I do love how you and Korrigan seem to jump on that guy, over he's, '600 hour', statement, because really that's all the pair of you have to go on isn't?
Exactly.
And if he had said that he had got 600+ hours on his account, and the game is..."GREAT!!! Dying in dungeons means you are playing it wrong!!!! Its all working well, unless you are a WoW scrub so go back to WoW and dont call this game flawed in any way you hater", then those 2 posters would have readily quoted him as 'an experienced GW2 player' to further their points and used his posts as proof that the OP is wrong.
Double standards of the poorest kind. And ofcourse that other poster might come back with another condescendingly smug drivel about what he would have done, but thats just the nature of petty people to act ignorant when called out on their BS.
For as much as I like GW2, I feel the game fell short on having worthwhile dungeons by a long shot...Its "different" by ANet's point of view but IMHO its just a bad kind of unbalanced 'different'.
When entering the zone we started thru the story. First mob is a Golem, solo, and didn't go to bad. One death by a warrior but we got him up fast. I'm thinking ok, not to shabby. Second group of mobs is where it all went downhill. Your first pull there is about 4-5 mobs. Each one of them are "elite" which means even if all 5 of us are attacking it, it takes about 45-60 seconds to burn it down. Except there is no way to do ANYTHING about the other 4 beating on you. There is no tanking, no offtanking, no CC that is worth it. Most CC in this game last 3 seconds maybe. So needless to say, nearly every pull was a wipe. We spent as much time rezing people as we did fighting.
We beat the dungeon, but our strat was to all attack one mob, burn it down hopefully before we wiped, and come back and do it again. We would burn the barrel placers first and so on.
I know that CM was made harder recenetly, but this was just storymode. I felt like I didn't learn anything from the story because I was to busy cringing at this system. There was NOTHING FUN about this dungeon. We also had a person quit and we had to replace them during this dungeon because he said (sorry guys..this dugeon system is horrible..I am going to uninstall).
My character was setup for PVE and grouping. I had healing spring with some points into healing, search and rescue to help with rezing and the healing spirit. There was no way to heal thru that damage. We also had a guardian and that helped some but just prolonged how long it took us to wipe.
I miss my healers, tanks, and true CC. I lost motivation to level now because I do enjoy PVE more then PVP and knowing that is all I have to look forward to in dungeons is quite dishearting. I love every other aspect of this game, crafting, quest, pvp, graphics, but this is to core of a system for me to overlook. There is a difference between core mehanics and difficulty. The core mechanics on dungeons is just broke. Even if they made it super easy and a zerg fest, there would still be no "skill" to the system. It is either boring no pay attention killing, or just a wipe and res as fast as you can event. I miss strategy.
So you were bad and because of that you complain ? For some reason some groups have it quite easy. Did you think about it a little ? Why is that ?
There is big difference between GW2 and other themeparks like Rift, WoW, TOR etc. It's not designed around stationary combat. So tank role is not to stay still, take agro and wait while healer is healing him. In this game being a punching bag is NOT A VALID TACTIC.
When I'm configured around defense (traits, traits bonuses, skills, weapon etc) I keep my shields up when I'm about to be hit. There are multiple shields like someone mentioned. Also I dodge a lot. Only idiot don't dodge incomings. I heal only when I need to. As secondary weapon I use scepter (nice AOE + rate of fire, too slow so only for PVE + short CC) and focus (for 3-hit shield that blow up).
As offensive guardian I use mutliple AOE + combo attacks and stuff to create literally a deathfield around me. I can burn down multiple oponents VERY VERY fast. Not good for champions but I'm not a nuker. My job is to take multiple weak enemies.
We also gather group with people that specialize in some roles. In dungeons I'm tanking but not TOR/WoW/RIft way. My job is to get attention and don't get killed by shielding, dodging and using skills. For example as hammer user I can create nice circle for 5s that will keep mobs in check and will not allow them to leave. Best to focus everything you got on that circle when it's on (whole team).
People say that in GW2 there is no tanking, healing etc. They are WRONG. Everything is in place. Difference is that no class is design for specific role. Take a TOR for example. You have trees for 2-3 roles right ? In theory. But in the end you will end up with the role your class was originally designed to do because it will be best at it. Part of this problem is that tree system was added quite late in TOR after people complain about trinity.
GW2 have no trinity. You are free to make a healer out of guardian. Just remember that in this game healing is just another way of support. Is not something that you focus all you are doing around. Healing will help someone but it will not keep you alive for a long.
In the end, I find GW2 dungeons much more enjoyable. Only thing I would change is to add mutliple patterns of attack/defense for them and less HP to make fights more interesting and shorter. In Rift/WoW/TOR all you were doing is "rotation" to burn down enemies while tank was taking agro. He was standing there doing from little to nothing while healers where keeping us all alive. And healing was so powerfull that when 2-3 healers were doing cross-healing in arena, you could not take them down.
Quite supid I must say. ANet give you a choice. Use it. Don't complain.
thats why we cant find skilled players anymore in wow. thats why not even 10% of the players cant complete raids in hc mode. all skilled players are in gw2 anymore ! pls come and help us sometime. give us your lights and teach us the right way.
if you want the cruel reality: dungeons in gw2 SUCKS big time. either it concerns mechanics, loot or whatever, they just suck. i have played eq1-2 / wow / rift / swtor / warr and mmo's in general more than 12 years. but man, this is the worst dungeons i ever met in a game. i dont say that the game sucks, but dungeons sure do!
I did the Sorrow's Embrace dungeon yesterday. What sucks to me is the fact that there's no sense of real loss since the dungeon doors don't close. Basically, there's no such thing as getting wiped by a boss, if you have one person alive you can still come back and finish the fight with the boss. Apart from that, the dungeons are alright if you know what you're doing.
For sorrow's embrace all you need is for every class that comes to the dungeon to bring something that can be used to defend against projectiles and you'll have an easy time in the dungeon but getting wiped there doesn't feel like a real loss at all.
Originally posted by Aerowyn gotta learn combo fields.. if you get a group together that knows how to utliize combo fields well dungeons can be a blast
Yeap combo fields is a massive mechanic in this game.
Combo fields can heal or protect the crap out of the players. Blindness and confusion is also a massive mechanic that got overlooked by many players because blindness actually allows for avoidance tanking as the mobs can not hit you when blinded. The condition removal effects from healing combo fields also saves lives. Poison and fire fields can effectively double your damage because of the DoTs. Invis from smoke fields - enough said.
These are big mechanic because in this game, even most bosses can not avoid them.
I can tell a lot of players don't even use them by playing side by side with them.
They are a big deal. Probably a bigger deal than what you traits and what skills you have ready (I don't feel traits changes a fight much and are a lot more straightforward in choices, comparison).
I have an entire build/setup focused on blind and vulnerability - blind to keep me alive and vulnerability to make them dead.
You can't just stack power and stack HP/defense and hope you can survive in GW2, it's taken me a while to REALLY just "start" to understand how it all works.
Between dodge, blind (which is pretty much a block) and block and buffs like protection and regeneration and debuffs like burning and vulnerability... and utilities/traits to help me manage conditions on myself, I am pretty much untouchable in PvE.
But yeah, Fire and Poison fields especially are amazing amounts of damage most players just ignore or are oblivious too. Light fields are great for protection/cleansing team skills.
Snares and immobilized and slows and wards are invaluable for the 3-4 seconds you can keep a mob in check until your next dodge/blind/block etc. is available.
I think SO many people are just so used to having healers cover for their mistakes.
Whoever said it earlier was right - dedicated healers and tanks are really just for covering the mistakes of bad DPS players, and of course unavoidable damage (dmg auras, mass AoE's etc.) but that is a much different school of thought for encounter design.
I think people who played Tanks/Healers in other MMOs, especially older MMOs where tanking/healing was actually challenging and took skill - those people are picking up how to play GW2 dungeons a whole lot better because they are used to having responsibility and people rely'ing on them.
I bet it's all the DPS players who never tanked/healed or only ever tank/healed during the "easy" cycles of tank/healing in modern MMOs (like WoW during WOTLK or now with zero-threat)
I have an entire build/setup focused on blind and vulnerability - blind to keep me alive and vulnerability to make them dead.
You can't just stack power and stack HP/defense and hope you can survive in GW2, it's taken me a while to REALLY just "start" to understand how it all works.
Between dodge, blind (which is pretty much a block) and block and buffs like protection and regeneration and debuffs like burning and vulnerability... and utilities/traits to help me manage conditions on myself, I am pretty much untouchable in PvE.
But yeah, Fire and Poison fields especially are amazing amounts of damage most players just ignore or are oblivious too. Light fields are great for protection/cleansing team skills.
Snares and immobilized and slows and wards are invaluable for the 3-4 seconds you can keep a mob in check until your next dodge/blind/block etc. is available.
I think SO many people are just so used to having healers cover for their mistakes.
Whoever said it earlier was right - dedicated healers and tanks are really just for covering the mistakes of bad DPS players, and of course unavoidable damage (dmg auras, mass AoE's etc.) but that is a much different school of thought for encounter design.
I think people who played Tanks/Healers in other MMOs, especially older MMOs where tanking/healing was actually challenging and took skill - those people are picking up how to play GW2 dungeons a whole lot better because they are used to having responsibility and people rely'ing on them.
I bet it's all the DPS players who never tanked/healed or only ever tank/healed during the "easy" cycles of tank/healing in modern MMOs (like WoW during WOTLK or now with zero-threat)
Sounds like you get it.
And you're not wrong about your DPS player assessment. I've been running a lot of newer players through dungeons lately, and so far all the ones that have been raging have been DPS-heavy. Usually the first thing I ask when someone complains about getting 1-2 shotted in a dungeon is 'how much health do you have?'. The vast majority of the time the person has less than half the HP of the rest of us, because they are wearing only power / precision gear, and have absolutely zero vitality built into their character. The other few times, it basically came down to someone not understanding a mechanic, or bringing zero defensive skills to a fight that called for them (ie. no condition removal, reflection, or invuln/block).
That said, the majority of the people I've PUGed with, once we get through the dungeon, leave with a much better understanding of the mechanics and seem to enjoy them a whole lot more as a result. Instead of focusing on how big their numbers can get, they start asking the right questions like ('would these skills work against boss 'X'?, or 'which defensive skills would work better for each path', etc.)
I usually enjoy your posts so don't take this the wrong way... but that is such a terrible generalization of DPS classes that is simply not true. I've played a healer, tank, or DPS in high end rading and to say the skill is only required in the first to is beyond misguided. It leaves me believing you haven't actually done it yourself and are just repeating what you hear on forums.
I usually enjoy your posts so don't take this the wrong way... but that is such a terrible generalization of DPS classes that is simply not true. I've played a healer, tank, or DPS in high end rading and to say the skill is only required in the first to is beyond misguided. It leaves me believing you haven't actually done it yourself and are just repeating what you hear on forums.
Oh I know there are very good DPS players out there who break the mold and provide a hell of a lot to their groups beyond just their bragging about damage meters.
I've been raiding/high-end PvE since 2004 (only started raiding in Vanilla WoW, not before) and spent 75% of the time between then and now either tanking or healing.
But it is just REALLY, REALLY easy to make a comparison between the "usual" DPS-tards in WoW post-BC and the kind of complaints and complete lack of strategy and skill people are showing in regards to GW2 dungeons.
I am 100% sure one of the really good DPS players from other MMOs would/can/do "get" the GW2 skill set as well as tanks/healers from those same games.
I usually enjoy your posts so don't take this the wrong way... but that is such a terrible generalization of DPS classes that is simply not true. I've played a healer, tank, or DPS in high end rading and to say the skill is only required in the first to is beyond misguided. It leaves me believing you haven't actually done it yourself and are just repeating what you hear on forums.
He's not wrong though.
And he's not saying that all DPS players are like this, but rather the majority of people who are making such complaints appear to be DPS focused players. Out of all the people I've met (in game) that have complained about dungeon difficulty, zerging, & the amount of dying not matching the rewards, literally all of them have been DPS heavy players with little-no vitality built into their characters.
Everyone I've played with who has either a balanced build, a support build, or is proactive enough to change up their skills as needed for a fight, seems to do just fine during dungeon runs. They may die a couple times, but it's not a big deal & they learn from it.
I usually enjoy your posts so don't take this the wrong way... but that is such a terrible generalization of DPS classes that is simply not true. I've played a healer, tank, or DPS in high end rading and to say the skill is only required in the first to is beyond misguided. It leaves me believing you haven't actually done it yourself and are just repeating what you hear on forums.
He's not wrong though.
And he's not saying that all DPS players are like this, but rather the majority of people who are making such complaints appear to be DPS focused players. Out of all the people I've met (in game) that have complained about dungeon difficulty, zerging, & the amount of dying not matching the rewards, literally all of them have been DPS heavy players with little-no vitality built into their characters.
Everyone I've played with who has either a balanced build, a support build, or is proactive enough to change up their skills as needed for a fight, seems to do just fine during dungeon runs. They may die a couple times, but it's not a big deal & they learn from it.
Glass cannons really have no place in GW2.
If the OP would like to post his trait build and what weapons he is using for his profession as well as how they are gearing we could probably offer a LOT of help.
Of course there are good players in every game for every profession. That really wasn't my point. My point is boss fights vary and depending on the strat they can really stress different points of the trinity. Some fights are extremely dps intensive and require real gaming skill. So to say dps is generally ez mode isn't correct. Just my two cents.
I mean... GW2 explorable dungeons aren't exactly rocket science when it comes to strategy. Let's be real here. People are struggling now because they're new and its a new design.
If the OP would like to post his trait build and what weapons he is using for his profession as well as how they are gearing we could probably offer a LOT of help.
This ^
Both in PvE and PvE glass cannons are the first to get killed. One thing a lot of people don't seem to know is that part of the mob AI factors in max health as well as damage output when determining aggro. The reason why glass cannons tend to die first in dungeons, is because they fit both parameters insanely well. They tend to hit significantly harder than everyone else, but also the mobs see that they barely have any HP. Basically an easy kill.
Furthermore, by pulling back just a little bit on the power/precision, and trading that for some vit, you gain a lot more defense without sacrificing much offense. Basically after a certain threshhold of damage, you get diminishing returns, and it makes more sense to get more health / toughness instead.
So players are in fact pigeon holed into building their character the way Anet determines they should? Glad we cleared that up. Sounds like there's less class diversity then in traditional trinity themeparks.
Originally posted by drakaena Of course there are good players in every game for every profession. That really wasn't my point. My point is boss fights vary and depending on the strat they can really stress different points of the trinity. Some fights are extremely dps intensive and require real gaming skill. So to say dps is generally ez mode isn't correct. Just my two cents.
I mean... GW2 explorable dungeons aren't exactly rocket science when it comes to strategy. Let's be real here. People are struggling now because they're new and its a new design.
I understand.
I am more so talking about small group content in games such as WoW - the most popular western MMO and one in which the most people have some familiarity.
In the 5-man dungeon content in WoW it has been very, very, very skewed towards the majority of the difficulty being in the tank/heal legs of the Holy Trinity since BC really - WotLK was a joke and in Cata they made tanking and healing (especially healing) harder - but didn't do too much to make DPS role more challenging except requiring dps to CC for the first like 2 months of the expansion.
However on the RAID side of things (again in WoW, the most familiar/popular MMO in the West) there have been many examples where the Tanks/Healers have easy mode whack a mole and DPS has had to perform miracles to win the fight.
So I agree with you.
But my original point is still valid I feel, as I think it is a fair hypothesis to consider that many of the people having "real" problems in GW2 dungeons are perhaps the very same players that are used to or "grew up" on the easy-mode DPS days of WoW.
Originally posted by drakaena So players are in fact pigeon holed into building their character the way Anet determines they should? Glad we cleared that up. Sounds like there's less class diversity then in traditional trinity themeparks.
Haha that probably is more true than many here would like to admit.
Strategies will adjust and more and more builds will become "viable" as time goes on.
I agree with that spock. I was thinking of skill through a raiding perspective. When put in terms of 5 man content tanks and healers do heavily alter the outcome. Fair enough.
Originally posted by drakaena So players are in fact pigeon holed into building their character the way Anet determines they should? Glad we cleared that up. Sounds like there's less class diversity then in traditional trinity themeparks.
No, they aren't.
It's a skill based game, centered around builds. If you build your character around putting all your eggs in 1 basket, it's kind of silly to then turn around and blame the game for your character having weakness'.
Each class has multiple tools to deal w/ any number of situations. What most glass cannon players are doing, is ignoring all those tools, in favor of having the biggest numbers they can get. That's fine, and I've seen certain exceptions ingame where that type of build can work, but you have to be extremely careful about how you play with such a setup. You're basically making a concious choice to ignore all the defensive capabilities offered to your character.
Think of things from a PvP perspective. If someone is running around in PvP hitting insanely hard, but as soon as they're attacked they lose half their health, who do you think you'd focus on killing first? Him? Or the other character hitting decently hard, but taking hits like a champ? Personally I'd kill the easier targets first. Mobs work the exact same way.
It's not pigeon holding. It's common sense. And they took some of that from PvP and built it into the PvE AI. You can still spec heavily into damage, but if you ignore all forms of survivability, then you really only have yourself to blame if someone or something exploits that weakness.
Originally posted by drakaena So players are in fact pigeon holed into building their character the way Anet determines they should? Glad we cleared that up. Sounds like there's less class diversity then in traditional trinity themeparks.
Haha that probably is more true than many here would like to admit.
Strategies will adjust and more and more builds will become "viable" as time goes on.
You give me faith that not all GW2 players are crazed zealots with hooded masks and torches.
Originally posted by drakaena So players are in fact pigeon holed into building their character the way Anet determines they should? Glad we cleared that up. Sounds like there's less class diversity then in traditional trinity themeparks.
Haha that probably is more true than many here would like to admit.
Strategies will adjust and more and more builds will become "viable" as time goes on.
You give me faith that not all GW2 players are crazed zealots with hooded masks and torches.
No those would be Teabillies you are thinking of not GW2 players :P
This game by far has blown me away in almost every category, the gameplay is fun and the world is bueatiful. The Dynamic events are a great way to level because there is no go fletch quest hubs and so on, but last night I tried a dungeon for the first time.
I was a a level 50 Ranger doing a level 40 CM story mode. I had heard the horror stories of how unorganized, zerg fest they were but I kept telling myself I've played MMO's for so long that it can't be that bad. It was, the lack of a trinity was clear right away.
When entering the zone we started thru the story. First mob is a Golem, solo, and didn't go to bad. One death by a warrior but we got him up fast. I'm thinking ok, not to shabby. Second group of mobs is where it all went downhill. Your first pull there is about 4-5 mobs. Each one of them are "elite" which means even if all 5 of us are attacking it, it takes about 45-60 seconds to burn it down. Except there is no way to do ANYTHING about the other 4 beating on you. There is no tanking, no offtanking, no CC that is worth it. Most CC in this game last 3 seconds maybe. So needless to say, nearly every pull was a wipe. We spent as much time rezing people as we did fighting.
We beat the dungeon, but our strat was to all attack one mob, burn it down hopefully before we wiped, and come back and do it again. We would burn the barrel placers first and so on.
I know that CM was made harder recenetly, but this was just storymode. I felt like I didn't learn anything from the story because I was to busy cringing at this system. There was NOTHING FUN about this dungeon. We also had a person quit and we had to replace them during this dungeon because he said (sorry guys..this dugeon system is horrible..I am going to uninstall).
My character was setup for PVE and grouping. I had healing spring with some points into healing, search and rescue to help with rezing and the healing spirit. There was no way to heal thru that damage. We also had a guardian and that helped some but just prolonged how long it took us to wipe.
I miss my healers, tanks, and true CC. I lost motivation to level now because I do enjoy PVE more then PVP and knowing that is all I have to look forward to in dungeons is quite dishearting. I love every other aspect of this game, crafting, quest, pvp, graphics, but this is to core of a system for me to overlook. There is a difference between core mehanics and difficulty. The core mechanics on dungeons is just broke. Even if they made it super easy and a zerg fest, there would still be no "skill" to the system. It is either boring no pay attention killing, or just a wipe and res as fast as you can event. I miss strategy.
It's called kiting, learn it, use it, it's your friend. There's plenty of effective CC in game. I play Ranger and guess what my job in dungeons is? CC and kite mobs around, mainly melee since I've got blind, etc. You're right the game's not easy mode with tank stands up front and everything wails on him while everyone else dps's it down and the healer replenishes diminishing bars.
GW1 was largely the same way with it's mission system. For vets of that game this is just par for the course.
Originally posted by drakaena So players are in fact pigeon holed into building their character the way Anet determines they should? Glad we cleared that up. Sounds like there's less class diversity then in traditional trinity themeparks.
Haha that probably is more true than many here would like to admit.
Strategies will adjust and more and more builds will become "viable" as time goes on.
You give me faith that not all GW2 players are crazed zealots with hooded masks and torches.
Well I never really got into GW1 very much, but apparently the exact same thing happened in that game?
Players thought the dungeons were SO hard and impossible and you had to have the exact right spec and group composition to complete anything.... until a few months in people kind of "figured it out" and a lot more builds and variety were successful and the content went on "farm" status.
GW2 is still quite new - they've spent very little time/resources on updates and tweaks because of the fires they've had to put out with the Trading Post and Account Security and exploits etc. etc. they've barely touched anything in terms of balance and difficulty.
Few class tweaks here and there, but nothing major yet.
If it's too hard now, wait a while or spend the time to figure it out.
Thankfully there is no sub so you can leave and come back or since there is a lot to do in this game you can play sPvP or WvW or farm open world stuff like Orr DE chains.
Or you can craft legendaries... lots to do - don't pigeon hole yourself people.
SO SO SO many instances of impossibly hard poorly balanced content at "end game" at launch of just about every MMO and a lot of their expansions/content updates.
Their will always and has always been a "top 10%" class of players capable of doing even the content the majority finds "impossible" and you know what happens?
Stuff get's nerfed, the 10% complain and the 90% rejoice. Such is life, such is MMO.
Originally posted by ShakyMo How many people are playing gw2 to grind dungeons though, I bet its a much smaller % of players than say "superwowclone5: with new cool gimick"
Unfortunately, you kind of have to do a certain amount of dungeon grinding @ 80, if you want some of the exotics, or if you want to craft one of the legendary weapons.
They're aparently working on a patch right now to reduce the amount of grind needed for dungeon tokens, atm, which is pretty nice.
I know a lot of people are trying to run dungeons, but since the last patch there haven't been as many PUGs, because of the amount of hysteria over the dungeon tweaks.
I think the biggest problem isn't that the dungeons are hard, it's that the learning curve is very steep.
The game starts out with AC at L30, which is (arguably) one of the hardest dungeons. The game throws you into the deep end with dungeons and tells you to sink or swim.
Don't get me wrong, I love the dungeons, I don't mind the death and trial&error part of just figuring it out and finally coming out on top - that, to me, is the most fun part of it. But I can see where a lot of people are looking for "starter dungeon", and thinking it will be something like Deadmines.
Gear helps, but isn't the end all beat all. A group of L30's are going to have vastly different gear than a group of L80's running AC, for instance, but I would expect that both groups should eventually be able to beat the instance. I would expect the L30's to struggle a lot more though, and I don't know exactly how the downleveling affects your gear stats to compare L80 gear (once downleveled) to L30.
The biggest keys I have found are: focused fire, dodging, using evasive skills (blinds/aegis/cripples/protection/binds/pushbacks), self-healing/survivability, and condition removal. Dungeons don't have to be a zergfest, but if you get stuck you can brute force your way through a bottleneck (at some gear-repair expense).
One fight in particular sticks out - Brangoire in TA. This fight, first time, we died. A lot. The mechanic spawns a lot of adds, and a lot of positional damage. It took us nearly 20 minutes to get past this boss. Second time through (different group), we had a bit of a different strategy. We still died some, but was much smoother. My third run through - no deaths at all (not to say we didn't revive a person or two, but no one blacked out). We had figured out one strategy to effectively deal with the encounter.
My point being - there are strategies, it's more than tank and spank, and you just need to figure it out. The trash pulls aren't there just to slow you down, they are part of the dungeon, and they are designed to be challenging in their own way. Each "trash" pull is a mini encounter in it's own right, and yes, some of them are as challenging as boss encounters.
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Not to mention he derailed the thread
thats why we cant find skilled players anymore in wow. thats why not even 10% of the players cant complete raids in hc mode. all skilled players are in gw2 anymore ! pls come and help us sometime. give us your lights and teach us the right way.
if you want the cruel reality: dungeons in gw2 SUCKS big time. either it concerns mechanics, loot or whatever, they just suck. i have played eq1-2 / wow / rift / swtor / warr and mmo's in general more than 12 years. but man, this is the worst dungeons i ever met in a game. i dont say that the game sucks, but dungeons sure do!
I did the Sorrow's Embrace dungeon yesterday. What sucks to me is the fact that there's no sense of real loss since the dungeon doors don't close. Basically, there's no such thing as getting wiped by a boss, if you have one person alive you can still come back and finish the fight with the boss. Apart from that, the dungeons are alright if you know what you're doing.
For sorrow's embrace all you need is for every class that comes to the dungeon to bring something that can be used to defend against projectiles and you'll have an easy time in the dungeon but getting wiped there doesn't feel like a real loss at all.
This is not a game.
I have an entire build/setup focused on blind and vulnerability - blind to keep me alive and vulnerability to make them dead.
You can't just stack power and stack HP/defense and hope you can survive in GW2, it's taken me a while to REALLY just "start" to understand how it all works.
Between dodge, blind (which is pretty much a block) and block and buffs like protection and regeneration and debuffs like burning and vulnerability... and utilities/traits to help me manage conditions on myself, I am pretty much untouchable in PvE.
But yeah, Fire and Poison fields especially are amazing amounts of damage most players just ignore or are oblivious too. Light fields are great for protection/cleansing team skills.
Snares and immobilized and slows and wards are invaluable for the 3-4 seconds you can keep a mob in check until your next dodge/blind/block etc. is available.
I think SO many people are just so used to having healers cover for their mistakes.
Whoever said it earlier was right - dedicated healers and tanks are really just for covering the mistakes of bad DPS players, and of course unavoidable damage (dmg auras, mass AoE's etc.) but that is a much different school of thought for encounter design.
I think people who played Tanks/Healers in other MMOs, especially older MMOs where tanking/healing was actually challenging and took skill - those people are picking up how to play GW2 dungeons a whole lot better because they are used to having responsibility and people rely'ing on them.
I bet it's all the DPS players who never tanked/healed or only ever tank/healed during the "easy" cycles of tank/healing in modern MMOs (like WoW during WOTLK or now with zero-threat)
Sounds like you get it.
And you're not wrong about your DPS player assessment. I've been running a lot of newer players through dungeons lately, and so far all the ones that have been raging have been DPS-heavy. Usually the first thing I ask when someone complains about getting 1-2 shotted in a dungeon is 'how much health do you have?'. The vast majority of the time the person has less than half the HP of the rest of us, because they are wearing only power / precision gear, and have absolutely zero vitality built into their character. The other few times, it basically came down to someone not understanding a mechanic, or bringing zero defensive skills to a fight that called for them (ie. no condition removal, reflection, or invuln/block).
That said, the majority of the people I've PUGed with, once we get through the dungeon, leave with a much better understanding of the mechanics and seem to enjoy them a whole lot more as a result. Instead of focusing on how big their numbers can get, they start asking the right questions like ('would these skills work against boss 'X'?, or 'which defensive skills would work better for each path', etc.)
I usually enjoy your posts so don't take this the wrong way... but that is such a terrible generalization of DPS classes that is simply not true. I've played a healer, tank, or DPS in high end rading and to say the skill is only required in the first to is beyond misguided. It leaves me believing you haven't actually done it yourself and are just repeating what you hear on forums.
Oh I know there are very good DPS players out there who break the mold and provide a hell of a lot to their groups beyond just their bragging about damage meters.
I've been raiding/high-end PvE since 2004 (only started raiding in Vanilla WoW, not before) and spent 75% of the time between then and now either tanking or healing.
But it is just REALLY, REALLY easy to make a comparison between the "usual" DPS-tards in WoW post-BC and the kind of complaints and complete lack of strategy and skill people are showing in regards to GW2 dungeons.
I am 100% sure one of the really good DPS players from other MMOs would/can/do "get" the GW2 skill set as well as tanks/healers from those same games.
Generalizations are just that - generalized.
He's not wrong though.
And he's not saying that all DPS players are like this, but rather the majority of people who are making such complaints appear to be DPS focused players. Out of all the people I've met (in game) that have complained about dungeon difficulty, zerging, & the amount of dying not matching the rewards, literally all of them have been DPS heavy players with little-no vitality built into their characters.
Everyone I've played with who has either a balanced build, a support build, or is proactive enough to change up their skills as needed for a fight, seems to do just fine during dungeon runs. They may die a couple times, but it's not a big deal & they learn from it.
https://ashesofcreation.com/r/Y4U3PQCASUPJ5SED
Glass cannons really have no place in GW2.
If the OP would like to post his trait build and what weapons he is using for his profession as well as how they are gearing we could probably offer a LOT of help.
I mean... GW2 explorable dungeons aren't exactly rocket science when it comes to strategy. Let's be real here. People are struggling now because they're new and its a new design.
This ^
Both in PvE and PvE glass cannons are the first to get killed. One thing a lot of people don't seem to know is that part of the mob AI factors in max health as well as damage output when determining aggro. The reason why glass cannons tend to die first in dungeons, is because they fit both parameters insanely well. They tend to hit significantly harder than everyone else, but also the mobs see that they barely have any HP. Basically an easy kill.
Furthermore, by pulling back just a little bit on the power/precision, and trading that for some vit, you gain a lot more defense without sacrificing much offense. Basically after a certain threshhold of damage, you get diminishing returns, and it makes more sense to get more health / toughness instead.
I understand.
I am more so talking about small group content in games such as WoW - the most popular western MMO and one in which the most people have some familiarity.
In the 5-man dungeon content in WoW it has been very, very, very skewed towards the majority of the difficulty being in the tank/heal legs of the Holy Trinity since BC really - WotLK was a joke and in Cata they made tanking and healing (especially healing) harder - but didn't do too much to make DPS role more challenging except requiring dps to CC for the first like 2 months of the expansion.
However on the RAID side of things (again in WoW, the most familiar/popular MMO in the West) there have been many examples where the Tanks/Healers have easy mode whack a mole and DPS has had to perform miracles to win the fight.
So I agree with you.
But my original point is still valid I feel, as I think it is a fair hypothesis to consider that many of the people having "real" problems in GW2 dungeons are perhaps the very same players that are used to or "grew up" on the easy-mode DPS days of WoW.
Haha that probably is more true than many here would like to admit.
Strategies will adjust and more and more builds will become "viable" as time goes on.
No, they aren't.
It's a skill based game, centered around builds. If you build your character around putting all your eggs in 1 basket, it's kind of silly to then turn around and blame the game for your character having weakness'.
Each class has multiple tools to deal w/ any number of situations. What most glass cannon players are doing, is ignoring all those tools, in favor of having the biggest numbers they can get. That's fine, and I've seen certain exceptions ingame where that type of build can work, but you have to be extremely careful about how you play with such a setup. You're basically making a concious choice to ignore all the defensive capabilities offered to your character.
Think of things from a PvP perspective. If someone is running around in PvP hitting insanely hard, but as soon as they're attacked they lose half their health, who do you think you'd focus on killing first? Him? Or the other character hitting decently hard, but taking hits like a champ? Personally I'd kill the easier targets first. Mobs work the exact same way.
It's not pigeon holding. It's common sense. And they took some of that from PvP and built it into the PvE AI. You can still spec heavily into damage, but if you ignore all forms of survivability, then you really only have yourself to blame if someone or something exploits that weakness.
You give me faith that not all GW2 players are crazed zealots with hooded masks and torches.
No those would be Teabillies you are thinking of not GW2 players :P
It's called kiting, learn it, use it, it's your friend. There's plenty of effective CC in game. I play Ranger and guess what my job in dungeons is? CC and kite mobs around, mainly melee since I've got blind, etc. You're right the game's not easy mode with tank stands up front and everything wails on him while everyone else dps's it down and the healer replenishes diminishing bars.
GW1 was largely the same way with it's mission system. For vets of that game this is just par for the course.
Steam: Neph
Well I never really got into GW1 very much, but apparently the exact same thing happened in that game?
Players thought the dungeons were SO hard and impossible and you had to have the exact right spec and group composition to complete anything.... until a few months in people kind of "figured it out" and a lot more builds and variety were successful and the content went on "farm" status.
GW2 is still quite new - they've spent very little time/resources on updates and tweaks because of the fires they've had to put out with the Trading Post and Account Security and exploits etc. etc. they've barely touched anything in terms of balance and difficulty.
Few class tweaks here and there, but nothing major yet.
If it's too hard now, wait a while or spend the time to figure it out.
Thankfully there is no sub so you can leave and come back or since there is a lot to do in this game you can play sPvP or WvW or farm open world stuff like Orr DE chains.
Or you can craft legendaries... lots to do - don't pigeon hole yourself people.
SO SO SO many instances of impossibly hard poorly balanced content at "end game" at launch of just about every MMO and a lot of their expansions/content updates.
Their will always and has always been a "top 10%" class of players capable of doing even the content the majority finds "impossible" and you know what happens?
Stuff get's nerfed, the 10% complain and the 90% rejoice. Such is life, such is MMO.
Welcome to the MMORPG genre
Unfortunately, you kind of have to do a certain amount of dungeon grinding @ 80, if you want some of the exotics, or if you want to craft one of the legendary weapons.
They're aparently working on a patch right now to reduce the amount of grind needed for dungeon tokens, atm, which is pretty nice.
I know a lot of people are trying to run dungeons, but since the last patch there haven't been as many PUGs, because of the amount of hysteria over the dungeon tweaks.
I think the biggest problem isn't that the dungeons are hard, it's that the learning curve is very steep.
The game starts out with AC at L30, which is (arguably) one of the hardest dungeons. The game throws you into the deep end with dungeons and tells you to sink or swim.
Don't get me wrong, I love the dungeons, I don't mind the death and trial&error part of just figuring it out and finally coming out on top - that, to me, is the most fun part of it. But I can see where a lot of people are looking for "starter dungeon", and thinking it will be something like Deadmines.
Gear helps, but isn't the end all beat all. A group of L30's are going to have vastly different gear than a group of L80's running AC, for instance, but I would expect that both groups should eventually be able to beat the instance. I would expect the L30's to struggle a lot more though, and I don't know exactly how the downleveling affects your gear stats to compare L80 gear (once downleveled) to L30.
The biggest keys I have found are: focused fire, dodging, using evasive skills (blinds/aegis/cripples/protection/binds/pushbacks), self-healing/survivability, and condition removal. Dungeons don't have to be a zergfest, but if you get stuck you can brute force your way through a bottleneck (at some gear-repair expense).
One fight in particular sticks out - Brangoire in TA. This fight, first time, we died. A lot. The mechanic spawns a lot of adds, and a lot of positional damage. It took us nearly 20 minutes to get past this boss. Second time through (different group), we had a bit of a different strategy. We still died some, but was much smoother. My third run through - no deaths at all (not to say we didn't revive a person or two, but no one blacked out). We had figured out one strategy to effectively deal with the encounter.
My point being - there are strategies, it's more than tank and spank, and you just need to figure it out. The trash pulls aren't there just to slow you down, they are part of the dungeon, and they are designed to be challenging in their own way. Each "trash" pull is a mini encounter in it's own right, and yes, some of them are as challenging as boss encounters.