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AC Exploreable Modes,,, OUCH
Aerowyn
Member Posts: 7,928
Finally got around to trying one of these out we choose the lover's tomb path.. By far the hardest dungeon I have played in recent memory. The numerous traps pretty much 1 shot you espeically the fire ones. The first spider boss puts out a ton of AOE poison damage all over the room, we finaly were able ot tackle her then the next big fight consists of a monk and couple others.. One of them is a warrior type with a whirlwind attack that pulls anything within a damn big range too him and insta kills anyone he pulls.. We tried this encounter several times before one of our members droppped out and it was getting late so we called it a night... even in the little bit of it we got through it was extremly challenging and look forward to going back in the future.
Another one I did finaly was CM story mode which people said was sooo easy.. I found it to be pretty damn challenging especially the couple rooms that have a swarm of those bandit types.. You get one swarm up stairs then another in the basement.. Also the second to last fight with the bombers was pretty hard as well but overall fun dungeon. Looking forward to seeing the rest of the dungeons and after the last few MMOs I have played nice change of pace to get a good challenge in dungeons.
I angered the clerk in a clothing shop today. She asked me what size I was and I said actual, because I am not to scale. I like vending machines 'cause snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar at a store, oftentimes, I will drop it... so that it achieves its maximum flavor potential. --Mitch Hedberg
Comments
It is a pretty tough dungeon, but once you figure out all the ins and outs it takes literally 20-30 mins to speed run through it and it becomes pretty easy.
WIth a good group of 5 of course.
don't see how just for the fact of how much health the mobs have.. we were fighting one that we didn't wipe once on and it took 5 min just to take down that single mob due to its insane health pool...
I angered the clerk in a clothing shop today. She asked me what size I was and I said actual, because I am not to scale. I like vending machines 'cause snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar at a store, oftentimes, I will drop it... so that it achieves its maximum flavor potential. --Mitch Hedberg
There is absolutely nothing worse than Arah explorable path 1. I swear this was designed for masochists. It takes forever (2 hours if you're lucky), the bosses are incredibly annoying, there's only ONE waypoint so you have to spend like 10 minutes walking back if you die, and for some silly reason you have to traverse through the ENTIRE dungeon as opposed to just one part of it like every other path in the game.
I'll never get the dungeon achievement at this rate
If you're on Jade Quarry I can take you on a run Aerowyn. Currently I'm doing AC all paths once a day and I do story modes for those that need help. Those that run them with me can tell you they are extremely easy. It surprises many how easy these dungeons on when you learn them. You start to wonder how they ever posed a challenge for you to begin with.
My current dungeon runner is William Greymist, working up 2 more characters so that I can do 3 runs of each path a day.
Path one is the one with the gorilla boss? Or the minefield?
OT: AC explo is difficult untill you learn them, but interesting. Having a support guardian helps a lot. Easiest is Ghost Eater. The other 2 have borrow destroying events that can be quite challenging.
I've found that having a defensive warrior along helps just as well, if not better, than a guard.
- AOE Healing every 20 Seconds
- AOE Condition Removal
- AOE Boons
- High CC Capability
- High uptime on Weakness debuff
Works extremely well for any of the explorable modes, and is much more versatile than a defensive guardian.
Hey Aerowyn, I am on SoR contact me in game you can run with my guild to do some of this stuff
.
Jump on Teamspeak any time 24.10.25.157 no pass,, we are actually running it as we speak.
The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true.
Carl Sagan-
If in 1982 we played with the current mentality, we would have burned down all the pac man games since the red ghost was clearly OP. Instead we just got better at the game.
Hmm think they both have areas where they shine better. Guardian has more aoe heals + aoe blocks I think. Has AOE Cond remover. On boons don't know who has more. CC is moderate I'd say and no weakness.
need your character name:P
I angered the clerk in a clothing shop today. She asked me what size I was and I said actual, because I am not to scale. I like vending machines 'cause snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar at a store, oftentimes, I will drop it... so that it achieves its maximum flavor potential. --Mitch Hedberg
The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true.
Carl Sagan-
after doing ARAH like 25 times now, i can say that it will eventually get eazier for you. problem is you need to not use pug groups.
20 times i used pug groups and it was hard as hell to get through but 5 or so times i used guild mates i knew and trust, and it was a breeze.
http://medias.luna-atra.fr/gw2/char_tool/CT_imageGenerator.php?pseudo=Centurion Mikal&lang=EN&code=&code=TSwtLDUsLSw2LC0sMjksOSwyMiwyMywyNCwtLDEwMiwzNiw4MSw4NCw4OQ==
Yes explorable with pugs can be a death trap for sure. Unless you get a group that has run them before and knows what they are doing, your chances of success are fairly minimal. However, with a guild or a set group of skilled players, using combos, tactics and positioning, the explorable dungeons are amongst the most fun I've experienced in MMOG gaming.
I see a lot of 'dungeons suck because they are to hard' threads (not this one, but others) on various forums. Poeple go into them expecting the same faceroll experience MMOG dungeons have had for half a decade. When they hit that wall (and all of us have), they freak. Unfortunately some never try a dungeon again and thus never get to experience just how fun they are with a good group or guild.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/innovation
if you are required not to use PUGs for it to be easy i really don't consider the dungeon "easy".. in most other themeparks I could run all the regular dungeons and usually upto the second to hardest difficulty with PUGs no problem.. Usually for this game people I see who say dungeons are easy are running with friends and on some sort of voice chat and/or are way above the dungeons level.. Yes they scale but being well above the dungeon level does have several advantages making things a bit easier.
I angered the clerk in a clothing shop today. She asked me what size I was and I said actual, because I am not to scale. I like vending machines 'cause snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar at a store, oftentimes, I will drop it... so that it achieves its maximum flavor potential. --Mitch Hedberg
So much missinformation.. all I'll say is this:
All dungeons are very PUGable. The trick is to make sure people are paying attention, people are listening to the groupl leader, and knowing the mechanics so you can explain them to the rest of the group. Most PUGs, just making sure these 3 conditions are met is more than enough for success. I see people claiming build X or build Y is required, but it's really all BS.
Having some variety definitely helps, but it really comes down to knowing the fights, and using what's available to deal w/ that. All classes have numerous skills to deal w/ a wide variety of situations. This is why when I run dungeons I rarely ever favor 1 class or another, and instead focus mostly on getting players who don't play foolishly. Which is how I think these games should be anyway.
As a few have said in this thread, most of the dungeons (AC included) really aren't that difficult. The challenge comes in the first few runs, when you don't know what to expect or how to deal w/ it. Once you figure that out the dungeons become fairly easy. AC actually turns into one of the easier dungeons once you understand the mechanics. It is a really fun dungeon, though. It has some really fast explorable runs, and some fairly interesting mechanics as well.
done AC story mode 10 times now has been a pain in the ass every single time but once... the one time it wasn't a pain the entire group aside from me was level 80 and knew the dungeon well.. Every other time it was just 5 random people not on any sort of chat and we got through it each time but no way in hell would I say it's easy compared to Rifts dungeons for example.. I don't mind it being difficult but still find it odd people say it's cake with PUGs yet then say you need to know the fights and have a good leader... well most PUGs I have played only 1 or two of us have played the dungeon and with how fast paced the combat is it's not that easy to just say stand here or stand there since the mobs are all over the place.
I angered the clerk in a clothing shop today. She asked me what size I was and I said actual, because I am not to scale. I like vending machines 'cause snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar at a store, oftentimes, I will drop it... so that it achieves its maximum flavor potential. --Mitch Hedberg
Ya... Good luck finding random people to do that constantly. Honestly, I got to ask where you looked for them? In your guild maybe? Since I have yet to find a single competent random in my group since I've started. Literally me and my friend carrying the instance and the only ones surviving on our mains.
Again, not sure how you expect this from a pug. People will do what they want, roll the buffs they want and not care about the group 90% of the time.
Not saying that any explorer mode is not pugable, it can be, but good luck finding that perfect group when your by yourself looking. It's almost impossible since people expect that zerg rezzing is the only solution, instead of mitigating damage. That and builds of people who solely PvP or PvE in the world tend to be very squishy and not able to really help each other out, since they don't care about the team, they care about themselves.
The only reason she had trouble was due to 2 factors:
1. Not experiencing much in dungeons before, and obviously not that instance. Thus the fights were hard.
2. The 2 pugs we got were on the ground 90% of the fight and then one ended up rage quitting (the one who was dumb enough made it explorer mode in the first place when we wanted to just do story) since he died every single pull.
It's not far too uncommon to find a single reliable person in the group unless they are your friends or guildies.
Your welcome for that run BTW.
lol yea that run with you was the only "easy" run i have had in AC.. remember the next one we did with those 3 random guys? was a mess.. well you did join us halfway through
I angered the clerk in a clothing shop today. She asked me what size I was and I said actual, because I am not to scale. I like vending machines 'cause snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar at a store, oftentimes, I will drop it... so that it achieves its maximum flavor potential. --Mitch Hedberg
I don't doubt that it was a pain, but the thing about these dungeons is they ARE a pain until you figure them out. It's not much different from other games tbh, other than them being more challenging than most.
Take AC story for example. Most people would say that 'The Lovers' are by far the hardest fight they've faced in game. The thing is, everyone pretty much knows the general strategy for dealing with them. Separate them, and focus them down one at a time. However, many people don't really take that further than skin-deep. They still just charge in, and try and separate them by splitting up and ranged attacking, or zerging, etc. That doesn't really work all that well.
Instead, there are 2 tactics I've found work incredibly well. 1) Try and pull the elementalist to the doorway, and use a boulder to lock her out of the fight. 2) Have 2 people tossing boulders at the mesmer (which knocks him back) until he is effectively pinned out of the fight. You can keep him shutdown indefinitely with that strat, just requires being a bit more proactive & aware of your surroundings.
As for the red part:
A lot of people seem to assume that making a PUG is synonymous with having zero communication, no preparation, and no leadership. If you go into dungeons this way (unless you know the people you are fighting with), you will inevitably fail. However, you don't have to PUG that way. I'm not saying you even need vent either. All it takes is someone needs to step up into a leadership role, who knows what they're doing. In PUGs, a lot of the time it means that person is 'you', because most people just don't do this. From a leadership role you can ask questions in /party chat to make sure everyone's on the same page, and listening. That's usually what I end up doing, and it always pays off. Some PUGs are better than others, they aren't always super smooth, but the only PUG I've failed to clear with was actually a guild group trying to fill up spare slots. They couldn't get passed the first boss of CM explorable, but they had it in their heads that someone needed to tank, and everyone needed to have very specific builds. After that disaster, I ended up forming a new group (which actually included one of the members from that group) and we picked up 3 randoms. It went smooth as butter and we ended up clearing 2 of the paths for CM multiple times.
- Long story short: First time doing dungeons in this game is rarely ever easy. Especially if no one has done them before. However, it's mostly due to inexperience. It's one of those things that is different about this game. In most MMOs the vast majority of dungeons are tank & spank. And many people are still used to this. In this one you have to be more aware of what's going on, you gotta rally teamm8s who go down quickly, and every encounter has a number of ways in which to handle it. Some may require you swapping out certain skills or traits to make the fight a little easier. If you learn from each encounter, you will get better, and find your own class synergies that you find work really well.
Unfortunately I don't think I'm on your same server, but if you ever find yourself on Fort Aspenwood feel free to send me a PM and I can show you what I'm talking about first hand.
i seen this posted several times you know you don't have to be on the same server to run dungeons with people..
also you say it's similar to other themeparks yet I haven't found that the case.. yes in other themeparks knowing the dungeon made it easier but not knowing it many times it was still easy as long as you had a semi decent healer/tank. I went through every dungeon in Rift on normal mode without completely wiping a single time and many all of us it was our first time. Trinity based games generally have the luxury of just needing a decent tank/healer can get you through many of the regular dungeons no problem. With GW2 this isn't the case and not to mention mobs hit freakin hard as well compared to other games top that with having no real tank class to pull and hold mobs it makes it much harder to predict where mobs will go.
I angered the clerk in a clothing shop today. She asked me what size I was and I said actual, because I am not to scale. I like vending machines 'cause snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar at a store, oftentimes, I will drop it... so that it achieves its maximum flavor potential. --Mitch Hedberg
Honestly, when PUGing it's usually different people each time. The people I run w/ consistantly are usually people from one of the various guilds I ended up joining. That said, when I do end up forming PUGs with people I enjoy playing with, it's not uncommon for us to friend each other, and end up grouping again at a later time. Perhaps the biggest problem I've had recently with PUGs is that many are now scared to run dungeons, because they've either had a bad experience, or people are running around screaming how impossible dungeons are (which isn't true).
When dungeon running I do tend to ask guildies first, but there are pleanty of times when they either already have full groups, or just aren't up for a run atm, and so I turn to /map chat.
Basically before I enter a dungeon I talk to the members in /party chat. I ask them how they're doing, what builds they're running, etc. If they seem nervous about that, I'll emphasize that I'm just curious about what people are running with & I like to know what types of settings we're working with. Basically it just comes down to getting a feel for who I'm grouping with. If someone seems sketchy, or too big of a dick, I may end up dropping them and trying to find someone a bit more pleasant to group with. Obviously during less peak hours I'll be a lot more lenient about who I group with.
In general though, I don't really care about who I end up grouping with, as long as they don't seem like dicks and they don't seem like they are overly stupid (nothing is worse than someone who tries to leeroy these dungeons and then rages when he aggros multiple groups at once). There are typically 2 big red flags I look for. 1) People who are specced ultra glass cannon & don't have any ability to increase their health pool to a reasonable lvl. 2) People who aren't responsive / seem unwilling to play as part of a group. By avoiding those 2 things I tend to have much better success in dungeons. People don't get downed as often, and they are more likely to listen when I need to explain a boss fight. They also tend to be more patient & thus less likely to rage quit if a fight goes poorly.
- Probably the largest misconception when going into these dungeons is that you need a perfect group in order to clear them. I've done so many runs that I've cleared these dungeons with most class combinations. I've done 5 necro groups, 5 warrior groups, 5 elementalist groups, 4 mesmer / 1 necro, 3 ele, 1 ranger, 1 thief.. etc. etc. etc.
Honestly the class combinations don't matter as much. This isn't to say that a more diverse class combination isn't stronger, but I have yet to see a class setup that can't clear these dungeons (and I was shocked when I managed to pull it off w/ 5 eles). Some class combinations are easier for various dungeons, but what it really comes down to is how well you know the fights, and that you make sure everyone in the group understands what's going to happen. People aren't completely locked into builds in this game. If a fight seems unusually hard, think about what you're facing, & what skills might be able to deal w/ such an encounter. Have a hall full of traps you don't think you can avoid? Maybe someone can use invulnerability + speed to rush passed them and turn them off. Have a huge group of adds you need to burn down, but not much defense? See if you can throw some AoE into your mix, maybe some AoE blind (thief, or ele in earth attunement + glyph of storms).
So much of the difficulty of these dungeons comes down to how good your understanding of the fights & your skills are. Once you obtain that understanding, a lot of the difficulty for these vanishes. People may still get downed, or die, but it won't be happening nearly as often (and in some cases, it may not happen at all). Hell, I still die or get downed on occassion during these fights. I'm still trying to get better about not over-commiting to resses & not dodging quick enough as a result. However, dying is a part of the game, and I rarely ever fail to clear a dungeon / leave with less than I went in with.
I angered the clerk in a clothing shop today. She asked me what size I was and I said actual, because I am not to scale. I like vending machines 'cause snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar at a store, oftentimes, I will drop it... so that it achieves its maximum flavor potential. --Mitch Hedberg