TTODewbackPuts the drawl in ya'llI think I'm in HellRegistered Userregular
Someone just explained to me where to find the gates to get other starting zones. I wish I knew this before I found myself questing against mobs 5 levels above me. I was also told to hit 100% map completion (I had missed the Vista inside the cave of the human starting area) because the rewards are awesome.
The birds aren't a condition. If you want to see it, its the Ranger Warhorn 4 skill. A white damage DoT.
It basically is a flurry attack that you can't get away from.
So it needs to be prevented instead of removed. In that case people could time things that make the boss miss, or trigger aegis on teammates to prevent it. The boss in explorable AC, that has the AOE pull and then whirlwind is similar in that you have to prevent it or it gets bad. I give stability to the group when I see his wind up. If that is on cooldown, I give the group aegis which blocks it. If that is on cooldown I use "save yourself" which removes all conditions from team mates. If that is on cooldown I do an AOE heal and give 33% damage reduction to group. Obviously not all of this is going to be on cooldown, but just showing how one class can have multiple tools to support the entire group.
Does the boss spam the thing every 10 seconds? I could see it being harder if he casted it less than every 10 sec, which would then mean two people need to devise a way to prevent it hitting. Or maybe get clever and have a guardian be the only person close enough to recieve it, and then just #4 staff though it with the right traits.
I'll check that out when I get home from work, thanks @Dranyth
And thanks again folks, this is very good feedback to have. I think I have indeed been trying to play my thief too much like I play my warrior. Too easy to get into that "I can do it all" mode of thinking.
Also remember you have two weapons. For thieves, the shortbow is civilization.
With a shortbow in your off-set you can swap: cripple + free backward dodge, Lay a poison cloud, long range shadow step, AoE damage.
I run pistol/pistol with a shortbow off-set. I use the pistols as my main damage, but if things go sideways I swap and start moving. If your preferred weapon set up doesn't provide something, make sure your off-set does.
You're only locked out of swapping back for...what 15 seconds or something? It's not long enough to matter, but it's important to be able to survive.
Which brings us back to AC: the AC 'vanity' gear looks terrible and absolutely looks like a low level set that is meant to be obtained by low levels- not something restricted only to level 80's in full exotics.
Opinions!
I rather like the medium AC skins.
Huggles on
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BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
The AC gear is low level. It's exotic level 60 gear!
CM gear is 70!
...and of course, as always, Kill Hitler.
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DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
Something I have noticed in this game is that even in group play it is still almost entirely single player. You build up your character for what you need to survive which may help out the group but in the end its your responsibility to dodge, remove conditions, heal yourself, etc etc. In the process of the other 4 people doing the same thing you might recieve additional condition removals or secondary healing but it is not much different than world based encounters just a bit more "focused" because you have to go in with only 4 other people.
Edit: I live in Pug world as I only have a couple of friends that play and they are very underleveled so your experience may vary.
See this is the problem. When you walk into a dungeon you need to drop the skills that you usually use to keep you going and switch to stuff that helps the GROUP.
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HalfmexI mock your value systemYou also appear foolish in the eyes of othersRegistered Userregular
I'll check that out when I get home from work, thanks @Dranyth
And thanks again folks, this is very good feedback to have. I think I have indeed been trying to play my thief too much like I play my warrior. Too easy to get into that "I can do it all" mode of thinking.
Also remember you have two weapons. For thieves, the shortbow is civilization.
With a shortbow in your off-set you can swap: cripple + free backward dodge, Lay a poison cloud, long range shadow step, AoE damage.
I run pistol/pistol with a shortbow off-set. I use the pistols as my main damage, but if things go sideways I swap and start moving. If your preferred weapon set up doesn't provide something, make sure your off-set does.
You're only locked out of swapping back for...what 15 seconds or something? It's not long enough to matter, but it's important to be able to survive.
Oh yes, I live off my shortbow against groups. Heck it's the only reason I was able to beat that damned Destroyer Queen. I'm also using the caltrop on dodge trait as that's a huge help with getaway.
Question re: traps, do they only affect the first mob that triggers them or any mob who enters the affected area thereafter (excluding the 'summon thief' trap as I'm sure that would only trigger the one time)?
Something I have noticed in this game is that even in group play it is still almost entirely single player. You build up your character for what you need to survive which may help out the group but in the end its your responsibility to dodge, remove conditions, heal yourself, etc etc. In the process of the other 4 people doing the same thing you might recieve additional condition removals or secondary healing but it is not much different than world based encounters just a bit more "focused" because you have to go in with only 4 other people.
Edit: I live in Pug world as I only have a couple of friends that play and they are very underleveled so your experience may vary.
See this is the problem. When you walk into a dungeon you need to drop the skills that you usually use to keep you going and switch to stuff that helps the GROUP.
That was implied in my post. Going in as a warrior with all signets is horrible and I would never do so. And so I swap to the AoE based build for boons and condition removers. I am sorry that wasnt clear but yes even with that it is your responsibility to keep yourself alive first and foremost and send out help to the group when you can.
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TTODewbackPuts the drawl in ya'llI think I'm in HellRegistered Userregular
I like how 2-Handed Maces are HULK SMASH-ariffic. I feel powerful using them.
Bless your heart.
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Dr. ChaosPost nuclear nuisanceRegistered Userregular
I don't mind the dungeon bosses having alot of HP but damn, they really need to nerf the amount of damage in these places.
It's a wee bit ridiculous. Even the smallest human error seems to fuck us over in these places with no opportunities to recover from mistakes.
Story mode way way harder than it should be for the intended target: random group of level 30's trying AC story run into the one of the hardest dungeons in the game. This absolutely needs to be easily puggable given the atrociously bad rewards (one ugly helm with terrible stats). The rewards of doing AC story are about equivalent to me soloing two veteran monsters and taking the chests behind them. So the difficulty needs to be in line with that. It's not.
What...? How is it one of the hardest dungeons? What is so hard about AC? I still have no friggen idea what people are talking about. I AM BAD AT VIDEO GAMES. Seriously, I'm not good at them. People talk about playing games on hard because the normal is too easy and I think "I had trouble with normal". My gf plays games on easy. Neither one of us finds AC story difficult. I mentioned to her last night that people think it's hard and she gave this look and said "What? how?".
Something I have noticed in this game is that even in group play it is still almost entirely single player. You build up your character for what you need to survive which may help out the group but in the end its your responsibility to dodge, remove conditions, heal yourself, etc etc. In the process of the other 4 people doing the same thing you might recieve additional condition removals or secondary healing but it is not much different than world based encounters just a bit more "focused" because you have to go in with only 4 other people.
Edit: I live in Pug world as I only have a couple of friends that play and they are very underleveled so your experience may vary.
I pug all the time, my guardian build is entirely group focused. I remove conditions, give boons, mass heal, crowd control, mitigate buff, etc.
I'm happy to have a few people in a group who are entirely DPS focused, as long as they still back off if they need more than their self heal or something.
And its not just guardians, most classes can do the same stuff, I hear rangers give some pretty good support/healing as well.
There are indeed a few classes that might need some buffing, like elementalist has a lot of complaints. But having the play style in group the same as solo is just going to make a crappy group.
I'm still pretty low level; I have two level 20 characters and that's about it. So, most of the stuff I have to say is dumb and fluffy. Namely...
* Meattoberfest is awesome, why isn't this a real holiday
* it should be a real holiday
* I wish there was some way to put the cooking skill to use in such a way that like... you could open your own little vendor shop in Lion's Arch or something. I know that such a system would be way too easily abused, and the TP is balanced the way it is for a reason, but there's something about having my own pie stand that would be awesome
* I also wish that we had a guild hall, and that in said guild hall I could leave out food items for people to just pick up and chow down on. Even better: use it as the waiting room for wuvwuv, everybody starts with nom buffs
* I am seriously tempted to start a cooking tumblr wherin I make every single thing from the cooking skill in real life. I have the skills and materials to make most of it (not bread, exactly, I'm really bad at dealing with yeasts...) and yes, I am including THIS IS HOW YOU MAKE BUTTERED TOAST. Part of me thinks it'd be a fun and nerdy way to teach people some very basic cooking skills and then work their way up to more complex things. Shame I hate carrots though
Most bosses in dungeons should eat a 25 to 50% nerf to health, varying, it would make for a much less tedious experience. If you're going to give us such boring gimmicks, we don't need to repeat that gimmick eighty times. Ten will do thanks.
Most gimmicks can easily be cheesed a smaller amount of times, they only become challenging to handle if the fight is 2-4 minutes long.
RE: dungeon nerfs. Re-read CJ's response on Reddit. The same complaints were made about DoA in GW1 when it was first released. They didn't change it, but people just got better at running it. Now DoA is regarded as one of the most enjoyable things about the game. The alpha testers were complaining about the dungeons being too easy in their current form. They are not going to nerf anything.
@Lucid_Seraph: Speaking as a grad student who can just about throw together things that won't actually kill me, do it! Also I think ANet have already said that there will be guild halls that will come after they've finished putting out all the fires. And by that I mean making anything in Orr actually work.
Story mode way way harder than it should be for the intended target: random group of level 30's trying AC story run into the one of the hardest dungeons in the game. This absolutely needs to be easily puggable given the atrociously bad rewards (one ugly helm with terrible stats). The rewards of doing AC story are about equivalent to me soloing two veteran monsters and taking the chests behind them. So the difficulty needs to be in line with that. It's not.
What...? How is it one of the hardest dungeons? What is so hard about AC? I still have no friggen idea what people are talking about. I AM BAD AT VIDEO GAMES. Seriously, I'm not good at them. People talk about playing games on hard because the normal is too easy and I think "I had trouble with normal". My gf plays games on easy. Neither one of us finds AC story difficult. I mentioned to her last night that people think it's hard and she gave this look and said "What? how?".
It is incredibly hard for a first intro into the instance world. Up to that point you have absolutely no reason to even know what a condition remover is because of what the game throws at you is easy world based stuff. You then move into a zone where you either GY zerg or have people change specs to remove conditions, realize that you can (and should) use environment objects on bosses, focus dps, dodge attacks reliably, etc etc. The first time I did the caster boss chic that condition dmgs the hell out of the group was painful with alot of "what is a condition?" from the pugs I was with.
It IS a hard step up from what is presented to the player prior. People familiar with MMOs will have an easier time but it doesnt degrade this fact.
I'll check that out when I get home from work, thanks @Dranyth
And thanks again folks, this is very good feedback to have. I think I have indeed been trying to play my thief too much like I play my warrior. Too easy to get into that "I can do it all" mode of thinking.
Also remember you have two weapons. For thieves, the shortbow is civilization.
With a shortbow in your off-set you can swap: cripple + free backward dodge, Lay a poison cloud, long range shadow step, AoE damage.
I run pistol/pistol with a shortbow off-set. I use the pistols as my main damage, but if things go sideways I swap and start moving. If your preferred weapon set up doesn't provide something, make sure your off-set does.
You're only locked out of swapping back for...what 15 seconds or something? It's not long enough to matter, but it's important to be able to survive.
Oh yes, I live off my shortbow against groups. Heck it's the only reason I was able to beat that damned Destroyer Queen. I'm also using the caltrop on dodge trait as that's a huge help with getaway.
Question re: traps, do they only affect the first mob that triggers them or any mob who enters the affected area thereafter (excluding the 'summon thief' trap as I'm sure that would only trigger the one time)?
I ran a trap build in my 40's, haven't tried it since I hit 80...but it's viable. Traps trigger on the first hostile to enter the trap zone. Things like Needle trap will only immobilize the first one, but will poison everything that crosses the zone for the duration of the trap (I think it's 3 seconds or something?).
The biggest problem with traps is that you need to be playing with non-idiots. I dropped the idea because no one seemed to understand how to drag mobs across my traps. There was a lot of swearing and frustration on my end when half of my damage was negated because a warrior decided to charge in and push/pull mobs away from my traps. Even after I explained it.
Also: Caltrops on dodge is nigh useless. They last like half a second (they literally fade before you exit the dodge), they drop half way through the dodge and not where you are dodging from (in my experience 50% of the time the NPC didn't even reach the caltrops before they faded), the cripple lasts like a second.
You're better off actually taking any other trait. Initial Strikes, Thrill of the Crime, Flanking Strikes. Those are all vastly superior to Uncatchable. Honestly, every thief who has points in the Thievery line needs to have Thrill of the Crime. It buffs everyone in a pretty large area when you Steal. 10 seconds of Fury/Might/Swiftness is absurdly helpful.
Yeah, I found AC incredibly difficult and everyone I asked about it in guild said the same thing.
It was almost funny going to the Manor next. From an unforgiving, long dungeon, to a 20 minute light romp.
Glal on
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SarksusATTACK AND DETHRONE GODRegistered Userregular
Story mode way way harder than it should be for the intended target: random group of level 30's trying AC story run into the one of the hardest dungeons in the game. This absolutely needs to be easily puggable given the atrociously bad rewards (one ugly helm with terrible stats). The rewards of doing AC story are about equivalent to me soloing two veteran monsters and taking the chests behind them. So the difficulty needs to be in line with that. It's not.
What...? How is it one of the hardest dungeons? What is so hard about AC? I still have no friggen idea what people are talking about. I AM BAD AT VIDEO GAMES. Seriously, I'm not good at them. People talk about playing games on hard because the normal is too easy and I think "I had trouble with normal". My gf plays games on easy. Neither one of us finds AC story difficult. I mentioned to her last night that people think it's hard and she gave this look and said "What? how?".
It is incredibly hard for a first intro into the instance world. Up to that point you have absolutely no reason to even know what a condition remover is because of what the game throws at you is easy world based stuff. You then move into a zone where you either GY zerg or have people change specs to remove conditions, realize that you can (and should) use environment objects on bosses, focus dps, dodge attacks reliably, etc etc. The first time I did the caster boss chic that condition dmgs the hell out of the group was painful with alot of "what is a condition?" from the pugs I was with.
It IS a hard step up from what is presented to the player prior. People familiar with MMOs will have an easier time but it doesnt degrade this fact.
So it's a question of not being prepared for an experience that once you familiarize yourself with it is quite reasonable? But what do you suggest to fix the lack of preparedness? It's not like conditions don't exist in the overworld.
Reasonable is subjective. I personally think the dungeon is a bit too long with boss health a bit high once you know what your doing the fight doesnt really shorten that much.
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HalfmexI mock your value systemYou also appear foolish in the eyes of othersRegistered Userregular
I'll check that out when I get home from work, thanks @Dranyth
And thanks again folks, this is very good feedback to have. I think I have indeed been trying to play my thief too much like I play my warrior. Too easy to get into that "I can do it all" mode of thinking.
Also remember you have two weapons. For thieves, the shortbow is civilization.
With a shortbow in your off-set you can swap: cripple + free backward dodge, Lay a poison cloud, long range shadow step, AoE damage.
I run pistol/pistol with a shortbow off-set. I use the pistols as my main damage, but if things go sideways I swap and start moving. If your preferred weapon set up doesn't provide something, make sure your off-set does.
You're only locked out of swapping back for...what 15 seconds or something? It's not long enough to matter, but it's important to be able to survive.
Oh yes, I live off my shortbow against groups. Heck it's the only reason I was able to beat that damned Destroyer Queen. I'm also using the caltrop on dodge trait as that's a huge help with getaway.
Question re: traps, do they only affect the first mob that triggers them or any mob who enters the affected area thereafter (excluding the 'summon thief' trap as I'm sure that would only trigger the one time)?
I ran a trap build in my 40's, haven't tried it since I hit 80...but it's viable. Traps trigger on the first hostile to enter the trap zone. Things like Needle trap will only immobilize the first one, but will poison everything that crosses the zone for the duration of the trap (I think it's 3 seconds or something?).
The biggest problem with traps is that you need to be playing with non-idiots. I dropped the idea because no one seemed to understand how to drag mobs across my traps. There was a lot of swearing and frustration on my end when half of my damage was negated because a warrior decided to charge in and push/pull mobs away from my traps. Even after I explained it.
Also: Caltrops on dodge is nigh useless. They last like half a second (they literally fade before you exit the dodge), they drop half way through the dodge and not where you are dodging from (in my experience 50% of the time the NPC didn't even reach the caltrops before they faded), the cripple lasts like a second.
You're better off actually taking any other trait. Initial Strikes, Thrill of the Crime, Flanking Strikes. Those are all vastly superior to Uncatchable. Honestly, every thief who has points in the Thievery line needs to have Thrill of the Crime. It buffs everyone in a pretty large area when you Steal. 10 seconds of Fury/Might/Swiftness is absurdly helpful.
Interesting, thanks for the trap info. I had hoped that at least the tripwire trap would affect more than just the first enemy it comes into contact with, but I suppose that makes sense. Re: caltrops, I'd noticed that the cripple from the dodge caltrops didn't last as long as those from the actual caltrops skill but it has kept things off my back a few times at least. I'll try some of those others and see how that fares for me.
We had a CoF Explore group the other night that pugged two guys.
One was a shortbow thief.
He refused to detonate his cluster bombs. Saying that the large explosion is better than detonation, which...I guess is true if you lack the ability to add.
I ran some tests in the next few fights (just to make sure I was right), detonating your cluster bomb is always preferable to not detonating. Things can get hit more than once, and each hit can crit. The single explosive just hits everything and does a single crit check.
If you just treat your cluster bomb shot as more of an airburst munition and detonate it right on top of a guy/group of guys you can pull twice to three times the damage of not detonating it.
Edit: My point was "pugs be pugs". Some people just don't take the time to ask questions or do research until they are confronted with an adverse situation. Then they usually clam up.
Anon the Felon on
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SarksusATTACK AND DETHRONE GODRegistered Userregular
Reasonable is subjective. I personally think the dungeon is a bit too long with boss health a bit high once you know what your doing the fight doesnt really shorten that much.
When I ran Ascalonian Catacombs for the first time I did it with three people who had done it before. The fifth person was a noob like me. I thought the dungeon was very reasonable with a team of prepared people. We wiped a few times but it felt like it was our own fault.
Nice! I am still sitting at 70% as I havent started getting tall the lower level zones done just the higher level ones. The damn SP in Orr is still bugged 2 weeks later so no 100% in sight.
Nice! I am still sitting at 70% as I havent started getting tall the lower level zones done just the higher level ones. The damn SP in Orr is still bugged 2 weeks later so no 100% in sight.
With all the bugged stuff on Orr, I've just given up. I'm only at 45%, but there are so many other things to do that exploration has been put on the back burner since it can't even be completed right now (unless you already got those bugged things).
Story mode way way harder than it should be for the intended target: random group of level 30's trying AC story run into the one of the hardest dungeons in the game. This absolutely needs to be easily puggable given the atrociously bad rewards (one ugly helm with terrible stats). The rewards of doing AC story are about equivalent to me soloing two veteran monsters and taking the chests behind them. So the difficulty needs to be in line with that. It's not.
What...? How is it one of the hardest dungeons? What is so hard about AC? I still have no friggen idea what people are talking about. I AM BAD AT VIDEO GAMES. Seriously, I'm not good at them. People talk about playing games on hard because the normal is too easy and I think "I had trouble with normal". My gf plays games on easy. Neither one of us finds AC story difficult. I mentioned to her last night that people think it's hard and she gave this look and said "What? how?".
It is incredibly hard for a first intro into the instance world. Up to that point you have absolutely no reason to even know what a condition remover is because of what the game throws at you is easy world based stuff. You then move into a zone where you either GY zerg or have people change specs to remove conditions, realize that you can (and should) use environment objects on bosses, focus dps, dodge attacks reliably, etc etc. The first time I did the caster boss chic that condition dmgs the hell out of the group was painful with alot of "what is a condition?" from the pugs I was with.
It IS a hard step up from what is presented to the player prior. People familiar with MMOs will have an easier time but it doesnt degrade this fact.
If you didn't understand conditions by the time you are 30 you then haven't been paying attention and failing here would be the point that you learn. That would require you to not be reading the text on your own abilities. Whose fault is that?
With that said... the instance is very easy if you do everything correctly. I have run that instance extremely INCORRECTLY and still got through just fine... so I must assume that some people are so amazingly blind to what's happening around them that if anything was tuned to that level it would ruin the game. They will learn eventually because it does not take lots of skill for these... just learning and paying attention.
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FairchildRabbit used short words that were easy to understand, like "Hello Pooh, how about Lunch ?"Registered Userregular
The Cattlepault is finally working, so I was able to finish that zone. Yay me !
If you put your first 10 Trait points into Precision on a Warrior, you get an ability that increases your Crit % based on the number of inactive Signets you have. My base crit rate is now over 80%. Holy Crap.
Nice! I am still sitting at 70% as I havent started getting tall the lower level zones done just the higher level ones. The damn SP in Orr is still bugged 2 weeks later so no 100% in sight.
1 week WvW Matchups started. Got keeps to take, no time to do little heart quests.
Story mode way way harder than it should be for the intended target: random group of level 30's trying AC story run into the one of the hardest dungeons in the game. This absolutely needs to be easily puggable given the atrociously bad rewards (one ugly helm with terrible stats). The rewards of doing AC story are about equivalent to me soloing two veteran monsters and taking the chests behind them. So the difficulty needs to be in line with that. It's not.
What...? How is it one of the hardest dungeons? What is so hard about AC? I still have no friggen idea what people are talking about. I AM BAD AT VIDEO GAMES. Seriously, I'm not good at them. People talk about playing games on hard because the normal is too easy and I think "I had trouble with normal". My gf plays games on easy. Neither one of us finds AC story difficult. I mentioned to her last night that people think it's hard and she gave this look and said "What? how?".
It is incredibly hard for a first intro into the instance world. Up to that point you have absolutely no reason to even know what a condition remover is because of what the game throws at you is easy world based stuff. You then move into a zone where you either GY zerg or have people change specs to remove conditions, realize that you can (and should) use environment objects on bosses, focus dps, dodge attacks reliably, etc etc. The first time I did the caster boss chic that condition dmgs the hell out of the group was painful with alot of "what is a condition?" from the pugs I was with.
It IS a hard step up from what is presented to the player prior. People familiar with MMOs will have an easier time but it doesnt degrade this fact.
If you didn't understand conditions by the time you are 30 you then haven't been paying attention and failing here would be the point that you learn. That would require you to not be reading the text on your own abilities. Whose fault is that?
With that said... the instance is very easy if you do everything correctly. I have run that instance extremely INCORRECTLY and still got through just fine... so I must assume that some people are so amazingly blind to what's happening around them that if anything was tuned to that level it would ruin the game. They will learn eventually because it does not take lots of skill for these... just learning and paying attention.
I didnt say that I was unaware of them I stated the game does not make you pay attention to them before that point and, if you skip AC, not till much later do the conditions actually make a difference in your playstyle in open world.
Story mode way way harder than it should be for the intended target: random group of level 30's trying AC story run into the one of the hardest dungeons in the game. This absolutely needs to be easily puggable given the atrociously bad rewards (one ugly helm with terrible stats). The rewards of doing AC story are about equivalent to me soloing two veteran monsters and taking the chests behind them. So the difficulty needs to be in line with that. It's not.
What...? How is it one of the hardest dungeons? What is so hard about AC? I still have no friggen idea what people are talking about. I AM BAD AT VIDEO GAMES. Seriously, I'm not good at them. People talk about playing games on hard because the normal is too easy and I think "I had trouble with normal". My gf plays games on easy. Neither one of us finds AC story difficult. I mentioned to her last night that people think it's hard and she gave this look and said "What? how?".
It is incredibly hard for a first intro into the instance world. Up to that point you have absolutely no reason to even know what a condition remover is because of what the game throws at you is easy world based stuff. You then move into a zone where you either GY zerg or have people change specs to remove conditions, realize that you can (and should) use environment objects on bosses, focus dps, dodge attacks reliably, etc etc. The first time I did the caster boss chic that condition dmgs the hell out of the group was painful with alot of "what is a condition?" from the pugs I was with.
It IS a hard step up from what is presented to the player prior. People familiar with MMOs will have an easier time but it doesnt degrade this fact.
If you didn't understand conditions by the time you are 30 you then haven't been paying attention and failing here would be the point that you learn. That would require you to not be reading the text on your own abilities. Whose fault is that?
With that said... the instance is very easy if you do everything correctly. I have run that instance extremely INCORRECTLY and still got through just fine... so I must assume that some people are so amazingly blind to what's happening around them that if anything was tuned to that level it would ruin the game. They will learn eventually because it does not take lots of skill for these... just learning and paying attention.
I dunno, for the parts I've done, I've noticed some glaring inconsistencies in mob damage.
For example, AC. Things are pretty fine, then you get a group with an elementalist. Then you realize that the elementalist's damage is absurdly high. If you didn't know this beforehand, you are more than likely wiping right there.
And I think that's really the issue. That you can clear a boss the first time, but a trash mob that you don't focus down wipes your party? Seems a little unbalanced.
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DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
Story mode way way harder than it should be for the intended target: random group of level 30's trying AC story run into the one of the hardest dungeons in the game. This absolutely needs to be easily puggable given the atrociously bad rewards (one ugly helm with terrible stats). The rewards of doing AC story are about equivalent to me soloing two veteran monsters and taking the chests behind them. So the difficulty needs to be in line with that. It's not.
What...? How is it one of the hardest dungeons? What is so hard about AC? I still have no friggen idea what people are talking about. I AM BAD AT VIDEO GAMES. Seriously, I'm not good at them. People talk about playing games on hard because the normal is too easy and I think "I had trouble with normal". My gf plays games on easy. Neither one of us finds AC story difficult. I mentioned to her last night that people think it's hard and she gave this look and said "What? how?".
It is incredibly hard for a first intro into the instance world. Up to that point you have absolutely no reason to even know what a condition remover is because of what the game throws at you is easy world based stuff. You then move into a zone where you either GY zerg or have people change specs to remove conditions, realize that you can (and should) use environment objects on bosses, focus dps, dodge attacks reliably, etc etc. The first time I did the caster boss chic that condition dmgs the hell out of the group was painful with alot of "what is a condition?" from the pugs I was with.
It IS a hard step up from what is presented to the player prior. People familiar with MMOs will have an easier time but it doesnt degrade this fact.
If you didn't understand conditions by the time you are 30 you then haven't been paying attention and failing here would be the point that you learn. That would require you to not be reading the text on your own abilities. Whose fault is that?
With that said... the instance is very easy if you do everything correctly. I have run that instance extremely INCORRECTLY and still got through just fine... so I must assume that some people are so amazingly blind to what's happening around them that if anything was tuned to that level it would ruin the game. They will learn eventually because it does not take lots of skill for these... just learning and paying attention.
I didnt say that I was unaware of them I stated the game does not make you pay attention to them before that point and, if you skip AC, not till much later do the conditions actually make a difference in your playstyle in open world.
But how is that bad? That's the point they chose to make you realize they are important but, since it is the first dungeon, they didn't even make it required to do a good job. You can still battle through that fight doing a bad job at taking care of conditions and still win. And which point you are supposed to go "man those status effects were rough! Maybe I should pay more attention to them?"
Story mode way way harder than it should be for the intended target: random group of level 30's trying AC story run into the one of the hardest dungeons in the game. This absolutely needs to be easily puggable given the atrociously bad rewards (one ugly helm with terrible stats). The rewards of doing AC story are about equivalent to me soloing two veteran monsters and taking the chests behind them. So the difficulty needs to be in line with that. It's not.
What...? How is it one of the hardest dungeons? What is so hard about AC? I still have no friggen idea what people are talking about. I AM BAD AT VIDEO GAMES. Seriously, I'm not good at them. People talk about playing games on hard because the normal is too easy and I think "I had trouble with normal". My gf plays games on easy. Neither one of us finds AC story difficult. I mentioned to her last night that people think it's hard and she gave this look and said "What? how?".
It is incredibly hard for a first intro into the instance world. Up to that point you have absolutely no reason to even know what a condition remover is because of what the game throws at you is easy world based stuff. You then move into a zone where you either GY zerg or have people change specs to remove conditions, realize that you can (and should) use environment objects on bosses, focus dps, dodge attacks reliably, etc etc. The first time I did the caster boss chic that condition dmgs the hell out of the group was painful with alot of "what is a condition?" from the pugs I was with.
It IS a hard step up from what is presented to the player prior. People familiar with MMOs will have an easier time but it doesnt degrade this fact.
If you didn't understand conditions by the time you are 30 you then haven't been paying attention and failing here would be the point that you learn. That would require you to not be reading the text on your own abilities. Whose fault is that?
With that said... the instance is very easy if you do everything correctly. I have run that instance extremely INCORRECTLY and still got through just fine... so I must assume that some people are so amazingly blind to what's happening around them that if anything was tuned to that level it would ruin the game. They will learn eventually because it does not take lots of skill for these... just learning and paying attention.
I somewhat disagree with this. Conditions are such a NON-ISSUE pre dungeons, that even if you read your abilities and understand that "Ability X removes conditions, okay, check", you won't really have any reason to care. Yes conditions exist pre-dungeons, hell, I play a class entirely reliant on them for a large chunk of it's usefulness (Engineer)....but it's completely easy to see how someone can not understand the importance of them until faced with the first dungeon.
Story mode way way harder than it should be for the intended target: random group of level 30's trying AC story run into the one of the hardest dungeons in the game. This absolutely needs to be easily puggable given the atrociously bad rewards (one ugly helm with terrible stats). The rewards of doing AC story are about equivalent to me soloing two veteran monsters and taking the chests behind them. So the difficulty needs to be in line with that. It's not.
What...? How is it one of the hardest dungeons? What is so hard about AC? I still have no friggen idea what people are talking about. I AM BAD AT VIDEO GAMES. Seriously, I'm not good at them. People talk about playing games on hard because the normal is too easy and I think "I had trouble with normal". My gf plays games on easy. Neither one of us finds AC story difficult. I mentioned to her last night that people think it's hard and she gave this look and said "What? how?".
It is incredibly hard for a first intro into the instance world. Up to that point you have absolutely no reason to even know what a condition remover is because of what the game throws at you is easy world based stuff. You then move into a zone where you either GY zerg or have people change specs to remove conditions, realize that you can (and should) use environment objects on bosses, focus dps, dodge attacks reliably, etc etc. The first time I did the caster boss chic that condition dmgs the hell out of the group was painful with alot of "what is a condition?" from the pugs I was with.
It IS a hard step up from what is presented to the player prior. People familiar with MMOs will have an easier time but it doesnt degrade this fact.
If you didn't understand conditions by the time you are 30 you then haven't been paying attention and failing here would be the point that you learn. That would require you to not be reading the text on your own abilities. Whose fault is that?
With that said... the instance is very easy if you do everything correctly. I have run that instance extremely INCORRECTLY and still got through just fine... so I must assume that some people are so amazingly blind to what's happening around them that if anything was tuned to that level it would ruin the game. They will learn eventually because it does not take lots of skill for these... just learning and paying attention.
I didnt say that I was unaware of them I stated the game does not make you pay attention to them before that point and, if you skip AC, not till much later do the conditions actually make a difference in your playstyle in open world.
In a way, I know you're right, but it's a thing I have a hard time wrapping my head around. How do people play games without caring how all the things work?
Here was me learning about GW2:
What does combo field fire mean? Oh neat, there's combos, oh here's a little chart of what combos with what. Hrm, I can make these fields and use these finishers, hey you're playing a Mesmer, what can you do? Chaos armor is awesome, I'll throw this blast finisher up whenever I can. What the hell is stability? Oh holy crap, that negates knockbacks and pulls, I be that will be handy for something. What are conditions? Dots, got it. Boons are buffs, and OK ready to go.
All I did was read the tooltips and I could pretty much play anything out of the gate. Heck, the support spec I panned out the first time I sat down and looked at Elementalists is apparently *the* support spec, who knew?
I mean, I also enjoy a certain amount of jumping in headfirst and figuring things out, but I don't think familiarizing myself with what's different/unique in basic game mechanics is too much, really.
Story mode way way harder than it should be for the intended target: random group of level 30's trying AC story run into the one of the hardest dungeons in the game. This absolutely needs to be easily puggable given the atrociously bad rewards (one ugly helm with terrible stats). The rewards of doing AC story are about equivalent to me soloing two veteran monsters and taking the chests behind them. So the difficulty needs to be in line with that. It's not.
What...? How is it one of the hardest dungeons? What is so hard about AC? I still have no friggen idea what people are talking about. I AM BAD AT VIDEO GAMES. Seriously, I'm not good at them. People talk about playing games on hard because the normal is too easy and I think "I had trouble with normal". My gf plays games on easy. Neither one of us finds AC story difficult. I mentioned to her last night that people think it's hard and she gave this look and said "What? how?".
It is incredibly hard for a first intro into the instance world. Up to that point you have absolutely no reason to even know what a condition remover is because of what the game throws at you is easy world based stuff. You then move into a zone where you either GY zerg or have people change specs to remove conditions, realize that you can (and should) use environment objects on bosses, focus dps, dodge attacks reliably, etc etc. The first time I did the caster boss chic that condition dmgs the hell out of the group was painful with alot of "what is a condition?" from the pugs I was with.
It IS a hard step up from what is presented to the player prior. People familiar with MMOs will have an easier time but it doesnt degrade this fact.
If you didn't understand conditions by the time you are 30 you then haven't been paying attention and failing here would be the point that you learn. That would require you to not be reading the text on your own abilities. Whose fault is that?
With that said... the instance is very easy if you do everything correctly. I have run that instance extremely INCORRECTLY and still got through just fine... so I must assume that some people are so amazingly blind to what's happening around them that if anything was tuned to that level it would ruin the game. They will learn eventually because it does not take lots of skill for these... just learning and paying attention.
I dunno, for the parts I've done, I've noticed some glaring inconsistencies in mob damage.
For example, AC. Things are pretty fine, then you get a group with an elementalist. Then you realize that the elementalist's damage is absurdly high. If you didn't know this beforehand, you are more than likely wiping right there.
And I think that's really the issue. That you can clear a boss the first time, but a trash mob that you don't focus down wipes your party? Seems a little unbalanced.
That's because They don't want the 'trash' mobs to really be trash. They want everything to pose some sort of threat. You are supposed to die. Maybe you make the recovery during the battle maybe you don't. If you don't recover you now learned something new and you try again. It's not like the cost for dying is bad, you don't have to re-kill the trash. You just go back to where you left off and give it another shot.
I think anybody who has ever played an MMO would've figured elementalist and necro mobs in AC were priority 1. If not, you figure it out really fast, followed by rangers. The warriors are completely kiteable and the monks don't heal for enough to matter.
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DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
Story mode way way harder than it should be for the intended target: random group of level 30's trying AC story run into the one of the hardest dungeons in the game. This absolutely needs to be easily puggable given the atrociously bad rewards (one ugly helm with terrible stats). The rewards of doing AC story are about equivalent to me soloing two veteran monsters and taking the chests behind them. So the difficulty needs to be in line with that. It's not.
What...? How is it one of the hardest dungeons? What is so hard about AC? I still have no friggen idea what people are talking about. I AM BAD AT VIDEO GAMES. Seriously, I'm not good at them. People talk about playing games on hard because the normal is too easy and I think "I had trouble with normal". My gf plays games on easy. Neither one of us finds AC story difficult. I mentioned to her last night that people think it's hard and she gave this look and said "What? how?".
It is incredibly hard for a first intro into the instance world. Up to that point you have absolutely no reason to even know what a condition remover is because of what the game throws at you is easy world based stuff. You then move into a zone where you either GY zerg or have people change specs to remove conditions, realize that you can (and should) use environment objects on bosses, focus dps, dodge attacks reliably, etc etc. The first time I did the caster boss chic that condition dmgs the hell out of the group was painful with alot of "what is a condition?" from the pugs I was with.
It IS a hard step up from what is presented to the player prior. People familiar with MMOs will have an easier time but it doesnt degrade this fact.
If you didn't understand conditions by the time you are 30 you then haven't been paying attention and failing here would be the point that you learn. That would require you to not be reading the text on your own abilities. Whose fault is that?
With that said... the instance is very easy if you do everything correctly. I have run that instance extremely INCORRECTLY and still got through just fine... so I must assume that some people are so amazingly blind to what's happening around them that if anything was tuned to that level it would ruin the game. They will learn eventually because it does not take lots of skill for these... just learning and paying attention.
I somewhat disagree with this. Conditions are such a NON-ISSUE pre dungeons, that even if you read your abilities and understand that "Ability X removes conditions, okay, check", you won't really have any reason to care. Yes conditions exist pre-dungeons, hell, I play a class entirely reliant on them for a large chunk of it's usefulness (Engineer)....but it's completely easy to see how someone can not understand the importance of them until faced with the first dungeon.
Right, but as I said that fight isn't hard even with poor play... so why is that a bad place to learn?
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So it needs to be prevented instead of removed. In that case people could time things that make the boss miss, or trigger aegis on teammates to prevent it. The boss in explorable AC, that has the AOE pull and then whirlwind is similar in that you have to prevent it or it gets bad. I give stability to the group when I see his wind up. If that is on cooldown, I give the group aegis which blocks it. If that is on cooldown I use "save yourself" which removes all conditions from team mates. If that is on cooldown I do an AOE heal and give 33% damage reduction to group. Obviously not all of this is going to be on cooldown, but just showing how one class can have multiple tools to support the entire group.
Does the boss spam the thing every 10 seconds? I could see it being harder if he casted it less than every 10 sec, which would then mean two people need to devise a way to prevent it hitting. Or maybe get clever and have a guardian be the only person close enough to recieve it, and then just #4 staff though it with the right traits.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Also remember you have two weapons. For thieves, the shortbow is civilization.
With a shortbow in your off-set you can swap: cripple + free backward dodge, Lay a poison cloud, long range shadow step, AoE damage.
I run pistol/pistol with a shortbow off-set. I use the pistols as my main damage, but if things go sideways I swap and start moving. If your preferred weapon set up doesn't provide something, make sure your off-set does.
You're only locked out of swapping back for...what 15 seconds or something? It's not long enough to matter, but it's important to be able to survive.
Opinions!
I rather like the medium AC skins.
CM gear is 70!
See this is the problem. When you walk into a dungeon you need to drop the skills that you usually use to keep you going and switch to stuff that helps the GROUP.
Oh yes, I live off my shortbow against groups. Heck it's the only reason I was able to beat that damned Destroyer Queen. I'm also using the caltrop on dodge trait as that's a huge help with getaway.
Question re: traps, do they only affect the first mob that triggers them or any mob who enters the affected area thereafter (excluding the 'summon thief' trap as I'm sure that would only trigger the one time)?
That was implied in my post. Going in as a warrior with all signets is horrible and I would never do so. And so I swap to the AoE based build for boons and condition removers. I am sorry that wasnt clear but yes even with that it is your responsibility to keep yourself alive first and foremost and send out help to the group when you can.
It's a wee bit ridiculous. Even the smallest human error seems to fuck us over in these places with no opportunities to recover from mistakes.
What...? How is it one of the hardest dungeons? What is so hard about AC? I still have no friggen idea what people are talking about. I AM BAD AT VIDEO GAMES. Seriously, I'm not good at them. People talk about playing games on hard because the normal is too easy and I think "I had trouble with normal". My gf plays games on easy. Neither one of us finds AC story difficult. I mentioned to her last night that people think it's hard and she gave this look and said "What? how?".
I pug all the time, my guardian build is entirely group focused. I remove conditions, give boons, mass heal, crowd control, mitigate buff, etc.
I'm happy to have a few people in a group who are entirely DPS focused, as long as they still back off if they need more than their self heal or something.
And its not just guardians, most classes can do the same stuff, I hear rangers give some pretty good support/healing as well.
There are indeed a few classes that might need some buffing, like elementalist has a lot of complaints. But having the play style in group the same as solo is just going to make a crappy group.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I'm still pretty low level; I have two level 20 characters and that's about it. So, most of the stuff I have to say is dumb and fluffy. Namely...
* Meattoberfest is awesome, why isn't this a real holiday
* it should be a real holiday
* I wish there was some way to put the cooking skill to use in such a way that like... you could open your own little vendor shop in Lion's Arch or something. I know that such a system would be way too easily abused, and the TP is balanced the way it is for a reason, but there's something about having my own pie stand that would be awesome
* I also wish that we had a guild hall, and that in said guild hall I could leave out food items for people to just pick up and chow down on. Even better: use it as the waiting room for wuvwuv, everybody starts with nom buffs
* I am seriously tempted to start a cooking tumblr wherin I make every single thing from the cooking skill in real life. I have the skills and materials to make most of it (not bread, exactly, I'm really bad at dealing with yeasts...) and yes, I am including THIS IS HOW YOU MAKE BUTTERED TOAST. Part of me thinks it'd be a fun and nerdy way to teach people some very basic cooking skills and then work their way up to more complex things. Shame I hate carrots though
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
Most gimmicks can easily be cheesed a smaller amount of times, they only become challenging to handle if the fight is 2-4 minutes long.
@Lucid_Seraph: Speaking as a grad student who can just about throw together things that won't actually kill me, do it! Also I think ANet have already said that there will be guild halls that will come after they've finished putting out all the fires. And by that I mean making anything in Orr actually work.
It is incredibly hard for a first intro into the instance world. Up to that point you have absolutely no reason to even know what a condition remover is because of what the game throws at you is easy world based stuff. You then move into a zone where you either GY zerg or have people change specs to remove conditions, realize that you can (and should) use environment objects on bosses, focus dps, dodge attacks reliably, etc etc. The first time I did the caster boss chic that condition dmgs the hell out of the group was painful with alot of "what is a condition?" from the pugs I was with.
It IS a hard step up from what is presented to the player prior. People familiar with MMOs will have an easier time but it doesnt degrade this fact.
I ran a trap build in my 40's, haven't tried it since I hit 80...but it's viable. Traps trigger on the first hostile to enter the trap zone. Things like Needle trap will only immobilize the first one, but will poison everything that crosses the zone for the duration of the trap (I think it's 3 seconds or something?).
The biggest problem with traps is that you need to be playing with non-idiots. I dropped the idea because no one seemed to understand how to drag mobs across my traps. There was a lot of swearing and frustration on my end when half of my damage was negated because a warrior decided to charge in and push/pull mobs away from my traps. Even after I explained it.
Also: Caltrops on dodge is nigh useless. They last like half a second (they literally fade before you exit the dodge), they drop half way through the dodge and not where you are dodging from (in my experience 50% of the time the NPC didn't even reach the caltrops before they faded), the cripple lasts like a second.
You're better off actually taking any other trait. Initial Strikes, Thrill of the Crime, Flanking Strikes. Those are all vastly superior to Uncatchable. Honestly, every thief who has points in the Thievery line needs to have Thrill of the Crime. It buffs everyone in a pretty large area when you Steal. 10 seconds of Fury/Might/Swiftness is absurdly helpful.
It was almost funny going to the Manor next. From an unforgiving, long dungeon, to a 20 minute light romp.
So it's a question of not being prepared for an experience that once you familiarize yourself with it is quite reasonable? But what do you suggest to fix the lack of preparedness? It's not like conditions don't exist in the overworld.
Interesting, thanks for the trap info. I had hoped that at least the tripwire trap would affect more than just the first enemy it comes into contact with, but I suppose that makes sense. Re: caltrops, I'd noticed that the cripple from the dodge caltrops didn't last as long as those from the actual caltrops skill but it has kept things off my back a few times at least. I'll try some of those others and see how that fares for me.
One was a shortbow thief.
He refused to detonate his cluster bombs. Saying that the large explosion is better than detonation, which...I guess is true if you lack the ability to add.
I ran some tests in the next few fights (just to make sure I was right), detonating your cluster bomb is always preferable to not detonating. Things can get hit more than once, and each hit can crit. The single explosive just hits everything and does a single crit check.
If you just treat your cluster bomb shot as more of an airburst munition and detonate it right on top of a guy/group of guys you can pull twice to three times the damage of not detonating it.
Edit: My point was "pugs be pugs". Some people just don't take the time to ask questions or do research until they are confronted with an adverse situation. Then they usually clam up.
When I ran Ascalonian Catacombs for the first time I did it with three people who had done it before. The fifth person was a noob like me. I thought the dungeon was very reasonable with a team of prepared people. We wiped a few times but it felt like it was our own fault.
With all the bugged stuff on Orr, I've just given up. I'm only at 45%, but there are so many other things to do that exploration has been put on the back burner since it can't even be completed right now (unless you already got those bugged things).
So insane. I've logged 60 hours since release, which I think is a pretty breakneck pace, I've played PvE exclusively, and I'm at like 37%.
Ya'll are blowing your wads way too early.
(grats, by the way)
Path of Exile: snowcrash7
MTG Arena: Snow_Crash#34179
Battle.net: Snowcrash#1873
If you didn't understand conditions by the time you are 30 you then haven't been paying attention and failing here would be the point that you learn. That would require you to not be reading the text on your own abilities. Whose fault is that?
With that said... the instance is very easy if you do everything correctly. I have run that instance extremely INCORRECTLY and still got through just fine... so I must assume that some people are so amazingly blind to what's happening around them that if anything was tuned to that level it would ruin the game. They will learn eventually because it does not take lots of skill for these... just learning and paying attention.
If you put your first 10 Trait points into Precision on a Warrior, you get an ability that increases your Crit % based on the number of inactive Signets you have. My base crit rate is now over 80%. Holy Crap.
1 week WvW Matchups started. Got keeps to take, no time to do little heart quests.
I didnt say that I was unaware of them I stated the game does not make you pay attention to them before that point and, if you skip AC, not till much later do the conditions actually make a difference in your playstyle in open world.
I dunno, for the parts I've done, I've noticed some glaring inconsistencies in mob damage.
For example, AC. Things are pretty fine, then you get a group with an elementalist. Then you realize that the elementalist's damage is absurdly high. If you didn't know this beforehand, you are more than likely wiping right there.
And I think that's really the issue. That you can clear a boss the first time, but a trash mob that you don't focus down wipes your party? Seems a little unbalanced.
But how is that bad? That's the point they chose to make you realize they are important but, since it is the first dungeon, they didn't even make it required to do a good job. You can still battle through that fight doing a bad job at taking care of conditions and still win. And which point you are supposed to go "man those status effects were rough! Maybe I should pay more attention to them?"
Don't have much in-game currency, but could provide sexual favors. :winky:
PSN: Beltaine-77 | Steam: beltane77 | Battle.net BadHaggis#1433
I somewhat disagree with this. Conditions are such a NON-ISSUE pre dungeons, that even if you read your abilities and understand that "Ability X removes conditions, okay, check", you won't really have any reason to care. Yes conditions exist pre-dungeons, hell, I play a class entirely reliant on them for a large chunk of it's usefulness (Engineer)....but it's completely easy to see how someone can not understand the importance of them until faced with the first dungeon.
Here was me learning about GW2:
What does combo field fire mean? Oh neat, there's combos, oh here's a little chart of what combos with what. Hrm, I can make these fields and use these finishers, hey you're playing a Mesmer, what can you do? Chaos armor is awesome, I'll throw this blast finisher up whenever I can. What the hell is stability? Oh holy crap, that negates knockbacks and pulls, I be that will be handy for something. What are conditions? Dots, got it. Boons are buffs, and OK ready to go.
All I did was read the tooltips and I could pretty much play anything out of the gate. Heck, the support spec I panned out the first time I sat down and looked at Elementalists is apparently *the* support spec, who knew?
I mean, I also enjoy a certain amount of jumping in headfirst and figuring things out, but I don't think familiarizing myself with what's different/unique in basic game mechanics is too much, really.
That's because They don't want the 'trash' mobs to really be trash. They want everything to pose some sort of threat. You are supposed to die. Maybe you make the recovery during the battle maybe you don't. If you don't recover you now learned something new and you try again. It's not like the cost for dying is bad, you don't have to re-kill the trash. You just go back to where you left off and give it another shot.
Right, but as I said that fight isn't hard even with poor play... so why is that a bad place to learn?