“Does Anet view these as exploitive as well? Is running through half the trash mobs imtended? Am I way off-base and these were intended tactics for the community to find? Are there other players who feel as I do on this subject?”
Anet fix these eventually but players always seem to find more. I’ve seen any number of different positions used in the dredge fractal for the armored car fight, probably because there it is so tedious that players are desperate to cut it down. I think these exploit positions are symptomatic of more general problems with combat movement, obstacles, and terrain and they perhaps need to change their development culture to bottom it all out.
Running through some of the trash in probably intended but I’m not sure the developers expected players to skip absolutely everything. Some skips are removed when Anet bug fix the dungeons. PUG players often are their own worst enemies and do bad skips that will eventually cost more time when people wipe, but that’s a different problem.
The exploits are cheesy and yes they shouldn’t be used. Many PUG players know they might get kicked if they object so they just tag along, meaning the exploits enter common usage quickly. I’m guessing the majority of players are so accustomed to these exploits that they don’t think they are exploits any more. If Anet can prevent most of the exploits with consistent quality of design then the culture will change too, so that players see exploits as the exception rather than the rule.
I’ve still got the golem runes from the CoE armor set on my ranger. I originally intended replacing them but the golem is fun and I just enjoy seeing it turn it up. If I was taking the ranger into fractal 30+ I’d take the runes out but I’m not, and all other group content will be ok whatever runes I use.
For the original poster, that’s a sad tale but your group was probably poor and doomed to fail anyway. Bad players always find ways to make things difficult.
“No the dungeon is fine. The more I do it the more I feel it’s fine. Just make sure you have 1-2 guardians.”
Don’t need guardians in here. Guardians are a crutch for players who don’t know how to defend themselves.
I think it is just conditions vs boons. Boon based classes are better because boons scale with content but conditions do not. Conditions are reduced by defiant, are applied to few mobs or a limited area, etc. Thieves relies on conditions like smoke and therefore fail when the content scales in difficulty.
The first thing to do in PvE dungeons is kitten each fight before you start and pick a plan of action. Change your utilities and weapons around to suit that and maybe your traits as well. The basic part of the plan is melee or ranged, or the timing to switch. With ranged you can generally get by with a shortbow and use smoke screen for missile defense. That should be enough to keep you alive in ranged fights if you use evade/cripple skill 3 at the right times and you get the cluster bomb for big group damage. For veteran/trash melee you should move to a safe edge of the melee group, put out some blindness for defense, then let the weapons roll out simple damage while you are watching for evades/dodges. Swords are good for dungeon trash with the cleave. If smoke is ineffective because mobs are running about then you might have a bad group or you need something different like caltrops or venoms to group the mobs up into a killing zone. For bosses you need to be much more careful since blind is ineffective and you just need to dodge out of the line of fire or be elsewhere.
With no trait points in either acrobatics or shadow arts you will be short of defense. You’re missing out on endurance, vigor, regen, condition cures, venom leech, etc and you’re probably better getting those trait benefits than trying to make do with utilities and food.
The dungeons are not easy for most new players. The common knowledge tactics for these dungeons are so well known however that the average PUG is not just being average, they are playing with well tried tactics. Even if they don’t understand how or why they are doing something they still do it successfully again and again. If a new group goes into the dungeons without any knowledge or tactics they become intensely difficult.
If a mob is outside its roaming area and you use a smoke bomb the mob will return to its area and aggro can reset. If you are inside a mob’s roaming area and use smoke bomb then it will wait for you.
I seem to remember that Mai’s words were vague enough for Scarlet to be an organization. Scarlet may not be the personal nemesis.
“There needs to be content that appeals to both casuals and hardcores. How hard is that to understand!”
You seem to want all content to appeal to casuals whether or not it appeals to hardcores, but that’s not going to work. This dungeon isn’t hardcore by the way. I’d define hardcore as something for people who put intensive time/effort/organization into the game. This dungeon isn’t restricted to hardcore. A good player with limited time can complete this dungeon.
Thieves can’t stand in front of mobs like a warrior can and hack them down. You need to use active defenses like smoke/blind, daze, shadowstep, cripple, and evade/dodge. It’s all there in the weapon sets so experiment a bit with the defenses and be prepared to let your auto-attacks roll out the damage. Thieves need to learn to play from the start and it becomes easier to see what’s going on when you’re not mashing your own skill bar.
Not a problem at all. The rangers put down healing springs and carefully loop around Mai getting some defense from weapons and condition cures from the springs. Most of Mai’s damage comes bleeds and the healing spring will wipe that out. The warriors can obviously work to that plan and the elementalist should be able to as well. If you are all within reasonable range of Mai she will not use her shadowstep pistol attack and Horrick will put the flame fields into the melee area on top of Mai.
Dodging the circles between stages is nothing to do with classes and isn’t so hard with a passive speed boost. When you’re reviving you need to watch Mai and stand up to dodge when she aims her pistol for the shadowstep.
Don’t feel guilty. A good player in fractals with the right AR is better than a loser in any other class. Play well and you’ll know you’re worth the spot. Your team mates tend to pick up on that somehow and accept what you’re doing.
At least it took more than two hobbits. Your complaint about the dragon fights is valid but in story terms the dragons are ok. There’s quite a lot going on in Orr with the sinking and raising, the corrupted priests and temples, Zaitan’s minions, Arah and the human gods, etc. It just needed a better Zaitan and for him to be seen earlier in the story.
In the LOTRO MMO there was a raid on a dragon called Draigoch that had no lore behind it at all. However when you entered his lair you had to sneak past the dragon as it looked through the cracks in the walls. The animations for the head and the eye (you really only saw the eye or some fire coming out of the snout) introduced the dragon incredibly well. The raid fight itself wasn’t the best but Draigoch had the type of entrance that Zaitan deserved.
The living story timeline isn’t mean to be fully integrated with the personal story timeline. A new player can do the aetherblades then the personal story, creating their own history and timeline as they do it. This means that the elder dragons are not doing anything different from what they were doing at the end of the personal story since that is near past, contemporary, and/or near future for players. Like Orr, the elder dragons are locked in time.
Could heartseeker be given a second skill in a small chain in the same way as larcenous strike? If this second skill was given a longer animation, high damage, high initiative cost, not a finisher, then might it give more balanced play?
Sometimes it’s wise to give your PUG a chance and see what they’re up to. It can be smarter than the common knowledge tactic. It can be smarter than your guild tactics. As an example, groups often insist that I stand in the huddle as they’ve always been in groups that huddle up for a pull. The huddle itself isn’t important. It’s the grouping of mobs for aoe that is important, so squishy classes can always take care of their own defense elsewhere as long as they maintain the killing zone and can maintain their group support.
It’s always funny to see people using common knowledge exploits that don’t work any more. The players insist you stand in specific spots and then die horribly when it doesn’t work. What a shame!
There is no need to turn the longbow into a skirmish weapon. The shortbow is the skirmish weapon. The longbow should be there for big warfare and the design suits that.
“You’re control is mid range, so the design feels a bit schizophrenic as one skill pulls you to mid range while another pulls you to long range.”
The big problem of the ranger is not that the weapons push the ranger to long range. The problem is that a ranger should be able to operate at maximum range and have utilities supporting his group, but at the moment the utilities only affect a small area around the ranger.
“because the laser walls are un-dodgable.”
Actually, dodging through the walls is ok since you can occasionally get through without a hit and more importantly, you only take one hit from the wall. If you try to run away from a wall but get caught by it you can take three or four hits and that can put you on the floor. Standing further away from the center probably means the beam passes through you faster too.
I’m guessing that if this dungeon stayed in the game for another month there would be PUG tactics for this room that would become common knowledge.
Guardians are the weakest ranged profession unless you want to include reflections. The thief ranged weapons only really miss proper single target dps from pistol/pistol. The shortbow is a good mobile weapon with aoe. Pistol/dagger isn’t great but has its uses.
I’d happily keep the weapons we have now if we can get more missile defense.
“Doesn’t matter how many times you mash your attacks and utilities or in what orders or combos, you wont match the Dps or support of another class. "
Again you’re wrong and you’re basing it on videos and heresay rather than what you’ve done playing the class in that dungeon. I’m not claiming great dps but the support is there as soon as you go into melee. I’m not going into CoE with zerker groups doing speed runs, I’m going in with PUGs who might need carrying through and I can help carry them through and I’d rather do it with my ranger than my other classes.
“Imagine how much more you’d be contributing on a good class.”
No the ranger is fine in CoE if it is played right. I know there are plenty of places where the ranger isn’t fine but it can be ok there. Don’t make blanket assumptions.
Strangely enough I play a melee ranger in CoE and my drake pets survive quite well on the alphas without me doing a great deal.
That skill is already really strong. You get the evade. You get the cripple. You can repeat it for as long as you have initiative. It’s a 100% projectile finisher. All it needs are its bug sorting out (unwanted repeats, hop on the spot). It is far stronger than the equivalent ranger shortbow skills, one for evade and one for cripple each with a cooldown..
I’ve got the same trait set up for PVE with a power/vitality/condition armor and adventurer runes (as my kiting armor set). It does a lot less damage than my main (beserker) armor set but the extra endurance from the adventurer works well with withdraw. I used to have nightmare runes but the fear effect was infrequent and usually counterproductive. I also was not convinced that the condition extension from the runes actually worked.
My build started as a venom based build but I now use the shadow arts more often for stealth. I still go back to venom sharing occasionally and it seems quite strong in the aetherblade retreat.
I opened 3 loot bags the other day and got 2 holographic knight minis. They’re the only things I’ve got from opening many, many, more bags over the whole dragon bash event. Streaks of luck can and do happen. Very long droughts are likely to happen to many people as well.
Experiment with different builds and traits. Try different weapons with traits and see what you can get out of them. It’s very cheap to change traits and you learn a lot more about the class.
“but this are mostly single player, single archetype, homogenized train-wrecks that rely moreso on knowledge of the dungeon / prior experience than teamwork.”
The teamwork is there but players don’t need to talk to each other to do it. They know what’s required and they make it happen. If you look at a dungeon like CoE there can be a lot of teamwork but very little is said at all. PUG players are assumed to know common tactics and make it happen.
If you want dungeons to need people in roles then play that style of MMO and don’t complain when you’re sitting lfg for an hour waiting for a character to do the tank/healer/control role.
“Because 9/10 times low achievement points means they are terrible?”
Yeah and you were terrible once and perhaps you appreciated the guys who didn’t boot you from groups on sight.
To all the idiots who think this is learn to play … the animation is bad. If a doorknob is broken and needs a special twist to open then someone can skillfully master that twist but the doorknob is still broken. The same is true of the ranger sword. Players can skillfully master it but it is still broken. Auto-attack skills should be the simplest skills that players can use and should not be a handicap in any way.
Personally I find the animation ugly and out of character for my ranger as well. It suits a dervish, berserker, or weapons expert rather than a ranger. It does not suit a tactical fighter that uses traps, spirits, and ranged skills.
An aggro drop on stealth would allow players to drag monsters onto other players and then stealth to lose aggro. This could be used for griefing but perhaps it caused other problems in PvP.
It would be wrong in design terms if we always did more damage with the bows than the melee weapons. We would then never use the melee weapons. They might as well be taken out of the class. Would anyone prefer that or do you just want swords to brandish for screenshots?
The correct design decision for game play is for melee weapons to do more damage than ranged weapons. It’s right. Players still use melee and ranged.
The last fight is a bit long but it is all challenging for newcomers who don’t know the fights. When I go in with PUGs I need to revive lots of players many times and that keeps us all busy. This is a new temporary dungeon so players be won’t aware of all the ‘common knowledge’ tactics and it doesn’t have to be balanced for people who have done it 20 times.
Look through previous posts. Someone else did some testing and found the same sort of thing.
I would pick shadow refuge, blinding powder, the movement speed signet, and basilisk venom. I spend most of my time reviving my team mates and those skills help. I did actually manage to get my team all back from the dead once (not just downed) but they all died again in the next cannon round and I couldn’t do it twice! Movement speed is for the cannon range and basilisk venom can park Mai for a few seconds.
Thieves should be able to spot Mai’s shadowstep as the dagger/pistol dual skill that blinds and shadowsteps. If you can evade when she does the animation you should be safe and it doesn’t matter what weapons you use. If you are near her in melee you need to clear conditions since the bleeds stack up rapidly.
“I dont go to this dungeon anymore because it is not challenging due to stacking (which is not an exploit but I find boring and too easy) and spots where the boss cannot hit you.”
Stictly speaking, those tactics are mostly exploits. I don’t think PUGs even know the real tactics and will never find out unless a guild group insists on doing it properly with them.
Since one of the content designers is kindly reading the thread, can I put in a popular player request for the enchanters to always respawn after a party wipe in their original state. That would be always with 2 on each side. If the content provides the right challenge to start with then it should reset to that challenge. It should never reset to a harder challenge for the struggling groups who are least able to deal with it. This type of punishing design drives the struggling players out of dungeons completely and does nothing to increase the challenge for the players who don’t find it difficult enough.
Rikkiti skritt.
All venoms suffer from a big disparity between the normal applications (1) and the maximum with traits (2×5). To make sure that two thieves in a party both sharing venoms do not become overpowered, all the venom skills are too weak without traits to support them. Stacking basilisk venom duration would be overpowered.
With the latest patch a new event to defend workers has been put into Kiel’s landing. This is more difficult than the old one and can be cleared solo but is really a two person job. Pride point can be cleared solo but is really two players. Steampipe can be cleared solo. I can’t really kitten camp karka but it probably needs a group. So a guild needs to take about 10 people down there to clear the camps in a co-ordinated way then wait for the Karka Queen.
This dungeon was labelled as challenging and it is. It is only hard because people do not know the tactics. If you go into CoE without knowing the tactics it can seem impossible but nowadays everyone assumes that everyone knows the tactics and that every CoE run will be easy.
I would agree that some of the run and dodge sections are too long and that the laser room has slightly too much. You get dragged around by the golem, jump onto some boxes, try to shoot the golems and you have … confusion? Who thought this fight needed some confusion on top of everything else?
First of all, swap your weapons the for encounters as you need them. When people post on the forums about using dagger/dagger or whatever with specific builds then they are primarily talking about SPvP where you can’t change stuff and also WvW where you can’t predict your opponents. In dungeons and especially fractals you can change your weapons and a few traits before each encounter and you should do so if you need to. For a lot of dungeon encounters a shortbow at 900m range is ok.
Secondly you do need to look for the animations of bosses. Kohler raises his arm before he does the pull and you can dodge. In fact there is enough time to dodge too early and get hit afterwards.
Thirdly get some smoke and blindness in place to give some defense. Smokescreen is a must have utility in ranged fights (it even blocks Kohler’s pull but it’s a touch slow to use as a reaction). There are a lot of ways to blind melee trash in dungeons but you usually need to be using some of them.
“You can also block/reflect/interupt/evade the pull, blind/fear/knockback/any other cc the golem, or use line of sight to stop the pull.”
The golems frequently have an invulnerability shield so you cannot pull, daze, knockback, or do anything else to them. Perhaps if you are dodging in the perfect direction and watching the golems and watching the beams and timing your dazes and everything else then you’re ok.
I think the fight is manageable but much easier for heavy armored stability classes than the squishy classes. Isn’t it funny how often this seems to be the case? I’m guessing ranger pets are pointless, and engineer turrets, and necro minions and so on.
Same problem. We went back and found some more engineers to kill. Kiel started moving towards the fight and once it was done she walked further back up the hill but stopped in a different place. We tried jumping off cliff to die and reset her, but she came back up the hill and stopped short of the switch again.
No solution found. We quit.
For leveling up you should start with sword/pistol for melee and either pistol/dagger for ranged. Get a shortbow for safe aoe at group events. These provides from the weapon sets your main defenses that you need to learn to use: cripple, smoke (blind), daze (interrupt), and shadowstep/return. They workout with any utilities from level 1. You get cleave on the sword auto-attack.
As you go up levels you should experiment with builds and switch weapons to see what you are missing. If you’re going to learn the class you shouldn’t pick a level 80 PvP set from day one and stick to it.
With a thief you have to learn to play. You cannot soak damage and need to actively defend with dodge, blind/smoke, shadowstep, cripple, and daze. You need to use the right defense for the right situations. It’s all there in the weapon sets if you know when/how to use the initiative and when to run with auto-attacks.
Explain the plain and simple please. It’s not plain. I’m PvE. I don’t like idiot warriors running out early and getting a lot of AOE down on my group. (Perhaps they’re not idiots if the skills isn’t working to its description).
I’ve noticed that if you leave shadow refuge before the full duration you are instantly revealed. I’d have thought you’d have just left the circle with as many pulses of stealth as you’d acquired. Is this correct and if so why?
“If these patch notes are real then ANet is blatantly ignoring how thieves actually function under water.”
Thieves are entirely dysfunctional underwater. I guess now we move away from being situationally perfect (broken) or situationally awful (broken) and just become awful underwater.
I entirely agree. The cut scene, voice acting, art, and so on was fine. It was just a poor story and the scenes were not believable. Magic boxes? Enemies appearing from nowhere? I’m guessing there were supposed to be some flashing lights when using the box but they didn’t even show for me