Dungeon Chat

[sachiel]

Dungeons are too hard, i don't care what three catasses can do.

I thought so too on AC story, while I was glass cannoning my ele and running with 4 people, just about 30, who'd never run a dungeon before.  Experience, practice and coordination, and they're really quite a breeze, but still a bit of a challenge to be on the ball.  I've run AC exp 5 times in the past couple of days, all with PUG's, and it was fairly easy.  Made about 50s and a 1/3 of an armor piece in tokens per run.  I bitched about story initially, but explore is a whole different ballgame, especially running with experienced people.  From my experience, the dev's telling people L2P is quite true.  Being flexible in your traits, technique and weapon choices is a must as well.  I don't think armor choices make that big of a difference as much as skill and playing for the team.

[Raknor]

Do you think they will ever put in a token system like WoW has that doesn't require you to use inventory space to collect them? I'm trying to avoid spending much on bank space but between cooking and daily tokens from dungeons there isn't a lot left. 

[sachiel]

Do you think they will ever put in a token system like WoW has that doesn't require you to use inventory space to collect them? I'm trying to avoid spending much on bank space but between cooking and daily tokens from dungeons there isn't a lot left. 

haha, I would definitely say cooking is our larger problem as I have two full tiers of bank slots filled up with intermediate ingredients.  Never know when I'll need 5 bowls of basic chicken stock.

[Ingmar]

Dungeons are too hard, i don't care what three catasses can do.

I thought so too on AC story, while I was glass cannoning my ele and running with 4 people, just about 30, who'd never run a dungeon before. 

If story mode is too hard for people with this setup (and we had 5 for most of it) then it is *too hard*. Period. Explorable mode can be as nut-punching hard as they want, whatever. Story mode needs to be easy enough that it can be done in random gear, by people who haven't unlocked every skill and don't necessarily know what they're doing yet, without optimizing their spec and voice chat and whatever else, as soon as they get the email from the game telling them they can go there.

The point of multiple difficulties is to accomodate everyone. Right now they're not coming close.

[Raknor]

I definitely agree with the Story modes being tuned down a bit.  Took a buddy of ours who is new to the game on his first CM story mode run.  We were telling him about how easy and good xp it was.  Apparently none of us saw the patch notes where it got buffed. Needless to say he got squashed and stated if we weren't there with him, he would have left half way through. 

Personally, I think the first couple dungeons should be an introduction to how this game works.  Departing with the tank/healer/dps trinity is certainly something that doesn't come overly easy to new plays that have done it for 10+ years of gaming. 

It's sad really. He was already on the fence about coming to GW2 and that run really made him think twice about his purchase. He likes raiding and is definitely one that would spend money on this game. The whole thing just really left a bad taste in his mouth.

[KallDrexx]

Whats worse is that not one bit of the PvE is challenging until you get to level 30 where you get mail going "Hey come check out our awesome dungeon", where you proceed to get curbstomped.

There's no intermediary.

[Brogarn]

Whats worse is that not one bit of the PvE is challenging until you get to level 30 where you get mail going "Hey come check out our awesome dungeon", where you proceed to get curbstomped.

There's no intermediary.

This. It doesn't change at 40 either. I tried CM for the first time last night and it's fucking ridiculous. Someone said to me last night that they recently made it harder. Whaaa? Between the annoying camera with the low ceilings, mobs dropping bombs that you can't see because of that camera issue, the tables and chairs counting as barriers to your line of sight, the chain fearing mutts, the one shotting snipers, and the zergs of mobs, I'm pretty much all done with that dungeon and maybe all dungeons in this game. This is story mode. I'm supposed to learn my way around the dungeon in this mode, not blink and be dead and have no idea wtf just hit me and learn what I could have done different. Just repeatedly run back from death until the mobs are dead. This just isn't fun at all and the rewards for doing it are basically nonexistent. Fuck this.

[Tannhauser]

Maybe their dungeons are intended to be 'raids'?  I just don't get why they keep them so tough.  Are they going to be part of their pve 'esports'?

I have to think they'll nerf them eventually.  They must be seeing that very few do them.

[Maledict]

I just don't get why story modes are so much harder , longer and unfun than exploratory modes. Seems completely the wrong way round.

[Venkman]

Between the annoying camera with the low ceilings,

I don't get this. Why is it so few have figured out when to selectively remove the world geometry, or make ceiling height higher than displayed geometry that is transparent from the other side) so it doesn't fight the camera?

[rk47]

Uh. try fighting underwater dungeons bosses that restricts 1/4 of skills like a few team heals that you specced for and made a lot of traits near useless.
Utterly ridiculous.

[Fraeg]

Did twilight arbor on explorer on Saturday .  Maybe we suck but with breaks and all that shit took us four hours. And now I hate flowers.   Iearned a lot, next run will be faster etc. but it doesn't seem worth it even though I really want the tunic and pants

[rk47]

I did that last night. The tree boss forces everyone to range.
I'm not sure what the fucking deal is, I understand trinity is not a must for dungeons anymore but forcing a Warrior to plink with arrows from a distance or be obliterated is not the way to design encounters. It wasn't challenging, just boring. And it was literally an endurance test - not a dps race.

[Genev]

When i cleared out TA, i actually had it worse than the melee at times, as a ranger.
For example that bloody worm boss, they have immense range for their spitting, also some other bosses where i had to move like mad while melee were pretty good up close.
I'm a ranger with the longbow range trait btw

[rk47]

I can't say any dungeons so far left a positive impression on me. I only wiped like once or twice in some dungeons - but I can't say I'm having fun.

I remember running my first Deadmines instance at lvl 20ish in WoW.
Going through it was fun. Even though I did not get much reward of gears nor token in the end, it was worth the trip and quest completions.
It wasn't too easy, it wasn't too hard as well. A friend coached us through the instance telling us what to do and how to pull and sap. The learning experience felt smooth and understandable - it was the basis of future raids - teammates understanding what their role is - what to do and what not to do.

Contrast that to lvl 30-40 runs of Dungeons in GW2 - clusterfuck. You know what to expect, but the numbers will blow you up so quick you realize straight away that the feeling of - 'you're not ready for this' is so obvious. Persist, and you won't even get much of satisfaction of beating it, only the feeling 'this isn't a great deal of fun vs time spent' when you're auto-attacking and spamming the same attack over and over again when dealing with trash mobs.

[Lantyssa]

I definitely agree with the Story modes being tuned down a bit.  Took a buddy of ours who is new to the game on his first CM story mode run.  We were telling him about how easy and good xp it was.  Apparently none of us saw the patch notes where it got buffed. Needless to say he got squashed and stated if we weren't there with him, he would have left half way through.

That happened to us, only we had to give up.  I felt really bad, because my first time through CM was a much easier and the group composition was a bit more balanced.  It was pretty demoralizing, and Story Mode just shouldn't be so.  (My Mesmer fared the best of the lot dying only once.  But when my friends aren't having fun, it totally blows the evening for me, too.)

[Modern Angel]

At some point, the explorables became WAY fun. I'm not sure when. We can run one leg of just about any of them in ca 30 minutes, which is just right. We got good or something.

[rk47]

As long as you're not running with randoms/pugs, a lot of stuff is do-able, with the right mix of patience and team chat.
I was getting too used to just blowing away CoF now that when I ran a PUG grp today, I felt kinda disgusted at having nearly wiped on the first major encounter.

[Sky]

Thanks for confirming my decision to avoid dungeons in this game.

[sachiel]

The majority of pug's I've run with have been perfectly fine.  Some were stellar greased lightning and some were wipes, but those are both in the minority.  The ones that have pissed me off the most were the messy speedrunners.  Speed running isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's not my cup of tea and not something you can do when everyone isn't on the same page and well oiled.  Skipping Kholer in AC for instance is something that I refuse to do with a pug as it's an easy central waypoint in case of wipes, not to mention a chest.  If someone insists on skipping Kholer, I usually tell them to either kill Kholer or find someone else and get out of the group.

I have run AC3 though with a pug in 20 minutes flat, no skipping shit.  That blew my mind.

[Modern Angel]

Yeah, I'm at the point where we're not deliberately speedrunning, but our speeds are great. And they're REALLY fun once you adjust your expectations of what they want you to do. Which isn't something that needs to be said again, even though I did.

[Ingmar]

Even when they go well I find the fun (and reward) level far behind similar content in other MMOs. Tomato/tomahto I guess.

[Rasix]

About how long does it take to run story mode Arah?

[rk47]

About how long does it take to run story mode Arah?

According to guildies, 1.5 hour if all went well.

[Rasix]

 

Great.

[murdoc]

Went to do Arah story mode to finish up my personal story on the weekend and it's bugged and nobody can get in. 

[Modern Angel]

Even when they go well I find the fun (and reward) level far behind similar content in other MMOs. Tomato/tomahto I guess.

The rewards are still garbage, but they've finally come around on that. I totally got my AC token staff, though, and it glows at night. Because GHOSTS.

[Lantyssa]

We've got AC down pretty well now.  It helped that Sachiel and Selma knew the dungeons pretty well, but now Vu and I do, too.

Composition matters a lot.  There's a huge difference in speed when we bring a Warrior and Ranger versus a Guardian and Mesmer.  (One run was a Warrior, two Guardians, and two Mesmers.)  Defense is great, but there needs to be enough damage happening to burn things down quickly with gravelings running about.

[Furiously]

We've got AC down pretty well now.  It helped that Sachiel and Selma knew the dungeons pretty well, but now Vu and I do, too.

Composition matters a lot.  There's a huge difference in speed when we bring a Warrior and Ranger versus a Guardian and Mesmer.  (One run was a Warrior, two Guardians, and two Mesmers.)  Defense is great, but there needs to be enough damage happening to burn things down quickly with gravelings running about.

We ran a three thief group through. Once we got all the thieves using sword pistol for the gravelings it went swimmingly.

[Sky]

We've got AC down pretty well now.  It helped that Sachiel and Selma knew the dungeons pretty well, but now Vu and I do, too.

Composition matters a lot.  There's a huge difference in speed when we bring a Warrior and Ranger versus a Guardian and Mesmer.  (One run was a Warrior, two Guardians, and two Mesmers.)  Defense is great, but there needs to be enough damage happening to burn things down quickly with gravelings running about.

Give me a yell if you see me on, my warrior is deeps. She's in a weird spot, now. Was focused on precision but gear has been weird lately (51 or 52) and it's very mishmashy, and my signet build is weakening somewhat (40 precision for unused signets, doesn't scale). Still badass, but I'm so used to constantly critting I'm going to have to rejigger some things (that trigger from crits).

[Lantyssa]

We're all on Jade Quarry.  Aren't you on Madness?

[Sky]

Yes.