Guild Wars 2

Demosthene.2195:

Ivonbeton.6814:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Unifying-the-FotM-playerbase/first#post779585

I’m sorry to say, but on my server LA overflow practically doesn’t exist. This is a band-aid solution only for overpopulated servers, and quirky at best. When people choose a server they take “roots” and grow a community there, don’t expect people to transfer servers just to be able to play fractals.

I also enjoy the groups from my server more then the groups I get at overflow. Either because my server just has more friendly people with a sense of humour or I have just been unlucky with my overflow groups. But honestly, even when the run is going well, the overflow groups feel cold and all business and no fun.

That said, I do support cross server LFG and grouping. In fact, I just support getting a better LFG system period! That’s my wish for Winter’s Day! To paraphrase a Maria Carey Christmas song “All I want for Winter’s Day is a good dungeon LFG system!”

Wini.7523:

They joined our party, not the other way round. So you suggest we were at fault?

I think you should have made clear that you were on alts and wanted to experiment with running lower level characters. Conversely, I think the level 80s in question should have dropped out if they had a problem with your level. I.e. this is an issue that should have been addressed before you went in.

Aside from that, not knowing the particulars of what happened during the run – I can’t really comment on the actions of your other party members. Maybe there was genuine frustration at how you and your friend performed during the run and might have felt you two were getting a free ride on their hard work. Alternatively, they could have just been elitist jerks. We don’t know, we weren’t there.

I don’t think you have to worry about this too much. After a certain point, most casual will hit the infusion wall. I mean, I have a Vial of Condensed Mists Essence but do not have the materials or the money to buy the materials to make it into Ascended gear.

And even if I did manage to make it into a back slot item, it won’t be infused and getting it infused is a grind in itself. Eventually, things will settle down and most people will run Fractals up to level 9 and thus more then willing to group lower then their level because they aren’t looking to increase their levels, they are only there for the loots.

That’s the issue, IF you want to increase your frac level. You will not group with people lower then you. But if all you want is loot or just something to do, you are not going to care.

People do run fractal levels lower then what they are upto. Especially if they are focused on drops and not advancing in level. I just ran with a group where two people were doing the fractal at lower levels to what they were upto. Both did it for the token and the loot. However, finding higher levels to help with level 1 is going to be difficult.

I mean this is my Fractal experience (all with PuG as my guild dungeon group hasn’t had a chance to do Fractals yet)

level 1 – fail
level 1 – fail
level 1 – success but this was with a group that I was invited to by a guy I knew and it was clear from the get go these were experience dungeon runners even if they were new to fractals
level 2 – success (same group as above)
level 2 (repeat with different group) – success
level 1 (on alt) – fail
level 1 (on alt) – fail
level 1 (on alt) – fail
level 3 – success
level 4 (same group as above) – success

See why I am not keen on helping strangers get past level 1?

Andele.1306:

Sad thing, that only happens with OoW, on each other order Trahearne could even be counted as a improvement from a pure, this is war vs a massive enemy force and same on how developed the character is.

I will have no ill spoken of Gixx and Sieran! Durmond Priory all the way!

Atmaweapon.7345:

I think that was the point of Tybalt. He’s there as your partner in the Order of Whispers to completely destroy any notion that the Order of Whispers was only full of stock no-nonsense assassin-temperament characters who are only cold and unflinching. Rather than that, they’re made up of people from all walks of life who each have something to contribute information-wise to the order for the goal of taking down the dragons.

So, you know, rather than an order where everyone is one-dimensional, you find out that everyone feels like a real character that aren’t conforming to your standards of what a spy organization should be like. It also makes it scarier since that Apple vendor who cheerfully sold you apples is exactly who he appears to be despite passing off info to the Order. There’s no finding some cold-exterior under a warm facade, no telling right off the bat that someone is acting nice because they aren’t acting. They really are nice and they’re still a part of a continent-wide spy organization.

I agree with this totally! If you choose the Grawl as your tribe, you get to go to Dredgehaunt Cliffs and the Order of Whispers agent there is a sylvari who runs a homestead full of Orphan Norn kids (and one Charr orphan). I had met her before on my main who is part of the Durmand Priory. Never once would have guessed she was Order of Whispers. Just seemed like a nice lady who wanted kids but couldn’t have kids on account of being a Sylvari and thus taking care of kids who needed a mother. But no, no, she’s a Whispers agent keeping an eye on things for the Order. Was totally shocked! But that’s how it should be, if you can tell person X is a spy, then person X is not a very good spy.

Alexnssilent.3690:

tinni, did you get a chance to do the event?

I did and I also got a legendary pre-cursor. So you can say that I was really lucky and should shut-up about it and its true, I was very lucky this time. But let us consider what’s been happening,

1. One time event on Halloween was just a cinematic – people raged about staying awake and the event being over hyped.

2. One time event this time was a 3 hour test of endurance that wasn’t really enjoyable. Most stuck around because of the sunk cost fallacy, i.e. they had already been around for 1 hour so they were going to stick around. But we were rewarded for our patience with an exotic trinket, an exotic 20 slot bag and 2 random exotics and 2 random rares. Some lucky people got legendary pre-cursors as part of their reward and some really unlucky people crashed out just before the finish and didn’t get anything.

I am fully behind people who put in the effort to get the reward they earned but I am not pro getting rid of timed events because some people can’t make it. I know I won’t always make events but that’s just life.

We could get rid of one time events but I think the game would be poorer for it. But that’s just me.

ghostchipz.2341:

Ok so here is a thought on how to make it possible for everyone to enjoy One-time events
- Roll the event out across your over flow servers every hour during a 24 hour period.
- When you first log on you are given the option to join the next running of the event.
- Once you have taken part in the event you will not be able to access it again.
- You can then control the numbers making it as lag free and accessible to you worldwide player base.

Now I am no techy so I don’t know if this is possible

This was actually a trick we used to use in GW 1. Halloween, Christmas, Dragon Festivals etc had timed events and it was possible to “catch” events by going to a different district. Districts were a bit like the overflows are now only we could select it our selves. So if the event was finished in, for example, American Dis #1, you tried to go to American Dis #99 and were generally able to catch the event. Mind you, the window was usually 30 minutes. But in theory, a more sophisticated version of the same thing deliberately implemented could be used to space one time events out and ensure that people aren’t automatically penalised for living in the “wrong” timezone. I.e. Australia and New Zealand. I mean, I live in the UK now but I am from Australia. We might have the best beaches but we certainly pay steep penalties for having them.

Panic.2497:

From Australia and didn’t get a chance to participate, should maybe add the chest everyone used at Lions Arch like they did for the Mad King event.

This I don’t agree with. Mad King, you had to turn-up for 15 minutes and do a bunch of emotes and that’s it. The bloody Ancient Karka took 3+ hours to kill! 3+ hours! I am pro giving people who participated but missed out loot but I don’t see why people who didn’t participate loot.

I mean, why bother turning up to one time events if you are just going to get the reward at a later date without any of the effort?

Stampeed.7194:

Still not a solution, Ive played 2h30… gotta do it again ? no thank you !

I do feel very sorry for those people who d/ced and miss out. So I think they should check logs and send those who missed out the items via mail. I.e. Karaka accessory, the Karaka bag and two exotics choosen at random. I realise its not easy but I think they should put in the effort given how much effort players put in. Almost 3 hours is nothing to sneeze at. Especially since the event was a endurance trial.

Umm… my brother is overseas right now and in a place where he has no internet. Thus he missed the event. Not everybody can make every single event. Christmas will also likely have limited time events. I might miss those as I have some travel scheduled for that time. So I will most likely miss some one time events. It happens, no need to get so worked-up about it.

Got Zap. I was really surprised! But my bro always said the game loved me Now I have to decide whether to keep it for eventual upgrade to Legendary or sell it. I am keeping it in the bank for now.

Given how many pre-cursors dropped. I imagine prices will go down. So everybody should be happy!

LightningBlaze.4913:

This thread is all about the following:
- Jealous people that feel angry that mf players get more rewards than them in dungeons. Pretty certain these players don’t have mf gear because they can’t afford them or contradict themselves with saying they “don’t want” that type of gear.
- People defending their mf gear benefits in dungeon and overall in pve.

I’m sure if all mf geared players would say “i didn’t get any good drop, mf sucks!” or better yet “I get more rare drops with normal gear than with mf” then this thread would be nonexistent. Nobody would care if they have members in their party with mf gears or whether they are dealing more/less dmg with that type of equipment. The “not contributing as much as the non-mf geared players” statement is simply a way to hide the real jealous emotions.

I am defending MF gear but I don’t have MF gear. I do however have toughness and vitality gear on account of being a guardian. Someone classified that as a selfish stats and there in lies the clux of the problem. Some people think full beserkers have no place in dungeons. Some people like high dps folks because of the speed of their kill. Some people think toughness and vitality are crap stats for team play and it goes on. Ultimately, I made a judgement call on my gear. You might disagree with them but all you can do is ask if a person has MF gear and if they do, don’t group with them. Singling out that stat in particular for rage is stupid. Value of all states is subjective.

Anakita Snakecharm.4360:

Dante.1508:

This is exactly how i feel as well, you do so much of the story line and NPCs basically dismiss you as a nobody with “i’ll follow Trahearne” etc

That to me just upsets and angers me, while making me dread doing my story line at all…

Yes i’m not the king of the world but do i deserve some recognition for saving the pact so many times, including trahearne.

You know, I would even have been okay with something like “being rescued by Trahearne and his friend.” Just some sort of acknowledgement that I even helped. It was like I wasn’t even a blur in the background, and while I agree the PC doesn’t need constant adulation, having my presence at least noticed when I worked hard on something would be nice.

Agreed. Trahearne is a great guy but he isn’t so magnificent that his presence blinds all to everybody else. Or at least it shouldn’t!

Plus I think it was a mistake to have the PC not have more contact with their order following Battle for Claw Island. Most people choose their order with care and I personally found it upsetting that I am not having more contact with Gixx (my order head). More importantly, I genuinely like my order and thus I worry that going forward, Anet will trivialise the order I choose to belong to and that’s not cool.

So really, I love Trahearne and I have nothing against him or him being the leader of the pact but I do think Anet dropped the ball in terms of story telling in the later part of the story.

I say this over and over and over again until you guys get it. If your argument is that magic find doesn’t contribute to the group then that’s a slippery slope to gear discrimination hell. What about the newly level 80 who might be in a mix of blues and greens? Many level 80s think rares are a waste of money and so will wear greens until the can get dungeon exotics. And what about rares? Maybe person X can’t afford exotics and so are wearing rares. Where do you stop the descrimination if your argument against magic find is “group efficiency”? Because surely blues and greens also detract from group efficiency, as does rares.

Also, what about food? If you eat something, even level 5 stuff, you are that much more effective then if you eat nothing! If everybody in the group has a food buff and player X doesn’t, isn’t player X bringing down the group efficiency? This is an absurd argument! I am almost in favour of “work meters” that factor in damage, healing, res and other things just so we have concrete proof that magic find matters little.

But honestly, if magic find matters so much to you. Just say “no explorer/magic find gear”. That way, everybody who wears magic find can group together and that’ll be that!

Ganzo.5079:

you only need to see wich kind of food they use… if they use MF food, they are problably use MF gear to have at least 100% MF. Its not always real, but its a good start.

Umm… I don’t have a single piece of magic find gear. Which is why I do occasionally chomp on a magic find food. That said, I don’t eat magic find food when I am new to the dungeon because I need to be 100%+ in a new environment. But something like CoF path 1 and 2 I can do in my sleep now and so can most PuGs on my server. Can you really say that Magic Find is detrimental either in food or gear form when the dungeon has been put on “farm” mode?

Tremayne.6734:

snip

TL;DR summary for the Internet generation – it’s not the gear, it’s the player.

Totally agree! I mean, greens have lower stats then rares they have lower stats then exotic. So are we to not have people in greens because stat wise they are not as effective as exotic wearers? Where does the discrimination stop!

Anakita Snakecharm.4360:

Tinni.4351:

Trahearne’s job is not fun people! It’s a managerial role for which he is highly suited. If you had gotten the job, you couldn’t be off “adventuring”. Please think carefully about what you are asking for and be grateful that Trahearne is doing all the boring stuff, so you can do all the exciting stuff.

Really? That’s funny, because I seem to recall Trahearne tagging along on quite a lot of my missions after about Level 50 or so.

And that’s the problem – the game tries to have it both ways. It would make sense for Trahearne to be the leader taking care of the mundane stuff, kind of like General Soulkeeper for the Vigil and whoever has similar rank in the other orders. They were also your superior officers, and they left you to get the job done.

The thing is, the game won’t just leave it at that when it comes to Trahearne. The game insists on forcing him into the spotlight over and over. He’s both the leader and somehow has to star in many of your missions. I think that’s actually the biggest problem.

The Pact leadership could be peripheral, like the orders leadership was – but it isn’t. It’s treated as a central aspect of the story, and since it’s about another character, it makes the story seem to be about him.

The story would seem more personal in my opinion, even if it was about your character as a footsoldier, if the focus was on footsoldiers rather than on the hierarchy.

He didn’t tag long to that many and inbetween, he was at headquarters. However, there is a problem with how the story was told. My brother and I were talking about it at one point when he commented that he felt like an NPC after battle for Claw Island. Now both of us are happy with Trahearne being pact leader. That makes sense and as I said, means we don’t get stuck behind the desk.

The problem is more subtle, the way the story missions happen. The way the NPCs talk and react to you. If it feels like you don’t have to be there for the mission to succeed, then it is not your personal story. Admittedly, in some of the missions, that’s how it feels – even when Trahearne isn’t around. It’s not really a Trahearne issue but more a wider interaction issue between the player character and story mission characters. Trahearne is just an easy target to focus on.

adobo.1749:

…warrior running MF and constantly dying leaving us to pick up the slack. he died so much his armor broke and still wouldn’t repair. he fought the boss in his underwear and during fights, he transformed into the candy corn monster, for the MF buff.

Now me and my brother who were leading the group were very patient. we knew from the get go, as soon as he died from the first encounter, that he was running in MF but we were very patient up until the last boss. I hate being that elitist jerk that will ask you for you to link your gear. I’ve never done that.

Up until now.

I don’t think magic find has much to do with this. The guys sounds like a total nub and shouldn’t been kicked once he refused to repair.

Is it just me or the list of “useless stats for dungeons” list to increasing? Everybody is like “put in an inspect function” and we all know for every person that uses it to check-out unusual or cool gear on a player, nine others will use it for discrimination. I mean, lots of people think +healing is pretty useless or + condition damage. Some don’t like people being all +power, +precision and no toughness or vitality.

Do you discriminate against a person who is wearing all Knights or Valkyrie but has superior pirate runes instead of, for example, rune of soldier? What about people who have a mix? Mix of knight and explorer gear? What about people who have all “approved” armour but magic find jewellery? I mean, where does it stop?

Ultimately, does it really matter what gear a person is wearing? A person can be appropriately geared but just be a terrible player or having an off day. I would rather have a competent player in magic find gear and an incompetent player in non-magic find gear.

PS. And before I am accused of wearing magic find, I don’t. This is my gear, which has been upgrade to have all superior rune in preparation of the weekends bloodbath with 5/6 soldier and 2/6 geomancer out of CoE.

PSS. I would like to point out that according to some people, how I am geared is a drain to the party as I will not do as much damage as a power heavy player.

GanNing.5963:

I don’t dislike Trahearne, just think that he’d be better suited for the role of an advisor. It was where he said “And this is my second in command” and I thought ‘Oh, second? I’m pretty sure I did alot more to unify the pact orders?’.

You did do a lot, in a field agent capacity. That’s why you are the guy who get to run around getting his hands dirty while Trahearne stays back and does the paperwork. Honestly, I cannot believe how much people playing GW 2 want to stay stuck behind the desk doing paperwork! Or do you guys not realise that a General spends 99% of his time doing paperwork?

And no, you can’t be an “absentee” general who drops by the base every so often to look over the paperwork. It just doesn’t work like that. As for what Trahearne did, he pretty much did everything. Those troops didn’t gather themselves. Fort Trinity did not establish itself. Behind the scenes, Trahearne worked out the logistics, made sure the Vigil, the Order of Whispers and the Durmand Priory all worked together, pulled their fair share etc, etc. A lot of logistics and management people. Not glamorous running around slaying dragons but looking over ledgers, making mundane but important decisions about everyday things like food distribution, medical supplies, latrine locations, not to mention keeping huge egos like Gixx, Armora Soulkeeper and Master of Whispers in check.

Trahearne’s job is not fun people! It’s a managerial role for which he is highly suited. If you had gotten the job, you couldn’t be off “adventuring”. Please think carefully about what you are asking for and be grateful that Trahearne is doing all the boring stuff, so you can do all the exciting stuff.

Nuka Cola.8520:

i’m also hating how dungeons feels like work in a sense that you get 60 tokens per path once and if you wanna do the same path (cuz you like it the most?) you have to wait 24h… this kitten is stupid to say the least, why do we even have tokens? All they do is waste inventory space. All dungeon weapons/armor should’ve been a random drop from end chest like gw1. REMOVE THIS TOKEN BS, ANET! Back on topic i’m also burned out on dungeons for about a month now and if their new dungeon is fun for 2-3 days and after is a boring fest with nothing worth farming in it, i’m out of this game and this is from some1 who played gw1 since 07 to gw2 launch day. GW2 HAS NOTHING WORTH DOING… why releasing a game with nothing worth doing for over a week and leveling up is the worst i’ve seen in any rpgs in general. You play an mmo to level up with tones of ppl doing their thing around you but in gw2 you see one person per 2h in the explorable world, just pathetic.

You are of course joking about removing tokens. Lucky drops? Are you kidding me? You think dungeons feel like work now, how many more times do you think a person has to run a dungeon if dungeon armour pieces were a completely random drop?

Also, who is forcing you to run dungeons anyway? You can easily get exotics without ever setting foot inside a dungeon and there are a myriad of looks you can transmute on the exotics too! If you really, really, really want a dungeon set, yes you have to grind for it. But that’s what prestige armour always has been in Guild Wars.

I mean, I remember soul crushing amber grinding for Kurzik armour and just thinking of the things I had to do for Vabbi armour is enough to make me crawl into a hole and not come out. By contrast running dungeon paths 23 times at max token hardly seems worth complaining about.

I also disagree with everything you said about levelling and stuff and would like to point out that in GW1 we levelled in instance world where nobody was around us unless we took them with us.

I am increasingly seeing a disturbing trend where you have people running around in full dungeon sets from X dungeon who have never done story mode. Yesterday I signed-up for a CoE explorable group where nobody but myself had done story mode. Not realising this and being on a semi-unreliable connection, I asked one of the others to start the dungeon because I didn’t want to D/C and get the party booted.

Long story short, the party managed to get the dungeon stuck in story mode and we ended-up doing story mode (with me switching to an alt who needed story mode). Happily, my server now has four more people (and my alt) who can now trigger CoE explorable. But really, skipping story mode seems to have becoming a thing because story mode doesn’t offer tokens.

So here is my suggestion, first time you do story mode. You get 100 tokens. This gives people an incentive to do story mode. Repeating story mode will get you 10 tokens or some nominal amount. Although I doubt anyone would farm story mode given those are usually longer. But people who take the time to help guildies or even strangers should get some reward for it. But what do you guys think?

glacialphoenix.3160:

Mainly – I’d like to know how long the difficulty scaling lasts and if there’s the option to down-level yourself without having to find people who haven’t run Fractals to the same level you have. I’d rather not be stuck in a predicament where I need Ascended gear to complete the level, but can’t complete the level because I’ve had no luck with Ascended gear. And of course, sometimes you just want a quick and easy run.

I don’t think Ascended gear “drops”. I think you get tokens like every other dungeons. So if you get to X tier, you will have enough tokens for Ascended gear. Of course if you screw-up you purchase or make the wrong gear choice, that’s an entirely different matter.

But no, I don’t think you will ever be able to have a “easy run” with Fractals. It is a “challenge dungeon”. If you want an easy run, you’ll have to do normal dungeons with a group that can do it on cruise control.

OPs reasons are exactly why I didn’t set dungeon set X as my goal. I looked at the token counts and I was like “not happening”. Don’t get me wrong, getting guaranteed tokens is not the same as running Stratham 100 times and never even seeing the Beaststalker pants drop but it still gets meh after awhile. (Quit WoW during Vanilla)

That said, I must have collected 2000 tokens by now. Except that they are from different dungeons. I still have some nice dungeon gear to show for it (staff from AC, pistol and shield from CM, Longbow from TA, Hammer from CoF, 2 x Superior Runes from CoE). I just don’t have armour. I do have full exotic armour that was funded from dungeon runs but it was funded from the money I made in dungeons, not tokens.

I don’t really see a problem with this. It’s just a matter of finding what you are willing to tolerate and staying within that tolerance.

So… this is mini-diablo III? I can live with that.

After thinking about it for a while. I think this is what’s happening with Fractals.

According to wiki: “Fractals of the Mists has no definite end. It is made of nine repeating mini-dungeons, each with their own story and environment, of which a random set of three dungeons will be selected for players to face at a time. After completing one cycle of three dungeons, the party is allowed to rest, repair their equipment and sell their loot, and the difficulty of the next set of three dungeons will be raised.”

So my thinking is that if you are in exotics or even level 80 rares, you will be able to do 1-2 cycles. However, Fractals is a literal treadmill that has no end. So for PvE players who stay on the treadmill, they are the ones who will need Ascended gear as the difficulty of the dungeon is upped.

I.e. Ascended gear is for the “farmers”. I have no issues with this. Not having Ascended gear is not going to disadvantage anyone in, 1. normal PvE, 2. PvP – including WvWvW because lets face it, Guild Wars PvP is not the same as WoW PvP were a guy in blues literally has no chance against a guy in Epics, 3. non-fractal dungeons as the infusion mechanic doesn’t matter in other dungeons.

Now of course, if you are a “numbers” person and have a compulsive need to have the “best” gear. You will run the fractals threadmill or failing to run it, come cry on the forums. But let’s keep everything in perspective here. Like everything else in Guild Wars, including the current legendary and exotic gears, this is optional. The slight improvement in numbers will not make much of a difference, you could achieve more pronounced stat improvement by eating a non-magic find food item.

The Fractal of the Mists dungeon is for “hardcore” PvEers to run endlessly. I see no problem with this. At the same time, I feel no need to jump on the treadmill. About the only issue I can see effecting me is that perhaps non-fractal dungeons might be harder to find PuGs for but that might be rectified by cross-server LFG system

facepalm I think there is entirely too much assumption going on here. I have no doubt that Infusion in GW 2 will work differently to Infusion in GW 1 but I doubt it’ll work the same as resistance gear did in WoW.

Socketing gems I can however see. My thinking is that what we’ll get is an “infusion upgrade slot” into which you can infuse whatever you like. I.e. just as you now put runes on to your armour, you can apply infusions. I doubt it’ll be anything more onerous then getting a second set of upgrade. I.e. I fully expect all armour to have the infusion slot.

Valhallen.1693:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/linsey-murdock-unveils-new-high-end-ascended-gear/

Arguments about gear treadmills and how GW2 wasn’t supposed to have one aside, I don’t like Agony. I don’t like how it works (from the article), I don’t like needing to mitigate it with new gear, and I don’t like the idea of grinding a dungeon for gear so I can do…the dungeon. In my opinion this is a mechanic best left in the past where it belongs, like resistance gear 5 years ago in World of Warcraft.

It’s not interesting, it doesn’t add anything to the gameplay, and it’s certainly not fun. The only reason for its existence is to encourage people to play more to upgrade their current gear.

What do you dungeon crawlers think of Agony, both the idea and implementation?

Agony = Spectal Agony is a condition from GW 1. Infusion is not a gear threadmill as you understand it. It is a special one off umm… upgrade isn’t the right word but let’s go with that, that you apply to existing armour. Granted if you change armours, you will have to get re-infused but Infusion only effects Agony. If you can’t be bothered getting infused, all you have to do is avoid mobs that perform Agony.

Infusion generally did not take long in GW 1. 15 minutes, you go kill a mob, take its essence to a “Seer”, Seer infuses your armour with the essence and your are done! I imagine to get infused in GW 2, you’ll have to do an event or something to that effect. I doubt you’ll actually have to “grind” for gear.

Agony is also a condition and will most likely be manageable to a certain degree without infusion. However, I would not recommend this as if Agony is anything like what it was in GW 1 – it will face roll you if you are not infused. In GW 1, us monks got the thankless task of keeping nubs who couldn’t be bothered spending 15 mins getting infused alive by going protection. I imagine that GW 2 it’ll probably fall to the team minded Guardian/warrior/necro to sacrifice their enjoyment and play to attempt to have a near constant condition removal setup to compensate for nubs who can’t be bothered getting infused. My suggestion is that you not rely on the generosity of other AND GET INFUSED!!!!

Iehova.9518:

Do you seriously think we’re skipping Kholer because we can’t kill him?

I think what you will find is that a whole group of people can’t beat Kholer because they have never fought Kholer. I.e. every Ascalon Catacombs dungeon group they have ever been to skipped Kholer. So if they are suddenly forced to fight Kholer, they simply do not know what to do in that encounter.

I can think of at least two other dungeons where I fear that a large portion of the population do not know how to not skip certain encounters.

Butterfly.9084:

So after I hit 80 on my mesmer, I asked what kind of build I should go for before I run straight into PVE (where I expected to die a lot due to noob) and was told to go glass cannon. Which is fine, really, but after watching full groups of glass cannons growing absolutely infuriated with certain trash mobs/bosses I was thinking that perhaps it would be a good idea to start a support character. Cus you know, I figured that sometimes you just need the extra support and a little less trying to destroy everything before you die.

What I really want to know is what profession you would prefer to bring to fit such a role, or if you’d even bother bringing support at all? I know guardian is more than likely great when it comes to this sort of thing, but are there any other gems that were overlooked? Currently I’m thinking about starting a necromancer after reading that actually, they’re pretty awesome at helping out downed people. The downside is that they apparently suck kitten in general. I’ve only actually ever seen one in a dungeon, so really I can’t comment much on that. Though I am tempted to just go with the ever-popular guardian.

TL/DR: What are your thoughts on bringing a support role to dungeons?

Before you reroll, might I suggest visiting your trainer and retraiting? Your gear being power heavy is fine but since it is power heavy, you can go 0/0/30/30/10 or whatever combination that doesn’t put any point in power and precision but emphasises toughness, vitality and your professions trait line. You will most likely find that those trait lines actually give you trait bonuses that help you be support even as a mesmer. Plus “support” comes in many forms. One for of support is by maximising combos. Mesmers have Ethereal Field which is pretty nifty and one of my favorite fields to combo with. Maximising combos with your team mates or even arranging your skills to be able to combo with two of your own skills would be a form of support. Especially when you are able to give your team mates chaos armour.

Rovaeden.8546:

Tinni.4351:

And this is why you should start on dungeons early! Most people have gone through the die-rez-die-rez thing but usually at level 30 when doing Asacalon Catacombs in story mode. It’s a learning process like almost everything else. Once you learn, you can do the dungeons on auto-pilot.

We WERE doing story mode. : /

Thats no excuse at all for a zerg of 20 mobs each with more HP that your group combined and the only way to get passed them is rez – zerg…. THAT is bullkitten design. Sorry but it just is. That is only one example out of countless.

What were your specs? Did you have points in toughness and vitality? What was your group mix? Where any of you trying to control the situation? Did you co-ordinate? Talk to each other and explain the game-plan before jumping in? Did you call targets? Did you, in other words, do anything to make your run go smoother? It’s not bad design just because you performed badly.

Learning that utilities that you run with in world PvE, learning that you need toughness and vitality or be very good at dodging, hell learning dodge timing, learning to watch for combo fields, target calling and following target calls is something you start to do after you first dungeon. Although some read-up on dungeon encounters and prepare for it and thus do not get face-rolled. Ever. But the point is that you have to learn how to do dungeons. When you do, you will not die and certainly won’t have to apply attrition to win.

Ruien.9506:

People that complain about trash mobs in dungeons just aren’t using their abilities well.

Somebody brought it up in another thread, the problem starts with calling it “trash mobs”. I.e. you expect it to be trash that litters your path to the boss. However, Guild Wars dungeons do not have “trash mobs”. Bosses are tougher but the mobs surrounding them have always been part of the difficulty of the dungeon. That is also why they do not respawn, which they did in vanilla WoW at least.

Anet used Guild Wars 1 expansion the Eye of the North to experiment with a lot of the concepts now in Guild Wars 2 and if you look at the dungeons that Eye of the North introduced, you see that there is no such thing as “trash mob”. I think when people stop thinking of the non-boss mobs as trash, they’ll stop being upset that they are so tough.

Asagi.1405:

drkn.3429:

Free tip: you can change your utility skills AND major traits any time.
If you’re built for summons, please change your build before fighting Alpha, change it back after the fight if you want – and that’s it. This mechanic has been introduced to use it when it’s needed or helpful, you know – and Alpha fights are one of those examples.

You should never, NEVER have to change your traits because they make a fight MORE difficult. That’s absurd logic.
Any MMO that has punished players for using pets and minions in encounters has quickly fixed this, because it’d ridiculous and unfair.

Welcome to Guild Wars, where the majority of your skills ARE situational and should be used with awareness of the situation. As in, if you refuse to change your utilities and traits from dungeon to dungeon or even fight to fight to optimise the encounter, get out and don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

Rovaeden.8546:

I had heard that GW2 dungeons were difficult so I put off running them until I got my character to 80.

These dungeons aren’t difficult, they are trash.

Die-rez-die-rez until you win is not a feature or a mechanic, it is a terribly tuned and sloppily designed dungeon.

I am really disappointed at how poorly designed these dungeons are. I am amazed anyone even bothers with them.

And this is why you should start on dungeons early! Most people have gone through the die-rez-die-rez thing but usually at level 30 when doing Asacalon Catacombs in story mode. It’s a learning process like almost everything else. Once you learn, you can do the dungeons on auto-pilot.

If you like to play the trinity, why not play a game that supports the trinity. Why does GW2 have to cater to players who want to play trinity when every other MMO on the market supports the trinity?

Purely for the lols, I tried using Mortal on the last boss in Honour Of The Waves story mode dungeon. It actually worked really well! Best of all, I could use the phrase “Eat mortal you bear killing, dragon worshipping kitten!”

I just did this path for the first time ever! It was a PuG but 4/5 of us joined vent and for the last fight 5/5 joined leader’s guild’s vent but I don’t think vent made much of a different.

Anyway, I died a lot. Had to use a repair canister on top of spending about 15s on repairs. But IMO, it was still fun and the fights aren’t hard once you get dodge worked out. I would do it again!

PS. I was on guardian and I suck at dodging! But even I could figure out the rhythm of the Subject Alpha dodges after awhile. Practice is the key to everything!

Considering that I am unlikely to change my armour look ever (although underneath it is now 6/6 Knight’s Exotics as opposed to the standard Durmand Priory rare) I change my colour scheme every few days. But I have been wearing the following colour scheme for sometime and it’s probably the scheme I have struck to the longest!

It’s Copper and Blue Ice. If you would like to see some of the other colours I have experimented with, please visit here

Sabyne.6329:

Lots of people seems to only have pvp or WvWvW in mind in this topic. When I read that we are in plate and shouldn’t go range at all or reroll another class, I find it amusing. In some dungeons, you simply have no choice. While I really prefer to be fighting at melee, I sometimes must equip a range weapon if I don’t want to be a burden for my group and waste my money in repairs. When these situations arise, I use the scepter and I don’t really enjoy it as I find its damage to be unreliable on a moving target. I’m not asking for a 1500 pew pew megalaser autoattack, just a weapon that makes me feel I’m not completly useless damage wise when it comes to some content in this game.

As I said before, our ranged isn’t something we are meant to have equiped for long periods of time. As a result, I totally AGREE that when in dungeons and you find yourself in situations were you must be at range for long periods of time – our ranged weapons really do not stack-up. Staff’s #1 range is too small and #2 has a long wait between orb casts. Scepter all you do is auto attack, since #3 is a kite and #2 as it is, is kind of lame.

However, I have a solution for this situation that shouldn’t make us too overpowered. Give us the ability to “grab” the spirit bow. I.e. after we summon the spirit bow, we can interaction with it using ‘F’ and grab it. We’ll get just one attack but it’ll do a fair bit of damage and also keep us at a bit of a range. The bow is immediately destroyed if we “drop” it and the spirit bow skill goes into cool down. This should make us not suck when prudence dictates we stand in a corner, far, far away and just shoot mob X in dungeons (or PvE in general). But is unlikely to be too overpowering in WvWvW or sPvP. In fact, you can disable that function for PvP.

Well I knew I wanted a Guardian, an engineer, a ranger, a thief and a necromancer. So it was a matter of spreading it out across the races and I thought that a Human Noble would be the type of person to be a Guardian.

Did him 5 minutes ago. Did not notice any changes.

mage.3570:

Just finished COF Path 1 with a pug where the leader kicked the party immediately when the dungeon rewards showed up on screen. The other people did not get their rewards. Why is a feature like this in place where the leader can disband the whole group?

The leader did it on purpose because he called us names during the run as well. How can we report this so he gets a ban to teach him a lesson?

I have blocked him but will it stop him from teaming up in future runs? I don’t want to team with dungeon griefers.

Happened to me once during MK. I am not very good with jumping. So I was taking a bit of time getting down to the chest and got booted from dungeon. Only happened once though. Most people were really patient with my Asura taking her time to get down to the chest.

KazNaka.4718:

and afaik, once you see the reward screen with the ok button, even if u get booted from dungeon, you will still see that screen outside of the dungeon. Press OK, and you’ll get the rewards still.

Yes but CoF, like MK, has a chest at the end. Its not really fair to not give players to open the chest. Even if only whites come out of said chest, the player still has a right to get said whites.

Anders.6425:

I agree I loved dungeons in wow and tor. Fun through and through. I can’t stand dungeons in GW2 even when things are going well its just not fun.

I think most of the people that defend GW2’s broken dungeon system run in guild groups almost if not exclusively.

I defend GW 2 dungeons and I 90% with pugs. I do have a guild group and things are more fun, if only because we are all on voice chat and since my guild is made-up of people who are friends RL it’s a totally different atmosphere, and generally go more smoothly with the guild groups. But I have done most of my explorable with PuGs and even a few story modes on main and alts.

It’s not PuGs or guild groups that make the difference. I think what the real issue (apart from dungeon bugs – which are irritating) is that people haven’t figured out their roles in dungeons. I don’t mean their class roles but what they want to do as players. Me? I have decided my goal in life in dungeons is to set-off as many combos as possible! So I try to provide finishers when I see someone put down a combo field (fire and ethreal combo fields are my favourites as a guardian). I also try to carry skills that let me combo two of my own skills, that way I can still set-off a ton of combos even if the PuG goes in without carrying any combo fields. Does it make a difference? I think it does and also gives me a feeling of being connected to my fellow players because I am not just focused on myself but also watching to see what they do.

Ruien.9506:

Robert lost me at ranger doing great dps. I started gw2 as a ranger. Got tired of all the nerfs with the sb nerf being the last straw. I have my dungeon master title,3200 achievement points(only 62 being salvage points) and I have 3 characters all in full exotic everything. The ranger is by far the lowest dps of the 3 characters. Warrior,ranger,thief. I have been in the top 5 guilds world wide in every game I have played.

I list all of that not trying to be elitist but rather to give some background and support of my next comment.

You are out of your mind if you think the ranger currently brings anything to a dungeon group that any other class cant do better be it dps or control. In a LOT of circumstances the ranger is actually a detriment to the group. Dont believe me? Do the captain in Arah path 2 with a pet who doesnt get behind a box. Do subject alpha where the pet can and will kill people because it gets its own set of ae circles. Basically, I can go on and list multiple ways the ranger is a detriment to a group. Sure, you can work around these detriments, but why bother when you can bring any other class and get more from them as far as synergy,dps,and group utilities?

It all boils down to….. you devs wont ever put in a meter because the sheer imbalance of the classes would be recognized by the average joe.

But aren’t we going back to the old problem with the holy-trinity with what you are asking about what a “ranger brings” to a dungeon party? I mean, before GW 2 was released the devs talked in terms of Association (soccer) Football teams and I think that’s a good analogy.

What is a role of a forward in football? One way to look at it is that the forwards role is to score goals. Except that in football, even the goalie can score. So another way to look at it is that forward is simply the player(s) closest to the goal. Likewise, forwards to run down the field when the opposing them is in possession. Just as defenders run forward when their team is in possession. So even though forwards and defenders have set positions, they don’t stay in that position during the game and what they do during the game is determined by the player not the position.

I think the same thing is true of GW 2. Based purely on armour class you can roughly say that Soldiers = front line, Adventurers = second line and scholars = back line. But we know that some necros can take a beating longer then some warriors and even Guardians can staff (which is more awesome that people give it credit for) or scepter (please change #2 to symbol!) from the back. Considering that rangers have both melee and ranged weapon choices, a player is free to define their own role within the party.

I mean, if Adventurers are the second line and thus roughly midfielders in the football analogy, then ranger can choose to be offensive midfielders who stay in close range with their goal being to damage and/or crowd control the mob. Alternatively, they can be defensive midfielders who stay at longbow range but can thus scan the field in relative comfort and react defensively, for example, squishie has mob on them, range can try and draw mobs attention or kite the mob so squishie can lose aggro. But it is up to you as a player to figure out what you role in dungeons are.

Also why meters are a bad idea because when your role is fluid, there are no easy metrics.

PS. I do wholeheartedly agree that the inability to put pet away is detrimental to our class. I mean, when I click the button to “put away” pet, I wish the pet would stay “put away” until I call them back! Because sometimes you just don’t want the pet around!

Krosan.2890:

I wonder if the GW2 community is possibly the most whiny mmorpg community to date.

Guild Wars always has had a whining problem. Anet even poked fun at that back in GW1 by adding a skill, and I kid you not, vocal minority.

See this is why we need cross-server dungeon party system. CM is quite popular on my server. It’s pretty easy to get groups. Good thing too! My Engineer got herself a golden weapon set thanks to PuGs.

DOW Mageski.2097:

However this is where I also agree. Some dungeons are just horrible to do, they take a long time and are unpopular and some servers. A example of this would be CM.
I hate that place, I am not allow, most I know do not like doing it and just about every thing in that dungeon seems designed to annoy people. So this is a dungeon I want some armour from, however I really am not looking forward to farming it.

So maybe while they take their time updating dungeons, they could lower the token requirement for unpopular dungeons? This might encourage people to do some which feel like a real grind.

CM is NOT a hard dungeon. Very few, if any, PuG will touch CoF path 3. I have seen many PuGs happily do all three paths of CM back to back! The list of popular and “easy” (all paths are not created equal afterall) dungeons are: AC, CM, TA and CoF. Groups for these are easy to get and are generally successful.

Don’t get me wrong. I hate doing CM on my Guardian. But my Asura Engineer managed to get 540 tokens from CM just with pugs and she also netted me 4/4 paths for the achievement. In the meantime my Guardian is still looking for path 3 CoF and forward-up and forward-foward for TA.

Edit: Based on another thread, it occurred to me that dungeon popularity might be server subjective. CM not being hard is true of all servers but CM is probably more popular on my server then in some other servers. A very good reason to have a cross-server dungeon LFG system IMO.

Oh Snapalope.1378:

Just let us check other players’ gear.

Hell no! Gear based discrimination is already rampant. We don’t need any more of it.

Yeah dungeon armour is irritating to save-up for. Because you need ~1400 tokens from the same dungeon. To date, I made and spent 1660 tokens but that was from 4 different dungeons. So I only bought weapons with the tokens.

For armour, I bought the Durmand Priory set and am now crafting the Draconic set and transmuting the exotic stats on to the Durmand Priory look. I like the Durmand Priory look more then I do any of the dungeon sets. Which BTW, is why I didn’t even bother trying to save for a dungeon set. The motivation just wasn’t there.

I think if you really, really want a specific look from one of the dungeons. You’ll put in the effort. If you hook-up with other people also saving for armour from that dungeon, you’ll find that runs are short and smooth because they all know the drill and it becomes fairly routine after awhile.

But if you don’t have the motivation, just do dungeons on a “for fun” basis and treat the tokens as secondary.

Evrae Altana.1295:

Nerf this guy seriously
every shot just knocks u down and tosses u around like a ragdoll without any chance of retaliating
to make things, people that res u get killed by him coz he just keeps knocking u around

Irritating but hardly difficult. Once took him down with two people below level 45 (including myself on a ranger at level 41). He doesn’t need a nerf.

I love my Asura because she is cute! I took extra care during character creation to make her into a plush cutie and now I am working on making her as lethal as she can be! Nothing like having a lethal plushie for an avatar!

Szin.1250:

Gay man IRL here. I can think of exactly three same-sex relationships I’ve come across — the “beloved” couple in the Sylvari story that the OP mentions, Caithe and Faolain (which is understated and could even be missed if you weren’t paying attention), and a random male NPC in the Grove who talks about how he started to notice restlessness on the part of an unknown male person (who presumably was his lover, but could as easily have been a best friend or even a pet).

Three. And only the first is unequivocal and obvious.

My complaint is that there aren’t nearly enough same-sex relationships to make the world believable.

As others have pointed out, I think your problem (and it is your problem, not the game’s) is that you notice the same-sex relationships because you do, in fact, have a problem with homosexual people, despite your insistence to the contrary.

The Twilight Arbour explorable has a two tragic tales of love and betrayal! One involves a “lesbian” (I put it in quotes because we are talking about Sylvari here) couple and the other involves a “straight” (again, sylvari) couple. Ah Twilight Arborr, such a soap opera in both story mode and explorable mode!