How to: GW2 Dungeons Tips and Tricks (aka how to un-WoW yourself)

[Galaddriel]

My guild has been delighted with the style and difficulty of GW2 dungeons, particularly Explorable mode. It seems that many people are having great difficulty getting through Story mode however and I thought I could offer some tips to help un-WoW yourself (this isn't a slight - I am proud of my prepatch Firelord title)

Defense is more important than offense, especially if you ever want to melee
This is the biggest mistake I see happening. Dual dagger thieves building glass cannon. Axe warriors in all power/precision gear. In general, the more offensive traits you take to make your build work, the more you need to compensate on your gear with defensive stats. Melee weapons in particular do much more damage than their ranged counter parts thus you can afford to stack more defensive abilities to allow you to get in there and take a hit.

Condition and boon management are something the group has to figure out together.
Protection increases your effective HP by 50%. Blindness is heavily penalized against bosses with Defiance but wildly useful otherwise. No matter how well you dodge, a 20 second boss poison will kill you. You need to look at your abilities (and your group mates) and at the very least have a solution for enemy conditions and regeneration/protection uptime. I realize the game is very new and there is a ton of depth to skill and trait configuration, but try to keep in mind that if you go into a dungeon with 5 DPS-focused leveling builds, you will die constantly.

CC is, as usual, king
Chilled, Crippled, Stun, Daze and more unconventionally Reflections/Absorptions are all necessary to complete dungeons without constant deaths because...

Ranged enemies are always priority targets
Ranged enemies are brutal vicious thugs in this game when you allow them to turret and waste your party. Enemy melee are very kiteable which is why it is important that they are kited until ranged threats are eliminated. All those Reflections/Absorptions that you glossed over when leveling because you thought they were useless? Try them again now. It's amazing how quick you can burn down a ranged enemy while inside bubbles of protective love.

Interrupts work through defiance You won't get the stun or the daze effect, but unless you actually see "Immune" pop over their head when you use these effects, they will still interrupt skills.

Reviving downed players should always be your number one priority This seems obvious but is the biggest failure of PUGs in particular. One alive team member can help a downed played get up in seconds. This is crucial to gameflow, even when death usually means a sprint back from the waypoint. The reason everyone feels like they're death zerging is because they sit and watch their downed team mates die while trying to beat the non existent damage meter. Quick revives are basically the GW2 version of healing in the traditional MMO sense and now everyone is responsible for it. Look again at your trait lines, specifically the vitality line - all those "on revive" traits start to look very good when you realize how often to need to be doing this.

You will only get good at dodging when you stop staring at your ability bar to hit DPS buttons on cooldown and start paying attention to the fight itself.
This comes with practice, but again, non existent DPS meter versus winning the fight. You decide.

Things I think are currently brokenish
•Trash is usually way harder than boss fights. Something needs to give.
•There needs to be a huge pinging "I AM DOWN" type button, it can be very difficult to actually locate downed team mates in the chaos
•I generally think there needs to be a range buff for nearly all effects that work on allies. The game wants you to spread out a lot to avoid AoE and then penalizes you by making all your group buffs relatively short range. This could easily be PVE-only.
•I still think getting into melee might be too punishing even with full defensive gear.
•The best bosses are the ones with tells that can be easily seen through all the spell effects. They're always there, mind you, just perhaps need a little emphasis.

So that's that. Feel free to add your own success stories and strategies, especially for specific dungeons and their encounters.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/c...ks_aka_how_to/

[Deleted]

Very informative and well-written. I shall pass this on to my guildies.

[apepi]

This may be a stupid question to ask but...how do you get to these dungeons and what level do you have to be to enter them? Do they skill down like regular mobs?

[lanerios]

Level 30 for the first one, Ascalonian Catacombs. I entered there as a 25 to see what the talk was about. Short: I died in 3 hits. Don't repeat that mistake ><

[obdigore]

This may be a stupid question to ask but...how do you get to these dungeons and what level do you have to be to enter them? Do they skill down like regular mobs?

They do not skill down. 30 is the first one, there is another at 40 and another at 50.

You will receive an in-game mail from your 'Herald' and if you click 'show me' it will show you the location of the dungeon in relation to where you are (like the scouts do to hearts).

[apepi]

They do not skill down. 30 is the first one, there is another at 40 and another at 50.

You will receive an in-game mail from your 'Herald' and if you click 'show me' it will show you the location of the dungeon in relation to where you are (like the scouts do to hearts).

Okay that explains it, I'm only level 28, Thanks guys.

[lanerios]

Do note! you can get the mail as early as 25 (I got it when I dinged 25), but seriously do not even try to go there at 25

[obdigore]

Do note! you can get the mail as early as 25 (I got it when I dinged 25), but seriously do not even try to go there at 25

You can easily get threeshot by trash and bosses one-shot you, even at level 30. Bosses are easy in Story mode, the trash is what makes AC difficult.

I've yet to do the level 40 or 50 dungeons.

[Deleted]

Just did AC first time yesterday (story mode) and it was fun, but the trash is way to hard and didnt have problems on bosses. This is design I hate, bosses should be much harder and they need to nerf trash a bit, because rangers who shoot traps and 1 shoot you is retarded. Don't BS me about "skill" here, at least if I had 0.5 sec after it lands to roll out from would be fair.

[obdigore]

Just did AC first time yesterday (story mode) and it was fun, but the trash is way to hard and didnt have problems on bosses. This is design I hate, bosses should be much harder and they need to nerf trash a bit, because rangers who shoot traps and 1 shoot you is retarded. Don't BS me about "skill" here, at least if I had 0.5 sec after it lands to roll out from would be fair.

Try getting double ranger trapped and rooted, so you get to stand in it and take the bleed while you spam your roll button :P Hardest pull in AC is easily the triple ranger group right before the ranger boss.

Edit -> it isn't really the traps that hurt, its the bleed they put on you.

[Jackkernaut]

I must add- Conditions are the most important stats against champions in addition to combo fields the gives plenty of benefit at high end mobs.
versatileness is the name of the game.

[Deleted]

I prefer minor enemies that are actual enemies, "trash" shouldn't be trash outside of player tutorial scenarios.

Since the game is not so heavily focused on the gear treadmill it's silly to ask for farmable dungeons where trash is irrelevant and bosses are the only meat of the dungeon.

That's what's killing small group content in other mmos...

[obdigore]

I prefer minor enemies that are actual enemies, "trash" shouldn't be trash outside of player tutorial scenarios.

Since the game is not so heavily focused on the gear treadmill it's silly to ask for farmable dungeons where trash is irrelevant and bosses are the only meat of the dungeon.

That's what's killing small group content in other mmos...

I don't think the trash should be harder than the bosses, and I don't think that all the bosses should be one-shot-able while the trash is quite difficult at points.

[Deleted]

I prefer minor enemies that are actual enemies, "trash" shouldn't be trash outside of player tutorial scenarios.

Since the game is not so heavily focused on the gear treadmill it's silly to ask for farmable dungeons where trash is irrelevant and bosses are the only meat of the dungeon.

That's what's killing small group content in other mmos...

This. You only think "trash" should be easier than bosses because you call them trash. Dungeon should be difficult as a whole.

[Artorias]

Very nice post. The problem most people having is they are still stuck on the 'holy trinity'. Most have accepted that there are no tanks or healers, but at this point they believe they are all simply DPS. The fact of the matter is that everyone is everything. If you are pure DPS, you are squishy. If you are pure tank, you do little damage. If you are pure healer, you are gimped in DPS and armor.

The only way to do well is to get enough defense to survive while still managing to heal through the incoming damage and put out enough damage to kill enemies before they kill you. Nobody gets that.

[Deleted]

Very nice post. The problem most people having is they are still stuck on the 'holy trinity'. Most have accepted that there are no tanks or healers, but at this point they believe they are all simply DPS. The fact of the matter is that everyone is everything. If you are pure DPS, you are squishy. If you are pure tank, you do little damage. If you are pure healer, you are gimped in DPS and armor.

The only way to do well is to get enough defense to survive while still managing to heal through the incoming damage and put out enough damage to kill enemies before they kill you. Nobody gets that.

Not really... it's all about MAX-DPS and your ability to dodge. If you can't do good DPS then you are worthless and if you can't dodge properly(because you are a casual) then you are also useless.

Hopefully the casuals won't nerf the game and it'll continue to be hard

[Deleted]

Trash is usually way harder than boss fights. Something needs to give.

Dire Maul (pre-nerf) all over again

[Kerath]

Helpful post - went in AC with guildies last night. Was kind of messy, but we did it. Just need to get used to paying attention to conditions and remembering which abilities clear them - they can be extremely painful. Also shouting at people to revive. I'm used to keeping an eye out for people from my healer days on WoW so I wasn't too bad with this but not everyone is as aware of the people around them. I did notice though that as soon as I started reviving someone, that was the mob's/boss's cue to hit me with something nasty >.<

[Lord Wokoom]

Very well said Galaddriel, thanks for the information! If you have any follow up advice please come back to update your OP!

[Deleted]

If you're having trouble with conditions, try using an ability that removes them.

As a Necromancer, I have a signet that allows me to draw conditions from allies on to myself and then apply all of the conditions on myself to an enemy, thus effectively removing every condition. I also have an ability that allows me to consume all conditions on myself to heal for every condition I had on me. It's INCREDIBLY useful when dealing with burning + bleeding from traps.