Guild Wars 2

If players would get rewarded better from actually playing it properly rather than using exploits than they wouldn’t exploit at all. It’s impossible to fix every single bug, at least for Anet, but they don’t realize they don’t have to. It’s all about getting the players to have a different mindset, and I really hope that they’ll figure that out one day.

But the rewards are enough already. Look how popular FotM are. People come to forum to whine about bugs, dcs, rng, not enough rewards and stuff, but then they alttab back to game and go for another round of FotM. If someone’s done ‘20 dailies and still no ring’, they would given up around 5th if the ‘grind’ associated was really painful for them.
Instead, people are like skritt – skritt kills ten rats, skritt wants shinies!

No one gives a kitten about other MMOs or how ‘grindy’ they are. We care about the state of GW2 here, otherwise we wouldn’t be playing it already.

Again – if you find something grindy, don’t do it.
I never cared for grinding events in Orr, felt too repetitive and just boring – never done it, despite some nice gold income before dungeon drop buff. I never felt i have to do it and i have to be rewarded just as much as the next guy who got three rares during one defense event while i got only blues. I just started doing stuff i enjoy, with rewards coming next, by the way – not being the driving force of playing, because if all you see in wasting X hours a day for a game is more/different pixels, something sounds wrong.

Iehova.9518:

Kishandreth.2798:

The players are to blame, its your choice to abuse the glitches.

It’s Anet’s fault for not testing content. They’re not glitches. It’s clever use of game mechanics.

That is all.

Porting through doors isn’t ‘game mechanics’. If you don’t like the word ‘exploiting’, here’s better – bugusing.
Skipping mobs in Jade level is using the game mechanics, even as it was thought through that way. Porting through doors or stucking the Mossman is bugusing.

The saddest part is that you can say whatever you want – ’we’re just using the given tools’ (so it was fair to exploit orbs in W3? forge cheap karma weapons?) – but you won’t admit it’s just pathetic bugusing. By all means – feel free to go down that route, but please have enough dignity to admit what you’re doing.

Using bugs in Fractals is not needed to progress. No bugs, except for the crashes/dcs (which, still, are on our side or somewhere on the way – no way to reconnect is a hole in the design, but not ‘bug’), block your progress.

If you feel the need to get an ascended ring, well, i guess it’s what drives you.
Newsflash: you do not need ascended stuff, not to mention infusions, anywhere else but in FotM now. The difference in stats is neglible – if you were dying in W3, you will keep dying in W3; if you couldn’t win 1v1, you still won’t; if you had troubles in dungeons, ascended jewelry won’t help you. The only place that ‘needs’ ascended jewelry with infusions is FotM themselves.
But then you say FotM is grind, it’s not fun, unrewarding and you do it because… what? If it’s not fun, don’t do it. Grinding it won’t help you progress anywhere else but FotM. Not grinding it won’t block you from playing other content.

The ascended stuff and the infusion mechanic is obviously a way to ‘reward’ and give additional incentive to those who already would play FotM all the time, because they find it fun, even with no rewards whatsoever – but pink rings and some extra mechanic add depth to the sense of progression, not the other way around.
It’s not there to grind it even if you don’t find it fun – it’s there to give an additional ‘something’ to those who do play it and advance in levels. This is where it’s different from other dungeons which we got used to farm for exotic equipment.

If you don’t find FotM fun and you feel it’s a painful grind, don’t do it.
If you feel you must be the cool kid on the block and show off your pink ring to everyone you meet and show it to every tree in Kessex Hills, given its neglible difference in stats to exotics, is something on your end, not a faulty design.
If you find FotM fun and enjoyable, regardless of rewards, you will sooner or later be rewarded with rings, just to keep you in the system.

But you people obviously haven’t seen ‘grind’ yet, in the old days of all those Asian MMOs where you had to kill 2000 monsters of the same type to progress at all, with other players stealing them in the meantime. Here at least you have the freedom to do something else with no punishment in other formats.

Yet you prefer to exploit bugs, to ‘save time and nerves from all the grind’.
If something’s not on a silver plate, it doesn’t mean it’s grind.

To be honest, i wonder how many of those crying ‘Arah bugged! fix!’ can identify what is bugged in the chain. Not just ‘NPCs won’t start’ or something, but can you actually point your finger at the NPC that blocks progression? Can you name any specific bug that’s there?
It might, you know, help ANet to fix it.

In terms of gear:
Fractals – ascended rings and backpieces, rng/grind.
CoF – berserker exotics of all kinds, some dungeon grind but easy dungeon.

Me and most other dungeon masters believe that full berserker equipment is a no-no for most dungeons (or rather: there are some that don’t punish you that hard), making the AC armor set the basis on which you can develop your build the way you want with weapons and jewelry.

What’s the purpose of such division?

The perfect solution is to ask the pug you’ve just joined whether they want to skip or fight X – boss X, trash at X, or whatever. We can solve it with communication, no need to limit options.

@down – indeed.
I find not enough initiative on the player level – lots of ‘issues’, ‘problems’ and ‘bugs’ can be easily fixed or circumvented by players themselves, without the need of making anything easier or different, without forcing or restricting players in general to/from something.
This situation is a prime example of what you can do with just talking to people.

2 levels isn’t 4. Sorry, but yes, it makes THAT much difference – not about dealing a bit less damage, but about the game’s mechanics based on very important level modifier in all formulae.
Do AC story with 5 people 25~26, or do CM with people 35~36 so they have elites. Fraps it, don’t edit out anything. Until then – sorry, but you have no idea what you’re talking about.

I’d love to see a vid of 5 underleveled (and thus undergeared) toons doing any dungeon route, with no lv80 toon to help them, with nothing cut out of the video. Until then your point is moot, sorry.

So you say that a lv28 toon can damage mobs in Ascalonian Catacombs, explorable mode (recommended: lv35), just fine, with no glancing, no downed/defeated in one shot, landing all their controls and conditions? A lv31 toon is just as good as a lv35 one?
I dare you to organise a run of 5 toons being 3-4 levels below the recommended level for story dungeon and post a vid of it.

Nope – 5 lower is already glancing more often than not on bosses and dying in one hit.
Open PvE != dungeons.
There is a reason for those suggested levels and them being the same as majority of mobs in the dungeon.

People need to get a clue that level difference is the biggest modifier for everything. If you’re too low, you will die in one-two hits as opposed to fifteen, and/or all your hits will be glancing, and/or your controls/conditions will not work at all.
If you join a dungeon 4 levels below recommended level, you get carried through by the others. If you and your group are fine with leeching, it’s a great way to exp up.

It’s not that bosses are not rewarding now, it’s that people are bad at killing them and prefer to skip them than wipe.

No – known bug, will be fixed soon.

Three/four in one sitting.

To steamroll PvE with – you meant.

In warcraft, I was the druid class leader for my guild for for about 8 months. I raided for over five years, and we were always in the top five guilds, for progression, on a very competitive server.
Trust me. Guilds can be much worse than anything I described.

Maybe you should look for something laid-back, more social oriented then? With more people interested in helping people and doing stuff together for fun rather than just for progression and being competitive?

Precursors are just named exotics – if you can get any named exotics from a source, you can get precs there, too.
I got Magmaton while farming Arah3 lately, meaning the champions there can drop precursors as well.

But to many who are revisiting the mid to late game again on another alt at level 60-80s – good luck in getting any Dungeon Story runs done.

That’s what guilds are for

edit @ up – if this is what you really think about guilds you either have just bad experience with terrible guilds or never really got into one because of unbased fears.

What bothers me here is that unpenetrable wall of having not enough dps to drop on her while she’s stealthed. As i said, all bosses are easier and faster with enough dps and with no one dying, it’s obvious – but you can slowly kill everything else, no matter how slow you are or what your team composition is. Full support party with no warriors can get stuff done – and yes, it will take them twice as long on most bosses, it might be harder to stay focused long enough on Lupicus with kitteny damage etc, but no other boss requires considerable amounts of dps to overcome their regeneration; even the Effigy of CoF1 can be killed with no heavy users whatsoever, though it requires paying some attention to the crystals as opposed to facerolling the boss while ignoring the crystals with enough damage.
Nowhere else you will find a real progression blocker because of your team’s composition or builds you’re running – and given Simin is the sixth boss of Arah 4, if you were able to get there you should also be able to overcome her without switching onto different toons.

ATMAvatar.5749:

drkn.3429:

Are you running a glass cannon build or, Six forbid, a magic find gear?
I’m not asking to be rude, but an elementalist can withstand some hits there, it’s certainly not a one-shot one-kill encounter for her, and she’s the profession with lowest hp/armor pools.

That’s only true if the ele heavily invests in earth and/or water for the increased survivability. A base HP ele would be one-shot by bombs, as it leaves you with just under 11k.

That said, the bombs have quite a long time between red ring and detonation, so there isn’t much reason to get hit by one.

30 in water here, 10 in earth, tanky gear – 18k hp and 2850 armor, with not the shabbiest ~2900 attack.

Still, the bombs are very easy to dodge – you really have to try to die there, at least up until FotM 10.

It’s not about very specific team builds, it’s about proper speccing.
Don’t go condition damage. Don’t have more than 1 necromancer (sorry, they simply are not suited for AC3 in bigger numbers). Don’t rely on crits. Go pure power. Have enough object-damage.

3 people in any combination of ele/war/engi can get it done with ease. Even low level.
Elementalists can spawn ice bows for everyone to use (including those pesky necros), whose 4th skill is absolutely godly against burrows. Other than that – grenades, 100b, ele fire staff + glyph of storms.

Most of my guild teams get all burrows destroyed and all monsters killed at 85~86% mark of the collectors, and we’re dancing around for a while.

Nothing kills an MMO faster than being forced to play it with the other players.

Because MMOs are single-player games by default…

Nobody wants to group with necros.

Get good with necros in dungeons/fractals. Join a guild.
I had two necros in fractals earlier today – one guildie, one puggie. I personally hate them, but they still can get stuff done, so i don’t mind them really.

I actually don’t mind a gear treadmill, as long as it doesn’t affect pvp, but the stats on ascended gear are good enough to create a gear gap.

The gap is only noticeable in Fractals themselves, thanks to the Agony Resistance – but even with Agony Res you can’t ignore Agony of facetank it.
The difference between other stats compared to exotic jewelry is neglible, although yes – some sweet stat combinations are available on ascended rings. Then again, new jewelry is available via recipes dropped by dungeon bosses, like the Claw of the Howling King from AC – a new exotic piece of jewelry with new stat combo.

..and why do I have to do pve in order to get the gear I need to be effective in pvp. Is this not the number one reason why every pvper leaves every mmo on the market? PVE gear that is better than the PVP gear?

Play sPvP – no PvE required at all.
Or simply keep playing W3 – you still can gear up with badges, even get exotic gear, it just takes longer. If you love W3 but hate PvE, you can stick to W3 all the time and still lvl up, get gold, get loot, get badges.

Now, it’s a freaking nightmare. Everyone is off doing fractals. Events never have enough people. Orr is completely unplayable.

It’s a server problem. Gunnar’s Hold has most temples liberated most of the time. Arah is open ~90% of the time here. We organise guild events, reinforced by pugs, to cleanse Balthazar from time to time, or to retake Arah in the morning.
And yet Gunnar’s Hold has Fractals, too, and people running other dungeons, and people playing W3.

Thanks for the input. Still, it makes a specific team setup required to kill her – you need at least one mesmer in your party, as AoE quickness is essential. Of course, it’s useful everywhere, you can mow down any boss with relative ease using Time Warp and enough dps, and so on – but no fight requires any gimmicky, specific setup like 3 gs wars or Time-Warp-on-cooldown.

This is what makes me believe we’re missing something – either we, players, omit a part of the puzzle here, or a piece is simply missing from the box…

.* hopes to bring Robert’s attention to this thread, since he’s stalking the forums now o/ *.

Lv82 icebrood kodans are normal there.

Tbh i find all Arah enjoyable and fun, all bosses are cool and i love the design – maybe just there’s a tad too much trash and it’s too annoying… but Simin fight seems lacking a piece of the puzzle.
It’s not the ‘difficulty’ or anything bugged tbh (no bugs when running sparks – you just can’t be fast enough), more like something… missing. The question is – is it there and we omit it, or was it not implemented?

All 5 circles are shielded after you trap 4 sparks for the 4-1 trick.

This is the only part based on silly dps (aka specific setup) or blind luck (1 spark decloaking her without the intentional 4-1 trick).
Or is it? Maybe we’re missing a way to make 1 spark decloak her without any tricks? I don’t believe it’s just random, as in a bug that makes it possible to kill her, or just stroke of luck letting you decloak her before she hits a critical limit of X hp, locking you in a loop.

What about the shielded circle? Is it really only a visual bug or has anyone tried luring a spark to that shielded trap first and seeing if it’s enough?

For the record – i’ve done it once, in a 2 guardians, 2 warriors, 1 thief party – we had next to no problems, the whole boss fight took us about 30-40 minutes, including 2 full resets after screwing up and considering all five of us were never to Arah 4 before.
Been there yesterday – 1 war, 1 ele, 1 guardian, 1 necro, 1 ranger – and we just locked in an infinite loop of her cloaking at 25% hp. We got her down to 25% using the 4-1 trick, she cloaked, we ran sparks and decloaked her at about 35~40% (2 people running sparks, 3 people keeping dps) only to see her cloak at 25% again. We kept in that loop for over 30 minutes – 25%→40%→25%→40%… sometimes it was considerably lower than 40% but not low enough not to trigger the 25% cloaking.
There’s no way to apply the 4-1 trick for the 25% cloaking… or is there? We tried it, got her down to 25%, ran only 4 sparks, let her pop out naturally, but then she got to ~75%, so we had to waste the ‘1 spark pops her out’ at the 50% mark again, staying locked in a loop.

It seems that the only way is to do the 4-1 trick, then keep insane dps up on her when she cloaks at 25% to keep her in the 25%~30% margin when the 5 (!) sparks are trapped, keeping her from cloaking at 25% yet again. This requires both very quick spark-running and insane damage output on cloaked Simin – the first is doable in pretty much any party setup, the second requires damage-built warriors to spam 100b on her.
Which is not only silly, but seems inconsistent with the whole game. Yes, spamming 100b on bosses is usually the fastest way to take them down, it’s also pretty safe quite often, 5man warrior parties mow through dungeons with ease and stuff, but there’s not one other encounter specifically requiring you to bring that much raw dps, and of specific type – as projectiles are nigh useless when she’s cloaked.
Not even the CoF1 Effigy is similar anymore, as you can get 1-2 people destroy the crystals if you have not enough damage output to just faceroll the boss, which is pretty easy on its own – but there is an additional mechanics.

I’m looking for a trick, way, mechanics, tactics or whatever that would allow to keep her from getting 25%->60%, locking you in the loop at 50% again, and not based solely on your party’s raw damage output – simply because you need a very specific team composition to get enough damage to kill the boss at all, not just do it faster or easier, as everywhere else.
It appears the only place in the game not doable without a specific team, and i’m really not talking about places being slow, harder, etc without superior dps.

~~~~
The applied tactics.

First step is to choose the spot where Simin will be pushed/dragged and fought. It is a corner far enough from sparks and the statue so that people fighting her do not aggro sparks, or she is dragged completely outside the cavern.
Everyone carries Tears of Dwayna to the chosen spot, stacking up dozens of them in one location, so they’re ready and easily available for petrification cleansing. They respawn pretty often and don’t disappear when relocated.

One person is tasked with keeping an eye on the petrified and cleansing them – usually the most support-specced one, the least damager and the least swift runner. Two people are tasked with dpsing Simin all the time, even when she is cloaked (more below) – usually the most damage-specced, best gs warriors. Two people are tasked with running sparks (more below), while dropping damage on Simin when possible – usually those with most swiftness uptime and decent understanding of the aggro/trapping mechanics.

How the fight develops:
Simin pops some AoE across the cavern, which is easy to notice, dodge or just ignore as its damage is neglible. Most of her attacks in melee range are neglible as well, she only bursts a bit from time to time but still it’s not anything as powerful as some other bosses hit. She also petrifies players, but the petrification is easily cleansed with Tears of Dwayna, and it can sometimes get bugged – even if you’re petrified, you still can freely move and attack.

At 50% of Simin’s hp, she stealths and regens her health – and does so really fast.
She is only cloaked and not invulnerable, so 3 people should still keep attacking her on the spot, even if she’s not visible, slowing down the regeneration.
Just as she cloaks, new 5 sparks spawn and have to be run to the traps. As soon as they’re all trapped, she pops out from her cloaking and stops regenerating hp.
Problem is – even if you’re fast enough to trap all the sparks when she’s on ~60% hp, she will cloak and regen again at 50%, stucking you in a loop unless you have enough raw damage to simply outdamage her regeneration. It is believed that keeping her poisoned helps, but tbh i’m not sure after checking it yesterday – keeping her perma poisoned didn’t seem to help, or was not enough without having 3-4 warriors.

So the trick used here is to take Simin from 100% hp to 50%, when she cloaks – run four sparks to the traps and let her regen back to 100%.
For some reason, after having done so you only need to run one spark the next time she cloaks at 50%, which is fast and easy enough to keep decloak at ~53% hp. She doesn’t cloak again at 50% if she’s low enough on hp – wherever the line exactly is.

Everything goes fine until she’s on 25% hp.
She cloaks then again. And you can’t do the ‘run 4 sparks, let her regen, get her down back to 25%, run 1 spark, kill’ trick – she regens all the way over 50%, making her cloak again at 50%, stucking you in an infinite loop.

The only way to beat her seems to be outdamaging her regeneration – or at least making it neglible with superior dps from 3-4 warriors spamming gs skills on her location when she’s cloaked. I suppose that gs guardian is good there, too.
This means that parties with less outright pointblank or ground-targeted damage (especially those with the unreliable projectiles) are screwed – on 6th boss, right before the end.

I believe this is not the intended way and that we are missing a part of the mechanics of this fight. I hope there is something bugged and can be fixed pretty soon or there is something we’re simply ignoring.
Has anyone tried using the reflection crystals found somewhere earlier to reflect the petrification or any other of her attacks? Has anyone tried fearlocking her? Can the regeneration be stripped or slown down somehow?
Has anyone got any idea what, exactly, might be bugged during the fight, or missing, making the fight a damagefest of warriors?

I will describe the fight below. I will provide insight how it looks, what do we know and what are the tactics used to overcome it.

Before i do, i’d like to ask the following:
To Dungeon Designers Team: is the below tactic the intended way? Are we missing some existing part of the mechanics? If so – please don’t tell us what, just point us in the direction. Is there anything bugged, as in – should work but doesn’t? How thoroughly was this particular fight tested when it comes to various party composition, particularly not including 100b warriors?
To Players: is there anything i have missed? Any terrible mistake here? Any idea why one of the traps has shields up all the time? Any idea what is the interactable object by the statue and if it’s usable at all?

~~~~
Onto the description of the fight.

The fight takes place in a pretty big cavern. In the centre of the cavern there’s a statue of Dwayna, surrounded by 5 ‘traps’ – small glowing circles. Scattered in the cavern, there are 5 sparks that have to be dragged to the traps – trapping all 5 makes Simin appear. There are several spots with Tears of Dwayna all across the cavern.
The sparks are usual mobs, like the sparks at the Temple of Lyssa. They are invulnerable and do not aggro on hit, only on proximity. They use ranged attack with neglible damage and like to reaggro onto other targets. As soon as a spark is dragged onto a trapping circle, it becomes allied and the trap is ‘filled’ – can’t hold another spark. As soon as all five sparks are trapped, Simin appears.
Tears of Dwayna become a bundle environmental weapon after picked up, with one and only skill being ground-targeted AoE that clears petrification off players, which Simin throws pretty often.

By the statue, there is a mysterious, invisible, unknown interactable object in the ground that does nothing. It can be targeted – a cog icon appears when hovering over its spot, can be clicked and targeted, too – and there appears an ‘interact’ popup nearby, but hitting F does nothing.

1. Wearing MF gear is not selfish.

Of course it is.
You build your toon around a stat that benefits only you, completely not affecting others, consciously bringing less stats that do somehow affect others in a positive way.
You lose out on a major stat that would make you more durable or let you deal more damage – both of which speed up things for everyone – just to bring a stat that might benefit only you.
It’s not down to min/maxing, it’s not down to ‘people with mf can’t complete dungeons’, it’s not down to ’it’s so much slower’. It’s first and foremost about being rude when you consciously drag your party down – and not to test out a new build or something, but because of your own greed, bringing a stat that benefits only you while you could have brought something nice for everyone.

Anyone saying that ‘mf is not selfish’ should take their head out of their kitten and start thinking again.

Being greedy and selfish is the biggest problem i have with people bringing mf to dungeons. I refuse to group up with greedy, selfish and lazy people. I’m fine with rookies, newbies, people not rich enough to buy decent gear, casuals who still need more tokens/gold – no problem, as long as they listen and follow the tactics, aka aren’t rude.
Dragging down party performance, being downed more often, making everything longer – that comes next to simply being a greedy prick, especially that it’s a conscious choice.

You were trolled.

Open like 90% of time on Gunnar’s Hold, except late night / early morning or soon after an update.

We’re also interested in merging smaller or half-dead guilds into our group – MM is a place for everyone o/

Strifey – because it’s per account and per tier, not character. You can do lv20 and lv10 AND lv2 to get three daily chests, all with one toon.
At least it’s what it appears to be, as i also heard about not getting a second chest no matter what.

Ascended rings, exotic→ascended backpacks, save some time spending karma on obsidian shards, generally more rare/exotic drops i think, fun pushing forward.

Keep it for another character.

Because they’re unique.
Get one onto another toon or bank it for until your other toons are lv80.

Of course they’re not off the hook. Of course it’s a huge problem.
But not for everyone. Judging by my ~30 FotM-active guildies, the ‘people with issues in FotM’ are a minority, and not really that big one, although vocal – as always. I’m not saying that this minority should be ignored and left to themselves, i’m not saying that they do not deserve even access to the content – but it really seems that (1) the problem isn’t on ANet’s end and (2) considerable majority of players do not have dcs, or not that often (myself – 2~3 crashes/dcs throughout over 700h, not counting the obvious server outages or issues with logins around headstart etc).

Yes, they have to work on it. Yes, it’s very frustrating when it happens to you. Yes, it’s annoying if it happens in your party, as it’s you and three others folks (sometimes two) who then have to decide whether they carry on or give up. I’m sure that introducing a way to circumvent the problem without making FotM exploitable, as other dungeons are, is one of the top priority things to do in ANet right now.

But no, it seems it’s not their fault. No, it’s not an easy ‘fix’, given the difficulty level design of FotM. Even if they know what to do and how to change it, they still have to encode it and incorporate it into the existing code without breaking it, what takes a lot of time, not to mention anti-exploit testing. No, they were not obliged to foresee that their players may crash due to their hardware/software errors or bottlenecks caused by their ISP or elsewhere on the way (and i don’t have a high-end machine, playing on low/medium details most time to keep it all fluent, i’m not on optical fibers, just 20MB/s download with 1MB/s upload, which is rather standard in Central Europe, not to mention Western or America).

More so, i think they are also redesigning how the difficulty system works and i think we’ll see a change fighting the fragmentation of players back. It was already suggested to allow low-difficulty players to join high-difficulty ones and play the more difficult content, but get rewards and progression based on their own current difficulty level. It seems not only a great idea, but also one not that hard to implement (of course it’s hard and long and requires testing, but i could think of impossible solutions while this one seems doable). This only pushes the FotM ‘fixes’ for later.

Contrary to popular belief, FotM is designed to bring people fun, not grind.
If you don’t find FotM fun, don’t play it. If you don’t find repeating FotM 5 times a day, don’t do it.
If you find fun in doing one phase of FotM every other day with your constant party of friends or guildies, go down that route. If you find fun in grinding relics, grind them; if you don’t – don’t!

Since the only ‘grind’ you need is ‘required’ to advance within the same part of the game as the ‘grindy’ one, if you don’t enjoy FotM you don’t have to ever set foot there.
If you do enjoy it, you shouldn’t feel it’s grind.
Perfect design!

Typhoon.8645:

I believe fixing FOTM making it resumable after disconnection like any other dungeon might be helpful.

You still haven’t even tried to understand why it’s harder to ‘fix’ than other dungeons, have you?

Any other solution would tremendously waste resources, causing lags everywhere for everyone, as well as possibly general stability issues.
Transfer instance ownership? So at the beginning of instance, another player (who? why that one?) would have to be flagged as secondary owner, ‘just in case’, doubling the needed memory for instance ownership flagging. Yes, it doesn’t seem much, but with hundreds of instances being open at once…
Just leave the instance open as long as there’s one person in? That will lead to even greater usage of resources.
Yes, it sucks when it happens to you, but the most sensible solution is just to trust players their computers and connections are stable enough not to drop out.

I believe that understanding the problem might be helpful: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/FoTM-is-like-95/first#post842249

I summed up how long dungeons take now, but seems that everyone skipped the post because of too many letters to read. Oh, well, the usual.

Point is – if you don’t die, don’t screw up and don’t block on dungeon mechanics like puzzles or certain ways to defeat bosses, almost each route is doable in less than an hour. Looks decent, especially when compared with GW1’s elite areas.

Got 41 fractals done, never crashed, dced or even lagged there.
Been doing fractals with ~20 various guildies, and i can tell that some people have problems with dcs while others don’t. It seems that not everyone is at risk of crashing or dcing, as if someone in my party has any issues, it’s always the same ~4 people.

Seems it’s mostly either on player’s end or somewhere on the way – our computers causing crashes (both hardware and software may be at fault), ISP screwing up, someone stealing our signal, our connection being too heavily used by downloaded stuff in the background, packet loss somewhere on the way (and that’s a LONG way). If it was purely ANet’s fault, everyone would get into issues from time to time.

I agree that it is up to ANet to figure out a sensible solution to handling FotM for someone who has crashed, whatever the reason, and needs to reconnect with friends inside. The problem here is that it operates on how personal story is handled (that’s why you all need to be on the same overflow and can’t go cross-server), which also doesn’t allow you to reenter the quest someone else is doing.
Other dungeons work in a different way and while they allow you to reenter if you lose connection or crash, they also allow you to switch on an alt mid-run or kick someone and invite someone else in their spot for the final boss. Exploiting FotM like that would either defy the whole difficulty level progression or would simply be impossible to do, period.

ANet is working on a sensible solution, but as i said numerous times, it’s not only down to fixing stuff, not only down to changing a few things, but it’s about finding out a completely new way of handling instances, coding it and implementing it into the already existing engine, without causing more problems than it will solve.
All we can do is be patient and ensure that there are no bottlenecks or bandwidth issues on our end. Peace!

What’s even better, AC has been the best goldmine since the release, being the only dungeon with gold-dropping mobs in the game before the recent update. It also has the best and cheapest exotic armor set.

I don’t think there’s a need of balancing anything here, though. If you nerf the ‘easy’ dungeons (what’s ‘easy’? for my team everything is easy, just some routes are longer than others; for other people some stuff might be hard, and different stuff at that), what is now ‘medium’ will become the new ‘easy’, seeing the most farming.
In essence, you can nerf the general gold/hour farming, but you can’t prevent the farmers focusing on one place, as there will always be one-two spots yielding best gold/time ratio, and they will see the most play.
Then the question becomes – which dungeons we want to see being promoted…

On the contrary on Gunnar’s Hold – open almost all the time (except late night / early morning, i guess). We even organised a guild run to open it today morning, done all the events through, got lots of random people into it on the way.
We even learned that some bugs can be circumvented – like the promenade capture getting stuck; it bugs because a mob or two are spawned under the stairs, inside the textures – guardians spamming 1 with staff everywhere around can help with lots of ‘bugged’ events.

My tip – get 5+ guildies and start doing the events, then have one visit LA from time to time and shout on your main shard that you need more to liberate Arah, and that a big chest spawns after it’s done. No problem liberating Balthazar that way, too.

We don’t know.
Probably crossing the barrier between the databases is what keeps guesting from being implemented.

OldRodKS.9758:

They.9516:

You can solo that fractal. ^ ^

Not sure if it’s the same one or not… but the Charr one I was just in (level 1) was full of dozens of Veterans you had to get through to get to the first gate. No way it could be solo’d. In fact, a group of 5 level 80s had trouble with it, with all the siege equipment firing on you from every angle. Are the NPC Charr supposed to help you? Because they weren’t in the times I’ve tried this one, unless you could get one to get injured by a projectile, then they would.

2 ways about this fractal.
Hug the left wall, go around the whole outside area avoiding any mobs, get to the wall, hug the wall, get to the gate, kill Dulfy while ignoring/dodging warmachines, destroy warmachines (oil!), destroy gate.
OR.
Stay behind your NPCs (they respawn, too! and push forth faster than enemies respawn), aid them to the gate, have them tank Dulfy for you while you dps her from safe range, continue as above.

It’s easy and soloable, just don’t try to rush it.