Guild Wars 2

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Rules:

1. Each account can only submit 3 entries. The winner will be the person who impresses me enough that my wallpaper becomes their submission (it’s gotta be that good!).
2. It must be inside a dungeon
3. It must have at least one character inside who is a part of your account

What about people with multiple accounts? Would it be ok for me to post a picture under this account that actually only shows characters from my other account?

runs off to bully guildmates into a ton of dungeon runs

deSade.9437:

Pffff…. daunting. They’re daunting if you give up after a few wipes and smash your head against the obstacles instead of thinking of a way to get past it. The only dungeon I can consider “daunting” for a noob is Arah. And this is why there are lower level dungeons.

I don’t know about the thread opener, but personally I can say that it’s not so much the dungeons themselves that are daunting, but the people running them. There seems to be so much “common knowledge” around these days that is expected by all but simply not common knowledge to me, that it makes me feel like I’m making a fool of myself by not knowing all those things.

I’ve actually been in all dungeon paths in this game by now, mostly with groups from my casual guild, but I still feel a lot similar to what you are describing. We’re having fun and can do all paths when the right people get together, but I still don’t know half of the intricacies of dungeon builds and dungeon running that seem to be expected knowledge in random groups. In fact, I don’t even get most of the jokes made on this forum since I have no clue how experienced groups actually run the paths that are around.

Personally I have started reading this forum hoping to pick up a few things as well as collecting exotic berserker equipment for my mesmer. Once that is finished I’m hoping to get up the nerve to actually talk one of the dungeon mentors into taking me to a dungeon, to turn me from totally clueless (I know my class but I haven’t the faintest idea about accepted or expected behavior in random dungeon groups) into fit enough to dare join random groups.

That said, there are a few paths that even I dare to pug already. Story dungeons are usually fine, especially if it’s mixed level groups for the earlier dungeons. I’ve also been in a few Twilight Arbour pugs that were pretty self-explanatory. I haven’t had as much luck with Ascalon Catacombs, since it seems correct stacking spots and such is not as intuitive in there, but I might’ve just been unlucky with groups in there.

Bottom line: Yes, I did (and in many cases still do) feel the same way about dungeons, but having seen the dungeons (although casually, in groups that many here probably would run away from screaming ) it’s totally worth it getting into them, most are really fun and awesome to see.

Dagoth.6278:

YWe just wanted to get some exp and maybe…just maybe enjoy a little story.
Seems you need to be elite player or something to kill some spiders.

No, you just need a full party that knows how to use their skills and abilities.

Dungeons in this game are a decent challenge for most (casual) players, but expecting to 3-man a 5-man dungeon to “get some exp” would essentially mean 5-manning said dungeon would be face-rolling it.

KevinB.9643:

My suggestion:
Should there be some balancing, so people are most likely not to kick you from PUG’s?
I have yet to think of a solution how this “balancing” would look like.

I’m afraid this won’t help much. The scaling actually isn’t all that bad, and a low-level player who is properly equipped for their level and knows their class (and possibly basic encounter mechanics of the dungeon they’re running) actually is in a better position than an 80 who doesn’t know/care how their class and the dungeon really works.

The problem is a) to figure out how well the person you group up with actually knows what they are doing, which you can’t properly tell until way into the dungeon, and b) how well the group as a whole is willing to figure out what works in their group composition, if it doesn’t fit the meta setup/meta strategies.

I’ve done Ascalon Catacombs path 1+3 with groups with only a few (non-berserker) 80s and several low-levels (lowest even below 35, my own as well as friends at one time or another), even if not a single elementalist was involved. In guild groups this mostly works well, takes a while longer (and possibly a few silver for the occasional wipe) but we have a lot of fun. In fact, we don’t often run dungeons with all-80s groups in our guild runs, there’s almost always a person (or three) joining with a leveling toon.

In random groups I’ve seen this work too, if the group is willing to take the time, but I’ve also seen such groups fail miserably because people expected the “stack here and burn down” strategies to work, which they clearly didn’t for the specific group due to not enough damage. Not everyone is interested in adapting to a non-perfect group setup, which is their right, but won’t help succeed if the group clearly is non-perfect. You either adapt the strategy or abandon the group.

There are way too many variables involved that depend on the people behind the keyboard that simply can’t be balanced automatically to make mixed-level groups “viable” for everyone. Even if the balancing would be “good” enough to make a lvl35-player exactly as strong as (or even stronger than) a down-scaled lvl80, you’d still have to change the preconception in a lot of player’s heads that 80 is flat-out better than 35, and that’s something no amount of balancing in-game will ever manage completely.

I enjoy well-running full-80s groups as well as fun groups of mixed levels, but each in their own time. If you want to play sub-80s, go looking for like-minded people. There are a lot of them, even on the LfG-tool, even without extra “balancing”.

Lindbur.2537:

dat frown

I like to tell myself that she simply is a very serious young lady … but I have the sneaky suspicion that the real reason for the frown is that she doesn’t approve of my plans to send her into non-casual dungeon runs .

Anyway, I’ve seen her show her teeth in what she calls a smile, I’ll take the frown any day.

IrisTheCasual.3742:

Asura looks cute in anything. Really. Just running around in a fluffy skirt is too kitten cute to me.

I’m afraid I’m too picky even when it comes to Asura fashion. There aren’t many armour sets I really like to see on my Asura. My in-house fashion consultant (aka my youngest daughter) advised me to take the upper right outfit (I think it’s the Caudecus chest piece?) because she doesn’t approve of the narrow sleeves on the other shirts. I’ll have to play around with gloves to see if I can’t find a way to make the center outfit work after all (which kind of turns out to be my favourite the more I look at it).

The boots are likely to stay the way they are in those screenshots, since I noticed those come in an exotic berserker version, and boots are the one piece of armour I haven’t had any luck with getting a buy order filled at the trading post (plus I’d save on a transmutation crystal that way).

Shirt could be decided by my limited funds in the end (I haven’t run either Caudecus or HotW much yet, but since I need extra HotW tokens for the head piece, it might be easier to get the missing tokens for the shirt from CM).

I have not yet finished my complete set of dungeon equipment, but I’m already stuck on the much more important question: Once I dare to invade Tyrias dungeons, what outfit do I wear? I can see myself hugging the floor in many a dungeon to come, but if I do so, I at least want to do so in style .

I like the Whispers skirt and HotW masque, but can’t decide on a shirt to wear with it. What do the experts of stylish dungeon invasion think of the three possibilities in the upper row? Any other suggestions that may go better with that outfit?

Do I have to get shoulders/gloves to round out the outfit? I rarely find any of those (on any character) that I’m satisfied with, so I turn them off most of the time.

And how about boots? I’ve been looking for something that covers the ankles (I don’t like the stripes the whispers skirt has at ankle height so I’m trying to hide those) without looking like I’m wearing a couple of trash cans instead of boots.

The lower row is what I’m wearing now (I’m saving my transmutation stones for serious armour), and I’ll most likely keep one of those outfits for my WvW equipment, but I admit that they are not really original or stylish .