Guild Wars 2

I believe you are referring to this:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Will-the-new-update-stop-skipping/page/1#post1205684

For those who are too lazy to click on the link:

Robert Hrouda:

It’s one of those human things to do something with the path of least resistance and danger, especially when there is a reward at the end. I could make enemies never drop their aggro on players and force them to fight every single mob, but I don’t see that as a viable solution right now.
I think the better solution is to look at why people are skipping things, and approach from a different angle. Trash mobs have too much HP, and can’t be counted on for lucrative drops from a Risk/Time vs Reward, so people interested in making money (most groups) aren’t incentivized to do it, whereas the end chest/boss are more guaranteed and accountable returns on time and risk. I also think there is something to be said about interesting trash mob mechanics making them more enjoyable of a fight.
I can’t make the rewards from trash mobs so lucrative though that people just farm the first couple trash mobs/boss in a dungeon and then rinse/repeat. We encountered this when people just farmed the first boss in an instance and then restarted it (earlier around launch time), and we had to adjust the content as a result. It’s a fine line you have to walk to encourage players to get to the end, but make the process of getting there rewarding enough as well.

I don’t imagine this next update will resolve all the skipping behavior. The path of least resistance is engrained in people, and even if I do everything I could to incentivize people, there will still be those who skip stuff. I have been fixing exploits that will require players to complete more of the events in dungeons, but I am sure people will still skip what they can to get to their end goal.

For now I would encourage those not looking to skip to find some folks who don’t like skipping and make a guild with them… or maybe look for guilds that are dedicated to not skipping, and tag along with them. I’m in a couple of them (anonymously), and it really is an effective solution to playing the game the way you want to play it: Find other people with similar interests and band together with them.

No don’t fix it. HotW is the perfect cure for insomnia and some people I know depend on it for sleep.

But yeah, 5 glass cannons improve clear time drastically that you won’t feel yawnful. Plus having to dodge occasionally helps you not get bored.

Assumptions on anti-skippers:
They are usually the ones getting carried and have no clue about the mobs’ mechanics in question. One good example is the first trash mob group in TA. The groups I’ve had who insist on killing them consistently backpedal into the blossoms rather than kiting around in the same blossomless zone and fail to dodge/rally off blossoms and wipe. If you tell them to skip though they wouldn’t know how to use stability/dodge/stealth w/e mechanics to get past the mobs either.

I.e. they are players who have no idea about mob mechanics or even their own class mechanics due to lack of experience from braindeadness or simply haven’t run the dungeon enough to not find killing the same unrewarding trash mobs xx number of times boring.

They are also likely PVT/HTP/HPV users who relish on tank/support “roles” that drags the fights on and on.

If you want to kill all mobs and find it fun please do, just advertise that clearly when you form your pug since by majority votes in normal LFG teams, skipping will always be in favor.

Fildydarie.1496:

A novice group often doesn’t care as much about speed as they do reliability; ensuring they finish the dungeon at all takes priority.

Gee and I wonder who comes in crying about mobs having too much health/having to graveyard zerg.

Fact is, a sizeable portion of PVT believers are stubborn and aren’t open to trying out glass cannon in fear of dying and never really learn to play properly. You’re right tho, even though these parasitic players leech their Dungeon Master titles without learning any game mechanics we should respect them. dot dot dot.

In my experience mesmers are prone to getting phantasms killed before they can act if you don’t try to time them so they appear right after a mob hit but yes the mesmer definitely feels more suited to glass cannoning than ele mainly due to the ele’s health pool. The main reason why glass cannon eles in sPvP isn’t that viable though more due to the fact that players can simply walk out of your AoEs for Staff/Scepter whilst the Dagger main-hand is ill-suited to burst, rather than being a survivability difference issue.

haviz.1340:

snip

1) Yeah I’m quite aware of the p3 changes since I did desperately farmed Crusher/Hunter during the ~2 week period after dungeon reward update after wasting my tokens on a whole medium set for my guardian… (and got 325g along the way) and farmed the Crusher some more while DR to run out after the the first nerf until it was fully nerfed as is today. Haven’t really touched Arah since.
2) Ledge method is what I thought most pug groups resort to, otherwise they ignore p3 completely :P

Khal Drogo.9631:

30s really? Youtube please. And please dont tell there isnt at least one mesmer in that party. As for a berserker geared guardian, I fail to see really how much more damage it does as opposed to a soldier geared guardian.

2 mesmers
We’ve begun to notice after one timewarp+getting Alpha to drop under 80% with big damage after 10 seconds consistently bugs him out (because he tries to spit out too much ooze?) and subsequently lets the mesmers maintain 3 wardens each ~12k-20k every 4.6s each whilst doing 1.5k sword auto attack crits/3k, 52% base crit chance, 72 with fury.

For zerker guardian on greatsword autoattack I typically crit very often with 70% crit chance thanks to fury from warrior at 2.2k and 4.3k on the final hit and 3k/5k once I build a steady 10 might stacks and spin2win on average 12k- total. Hammer theoretically does more damage but I’m bad, rely on 2 autos after ice appears-dodging and hate having to cancel the third auto-attack to dodge.

For more damage while downed and/or more time for your team-mates react and rub your body back to health, order some Bowls of Fire Salsa today! To stay on topic: maybe try to offset your weaknesses running MF with potions or perhaps switching out the MF food for an overpowered useful food at least temporarily? People rarely use potions them so you would be slightly more useful comparatively and even less people use the overpowered ones like censored to avoid inflation on my favourite foods.

Iehova.9518:

Have your warriors melee him in p3.

Last time they tried that with with me joining in for some hot lupicus’ butt scratching time with my Fiery Greatsword, he suddenly turned around and bubbled us all.

I would love to run Arah more often and get my team better at it but our greedy nature and desire for charged lodestones for our first/second legendaries dictates that we should reserve our 4 paths per 2hr DR limit on a strict CoE 231+CoF 1 rotation.

Wethospu.6437:

Probably cos the presence of your majesty annihilates lupicus in 1-3mins while MY warriors stay ranged and we have to take a massive 5 mins to kill him. :P

Khal Drogo.9631:

Berserker’s armor just makes boss fights slightly faster in most cases, I dont see it as a game changer.

That’s what I used to think when I was a PVT believer 2 months ago. But once you play with full glass cannon elite crews you sorta get used things dying fast, then when you PuG and get ‘I never die!’ PVT/Cleric eles/guardians in your CoE team and Subject Alpha encounters takes 10 mins to kill as opposed to 30 seconds, it gets VERY BORING.

Another ‘we have no damage’ scenario I’ve been in was a team with 2 support guardians and a ‘support’ ele who loved to camp water and earth exclusively, a shout warrior and me as my usual full zerker kitten ele in Volcano Fractal scale 26 daily run: we had pretty much no damage at all and the villagers got pushed off one by one with immobilizes/snares running out we manage to survive with one villager… then at the Shaman they chained their Shield of Absorption/Wall of Reflection/Shield of the Avenger when lava elemental spawns but after all that the lava elementals were all still alive with 25% health and proceeded to down then all; if I hadn’t been running zerkers I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have been able to rally them at all.

haviz.1340:

zencow.3651:

Personal Team Hi-score(s):
- 20 mins Arah path 3 without map exploits.
- Killed CoE3 destroyer in 5 lazer shots but we’re also Omnom believers looking for Operative’s Creed recipe so not really aiming for faster. The team who Rob said did it in 2 lazers shots probably were using +damage food and +damage vs destroyer potion.

That arah run was after or before adding new stuff?

I killed CoE3 destroyer with 4 eles and 1 war (pugged) in 5 shots so I guess a group of decent wars/thieves/even guardians with food+pots can do it much faster. Unless someone thinks that bunker eles has so much damage

1. That was ages ago with players who don’t play anymore, ~2 days after the token buff from 30 to 60 and the team comp as me(ele), mesmer, guardian and 2x warriors.
2. Whoa you managed to find a PuG who would do the destroyer normally? And that’s pretty impressive for bunker eles, I’m assuming the majority of them were doing the highest burst of scepter/dagger Tooth→Ring→Phoenix→Touch→Earth quake→Churning Earth→Lightning Strike→Blinding Flash→Arc Lightning→Lightning Strike as they retreat?
Personally still having problems brainwashing the others into glass cannoning, only 2 other people in my loose group are true zerker believers. I think I need to urge them to jump down the platforms earlier too, they are usually down 3-5 seconds after the shield goes down rather than AS the shield is going down.

Dee Jay.2460:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Same reason people run PVT gear. They don’t care about contributing, they just want to sit there and let other people do the work.

WoW, this is the dumbest comment I’ve read in a while.

I’d rather group with 4 players wearing PVT gear than a group of full glass-cannons.

Actually I’d rather run 4 players who don’t ever die in Explorers than 4 PVT players who supposedly ‘soaks damage’.

But of course I’d prefer 4 Beserker’s players who don’t die;
Personal Team Hi-score(s):
- 20 mins Arah path 3 without map exploits.
- Killed CoE3 destroyer in 5 lazer shots but we’re also Omnom believers looking for Operative’s Creed recipe so not really aiming for faster. The team who Rob said did it in 2 lazers shots probably were using +damage food and +damage vs destroyer potion.

My verdict: have both sets then wean yourself off the PVT until you become an awesome player and use PVT only when you NEED it e.g. cliffside hammer wielders, blizzard hitters (since structures can’t be crit) or lagging too much to dodge properly.

Most likely they copy+pasted the Earth Elemental and re-skinned it and added the passive but forgot to remove the Magnetic Aura from their skillset.

Try using Lightning Hammer, its really awesome for taking these guys down given you dodge their Ring of Earth-like knockdown skill.

Stinson.5972:

let dungeon parties guest into each other’s servers to try to work it together….

Zenyatoo.4059:

5 people is enough.

The problem lies having everyone on the same server. Often though you’d at least have two people from the same server and its possible with only 2 people:

The blue circle marks the waypoint, the red skulls represent where the coil commander can spawn and how he moves. One player can camp next to the waypoint while the other moves around to greet the commander.

You will hit DR on your third AC run.

The DR rules are as follows:
1. Path dependant DR: The same path cannot be repeated within 2 hrs regardless of character.
2. Global DR: There is a 4 paths in 2 hrs limit, your 5th path will be hit by DR regardless of which dungeon you’re doing.
NB:
a) The Daily bonus +40 tokens for each path is character bound not account bound but you must keep in mind rule 1 when repeating the same path.
b) DR takes when the final boss is killed/when you receive your rewards, nothing else matters e.g. when you enter etc.

What you CAN do is CoF 1 and AC 1,2,3 then wait around an hour and a half maybe doing non-dungeon stuff e.g fractals/node farming/WvW etc before repeating the same paths on character 2. It is much more preferable to have a full glass cannon team to ensure fast/consistent clear times. Without a consistent clear time you risk running a path too slowly but on your next run doing it too fast and breaking rule 1 while doing the runs too slowly makes rule 2 harder to keep track of.

If you intend to PuG mostly then keep track of the time you kill each final boss and ensure 2 hrs has passed until you kill it on your second character but having to time keep precisely is painful.

Vennyhedgie.5369:

Are you even aware of what you’re saying? First, to actually earn the money someone has to BUY them. Their demand is so ridiculously low compared to precursors it’s not even comparable. Yes, I got a lucky shot and got the CoE recipe. Am I rich? LOL hell no, I make maybe 5 to 7 gold out of a ring…every 3 runs. Is it really that bad? and that’s with buy instant offers because even if you list them, almost nobody wants them. Honestly, I understand the RNG fixing stuff for items you need like ascended on fractals, or even legendaries (though they’re not mandatory), but this..this is thought to be a lucky shot, it’s meant to be a way to earn money. All mmo’s have some of these lucky shot stuff, and honestly it should stay like that.

1) Stats-exclusive trinkets like Operative’s Creed and Tortured Root are pretty well in demand since the only way to get them is to essentially buy them from the TP. Even for less demanded trinkets like yours however, the supply is so much lower that eventually they will sell if the price is reasonable.

2) a) Yes, its terrible since even if your Husk of the Destroyer/Infinity Loop drops to 2.5g each you’re still potentially earning twice as much as other people can with their tokens via the rares to ecto salvage method. I am hoping to get a CoE recipe myself as aside to the chance at charged cores/lodes since all paths only take 1 and a half hour since I’ve brainwashed enough people to all run glass cannons with me.
b) Even more profit from those who could craft away tokens from SE and under especially AC where ecto salvage rates are worse.

3) Because both GW1 and GW2 were a game sold on skill > grind/luck these sometimes stats-sensitive trinkets are very controversial:

These concepts are so old I can’t believe they exist at all in any modern MMO. WoW made these mistakes and fixed them. RNG does not work!

The rewards from dailies were originally intended to be a way for casual players to ‘catch-up’ through the experience/coin bonus but as things stand, I’ve began to feel it is becoming a painful chore as I shifting into a more casual gamestyle. Having to log-on every day is something I’m sure casuals have difficulty with.

Hence, I suggest that dailies be combined into a weekly i.e killing 420 monsters within the week instead of 60 a day, 35 dynamic events completed within the week instead of 5 a day and 140 gathers instead of within the week instead of 20 a day. Daily variety maybe 24 instead of 15. The rewards can still be given every 60 kills/5 dynamic events/20 gathers as usual or altered towards a tiered progression.

This would allow casual players to be able to dedicate themselves to a few days rather when they have free time rather than being pressured to play everyday.

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

Bring projectiles blocking, if you’re an ele and you aren’t using a focus for this fight then you’re bad at dungeons.

I used a focus for the first 2 lupicus encounters then for the next 28 I used a staff since my team got better at dodging so I could do more damage and Burning Retreat/Magnetic Aura/Windborne Speed around instead of Swirling Wind babysitting.

Wethospu.6437:

Well, looks like you didn’t. Because in GW1 you can’t swap people mid-instance making running much harder than normal playing (which is how you can do it in GW2).

But in GW1 you had heroes who don’t have to be paid/GW1 WAS MUCH EASIER in that you could solo certain things fast. 3 customers (max since you need another member to ‘anchor’ the party) = 60g that has to be split between the 5 guild members who ran it originally.

Compared to high yield runs which could all be done under 1hr:
-600/smite CoF runs which were 5-20 plats each in it’s prime and 5 customers, heroes don’t have to be paid. All to one runner. All to one runner (heroes don’t have to be paid.)
-SF sin Duncan service at 15 plats each with 7 customer slots. All to one runner.
-Underworld service at 15ectos each with 4 customer slots. 15e per runner.
Which could all be completed within an hour.

Gw1 was more open to inflation since it didn’t have a gem store so people could readily pay off at least part of their runs with the dungeon rewards they got but that isn’t the case in Gw2. I don’t really see how Anet can fix this issue if it were either.

The game isn’t balanced around just health pools since there are other factors that affect survivability. Eles and Guardians have the best protection up-times and the most defensive skills. Eles are also able to maintain permanent vigor and dodge about twice as much as a Warrior can. Arguably better for higher levels of FotM where you can’t just tank things. But anyway, regardless of class theres really no excuse for taking a big hit. If you CAN take a big hit you’re probably too tanky and should consider weaning from the P/V/T and take bigger damage and getting better at dodging.

Down skillwise, the Ele’s vapor form (when you are not being bad and mashing 2) is also alot better than other classes’ downed escapes for when you do get downed. Warriors are also given a higher health pool since they are expected to stay in melee range to deal big damage, a warrior at range does very little damage and AoE.

As for dredge tanking… None of the classes can really just stand there while the dredge pummels them at least at higher levels. And if you’re complaining about having to spend more effort mashing the keyboard than other classes I don’t think Eles are the right class for you. Period. As an Ele, you can and should switch to a focus for 6 seconds of Swirling Winds + 3 seconds of Magnetic Wave + 4 seconds of Obsidian Flesh and 3 seconds of Mist Form for a total of 16 seconds of safety which is plenty of time with proper aggroing it’s really, Warriors only have Shield Bash for 3 seconds and Endure Pain for 5 seconds as their tanking skills. I find it a good design since it’s one of the moments where you have to reconsider your strategies, albeit only for the first time you do it, that makes dungeoning fun. Edit: You could also opt for the second switch, you only need to stay on it for 1-2 seconds for people to get into the gates.

I pugged my way to lvl 25 FotM with Full Beserker’s mainly using staff and 30/0/0/20/20 at 15k health and still have yet to see what all the fuss is about. Tossing 2.5k crit fireballs and providing decent sustain/protection to the team seems to do the job just fine. Admittedly I do get downed when I get distracted but I’ve never been in the situation where I scream UNFAIR at getting one-shotted since everytime that happens I know it’s my fault for playing badly/I could’ve done something about it but I didn’t.

Sitting in fire with 30 fire with Internal Fire, Pyromancer’s Aclarity and Pyromancer’s Pussaince is really strong but telling you not to switch attunes at all is just terrible.

I agree with LordByron that you need to swap attunements accordingly as needed rather than just spamming away since that would get you killed in Fractals.

Pyromancer’s Pussaince the fire 30 trait got buffed later on in exchange, with decent boon duration you could get like 20 might stacks just from that.

I’ve made two mistakes with tokens so far:
- Buying a trident instead of a staff. (Them icons/preview skins were identical)
- Wasted hard earned Arah tokens carrying pugs for about a month and a half and bought set of medium Orrian for my GUARDIAN (went through 6 confirmation messages!). GW1’s armor purchases where made idiot proof by making only armor usable by your profession purchasable, dunno why they don’t have it HERE. (Then in my frustration I resorted to forming a dedicated Crusher+Hunter farm team and got 2 suits worth of tokens + super rich before Rob nerfed it.)

zencow.3651:

The RNG component is so enormous over the cheap to obtain jewellering component that the latter doesn’t even matter.

Tell me how maxing jewelcrafting is difficult.

Static.9841:

DaveGan.8065:

Unlike the bifrost, these rings would have no statistical replacement and be extremely subject to (short to medium term) market manipulation.

Have you actually seen any of the trinkets in question? they are ALL the same stats as any other exotic trinket of that type (eg carrion stats) with the exception that they have no upgrade installed in them. Tell me more about how there is no statistical replacement….

Please. Have YOU even seen the trinkets in question? The Soldiers/Rapid/Shaman/Traveler stat rings aren’t craftable outside these recipes.

Fildydarie.1496:

snip

What conflicting arguements? Mine are all aimed at devaluing these trinkets so they can’t be gold mined by changing their binding status/increasing their availability.

1) lucky people don’t suddenly EARN more, noone cares if a garbage collector wins a lottery but if a garbage collector suddenly randomly gets a massive pay rise, the other garbage collectors have a right to flip out.

2) people seeking specific stats on trinkets should be able to obtain it themselves.

I’ve humbly stated how much grinding I’ve done to put you into perspective on how terrible the drop rates are but you obviously completely missed the point. You don’t know me, judge me however you want but it still does not validate this poorly designed aspect of the game.

I dunno what game you’re playing but 5g extra for completing all paths of a dungeon is a massive bonus.

DaveGan.8065:

yay

Thank you for your understanding.

Dempsey.8760:

RNG is lot broken lolz

Rude much? Kindly contribute something useful to the topic and stay civil rather than indirectly insulting me, thanks.
If everyone stayed content with their game/if Anet never seeked to improve, you think there’d be Gw2?

Well, it’s only just 3 months and Anet’s already losing their philosophies.

I’ve done 300 dungeon runs estimated by the broken Hobby Dungeon Explorer title since the dungeon patch that they were introduced in and not gotten an exotic drop let alone a recipe. Side note: I’ve ran probably over 500 paths and not gotten an exotic drop from chest/bosses.

Yes, it’s only for a short-time. However, I didn’t mind people rushing for end-game greens/winning rare minipets since it takes effort/just winning a loterry. But recipes impacts player behaviour in what you want to do in-game as badly as arah farming was. Maybe I and my legendary-owning dedicated grinders (admitedly tiny protion of the community), theres just no point in doing anything else but the most profitable method and this RNG combined with the FotM’s makes the game really unfun for us.

On the flip-side I don’t see how people have to suffer in being price gouged/suffer the RNG/wait until they can afford to complete a STAT SET they want. Not just a cosmetic issue.

The fact that you can grind endlessly due to the extremely low chances and never get it and you can’t obtain it otherwise makes it exclusive. It may sound like I am for abolishing RNG totally but no, I am merely pointing out there they are unfun so they can be fixed.

zencow.3651:

As I said I’m actually fine with 1-time massive income drops, as per VS/Froggies/BDS/EEs in Gw1.

The difference is these and precursors are mostly cosmetic (tainted by q9/legendary stat value) AND you had/have the alternate choice to grind for them.

Recipes are exclusive gold mines and FotM stuff affects your stats. For the latter, no-one complained about not having a Superior Rune of Vigor as would no-one complains about not having a full set of Divinity Runes. The exclusivity in the RNG and the fact that these are account bound makes them unreasonable.

Static.9841:

snip

1) True, but the fact that the goldmine is present because these recipes exists in their current fashion is dumb.
2) What I am aiming for, devaluing these recipes. The RNG component is so enormous over the cheap to obtain jewellering component that the latter doesn’t even matter. Take your crafting is useless arguements elsewhere.
3) Flipping is ‘fair’ since the only barrier of entry is your own wealth.
4) Mystic toileting for precursors suck and ANet’s trying to amend this with their ‘scavenger hunt’ ideas. I paid a massive sum for my The Legend yet I find this a great idea as this makes their game better overall.

Nashaan.3160:

kitten

As I said I’m actually fine with 1-time massive income drops, as per VS/Froggies/BDS/EEs in Gw1. Thanks for reading my post /sarcasm

Ouroboros.5076:

It’s like that in all RPGs since Dungeons and Dragons. As I said, get over it or play other games

Or having played Gw1, I can keep complaining until they rework the reward systems to be as fair as such.

ATMAvatar.5749:

To provide a little perspective, one of the major selling points of GW2 is that RNG was going to be minimized. ArenaNet wanted to provide fun over grind, and as a one-time purchase rather than a subscription model, there was little business incentive to force a grind.

Much of the RNG people complain about now was added very recently.

As a long-time Gw1 player having been sold to their philosophies and manifestoes, I have the right to tell them their reward systems are becoming derailed to OTHER MMO KITTEN and for them to fix it. I don’t care what other games you’ve played, I want improvements in my GW2 and you RNG lovers can go play w/e gazillion other mmos out there have.

Because RNG sucks and things could’ve been implemented in better ways e.g. recipes purchasable for tokens etc that would induce alot less kitten and satisfy the latter of your group. The former two points shouldn’t exist; The fact that you could endlessly grind and never get a recipe is absurd. Grinding for the same amount of time as your lucky peers but getting less rewards for it is daunting and unfun.

Here’s an analogy from my heavy grinder’s point of view right now: No-one minds if a garbage collector wins a lottery, if the garbage collector however randomly gets a massive pay rise, the other garbage collectors can a) stay at the same messed up company and hoping for their chance or b) quit. Sure I already have BiFrost and still having fun but the kitten is strong.

WHY ARE YOU EVEN DEFENDING IT? Anet has to be leashed back to their philosophies to remove the unfun RNG that belongs in F2Ps.

Also you don’t seem to know the DR rules (from personal experience, Rising Dusk has an intensively researched post elsewhere I believe):
- path DR resets after 2 hours, after which you can get maximal rewards on an alt.
- global DR only kicks in if you do more than 4 paths in 2 hours.
Now rethink on how EASY it is to get a precursor from having a recipe. E.g even without an AC recipe and optimal team you can do AC all paths twice in 3 hours for 8-10g. With a recipe you get double that. Not counting what you do in your 1hr dungeon break.

Static.9841:

Wow, really? Because someone found something you didn’t, it’s really unfair? This is just massive entitlement. Go out and grind dungeons if you want it so badly. Do you make forum posts every time a precursor gets sold on the TP because they had the RNG fortune that you didn’t?

Yes, I do. And I don’t feel the sense of entitlement is unjustified. I’ve grinded my way to BiFrost but since other legendary grinders seemingly all have these OP recipes will get their SECOND legendaries up to FIVE TIMES FASTER than I would. This is much worse than precursor RNG since it affects income at a MASSIVE level. Precursors are a one-off payment that can be easily sneezed off. Winning a precursor is like winning a small lottery but getting one of these recipes is like getting paid 5x more for doing the same amount of work.

I’m still here and willing to grind. I deserve an equal footing but RNG does not provide this. Anyone who doesn’t realise how broken this and think my sense of entitlement is invalid can suck my fat rainbowy charr kitten.

Maybe it will be an alternate way to make ascended trinkets in future, who knows. With Anet’s increasing love for RNG I wouldn’t be surprised.

That’s why you don’t switch in at the last moment? Just run it with your alt, the exp from bosses boosts you up to like 90% of a level per run.

edit: his money table and answer to Ivanov are unrelated.

Since the dungeon patch, the final/semi final dungeon bosses can reward account bound path-specific recipes that can make non-account bound exotic trinkets using dungeon tokens. It has been 1 month since this patch and some products remain rare – Plague and Nightmare Coil valued at around ~20g each. Particularly, some stats that are impossible to obtain out side of the the alternative fractals RNG.

Although it does not cause massive inflation, this presents the possibility of price gouging and gold mining of incomes larger than that of exploits such as Arah farm.

Possible solutions include:
- Increasing the drop rates of these recipes to flood their supply.
- Allow recipes to be sold.
- Allow recipes to be obtained through tokens
- Make the more RNG exclusive trinkets of certain stat compositions obtainable by other means.

Which would reduce the gold mining and associated jealousy/kitten among dungeon runners and make it easier for non-dungeon runners to obtain their desired stat composition.

Edit1: It may sound like I’m making a massive fuss something small… it is but still, it’s something that can be improved and if no-one fussed over it, it wouldn’t come to Anet’s attention.

Edit2: Made OP sound less whiny.

Well maybe fixing this is harder than fixing Fractals, remember when Anet broke it so points from dailies got reset when they added PvP dailies/monthlies? That made me so worried. Hope that’s the case rather than Anet being completely ignorant about this.

edit: LOL yeah the grenth boss is worse than simins in terms of fun imo. At least it was exciting running the sparks into the cages and making sure you ran in the exactly the right patterns+fast enough.

Did CoE3 to try out the ‘new’ all jump down on destroyer fun way the day this post came out: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Path-3-CoE-Evolved-Destroyer/page/2#post925992. Awarded achievement progression.

I’ve never spammed CoF1 so I can’t confirm 100% but I would be inclined to say yes. Rotating between HotW1 and CoF1 however I can fully confirm since that’s what I farmed mostly after Arah farm nerf for my BiFrost.

Sad truth is Anet has too many other things to worry about before achievement points even when the research has been fed to them.

edit:

And we didnt do spark running we DPS’ed Simin down. (5th spark filled on 50%, then full dps on one go), took us long time to get the damage needed tho.

We have two eles most of the time, I being one of them so DPS sucked too much even with full glass cannons. Running was our only hope. Only took us an hour or so to master the spark running though since we were used to running around/manipulation mobs.

I’ve already done some research on this ages ago. Feel free to update it with your own findings. The only tested paths that award progression are CM1, TA up, SE3, CoF1, HotW1 and CoE3. Skipping does not affect things in anyway.

I don’t think I’m a masochist but I did repeat Arah4 to help some friends with my masterful sparks running but it didn’t give achievement progression. Just need SE1, CoF3 and Arah 1 and 2 tested and we’ll have the whole list completed and then maybe Anet will look at this bug for us.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Semi-official-update-on-Hobby-Dungeon-Explorer/first#post833697

Malediktus.9250:

Are you sure? People would quickly learn to master it and precursors will become 5-10g at most.

As in one of the tasks. You should be required to accomplish other tasks of the same vibe that all require 5-7 hours of mastering each. And they should’ve been account bound too so it would actually be in a state of pricelessness and a display of skill rather than luck/grind/price flipping prowess/gold buying.

This feat is how precursors should be handed out, not by dumb RNG!

Zogyark.4597:

Guess it’s time to solo lup with my necro

I can see Death Shroud tanking every 5 sec on big hits with Soul Reaping XII being feasible for replacing dodges but that would require so much life force management.

Getting a PuG to all jump down in the lava pit to squeeze DPS on the destroyer boss is as tough as getting a PuG to do CoF 2 Kaboomium event without suicide running. But does that mean dungeons should be balanced around PuGs?

Fact is, you don’t need to run specific builds to succeed but you do need to bring utilities that are useful depending on the situation and shredding off the needless vit/tough helps immensely. Good players in general or at least in my circle normally seek to improve their gameplay and learn to switch out survivability for damage as they get better. Vit/Tough is useless if you don’t need it.

Dungeons are being balanced around such decent players and not around PuGs and this is the way things should go. Slightly off-topic: Robert initially didn’t even mind the Arah p3 farming by the pugs with the 5-7min runs that equalled other farms. Coordinated teams however seeked to improve their methods and reached 1-min kills for ~7+g/h runs not including loot and tokens that could be turned to rares/salvaged for ectos which was much to absurd.

Shield first but also tag the elementals with AoE if you can. Should be down before you start needing to rally off the adds. If you focus adds first you may run into last second ‘oh no he’s reaching the villager!’ moments and end up leaving downed mates defeated.

I think you’re overkiting lupicus on phase 2, for my parties through 30+ runs his shadowsteps consistently targets the highest armor player while his bolts consistently targets assuming you both remain within his aggro range, On phase 3 again he consistently he camps bubble/hand vomit on one player and bolts/leech on another. But anyway I used lupicus just as an example since it’s the most obvious scenario where this occurs. I’ve ran dungeons enough to get at least two sets of armor for every dungeon before I’ve finally reached this conclusion on the AI behaviour.

It wouldn’t really increase the difficulty for anyone since it would be more like fighting a different boss. I want a set aggro table with everytime the instance is started, not upon boss reset or constantly changing since while that would be exciting I agree that would be much too difficult there. For less-skilled players/first timers this shouldn’t change the difficulty for them at all, all it would do is change the order in which they would wipe Second-tenth repeaters may not have even recognised the AI behavious. All it would do is change things up very subtlety to keep EVERYONE on their toes rather than the primary targets. I want see the people who just sits back at max range get chased down by Saemus and suffer.

I don’t think this would be high in Anet’s agenda since they have so many more game-breaking issues right now but they did say they wanted to revamp dungeons and I’m sure changing up the aggro tables would be one component to making things more fun.

90% of bosses prioritize high armored targets and for those who have proximity prioritization, armor is still pretty high up the list. For giganticus lupicus this is especially true in making the encounter boring with the primary aggro target/ secondary bolt dodging target having all the fun while the rest of the group seemingly learns nothing from the encounter.

This also isn’t very well advertised when people buy their gear and it is a common noob trap especially thieves and eles who believe they would survive better in dungeons with e.g. knights rather than berserkers. It also makes say, 5 people in soldiers gear totally un-productive when essentially only 1/2 players becomes targetted and if they never get downed, the vit/tough on the other 3 are totally useless. I’d also like to see light armored zerker or MF users suffer more.

tl;dr Please re-evaluate your aggro tables. Preferably also create more than one aggro table, with some HEALTHY RNG to select from the list of tables to make repeating bosses more refreshing.

Thanks for the info, again consistent with the current findings again; only CM1, TA up, SE3, CoF1 and HotW1 contributes to the achievement. Skipping does not seem to affect this.

I’d like info on SE1, CoF3 and Arah 1 and 2 but FotM is making it difficult to get a team/is so much more rewarding. Very glad I did all those other 21 paths over the 3 days before FoTM release.

Fay.2735:

Just did Path 3 of Arah, No progress on hobby dungeon explorer. That’s all I can report for today

Fay.2735:

Update: AC path 3 did not count towards it without skipping any bosses or mobs.

Zogyark.4597:

Ok I can confirm that TA Up path grants a point for the hobby achievement, we skipped all mobs (except spiders) and I still got it. Nothing for the other 2 paths (skipped mobs also)

Thanks for your inputs, your findings seem to agree with mine and that’s showing me I’m on the right track ;D

Jim Travakh.7495:

I assumed it leveled up randomly and didn’t bother questioning it

I did so too until someone suggested to me that indeed only certain paths are working and I began to record my dungeon runs. It’s also helping me remember which paths I’ve already done each day which can get confusing when I do 8+ dungeon paths a day (which is what peeved me to find out why I wasn’t getting achievement points from it at all!).

As yet untested and more confirmation maybe required but this little project has indicated that a daily run of CM1, TA up, SE3, CoF1 and HotW1 may be the best way to earn achievement points from dungeons. i.e the only 5 known paths of the 25 giving Hobby Dungeon Explorer tier progression.

Tweek.3190:

I tried AC as well, but I didn’t complete all exp and the story on the same day.
I never run other stories anymore so I don’t know about the rest. Or is it supposed to progress on each path completed?

It’s supposed to grant a tier every path completed as confirmed by support. They don’t seem to know what the issue is/the problem even exists so that’s why we’re here to investigate. :P

Verdelet Arconia.6987:

I will try TA,maybe it works for some ppl but not in your case. Will let u know tmrw if all goes well

Zogyark.4597:

I get 1 point towards it every time i complete the three exp paths in TA

You guys don’t skip the trash mobs I suppose? I’ll add them to the list for now until you can confirm further

Fay.2735:

I’ll keep track whenever I do a dungeon to see if it grants progress, I’ll let you know Nice initiative for bug tracking.

We’ll (hopefully) figure it out in no time with enough dungeon masters taking part in this little project!

Oh and please do keep track of which character you used for each path incase it really is a grant one tier after X paths done issue that’s character bound. Pretty sure there has to be a pattern SOMEwhere!

My personal record of consecutive runs as I actively keep track of them:

11/13 daily reset
CM 123, CoE 123, AC 123, working status not kept track of, all heavily skipped.
CoF path 1 worked (gained tier 5) [Completed on Krevad]
-> Reset to tier 0
CoF path 2 no gain [Completed on Krevad]

11/14 daily reset
SE path 3 worked – skipped trash (gained tier 1) [Completed on I Q]
SE path 2 no gain – skipped trash [Completed on I Q]
AC path 1 no gain – skipped kohler and mobs after traps [Completed on Miraz]
AC path 2 no gain "" [Completed on Miraz]
AC path 3 no gain "" [Completed on Miraz]
CM path 1 working (gained tier 2) – Heavy skipping [Completed on Miraz]
CoE path 2 no gain – skipped champion wolf and twilight arbor type mobs before husk boss [Completed on I Q]
TA forward forward no gain working (skipped all trash mobs except pups + Leurant’s knights) [Completed on Miraz]
TA forward up no gain (skipped all trash mobs except pups + 4 Husks that come with bosses) [Completed on Miraz]
TA story no gain – ignored pods [Completed on Miraz]
HotW path 3 no gain – skipped many trash mobs [Completed on Krevad]
HotW path 2 no gain – skipped to last boss [Completed on Krevad]
HotW path 1 worked (gained tier 3) – only skipped one ice totem and trash around it (the one to the right after fall) [Completed on Krevad]
CoE path 1 no gain – skipped champion wolf and first alpha encounter [Completed on Krevad]

11/15 daily reset and update
Arah path 3 no gain – skipped trash, killed all bosses [Completed on Krevad]
achievement point fix
CoE path 1 no gain – skipped champion wolf and golems before lazer room [Completed on Krevad]
AC 123, no gains, all bosses completed, skipped trash [Completed on Krevad]
CM 1 worked, (gained tier 4) [Completed on Miraz]
CM 3 no gain – killed all bosses, skipped trash [Completed on Miraz]
CM 2 no gain – killed all bosses, skipped trash [Completed on Miraz]
TA up worked, (gained tier 5)- skipped trash [Completed on Miraz]
-> Reset to tier 0
HotW 1 worked (gained tier 1) – skipped trash [Completed on Krevad]

11/16 daily reset + FotM released
- Could no longer find people for classic dungeons

drkn.3429:

And AC… sweet AC… let me just say i can solo the left side of the Hodgins’s room with my ele, and i’ve seen a warrior doing the same – not saying how pro i am, but how easy that encounter is if you, yourself, are prepared – 4 people are enough to destroy the right side and babysit Hodgins, even if they’re complete noobs and idiots.

I could solo the right side with the double scavengers as Ele. But in one of my PuG, they somehow kept wiping on the left side with 4 people. They also refused to take an ice bow from me. The instance owner left after 5 tries claiming it was too hard. Occasionally I would recommend utility changes so their life but they would simply refuse and keep dying. I’m not even asking them to change their traits/buy new gear! Truth is, some people rather complain and continue to be bad than even listen.

Then there’s confused individuals who support them by saying skill > gear. But you have to realise 95% of the population cannot survive in MF gear/5 signet warrior/full zerkers (avid zerker believer myself) and are a liability to the team. Usually I would carry these guys as much as possible until they make changes on their own and survive or ragequit the party.

Support has answered an associate of mine that the Hobby Dungeon Explorer title should one tier of progress with every dungeon path completed, currently it seems to award progression only with certain paths and not others. Others have reportly repeated certain paths rigorously on a daily basis and had not made progress e.g AC 123 daily as their only runs, thus confirming this is not a N-paths completed issue.

So I am requesting that you all begin to:
1) You keep track of which dungeon paths so we can figure out which paths are correctly giving achievement points so: a) we can update the wiki that so that when Anet support sends non-forum goers to the wiki as a default reply to this problem, players won’t be as perplexed and b) for the sake of all us OCD Anet point lovers who find Anet points important.
AND
2) Report the bug through the in-game feature. It will send your character’s data and dungeons completed to help Anet identify the issue.

Please keep your findings to one post using the edit feature and and state whether any skipping was done. Edit: Findings indicate skipping does not affect this achievement but keep note of it anyway for scientific purposes.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Compiled achievement information:

Ascalonian Catacombs:
Story –
1 – No gain
2 – No gain
3 – No gain

Caudecus’ Manor:
Story –
1 – Working
2 – No gain
3 – No gain

Twilight Arbor:
Story – No gain
Up – Working
Forward Up – No gain
Forward Forward – No gain

Sorrow’s Embrace:
Story –
1 -
2 – No gain
3 – Working

Cathedral of Flames:
Story –
1 – Working
2 – No gain
3 -

Honor of the Waves:
Story –
1 – Working
2 – No gain
3 – No gain

Crucible of Eternity:
Story –
1 – No gain
2 – No gain
3 – Working

Arah:
Story –
1 -
2 -
3 – No gain
4 – No gain

ilr.9675:

In GW1, Spectral Agony was a bit of a Skill-check because even uninfused players could be given some resistance to it with Protective Spirit / Angelic Protection if you caught it fast enough. We also had 8-player parties and the ability to give all our heroes Ranger-Pets who were already naturally infused against it (unlike other minions). This ensured that you could bring along 1 or 2 uninfused players so long as they were careful about their Aggro from the Mursaat.

Here…. it looks really bad/binary. Even the way Linsey describes it makes it sound nothing like a Skill check but purely as a Gear Treadmill. IE: in Gw1 it was mechanically a Damage over Time “attack”. (that lots of Mesmer & Asuran skills could exploit BTW). Here it’s a condition that can’t be purged or resisted with the help of teammates. It also appears from the picture to be applied the same way those extremely overpowered Orrion Illusionists attack which everyone knows… is basically the Quake Lightning gun powered by an Aimbot and can’t be reflected either.

I’m really starting to question whether Arenanet understands “the problems” that we’ve been citing with Dungeons. Especially since I can’t point to one single thread here complaining that we “Ran out of Treadmill” in dungeons. No, a lot, if not the majority of complaints here, are that most of the current encounters just aren’t engaging and already feel really grindy. (slowly whittling down a Battleship while rote memory handles all the red-circle dodging)

Agreed, the other Gw1’ers are being abit too optimistic. The way they implied infusion could had tiers also sounds alot like. If you asked me 2 months ago when I was still an avid GWAMMie fanboy I would’ve told you ‘Anet knows what they’re doing, don’t worry everything will be fine!’ but now I’m not to sure.

Everything item/reward based from dungeons to mystic toilet is just so broken I have trouble enjoying myself sometimes. To be frank, Gw1 was soooo much better after John Stumme took over too.

It’s fun to see big green numbers but the thing with support is, you shouldn’t really ‘spec’ for it. Healing power to heal ratios on things are pretty terrible and the lost damage compared to the healing gained is just absurd. Your support from non-healing skills/boons that mitigate damage far outweighs the healing ones too.

This is worsened in dungeons where the trash mob HP are high and doing 50% less damage replacing a damage attribute for healing power just draws out the misery of taking longer to do things and risks your party from wiping even more once their defensive cooldowns/dodges are exhausted and your healing power can’t compensate.

There is a breakpoint though where enough healing power in the group would let you sustain yourselves infinite but again, you’re gonna do bad at DPS checks if everyone does little damage.

tl;dr Support is fine skillwise and traitwise. But don’t waste gold speccing for Healing Power through suit/jewels since Healing Power is weak, you’re better off with just the base healing from skills/traits.