to armor types appearing completely irrelevant, it leaves ranged classes with inherent survivability advantages. Given those advantages, even if melee and ranged classes had similar damage stats, ranged classes can consistently deal damage, increasing their dps. That said, I don’t believe melee damage stats are on par with ranged, given the huge damage numbers my elementalist can pull vs my warrior.

I can see rolling through dungeons with melee if you simply want an additional challenge or like the look of melee armor, otherwise ranged has clear advantages in a game without tanking and virtually no 1-1 healing. Two mechanics that don’t make sense to drop, especially if you’re going to go through to trouble of classifying armor into categories such as heavy, medium and light.

I like RNG looting, but they’ve included too many variables to the equation. Either I’m looting something that isn’t my class, isnt my level or isnt an upgrade from story mode loot. On the off chance I get a rare that someone else can use, it almost always seems to be soulbound.

I’m not sure where you’re getting that an ele can be out dmging a war, certainly they have their perks and utility, but straight damage is not what an ele is best at in most situations.

It also seems like you’re judging how good your loot is on whether or not you can use it immediately on your chars? This is not the case at all and is the reason TP exists. Most gear you get as loot is not going to be exotic and tailor fit to your build, which is what you should be aiming for.

And about the different armor types, there is a significant difference especially vs trash mobs where you’re getting hit more times for less dmg, heavy armor protects you a whole lot more in that situation. Also as a heavy armor you will get more mobs attention which takes the pressure off lighter classes allowing them to do their job better.

No dude I’m not trying to make this a personal thing at all, Im saying that there is more than 1 class in this game, and people should be able to play them all without being reprimanded by the “dps is best everything else useless” group.

What a lot of people seem to completely disregard is that personal dps in NOT everything in runs especially fotm.

Staying alive is equally important to keeping your team’s dps up and if you are a warrior with high dps who is good enough at your profession to be able to keep up that high dps and not be downing all the time, thats great and I applaud you, but do you REALLY want to promote 75% of all players being warriors in all runs?

If people start seeing that everyone is valuing high dps in their groups above all else, it’s going to attract people who build accordingly but have no experience in not dying and supporting the team. I play guard in fotm 48 constantly and while I dont have the dmg output of a war, (my war was my first char and I love him but now he usually sits outside CoF) I see many times that I am the reason that the war who is out dps-ing everyone else can stay alive and be able to keep swinging that gs and using burst skills effectively.

All I want to get across is that teams work best when everyone can play their role effectively and this can be just as fast or faster than a group of all/mostly wars..

Im confused why anyone cares how fast you can kill tentacles on maw? Maw lvl is so easy and dps really isnt taken into account at all there.. unless you count clearing the mobs

Ah think you are right about the no weapons, but it would take quite a while to farm enough tokens to get the 4 exotic weapons for MF, especially something like gs, 330 tokens each no ty -.-

Well looking at your group/video I have two guesses.

-It looks like the mes is probably running a shatter type of build, looked like the clones were running in right before the spike

-Other guess would be the warrior using her burst skill, these can do a lott of damage especially the axe burst Eviscerate

I haven’t really played ele much but to my knowledge they dont have any huge burst skill like that, and i know guard doesn’t, so Id say its the mes/war or a combination of both

Your video is private, can’t be viewed

Could you provide more info on what boss you are talking about/what classes were in your party?

You have to look around a bit. Go into the second room with the pool and talk to the ghost standing on the lilypad, he is the one who gives you the items

Edit: you also needed eotn expansion in gw1 and to have the necessary requirements unlocked to receive the items

I would recommend trying out fractals if you haven’t already.

Doing fractals introduces you to different situations and scenarios where you will have to put different skill sets to use, and kind of eases you into dungeons in general at the low levels. It’s kind of like training for PvE and in my opinion, everyone should try to go through at least a few levels in fotm

I think after going throught fractals 1-30 I got 2x better at the game mechanics in general.

As far as garbage loot in dungeons, this is a RNG so loot is completely random everywhere you go, one run you will get 0 rares and the next you will get 4 rares and a lodestone, plus the tokens you can put towards equipment, or if the dungeon is 70+ rare equipment which you can salvage for up to 3 ectos.

PyrophoricX.7540:

I quit the game for awhile and just came back. After completing the 30, 40 and attempting the 50 dungeon I can still say, without a single doubt, the dungeons in this game are neither fun nor rewarding. They are absurdly difficult unless you focus on running and gunning. Essentially, all mechanics and classes are moot, just range dps and run. Melee, strap on your ranged anything and prepare to be forced into ranged combat. It’s hilarious that heavy armor wearers take virtually the same amount of damage as light. Something is clearly not working!

Now doing Twilight whatever and we were kicked mid dungeon, for apparently no reason. No one left the group, but one guy crashed to desktop.

If not for being free, I’d have not come back.

This is an unbelievably great game during the lvling process, the end…

If it was the case that range is the only viable option, then warriors in dungeons would not exist, mesmers using sword, guardian, axe-wielding rangers and more, all these classes would not exist in dungeons.

Part of being good at this game is learning the mechanics and learning how to dodge and move effectively so you are not getting hit all the time (not always possible, of course, but in some cases of course you will have to switch to range)

It sounds like what you are arguing is the result of either
1. grouping with mostly inexp players, which could very well be the case especially in the less played dungeons
2. Inexperience yourself, everyone is here at one point, you just need to put in the time/effort to make yourself better
3. Failing one or two times and saying “kitten it this is bs too hard” many people do this and its extremely aggravating to hear them gripe (not saying this applies to you)

Basically, dungeons are meant to be difficult because your options in pve are somewhat limited to doing events and bosses, which is pretty easy, or doing dungeons with the rewards being increased and the option of getting FREE exotic armor and weapons, so of course the difficulty will be increased comparatively

Nikaido.3457:

God no. While I would want for fractal level to be account bound (like guild war’s 1 hard mode) rather than character bound, having any player suddenly joining a FOTM 48 for an increased chance at skins would completely kill it as far as pugging goes. I know I would start restricting myself to guild runs only.

This is exactly what would happen and it’d be the beginning of the “ping your pristine relics on join!”

Sucks to be anyone who used theirs to get rings

Well, a large reason of doing lvls 0-39 is to get to lvl 40 heh because that is where you start getting the most relics and the greatest chance of getting a skin (although it’s not impossible to get them at lower lvls, my last two 3x runs i got skins, for ex)

Also while you may not experience this, after I got into the higher lvl fractals I started seeing that I was noticeably better at other aspects of the game simply because fotm is so demanding at higher lvls it really does make you a better player.

As for AR, I got to lvl 30 with only 5AR and I did completely fine as long as you are able to fight the bosses without getting hit by their agony attacks constantly (you may die on maw but it only takes real planning at 40+)

laokoko.7403:

you can still use the token from other dungeon to gamble precursor. But many people dont’ like rng.

Only the dungeons that have at least lvl 70 rares, so AC, CM, TA and SE will not work for this

Well its always about luck, and when you do get a ring from the daily theres no guarantee it will be one that fits your build.

There is something you can do to get them though, and this is by using 10 pristine relics to trade for a ring of your choice at the fotm merchant. It’s up to you if you want to do this, no one knows yet if/when anet will impliment another use for the pristine relics

To my knowledge it will, but if youre at peronal lvl 8 and do a lvl 40 run your lvl will still just increase to 9

It used to be this way, the lowest lvl in the group was what the group was limited to, however they changed it a few months ago so now the group can enter any level as long as someone has it unlocked.

However if your personal lvl is 8 lets say, and you run with a group doing lvl 20 you will not recieve the daily bonus

The trick is to know the boss and know when you will need to dodge his attacks and how.

Im thinking you’re refering to the attack where a bunch of little things shoot out and you see a lot of red circles appear?

This one is best dodged (in my exp) by dodging away from lupi and hopefully dodging the first, which usually gives you a second or two to prepare to dodge if a circle appears beneath you.

As a guard in an often squishy part lupi focuses on me 75% of the time so Im pretty good at dodging his attacks now

I like this name, especially the valentine because it does make me think of FF VII haha

8/10

My male guard – Odd Guard

Not sure exactly why I chose that, but I like it now and it lets people know what class I’mplaying lol

Heritage armor is somewhat plain looking, of course you can only get them if you played gw1..

Wukunlin.8461:

I guess the real question is: does ANYONE find the fractal skin drop rate acceptable?

Id like to go on record here and say that I really like how hard it is to get fractal skins.

I’ll probably get some hate for it but when you look at it this way, frac skins are the only cool looking skins that cant simply be BOUGHT by every player who for whatever reason has a ton of gold and means that if you do have frac weps, especially a set for a character, it really tells people that you probably invested a lot of time/effort to get those skins.

In fact I see more people with legendary weps these days than fractal skins, and that honestly makes me happy because I can use these somewhat exclusive skins on my characters and no one can just throw out 50g and instantly get what I had to really grind to acquire.

Yes it is quite annoying when you get a ‘useless’ or repeat skin, (I still havent got a gs :/ ) but that just make it that much more exhilirating when you finally do get a skin you really want

Seras.5702:

Forgive my naivity but what about CoF1 makes it such a gold-maker? Is it just because it can be run fast? Or are the drops that much better? Is there something specific I’m missing? I can’t recall ever making that much for a single CoF1 run so I must be missing something.

Yes a lot of the reason it that it is so rapidly completed. You also get a fair amount of flat gold especially with omnom bars, rares and the tokens which are exchangeable for rares at the token trader which can be salvaged for ectos (for 30 tokens each)

RagingDragon.9475:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dungeon

These are the base level requirements, alot of PUG’s wont accept you at thet level though. Make sure if you are posting on GW2LFG that you mention you are new to the dungeon. You may get less invites and it will take longer to get a group but you eliminate the chance of being kicked in the middle of the dungeon.

Yes and for your lvl I would recommend Ascalon Catacombs dungeon because it has decent rewards and great xp reward for completing it, however as Dragon said a lot of people only look for 80s which is a result partly of Anet increasing the difficulty of the dungeon and people’s intolerance for lowbies, which is unfortunate.

However! It is absolutely not impossible to find groups that will take you, and honestly a skilled lvl 40 can do better than a unskilled lvl 80. I think someone said you should try to find a guild who can help you learn and actually someone just posted on here that their guild is going to be doing dungeon runs with the purpose of teaching newer people the runs and helping them learn, so maybe you can check that out.

Edit: heres a link to that post https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/New-to-Dungeons-and-want-to-learn/first#post2048066

Well Fractals are a level 80 dungeon and at higher levels of it (10+) the bosses have skills that apply agony, which does huge damage unless you have Agony Resistance (or AR) gear which is all req. lvl 80 to use.

For when you do get to 80, Dulfy has a good overview guide available, or you can check in this section of the forums for more specific info.

http://dulfy.net/2013/01/07/gw2-fractal-of-the-mists-fotm-guide/

You can also check the wiki for different dungeon lvl requirements.

Man this is a cool Idea. Good luck to you guys and happy dungeoning!

Yes I do agree that having some dps will of course make the run go faster, which is nice. But the point I was really trying to make is that it should NOT turn into another case where people start valuing warriors over all other classes for this reason.

Although I’m not sure a group of all/mostly wars would even make it through 48 >_>

People need to get this idea out of their head that “DPS is always best”.

Especially for a run like fotm where having all the dps in the world won’t save you if that’s most/all you can bring to the table. Fotm is all about working well as a team and getting the objective done without having a million deaths in between.

I run my guardian on 48 and can honestly say that although I have low to moderate dps compared to a warrior, my teams would be in trouble many times If I was not there to support them (try shaman on 48 with multiple wars and no guard or other class with support skills.)

Of course I value warriors just as much as any class in fotm, but it’s not because im thinking “YES now our dps will be so high!” It’s because most of the warriors Ive run with (luckily) have been exp and not noobish, and that’s 99% of what I look for in fotm teammates.

Don’t think drops have been changed at all, they have ALWAYS wildly fluctuated for me, like getting 5 rares one run and 0-1 for the next three.

However the last two 3x lvl runs I have been on I got a skin for both, but these runs were weeks apart so I doubt it’s the result of any change.

I was in a fotm lvl48 group today and on the third level about halfway through my comp decided to auto update itself which auto closes everything including gw2 and can take upwards of 10-15 min to complete.

After I finally got booted back up and into gw2 I found that I had been kicked from my group and moreover the group decided to keep the new guy instead of adding me back.

Now it’s not their fault really they replaced me, apparently they at least waited a bit which is nice, but it doesn’t lessen how horrible it is to lose your place in a group on a quite long and difficult run to something as mundane as a windows update.

So this is basically just a PSA to tell everyone to make sure you have Auto-Update TURNED OFF so that this experience does not happen to you =/

Thank You.

Tbh this reminds me of when guardians got hit by the retaliation nerf early in game and everyone was qq saying guardians are crap now their role is pointless bla bla, but guess what they’re still one of the “Tier 1” classes and so is mesmer.

Its one of the most fun classes to play imo and dominates pve still

Just got her to 80 and geared up, Arah shoulders and t3 cultural pants are only armor im 100% sure I like.

Any suggestions for others welcome ;D

Me Kill You

same name my first char/war had on gw1

Charrs were one of the most enigmatic and brutal races in GW1 and I think a lot of people including myself were pretty psyched to be able to play one finally.

And as I now have my charr war decked out in our race’s awesome heavy armor (especially cultural) I am not disappointed

Heres my charr war. Thinking of getting t3 cultural legs next, not sure about the rest.

Edit: new pic with T3 legs and T1 shoulders