Guild Wars 2

So i’m basing on specific examples provided by you – it’s bad.
I’m talking in general – it’s bad.
I’m pointing out what are the problems of pugging – it’s bad.
I’m pointing out that 5man engi team can get stuff done, even if facing projectile reflection or the TA bubbles – it’s bad.
I agree that purposely organising a 5man war/whatever party is wrong – it’s bad.
I just do not agree that it makes much difference, as you can still get stuff done – it’s bad.

It seems like you’ve just been to parties with bad engineers/thieves who failed at one or more things i’ve mentioned above, and/or you’ve been excluded or not invited to random parties because you play profession X. Anyone telling you that it’s not a bad design but a flaw in players’ mindset, as well as that you still can get stuff done with your toon whatever it is, is a troll or a child for you.
Ta ta!

e @ down:
Good luck getting a “Developer quote” to back you up, especially that one of the game’s premises is that you can complete anything in any party setup as long as you’re flexible – even with 5 engis!

Completing the Jade Maw level at the end of each even difficulty level phase yields an additional chest, which is daily-per-account and may give you extra relics or bags of gold. On difficulty level 10+ you may also get rings there.

Just the very idea of having a majority of the same profession or all of the same profession to do a dungeon explore mode or FotM, is stupid! No, its not my opinion, the idea itself PURE idiocy because this already hurts the game populations because the most top favorite profession creation is Warrior, Mesmer, Thief, and Guardian.

Just to reiterate – i’m not saying that purposely organising 5man war or any X team is a good idea. It’s not, or at least – it doesn’t solve any of the problems pointed out in my previous post.
All i’m saying is that if you, by chance, get a team with 4-5 of X, you still can get nearly all stuff done (4 necros can’t do AC1 and AC3 not pugged at least, and it takes some more advanced tactics to do it with guildies).

haviz.1340:

drkn.3429:

You aren’t supposed to damage them through the bubbles, but to enter those bubbles and fight them inside. You can melee them with a gs warrior that way just as well. More so, warriors can’t fight them from the outside either.
Many professions being able to fight them without teleporting inside is actually a flaw in the design.

It’s not a flaw, basically every ranged non-projectile attack will get through the bubble. Bubbles absorb only projectiles. Can’t really imagine that was a flaw in the design but a
intentional choice. Also, you can get inside the bubble without using teleport (every profession except necro)

I’m very aware of that, but given that the teleports are there, the ranged-non-projectile attacks working seems like an oversight, forcing everyone to use the portals would be much more fun.

The bubble issue, in a certain TA path

If you’ve done everything properly and still never dealt any damage, you just have run into a random bug. I’ve done TA many, many times, on 4 different professions, in different team combinations, using melee, ranged and ‘other’ attacks alike, both inside and outside the bubble, and never had any issues. I was in teams with 1~3 engineers (guild groups) and had no problems going through any of the content unless they all wanted to go squishy flamethrower.

Now as for the CoF Path 1, no Engineer can provide enough damage for the regen phase for the final boss. The only possible idea I can think of, not tested, is 2 Engineers go for AoE bomb heal and 2 or 3 engineers, go for the grenade spec

Everyone for grenades, everyone for power build with some prec and some crit, and just nuke him down. One can go pistols for poison, as it works really well with the regen.
Being undergeared might be an issue there, though. I was in CoF1 this very morning with 2 people in masterworks and 1 person in a glass cannon build in rares who just kept dying all the time, and while it wasn’t impossible to beat the effigy, it took us MUCH longer than ‘normally’. Rares to exotics is 12% difference in stats, and if more people are undergeared… it simply shows.

Now as for Thieves in this matter, having a bunch of thieves is bad because they are squishy and they invis alot.

Two words: blossom spam.
Again – don’t be undergeared, but also don’t go full glass cannon. The effigy’s damage is laughable until it gets the might stacks later on, but then it’s still easy to avoid or heal up.
Not being undergeared, not going for condition damage, not going for full glass cannon – that’s something true for everyone (except for necros on the cond dmg part), and if those three premises are kept in mind, if the party is diversified in builds and roles, not necessarily professions, you’ll be fine.
Thieves don’t have too much party support, but then they don’t really need it. The main problem of thieves, though, is that there are not enough good thief players – everyone seems to go for full glass cannon, can’t properly utilise their stealth and all the utility skills, can’t dodge out of telegraphed attacks.

FotM bonus fractal – as mentioned above, go grenades and throw them by the mob to hit it with the splash damage.

Yes, going 5man X team is usually slower; yes, it’s usually annoying; yes, 5man war parties are cheesy and boring; yes, the difficulty level of going in 5man X team, except for wars and guardians, is higher.
But everything’s doable.

Pugs have much bigger issues than just the profession composition. People do not listen. People do not want to change their builds to fit the group. People do not bring ranged weapons, as seen in another thread here. People ignore dungeon mechanics. People ignore game mechanics. People are undergeared, or geared for useless stats, or geared for full glass cannon they simply can’t handle, or they bring MF sets into dungeons.
None of that is a case of faulty design.

The design promotes tanky builds that can hold their ground and survive every encounter on their own while still dishing out constant damage, throwing in some party support from time to time, best in form of maximising dps rather than providing more survival (as everyone is responsible for their own survival, first and foremost, with no healers around – and trying to play one is simply bad). The design promotes taking advantage of game and dungeon mechanics – use of line of sight, of range, skipping (sometimes), and so on.
The design punishes bad players – and not in terms of any ‘skill’, whatever it means, as even proper dodging is just a matter of practice. It punishes players who ignore the dungeon mechanics and just want to faceroll through everything. It punishes players who bite off more than they can chew – both in regard to overaggro and to running glass builds when they simply can’t handle it. It punishes impatient players who want to do everything NOW and on the first attempt, while even experienced dungeoneers may need a wipe or two to learn a new dungeon’s mechanics. It punishes inflexible people who refuse to tweak their builds, who bring only their favourite weapon and never use anything else.
Because of the above it punishes pugs. Not because of a ‘bad design’.
Proper guild groups are fine, even if they have 4 engineers or elementalists, although yes – such groups are ‘subpar’, slower, harder to run – but very working.

nachtnebel.9168:

A flawless run should take between 45 and 60 minutes.

It does, except for Arah if you don’t skip; if you do, it’s about 90 minutes.

Go inside.
Equip grenades.
Throw grenades at your feet, dealing splash damage to the archer.

That’s the easiest, most bad-player-friendly way to do it. There are more, though.

However the bubble comment, inside and outside, as an Engineer, you cannot damage those mobs with any abilities or weapons. So please stop posting false information.

You can – when you get inside the bubble.
Getting ‘obstructed’ with flamethrower from time to time when there’s nothing to be obstructed by it something completely different, but the flamethrower is not the only of engi’s goodies.

The only 5man teams i see as having troubles is 5 necros, simply because they excel at nothing but cleaning trash now and they’d hit the cap of 25 bleeds much too soon. Still – don’t have the same build and you’re good to go.
I really perceive it as another facet of the ‘pugging problem’ – when you already have 2 necros, pugging a third might be risky if they run the same thing as the other two, refuse to change their build and/or are generally inflexible. Same goes for going 5 pugged engineers – each of them might want to run a glassy flamethrower build, with no one bringing support or ranged dps, no one slotting some control skills… even though an engineer can do all of that.

TA issues, is Engineer thing, I forgot which path but the issue is Engineer cannot cause any melee auto damage. Somewhere in TA there is a point where some mobs, after crossing a bridge, that are behind bubbles, non of my attacks including, kits, and turrets can damage them.

You aren’t supposed to damage them through the bubbles, but to enter those bubbles and fight them inside. You can melee them with a gs warrior that way just as well. More so, warriors can’t fight them from the outside either.
Many professions being able to fight them without teleporting inside is actually a flaw in the design.

In CoF Path 1, Engineers could not burst down the final boss. In path 3, Engineers could not get pass the gauntlet event.

Sorry, but that’s just a bad/undergeared team of engineers. I’ve done CoF1 in 3 engis, a mesmer and a necro multiple times with no issues – yes, it’s slower than with some 100b wars, but still very doable.

In FotM, extra boss area, occurs every 2 levels, there are certain mobs that reflect all projectiles, we have no melee.

Their shield is not up all the time.

Being bad, being undergeared or not built ‘properly’ for dungeons, not understanding the mechanics (like with TA above) – those are not problems with the design.

I was in a party of 5 eles doing HotW some time ago. Longest HotW in my life, but still not problematic.

Having 3, 4, or 5 of the same profession in a group, is bad due to the lack of skill variation, Crowd Control, and buffs offered?

But it’s not – 5 guardians or 5 warriors are one of the easiest setups in dungeons; not saying ‘best’, but they can get everything done with relative ease, good for pugging and bad players.
It’s bad to have 5 glass cannon toons, or 5 ‘i decide to autoattack the whole dungeon’ people, or 5 ’i’ll only use 3 skills’ people, or 5 ‘i am melee uber warrior and i refuse to use ranged stuff’, or 5 ‘my minions are cool’ people. It really isn’t based on your profession composition that much, though.

Half of the dungeons take 30~40 minutes once you know how to do them. All open PvE content is shorter than that. Hot joins are shorter than that. Most fights in W3 are shorter than that.
Not everyone is a purely casual player, and even casual players might like some challenging content that takes more time to complete, giving more satisfaction afterwards. It’s not about the length of dungeons that much as it is about the length of particular fights, with too much silver trash on the way (instead of 4 silvers, put 2 silvers and 10 normal or 4 bronzes – might actually make it more challenging in the initial clash) and bosses having too much hp.

dhmy.7803:

does fractal daily chests pop again for your alts? (diff character, assuming u done it once on main)

No.

The current time is fine, but it’s based on your party’s understanding of the route and general knowledge of the game.
Still, there shouldn’t be ‘one time for all’, as there shouldn’t be the same level of difficulty for all dungeons and routes, not each dungeon should be based on the same mechanics, etc.

Anyway, having done them all and farmed them all at some point:
AC takes about 25~30 minutes per route, which is fine.
CM takes about 30~40 minutes per route (it’s designed to skip some trash), which is fine.
TA is 30~50 minutes per route (depends whether you skip stuff or not).
SE1 used to be 10~15 minutes, except for 18 minutes to wait out the patrols (one person afking). SE2 is about 40~70 minutes, SE3 something about that as well, perhaps a bit shorter.
CoF1 and CoF2 are 20~40 minutes, CoF3 is much longer – about 70~80 minutes? – but it’s the only exception so far.
HotW is longer, but then it’s faceroll easy and usually takes much longer because people are not properly equipped for underwater combat, or just can’t fight underwater properly. With underwater exotics and understanding of mechanics across the party, it’s still ~80 minutes tops.
Two CoE routes are about 25~50 minutes each. Farmed loads of it for cores with guildies. CoE3 takes much longer because of the destroyer fight, but it can be done half-afk if you’re manning a cannon, or it can be done faster if you spike him in all 5 people.
And Arah – Arah takes 2~3h each if you don’t skip anything, probably 1~2h with skipping. I guess it’s fine for the last dungeon in the game, and it certainly is enjoyable, and 3h isn’t something most players can’t pull in one sitting from time to time.

It’s still much better than camping an epic boss for 4h, and then fighting off waves after waves of enemy clans trying to get to it, while it has a random respawn window.

The Charr seige one needs to be taken out until the transforms are fixed, don’t leave broken levels in the game wtf are you thinking?

Transforms?

I don’t know if the information npc actually tells you anything of use like “There are infinitely spawning enemies in here, just follow the targets listed” or “Environmental effects will kill you occasionally” or “They’re ALL VETERANS, beware”.

That’s standard for dungeons. It’s also standard that you die/wipe several times before you learn the mechanics, even if you’re a veteran dungeoneer yourself.

Least fav – Ascalon.
I like the design of a proper siege and stuff, but it gets old the fastest.

Most fav – everything else, really.

forgot a key component: Rewards.

Having fun with guildies is the key component, rewards come second.

Sina.9208:

Mckeone.9804:

Answer: To have fun?

Doing it over n over n over n over n…. n over is not exactly my definition of fun. I’m lvl21 right now and it gets more and more annoying and boring at the same time, if that makes any sense.

Here’s the solution: if it’s annoying and boring, don’t do it.
No rewards should be the carrot making you mow through boring stuff. And if it’s not boring, you’ll do it regardless of rewards…

It’s also the only dungeon you cannot exploit with alts – and it’s fine that way.
We need a way that can’t be exploited but allows players to come back after a crash or dc. Currently there’s no such mechanic in the game’s engine, meaning it not only has to be thought of and designed, but also coded and implemented into the game.
Of course the problem is annoying, of course it needs to be addressed. But it will take a while to get it properly figured out, so just be patient and try to minimise the probability of getting a dc or crash on your side – somehow there are people who never had any troubles…

We managed to recover it once – picked it up while falling :p

I crashed only twice throughout over 700h…

There’s a simple solution to at least half of those problems: join a decent guild and run fractals with guildies.

But it’s a good change – the only flaw is that your party members seem not to be prioritised among those 5 targets with most skills. Other than that, it’s a vital part of the game’s mechanics and makes perfect sense.

Doing it is not about progress or rewards. If there was no difficulty progress or new items as rewards, people would still do fractals. BUT. Since people would still do it, and do it continuously even for the 20slot bags, ANet added some additional incentive for those who find it enough.

I think you have it the other way around.
The sense of progression is there on top of the fun you get from playing, not instead of it. People would still play Fractals even if there was no Agony, no difficulty progression, and the loot was always the same – aka as any other dungeon. But since people like the ‘sense of progression’, even if it’s completely artificial, it’s there – on top of the usual stuff, not in its place.
It’s like Assassin’s Creed’s multiplayer’s xp levels, especially the prestige levels. They give you absolutely nothing, but are a way to ‘reward’ you with this sense of progression if you keep playing even after having done everything there is to do.

I actually have grown really fond of scepter/focus combo on the guardian, the damage isn’t shabby, the control and survival boost is nice, and the immobilise helps other melees, especially warriors with their 100b.
Refusing to slot a ranged weapon might not be ‘noobish’, but could be rude and make others nervous a bit.

60 tokens per run, 1380 tokens for full set (1200 for the AC one).
23 or 20 runs, 3 runs per toon per day.

Still bugged, still being worked on.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dungeon#List_of_dungeons

Well, they enforce players to group up in guilds rather than pug, and do things together, help guildies get to higher diff levels and so on. Not the worst thing.

Both, actually.
The best fix would be to move extra rewards – silver and bags – to extra bosses, like the champion drake in some Arah paths etc – stuff you don’t have to kill but is there if you want more drops. Add new extra champions if needed.

Yeah, because FotM is the only thing to do in the game. There’s nothing else to do, and if there is, it’s just as gated, segregated and problematic as FotM.
How about FotM, especially higher levels, being the equivalent of sPvP tournaments for the PvE folk? Aka, how about FotM being accessible to anyone, but ‘mastered’ and farmed only by the organised teams?

It’s really not, atleast with one guardian you can still get instakilled if you dont pay attention (atleast at lvl 10+). Usually this doesnt happen, but 5 guardians really don’t add that much since protection stacks in duration and not in time and it slows killing speed.

Mace1 spam across 5 tanky sources with enough healing power to make it noticeable.
Yes, it’s not the quickest, but those tanky guardians still have about 3k attack.

This is complete bs. A conditionmancer can lay smack down on grp of mobs like no one else. Also some if these fights need constant, sustained DPS rather than burst. I have seen grps fall apart in the dredge from the mass of mobs while condition necro with epidemic freaking destroys them. Your list is way off because of lack of info and understanding. Also on the jellyfish boss, the adds are a non issue with a necro. Epidemic off the bosses conditions and they all die before they ever make it to any party member.

Oh, on the contrary. I have four toons on lv80 and seen plenty of dungeon play – ele, guardian, war and necro – and it’s the necro that sees the least use and feels the most useless in groups.
Excelling at killing non-veteran trash mobs is not something worth noticing, especially that everyone can do it really well. I just guess you haven’t seen a decent warrior/guardian in your dungeon groups or necro is your main toon and you’ve learnt to get stuff done – yes, it can get stuff done, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s inferior to others at the moment.

I’m not talking only about the obvious bugs and broken skills, but its intrinsic design. You have to rely on conditions, and only bleeding/burning are damaging conditions. Power necros make little to no sense outside of specific sPvP teams, and i learned it the hard way, having to respec and recreate all my gear after going the power route.
The way how burning stacks and how easy to apply it is makes this condition unreliable and not particularly useful to spec for in dungeons. Yes, necros have limited means of applying it, but just getting it out of the way.
Then there’s bleeding. Yes, you can stack ~15 bleeds on one target and ~10 bleeds aoe; yes, you can get about ~130 damage per tick. Yes, you can burst it around with epidemic. At the expense of spreading your stats more as you have to make condition damage your main stat, at the expense of being useless against objects (gates, burrows, nests), at the risk of being useless against bosses with condition removal (heck, there’s even one that heals itself when it removes conditions, and does so often).
Then, after unloading your strong spells and epidemic, you’re autoattacking or just pondering the nature of the universe until you can apply those lots of bleeds again.
The 25 stack cap doesn’t help here either, with warriors applying bleeding on crits (even if they have just 100 condition damage, they still take slots with their bleeds), with eles applying bleeds in earth, with loads of bleeding flying around everywhere.

You’re still squishy as a necromancer, with low basic armor. The high hp pool helps to sustain a burst, but necros don’t really have enough health management skills to keep their hp high; on the contrary, eles rely on dynamic health management, with low hp pool but lots of means to keep it always up. Mesmers rely on deception and stealth as their way of survival, meaning they have more ways to not just soak damage and pray they are not targeted again in a while, but to completely avoid any incoming damage.
As a necro, you can only soak everything you get hit with, but there’s a limit to how many hits you can take, especially with mediocre healing from the skills on 6.

Necros provide some combo fields, but have next to no finishers, with their only two being a 20% projectile finisher on staff autoattack and double-blast finisher on staff 4, on long recharge and not really reliable to use as a finisher but as a condition removal. At the same time, they easily overwrite the important water and fire fields with their dark/poison fields, so they shouldn’t use their field-creating skills anywhere and anytime they like.

So to sum up necros:

• most bugged profession at the moment;
• squishy with decent soaking capabilities but no dynamic healing mechanics;
• required to spread stats on condition damage, making their non-condition attacks laughable with low power and losing out on survival;
• limited by the cap of condition stacks on targets;
• overwriting the more important fields with their dark/poison fields way too often;
• not much to do for a longer while after dropping all the cool skills – you can just autoattack with scepter, adding some bleeds, but it’s really really slow.

One 100b from a warrior can kill all that non-vet trash just as easily, with more armor, damage output, not relying on damaging conditions, not spreading stats… and so on.

The ‘problem’ with CM is that it is designed to ‘skip’ some parts.
You can and should skip the big groups in the cave. You should skip the next groups until you get into that small room under the floor, and fight everything that’s coming there, nuking everything with AoEs. You should exploit the AI design when placing bombs at the gate.
This is how it’s designed. Most people ignore the tactics that are necessary to win easily and they just try to bruteforce stuff, failing.

All i can suggest is to try stirring your guildies a bit and organising CM runs with your guildies, filling spots with pugs from LA. Given you can multiguild and do dungeons cross-server within the same database, you can look for a guild that does CM fairly often and ask them if anyone’s up for a run.

If you haven’t ever been to a dungeon in 5man guardian party, best everyone with mace/shield tanky dps setup, you have no idea what ‘immortal’ and ‘mow through stuff’ mean.
Run up to boss, start autoattack, minimise the game – for most encounters.

I think it’s tied to the fact that fractals work like personal story, and aren’t seen by the game as a ‘dungeon’ in sense of game’s mechanics.

Can someone describe how Agony actually works? Where is it, how got, when triggered, how deadly (that got covered), etc. TIA!

Geekcrux – but you’re not wasting time when you’re helping a guildie out to catch up to your 9th level. You keep getting tokens, you keep getting chests with loot, you play together and upbring someone to play with further.
If you’re not obssessed with seeing higher difficulty level every hour, you’re not wasting time. If progressing in your toon’s diff level is more important than playing together with guildies… well, i guess there’s a place for such attitude as well.

But you know… I wanted to learn, and was willing to pay the repair cost. It would be disappointing, of course, if we couldn’t even finish 1 fractal, but at least I’ll learn from the experience.

You have restoren my faith in humanity.
I take my hat off and bow before you, kind Sir, as you are a shining example of how people should take dungeons in this game, even if they’re struggling a bit at the beginning, instead of coming here and crying how impossible and unbalanced it all is.
If it makes you feel any better, you’ve warmed a grumpy heart.

Guardian > warrior >>> mesmer & thief > ele >> engi & ranger >>> necro.
Howgh.

Pointing at a feature that turned out into a griefing extravaganza is one thing, looking for a way out of the problem on your own level rather than waiting for a devs’ fix is something different.

As said above, i still can’t think of a viable way of fixing it without wasting lots of resources, and all i’ve seen is people pointing how bugged and unfair it is but no other workable solutions. I think that if it was as easy to fix as some might think, it would have been changed by now.

I can’t really think of another way to implement it without wasting kittenloads of resources on empty instances.

It’s been changed to kick the host as well if they leave the party in a dungeon. They still can kick everyone with one person to second the kicks, though.
I agree that it’s a nail to the coffin of pugging, but it’s not a bad design of the game or dungeons, it’s people being greedy and griefing others, or not foreseeing how much time it takes to do a dungeon.

All i can suggest, and will continue to suggest it, is to find a decent guild and run dungeons with the same people rather than pug. I don’t know why people prefer to pug in the first place, must be a habit from another MMO where pugging works fine and is good enough.

There are several things that could have gone wrong here, and it’s very hard to drop any hints. I guess even devs would have a hard time identifying the issue and suggesting a solution given scarce info and a plethora of possible explanations.
All i can say is to have everyone Join In to the same one person who certainly is on an overflow shard, then using the same waypoint to force the game to reload while on that shard.

The game was designed for puggers who wanted something that “was different from WoW & other MMO’s”

False.
ANet stated multiple times that explorable dungeons are not something meant to be puggable by any random group, it’s something that requires practice, patience and understanding. Not skill or the top gear, mind it.
The open PvE content is meant to be pug-friendly, with random groups of random players doing big events together. You can kill a dragon with anyone, but you can’t beat Subject Alpha with any random team composition – and that is fine, because organised teams need some end-game as well and it’s not hard to form or get into one.
That said, i don’t mind taking ‘noobs’, for lack of a better word, into my teams, even if they’re somewhat undergeared, don’t run the top build, can’t dodge out of 100% aoes, etc – as long as they are willing to learn and as long as i know i will meet them again, aka if they are in my guild.

Having that many routes across all dungeons, it’s impossible to balance everything out and make everything out equally long, difficult, and interesting for people to run, unless you’d just copy all the mechanics and encounters with different skin.

Stability on necromancer → Plague or Lich Form.
Stunbreakers → Spectral Walk (which also grants swiftness, which is mandatory for the Swamp Fractal), Spectral Armor, Plague Signet.
You don’t have to trait anything of the above to have it viable.

If you need more stability/stunbreakers than the above to run one wisp, perhaps you should take a while and learn the route, try to avoid more traps.
The only somewhat broken knocklock mechanics found in dungeons is in AC, as Scavengers can keep you on the ground even after you have used a stunbreaker.

After running the wisp, you slot your chosen utilities back – especially that you won’t really use Blood is Power, or the wells, or the minions when running a wisp.

This is of course a specific example, but it’s good to talk about specific things when it comes to ‘difficulty’ or ‘solutions’. You still can slot Spectral Armor for more demanding dungeons where you die or get knocked/stunned more often. It’s fine to die often or get stunlocked the first 2-3 times you are somewhere, but if you’re there for the tenth time and still haven’t learnt to slot and use the needed skills, it’s not a bad design but a stubborn player.

Explorable dungeons are far from hard – it’s the people who usually pug and not run guild parties who simply come undergeared, without proper understanding of the upcoming encounters, refusing to change some of their skills for encounters, etc.
Following the basic premises of dungeon running and actually talking with people on /p, everything is doable in any party composition, given everyone knows what they’re doing, their toon and they run a viable build.

That said, i can understand the need for a LFG system and while it might be useful, i’ll still keep pointing at the other way out – just join a decent guild. Find a constant team (not talking about 5 people, but more – a guild) to do content with whenever you feel like it. It really makes stuff easy and makes any pugging redundant.
Still, some people just like to pug – it’s a way to meet new people, learn new tricks, soak into the community. A LFG system might be good for them, but if you’re struggling to find a team at all and you can’t do stuff because it’s too hard, a LFG tool won’t solve your problems.

I am against any kind of uniforming tokens, though, as it would make people run only 2-3 easiest routes of the easiest dungeon and never even see the remaining content. It would waste a lot of the dungeon designers’ work. If such thing was implemented, it would be only fair to also limit the rewards to only one skin, wasting the work of skin designers.
It’s only a way for people too lazy to put enough effort into finding or forging a guild and/or making friends. It has nothing to do with casual players, as you can play 3h a week and still get all dungeons done (keeping in mind that some routes take 3h in one sitting). You can use rare equipment and still get everything done. You can get everything done with any profession, as long as you don’t expect to get through dungeon X with 5 minion master necromancers and similar composition.

Bring stability and/or stun breakers. Fun fact: stun breakers also get you up after a knockdown. Bring condition removals. Fun fact: every profession can cleanse conditions, at least from oneself.

Yes, you can run any build you want, in general. There are, though, specific encounters when you should slot some specific skills/major traits over the things you usually run, regardless of what your puggies do.
It really is fine as it is – you still can run whatever works for you for 90% of the content, and you still have all the tools needed to deal with the remaining 10%.

Lemme explain it as simply as possible. It might sound oversimplified, so please don’t feel dumb.

Let’s take EU servers.
There’s one Lion’s Arch map for Blacktide.
One for Gandara.
One for Far Shiverpeaks.
One for Underworld.
One for each server.

Once Gandara’s version of Lion’s Arch is full (let’s say – hits 100 people, although it’s a random number as i haven’t researched the actual cap), new people from Gandara server who go to Lion’s Arch get kicked out to a Lion’s Arch Overflow.
Once Underworld’s version of Lion’s Arch is full, people going to Lion’s Arch on Underworld get kicked out onto Lion’s Arch Overflow.

Here’s the catch: a Lion’s Arch Overflow can also become full, as it’s capped just as any other map.
A new Lion’s Arch Overflow is created then. Let’s call it LA Overflow 2. This is not indicated in a party tab, so if you have people on different overflow shards, you will only see ’Lion’s Arch (Overflow)‘. Still, if someone’s blacked out on your party tab, it means they are on a different shard of that map, a different instance of it.

There’s one more thing: all overflows are shared across all servers within a given database.
There is no such thing as separate overflow for Lion’s Arch for Vizunah Square. All French, German, Spanish and international servers mix on overflows together. This is why it’s considered rude to use non-English on /map when on overflows, this is why people are often confused about the ongoing non-English shouts on /map.

You can click mouse2 on anyone in your party tab and click Join In to join them in their version of the map, aka in their specific overflow.
You cannot join in to someone on a ‘main map’, aka the original Lion’s Arch (Gandara), but they can come to you onto an overflow.

NA people do not mix with EU people. They do not meet on overflows and cannot play dungeons cross-server together. The databases are really separate right now.

This covers the whole overflow mechanics.
I would love a dev info about the limit of any given shard – how many people to hit the cap when a new overflow is created – just for the record, as it’s not any exploitable data and might be useful just to understand the game better.

Use the lightning bombs in the cages, and the jelly goes down really fast.
Lupicus also goes down pretty fast if no one in your party dies.

But with more bugs to fix, they give more people a job, fighting unemployment in the industry.