4661

On the subject of 5-mans…are there any general tips for running the these? Some friends and I ran our second 5-man last night, Caudecus’ Manor - Story. We all ran Ascalon Catacombs - Story a month or so and it was very ugly. We died, all the time. This was ok, I said. AC is known for being crazy hard in some spots. I was looking forward to running CM - Story last night because I’d read it was much, much easier, especially once you got past the first boss. This was not the case for us.

It seemed like every pull, both trash and bosses, were basically graveyard zergs. I think the ambush after the first boss took us 10 minutes to clear with everyone running back multiple times. Simple three pulls were similarly deadly. And don’t even get me started on the dog packs. It wasn’t until the very end, maybe the last two pulls including the last boss encounter, that we started to feel a little bit more in control, but those also felt easier.

I can’t help feel that we’re missing something. We’re generally not noobs. We’ve all played WoW together for years, and beaten almost all the most difficult content with each other. We spent time trying to coordinate things in Vent. We looked for traits and abilities that would help the group. We tried pulling stuff back and through choke points. We set assist targets. We made sure to repair. We weren’t trying to force the tank/healer/dps trinity into the game. We tried using control abilities.

In the end, we still felt like there was something colossal that we must be missing, something fundamental. I know GW2 is not WoW, and I know that, in general, 5-mans are hard. But it doesn’t feel right that we should have to graveyard zerg every fight. We still have fun playing together, but it isn’t fun to get two-shot while at the same time watching enemy health bars go. Down. Very. Slowly.

So help me seasoned 5-man veterans. What am I missing?

4662

CM got buffed up quite a bit about a month ago - it went from being trivially easy to just being a moderate challenge. That said, a group of us in BFF nearly 4-man’d the thing - we got to the second-to-last fight but just couldn’t deal with the snipers in the trees and had to pull in a fifth to finish it out.

It’s really hard for me to diagnose what’s wrong based on your description, because while I could easily buy that Explorable modes were giving you guys trouble in spite of the degree of coordination and thought you’re putting into it, the Story modes honestly are pretty easy - at best I might say the fights are tedious because you aren’t realistically going to lose but some enemies have very long health bars you have to wear down.

You may very well be missing something fundamental. Are you guys going out of your way to Rally each other if you get downed? Are you taking abilities that help with Rallying? Are people evading attacks smartly and staying mobile? Most dungeon mobs hit like trucks but have very simple attacks that you can just avoid getting hit by.

4663

I definitely figured this would be hard to diagnose. To be honest, it’s hard to say what exactly everyone is doing at times because I’m busy trying not to get splatted myself.

Are you guys going out of your way to Rally each other if you get downed?

Depends on what you mean. Are we collapsing on a downed player as a group to revive them? No. If someone is near a downed person, do they try to bring them up? I think we started doing this, but it ended up taking so long, that it felt like it was better to keep dpsing/moving and let them run back.

What kind of abilities help with rallying? I’m an engineer, and I know I have one elixir that I can throw which is supposed to bring someone backup up, but it’s on a fairly long cooldown, and generally isn’t useful otherwise.

Are people evading attacks smartly and staying mobile? Most dungeon mobs hit like trucks but have very simple attacks that you can just avoid getting hit by.

I want to say yes, but it’s something I can bring up again. I know I am dodging/kiting whenever something gets near. If a ranged mob is on me, I usually try to find cover, but sometimes it takes a hit or two for me to notice the damage, and then I’m not able to scramble before I’m down.

Thanks for the info about CM being buffed recently. That at least makes me feel slightly better about how we did last night. When you say you 4-manned it, are you doing it at 80 and geared, or are you <80? Our group had two 80s, a couple low 40s, and myself at around 56. I know level technically doesn’t matter because of downleveling, but an 80 that’s well-geared downlevels better than a 56 in just blues they collected over the last few levels.

4664

It takes too long only if they get fully killed. If they’re just in the downed state where they can still be using their downed abilities it should only take 3-5 seconds to Rally them. You don’t take equipment damage if you don’t get killed, and you’re not graveyard zerging if you’re using Rallies properly.

My main is an Engineer. I have that elixir equipped almost 90% of the time that I’m in a dungeon. The ability to just toss down a free Rally on a teammate that maybe you can’t get to as easily is an awesome, awesome ability. The cooldown generally just means you can only use it once per fight - which should be more than plenty.

Warriors also have an Elite skill that drops a banner that Rallies nearby downed folks. I’m pretty sure Guardian and Elementalist have some abilities that do this too but can’t name them off the top of my head.

I think we had 2 level 80s and 2 50-60ish folks. Not sure what server you’re on, but you could try getting someone experienced outside your group to do a run with you and maybe they could give some pointers if you’re doing anything really weird.

4665

Mesmers have a non-elite 15-second res, which goes permanent if you kill something, too. I’m not sure how useful it would be in dungeons (I’ve got one to do next time I get a chance to play), but if there are lots of weakish foes it seems like it would be really handy.

4666

I’ve done a fair number of dungeons in GW2.

The ambush is brutal. I don’t know that I’ve ever done that and NOT died like 2 or 3 times (as a cloth wearer). I really don’t know how you do that without a lot of dying, to be honest.

And I haven’t done CM story since it was buffed, but prior to that it was a bunch of simple tank and spank encounters.

I can’t help feel that we’re missing something. We’re generally not noobs. We’ve all played WoW together for years, and beaten almost all the most difficult content with each other. We spent time trying to coordinate things in Vent. We looked for traits and abilities that would help the group. We tried pulling stuff back and through choke points. We set assist targets. We made sure to repair. We weren’t trying to force the tank/healer/dps trinity into the game. We tried using control abilities.

In the end, we still felt like there was something colossal that we must be missing, something fundamental. I know GW2 is not WoW, and I know that, in general, 5-mans are hard. But it doesn’t feel right that we should have to graveyard zerg every fight. We still have fun playing together, but it isn’t fun to get two-shot while at the same time watching enemy health bars go. Down. Very. Slowly.

So help me seasoned 5-man veterans. What am I missing?
There’s gear, there’s skills, and there’s techniques.

Gear: I’ve seen analysis as to what gear people should use, and the conclusion was you had the most effective hitpoints with Knight’s gear. Therefore I am in all Knight’s gear with Beryl Orbs in the upgrade slots. My jewelery is a mix of Knight’s and Berserker’s gear. At 80 I have about 1500 toughness. It helps me a lot in doing any kind of up close fighting (and it keeps me up pretty well in WvW also). If people have poor gear, or if they’re geared for glass cannon types of builds, they’re going to die a lot.

Skills: As a Mesmer, I tend to use utility skills like feedback (bubble on ranged mobs), Blink (quick teleport/anti stun), Null Field (get rid of conditions), Phantasmal Disenchanter (removes conditions) and Phantasmal Defender (absorbs damage) and the like in dungeons - most of the abilities I use are defensive in origin. And there are times when I need to change it up and switch things around - don’t be afraid to change up your skills if a strategy is not working.

Techniques: I’ve found that keeping alive should be priority #1. As they say, dead = 0 dps. Reviving downed teammates is high priority (though not at the cost of your own life). Be ready to dodge. If you’re downed, run back ASAP. Keep your eye peeled for red circles, because they’re everywhere. Use knockbacks, stuns, knockdowns when you can. Since there’s no real aggro management (to my knowledge) when you do get aggro, you need to run around and make sure you survive until the mob turns his attention elsewhere.

Smart target calling is a must. You have to know which mobs should be burned down first, and you need to focus fire on them.

…

Even after all that, sometimes you still die a fair bit, though. But I’d say that most of the time I will die 0 to 2 times in a dungeon (and that’s running everything from CM through CoE - have not been to Arah yet). Part of it is all the above. Part of it is knowing what’s coming, and when you should be moving and when you can stand still. Knowing what’s most important to kill and what you should ignore.

4667

Since you’ve been doing a bunch of dungeons, what is the usual pattern for a tough encounter as handled by a skilled team? What little I’ve seen, from people like me not experienced with GW2, is very chaotic.

Since there’s no real tanking, someone aggros the serious mob or mobs, and then runs around with their hair on fire while everyone else either eliminates minions or picks away at the pursuing bosses. Eventually the boss or bosses switch aggro, and it’s someone else’s turn to run around like a fool. What with all the running, especially in narrow corridors, it’s easy to get your camera spun off somewhere weird, or to take a wrong turn and pull a nearby group into the fight.

Of course, there are various kinds of aggro switching, slow, root, mezz and other little things that get thrown in along the way, but they don’t seem to last long enough to allow for anything resembling a controlled situation.

I find this rather dissatisfying. Not that having a quasi-invulnerable tank backed up by a super-powerful healer is all that much fun either, but this chaos is just silly.

4668

I really, really do not like dungeons in this game. That said, I’ve run a fair number, as some of my friends really wanted certain gear sets.

The game assumes people are going to be downed, and that you’re going to revive them. Dead players should probably be ignored, but downed players should be a priority. You have to be smart about it though, as enemies will still beat the crap out of downed players, and you don’t want to get yourself killed while trying to rez them, or pull attacks onto them that are going to speed their demise. The rez elites and such are great, because you don’t have to worry about the above.

Overall, I find the dungeons are a mess because while they made good on their promise to remove the trinity, they didn’t really take the next required step to actually replace it with anything. This leads to some fights really more about bullshit than anything else. If the AI decides it absolutely must down a particular person, then kill them while they’re downed, depending on the class that’s just going to be what happens. Enjoy the repair bill. Enjoy the run back. Other times, a fight may be entirely trivial. Very often, certain classes have abilities that completely negate the mechanics of a fight, and turn an absolute dick grind of a fight into a joke where no one takes any real damage.

Let’s also talk about how dungeons are in playable zones, but their level has NOTHING to do with the zone. So, recruiting in the dungeon’s zone is a waste of time, and while you’re leveling you encounter these dungeons that are of zero use to you. WTF.

Or how the rewards are basically crap (they’re addressing this, hopefully).

Or how we’re back in the bad old days of spamming chat for groups. Solicitation is not socialization.

While we’re on the topic of dungeons, why aren’t all the story modes easy, training wheel things that actually familiarize people with WTF they’re supposed to be doing?

TLDR; The dungeons are a mess, but you really need to be reviving downed players because the system expects players to be downed.

4669

On my way to level 80 I did 1 dungeon… the first one (AC, 30)… and it was enough to turn me off the premise entirely.

If this wasn’t a f2p game It would probably start bombing by now for lack of a LFG dungeon system.

4670

It doesnt really matter what server he’s on. Invite him to your group and zone into the instance and he will zone into the same instance with you. A little known feature.

4671

That’s what anet claimed before the game released but their crappy beta test doesn’t appear to have revealed this problem. Actually all your complaints seem to stem from inadequate testing. But who would have predicted that one weekend per month wouldn’t be sufficient to reveal these problems. It’s sad that beta tests have turned into carefully restricted sneak previews but that’s the way the market seems to have trended. And before someone points out that they had an internal beta test running with a smaller group, isn’t it obvious that their beta was too damn small to reveal any of these problems? Or maybe they just don’t see them as problems.

4672

No doubt if this game was subscription it would be giving SWToR a run for it’s money in the customers out the door department.

4673

Right, yeah. GW2 has all of SWTOR’s problems.

Wait, what? That’s fucking retarded.

4674

Except that is not what Phred said - nice strawman. His specific point that if GW2 was subscription based it would be experiencing player loss similar to SWTOR is debatable, but hardly “fucking retarded.”

4675

Adding a monthly subscription to a good game would not make it a bad game. GW2 indeed has some issues but it is no SWTOR by any stretch of the imagination.

4676

I’ve also run a fair number of dungeons (and I am doing them all again now on my lvl 78 alt) and I really really like dungeons in this game, except for a few things that could be improved. Namely oversized health bars on some of the bosses and consistently not exciting loot. And the LFG tool, of course.

It’s kind of strange seeing some of the comments from someone who supposedly has experience with dungeons.

The game assumes people are going to be downed, and that you’re going to revive them. Dead players should probably be ignored, but downed players should be a priority. You have to be smart about it though, as enemies will still beat the crap out of downed players, and you don’t want to get yourself killed while trying to rez them, or pull attacks onto them that are going to speed their demise. The rez elites and such are great, because you don’t have to worry about the above.

Personally, I think rez abilities are a waste of skill slots. I honestly don’t remember one being used in any of my runs ever. Maybe, if you have a couple of very inexperienced group members that go down all the time but even then IMO there are better skills to take into a fight. As Reldan mentioned, it takes only 3-5 seconds and (sometimes) some coordinated effort to rez a downed (not killed!) player and dedicating a skill slot (especially on multiple players) to cut that time seems like a waste and will reduce your group’s overall effectiveness/flexibility.

I guess, you can say “the game assumes people are going to be downed” because downed state is a part of the game, same as you could say the game assumes people will get hit, healed, CC’ed, they will dodge, use CC and so on. However, it doesn’t mean that the game is built in a way to make downed state unavoidable. Sure, sometimes you just get caught in a bad spot and you go down but most of the time it’s due to some mistake(s) made by a group or an individual.

Downed state is expected, recoverable and avoidable. Most people will get downed a few times during a run. It’s just a part of the game you work with. This doesn’t apply to full deaths though. The game allows to graveyard rush most of its encounters and IMO this mechanic is the “training wheels” that allow people to complete dungeons even when they are still learning the game. If your groupmates are dying more than 1 or 2 times in a dungeon, they (or maybe your group in general) are doing something wrong. :)

Overall, I find the dungeons are a mess because while they made good on their promise to remove the trinity, they didn’t really take the next required step to actually replace it with anything.

They did replace the “tank, heal, dps” class-based trinity with the “damage, control, support” player-based trinity. This means that instead of requiring groups to have certain classes to fulfill those old roles, GW2 requires groups to have all players to fulfill the new roles. “GW2 removed the trinity” does not mean your group can go all dps. If all of your group members don’t do all of the above “damage, control, support”, you are not going to be successful.

In old trinity, a player could say, “I am dps, it’s not my role to cleanse” or “I am a tank, it’s not my role to buff” or “I am a healer, it’s not my role to CC”. It won’t work in GW2. Everyone is supposed to do everything they can to help the group. And if the group is lacking in certain areas, players are expected to switch around their skills and/or Major traits to compensate.

This leads to some fights really more about bullshit than anything else. If the AI decides it absolutely must down a particular person, then kill them while they’re downed, depending on the class that’s just going to be what happens. Enjoy the repair bill. Enjoy the run back.

Only if the rest of your group thinks all they have to do is dps.

If everyone is using their available CC, buffs, debuffs, heals, etc. Cripple, knockdown, daze, immobilize the melee AI, all kinds of reflection skills for the ranged AI, aegis, protection, regeneration, swiftness on the friendly. And so on.

Survival of every group member is a task for everyone in the group. Not just tank and healer as in old trinity.

Let’s also talk about how dungeons are in playable zones, but their level has NOTHING to do with the zone. So, recruiting in the dungeon’s zone is a waste of time, and while you’re leveling you encounter these dungeons that are of zero use to you. WTF.

What difference does it make where the dungeon is? You are not supposed to do your recruiting in the dungeon’s zone anyway, there are always multiple zones for any given level range, plus who says people are supposed to be in a certain level range to do a dungeon? Lots of lvl 40-80 people want to do AC, how are you going to get them if you want to do your recruiting in a “level appropriate” (30-40?) AC zone.

You do your recruiting in LA.

Or how the rewards are basically crap (they’re addressing this, hopefully).

Or how we’re back in the bad old days of spamming chat for groups. Solicitation is not socialization.

Yeah, these two are disappointing and I hope they fix them soon.

While we’re on the topic of dungeons, why aren’t all the story modes easy, training wheel things that actually familiarize people with WTF they’re supposed to be doing?

Every single MMO has these arguments. Difficulty is highly subjective. Even in this very thread some people said story modes are easy and some said they are extremely hard.

The rest of the game is easy. Why people can’t familiarize themselves there? Why can’t dungeons be challenges that test players on what they learned in the “open world”?

TLDR; The dungeons are a mess, but you really need to be reviving downed players because the system expects players to be downed.

Hehe, here is my TLDR then. :) The dungeons are great but you really need to make sure your entire group helps everyone NOT to get downed as the system allows well coordinated players to complete a dungeon with minimum “downs” and zero deaths.

As for the gear, it’s quite important but not overly so. Having power/toughness/vitality gear should certainly help less experienced players to survive a bit longer. However, gear will not magically allow people to tank dungeon mobs - all you get is maybe 1-2-3 extra hits before you go down.

4677

The stuff that you quoted - location of the dungeons, quality of the loot, difficulty of the dungeons and lack of an LFG tool - not only highly subjective but also has nothing to do with their beta test process. They are all design decisions.

4678

SWTOR bled players because of all the problems it has. GW2 does not have those problems. It’s not a strawman.

Given that SWTOR beats GW2 in story and literally nothing else (it fails in performance, visuals, combat, UI, innovation, PVP, quest structure, etc etc) it was a really dumb comment to make. GW2 is a success of great design. SWTOR is, well…

4679

Even so it could still have been a massive failure if subscription based, there seems very little appetite for subscription models outside of WoW and EvE these days.

4680

Hehe, that’s a great way to do things. Do 1 dungeon (out of pretty much 33) while leveling up, when everyone is learning the game and really has no experience with it and then write all dungeons off completely. :)

To be honest, my first AC run I also was like “WTF was that?”. It took a few more runs for things to start clicking. And IMO AC is the least interesting dungeon in the game.

Lack of an LFG tool is certainly discouraging but is hardly a reason for a game to start “bombing”, let’s not be overdramatic here. :)

It probably depends on the server but, on EBay, it took me maybe 5 minutes of chatting in LA to get groups going for any of the dungeons I did in the last 2 weeks. It would be nice to cut off those 5 minutes and all that chatting with an LFG tool but it’s certainly doable without it - groups are forming up in LA all the time.

At the very least, ANet needs to come up with a way to form groups “across servers”. As of now, you can invite people from other servers if you already know them (from your friend list or guild list) but there is no way to form a PUG between servers.