As part of an ongoing conversation with the Guild Wars 2 dungeon community, Robert Hrouda, ArenaNet Content Designer, mentioned Rangers in quite a few forum posts yesterday. The pet UI in Guild Wars 2 can be a little frustrating (poor Necros have it even worse), and this fact seems amplified when running dungeons and fractals as a Ranger. Pets have to be micromanaged fairly closely in order to even have a chance of staying alive, and due to the lack of overall survivability that pets have, even when micromanaged correctly, some pets don’t stand much of a chance in the more dangerous fractals.

These pet issues make some Rangers feel like they really don’t have a place in dungeons and fractals, especially since trading off stats and abilities to help their own survivability takes off a rather large chunk of their personal DPS.

Robert Hrouda made the argument that Rangers are actually in a decent spot for the most part. He offered a few tips for dungeon-aspiring Rangers as well as talked a bit about what the team plans on doing about the Ranger pet survivability issues. That is indeed an issue. Keep reading to take a look at all of his posts.

Achieving the perfect balance on tough bosses in explorable mode dungeons and fractals is never an easy task. ArenaNet’s Robert Hrouda has been adjusting one of the most difficult bosses in explorable mode Arah– the fourth (Seer) path’s Dwaynas High Priestess Simin fight– and is still making adjustments to the fight. This boss was often skipped by groups before the recent changes. Here is his latest update on the changes being made next:

Originally posted by Robert Hrouda (Source)

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Hey folks, sorry about not having posted in here for a while! But update time!

I took another look at Simin after the spark AI fix, and got more feedback concerning the difficulty. The sparks were a step in the right direction, but it wasn’t enough. I’m going to reduce her stealth healing this time around while I consider other possible changes. As it stands right now she has some nice mechanics with the tears and the spark running, which emphasizes the teamwork we like to see. However all that aside, her healing turns it from a fun mechanics fight to a more hard-nosed DPS check for even the most mechanically skilled groups.
Personally I would much rather see people having fun with mechanics than having meet a DPS check. Considering also there isn’t a visible meter to check your group DPS versus her healing, groups can spend hours doing this and reaching the same result, despite meeting the mechanical skill threshold.

I will eventually change her stealth mechanic so she doesn’t heal during it and instead does something else (like an enrage moment where she is invulnerable), but for now I’ll just take her healing down a peg to reduce the DPS needed to overcome the fight, so people can enjoy the mechanics of it.

Keep reading to see a followup post.

Fractals of the Mists offers organized groups a unique chance to gather their wits and challenge the most difficult levels of GW2′s current group content. If you’ve ever wanted to see an organized group in action during the level 50+ Fractals, today we have a set of videos just for you. Captured by The Brainz and Kunst, the following videos showcase Fractals from ranges level 51 through 55. The group stays the same throughout, and is comprised of one Guardian, three Elementalists, and one Thief. Some videos are quite long, while others focus on a particular boss fight.

To take a peek, hit “Continue Reading!”

It’s been a good week for The Lost Shores information reveals! Yesterday we received another developer blog update from Leah Rivera, who showed off some details and a cool video about the new dungeon that’s built out of mini-dungeons being added Friday– Fractals of the Mist:

This dungeon is unlike anything you’ve played in Guild Wars 2. It’s built of an array of mini-dungeons, which we call fractals. These fractals are slices of the Mists, fragments of time that have been stabilized by the intrepid asura researcher Dessa. Some of these vignettes from history may be familiar to original Guild Wars players, while others will represent previously unseen events. Because of their eclectic origin, each fractal is built as a distinct, separate experience with themes, mechanics, and art specific to that fractal.

Leah Rivera goes on to explain the fractals system, which plops your party at a central hub every time a mini-dungeon, or fractal, has been cleared. After this point, the party has the opportunity to explore a different fractal, which is completely random and scales in difficulty as your party advances. This new dungeon will be open for players of all levels, since it will scale us to level 80, but it’s definitely meant to be a challenge, especially for lower level parties.

Keep reading to check out the video, which is quite impressive!

We all have things we love about Guild Wars 2, places that make us cheer out and say “yes, this is my ultra-mega place!” We all have classes, abilities, and features we’re passionate about, either negatively or positively. This is a place to share all that. Once a week I’ll be raising a Guild Wars 2 question to the community– hopefully an interesting one– and we’ll share our opinions. I’ll start off with my opinion just to get the ball rolling, but these questions will not have any right or wrong answers, so feel free to argue with me to your heart’s content!

So, organized group content. Raiders sometimes receive a lot of flack because of how raid-centric and loot treadmill-like many MMORPGs have become. Want the shiniest gear? Better get your raid group together, clear three nights a week off your schedule, and get ready to stand in–er, avoid fires. Despite the negativity that some gamers feel towards raiding, however, there’s no denying the fact that a challenging raid or 5-man dungeon run with friends can be an extremely fun way to spend an evening. Challenging group content– when made well and completed with the right group– promotes teamwork, communication, leadership skills, and it makes us want to become better players.

During Tuesday’s update, we saw some pretty significant changes to the dungeon reward system, and how reward tokens are affected by diminishing returns (DR) as well as offered at the very end of a complete run. The changes were done to discourage players from exploiting certain dungeon bosses and environments in order to skip certain fights, and run through areas as quickly as possible, multiple times, to farm tokens. This may seem like a good intention in theory, since the system will undoubtedly see subsequent changes once ArenaNet’s team actually fixes the exploits.

Except for the fact that, well, the DR system– and the changes that occurred– seem… not quite right. Instead of seeing diminishing returns for super-fast dungeon completion runs (less than 30 mins) that are ran back-to-back, as intended, some players are seeing diminishing returns on the amount of tokens they receive the first time through. And the second time through, even though their run took far longer than 30 minutes. There are also players who are finding themselves kicked out of groups right before the final boss so their groupmates can quickly grab a friend who can then earn the completion rewards, leaving the original player who battled through the entire dungeon empty-handed.

Players are reporting mixed feelings about Guild Wars 2′s dungeons so far. Some think they’re too difficultly tuned and not quite worth the rewards, others think they are just fine, and merely need an organized group and a bit of smart tactics to successfully clear. Yesterday, Colin Johanson, GW2′s Game Director, had a few things to say about the inherent difficulty of many of GW2′s dungeons and how dungeon difficulty in general was approached during the game’s alpha stages as well as in comparison to Guild Wars 1. It’s an interesting read!

Here’s a snippet:

I’ll point out ironically, when we first turned on DoA back in Gw1 the posts you’re seeing in this forum from a few folks about difficulty were the exact same comments everyone had about DoA. It was “impossible, mobs were just tuned to do insane damage and have huge HP, there was no tactics to defeat DoA”, etc. I went back and read through the original DoA launch feedback and it was literally identical to the comments folks on the forums are leaving now.

We made the choice back then to stick with the difficulty, and give people time to learn how to play the dungeon better and overcome it. A few months later, people viewed it as the most fun thing in the game and totally reasonable without us changing anything.

Keep reading for the rest of the quote!

GameInformer published a brief, useful guide for Guild Wars 2 players that are new to the game’s dungeon system. Dungeons in GW2 are a little different than in most MMORPGs that utilize the familiar “trinity” system. Players will need to be a little quicker on their toes, and maintain responsibility of their individual survivability as well as keep group utility in mind. This can take a little reprogramming, but the playstyle can lead to some fun dungeoning adventures!

Here’s a preview of one of the tips offered:

Embrace multiple roles.

Tanking and healing don’t exist in Guild Wars 2 like they do in most MMOs, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t different roles to play and ways to specialize your character. Many dungeon fights throw curveballs at you, from additional enemies spawning mid-battle to bursts of status effects that cripple the party for short durations. Be ready to not only change your tactics, but switch to a different weapon set and embrace a secondary role. Many elite skills, like the guardian’s tome of courage, change your entire skill loadout – learn when those dramatic changes are useful, and capitalize on them. Weapon switches (or attunement changes, for you elementalists out there) are much more useful than just for the occasional swiftness buff. Take a second look at your classes’ skills, and see what might be useful in a party despite being pointless for a solo player. You’ll be glad the first time you turn the tide of a battle by blocking off a doorway and locking out a bunch of monsters with a support skill that does nothing in one-on-one fights.

Good stuff. Check out the full article for all of the tips.