Guild Wars 2

haviz.1340:

Good luck with that when new patch comes live ;p

That’s why I tell players wanting to try Arah to go now, while they can resurrect in a fight.

Anyway, it wouldn’t surprise me if Giganticus is modified to make it easier for new players.
But, if I have one advice : fight Giganticus along the walls. That way, when you die, another team member can resurrect you while the others keep him busy at the other end of the room.

Giganticus is the only thing that can be considered challenging in Arah (except Simin, but that’s another story).

If you want to beat it you have to train. Even if your team keeps dying, as long as one player is able to survive, the fight can go on while the others run back.
So if you don’t want your PuG to leave, practice surviving.

If I’m not mistaken, the AoE attack bounces around before hitting the red circles, thus why you get hit by it. But really, you have enough time to run away from those circles, and maybe use a dodge if you really took your time, to evade that attack.

I rather fight Alpha than the tree in TA.

And CoE is kind of fun. Or at least it’s not annoying.

pdfrod.1948:

Failing what? Since the boss doesn’t reset, every group can win no matter how bad they perform. As it is right now, it’s just a time sink.

Failing trying to melee the boss and getting out in time.

This encounter is as much a time sink as most other boss in the game, except that some PuGs prefer to really play it safe by only having 2 players attack it.

Hmmm weird. Never noticed anything like this before, but it’s not like I’m going to try to solo this.

Nice job on this, I was wondering if you were going to use some sort of terrain glitch to get by this, and you didn’t ^^.

The kegs teleport back ?

Why didn’t you correctly place the kegs the first time ?

Mr eX.3420:

I’m well aware of this. That doesn’t help your allies revive you when you defeat, which is what my question is about.

That was my point : stay near blossoms. That way you can use it to rally instead of being defeated.

Gator.5729:

We normally do path 1 every night at least once, we kill everything (no skipping). It usually takes us about 25 mins each time. How much faster are these speed runs anyway?

They take between 6 and 10 minutes.

We need more informations :
-classes
-gear (masterwork/rare/exotic, berserker/knight/etc)
-dungeon (SM or EM, path)

And really, what was exactly the problem. Right now it’s all kind of vague.

Mr eX.3420:

Is the Greater Nightmare Vine encounter in TA being reworked with the res rush change in mind? All the red circles make it impossible to revive someone after they’ve defeated.

You noticed all those blossoms ? Kill them when you are down.

pdfrod.1948:

This boss definitely needs a revamp, as every now and then a thread comes up complaining about the boredom of this fight.

This boss doesn’t need a revamp. Players are slowing themselves down because they don’t want to take any sort of risk.
I can’t say anything for those suffering from depth perception problems (because I don’t have that) but for everyone else, it’s a matter of trying, failing and finally being able to do it.

evolverzilla.2359:

Did you read any post? For your post i imagine not… Read first then auto-answer your question.

I just wanted to know how you think someone can get other people banned.

Writetyper.1985:

Probably the latter, there’s hardly any waypoints in P2/3 apart from the early ones.

Just don’t die at alpha. You have a dodge key, right?

In P3 you have a WP after killing the Destroyer.

evolverzilla.2359:

@Fallon
I have a group where we can do CoF path 3 very, very easily. So we start selling spots. Another group wants to just shut our group off. So they can use LOTS of ways to exploit the way we sell and get one or two of us banned. Even if for a week. They will have a week without competition.

I don’t understand. I’ll try to sum up why I don’t understand what you are saying.
Guild A sells spots for CoF. Guild B also sells spot for CoF.
Guild B wants to get Guild A’s customers. So they plan on getting Guild A banned.

My problem is : how can they get them banned ?

I think they were talking about the infusion type, like right now you have Offensive, Defensive and Omni.
And soon you’ll have Utility

But maybe I’m wrong. However I doubt (and hope) that it has anything to do with racial skills or even races.

CassieGold.7460:

Right. Now try that in a group that’s composed of a ranger, ele, guardian, thief and engineer.

Replace the engineer with a necro and we did it.
And a few days ago I failed it with a PuG of 3 guardians, 1 mesmer, 1 warrior. We didn’t even last 40% before switching to kiting. It’s a matter of knowing what you have to do and wearing the correct gear helps.

Now that I’m thinking about it, they should take some inspiration from this : http://www.cracked.com/article_19162_6-hilarious-ways-game-designers-are-screwing-with-piratekittenml

Czinczar.3786:

come on, you are not going to ban players just because they stand on that little rock that lies in front of them. If standing on that little rock breaks the intended design of the dungeon, then it’s clearly a design flaw.

Of course, I think that those on the side of banning players know that some things are so stupid that they shouldn’t warrant a ban. Ranging the AC boss isn’t worth banning anyone, it doesn’t save any time, unless you have the worst PuG ever.

Exploiting to do 2 dungeon runs in one, as seen in CoE, HotW and Arah however, saves a huge amount of time. So does skipping Giganticus, or the mountain in CM.
Basically anything that relies on terrain bugs, missing textures, portal gun and whatnot is something that I consider high on the “you should be ban” list.

Iehova.9518:

Consider the following: If people go to such extreme lengths to bypass mechanics, maybe the problem is with the mechanics?

Outside of fractals (because I don’t know enough on this), no. They are lazy/don’t want to take any risk/can’t do it normally.

Czinczar.3786:

the dredge fractal : “wheel?”
What does it take for a hotfix? How much time does it take to place a rock in that CM spot for example ?

It’s the third or fourth jumping spot since the mountain exploit was discovered. It wouldn’t surprise me if players find a new one after the update.

That’s to push players to keep doing SM. Players are already having difficulties finding a group for SM, it would be worse if you only needed to do it once per account.

That boss is in path 3.

And yes the new waypoint system might be problematic during some encounters, especially if bugs are involved.
They should let the very first WP on a dungeon always usable. It’s not like you can zerg with this one.

And I really hope that the game will correctly recognize when you are in combat and when you aren’t with this update…

Conner.4702:

No, they need a form of punishment. This kind of behaviour should never be allowed. If no punishment is given you just send the wrong message. So I’m all for a 3 day ban to those that have abused the exploits.

I agree. A perma ban is way too extreme, but a 1-3 day ban isn’t too bad for players that exploit whenever they can. If you think about it, some players exploit so much that 1-3 days of playtime is probably the amount of time they saved by exploiting.

ArcTheFallen.7682:

Lol I don’t disagree with you. This is mainly a L2P issue, but it’s less forgiving compared to others because you put the whole team behind if you die which can be frustrating for a person and his/her team.

That’s why whatever new path I was doing, I wanted to do it with a full guild team. At least you can try whatever you want and they won’t yell at you too much (if you aren’t in an evil guild).

You could always train for this by doing annoying jumping puzzle (Iron Marche, Metrica, Caledon, at good 25% of them).

Mirta.5029:

except that I’ve gotten yellows and lodestones from those “trash” mobs.

I personally never skip and even state while looking for group that I won’t skip. Skipping is just losing out on loot.

A guildie got Dawn from a risen while doing I don’t remember what in Cursed Shore. Yet I never ever found an exotic drop from a monster.
That’s the beauty of random drops. Some are lucky, some aren’t and some can craft Plague and the Bloodstone fragment after doing p4 only once.

If you are the kind of person to go into calculations and finding what is the fastest way to make cash, you’ll notice that killing trash mobs takes a lot of time and have a low chance of giving anything worthy.
In CoE and CoF, maybe you can get something interesting. But in AC ? not a lot of thing that are worth the time.

(This doesn’t mean that I am a skipping dictator, I follow whatever the group wants to do).

ArcTheFallen.7682:

Some ppl aren’t good at spacing between the shield which apparently pushes you into the lava ruthlessly. I think that’s the main source of deaths.

It’s a matter of observation. The shield pulses 4 times (or 3?) before being renewed. Of course, by the first pulse I was already out, but some of my guildies stayed in till the last moment.

And if someone isn’t good at something like this, they should train. It’s like players saying “oh I’m not even going to try to jump the laser grid, I’m bad at it”. Of course you are bad at it, but if you don’t practice, how can you get better ?

Stigma.7869:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

This is indeed considered a terrain exploit and will be fixed in the next patch.

To clarify, standing on high cliffs and shooting down is a tactic and not an exploit. Now if you’re standing on a rock in Snowbind Fractals shooting the boss at point blank w/o him attacking you -that is an exploit… Simply because it applies in real life. If you see a giant spider in your back yard and u want to kill it… you bet you want to climb up to your roof and shoot at it.

Huh, telling the dungeon designer what can be considered an exploit…

Monsters go invulnerable when they cannot attack you because you are standing on higher or lower ground. The Spider Queen (and the p1 Boss) doesn’t. It’s a bug. A bug that is being exploited during this encounter.
Don’t bring real life into it. When a black widow bites you, you don’t turn green and the poison isn’t naturally eliminated from your body after 30 seconds.

I did it recently. I dreaded this encounter because pretty much every post I read about it talked about how long we took to kill, that his health was way too high, etc.

We did it and defeated him rather quickly.
I asked my guildies why players were complaining so much for such a quick fight. They told me the horrible reality : in PuGs only 2 players attack the destroyer while the other 3 use the lasers…Why would you do that ?

How can you even fall into the lava more than once ? The AoE attacks give you plenty of time to get out of the way and I’ll admit that the first time you try to get out of the main platform you might jump at the wrong spot. But aside from that, it’s a pretty easy thing to do.

Rising Dusk.2408:

As much as I want exploits fixed, please don’t prevent us from getting on those pillars! Just make the spider queen reset if the only person attacking her is on them! They are a wonderful safe place to fight the little spiders that shoot projectiles, and make me feel like my extremely capable jumping skills are actually useful for something.

Pretty much this. Those pillars embody the first thing you should know about dungeons : look at the environment instead of following the “normal” path (without exploiting of course.

I think it would be easier to make her invulnerable to your attacks if it cannot hit you (and do that for every other boss, like virtually every monster in PvE) rather than giving it a range attack or a pull attack.
The problem with the pull is that if every boss that can be exploited have this, they will use it even when not exploiting, making it useless to have a range of 1200.
The problem with the ranged attack is that if it’s a projectile, reflect projectiles will trivialize the whole thing.

Awesome.6120:

You know you actually have to do the dungeon right? The story isn’t over when you walk inside alone.

I think that he only wants the WP. Because I don’t see any other reason why you would want to get there. You can do the dungeon without being near it as long as one of your team member creates the instance.

The daily resets at midnight UTC.

If you complete a dungeon path at 23.50 UTC and then complete it again at 00.20 UTC, you’ll get 60 tokens both times.

Dungeons didn’t change, or at least didn’t become easier (except because some bugs were fixed).

mosspit.8936:

Lerysh.8173:

If you are going for a full set of dungeon armor AC has the cheapest exotics for the token price, making it a good place to start. Good luck finding PuGs that won’t skip everything and speed run.

Isn’t the token pricing for dungeon armor the same for every dungeon? Different parts like mantle and coat are different ofc.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_armor_sets#Dungeon_armor_sets

I know this isn’t the best solution, but it does the trick.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Order_of_Whispers_Spy_Kit

This week-end, if I get the time to play, I might PM you to do dungeons. I’ll grab two other guildies (if they are available, else a PuG will do the trick) and we wouldn’t mind doing whatever dungeons you want to do ^^

Sarcasmic.6741:

Well, you’re missing about 20% crit damage (possibly more), and the rest I would assume comes from your trait lines. It’s entirely possible to make each tick of smite do that damage. You could be auto attacking for more.

Maybe there are 25 stacks of might and what not in there too ?

tom.7468:

Anti projectiles is unique for guardian just like portals is unique for mesmer, stealth for theif, pets for ranger, banners for warrior, kits for engineer, attunements for elementalist,wells is unique for necromancer…DEAL WITH IT

Wow Necromancers and Rangers really are lucky to have that ! I would never trade my so ever incredibly useful wells for something else. Oh the times I thought to myself “I’m so glad to have those wells !” You really compared random stuff : from profession mechanics, to type of skills, to skills that have a certain effect, to a single skill.

On a more serious note, wells aren’t that useless. But they don’t come close to being useful as anti projectiles.
Guardians are useful, they simplify a lot of encounters (not too sure about high level fractals) but they shouldn’t turn a fight into afk auto attack while one or two players hit the shields.

Essence Snow.3194:

Based on a matter of principle…..If I were to pay 15g for 1 path….on principle I’m not helping to do kitten…that’s what the 15g is for….15g worth of help.

Seeing that some players wasted 12 hours to fight a boss without being able to defeat, I guess a lot of them wouldn’t mind paying 15g to avoid that experience again. And those that got scared because of such stories might be more inclined to pay 15g if all you have to do is use the WP and get to the last boss to help a little (although skipping the sharks and last mobs can be dangerous). And never forget that you can get a recipe from Arah path 4. And the amulet made from it is worth an excessive amount of cash.

But that’s only for Arah path 4.

For anything else, I can’t see the point of wasting 15g. There isn’t anything worth 15g in dungeons (except the recipe I mentioned). A title you didn’t earn ? 60 tokens ? Must be some really beautiful skin if you are ready to pay such a huge amount of cash for it.

Really, if you never did the path, say it. Or say something like “Oh my, it’s been 4 months since I did that, so I might not remember stuff”, but be careful, this doesn’t work in CoE or Arah. Those dungeons are painful enough that one time is enough to scar you for life.

Some players might kick you, but they aren’t the only ones running dungeons, especially for stuff like AC or CoF.

And whatever happens, unless you over aggro, no one can honestly blame you for a wipe, even during Giganticus.
Unless of course they gave directions (like “take Feedback”) and you didn’t use it at the correct time.

And how could anyone forget players running Elona Reach ?

If you managed to get there as a duo, you should be fine with explorable.

And with AC, the explorable isn’t really harder than the story mode. It’s different, but I wouldn’t say that there’s a huge gap between the two mobes.

DancingPenguins.9875:

You’d still get lowbie loot if you aren’t at lvl 50. If you are at lvl 50, why would you pay any money to get to jade?

Because you paid them to get from level 49 (which you also paid) to level 50 ? :p

Twaddlefish.6537:

I never saw people offering missions completed for money in GW1, but I did see the Droknar’s Run for money. Gets you to Droks for max armour, nothing horrendously special there.

Can’t remember their name, but there was a guild dedicated to running missions and what not as long as you could pay. And they were only one of other guild specialized in running content.

Don’t bother trying to duo it. It can probably be done, but it takes an excessive amount of time.

And that thread is an exaggeration. Read the guide about AC on the wiki that I linked before, to get an idea on what you will be up against and then it’s only a matter of practice that you shouldn’t have too much difficulty with.

Since you are a guardian and she is a thief, you could do CM without it becoming frustrating if she takes smoke screen and you take wall of reflection/sanctuary/shield of the avenger to fight against the projectiles.

Guides on the wiki are really well written. Not always the best tactics, but quite good if you never did it or aren’t used to it.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ascalonian_Catacombs_%28explorable%29
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Caudecus%27s_Manor_%28explorable%29

Sarie.1630:

I would like to know that too – that was word of mouth for me. From my point of view a reliable mouth, but nonetheless third party.

Here is what Robert has to say about this

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Just for the record, standing in a place where you can hurt the boss but the boss can’t hurt you back / can’t fight back is considered an exploit, and we are working on a solution for that problem. As is exploiting terrain like teleporting through walls/closed doors, and getting under/above the map to skip content and get to a place where you can take advantage of bugs or events not requiring previous completion in the order of events (skipping directly to Giganticus lupicus from the start of the arah explore chain for instance).

These are things we patch and fix as we discover them and figure out solutions for. As I have said before, if you see something say something by emailing this alias: Exploits@arena.net

Sarie.1630:

Is this still a common problem? I was aware of the existance of the Honor of the Waves dual-pathing method but that was some time ago and I assumed it was fixed now. Does it go on with others?

In Arah p2 you can use a portal gun to get to p3 boss, kill it, get 60 tokens and resume p2. It wouldn’t surprise me if it can be done in p1 and p4.

That’s because every single thing a necromancer can do, another class can do better and bring something else :
-bleeding ? Why bother with that when you can simply DPS
-poison ? Rarely needed and a thief can apply it and it lasts longer
-blind ? See thief
-fear ? other professions have longer lasting fear
-tank ? not the best choice
-wells ? What’s the point of them ? The recharge is horrible

My main character is a Necro, I did nearly every path with her and we do really fine. But it’s not the best choice. And PuGs like to have the best possible choice, especially when farming.

Morkath.9702:

Caudecus’s Manor was a different story, that just seemed like one major zerg fest of mobs and even following what people considered the correct tactics at the time ( I highly doubt they were) it just wasn’t fun, in fact difficulty aside I found the whole dungeon seemed thrown together.

CM is the perfect example of a dungeon where taking the right skills make the whole thing easier. As a Guardian you should take reflect or adsorb projectiles kills (Wall of Reflection, Sanctuary, Shield of the Avenger), as a Mesmer feedback and null field, etc…

If you finish 5 dungeons in less than 2 hours you get hit by diminishing returns.

Morkath.9702:

GW2 Dungeons put up a brick wall if some of the players struggle in fast paced twitch gaming. No amount of coaching, practice and encouragement will help a group with below average skill players through GW2 dungeons.

I doubt you hit a “brick wall” because the fights were fast paced.
Nearly everyone can learn how to do every encounter because there aren’t that many things that happen randomly : Kohler will always strike a rather long pose because pulling you in (which can be reflected or you can use stability), the graveling boss in P1 and P3 will always do the same animation before screaming, leaving you enough time to either move to the side or behind him.
I could talk about the other dungeons, but I don’t know if that would be relevant since most players use AC as their example.

You didn’t hit a brick wall because you didn’t have “twitchy” reflexes but because you probably weren’t correctly geared (at least with gear of your level), you were probably not using skills that could have help in certain situations, and you didn’t really know how to correctly do the encounters. Which is normal because it was your first times.