Guild Wars 2

TBH one of the issues I see in some dungeons for new/pug groups is some bosses/fights not fully resetting on party wipe. The most noticeable examples of this are

1. Dethra setting up the cannons, if someone rezes Dethra before you deal with the ghost left over from your last wipe you can end up with multiple spawns sitting on top of one of the cannons. So not only has your team failed and got wiped, but you end up having to spend about 20+ mins pulling off 1 or 2 mobs at a time as with multiple Necros/Monks stacked on top of each other it is impossible to kill them any other way.

2. Nightmare vines in TA. If you fail this fight you end up with 2-4 Vines left up. It then becomes a deadly job for the wiped party to deal with them as they are swamped by 100s of red circles. Much harder than the initial fight.

So if you fail these fights the first time the dungeon can end up doubling or tripling in the amount of time it takes. Because the fight actually becomes harder. If you imagine you are taking two or three new people through a dungeon, you explain the fight to them, but one or two of them don’t understand it totally, or one of them runs in and rezes Dethra. The run then becomes slow tedious and boring as you try to deal with their mistake. How many of those players will do the dungeon again.

I run a D/D Thief in fractals, I think I’ve only fallen on the Colossus fractal once (due to DB) in the last 20 or so runs. It’s very predictable. It always moves the same distance. You can even stand on the edge of a platform, death blossom over a mob and then hit it again and you are all but guaranteed not to fall off. The trick with a Thief is to be really careful to watch the enemies health bar, because if he dies just as you activate an ability it can cause you to target a new mob and that can cause issues.

TBH it’s fine at 35, it’s really a case of right tools for the right jobs.. A wall that reflects missiles is a wall that reflects missiles at 35 and 80.

I’ve tanked Hodkins burrow and the spikes at 35ish on both my Ranger and my Guardian, if you use the right skills and know how to kite you are fine.

I don’t think any fight in AC is DPS gated in any way.

I would have no problem with the changes to guard if they made Birds able to path inside keeps.. They are fricking bird.

But I agree. I have 5 level 80s. I enjoy the Ranger the most, I think it’s a really fun class. The issue really is it is harder to play, you have to consider far more than most classes, partly due to bugged skills, and there really is no gain for this.

Also in high level dungeons a lot of the time we are a liability. We are a class which due to pets dying almost instantly in a lot of boss fights has low DPS and not enough support to make up for it.

I see in GW2LFG “lf2m, no Rangers” so often. And I even get it in guild, where they don’t want me to take my Ranger. This is an issue. An issue which could be sorted by altering the ratios on bosses and making Agony Resist work in Fractals. Or allowing stowing of pets on the few fights where they are liabilities, and giving use some of the lost DPS back, I’m not saying that pets shouldn’t give more DPS, it’s risk and reward, if you use a pet and manage it properly you should get more out. But those times where the pet does not help at all we should be able to mitigate it a bit.

The trick is watch your mini-map if he’s agroed on you.. he carries on following you so when he disapeared you can run towards him and roll when you hit his icon. you will roll through him, and his axes will miss you when he de-cloaks.

I’ve just done a couple more runs.

Are Breeders/Burrows meant to spawn infinite mobs. There were a few times where a single player got left against a breeder and a burrow, after people had died, and I think at one point I had around 50-60 mobs following me and my FPS dropped off the face of the earth.

The issue it’s once you have done it once, no-one has a reason to go back to help new people. Making it really hard for a new player to get a team. A first time reward doesn’t help this. An ongoing daily that gave some kind of reward would.

Tokens could definitely help, though I’m not sure I would give them for Arah as the Story and Exploration might as well be different dungeons.

That’s not quite what I’m saying, I could be the most amazing froody player ever, it wouldn’t matter, as I run these dungeons with a team. Quite regularly with low level pugs. What I’ve found its that level doesn’t matter that much, I’ve had full 80 teams that have been useless, and low level teams that have been really relaxed and fast. It feels that what is more important than level is the ability to adapt. If things don’t work stop explain clearly and go again.

A prime example of this is the Hodgkins burrow room. This room is not a DPS speed race as people think. The back left burrow doesn’t spawn till you kill the front burrow. You can kill the other 3 burrows and then just sit there clearing mobs and getting back cooldowns before you kill the front burrow and deal with the scavengers from the back left burrow. If you do it this way there are far less things that can go wrong. And I think any team of any level could do that room with no issues.

Ioflux.4369:

Ratty.5176:

Eliyahu.1467:

The only excuse for failing on Simin before the update was if she bugged — which was a rare occurrence much like Lupicus bugging.

There was absolutely no requirement for a certain party make up — any combination of classes could do the fight. If you failed it was because your team couldn’t run sparks worth a kitten

http://i.imgur.com/iE0VjkP.jpg

You know what that is? That’s a Necro, an Ele, a Mesmer, and 2 Engineers downing Simin. The fight did not need a nerf in the least. It needed a bug fix for a rare bug, that’s it. The only other barrier to completing it was between the chair and keyboard.

not really surprising you had decent condition damage and AOE, now try doing it with 2 entirely healing build Guardians and a Ranger, very painful. Felt like hitting head against a brick wall. She was most definitely a DPS race.

Really? Aoe? I didn’t know Aoe mattered for simin. That party’s dps is so low yet they completed it.

You could AoE her while she was Stealthed to counter her healing, while 2 people ran the sparks.

Eliyahu.1467:

The only excuse for failing on Simin before the update was if she bugged — which was a rare occurrence much like Lupicus bugging.

There was absolutely no requirement for a certain party make up — any combination of classes could do the fight. If you failed it was because your team couldn’t run sparks worth a kitten

http://i.imgur.com/iE0VjkP.jpg

You know what that is? That’s a Necro, an Ele, a Mesmer, and 2 Engineers downing Simin. The fight did not need a nerf in the least. It needed a bug fix for a rare bug, that’s it. The only other barrier to completing it was between the chair and keyboard.

not really surprising you had decent condition damage and AOE, now try doing it with 2 entirely healing build Guardians and a Ranger, very painful. Felt like hitting head against a brick wall. She was most definitely a DPS race.

There is very little difference between a 1 and a 9. At 10 things change up a bit. I think you would be fine joining teams up to that point.

To be honest there are 3 things I think you really need for a successful CoF farm

1. people that know what they are doing
2. people that are willing to do multiple runs in one go
3. people in multiple servers

the real things that slow down farms are
1. Not finding 5 people fast
2. The dungeon being locked

and this is why I don’t get the Zerk farming group. You spend far more time putting the perfect group together and not enough time actually making money. And the gain is not so huge to make up for the wasted time checking each person and kicking them. I’ve done runs which have taken less than 8 mins with no warriors.

I’ve done almost every path in the game at the intended level. I leveled my Mesmer, Warrior and Ranger almost entirely in dungeons. My Ranger literally did each dungeon when it first opened up, I believe it even did AC at 34.

I’ve just started a Guardian, Leveled it up 20 levels in crafting and popped into AC explorable today even with the new changes succeeded all paths, though path 3 boss was painful. Our Pug team also included a level 43 elementalist, 47 Necro and 60 guardian, only 1 player was 80. Successfully tanked both Hodgkin’s burrow room and the spikes without dying. So very possible.

Did a pug with two new players last week, they kittened up their advert and were wanting story but advertised P1. So we ended up doing P1 with them. One was a level 31 thief another 37. After explaining each fight it was one of the smoothest runs I’ve done.

I feel that most dungeons are more about technique than stats. Though there are a few that are DPS races. Though off course stats give you a bit of leeway.

I totally agree. They take just as long if not longer than Explorable, so I can’t see people farming them unless they gave over 40 tokens. Heck I don’t think people would farm them any more than explorable even if they got 60 tokens.

But what tokens would do is mean low level characters would be able to get Story teams. I know I’ve always had issues getting it on each of my alts, because there truly is no reason to do it more than once.

Possibly give standard rewards the first time, and some tokens the second time.

Been running the dungeon today on my level 35. Overall it’s still very doable, but

I feel that Path 3 boss may be too hard, as it stands.

Path 2 boss seems to get stuck and just won’t move. I’m led to believe this is due to defiance. because if I run in with my Guardian and pop all my CCs it seems to get him moving again.

The Spikes part give severe lag, I’ve also seen the same at the end where 2 Breeders were spawning lots of mobs. Everything started stuttering.

Amodin.1092:

I’ve only done Path 2 in here, and I can definitely see the changes. Some very good, some were… not really bad, but the mechanic is broken a bit and needs tweaking. Might do Paths 1 and 3 today if we get some time. Path 2 has a very bad video lag hit on pulling chains. All of the lag seems to be related to gravelings. Noticed it very quickly.

I’ve just started a thread about that. The graphics get really messed up in that fight.

The new patch seems to have introduced some graphics issues. Most noticably around the Spike Traps. Mobs flash in and out of existance, Spikes seem to be missing animation and it feels like the Anti Aliasing dies and the frame rate drops.

I’ve also noticed it in a few other places. But it’s most noticable at a trap. A few Guild mates report similar things.

Geoffroy.3685:

Oglaf.1074:

I appreciate the Ghostbusters reference, but please just change him back already…

Pretty please?

I haven’t tried Path 1 & 3, but though I agree that most changes on path 2 are actually good (spider, new mechanics on scavengers, overall reduced health pool, …), I must also point out that the new ghost eater is horrendous. Spent half an hour on it after patch, and I’m really really happy to be all set on AC tokens. Seriously, do you really think that adding such a tedious and demanding mechanic on the first dungeon of the game was a good idea ?

I’d rather go wipe with PUGs in Arah than doing it again.

We had real problems with Path 2. Then 1 person quit and I got in a second Guildy, and we did it in no time at all. So I feel that part of the issue is people just not understanding the fight yet. When we had 3 people on the team that did it was just as fast as the fight was before.

I have found Symbol of Wraith on the Greatsword seems to debug him so he starts following you again.

Jordy.1570:

the reason is…. morons….. think they have tiny brains…. at least u can go back into fractals when u r disconnected…. i dont get it either why dungeons ids r bound to 1 person. just stupid…

Fractals are linked too.. if the person that started it leaves the group (or changes character) everyone gets kicked

If you swap MF for Precision you don’t get any squishier than you were with the MF. Precision stat doesn’t decrease your survivability.

Anwar.2018:

Isn’t the purpose of doing those too-hard-to-be-fun group things to get loot? Betcha 80% would do an easier solo if they could get the same loot. Sooooooo….shouldn’t your complaint be about whatever you’re doing is too hard, since your buddy has died 3 times at the beginning?

I don’t know, I play a MMO to play with other players, otherwise I would be playing Dishonored or Assassin’s Creed 3.

I don’t think any of the Dungeons in this game are too hard to be fun except possibly Path 4 Arah. You should of seen us last night doing a Level 34 fractal, we were having such a laugh.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Ratty.5176:

In a game which is social, this feels off. It feels in someways like a Baseball player going into a game with one eye shut because he’s being payed by the opposition coach. He is not being up front with his team, he’s lowering his performance that has a knock on effect on his team, and he’s taking money on the sly to do so.

It’d be more like the Black Sox affair I suppose, if you want to go way over the top in how it gets applied. Or a player phoning in their play because they’re thinking the team isn’t going to be big enough to suit him. (Think the character Roger Dorn of “Major League”.)

While this game is social and oriented to encourage players to work together there’s still . . . and always will be, a strong competitiveness at work in some players’ minds. They’ll want the most out of what they do, and will react in differing degrees to other peoples’ impact on their play.

Disclaimer: There is nothing wrong here. I am not saying people need to stop being competitive. I am saying it’s natural and understandable.

If there was a lobby to make MF/GF, et cetera partywide, then you’d probably see some other complaints in reverse starting up . . . that people are being pressured to help the group by running more of these so they can benefit the team. Yes, I can see that argument starting right now in an alternate world’s web forum

I think it depends on how you set it up, if you had diminishing returns, then I feel you would end up with everyone in a group taking a bit of it, rather than people being forced into it. As 7 bits of armor across the group would have far less impact than increasing from 5 to 6.

I think the real test is the people that are taking Magic Find should be up front about it, and tell there group. If the group doesn’t want someone with Magic Find in it, it really shouldn’t have to deal with them. However I doubt many of the people that run with full Magic Find sets would do this. But it’s the real test of the pudding. If they find they are kicked from every Dungeon group because of it, or asked not to use it, it suggest the majority are against it in it’s current incarnation.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

The best fix is a tweak to allow the bonus to be beneficial to the group, which adds something to the game . . . rather than remove all four of the above effects, which takes something away from the game.

Indeed I totally agree, it’s in the game, Magic Find is not necessarily a bad thing. However I dislike the implementation of it. And I’m definitely not the only one, as I’ve seen in Guild chat, it is a prevalent feeling that it hurts the team when people run magic find, and I agree it does, a couple of people going into a dungeon with 2/3 the stats does affect the team heavily.

Someone may not be the best player and therefore may be down a lot or contribute to the team as much, he can not help this, and so I have much less issue with this than someone coming on the team in MF gear, in this case he is consciously making the choice to gimp his stats and help the team less than he could otherwise.

In a game which is social, this feels off. It feels in someways like a Baseball player going into a game with one eye shut because he’s being payed by the opposition coach. He is not being up front with his team, he’s lowering his performance that has a knock on effect on his team, and he’s taking money on the sly to do so.

Fuz.5621:

I run full MF (except on places like Arah, fractals 11+ or CoE where i run full berz. But something like AC? Full MF all the way), and I’m very often the one who dies the least. I know my character skills, I know the instances, I know the bosses. I contribute to the group more than most people I pug with.
And for the ones who say that running MF is egoistical… seriously guys, do you play for the other people or for yourselves? I do dungeon runs for money and loot, and MF helps me achieve my goal.

Just because you survive does not in any way mean your not responsible partly for the deaths that happen. There are many places, EG Dethra setting up the cannons or Charging the Hammer on Fractals, where DPS is important. If mobs are not being killed fast enough it means the people on your team are getting swarmed by more mobs, this can lead to you not being able to heal through the damage being taken, and this is when teams normally go down. Having enough DPS is important and you taking Magic Find can be one of the causes of this lack in DPS even if you survive longest.

I’m not against Magic Find, I’m against people making that decision for me, and reaping the benefits for it.

Writetyper.1985:

Ratty.5176:

Writetyper.1985:

MF is kitten as a concept but am I missing the memo where dungeons were hard or something? If the whole point of dungeons for most people is to make money… why not make money then?

Because without any way to know how much MF everyone has you end up with situations were 1 player is running tonnes of it and everyone else is suffering because of it, low DPS/Survivability. So most of the team is supporting 1 person that is making more out of it. If it showed as a buff at least you could at least advertise. AC 25MF run, so everyone gets an equal share of the loot, rather than one person being carried and getting more loot.

But they’re not getting carried because because if you play with fingers on the mouse instead of toes then you could do dungeons naked and finish in due course. It might take longer, but so will putting a ranger into your group, so will having someone with full soldiers, so forth.

I don’t use any mf because I don’t care about money, but that’s food for thought. Any lost time in a party wherin everyone is using mf might be made up through dosh. It’s certainly not like 5 PRECISION, which is less than 1/4th of what it takes to up your critical chance by ONE PERCENT is going to speed things up much at all.

5 Precision won’t, but if you have a person with full Explorer and Runes of the Pirate, they will do significantly less damage as a player with full Berzerkers and Runes of the Scholar. The issue is not that you can do the dungeon easily with this player. It’s that this player is making that decision for you and the team is suffering for it. Everyone is having to play better, and take longer over fights to line this one players pockets.

Writetyper.1985:

MF is kitten as a concept but am I missing the memo where dungeons were hard or something? If the whole point of dungeons for most people is to make money… why not make money then?

Because without any way to know how much MF everyone has you end up with situations were 1 player is running tonnes of it and everyone else is suffering because of it, low DPS/Survivability. So most of the team is supporting 1 person that is making more out of it. If it showed as a buff at least you could at least advertise. AC 25MF run, so everyone gets an equal share of the loot, rather than one person being carried and getting more loot.

In otherwords I have no issue with a group handicapping themselves to get more loot collectively. But one person handicapping a group to get more loot personally, that’s more of an issue.

It’s like Fractals. You can choose to do a higher level fractal, which is going to be harder, everything is going to do more damage and you are probably going to have more deaths, but you get better loot. Or you can choose to do a low level Fractal have an easier ride and less loot. This is fine because the group makes this decision.

1 person secretly running Magic Find is the equivalent to everyone in the group signing up for a level 1 fractal and actually doing a level 10 fractal where only a couple of players get the extra loot.

I find this particularly amusing as last week I had 2 players that advertised for AC P1, when they were new to the game had never done a dungeon and wanted Story, obviously to them they thought P1 meant part 1.

Anyhow we get there and into Explorable only to find this out. One level 31 Thief and a level 38 Warrior. Anyway we still do Path 1, rather than story, the Thief 4 levels below the dungeon level. Smoothest run I’ve ever had. no-one even went down in the Hodgkins burrow fight. Every part where we skipped mobs they succeeded without dying. Afterwards I took them for a path 2 run.

So the moral of the Story… LEVELS DO NOT MATTER IN AC. What matters is skill and technique. These 2 players were willing to listen to my instructions, didn’t have an ego, didn’t go running off on their own, and even with low level toons it was much faster and easier than with most of the full 80 pugs I’ve been with.

Having done AC on level 80s and having leveled 2 characters almost entirely in Dungeons from 30, I must say having low level players does not make an awful lot of difference.

Kimyrielle.3826:

The game is becoming anti-alt rather than anti-casual. With the addition of fractal levels and hard-to-come-by gear (Ascended), it’s getting really difficult to keep more than one character “high end ready”. Getting legendaries for more than character is probably out of most player’s reach, too. However, I dare saying that even casual players can still get their hands on Ascended gear for ONE character.

I think they needed something for the longer term players, ascended don’t have much better stats, you can run any dungeon in the game without them, FotM can be played casually, as you can run it at low level with no special gear. You can even run 10-19 with no AR, it’s harder but you can manage it.

I’m finding now by the time I level up an alt I have full exotics just sitting there with the stuff I get from exploring the last zones, doing dungeons and just selling stuff. But without Ascended gear there would be nothing between Legendaries and Exotics. And if you know the game well you can level a character to 80 and have full Exotics very quickly even playing casually.

I’m also finding that the ascended stuff is just sitting there waiting for my alts when they hit 80 now.

Having played CoH, Warhammer & Aion, I would only say CoH was less grindy, and by the end I don’t even think that was true with the high level slotted enhancements.

I don’t like the implementation of Magic Find in this game. I agree, if you take Magic Find you are lowering your contribution to the team. Either the Dungeons are going slower than they could, or you are going down more often than you should. If you say I don’t need the Toughness, I don’t go down often, then those points should really be funneled into doing more damage or more healing. I do feel if you join a team you are making a contract with the rest of the team that you playing your best to help out the team.

Magic Find is a fine stat if your in open world or farming events but in Dungeons where your contribution affects other people it doesn’t feel right to run large amounts of Magic Find when I could be helping the team out in other ways, it’s not like your going to be sharing the extra loot your gaining with the healer that is keeping you up (who has taken Healing instead of Magic Find) or the DPS guy that is killing mobs faster (who has taken Crit Dmg instead of Magic Find), so even if it’s not having much effect you are still really leaching off the rest of the team.

The way I feel Magic Find as a stat should work is that every team member that damages an enemy should add their Magic Find to the loot that mob drops (In other words if you have done enough to get a loot drop from a mob your Magic Find adds to that mobs loot). But that when implemented Magic Find totals you get a inverse squared drop off on the effect. So 10 -> 20 has much more effect to the loot you get than 20 -> 30. This means that multiple people having a bit of Magic Find helps out everyone, Yes you won’t get through the Dungeon as fast, or more people might die, but everyone gets a bit better loot. Or one person could load up on it, and though they might not help the team out as much they have other benefits to everyone. But if everyone takes all Magic Find you don’t get stupid loot.

I’m finding it good in dungeons. Being able to pull from extreme distance is nice . Has a few issues in AC, I haven’t really found a way to take burrows down fast, My Thief and Warrior do this job so much better.

I can see what you mean. I think once you start swapping between weapon sets you can get some really interesting combos.

Using Axe/Fire, dropping Fire Combo field and then swapping to short bow to spread cone Poison/Fire. There are also some nice combos running Sword and Longbow due to ranging. So some complexity is there..

Does anyone else find it annoying that the pet name is linked to the slot and not the actual pet.

I mean if I have a Moa called “Tweedy Bird” and I need to swap to a Brown Bear it either gets surreal or I have to mess around renaming in combat.

Totally agree, This games pet control is really bad in general, but I can live with it with most classes. With Mesmers they are really a fire and forget mechanic, same with the Thieve’s Guild.

With the Ranger it is meant to be part of the character class dynamic. But you have so little control over what they do. Being able to Stow a pet away when needed would at least remove some of the annoyance of the Ranger.

I too was really confused when I stowed my pet the first time and it immediately reappeared.

Really want Raptors… I mean who wouldn’t want a Velociraptor with feathers…

Yeah.. not only does the back slot disappear, but your off hand weapon.. Torch 4 has a similar issues, it’s really annoying

I’ve noticed this issue too. Especially on the Jade Kraken. I run to a crystal and hit F, I carry on running for a bit with no control. Sometimes I then pick it up even though I’m now nowhere near it.

Are you still running a 32-bit operating system, I had serious issues with game crashes with Nvidia before I updated my Windows from 32-bit to 64-bit.

Also noticed this issue, multiple times I hit jump and the game just didn’t respond. Caused multiple falls on both the Asuran and the Jade Ocean.

Since the patch, every time I have attempted FotM (3 times now) I get loading screens that just never end. This is not even between Fractals, one time it was after falling off on the Jade Kraken, and another it was being blasted off one of the walk ways on the colossus.

It is gettting infuriating. Almost to the point where I’m tempted to just leave the game for a week or two till things get fixed.

Since the patch I’m getting loading screens that never end. I’ve attempted FotM 3 times and each time at some point I just get a loading screen that never ends, and can’t get back into the team.

I got 250 Fractals a couple of days back, and have never had this issue before.

Had this same bug, the issue comes in the last phase. Without the ability to pick up crystals the team wipes and the entire encounter starts again. Tried changing back with tonics and it didn’t help, just said you couldn’t use them in a transformed state. We had a team wipe and it reset as we couldn’t pick up crystals in the last phase and we were still Charr.

TBH, most Story modes are harder than Explorable modes, why not just add tokens for the 2nd and subsuquent completions. The only reason no-one is willing to run story more than once is that it gives practically no rewards compared to explorable. Which is a shame as some of them are really fun.

We just had a Fractal Run after the patch, when we got to the final seal we got the boss down to 75% and then no mobs spawned at all, so there was nothing to hit with the hammer to charge it.

To be honest all you need is a couple of new Mystic Forge recipes.

EG… Fractal Weapon + Exotic Crafted Weapon with type and stats you want + 50 Philosoper Stones + Vial of Myst Essence

That changes any Fractal Weapon into the one you need for your class. You still need to get to the correct level and get a Fractal Weapon drop. But doesn’t mean you have to run Tier 3+ 100 times to get the 2 pistols you need.

You could do something similar with rings. with the ring you get out based on the mix of two types of T6 Mats and the Tier being based on the Tier of the Ring you throw in.

EG… 25 primary T6 Mat + 25 secondary T6 Mat + Vial of Myst Essence + Ring (Any Tier)

That would keep it fair. You have to do the correct tier to get your item, you can’t do Tier 1 Daily over and over to get a Tier 3 Weapon. But you don’t have to get super lucky to get the items you need. You can be a bit lucky and then change the item that drops.