Guild Wars 2

The problem with dungeons is mostly that this game never really attempts to teach you how these mechanics work. Literally every other aspect of the game, from dynamic events to hearts to gathering to PVP, are casual. You jump in and out when you want, and there’s never much real danger.

Then you get into dungeons and suddenly, you’re expected to know all these strategies and ideas, and you are brutally punished for not knowing these things. The monsters have way too much health, and their abilities rarely have enough telegraphing to say “Hey, stupid, dodge this!”

Don’t get me wrong, the dungeons become infinitely simpler once you figure it out. But then you still have to contend with the monsters having too much HP, turning the encounters from “hard but interesting” to “long and boring” with the added frustration that if you goof up because you accidentally tap your dodge key or something before you meant to, you get smeared across the floor.

The dungeons aren’t “fun” for a huge portion of the player base. They don’t want to spend two or three hours trying to learn mechanics in an extremely punishing environment for a handful of blues and greens, and a helm they’ll never use. You can throw your hands up and complain about “casuals ruin everything!” or “only hardcore jerks want to spend five hours in a dungeon!” but just because something is getting cleared doesn’t mean it is in a good place overall. Personally, I don’t want to have to block out 2.5 hours of evening to learn Twilight Arbor for the first time. That’s not fun, it’s not enjoyable. The result is that it drags and when I finally get to the end, I’m frankly glad it’s over and consider myself unsure if I want to even bother with the explorable modes.

These dungeons are doable in their current form, but they are supremely aggravating in many ways. They need a good deal of readjustment to bring them into an area where they are challenging, fun, and interesting at once.

Ah you’re right. I did forget the scepter. I’m personally of the opinion that Smite should just be a symbol instead of…whatever it is.

The only main-hand weapon we have that doesn’t generate a symbol is the sword, though. The mace, hammer, and greatsword all generate symbols so unless both your weapon sets have swords for some reason, you have access to a symbol at every turn. Not to mention that synergizes with some of the other trait lines that create symbols on you in certain conditions.

The reason Stability was removed from the tomes is to make them not as absurdly ridiculous for WvW or sPvP. 20 seconds of stability and the freedom to just cast whatever you want is kind of insane, especially considering that Tome of Wrath’s holy nuke has a huge AoE that does a significant chunk of damage on top of a knockdown. Tome of Courage has an AoE stun and an AoE max heal (limited to 5 targets but still).

I actually think the guardian elites are pretty awesome. Renewed Focus might seem meh until you build a Virtues-based spec, but it is really really useful for that build. It’s a melee-focused build anyway so the root is kind of a non-issue since you’ll be in somebody’s face using it. It’s not like it’d give anything extra if you could move, you’d still be casting it and locked from doing anything.

Hate to break it to you, but nobody really enjoys long raids or dungeons anymore. Even WoW has defaulted to winged raid instances such that you don’t have to spend your entire night doing one thing.

I don’t even really think the GW2 dungeons currently are very casual-friendly because they require a lot of coordination, something you won’t get in most pugs. You also really have to pay attention and think in these current dungeons. When you get killed, there’s usually a good reason, and you have to think it over and strategize.

Besides, from the inception of Guild Wars 2, it was designed to appeal to a more casual audience. I can log on for an hour if I have a busy evening and still get a good chunk of a level done or complete the daily achievement. Have a spare hour and want to play WoW? You can complete maybe one dungeon and check the auction house.

I’d like to see story mode yield a small number of tokens, too. Honestly I just don’t think right now the dungeon rewards are on par with their difficulty.

As for the difficulty, while I’ve been able to personally grasp how to get through dungeons with guildmates fairly quickly, I’d like to see an across-the-board health reduction in dungeon mobs. Once you figure out the gimmicks of each trash pack or boss, I find the fights go a little stale since they just have mountains of health to burn down.

It’s almost as if…new games have problems that take time to be sorted out. Weird.

Tsaritsin.5364:

Blizzard doesn’t even exist anymore, it’s Activision,

Activision wearing a Blizzard dress, and dancing with anyone at the party who looks like they might have money.

Bobby koticks Cash Cow, yeah give him all your money,

But don’t expect a Game.

R.I.P Blizzard

This is a dumb post. Activision has literally nothing to do with Blizzard’s side of the operation. The merger was done by Blizzard’s parent company, Vivendi, to essentially rescue Activision from bankruptcy.

Kotick has zero say in anything Blizzard does, which is why you aren’t seeing a WoW expansion every 12 months like Call of Duty has.

We tried to run Caudecus Manor last weekend and had some serious trouble. We were also 4-manning it, which put us down a bit, but we hit a serious brick wall. After thinking it over and re-strategizing, we went back in last night, and I led the group to a full clear in ~60 minutes with only one full party wipe.

Here’s my suggestions:

• The golem at the start is a jerk but what’s important is that EVERYONE gets away when he spins up. Similarly, his missiles are terrible; they need to be either dodged, reflected, or absorbed.
• The first pack after the door guard, with the bomber, is borderline impossible to fight in the basement. Pull him back up to the room with the doorguard, and you will have plenty of space to get out of his keg throw.
• Every pack after this has a Champion in it so be prepared to crowd control it somehow, or at the very least, be prepared with some heavy healing or utility skills.
• The dogs have a 5-second fear on a short cooldown, and each dog can cast it so you can get unlucky with the fears. Have some kind of Stability source ready (your guardian can use Hallowed Ground)
• The snipers are a monumental pain, either line of sight them or have reflects ready. Seriously, use reflects if possible. Each shot reflected will smack them for around 1000 damage.
• I just saw you mention getting overwhelmed by mobs. After you kill the door guard you will get swarmed but all but one or two of them are normal creatures that should melt if you group up and AoE them down. There is a second point where you may pull an extra couple mobs (when you’re freeing the first ambassador). This is the point where we had our only group wipe, just be prepared for it and focus down one mob at a time.

In all seriousness, the worst pulls are the bomber pack in the basement and dogs.

Now, I don’t have much experience with the other classes, and I’m not sure what level your guardian friend is, but here http://tinyurl.com/cb6xujn is what I’m gunning for my guardian at 80 (I’m at 78 currently) as support/heal. This will give him a lot of healing off his weapon skills and group protection off the shield. The staff is useful for setting up ranged pulls as I’d use Staff 2 then set down Staff 5 to get away. Healing Breeze is weaker than the other two heals, but Breeze is the only one that will heal others. Merciful Intervention isn’t the biggest heal but will get him close enough to drop a Symbol or use a shield skill to protect them. Wall of Reflection is really good for this instance, thanks to the snipers, and Hallowed Ground provides a fire combo field for the group and grants almost 12 seconds of stability. And I cannot stress enough how absolutely incredible Tome of Courage is, with a spammable heavy heal on 1, a group buff on 3, an aoe stun on 4 and a full heal on 5.

Hope some of this helps you out, good luck!

We have plenty of combos. For example, you can use Purging Flames and while standing in the field, Greatsword 4 grants a Fire Aura while Greatsword 3 and 5 generate Burning Bolts.

While inside Purging Flame, Scepter 5 grants Area Might. While inside a Light Field, Hammer 2 grants Area Retaliation.

There’s a lot of self-comboing we can do. I don’t think all weapons need a combo finisher, although I do think it’d be nice to change the scepter’s auto-attack to a slightly faster three-hit chain where the last chain is a Projectile finisher to shore up our ranged weapon.

Do you have any idea how absolutely ridiculous it would be if we could block all damage for two seconds on command as a base class skill with a short cooldown? No, we don’t need to have this, sorry to burst your bubble.

Aegis is fine as it is, it’s not designed nor intended to be your go-to defensive ability for WvW or rapid ranged attacks. For ranged mitigation, we have Shield 5, Mace 3, Focus 5, Sanctuary, and Wall of Reflection. If you’re getting pummeled by a warrior using 100 Blades, dodge away from him. He’s rooted in place, and the skill doesn’t send out waves like our Sword 3 does so once you’re out of melee, he deals no damage with it.

Aegis is meant to soak big hits. The only change I would make to it is for the game to somehow check for it against Blind. It is a minor irritation to use a blind, only to have Aegis pop up and get wasted blocking a hit that was a 100% miss.

While the aesthetic of pistol/torch sounds pretty cool, I’m of the opinion we don’t really need to get another weapon. The scepter needs tweaks, mostly to make the auto attack faster and give Smite a slightly longer range. Staff needs to do a little more damage.

I do wish some of our AoEs could reach off keep walls to be sure. But none of our utility skills are built around being ranged, and even if you take the ground targeted consecrates, you wouldn’t be able to get them to work with weapons of long range. We’re designed to be up close or at medium range providing support and damage.

I’m not really sure I agree about the lack of control. As you said, Scepter 3 and Hammer 3/5 offer some control. But Tome of Courage includes a huge stun, Tome of Wrath has an AoE knockdown, and the charr have Shrapnel Mine for a bleed/cripple. I’m aware the books are a little more finnicky now they don’t provide Stability, but the options are there. You can also hold people off with Line of Warding. The Guardian isn’t really designed, I don’t think, to be some kind of huge debuff-applying class. Our focus is more on providing the buffs, a little bit of healing, and support while we scorch entire groups of people.

But the block is actually REALLY useful in PvE considering it mitigates 100% of an incoming attack. It’s not really about trying to tank but being able to block, say, a ranger’s shot in Ascalonian Catacombs is incredibly helpful. While there may not be any true tanks, the guardian is designed to soak hits via mitigation like Aegis or Blind.

As for me personally, initially I was pretty down on the shield. After going back and using it more often, I’ve found that my preferred weapon sets in a dungeon are sword/shield and scepter/focus. The sword/shield lets me get up close to do some damage and get to melee range to pop the #5 bubble as a heal, and the scepter lets me do a bit more control from a distance.

Yeah, the monsters operate on a threat table similar to what GW1 did from my understanding, and it’s very different from Rift or WoW, which had simpler aggro mechanics.

In dungeons, nobody is really quite meant to be taking all the damage for the party. It’s more about control of the battle and creatures. That being said, the guardian’s “tank” weapon brings a lot of party support and personal defense, especially if you make good use of Traits. 20 points in…Honor, I think, lets you access two major slots that make Symbols larger and heal allies who are inside them, making the mace’s Symbol really, really useful.

Leap of Faith also has a really short range, only like 600 I think. It’s not very effective as a gap closer, you’re much better off getting closer with something like Flashing Blade from the one-handed sword or Judge’s Intervention before using Leap.

The elevation thing, as far as I am aware, is a known issue. At least I think it’s in the bug compilation sticky.

I know that I see a lot of people complaining the guardian is a little too squishy or don’t enough damage or something, but to be honest, I don’t find this to be the case. Mine is at level 63 or 64 right now, and by this point, I’ve figured a pretty good deal out on my own.

You sort of covered this in the Traits section but to reiterate: Guardians have some incredible synergy among traits. I’ve got enough points such that I’ve picked up the Virtue of Justice bonuses (Blind upon activation and resets with kill). In that same tree, you can also pick up a slot trait that causes Blind to apply Vulnerability. With the weapon set I run (sword/torch and greatsword) this is easy access to three blinds, and each Blind applies a stack of Vulnerability.

On top of that, one of the Traits in the first tree also makes your symbols apply Vulnerability. So between all my blinds and the symbol from the greatsword, I can get a decent stack of Vulnerability running by myself. All this combined with some condition damage gear, Burn duration runes (Balthazar’s runes), and the trait that’s an extra 10% damage to burning targets lets me melt things pretty quickly.

As for defense, we may not have the enormous health pool that a warrior has, but we don’t really need this because we have so many ways to mitigate damage entirely. Not only do we have access to four blinds, but we have two knockdowns (one from the Hammer and one from Bane Signet), two blocks (one from the mace that soaks one hit, and the focus shield soaks three), three ways to apply Aegis (the trait for getting it at 50% health, every 40 seconds from Courage, and for activating Courage), and there’s still the two dodges. While it’s kind of wonky and nearly impossible to time correctly, charr also have Hidden Pistol to do piddly damage but execute a dodge that doesn’t consume Endurance. Don’t forget either that Tome of Courage grants you a full heal and a 3 second stun.

Last night, I was tired of waiting to for a group to show up to the Fire Shaman boss in Iron Marches so I went to tackle him myself. I am not really traited for defense or support, but I tossed on a scepter and focus. I swapped my utility skills to include Sanctuary and Wall of Reflection. Once I got my cooldowns timed and into a pretty decent rotation, I was able to avoid taking nearly any damage from a boss that can instantly down you by hurling a flaming axe that does somewhere between 8k and 10k damage. WoR flipped his own axes and fireballs back at him, Sanctuary soaked the same attacks, Shield of Wrath blocked them when those were down, and in that time, Aegis was probably up. I was almost never without one of my skills, and in the event I found myself in a dead zone, timing my dodges was enough to save my bacon.

The current state of human affairs is also pretty directly related to the fact they got wrecked by Flame Legion-led charr and were reduced to a fraction of their former glory. They’ve lost a lot of their ability to produce and innovate on technology due to having almost no resources. They’re deadlocked on pretty much all fronts, either by norn territory, frail charr treaties, insurgents, or dragon shenanigans. They have to rely on bootleg charr technology for their weapons, and hand-me-down research from asura. They’re in dire straits, but I think that makes for a more interesting point for them to be instead of “on top of the world” or “right in the middle” for their story.

Incidentally, I’d prefer to see them succeed in spite of the gods’ abandonment rather than have the gods return in some kind of literal deus ex machina.

If you’re finding yourself having some issues with the hammer, try comboing it with Judge’s Intervention as a utility skill. It works as a slightly better gap closer than Hammer 3, and teleports don’t seem to interrupt casting so you can start casting, say, THUNDERDOME and pop JI right before it finishes. You’ll warp to the target, finish casting THUNDERDOME and have your target trapped for a couple seconds.

Reihert.1509:

Dont forget the combo field you can create with symbol of wrath and whirl.
Not related to the topic but many people dont realize that.

Removing one condition from yoirself and your nesr by allies is great.

You can also use Purging Flames to drop the fire aoe and use Leap of Faith to generate a Fire Aura. Then Whirling Wrath and Binding Blade both will combo with the fire field to launch Fire Bolts everywhere. It is the best.

Not sure what you want, the larger force is probably always going to beat out a smaller force. It’d be the same if you have 5 vs 10 or something. Having less players by a double digit count in an open battle is a pretty significant handicap.

As far as zerging goes, there’s not really much you can do to dissuade that. By the very nature of the battle, it takes large numbers of people and siege weapons to storm a keep/fort/tower. The reverse of this is also true, however, in that if a huge number of people are rampaging through the map, a smaller number of people can basically waltz behind them to recapture everything.