PvE dungeons are ridiculous.

[Deatheryn]

Play the game like you would a single player rpg, It is an MMO but every person/toon is responsible for their own ass. Thats how I see it, like a co-op+ rpg. Like playing Skyrim!, you dont have a tank and heals, you bob and weave, healing what you can when you can. Really simple strategy. You don't just stand there and get blasted in the face repeatedly, expecting to live through it, you stick and move.

Go play Demon's Soul/Dark Souls and then come back to GW2, you'll find it to be a breeze, that is if you don't rage quit either of the former in the first 15 minutes.

[Deleted]

So a few things about this
1. There isn't any holy trinity in the game, so get used to it. This isn't your cookie cutter mmo where you have a tank, heals, and you can pull massive amounts of trash thinking it can be easily AOE'd down.

This is one point that annoys me incredibly. The basic mechanic of Guild Wars 2, the lack of a Holy Trinity, is "cookie cutter" as you put it. The idea of having self-sufficient party members is not new and exciting and merely replacing the ability for a player to move out of the way with a button is not novel. In fact it is hard to distinguish this game, mechanically, from precursors such as Phantasy Star Online and, in particular, Phantasy Star Universe where one finds the game a lot easier if they can time movement, there are no defined roles which match with the Trinity implementation and abilities are inherently attached to a weapon type.

[Karazee]

I love this game BUT...

Classes can't hold threat.
Mobs 1 hit.
Heals are underpowered.
LoS pulling is gone.
Loot is crappy for a "We don't want you to grind" attitude.


Just a few things I noticed while doing a dungeon. OH, did I mention it took almost 3 hours...?

EDIT 1 for the "Elitists":

To all the people saying that there is "No Holy Trinity" or there is "no Tank or heals classes"...

What would you call a Control build?
What would you call a Support build?
What would you call a Damage build?

The fact is I spec Control and I cannot get a mob to look at me for two seconds, I spec support and my heals do 50 each. Damage is okay and EVEN when I spec to do a bit of all THREE I still get one hit by mobs. This was also done mostly in a PUG run. Im sure that if was my guildies it would be a different story. Also, I am not saying I didn't enjoy my experience with the dungeon because it was great.

The problem is that you think control=tank and support=healer.

WoW's Frost mages have infinite control. I haven't seen them tanking raid bosses lately.

[Deleted]

I dont think people really realise how important conditions and boons are in this game, keeping your party buffed and debuffing the enemies really increases your party dmg and survivability.

Just to list the defensive ones:

• Protection/Weakness: +50% effective hp each (stacks multiplicatively with each other for a total of +125% effective hp. Weakness is on average though as it only works on half the attacks and works very well then)
• Aegis/Blind: Completely negates attacks.
• Chill: Not only slows enemies to a crawl but also triples the time it takes for their skills to recharge. (or to put it in another way, for every second of chill you apply to someone, you add 0.67s to any skill that they have on cooldown).
  
• Swiftness: Highly increases ability to get out of AoE and get away from mobs chasing you.
• Regeneration: Equivalent to a couple of extra self heals every minute even without healing power. With healing power, provides as much healing as self heals.
• Vigor: Every 10s of vigor equals an extra dodge.
• Stability: Prevents you from getting knocked down/stunned/etc.
• Stuns/Dazes/Knockdowns/etc: Prevents your opponent from doing anything.
• Immobilize/Cripple: Makes it more difficult for melee mobs to reach their targets.

If you're undergeared, which you are, since story modes are meant for higher level characters with maxed scaled down percentages, you're going to have a hard time.

I think you meant explorable there. Anyway, that is an important point. Anyone doing explorable dungeons before level 65 (around where you get your third stat on gear pieces) is begging to have a hard time. It is still possible at lower levels, but in no way what the the dungeons were balanced around.

[Lucky_]

Specifically my and Ynna's "my experience in explorables" comments ask for the following:

Adjust difficulty so it is moved from trash to bosses.

What we are NOT asking for:

Nerfs.

Explorable bosses are currently mostly too EASY. Trash is harder then bosses in most cases. Most of the hard ones are made hard by the broken camera in game or the particle soup preventing proper telegraphing, or just a random mechanic that is annoying not because of its difficulty, but because of its sheer randomeness (get it right and breeze through the boss, get it wrong and instantly die, essentially a game of a coin toss rather then skill).

And dear swiped, whoever's smurf you are, hyping the game that we can actually play on basis of things that are impossible (such as stability to avoid poorly telegraphed knockdowns in melee) is about 4 months late. Sorry.

---------- Post added 2012-09-04 at 01:42 PM ----------

Anyone doing explorable dungeons before level 65 (around where you get your third stat on gear pieces) is begging to have a hard time. It is still possible at lower levels, but in no way what the the dungeons were balanced around.

Strongly disagreeing here. AC explorable results in lvl60 gear from vendor. CM is lvl70. CM explorable is farmable at 45 with half a decent group on two routes (though CM story farm is probably among the best exp farming methods in the game, you get 20k from completion + kills from ~15 minute run).

[Morogoth]

Don't get your panties in a bunch guys. People don't call for nerfs, it's true that some fights need more tweaking.

Don't tell me that the Fire Elemental in Metrica Province was a fun fight. I died maybe 25 times (like the 50 or so other players). This was just ridiculous.

This is the same for some fights in dungeons.

[WorldofWorkcraft]

So...are these concerns addressed per all of the explorable dungeons, or just the first few? I personally have only done 2 explorables (1 AC and 1 CM) and they were a good difficulty. I don't know if I want them changed at all. Obviously if the reason the fight is hard is because of bugs it should be fixed.

[orderschvank]

so this game is based on skill and not being carried? sounds great, but the bad players, usually the majority, will probably end up quitting and just go back to WoW where they can be carried through stuff.

[Deleted]

so this game is based on skill and not being carried? sounds great, but the bad players, usually the majority, will probably end up quitting and just go back to WoW where they can be carried through stuff.

Link to your heroic 0% achievement please, or all your talk is just fanboyish bullshit

[Lucky_]

so this game is based on skill and not being carried? sounds great, but the bad players, usually the majority, will probably end up quitting and just go back to WoW where they can be carried through stuff.

At the moment game is based on stacking certain classes, reducing particle effects to lowest possible in dungeons and hoping random mechanics don't kill you.

Notably this is the exact opposite of what good players traditionally asked for in MMOs.


Note: I'm talking about "good players" as in players that clear content.


This not to say that the game is bad. It's just that it's very poorly adjusted to the gameplay model, they still haven't fixed the particle soup problem that they apparently only figured out to be a problem when public beta started, and they have problems balancing bosses vs trash.

It's fixable, but very, VERY far from having a meaningful end game PvE content in dungeons at the moment based on what I've seen. Too much content is simply annoying farm, and too little and meaningfully hard to make it actually fun doing.

[Kharli]

That's how it was in Aion

Doing the group content and elite zones was more trouble than it was worth, unless you had twink gear. Guild Wars has the "World" stuff, where everyone around you can be involved, but as far as actual organized content, it seems the same as Aion, where you just shouldn't waste your time until you're 10 or so levels away from max, and have decent gear

AION was not made by ArenaNet
NCsoft is the Publishers.
get your facts correct.

[WorldofWorkcraft]

Link to your heroic 0% achievement please, or all your talk is just fanboyish bullshit

Don't see how that applies if it's dungeons. People are easily carried through heroic dungeons. As per raids, you need everyone with on-par gear and not sucking to do well, as well as coordination. I'd say for Explorable dungeons, you need decent gear but moreso you need everyone to be alert and skillful. So it's pretty similar, just a different approach and less people to depend on. If you bring 2 guardians, a thief, a mesmer, and a warrior, and all the heavy armored people die, you can still rally/revive them and win. If you bring 2 tanks, 3 healers, and 5 dps to a 10-man heroic raid, chances are if one person dies, it's over.

At this juncture people are still figuring things out, so it's easy to say things are hard. That's how it was with WoW's Cata heroics. People cried hard, other people loved it...then they got easier as people geared up/found out fights.

At the moment game is based on stacking certain classes, reducing particle effects to lowest possible in dungeons and hoping random mechanics don't kill you.

Notably this is the exact opposite of what good players traditionally asked for in MMOs.


Note: I'm talking about "good players" as in players that clear content.

Can you let me know which you've stacked for which EM dungeons, and why? Curious. Thanks.

[Lucky_]

Can you let me know which you've stacked for which EM dungeons, and why? Curious. Thanks.

Heavy and certain medium (not engineers...) armour classes make it much easier at the moment due to superior survivability and damage. Essentially you want guardians and warriors with something ranged to support them such as rangers.

Softer support targets like elementalists work with +healing gear stacked, but will be down a whole lot more (I seemed to draw about 40-50% of group's total aggro on runs as elementalist in spite of being permanently at near max range whenever possible, and casting meteor shower or healing rain seemed to have about 33% chance of instant aggro and multiple shots in the face on ranged trash packs causing these skills to only be really usable when arcane shield was available). Necromancers seem to draw less hate and work well in anti-condition support role, but don't do nearly as much damage.

There are some other factors at play as well with other classes like mesmers, but I'd rather not go in depth right now because I'm not as well versed in those. I have seen that dungeon difficulty is essentially inversely proportionate to amount of guardians and warriors you have in a group though. The softer the group, the harder the run.

[Strah]

The hardest boss is probably entering the dungeon itself.
It's an absolute pain in the ass to make it so taht all 5 members are actually in at the same time.

[WorldofWorkcraft]

Heavy and certain medium (not engineers...) armour classes make it much easier at the moment due to superior survivability and damage. Essentially you want guardians and warriors with something ranged to support them such as rangers.

Softer support targets like elementalists work with +healing gear stacked, but will be down a whole lot more (I seemed to draw about 40-50% of group's total aggro on runs as elementalist in spite of being permanently at near max range whenever possible, and casting meteor shower or healing rain seemed to have about 33% chance of instant aggro and multiple shots in the face on ranged trash packs causing these skills to only be really usable when arcane shield was available). Necromancers seem to draw less hate and work well in anti-condition support role, but don't do nearly as much damage.

There are some other factors at play as well with other classes like mesmers, but I'd rather not go in depth right now because I'm not as well versed in those. I have seen that dungeon difficulty is essentially inversely proportionate to amount of guardians and warriors you have in a group though. The softer the group, the harder the run.

Which dungeons have you done, if you don't mind? From the 2 I've done it seems like heavy armor only helped in very few cases.

It stands to reason heavy armor can take more hits, but it also really depends on builds and if you're friends or not. My group of friends is running 2 rangers, a mesmer, and 2 guardians, and had a really tough time in certain spots, possibly due to unmaxed gear, but also because the dungeons are designed to give you a tough time regardless of your makeup. The guardians weren't going down noticeably more, but just did things like try to initiate fights or greatsword gather mobs when possible.

From what I've seen, makeup really doesn't matter, but diversity helps.

[Lagmonster]

Heavy and certain medium (not engineers...) armour classes make it much easier at the moment due to superior survivability and damage. Essentially you want guardians and warriors with something ranged to support them such as rangers.

Softer support targets like elementalists work with +healing gear stacked, but will be down a whole lot more (I seemed to draw about 40-50% of group's total aggro on runs as elementalist in spite of being permanently at near max range whenever possible, and casting meteor shower or healing rain seemed to have about 33% chance of instant aggro and multiple shots in the face on ranged trash packs causing these skills to only be really usable when arcane shield was available). Necromancers seem to draw less hate and work well in anti-condition support role, but don't do nearly as much damage.

Are your guardians not slotting shield of the avenger? Seriously, make them take it (if you have two guardians with it, ez mode when staggering them assuming traited for extra duration.) I cringe whenever I hear someone say they get blown up by ranged mobs and they had a guardian in group lol. Have so many skills to deny ranged attacks from getting through. If you go all out you can have around 40ish seconds of totally shutting down a ranged mob outside of ground based aoes. Yeah you may have to do some dancing around to always make sure the mob is between you and the denial ability.....but my god it works well.

[DrakeWurrum]

It sounds like they need to do something about armor values if elitists like Lucky truly feel that heavy armor classes are a requirement.

[Granyala]

Don't tell me that the Fire Elemental in Metrica Province was a fun fight. I died maybe 25 times (like the 50 or so other players). This was just ridiculous.

You mean that thing in the reactor complex, right? The one that insta gibbs you w/o warning? God I was this |-| close to rage alt+F4.
1st circle: dodge, second circle: dodge, third cir-INSTAGIB!

If dungeons are like that: Thanks but no thanks. I'm not a FPS gamer with reaction times of 100ms, nor do Iwant to become one.

[WorldofWorkcraft]

You mean that thing in the reactor complex, right? The one that insta gibbs you w/o warning? God I was this |-| close to rage alt+F4.
1st circle: dodge, second circle: dodge, third cir-INSTAGIB!

If dungeons are like that: Thanks but no thanks. I'm not a FPS gamer with reaction times of 100ms, nor do Iwant to become one.

This is only hard if you let the adds overrun you. With a few people focusing adds and the rest being able to not die from red circles, it's not that hard. Just when the entrance gets blocked and people sit there dying does it seem hard.

[Deleted]

I'll try to contribute.

Today I had my first experience with dungeons in GW2

It's bad and frustrating experience.

First of all, no holy trinity in pug groups looks like (i'll put it in wow terms) 5 dps doing the dungeon and getting killed all thm time coz there is no healer or tank. I was happy that there was no roles. But there is no pulling your own waight here, it's just come, hit, die and then run back and reapeat, and after few times you die and run into battle it's finaly over. That's the concept I'm seeing.

People in group were unable to communicate, everyone was doing his own thing and it was frustirating and unrewarding exprience ("bosses" had no loot whatsoever). I dont mind hard game, but getting killed by mobs who just aoe the whole room was not fun, not beeing able to communicate with members is also no fun, and it may be fun experience for those who run it with friends, but puggin it is just not doable. I'm all up for hard stuff, but there is no doing hard with without communication.

It was also my first expeirence with GW2 community and I'm just... deepy dissapointed. SWTOR had fun first dungeon. it was easy and later on is was boring, but atleast it started well. I'm hoping GW2 started bad and it will turn out good.

P.S. I dont mind the game, I dont hate anyone, I'm all up for hard content and changes, but in realty I dont see it work way it should atm. Yes this may be rant, but disappointment is too great atm...