19 replies to this topic

[Popcorn89]

A couple friends and I decided to so our first dungeon today and it was a total train wreck. We sat outside the Ascalonian Catacombs to get 2 more people to join us and found them pretty quickly, but that's about the only thing that went smoothly. After about an hour of fighting our way to the cutscenes where the champions are Introduced we were pretty excited we had made It that far. The first two champions only took about half an hour to do which wasn't bad, but then we hit a snag. The next hour and a half was spent on us trying to beat the room where you fight the 2 champions at once. It took so long, and we had made such little progress (didn't get a quarter of either health bar down), the 2 that joined us up and left. The thing was though, those 2 had finished the game already, they were working on their second characters and had done the catacombs several times with their first characters. They told us it had never been that difficult, even when they went through it the first time.

One of my friends left and got 2 more to join us about 10min later. They showed us how to trap one of the champions to make the fight easier and it couldn't be done. We spent about 15min trying to trap and it wouldnt work. My friends and I had no moral left and were more frustrated then any game had ever made us. We decided to just rush them and give it one last hoorah before giving up and managed to fet both champions down to a quarter of their life left until the most devistating hand my gaming career had ever delt me was thrown my way.

There were 4 of us that had to re-spawn and one was in the downed state healing himself. I was running down the hallway in-between the 2 doors and just as I reached the second door I saw the male champions health shoot back up to 100% and the female's health quickly revenue back up to about 3/4 of her max hp. At that point the other 2 were behind me and the one just left immediately while the other just stood there dumbfounded. One of my friends just said enough Is enough and left and the other went dead silent. The other starnger that had showed us started trying to figure out why it was so hard and could only come to the conclusion that the top tactic was patched and the difficulty was raised via the recent patch and we logged off.

I didn't share this experience as a form of complaining or anything along those lines, its simply just to see if anybody else has had issues like this In this and other dungeons. This is the first dungeon in the game and we started around 9 ad finally gave up around 11:45. If what we assume is correct, and dungeons get harder the further you progress in the game, then my friends and I have lost any and all interest in dungeons. I didn't have anywhere near that degree of difficulty when I played Demon's Soul's. So again, has anybody else experienced the degree of difficulty that we've experienced tonight, and can we expect it to get worse? It was such a massive whooping that we probably won't touch that dungeon for quite some time.

[thehotsung]

I didn't find dungeon hard mainly because I did RoF as a mesmer in GW1, which mean a miracle is needed just to win.  It like playing 4 instead of 5 as a mesmer in GW1.  However I done AC once and TA once and both time my group quit on me.  This put a sour taste in my mouth.

[StormDragonZ]

ANet surely tested the dungeons out to make sure it was equally possible to complete, whether you had an entire team of Rangers, or a mixed bag of a Thief, Elementalist, Warrior and 2 Engineers... right?

... of course not.

[Snapalope]

Their way of making things hard is giving everything a billion health.  Which is not the way you should be doing things.

StormDragonZ, on 29 September 2012 - 05:11 AM, said:

ANet surely tested the dungeons out to make sure it was equally possible to complete, whether you had an entire team of Rangers, or a mixed bag of a Thief, Elementalist, Warrior and 2 Engineers... right?

... of course not.

It's Arenanet, they never test anything.  Also it's not wrong to admit you made things too hard, hell Blizzard did it with Diablo III.

Edited by Snapalope, 29 September 2012 - 06:33 AM.

[Takato]

Wait wait, is this explorable mode or story ?

If it's story, then LOL

If it's explorable mode, why do you think something that was supposedly made to be only completed by well coordinated groups wasn't doable with your two friends and 2 randoms ?
Don't jump in an explorable mode dungeon thinking you might actually finish it.

[Alch]

the fact that the guy describe the mobs as "champion", as if was the mobs names gives a good clue of what happened

[Draycon]

He means the bosses called 'The Lovers' and to a degree I can understand, happened to me twice where a pug said they knew it, and they didn't... but after that it seemed to get much easier. Little tip Popcorn.... keep them apart

[GrayGardner]

I'll teach a quick and painless way to kill the lovers, everyone in the team grab a boulder before going into the room or before the fight begins. When the lovers start spawning form a circle and start throwing the boulders at the elementalist. After a while the mesmer will Blink to her, and that is when the fun begins, they will be locked in a stun cicle and will die in a min of boulder being traded. Good luck with it.

Edited by GrayGardner, 29 September 2012 - 08:09 AM.

[Mustache Mayhem]

I did this story with a friend of mine who leveling mesmer.. it was his first time in there xd we had no guardian just engineer, 2 mesmers, ranger, elementalist.. know them all in rl but one mesmer we had to pickup

just called targets which everyone followed.. for the lovers, all you have to do is keep vassar busy.. I ran in targeted relena and then pushed vassar back with the shield.. as long as your the first one in he'll aggro you and you can keep him busy on the other end of the room.. just kept him there while the rest targeted rellena.. he did manage to get back to her when she was around 25% but just pushed him back again and she went down.. you just need someone who knows something other than smashing buttons- (helps if they are a gw vet).. those wow guys are horrible!

bring anyone.. a warrior, engineer, guardian- anyone with a pull or push will work.. as long as they can keep vassar busy by themselves while relena just dies.. yeah it is pretty funny your group left though.. that story mode probably one of the easiest to be honest

there's a couple other ones I'm sure you'll love if you had trouble there =]

[KazNaka]

a lot of dungeons are about finding out the best way or the "trick" (whether it be using rocks, kiting adds, pulling 1 at a time, side-strafing to dodge, DPSing hard, etc, etc.) to kill a boss. The rest of the trash mobs are seemingly there just to prolong the dungeon, making it "seem" difficult ("Oh look, an elite mob that's harder to kill than normal mobs") and very time-consuming. In fact, I have done an Arah explorable path 1 in about oh...6-7 hours...

but you see, in your case, you just didn't figure out the trick. It's hard to believe those lv80s couldn't figure it out either.

[Princess Fatora]

GrayGardner, on 29 September 2012 - 07:00 AM, said:

I'll teach a quick and painless way to kill the lovers, everyone in the team grab a boulder before going into the room or before the fight begins. When the lovers start spawning form a circle and start throwing the boulders at the elementalist. After a while the mesmer will Blink to her, and that is when the fun begins, they will be locked in a stun cicle and will die in a min of boulder being traded. Good luck with it.

I kinda want to do the dungeon again just to try this strategy, because LOL.

[Aetou]

You're supposed to use the boulders, focus one target at a time (ALWAYS) and read for tips like 'keep them apart' (there are massive hints to that effect.)  The first time I did AC my group were bad and couldn't do it.  The second time we cake walked it.  It all comes down to everyone in the party knowing what to do and keeping their gear up to date (because of how downscaling works.)

It is one of the hardest Storymode bosses though.

[Popcorn89]

We tried the boulders and it worked well for quite sometime, but thats when the first two left. After the second two joined and we gave up trying to trap the girl I switched to my hammer and pushed vassar up against a wall and kept using earth shaker and backbreaker (I think thats what its called). The first group was a warrior, elementalist, engineer, thief, and necromancer, and then when the other two came In to replace the two that left it was a warrior, 2 elementalist, am engineer, amd I can't remember the last one. We were doing story mode by the way. The second 2 randoms that joined did so because they thought we were just having the typical first timer troubles but were dumbfounded by the degree of difficulty, and when they both got their health back while 2 of us were in the room it completely demoralized everybody. We were under the assumption that their health wouldn't regen if 1 of us was in the room with them but it happened while 1 of us was right next to them and i had just ran into the room.

[jeremynsl]

The first time I ran AC story (I was lvl 31) the Lovers were super difficult.  At least a dozen tries to kill them.  The second time I ran it, we beat it on the first try - using the same boulders strategy to keep them apart.  I'm not sure if the encounter was nerfed or if I just had a better group the second time...  But it sounds like by the OPs story, I probably just had a better group.

The Lovers don't really need to be that hard though, especially considering how they are much much harder than the final dungeon boss.

Edited by jeremynsl, 29 September 2012 - 07:04 PM.

[MFGrady]

Sounds like the two "pros" lied to you.

Even so, getting to 80 means ABSOLUTELY NOTHING because you can easily hang around in a single area and level to 80, albeit slower.

The problems comes less from the dungeon itself but the dunces you ran it with.

[Deyadissa]

How are people having troubles with dungeons? The bosses do the same commands over and over, all you got to do is avoid it.
I completed both AC and CM on my first try with absolutely no troubles with my guardian.

Edited by Deyadissa, 29 September 2012 - 07:46 PM.

[Millimidget]

AC and TA are two of the most annoying dungeons I've ever come across. The dungeons in general seem tuned for reasonably geared 80s. AC is low enough that it has a heavy PUG population, but it's not PUG friendly. TA has those damn blossoms.

HotW, the only other dungeon I've run, is vastly more enjoyable.

jeremynsl, on 29 September 2012 - 07:03 PM, said:

especially considering how they are much much harder than the final dungeon boss.

This seems to be a recurring theme.

Edited by Millimidget, 29 September 2012 - 07:49 PM.

[Popcorn89]

Was our assumption of the npc's not regenerating health while one of us was in the room with them correct? Because them regenerating their health (despite the almost hour and a half we spent im that room alone) was thw straw that broke this particular group of camels' backs.

[pswendel]

Millimidget, on 29 September 2012 - 07:48 PM, said:

AC and TA are two of the most annoying dungeons I've ever come across. The dungeons in general seem tuned for reasonably geared 80s. AC is low enough that it has a heavy PUG population, but it's not PUG friendly. TA has those damn blossoms.

HotW, the only other dungeon I've run, is vastly more enjoyable.


This seems to be a recurring theme.

What's funny about this is I have run AC with 80's that couldn't do well, and again on an alt at 35 with a clean run.

It depends on how you, as a player, are doing.

Popcorn89, on 29 September 2012 - 05:01 AM, said:

A couple friends and I decided to so our first dungeon today and it was a total train wreck. We sat outside the Ascalonian Catacombs to get 2 more people to join us and found them pretty quickly, but that's about the only thing that went smoothly. After about an hour of fighting our way to the cutscenes where the champions are Introduced we were pretty excited we had made It that far. The first two champions only took about half an hour to do which wasn't bad, but then we hit a snag. The next hour and a half was spent on us trying to beat the room where you fight the 2 champions at once. It took so long, and we had made such little progress (didn't get a quarter of either health bar down), the 2 that joined us up and left. The thing was though, those 2 had finished the game already, they were working on their second characters and had done the catacombs several times with their first characters. They told us it had never been that difficult, even when they went through it the first time.

My first run was about expected in AC. My second the most painful experience of my gaming life. My third was flawless and very quick. All story modes, twice with the same character (the second was with 4 80s!).

What I can tell you is, if you get better (and your team mates get better) at allocating traits, using skills and playing - the dungeons will become easier.

[Mustache Mayhem]

my friend just got to level 50 so we ran twilight arbor story to unlock explorable.. everyone else was working today so joined a pug advertizing..

this guys pug was pretty cool and said he runs story mode all the time.. I've done it before but seems like a long time ago- but here I'll post what he said xd he kind of got all paniced before we hit that boss and was telling everyone to just zerg the boss from the waypoint =D

probably just pugs.. ah well out of state next week- I won't be back for about a week.. have fun and quit botting- oh yeah and pandas blow