Guild Wars 2

Yeah I’m aware that HotW and CoF can be done in very good time, and the DR system they have on tokens is catching out quite a few legit teams together with the people who are like skip skip skip do not pass go do not collect $200 final boss done. But there’s been a couple of red posts (probably Hrouda) a few pages back saying that they’re not going to disclose any information about how their DR works, so. You’re stuck with having to wait it out until around the 20 minute mark.

Iehova.9518:

So we’re punished for being a well-coordinated team of good players, is that what you’re trying to say?

It’s designed as an anti-farming measure, but actually you are essentially being punished for skipping half the dungeon and rushing to the final boss.

Also I’ve run consecutive 25 minute runs and got 60 tokens per run, so I guess 20 minutes is more accurate, but no one knows the exact number since ArenaNet refuses to release data about their DR system.

I would be happy to spend money on gems if I got frequent flygater mileage points

Apart from the ‘sorta buggy sometimes’, most likely you did the runs too fast. Your first runs should be 60 tokens but if you complete a path in under something like 30 minutes, DR kicks in and you get 45. Try skipping less mobs next time, or wait around until the half hour mark before taking on the final boss.

It’s a bug when you have a certain thing set to minimum/lowest settings, but I can’t remember which setting it is _ Play around with the display settings. One of the values will change it so that you can actually read the text.

Hi guys,

I made a guardian alt and I’m enjoying the profession a lot. I’m only at around level 20 but I’m planning to dungeon (AC, CM and TA) my way from 40~80 which is what I did for my main and I need some tips.

I’ve tried out all the weapons, unlocked all the possible 1~5 weapon skills and while I have one of everything in my inventory, I usually go with greatsword + scepter/shield. I can see staff coming in quite handy for certain paths with narrow corridors but I don’t think the other weapons are going to be in use very much.

My main query is about traits and the 6~0 skills. I’ve looked through a lot of builds and while I’m running around in PvE with the spirit sword, the spirit hammer and the speed boost (retreat?) skills, I recognise that these are not going to be very supportive in dungeons.

I’m aware that there is no one ultimate dungeon skillset, but I’m looking at consecrations and I’m wondering if other regular dungeoneers who are guardians would use them over spirit weapons, signets and meditations?

Also am I right in thinking that if I find one consecration skill useful, I should have the other two (non-heal and non-elite) skills be consecrations to make the most out of my traits?

EDIT: Do you guys retrait for dungeons if you regularly use non-consecration skills outside of dungeons?

There was a post like this in the Black Lion Trading whatever forum but yeah, everyone who posted got like 3~5 copper.

What the above said. Elitists and parties that think they can’t do a run without high DPS tend to recruit warriors more than guardians.

He doesn’t open the door to access the second scepter area. I’ve tried getting him killed and WPing from the beginning and running back to the chamber, to no avail.

I’m not impressed with a path where half the time the NPC works just fine and the other half he’s bugged. Especially when the burrow stage before that is time consuming with a PuG.

Anyone found a way to get him to open the door?

Granted there are a lot of bugs that make the necros feel underpowered, but making this change only to necromancers would unbalance the class because, as you say, we’d max a single trait line to get what every other class has to max 2 trait lines to get.

Alur.7510:

This was 26 days ago, and next patch, next patch, and that actually never happened, what we expect right now, after 1 month is the 15th of November or even a more long-term date? Will be really nice a bit of transparency in this, cause “SHOULD” “next patch” is not even near as what we get now “soon” (and prolly I will be a fool quoting you and tomorrow getting this new system, but at least I do wanna now 20+days of testing how is going..)

Posts like this one are the reason why the red posts are really vague when it comes to implementing game changes. Players are frustrated that they’re not being given an estimated timeframe for X and Y fixes, but when the ArenaNet staff try to be specific and it doesn’t make the patch they say it would for whatever reason, people QQ on the forums saying that the developers are lying/stupid/slow/noob/don’t care about their profession/quest/whatever.

You can keep asking ‘when will we see X and Y’ and ‘what bugs will be fixed next patch’ and you’ll never get a straight response because when promises are made and broken, there’s the inevitable backlash of ‘OMG but you said!!!’

I can only help you answer 1, and yes you can do this without getting everyone kicked out as long as you’re not the party leader. If you’re the party leader and you leave the dungeon or leave your party, everyone gets booted from that instance.

Hold on to them a little longer. No point trying to sell them while everyone else is trying to do the same thing. I doubt you’ll see a queue of people wanting to craft exotics with how ridiculously expensive the other materials are, but when the demand starts picking up again it’ll be more worthwhile to dump them then.

Have to agree. It’s totally fun but I feel pretty useless in just about every dungeon I’ve done.

Yeah but similarly there is no way for you or me to change the exchange rate between the American Dollar and the New Zealand Dollar. Nevertheless the exchange rate is not completely controlled by either governments. One party can print more money and use other tactics to artificially inflate or deflate the economy, but at the end of the day it is the masses who determine what the exchange rate is.

That’s why I said that ArenaNet can control gem > gold conversion rates to some extent, but it cannot be completely controlled by them. Otherwise there is no need for a semi-free market. The reason you are able to buy gems for gold is not because ArenaNet is giving away free gems for a goldsink service; it’s because there are people who pay real money for gems and convert to gold. The supply is there.

To the original poster: saying penalising ‘legitimate’ players for using goldseller services doesn’t make sense, because buying gold from a goldseller means that the player is no longer legitimate.

What I really want to address is this: “My conclusion after reading you all is more peoples buy to goldsellers, more the gem price increase. And more the gem price increase, more players are tempted to buy to GS.” I hope my explanation will help you understand.

Let’s have an imaginary scenario where everyone uses goldseller services so everyone has 1000g in their bank. Well, Christmas event is coming up and I want gems to buy that awesome Santa Quaggan costume that costs 750 gems. I will now convert some of my 1000g to 750 gems to buy that costume – that’s cheaper than buying 750 gems directly from ArenaNet, right?

That’s fine if 100 people do it. But let’s say 1000 people do that. What happens? The exchange rate will adjust because a lot of gems are coming out and a lot of gold is going in. Just like the Halloween event, the rate will go up, so instead of 1g = 150 gems, we end up with 1g = 50 gems. So the price of your 750 gem costume is not 5g, it is 15g. The price of gems has just tripled.

So now I come along and I look at the exchange rate and I’m like OMG AWESOME. Now I can buy 3g with 150 gems instead of just 1g. Why should I buy from goldsellers when I have such an awesome exchange rate in the game itself? I’m just going to buy gems to convert to gold. The ‘temptation’ to use goldseller services is only ‘tempting’ if they sell gold for much, much lower $$$ than the gem > gold conversion. Every time you buy gold from a goldseller to convert to gems, the rate adjusts so that it becomes more and more viable to buy gems.

What will happen in the long run is of course inflation. Last time 150 gems = 1g. Now 150 gems = 3g. More people are willing to pay real money for virtual currency and as they keep converting gems to gold, the prices on the trading post will eventually, under this scenario, triple because gold is worth 1/3 of what it used to be worth.

Is it intended as an anti-botting or anti-farming technique or whatever the hell it’s called. You do your first run after the daily reset thing and it should be 60 tokens. After this, if you complete a different path within 30 minutes I think it is, DR will hit and you’ll get 45.

It is a blanket solution that punishes botters, farmers and legitimate players. The only way to get around it is take your time in the dungeon. Skip less mobs. Sit around and play bingo or bully one of your party members to sing karaoke in teamspeak/mumble/ventrilo/whatever you’re using until you’re at the 30 minute mark and then take on the final boss.

EDIT: Not that I have done any of those abovementioned things… they were just suggestions =)

I’d be happy to do this with you except I’m in the Oceanic timezone. If you’re an Aussie/kiwi and in a North American server I think we should be able to make this work.

AC all paths is a lot easier to find than CM all paths, but I’m in for both if we have compatible online times =)

I was a casual player up until I cut back on my work hours, and I learned how to do dungeons like everyone else. Please don’t equate casual players as ‘too lazy to learn dungeons’ or ‘too dumb’ or ‘too’ anything. Take five minutes aside to explain to new runners what to expect, potential skills that might be useful and you’ll complete the run just fine.

Anyway, this detracted from the original topic, which I have to agree with. I’m an Oceanic player in an unofficial Oceanic server, so I have no problems going to LA to round up five blokes to run AC together in five minutes. But I can’t say the same for any of the other dungeons. Hardly anyone does dungeons like SE, CoE or HotW.

The thing with dungeons is that the GW2 community is quite polarised. You tend to find people who have either attempted a few runs and were completely put off for whatever reason, or people who have earned thousands of tokens and are completely bored because the dungeon is too simple. That’s not to say that the latter group doesn’t find it fun running dungeons, but we have a bunch of people who say it’s too hard and a bunch who say it’s too easy.

It doesn’t help that there’s a lot of elitism going on. Today I invited a level 34 first timer to AC and from the way the level 80 full exotics glass cannons reacted, you would have thought I invited Mitt Romney into our party. There is a lot ArenaNet can do to make dungeons more popular (by the way, I don’t think forcing people to do 5 runs for monthly achievement is the way to go about this), but I think that change should start from us as the ‘regular dungeon running community’ to help new players out and make dungeon running less QQ and more pew pew.

I agree with 1 and kind of agree with 4, but I don’t think it’s fair to say that ALL trash mobs are ridiculous. Certainly I feel like Nightmare Knights in TA, for example, or the Gravellings that basically kill you when you get knocked down (Scavenger?) are a little overkill, but generally they’re not too bad.

As for points 2 and 3, these are really common grievances for when you’re new to the dungeon path you’re running. ‘Graveyard zerging’ tends to happen with an inexperienced or disorganised group, and occasionally I’ve had to ‘graveyard zerg’ a few times because there’s only 2 level 80s in the group and the other party members are in blues and greens and we get overwhelmed. But once you know what to expect in a path, you shouldn’t have to ‘graveyard zerg’. Jumping puzzles also become easier once you’ve run a path a few times and know where to jump,

As for #5, while I don’t think anyone would complain if better rewards are given out for doing dungeons, I think the loot you get in dungeons is more to cover armour repair costs than actually make you money. The 26s you get upon completion is the money you earn – anything extra from chests that don’t go towards repair costs is a bonus.

The easiest path on CM is the Butler one. It really helps if you know what to expect so you don’t run in blindly and get doused in flames or get shot at by rocket turrets without knowing that you have to use the air rifles.

All dungeons are difficult the first time around and you will die multiple times the first two or three times you run. You can’t become part of an ‘elite’ dungeon group, whatever you might think that is, without learning the ropes first. Everyone starts out as an ‘average’ player.

You do not need a good group to run a dungeon. I run dungeons every other day with complete strangers and we do just fine. What you do need is experience. We’ve all been where you’re at right now – dungeons are too hard, the bosses have over nine thousand HP, the trash mobs are hitting ten times harder than PvE mobs, who wants to spend two hours for 60 bloody tokens – and I can’t argue that for the amount of time and effort that goes into them, the rewards are pretty crap.

But that doesn’t mean that you should give up. We’ve all had bad experiences with dungeons but it gets better. So it’s tough to learn and you don’t make a lot of money from dungeons the first few runs – that’s part of the process. And it’s totally fine if you want to sit out dungeons and wait until the rewards are better, or they fix X, Y and Z bugs. But dungeons can be a lot of fun. And even if you don’t enjoy doing dungeons after you do a half hour run where you’ve only died once, that’s fine too. You’ve given it a shot and you don’t like it. You can get crafted or karma armour with mostly the same stats. It’s not the end of the world.

But I don’t think you should give up on doing dungeons just because the first few runs you did, you ended up taking three hours to get to the end and you have to fight the boss in your underpants. We have to learn to walk before we can run. I can’t promise you that you’ll have fun once you get the hang of them, but I can promise you that it gets easier with practice.

You’re never going to satisfy everyone. All the people who rage and QQ on these forums ran a dungeon once, refuse to give it a second chance with a more organised team and just go “OMG never again!!!” while others who have done path X a couple dozen times to get tokens since it’s the easiest path are like “Zzzzz so boring!!!”.

For the TA complaints, actually I found TA was easy before they made it even easier (I’ve obtained and spent over a thousand tokens; I’m in the ‘Zzzzz so boring!!!’ group for TA). I think the blossoms are designed for people to rally when they get hulksmashed by Nightmare Knights or yapped at by the Hounds, not to kill people because they ran into a blossom by accident. If they were designed to be fatal they would have some sort of stun ability first and then poison, or be more like those mortar turrets that hit particularly hard. Most classes have condition removals so the poison wasn’t really an issue.

I do believe AC is easier than SE and HotW, and AC is definitely the fastest to find a group for in LA. My runs are usually complete within half an hour per path if I’m in a party of regulars but if it’s your first time running, you may need a few runthroughs before you can do it blindfolded.

Actually I think everyone should start learning dungeons from AC. It’s not the first dungeon you can access for no reason.

But anyway, while I advocate for AC, I don’t find any of the armour skins appealing. If you want to go for ‘looks’ I’d go with HotW.

I think I posted this somewhere else earlier, but in addition to the tips above:

1) When you are in combat, learn to use the dodge key. Unlike WoW you are able to move while hitting stuff and dodge oncoming attacks, and learning to dodge effectively at an early stage is going to really help you when you get to higher levels.

2) When you’re roaming about and you see a ‘New event nearby!’ message pop up on your screen, on your minimap there will be orange icons of either crossed swords, a shield or a bucket with an arrow pointing into it. These Dynamic Events are really good for EXP so go over and help out – what you need to do for that particular event is described on the top right of the screen.

3) When you get defeated, you’ll go into a ‘downed’ state and get 4 skills. Target the closest thing with the least amount of HP. If you defeat it while you are ‘downed’, you can ‘Rally!’ and get back up again.

4) Buy a crude salvage kit and use it on the armour and weapons you get that sell back to the vendor for under 20 copper (I think in WoW the process is called disenchanting but I’m not familiar with WoW). The raw materials you get from salvaging the loot (copper ore, jute scrap, green wood log, etc.) will sell for more on the trading post (default hotkey o) than selling the equipment back to the vendor.

5) Once you’ve settled on a profession you like, try out every weapon that is available to that profession. They all have different 1~5 skills.

6) You are able to bank collectibles (ores, logs, scraps, gems, food ingredients, etc) from your inventory straight into your bank. Inventory space is precious especially at lower levels when you only have 4 slot bags, so use and abuse this feature freely as you’re going around gathering stuff.

ArenaNet can’t really reduce the price of gold. It’s controlled by them to some extent but not completely. The gem > gold conversion rate and vice versa is determined by player supply and demand. So as you stated, because people wanted gems during Halloween for various gem store things, more people exchanged gold for gems. Gems were in high demand, so it cost more gold to get X number of gems than outside the Halloween period because many people were buying gems.

As for buying from third-party sites, it is against ArenaNet’s TOS, so you do it at your own risk. This argument has been brought up many times before and the response is going to be the same. You can support your favourite bands by paying for their music or you can download their songs from the internet for free. You can support ArenaNet and help them pay their staff and other overhead costs associated with running a business, develop games and bring out new content for existing games or you can buy from gold farmers and use the farmed gold to inflate the economy. Know that as long as there is demand for gold from these third party sites, there will be an increasing number of hackers and bots who farm the gold to sell it to you.

No one can stop you from going out there to buy gold from gold farmers. But know the risks you are taking if you decide to do so, and be aware that what you are doing has a negative consequence on the company that made the game, on the game’s economy and on the other players who are trying to play the game but are not having a good time because of all the bots they encounter.

There has been a lot of threads about crap loot in dungeons and we did get a dev posting (probably Hrouda) saying that they were looking into it.

“OK necro u tank we dps”

Just a few tips for when you start.

1. Buy copper mining pick, sickle and axe. Gather everything you come across (they’ll be on the minimap). They will come in handy later.

2. When you’re killing things, get used to running around and using the dodge key (I think it defaults on C)

3. If you’re stuck, type /m and then it should switch to map chat. Ask your question or ask for help in map chat. Be prepared for one or two idiots with snarky replies, but most people are very helpful and they will help you.

4. As you’re exploring you’ll come across “New event nearby!” and there’ll either be crossed swords, a shield or a bucket with an arrow pointing down into it on the minimap with an orange circle. These are Dynamic Events and they are really good for EXP. What you have to do to complete them is explained in the top right corner.

5. Sooner or later you’re going to get downed, when a mob defeats you. Target the one with the least HP. You can get back up again (known as ‘Rally!’) if you defeat them while you’re down.

A lot of this game is figuring stuff out on your own – it’s confusing to just throw yourself into the game – and it’s natural to get stuck every once in a while. Don’t be afraid to come back to the forums and ask questions. We’re all happy to help.

Yes you can. When you double click on the stone, you put the two items you want to transmute into the boxes. Then you can pick

1. The appearance
2. The stats
3. The sigil/rune/whatever

So as long as you pick the stats of the lower level weapon, you can use the higher level skin on it.

If you want to use a level 80 skin you will need a fine stone.

I don’t understand why we have all this ‘anti-carrying’ people sentiment. When you ran a dungeon the very first time, were you not carried? Who gives a toss what frock you’re wearing? So you can do 50 damage more per second in your level 80 full exotics than the bloke standing next to you, level 35 in full greens. Congratulations, we defeated the boss half a minute faster than we otherwise would have.

The only reason you’re able to sit on your high horse and say OMG NO NOOBS IN MY PARTY PLIS is because someone was willing to take you into their party, run the dungeon with you and most of them will even stop before each boss and tell you what to expect.

Cut your elitist crap and do something nice for someone else for a change. A 60 token, 26s, 4500 karma reward in AS FAST AS POSSIBLE pales in comparison to finishing a run in an hour – with the same 60 token, 26s, 4500 karma jug – and have the level 35 new to Guild Wars 2 whisper you saying “Thank you so much, you were really helpful and that was really fun”.

I didn’t really understand your post with the typos but there was a bug before with CM story mode right at the end, where you were stuck on 2/3 separatists killed and couldn’t complete it to save Queen Jennah. This has been fixed so you can run it now and hopefully complete it.

The targetting thing is basically a way for party members to tell each other what they’re focusing on. If someone has highlighted a target it means that you should focus doing damage to that target. You will find it far more useful in other dungeons like in AC path… 3? One part involves DPSing burrows and someone in the party will target burrows as they appear, so everyone focuses on that. TA too for when people are luring Nightmare Court ______, because you’ll likely wipe if you get 3 Knights charging up to you with their multiple knockdowns.

Hi Vullon,

Most people do dungeons for the tokens. These tokens can be exchanged for exotic armour and weapons. You’re right in that you can probably get faster EXP doing Dynamic Event chains – I think I levelled faster at Harathi Hinterlands doing the Kol Skullsmasher chain than spending all that time in LA spamming LFG LFG LFG and then actually doing a dungeon run – but most of the people I do dungeons with are level 80 so they don’t actually need EXP.

Once you’ve run the dungeon a few times, you will become better at it. You know what comes next, you know what skills are more useful for what you’re about to face and you end up dying less. The first dungeon I ran was CM and I was fighting the boss in my underpants. Now I can run CM with either 0 repair costs or just one damaged armour piece.

They are looking to make the drops better, but right now you’re right – sometimes you get a rare or an onyx core but most of the time the drops aren’t worth it. That’s why a lot of people are skipping half the dungeon – it’s not worth it to spend all this time on trash mobs that give, well, trash loot, and they just want the tokens at the end.

People have explained the TP stuff so I’ll go into your other options. Crafting is not worth it unless you have all the raw mats ready. The only things that sells for profit are the ones you can craft at level 400, so you’ll spend a lot more before you can start earning.

As a daily dungeon runner, I find dungeon runs to be a good source of money. Once you master a dungeon the most you have to repair is maybe two pieces of armour, and some runs can be done under half an hour. I easily earn 40~50s per run so it comes out to about 1g per hour. You can use the tokens to buy weapons since you’ve got your heart set on the cultural armour.

Farming at Orr is subject to diminishing returns, which means that it will be most effective to farm for one or two hours. After that, DR will kick in, and the amount of gold you will be earning will decrease. It is not a bad way to earn gold and I think it’s great for casual players to do once in a while, but it’s not something a dedicated gamer can sit there for six hours and keep doing and expect to consistently rake in 2 gold per hour.

The only time I might recommend getting rares is if you’re planning on running dungeons, and even then I think greens will suffice as dungeon parties usually have one or two level 80s in full exotics who know what they’re doing and can hopefully help everyone finish the run. Most greens you can buy from the Trading Post at one or two copper above the sellback price, so it won’t break your bank.

If you’re not planning on doing dungeons, then yes, wait to 80, bypass the rare tier and get exotics straightaway.

Almost every AC run I’ve done has skipped Kholer. Why? Well sometimes it glitches anyway so you don’t even unlock the waypoint and get the chest. And let’s say you do – yay, I got a blue rifle, a white chainmail helm and a tonic from the chest. How rewarding.

Almost every TA run I’ve done we’ve skipped half the dungeon in different parts. Hounds, husks, spiders, the final run before the two wardens or three knights & Leurent. It’s hell for people who die at boss and have to run back because there are so few WPs in TA, and I try my best to insist that we kill at least all the hounds and the first husk. But people skip them because they’re easy to skip and because earning 60 tokens in a 30-minute U/U run is better than earning 60 tokens in a 90-minute U/U run. Would you rather be paid $60 for half an hour of work or $60 for one and a half hours of work?

When you have a system where you only get your payload at the very end, people want to rush to the end. I don’t mind stopping to take care of mobs and bosses, but I think more PuGs would be willing to do the same if they had a chance to drop one or two tokens, or even dropped a green every once in a while. But why would people feel compelled to stop and kill stuff if every time they fight a mob, all they get is a piece of loot that hogs invo space and sells back to the vendor for 2 copper?

I’d have really liked for my necro to be able to wear the trenchcoats that are the typical look of medium armour but I had settled for transmuting to dungeon and cultural armour since this wasn’t possible. While I think it’s a nice option, it does make things needlessly difficult for ANet to code.

And plus I think that scholar classes with heavy armour might unbalance things a little since they’re meant to be ‘squishier’.

I got one too from a dungeon run a couple days ago. Was expecting like a couple of silver but got like 3 copper. Sadface.

I was gearing up to sell the one skin I got from a chest, and then yeah. Prices plummeted because some amateurs on the TP probably have no actual experience with derivatives XD I’m happy to hold on to it until sometime before Halloween next year. Despite the ’unique’ness of them for now, I don’t for certain that the skins won’t be re-released.

As the above poster said, if you’re selling, hold on to them for now as the market has already been flooded. But don’t hold on too long.

Asagi.1405:

Melee/tankish support. If I wanted to use a staff I’d roll a caster.

Fair enough. ANet’s supposed design philosophy might be to play how you want and use a build that suits you. But they’ve given each class X amount of traits and Y amount of skills, and some of these are more useful in dungeons than others. You don’t even have to retrait if you don’t want to run to the vendor and spend the few bits of silver, but you may have to swap out one or two skills or use a specific weapon that would be more effective in particular instances.

The reason you are able to swap out different skills as long as you are not in combat is so that you can be flexible and put in your best, using the skillset that would be most useful for the part of the dungeon you’re about to approach. I would never use necrotic grasp in normal PvE environments but it’s constantly sliding in and out of my utility slots in TA.

Being stubborn and sticking to your unique non-cookie cutter build is like saying ANet gave my class 3 main hand weapons, 3 off hand weapons, 3 two handed weapons and after evaluating all my options, I’ve decided to bring a butter knife to a gun fight.

This is one of the harder parts of TA and the only time I’ve managed to reliably pull one at a time is when we chain pull, e.g. I do necrotic grasp and a thief standing behind me does scorpion wire immediately after. Of course I can’t say I’ve run it without a kiting ability as I only have one character high enough to do it and it’s a necro.

Nevertheless generally you aggro all 3 knights and Leurent when you pull one – doesn’t matter even if you have necrotic grasp or scorpion wire; they all come running – you have to have the whole party focus on the one knight. Sometimes that one knight you had initially targetted will start walking away and regenerating HP but another knight that was drawn to your group is busy smashing someone to bits – your group has to quickly switch targets to pin that knight down and take care of it.

You don’t necessarily have to pull the knights back too far – in fact they don’t come out too far before they reset, so you want to stay fairly close. As long as you’re fixated on damaging the one knight and dodging and ignoring the others, they will reset on their own.

This bugs me as well… and I also hope they’re working on better loot in story mode. Just ran CoF story mode today and it’s so much more fun than the OMG MAGG Y U FALL IN LAVAAAAA but all I got in the end was a stupid hat that I have no use for.

I got the entire TA set and proceeded to transmute everything because, well. I think the skin looks nice on female characters but looks more like a drag queen outfit on males. And I guess you would look kind of ridiculous as a Charr dressed up like a flower.

The easiest path for TA is Up/Up. I think Forward/Forward is medium, made easier if your team can kite well (basically if you happen to have a thief who knows how to use scorpion wire or whatever it’s called, you’re all set) and Forward/Up is the hardest because in all the runs I’ve done, at least one person has died from the killer bees, Vevina is tough on first-time runners and the spiders at the final boss can be pretty brutal. The main things you have to watch out for in TA are the Volatile Blooms and the Nightmare Knights. The final boss is a piece of cake though; all paths lead to a stationary tree which you just have to watch and dodge as appropriate.

The easiest path on CM is the Butler path. The Seraph path can lead to a lot of headaches if your party isn’t familiar with how to scatter the barrels and the Asura path is a little tedious especially as party members can easily get lost around the mansion if you don’t move around together.

I have not done HotW or Arah so I can’t give you any advice about those. What I can say is that while I think CM is easier to run than TA, the TA set runes that give condition damage are more beneficial than the CM set which gives magic find.

You’ve probably chosen what you want to go with by now, but if you’re on an NA server I’m happy to run CM or TA with you =) TA isn’t very friendly to first-time runners (translation: expect to die often) and most PuGs I’ve been in have not been kind to first-time runners either. But as with any dungeon, once you know what’s coming next, it gets faster and you’ll die much less frequently.

I just did path 2 for the first time today. Never done CoF before and didn’t really know what I was doing. All five of us picked up a fire extinguisher and ran across. I just blasted the fire extinguisher left and right a few times – don’t think I even hit any lava – ran straight across with the rest of the team to the whatevercyte red rock and it proceeded to the next stage. Didn’t have to kill mobs or anything. Maybe the bug is fixed or it’s only happening in certain instances?

Having said that CoF has been bugged for my server for about a week. The dungeon was perpetually contested and we’ve scoured Fireheart Rise for a potentially abandoned NPC to no avail. Couldn’t get in at all until I joined a group sometime after the patch earlier today and it magically worked.

Did you try before the patch or after?

Never played Warhammer but most condition builds use scepter/dagger and staff. For skills you’d want Consume Conditions for healing, and Blood is Power, Plague Signet, Epidemic and Plague Form for elite. If you spend a lot of time 1v1ing then Epidemic may not be so useful. I use Locust Signet for speed boost a lot but you can use Spite Signet as well.

As for WvW you’d probably want skills like Corrupt Boon or Well of Corruption. Works particularly well against Warriors and Guardians.

Thought it’d be fixed after a week but guess not. Ran into the same bug about an hour ago and reported it. Does anyone even do anything about the in-game reports?

Wouldn’t care too much since CM story mode is really easy but I wasted quite a bit of silver on repair costs, and wanted to complete it as a pre-req to future parties being able to enter exploreable mode through me. What a waste of time and money.

Eh I’ve got like 5 people in each guild so far which isn’t ideal but at least it’s not a total failure xD

You can only join a maximum of 5 guilds and I’m in 2 others, so I could only create 3 guilds. I personally only run AC, CM and TA which is why I made those guilds. Nothing’s stopping you from making your own guild for the dungeons you want to run and recruiting for it as well.

Reiterating what everyone said with the Flesh Golem. It even attacks structures you don’t command it to.

I think Scepter 2 works as well. Structures don’t suffer from condition damage which is logical but detrimental to necros, especially those who usually use Dagger/Dagger. Staff auto is slower in terms of DPS compared to scepter auto for AC burrows.

I need a lot more people in order for this unofficial dungeon finder system to work. It doesn’t matter what server you’re on since you can have cross-server parties enter a single dungeon instance. Casuals who run dungeons every other day are also welcome so don’t be shy. Let me know if you’re interested =)

Comment here, whisper me in-game (David Riedmaier; I’m in New Zealand so if you’re American or European you might not see me online that much) or send me a private message if you’d like to join a newly formed AC, CM and/or TA guild. You don’t ever have to represent the guild (EDIT: in fact, please don’t represent the guild as you’ll be wasting guild influence points) – it’s just a handy list of online regular AC, CM and TA runners whom you can whisper if you want to make a party.

I have 2 or 3 people in each guild so far so it’s not working as it is intended. Ideally I’d like at least 30 people (bearing in mind everyone’s from everywhere so the timezones might mean that only 10 people are online at a time) so it’s easier to create dungeon parties on the fly. It’s going to be more organised than a PuG since you’ll be whispering regulars and hopefully it’ll save us all some time standing in LA screaming LFG LFG LFG.

It doesn’t matter what timezone you’re in or what server you’re on since you can have cross-server parties enter a single dungeon instance. Casuals who run dungeons every other day are also welcome. Just let me know if you’re interested. Thanks!

I wouldn’t quit my necro even though my level 7 guardian is more powerful in Mad King dungeon xD But out of all the bugs I’d really like to see the minion AI fixed. I’ve had to run conditionmancer because minion master wasn’t viable and I know that as soon as the minion AI is fixed I’d retrait and go back to MM in a heartbeat.

I have what is basically AC, CM and TA dungeon finder guilds. They’ve only got like 3 or 4 people at the moment but hopefully they’ll grow as I add more dungeon regulars. I’ll be happy to invite you to any of them if you like.

Dungeons can be accessed by a party of players across multiple servers so you don’t have to worry about that.