My Experience in Ascalon Catacombs

[Artravus]

I tried to get into instances as fast as possible with my friends. Not many people had done Ascalon Catacombs by the time my friends and I had gotten to level 30 as far as I know. We had heard from the way the game was advertised that the holy trinity of tank, healer, and dps was no more. That you could perform just as effectively without the holy trinity. That's the information that was circulating around. We get into Ascalon Catacombs with all dps specs. We get crushed OVER and OVER and OVER again. I manage to find someone who HAD in fact cleared Ascalon Catacombs, and he told me that you had to have at least one tank and one healer. We eventually tried it that way, and BOOM, we cleared it. So apparantly, the holy trinity remains. I feel misled.

Thoughts?

[Cyphran]

Your dps were not effective at using all their skills and you find running a sub optimal training group gives you the ability to clear the easy mode of the dungeon.

I finished it twice on day two, both groups had no elementalists or guardians. Healers are for groups that need them.

[parcus]

I think I can help you at least in story mode. First of all NOBODY should go there without endurance/ vitality/ healing power (or at least with a strong 2 of those). Either the gear should be towards that or the traits, but the balance between survival and damge is still unknown to me. Second, remove condition skills can be very helpful, as you may get killed by that.

And now I will speculate: I believe the reason those rangers before the rangers boss are so tough is because the game was not designed to have all of them hit the same person at the same time. Considering nobody is too squishy, I believe 2 people could keep 2 rangers (maybe the more tanky people) occupied while the other 3 kill one of them.

Hope this helps. I ran it 2 times and the first it was as frustrating as you say, the second was pretty fun.

Edit: all the bosses there except the twins are pretty much kitable (heck, it is supposed to be easy mode) and you can avoid the melle damage/ spread it around the group pretty easily. So I will assume you aren't having too much problem with them. I don't think you need a very optimal group for story mode also, the extra endurance / vitality makes a huge difference. If nobody is too squishy it should not be too traumatic.

And buy the gear cheap from the AH, I just bought a whole set for just a couple of silver.

[Hockeyhacker]

I tried to get into instances as fast as possible with my friends. Not many people had done Ascalon Catacombs by the time my friends and I had gotten to level 30 as far as I know. We had heard from the way the game was advertised that the holy trinity of tank, healer, and dps was no more. That you could perform just as effectively without the holy trinity. That's the information that was circulating around. We get into Ascalon Catacombs with all dps specs. We get crushed OVER and OVER and OVER again. I manage to find someone who HAD in fact cleared Ascalon Catacombs, and he told me that you had to have at least one tank and one healer. We eventually tried it that way, and BOOM, we cleared it. So apparantly, the holy trinity remains. I feel misled.

Thoughts?

Thoughts are that people are still to use to stand still and nuke as "DPS", you can do just fine with no "healer" (which the "healing specs" are pretty much a joke compared to how much a single normal mob hits someone) and no "tank"... never stand still, use dodge for the big attacks and don't waist it on stuff you can straif out of, and kite... its not a matter of you can not do it with 5 "DPS" its more of a matter of you can not do it with 5 "DPS" with bad habits from being use to being able to stand pretty still and not pay to much attention due to being use to having a tank keep threat in other MMOs and so they are use to only having to move "out of the fire".


Still a fairly new game, people are still playing with bad habits, and well, bad habits pretty much sums it up. I see players all the time just standing there not moving at all in the open world getting crushed in 1-2 hits by a ettin or troll which are both very easy to take no damage on by just staying moving, during one of the group DEs of kill a Ettin I saw most of the people who have bad habits of standing still while doing DPS die at least 10 times during the event while the people moving and dodging never take a single point of damage... over time players will be better and out of bad habits and then more types of groups will be just as playable since its a lot easier to do something if there isn't 20-40% of your group getting facerolled for bad habits of standing in one place and eating damage.

[Wynnyelle]

I've PuG'd AC twice and haven't had a problem either time. We didn't really roll with a particular set-up, we just used our skills to their potential and everything worked out fine. As long as everybody has their head in the game it's relatively painless.

[parcus]

Hockey,

You made a strawman imo, I think people who steps into the dungeons are mostly quite familiar with the dodge mechanism, and if not they learn it in a couple of pulls. Truth is that there is unavoidable damage that kills people with bad gear/traits/skill bar optimization REALLY fast. I believe that is the reason the dungeon seems so hard to newcomers.

[obdigore]

I've PuG'd AC twice and haven't had a problem either time. We didn't really roll with a particular set-up, we just used our skills to their potential and everything worked out fine. As long as everybody has their head in the game it's relatively painless.

This, we had some trouble on the triple ranger pull before the ranger boss, but we got it done. Everything else in there is pretty easy, except the Lovers if your pug is retarded, but a single person can keep them apart with rocks.

[Nikijih]

Considering the fact that there is no threat, and the fact that there is no profession that can sustain healing (even water ele has looooooong CDs), thats pure Bugatolian Bullshit. You literally cannot build a tank or a healer in this game. Just like you should not build a pure DPS.

At the end of the day, what you DO need, is a balanced build. You need everyone to be able to cover their own asses. Pure DPS specs doesnt work. What did you think, that they had only removed tank and heals? No, they removed tank, heals, AND DPS! The idea of a traditional min/maxed DPS spec is something of the trinity, and only works when you got people built to cover your ass (tanks and healers).

Everyone needs defenses. Everyone needs sustainability. Everyone needs utility. Everyone needs damage. Yes, you can TRY to build a trinity group, but that will be one heck of an epic failure in exploration mode.

So yes, if you try to build a traditional min/maxed DPS build, you are doing it wrong to begin with, and you will have a terrible time.

[sacrypheyes]

stupid people are stupid.

had a few PUGs and well, some were just terribad because dudes wouldn't want to :
-rez downed players
-dodge out of HUGE incoming aoes or traps
-take defensive skills / use a more defensive setup (love those greatsword warriors with no toughness rushing in like mad and QQ-ing minutes later cause they gotta repair every few pulls)

always got to the end each time but some runs just took twice as long as most others...

[theredviola]

People can't just go into AC, or any dungeon, with pure nuke/kill 'em all specs. If you all are running those specs, you're in for a hard run. When Anet tested these dungeons, they were done with 5 of every profession. Thieves, rangers, necro, etc. They said "no dedicated healer or tanks," and unfortunately the community at large probably took that as: "Awesome! We can just nuke down most everything! Kite what we can't nuke and finish it off!" When in reality they probably had 1, or more... probably more, of those 5 classes spec'd into vit, toughness, and healing.

[Nikijih]

People can't just go into AC, or any dungeon, with pure nuke/kill 'em all specs. If you all are running those specs, you're in for a hard run. When Anet tested these dungeons, they were done with 5 of every profession. Thieves, rangers, necro, etc. They said "no dedicated healer or tanks," and unfortunately the community at large probably took that as: "Awesome! We can just nuke down most everything! Kite what we can't nuke and finish it off!" When in reality they probably had 1, or more... probably more, of those 5 classes spec'd into vit, toughness, and healing.

«
As I was saying you need a balanced build. Power/Precision is nice and all, but you are simply not going to be able to survive for long. You need to balance your offense and your defense. Thats why, like you said, the DPS kids are having an awfull time.

[Imnick]

I just today completed the dungeon as a team of DPS with two engineers playing as a Greatsword warrior with no toughness
We had no prior preparation, sub-optimal traits (I was running all signets and precision) and four manned half the instance because one of us wasn't online when we started
Our only possible advantage was that we were all on Skype and weren't complete idiots
You didn't accidentally go to the hard mode right? The only things we ever died to were trash pulls, the bosses had big health pools but were basically a piece of cake

[Betrunken]

I tried to get into instances as fast as possible with my friends. Not many people had done Ascalon Catacombs by the time my friends and I had gotten to level 30 as far as I know. We had heard from the way the game was advertised that the holy trinity of tank, healer, and dps was no more. That you could perform just as effectively without the holy trinity. That's the information that was circulating around. We get into Ascalon Catacombs with all dps specs. We get crushed OVER and OVER and OVER again. I manage to find someone who HAD in fact cleared Ascalon Catacombs, and he told me that you had to have at least one tank and one healer. We eventually tried it that way, and BOOM, we cleared it. So apparantly, the holy trinity remains. I feel misled.

Thoughts?

I ran in twice. One we had an Elementalist healing, and another we had all dps specs. Both times it went smoothly, just had to coordinate our attack targets and it went fine.

[Hockeyhacker]

Hockey,

You made a strawman imo, I think people who steps into the dungeons are mostly quite familiar with the dodge mechanism, and if not they learn it in a couple of pulls. Truth is that there is unavoidable damage that kills people with bad gear/traits/skill bar optimization REALLY fast. I believe that is the reason the dungeon seems so hard to newcomers.

Though yes you can fail for your reasons listed, remember he/she is talking about story mode version (since he said "first time in dungeon implies it has to be story mode he/she is talking about), gear/traits/skills are not nearly as harshly punished as explorable mode, you can still have little to no issues completing a story mode dungeon with pish poor gear, random traits, and mediocre skills so long as you execute it with proper game play untainted by bad habits.

But either way for him/her to draw the conclusion that dungeons need a "tank and healer specs" is like the example "All apples are fruit therefore all fruit are apples" or more accurate comparison "No fish can fly therefor anything that can not fly must be a fish"... Just because they succeeded changing a few specs around to emulate the "holy trinity" doesn't mean its required, it just means it worked for them that single time, rules can be proven wrong with one example of it not working, but rules can not be proven right with one example where it works. His example of "we failed until we emulated the trinity therefore the trinity is required" is similar to "All two letter words must end with 't' because the word 'at' ends with 't' "


If your going to criticize an argument on this topic you may want to look at his "One A was B therefore all B must contain A" argument. Obviously there is more to completing a explorable mode dungeon then purely skill as you pointed out, but story mode is much more leanent as far as non skill factors go then explorable and skill is a big factor in either case. Yes if your in all level 1 white gear you will have issues, if your spec is purely around bleeds and the mobs are immune to bleeds you'll have issues, but you can not argue that skill is not a big determining factor between success and failure as well.

[Blznsmri]

«
As I was saying you need a balanced build. Power/Precision is nice and all, but you are simply not going to be able to survive for long. You need to balance your offense and your defense. Thats why, like you said, the DPS kids are having an awfull time.

I've done Ascalonian Catacombs, Caudecus' Manor and Sorrow's Embrace as a Ranger with Power/ Precision Gear and Traits (as well as 5 or so in Wilderness Survival for the 50% endurance regen buff) and I had few problems with either, just had to adjust my skills (have all basic skills unlocked and am only missing 2 elites, the 30 point ones) and figure out what to dodge and what not to.


Smarter Play will get you through any dungeon in this game, you don't need "tank" or "heal" specced players, they just help.

[Deleted]

I would love to see your healer's and tank's setup, srsly. Especially between 30 and 40 lvls where gear stats are minuscule. I wonder how much the healer's spells healed you? Hmm.. 5%-10% of your HP? Your story is fascinating...

People need to learn that leveling spec =/= dungeon spec. No matter the class everyone needs to have one ability that removes conditions/stuns and one ability that provides party wide boons (stability, protection etc). You also should have a secondary weapon focused on CC (not needed if you have one or two people that have CC heavy builds).

[Shadzta]

I ran with guildies all on mumble ... was challenging and fun for the first run through...we were all dps...no tanky we had an ele that helped heal here and there but nothing significant to warrant it...we just co-ordinated...timed stuns together called out where water fountains were going to be to help heal everyone etc etc. Was awesome

[Ticktox]

As far as I've seen, you do want coordination, it's not just a DPS fest of running around. Having someone who can take a hit helps, as well as having people who can support, buff and heal and remove conditions. But technically, everyone can do that. I've "tanked" as a mesmer by that definition but I can't hold aggro, but I get many illusions out and keep the mobs busy, but it's by no means "tanking". I can't taunt if someone's being attacked. I can't do much of anything for that matter to get the monster off of him. At this point I can maybe buff him, but now is my opportunity to do some damage now that it's not focusing me.

One thing I noticed that does annoy me though, is no amount of dodging/kiting will save you from conditions. So it's pretty much like everyone has to be able to help eachother with condition removal or some sort of healing to counter it. I try to remember what monsters kicked are arse with conditions and set nearly all my utility for some form of condition removals. That is something I dislike, but I'm not sure they could change much.

[Eggoman]

I tried to get into instances as fast as possible with my friends. Not many people had done Ascalon Catacombs by the time my friends and I had gotten to level 30 as far as I know. We had heard from the way the game was advertised that the holy trinity of tank, healer, and dps was no more. That you could perform just as effectively without the holy trinity. That's the information that was circulating around. We get into Ascalon Catacombs with all dps specs. We get crushed OVER and OVER and OVER again. I manage to find someone who HAD in fact cleared Ascalon Catacombs, and he told me that you had to have at least one tank and one healer. We eventually tried it that way, and BOOM, we cleared it. So apparantly, the holy trinity remains. I feel misled.

Thoughts?

Here is my experience. We went in with 2 Necro, 2 Ele and 1 thief. We cleared it in about 30 minutes on story mode. Explorer mode (first option) was different and the first time it took us a hour and half. The lieutenant was the main cock block as we had to get used to his animation and issues with him ripping through 4 cloth professions lol...

Our second run through we went through with a ranger, warrior, ele, theif and necro. Everyone was power based except the necro who was spec'd conditon. Story mode cleared in ~20 minutes, explorer mode (we chose the 2nd option) in less than 40 and we had no wipes. I think we made almost a gold from story+explorer mode runs.

The main difference was the second group didn't take as much damage but put out even more, faces melted severely. We never had one person die completely, a few hit the down state but we got him back up real quick.

The difficulty you are having is the players you go with can't survive. They can't dodge, block or evade the attacks they are supposed to. A tanky class can do this very easily (hit one button and block 3 attacks), the only thing the healer probably added was alot of condition removal which is key to survival but I doubt, I really doubt his direct heals added any value to your group other than psychological. If you think a healer heals like a priest or paladin you will be surprised, a healing specc'd elementalist probably heals more like a feral druid or a ret paladin. The heals are very minimal compared the the direct damage.

I think your success might be more related to you having run it once before, I know the first time through we had trouble. The second time through we had a super duper easy time, it was silly how easy it was because we knew exactly what to do, what to dodge etc. etc. I'm sure if you run it again you'll find it easier to complete.

[Deleted]

We get into Ascalon Catacombs with all dps specs.

This is the problem.

There is no nominated tank or healer - because you all tank and heal...no trinity doesn't mean that you can all just stand and fully DPS.