Being Saleh: Dungeoneering, Part 2

Dungeons never got into my nerve, never, even Heroic on full blown WOW Cataclysm before nerf never once got me into the heat, this was before Explorable Mode Dungeon Guild Wars 2 came.

Sorrow's Embrace

I never ever lose my temper during the death on dungeon, even at a full wipe on a bad PUG groups, but Sorrow's Embrace Explorable mode is a death trap, an impossibly fast button mashing that can turn your fingers into jelly and irritate your eyes (at last that what happens to me when I ran it).

I first taste the explorable mode with guildies on a beautiful saturday afternoon, It was eventful but not too bad of an experience, so we're coming back with a different path on last night (Explorable Mode Dungeon has at least three different path to follow) and boy, what a surprise

The first path is bugged, but even without the bug the mobs are impossibly hardened that it caused us to run back and forth (means dead and teleported thorugh the waypoint for like thirty five times), the trash mobs are like tanks, and they hit with unblockable AOE attacks, it takes us like ten minutes just to clear one heap of them (which only five mobs, yep FIVE little runts), after one hour: exhausted and finally recognized the bugs we took another path, the one I'm slightly familiar with it

Surprise: They've been buffed, sure the trash mobs are still like butters but the bosses are extremely aggresive now since the last time. Their attacks are somewhat the same but they're more often now, and combined the fact that they have tons of HP wasn't really any help.

I lost my temper, really, I literally swear repeatedly on Raidcall, I can spend two hours with 35 gold repair bill on WoW Un-nerfed Cata Heroics (even Troll Heroics, yep Jin'do the PUGbreaker) but I still wonder why I quickly lost interest on Guild Wars 2 Explorable modes (even with my own guildies) and it didn't help my interest to make a complete set of a dungeon set, what do you mean people ran this over and over again? Are they borderline masochist? I WAS a borderline masochist for staying through a two hours failed PUG run on one of the hardest dungeon ever created on WoW and I feel fine but this... this... explorable mode thing is... almost a mental devastation for me and it's extremely exhausting, unenjoyable experience.

Maybe I'm not really there yet, maybe I'm just lack of madz skillz, still have to go through the 'learn ur class noobz', maybe I'm still just an ordinary b*tching casual who didn't deserve my Sorrow Embrace Pauldrons, but here's the thing: Guild Wars 2 have every element I love, even the PVP, and crafting, but I personally like dungeons from my past MMOs, and it's just a huge turn off to see that the dungeons are every single bit an.... utter disappointment

Yes, I'm basically saying Explorable Mode Dungeons (especially Sorrow's Embrace) are too hard, nerf it Anet or maybe you can modified it in some sort that it can be at least slightly enjoyable

PS: I do want to try another dungeon paths to see if it is the same, but as the rumor I heard that Sorrow's Embrace is the easiest of them all, I'm not really optimistic about the other

Being Saleh: Dungeoneering, Part 1

I've sharpened my swords, readying my scepter, polishing my staff, but to be honest I think nothing can prepare you on the first run on Guild Wars 2 dungeons, below I put on some words of my (cursing) time with them :D

The Hell and Heaven Runs on Story Mode

Welcome to Ascalonian Catacombs, where every Ascalonian dead elite fighters are still thinking that they're alive and everything that walks in two legs are charrs, AC is the lvl 30 dungeon located in Plain of Ashford, Charr's starting area, this is my first dungeon, tried the story mode a week after Guild Wars 2 release (still a cute lvl 27 at that time) but it's apparently bugged so we tried again on the next week.

The mobs are all ghosts, and they're nasty, when you have a party on minimal level prepare to die a lot, but as I told you before: dying is a requirement for Guild Wars 2. So we have nasty mesmers that confuses us, elementalists that rain down destruction from above, and some nasty archers that trapped and one shotted us. After several hours tried to clear the story mode we realized something else: our repair bills exhausted our pocket, we cleared it though.

A week later we tried the level 40 dungeons, the Caudecus Manor, located in Queensdale, humans are the denizens on this dungeon, regular bandits and regular difficulty, I was kinda surprised how CM is completed in only 20 mins rather than AC (which took us two whole hours), I've heard they fixed the diificulty (buffed it through the roof) on the latest patch, I haven't tried it again.

Since I was at max level now (I didn't even pay attention when I leveled up) so I've been running some more dungeon, Twilight Arbor is a nasty place with a lot of poisonous mobs, Sorrow Embrace is an exhausting place since it's a big dwarf city, Citadel of Flames are... well... fiery, and at Honor of The Waves the difficulty are plunging down again, in fact SE and COF final bosses doesn't require you to have some madz skillz, it's more like “stay away from the fire” kind of fight combined with using environments so the boss will somewhat hurt themselves (or taking a heavy damage from a tool) while we laugh in a safe distance, pretty easy, but the journey to that easiness is effectively hellish.

And yes, this is on story mode only, means you run it not for the rewards but simply an optional story, no loot table on bosses but they do awards you with some nice hat according to your class first time you complete it, which in my case: go straightforwad into the mystic forge just because I don't like the shape of it on my head when I wear it (most of the full-cap light armors hide charr horns, making me look like a superdeformed dolphin with fangs)

After The Runs

I sometimes think that the devs are experimenting with dungeons, there's a couple of interesting fight in there with mobs that have special abilities, but it's usually hard, and lots of dodging are required, on the other hand we have some boring standing generic bosses which are easier. The Dynamic Events (yes there are events in dungeon) are somewhat catchy but it requires awareness that you don't drag mobs from the events into another pack, the “pull it apart” strategy are common, it's more like crowd controlling but in a shorter time, one regular dungeon monster is enough to wipe you and they mostly did it.

There are lots of... 'unbalanced'.... difficulty on bosses, for example the first boss on COF is the most sadistic of all from my experience, try fighting a hard hitting whirlwind-ing boss while face a sentient invulnerable weapon of his (which also creates a whirlwind of fire), while the last boss of COF can even be faced naked, yes, naked, with no penalty since everything is coming down to you hitting him with a boulder he rolled at you and burn everything on him when he's stunned, after that it's just rinse, and repeat, also: you can't die on him since there's an invulnerability bubble erected from an NPC, so one of your party member can chill out while everyone tried to hit the boss's face, and the waypoint is right outside the room, so when you died and return you can still continue where you left off because one of your friends is bubbling and the boss will never reset while he's still there

I can't even suggest the devs to add/fix something from the dungeon, because it have so much extreme ups and downs on difficulties, but overall until this day I still think along the lines of “dungeons 'r hard”. For me Guild Wars 2 dungeons seems of a sort of punishment for me because of my usual facerolling on WOW Twilight Dungeons

I liked story dungeons, I do, but I probably won't repeat it unless I'm helping someone runs it, the story mode is not even the true dungeon, the real one is the Explorable mode when you face harder enemies and acquiring phat lootz. If the easy mode is not... well easy (for me and some guildmates of course) I think I need more time to try the Explorable Modes (like next month). I do want the Twilight Arbor's Greatsword =))

UPDATE: I finally managed ran two Sorrow's Embrace explorable mode on the last three days, next post is just up there