Guild Wars 2

What rifle is that?!
I saw it on Tybalt and I friggin want it NAO!

This post has been edited to remove a violation of the forum code of conduct.

Smoothest runs I’ve had were with one dedicated support player (banner warrior, elixir engineer, etc..) and a beefy melee (usually a defensive spec guardian) with everyone else being dps.

Solution to what your problem is. Have the people guarding the kegs at the pickup point constantly throw some down near there. The mobs will grab those instead of the ones at the gate.

Problem solved.

The intended method, imo, would be to have 1-2 strong ranged or mobile melee people on crystal duty with the other 3 on dps.

@Joxy.6879
80s all around, best group I found was 3 warrior 2 guardians with at least 1 warrior going banner regen support. I’ve had similar levels of success with 2 warriors 1 guardian and 2 ranged AoE classes (ranger or engi) and several permutations thereof. The key imo for most reliable clearing through dps is to have someone that can pull the mobs together for AoE burning.

Alternatively you can run with very high single target dps and kill priority targets that way but it’s hit or miss. The only thing I’ve seen that makes it impossible to clear everything is if your group tries kiting AT ALL. If you’re losing any dps time you’re going to either end up gy zerging, kiting the rest of the event, or failing.

Kevin.2176:

vicwolf.7862:

I’d like to see you post a video of you DPSing the whole event Kevin because you kitten can’t. The last guy to post a video here of his group trying ended up kiting most of the spawns past the 80 second mark.

vicwolf.7862:

Try it again with a group of 75s Kevin.2176

vicwolf.7862:

I’m gonna disagree with the “almost any group” part. You’ve gotta have either WAY higher single target damage or good AoE damage plus someone that can do a pull like guardian or mesmer. Otherwise you end up running around too much to get to each of the ranged mobs and losing a lot of time needed to kill things.

I like how you went from “you can’t do it period, show me a video” to “you did it at level 80, do it with a bunch of level 75s” to now “you can do it, but only with very specific group composition”. Whats next? do this encounter with only 2 skills and my arm tied behind my back?

The things you listed are pretty much covered in some aspect by one class or another, either in very good single target damage or melee AoE cleave. Majority of the classes has some sort of push back, and guardians are not that hard to find period. Considering the actual difficulty of this encounter I’m going to flat out and say its doable with any five intelligent players playing any professions.

This game’s current PvE content is laughable in comparison to many other games (its fun for sure, but not very difficult). I’m honestly surprised you are still arguing about the difficulty of this encounter. I guess its always easier to blame outside factors than attributing to poor play.

Yeah, I spent some more time trying with a dedicated group setup to clear it with dps and was pleasantly surprised to find it possible but also found that without top notch (at least rare quality all around) and the previously mentioned abilities to gather up mobs we always ended up kiting past the 50% mark.

So while I’ll eat my hat for the assertion that it wasn’t possible (on the condition that it wasn’t stealth changed over the past couple patches) I’m still maintaining that it is overtuned and should be more on level with the door events in CoE.

Kevin.2176:

Stobor.8041:

When you do it without a Mesmer i will be amazed. Now it just proves that the Mesmer is the best buffer in the game where everyone should be equal.

Here ya go, same group, no mesmer, frapsed way earlier so people had less gear.

If this encounter is almost doable without armor, I’m fairly certain its doable with any group composition and non-perfect gear.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3szVor2tMU

I’m gonna disagree with the “almost any group” part. You’ve gotta have either WAY higher single target damage or good AoE damage plus someone that can do a pull like guardian or mesmer. Otherwise you end up running around too much to get to each of the ranged mobs and losing a lot of time needed to kill things.

Normally I’m not on this side of the argument but if you think that Subject Alpha’s health are armor are too high then your dps is the problem. Look at it in reference to every other boss in every other instance, he’s very much on par with almost all of them (save for the drake and last boss in CoF3 which need better attacks and less health respectively). Hell, the only attacks that Alpha has that are even a threat is the bullkitten earthspike wave attack that can’t be reasonably dodged.

“i thought story dungeons were originally supposed to be soloable”

Where did you get this idea?

Try it again with a group of 75s Kevin.2176

Why not just give the previous level of reward before you nerfed the poop out of it? 26s and some experience wasn’t really unbalanced especially since you added all the garbage to CM story.

“at least a lot of players say that”

There’s your problem. Just because a number of kittenes say it doesn’t mean in any way that it is true or intended by the devs.

Really? The pugs I ran with must have had some amazing dps then because we ripped through absolutely everything. The only thing that was even moderately “difficult” was path 3 subject alpha.

rickets.1386:

@ vicwolf
three things.

1. We are by no means super hardcore, we don’t respec specifically for dungeons, we all use a general build for all stuff(WvW, DE’s, Farming, Dungeons are all the same spec). Not everyone is in full exotics, our mesmer was actually in 90% yellows, and many of us only have yellow jewelery. You can buy a full yellow set for about 20s per piece of gear, they are generally 3 to 10 stats lower then exotics.

2. It’s an endgame dungeon. Explorable Dungeons are designed to be the hardest content in the game, think of explorable modes as raids in other MMO’s if you like(im not saying all explorable modes are created equally). Assuming you could do them in blues with a random pug of players with no plan/strat what so ever is silly.

3. I’m not saying the event isn’t overtuned, but you stated it couldn’t be done, which simply isn’t true.

Edit: I will add that a lot of encounters became a bit easier when our guardian noticed that reflect wall really owns ranged mobs, especially the spiders in AC and the Stalkers(rangers) in the maggs bomb event.

1. that still belies the point that it is content that people at the level you get downgraded to should be able to clear.

2. at most they are like heroics from WoW, by no measure of the experience are they supposed to be (nor could they be) at the difficulty and time consumption of raids.

3. I stated that you cannot do the event the way that it is intended to be done (by fighting and defeating all of the mobs that spawn) and asserted that you certainly cannot do it this way if you are not already in optimal or near optimal gear and max level.

I’m not saying he’s not too easy now, I’m saying that the previous version was patently bullkitten.

@rickets.1386

And this is with your overgeared super organized group that is built to run instances. If you can’t completely demolish the encounter with that much on your side then it is overtuned. This isn’t supposed to be some super endgame raid encounter, it’s a friggin dungeon run for 5 people.

@The Mexican Cookie.3690
Even the devs said you were REQUIRED to stack poison on him in order to beat him. That goes entirely against the design philosophy of the game.

I’d like to see you post a video of you DPSing the whole event Kevin because you kitten can’t. The last guy to post a video here of his group trying ended up kiting most of the spawns past the 80 second mark.

If by “challenge” you mean, “required a specific class to stack a specific debuff and lucky crystal drops to kill” then sure. Maybe you don’t understand what balance is.

Bump
Has there been any progress on finding out exactly (officially) what the deal is with this?

Rumor was there was supposed to be a patch today.

Ironically this is the kind of crap that pushes normal players to look for exploits and ways to cheat/break instances so that they don’t spend the normal amount of time in there just to get screwed over.

Zale.9645:

Reacher.8379:

I would love to see a video of the devs actually doing this section correctly how they intend for us to play it. Do you want us to stand and fight? Show us how you did it! Your dungeon mechanics are poor. I like the game, but I’m put off dungeons because…well… they suck. Twilight Arbor is terrible, 90% of the time the blossoms can’t be killed by rifle users. Not to mention the insta pwn you get from the four knights. Actually get a team of you devs record some footage of you guys doing the dungeon how YOU intended it to be played and I’ll eat my words.

Don’t quote me but I remember one of the devs stating that they don’t do that because people would accuse them of having OP dev gear. I think it was Robert Hrouda, but I can’t find the original quote so I don’t wanna commit to it. Either way, it’s a convenient excuse.

As I said at that time, I’ve never once heard that kind of criticism leveled in that kind of situation so the only explanation is that they actually are only testing them with dev gear.

Hekken.4153:

Don’t even know why they’re bothering updating the fight…… What a lackluster fight, Loot, etc. Stop making the players your QA and get your stuff straight. Personally you can update this fight and I could care less about it. Theres no desire to redo that fight over if its just gonna play out the same way it did before plus or minus a few tweaks on how you bring him down. The entire last mission needs to be revised. The whole time i was like really is this how its gonna end? Really? Then a spam fest at the end…. LOL. So i guess you’ll update it so he will fly off and on the pillar after a certain amount of dmg has been done to him…. Great update. Please ANET focus on fixing the end.

I would love to be QA, just not in the game proper where I’m spending hard earned gold on repairs to test this crap out.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

vicwolf.7862:

I think we have to assume at this point that getting 1 token for a 2 hour instance run is intended. The devs have adamantly refused to acknowledge that this is a bug.

I admitted it was a bug a few posts up.

The bug is that the reward was messed up when you left the dungeon, not that you left the dungeon by standing on the teleporter when it activated.

So suck it up until Monday when we can see if it’s working properly this time? Side question, why isn’t there a public test server so that things like this never have to happen in the first place?

It’s just so painfully obvious that the existence of these bugs is due to you not having enough QA to find it all before pushing out a patch.

Godchi.9072:

I’ve reported this….doesn’t matter if I’m on the platform or anywhere in the room; I still end up getting 1 token.

Ran this with different paths on different days and still received 1 token.

Emailed support, basically told me to suck it up.

I think we have to assume at this point that getting 1 token for a 2 hour instance run is intended. The devs have adamantly refused to acknowledge that this is a bug.

Hey Robert, way to miss the bigger issue. He got only one badge for running the friggin instance in far over an hour’s time, fix the kitten loot before anything else man.

Massacrul.2016:

1. Use search function – there were like 50 threads about this so far
2. Read sticky threads above section…

You could take the time to write that response but not give him the answer he needed?

OP, it’s bugged.

Post a video of you killing Dwanya and I might care.

How about fixing Dwanya in explorable mode first, William?

The theory is that they want a roadblock to stop potential dungeon exploits from causing a massive explosion of gains. The actual application however is completely inane partly because they, for some unimaginable reason, refuse to tell us exactly how it is supposed to work.

Spawn.7014:

So why should any one listen to you then? Where is your credibility? do you work for Anet? where is your empirical data? you come off like a kitten does that mean i should follow your ever word?

Project name and company name are not ready to be released at this time. they will be released with the release of the website. still going through the leagel team for naming issues.

I’m not here to do research for you. The reason anet went with f2p in the first place was because it is a proven system that in many cases (Allods, Maplestory, Blacklight) have made substantially higher profit rates than their respective p2p competitors with the caveat of Blacklight competing with CoD’s already monolithic popularity.

Also your reluctance to front any information at all about your “company” further supports the idea that you’re full of kitten.

My empirical data is the history and development timeline of EVERY MMO in the past decade. Hell, even WoW will be going f2p within 2 years.

Kana.6793:

If there was a way to find out which players jumped over the gates at CoF I think they should meet Dhuum. There’s no way you accidentally jump gates, get double chests etc without realising it’s an exploit.

kiting and gy zerging would be considered an exploit by their standards.

Gies.3824:

Mmmm I would, but I’m such a kitten-faced-kitten-hole that I would rather tell DKP in PM’s. I’m sure he will share it in a much more concise manner then I would ever have the motivation to do. If people want to PM me for tips, fine. If I don’t answer you immediately I’m either:
A) working and will get to it when I can
or
think you are like this loveable character Vicwolf and will take pleasure in making you wait.

Wanna post your strat for doing magg too? You know, the one that involves graveyard zerging and kiting?

Skyrant Kangaroomouse.7458:

JonPeters.5630:

All rewards are susceptible to our code that is dealing with people who are speed clearing dungeons. If you find yourself getting less rewards consider whether or not your rate of dungeon completion is extremely high. This did not get reset with the patch.

If you think you are running at a fairly reasonable pace post all of the chains you have run and the times to complete and we will file it to try and figure out if it is a bug. Please post accurate times, otherwise we cannot determine if there are in fact bugs in the system.

Thanks,

Jon

There is your Quote. They targeting people specifically that ran dungeons with exploits. This is a witch hunt and to be honest i find it quite amusing how a professional gaming company can act in such a vindictive way almost like a spoiled little brat that does not get what it wants.

I have lost all respect for this company and the developers. They should be glad we test their bugged game and discover exploits. Without us they are NOTHING.

I could not care less, the medium dungeon armours are all really ugly and not worth my time.

Cheers | Skyrant

It’s not even a witchhunt. The system is so blatantly bugged that there is no denying it. There’s 9 pages of reports of times of runs in the sticky reporting the apparently random allotment of rewards.

Loe.6351:

vicwolf.7862:

Loe.6351:

But seriously, what would make people on the same dungeon earn more or less rewards?

This bug just showed to us that they are nerfing people individually. In that case, it makes me wonder if the op isnt right.

OP isn’t right because there is no consistency to the reports of lower than expected badge gains. It’s very obvious that the code is kitten up at random.

Not 100% random. People who were farming are the ones with diminished returns.

And so are people who are doing their first ever explorable mode runs after the patch.

KittyWitty.7813:

Cromx.3941:

Like they have been listening already? THEY ARENT LISTENING. They obviosuly don’t care about their players else they would never intentionally go after people with the new rewards system.

They haven’t been listening? Then tell me why did they bother with the 25th September patch? Why bother changing the tokens? Why bother fixing the exploits that people have been posting on the forums? Why fix other things? They do listen, however not to people who have indecency to insult them and wish misfortune upon them and their company. Seriously, the first thing I thought when I read your post was “entitlement” this isn’t helping the case at all. Sometimes I wonder why the devs even bother reading the forums when it’s so full of non-constructive criticism, people whining and there’s only 1% of the post actually being worth while.

What fixes are you referring to specifically? Near as I can tell the only reason they pushed the 25th patch out was because they felt that too many people were still running dungeons, or at least that is the impression that the effect of it has given.

You’re verging dangerously close to fanboyism here. The problems have been clearly document and complained about here already.

Spawn.7014:

vicwolf.7862:

Spawn.7014:

vicwolf.7862:

Spawn.7014:

you guys are funny. Heres why.

they dont have enough money for another server to test stuff.

This doesn’t deserve a response but I’ll give it one anyways.

Yeah, they do. For one, servers don’t cost that much to build and run relative to the amount of money they are swimming in since the launch. For another, they already have an internal server they use for their “claimed” QA team (who aren’t very diligent apparently).

How much money do you think their pulling in now since there is no monthly fee to play?

How much money did they make with the release of game and how much did it cost to make the game.

trust me, all of their staff is working on fixing the game as fast as they can. But with little income (gem store + more people buying the game) and with the game in its current state they dont have the time nor the money to creat a PTR.

I wish they did because they freaking need one BAD! but with the PTR they make no $$$ off it.

Lots, the cash shop pulls in metrickittentons of cash relative to the cost of maintaining it.

I’m not going to educate you on the f2p model and why it is often more lucrative than p2p these days so we’ll leave it at this: you’re provably wrong and if you actually cared about being right you’d do even a little research and see exactly how wrong you are on this subject.

Trust me i know what the F2P model is considering i own a gaming company working on an MMO. it’s a topic we have been discussing for a long time now. The gem store is not brining in as much as you think. and this is because you can convert gold to gems. and sadly you can buy gold cheeper from a farmer then you can from converting gems to gold.

Trust me they are working their crews to the bone to get this game working. I am not disagreeing with you that this game needs a PTR but in the eyes f a company it will not make them any money. WHo in their right mind would buy gems on PTR?

You keep saying to trust you. You have no credibility, there’s no reason to take anything you are saying at face value.

“Trust me i know what the F2P model is considering i own a gaming company working on an MMO.”
Oh? What’s your company name? What’s the project name? Your statement flies in the face of nearly half a decade of mounting empirical data that is diametrically opposed to your supposition (not to mention the laughable statement that they cannot afford a PTR).

Rylain.2379:

vicwolf.7862:

Rylain.2379:

Anet, i suggest you create a new thread for people who beta-test the bug on DR tokens for you, and keeping this thread on feedback for after patching.

This is supposed to be a discussion thread on our experiences in dungeons after patch implemented, not us posting test-run results for your bugs.

Where did you get the idea that this thread wasn’t for reporting the effects of the changes they made to the reward system?

Quote Robert Hrouda:

So the plan is this.
1. We will have a sticky thread with the most recent patch update pertaining to dungeons. This thread will be LOCKED. That way, when we need to update things or get new information out regarding the patch, there is a place to do it where information is easily found.
2. We will have a second thread specifically for feedback. This will allow people to post on topic.

Read number 2. Feedback isn’t about countless posts reporting number of tokens at when with how many runs. That’s irritating.

Jon also asked for people to give feedback on lower than expected token gains. Try reading more threads.

Also, what other feedback would you expect? The central change of the patch was this new reward system.

Loe.6351:

But seriously, what would make people on the same dungeon earn more or less rewards?

This bug just showed to us that they are nerfing people individually. In that case, it makes me wonder if the op isnt right.

OP isn’t right because there is no consistency to the reports of lower than expected badge gains. It’s very obvious that the code is kitten up at random.

Kana.6793:

vicwolf.7862:

Do you get my point though? Farming karma isn’t a solution to the issue at hand which is farming in the first place.

I didn’t really consider it to be farming. I just did whichever events I felt like doing at the time and enjoyed some good battles in WvW.

I’ve done plenty of grinding and farming on GW1 and WoW, the karma here just seems to appear while you’re playing the game.

WvW has been a chore for most people since the first patch forced a lower draw distance and made it a rare event to see a zerg rolling up on your siege party, not to mention the fact that getting matched against Australian servers negates any effort done during the day because they simply roll in enmasse at night and free-cap everything.

As for event farming, yeah no, to get the amount of karma we’re talking about here you’d have to do these events hundreds of times. There’s not really anything to call it other than farming.

Spawn.7014:

vicwolf.7862:

Spawn.7014:

you guys are funny. Heres why.

they dont have enough money for another server to test stuff.

This doesn’t deserve a response but I’ll give it one anyways.

Yeah, they do. For one, servers don’t cost that much to build and run relative to the amount of money they are swimming in since the launch. For another, they already have an internal server they use for their “claimed” QA team (who aren’t very diligent apparently).

How much money do you think their pulling in now since there is no monthly fee to play?

How much money did they make with the release of game and how much did it cost to make the game.

trust me, all of their staff is working on fixing the game as fast as they can. But with little income (gem store + more people buying the game) and with the game in its current state they dont have the time nor the money to creat a PTR.

I wish they did because they freaking need one BAD! but with the PTR they make no $$$ off it.

Lots, the cash shop pulls in metrickittentons of cash relative to the cost of maintaining it.

I’m not going to educate you on the f2p model and why it is often more lucrative than p2p these days so we’ll leave it at this: you’re provably wrong and if you actually cared about being right you’d do even a little research and see exactly how wrong you are on this subject.

Obrimus.5701:

vicwolf.7862:

Chill out bro, the system is bugged. If you’re mad at anything let it be that they pushed a broken system into live without properly testing it.

Sorry, but from what i’ve read from the redposters they’ve seem to think there’s nothing wrong at all atm when some people in the same dungeons get 15 tokens while others get 60

Robert thinks there’s nothing wrong because he doesn’t know how to check his code (not really his fault, he can’t change his mindset from that of a dev). Jon accepted that the code probably isn’t working as intended and implied as much in his post to the “not getting 60 badges” thread.

Cromx.3941:

vicwolf.7862:

Chill out bro, the system is bugged. If you’re mad at anything let it be that they pushed a broken system into live without properly testing it.

No they said, consider if you had a high dungeon completion rate PRIOR to the new patch. That is exactly what they said. Its not bugged they intentionally are going after people who ran dungeons before the patch hit.

No, they aren’t. Also, that isn’t a quote that I’ve seen ANYWHERE in here so if you wanna pull it up I’ll tell you exactly what they meant and reply with the post of them acknowledging that the system isn’t working as intended.

Gies.3824:

I say let them keep the gear, but give them a giant mark of shame. Like the 100% map completion icon, but a big thumbs down.

Yeah, because they are aware of everyone who intentionally exploited. That’s how on top of things they are…

They already decided on the solution to that problem, it is to (eventually) make badges a rare loot from the bosses.

Shakar.3485:

Thank you for your response vicwolf. But what about the influence?

Considering we completed it in our first run. I don’t think we did bad at all Cappy. But I guess everyone is not elite like you.

Nothing helpful to add don’t add anything at all.

Not sure, I haven’t looked recently but I think it was something like 100, something trivial like that.

NagaSadow.1043:

DKP.4196:

Trik.1039:

A better approach would be to remove dungeons completely until they work correctly and are fun for a large percentage of players. That whole “Is it fun?” blog post comes to mind. Seems like they tossed that thought line right out the window.

Who are the majority of players that think dungeons are “fun”. The majority of the community who dont come on the forums to rant because they are busy in the dungeons/WvW/exploring etc or the minority who are on the forums ranting? :/

Some fixs need to be made but taking out dungeons from GW2 is a MMO suicide, and is not the solution. The dungeons are fine tbh, just need to tweak it a bit, make it more interesting, harder and challenging.

I like trap rooms for example, lots of traps that need teamwork to get past etc would be a good addition. Many may disagree but just a note to put in the box;)

TBH its not a rant I just find it amusing that some people are allowed to run about at level 80 with full dungeon sets due to " unknowingly " taking advantage of broken events and dungeon’s to power level and loot abuse. However instead of them being punished they are allowed to keep the levels they gained and the loot and everyone else is punished for it.

What exploits are you even talking about? For which instances? They already solved the issue with arah shard farming and CM story isn’t worth running even if you’re level 40 (especially if you’re level 40) and magg has been fixed as well. I’m not familiar with any others.

Papa Shongo.8104:

So to clarify, she only needs to do a single point of damage for event and xp credit?

This is concerning for the more populated areas, since as a new player she will be spending much more time than others trying to even run to face the enemies.

Correct. If she sneezes on it or looks at it cross she’ll get exp and event credit (usually) for the kill. In some of the events it seems to calculate based on the amount of total damage you did to the enemies but those are usually ones with veterans and champions which are easy to get damage in on.

Chill out bro, the system is bugged. If you’re mad at anything let it be that they pushed a broken system into live without properly testing it.