So, last night, I finally did Ascalon Catacombs. AC is a level 30 dungeon and its Story Mode is the first dungeon in the game. It was much harder than I was expecting or anyone in my group was expecting. I think everyone thought they could just mindlessly DPS and be fine. We all rushed in without a strategy and nearly wiped on the first pull. Our group had two thieves, one guardian, an Elementalist and my Mesmer.
As the dungeon went on, we started getting much better at the pulls, mobs and flow of the dungeon. We had a couple of people who had tried Story Mode before but not beaten it. I think I'd rather just break this post into certain encounters, why they kicked our as, and what we did about it.
1. MobsOur first pulls - We fight the first two or three mob pull and nearly wipe. The Melee goes down first and rather quickly. Some people are just DPSing and standing still. I try to rez one of our melee guys and nearly die myself. Early on, we were doing a lot of corpse runs from the Waypoint to progress. I hope this is not by design, as it racks up the repair bill. Luckily, they include a armor repair guy in the dungeon. Anyways, what we learned is:
-You have to figure out your pulls before going in. Call Targets and separate targets. You can pull individuals from a pack away from the rest. This allows you to fight one mob at a time, and this is much easier. You also don't want to fight multiples in a tight area. Pull the mobs out of stairwells and chaotic tight spots.
-When fighting a ranged + melee mob, you can LoS the range or anti-range him. As a Mesmer, I switched up my toolbar to aoe combo fields and a lot of anti-range stuff. My Illusionary Warden could occupy a ranger mob while we focused on another mob.
-Combo fields! Drop them, use them. I was stacking combo fields with our Guardian. Applying chaos fields on top of light and fire fields. This gave chaos armor and condition cleansing to those who used them up with a finisher. After awhile, our melee adjusted, remembered to move and dodge, and take advantage of fields. They began to live longer.
2. TrapsWe ran into our first trap room and did pretty well with it. We quickly focused on the gryphon heads that controlled the traps and took them out. The trap room that gave us trouble was an open room with a gate, and a Champion level mob guarding the gate. The room was full of spike traps. The person who did it before informed us that there is a chain by the Champion that disables the traps. I blinked thorugh, found the chain and pulled it before dying. The rest of the group had run in and died on the traps, so I had the miniboss focused on me. After this was done, we downed the gate guard pretty easily.
At this point, we were starting to improve as a group. The next part was the locked gate that required you to drop a stone on a pressure plate, but we all know about that and it was done before I even got to the door. We then cleared out the next trap room. The following stairs gave us trouble because we made the previously mentioned mistake of fighting in a tight area. Once we began pulling each mob from the pack of three out of the stairs, one by one, we took them down. There was still a lot of dying and corpse res and running.
3. BossesNext came another miniboss that was already engaged in a fight with a NPC. We ran in and joined the fight. There was some dying and corpse running here. I realized this miniboss needed some interrupts, but I didn't have many on me. I used my KD from Greatsword and my Diversion shatter here and there, plus my CHaos Storm had a daze chance. Someone pulled him into the stair well entry, and that gave the rest of us a chance to DPS him for awhile, but tight spots are dangerous. After some dyings going on, I ended up kiting the miniboss until my staff hits killed it.
Another thing I should mention is that story mode has story segments. There are cut-aways and conversation scenes between the NPCs. When we downed this miniboss, we freed up Eir and there was a dialogue scene. After that, Eir joined our party. So we had us five, plus two NPCs. One a ranger and the other a Warrior-like.
The real bosses: There are three real bosses after all the minibosses. We started off with the Ranger boss. In this fight, the boss stands atop a platform and range attacks you. The platform is separated from the rest of the surrounding area, and the only way to get to it is going up a beam of wood. Our melee went on the beam, and the rest of us kited in the circle area surrounding the island platform. This boss went farely well. He was by far the easiest encounter. He randomly attacks people from range, then teleports to the surrounding circle and engages in melee distance. This process then repeats. When he dropped into melee range at low health, I dropped my Time Warp on all of us and we speed bursted the last of his health down. When He was on the island, I kept my anti-range skills up on him. By now, I had ditched my Greatsword for a Scepter and Focus. The reason for this is the Focus has the iWarden for DPS and deflections, and the temporal curtain/into the void skill allowed me a way to pull groups of mobs and do knockdowns during fights. Plus the Scepter 2 skill was a block/blind depending on how you used it.
On our way to the second boss, our Guardian pulled a gorup before we were ready. We wiped on this, but when I came back, they were still engaged from corpse running. They were focusing on the Warrior and my presence drew the monk mob. Because I fucked it up, I decided to kite/tank the Monk with my anti-range attack skills. I ended up pulling this off long enough for them to finish the other mob and switch to the monk. So yes, a Mesmer semi-tanked for a bit. The second boss we fought was also pretty easy. You could fight this boss as a straight dps attack. She was sort of a Necro boss, and would summon adds. In story mode, we just ignored the adds. At certain points she sends out these beams to the adds and channels something to herself. RUnning across the beams fears you, so you have to stick to an area. Mostly, we DPSed and ressed each other from downed stage.
The third boss was directly after this, and was the boss our Guardian couldn't beat in his last group. The fight is like Twins from AQ or anyone of the raid bosses that followed that strategy in WoW afterwards. The difference is that you can't simply aggro and tank the two bosses apart from each other. You have to use pushbacks and knockdowns to separate them. There are boulders all over the area, and picking them up lets you throw the boulder and knockback a boss. This fight took a long time, a LONG time, and we died and ran back from waypoints over and over. It was very hard to move the bosses how you wanted to move htem, and we weren't totally coordinated. You might have one player knock the boss one direction, and then another knock the boss back another direction. If we did it again, I think I'd have one or two players on Boulder duty, and make sure they just keep knocking one of the bosses down and away from the other. Then have the other three focus on one boss. Our damage ended up split in all the chaos and the bosses got next to each other quite often. We did manage to defeat them though.
Final boss was the ghost of Duke Barradin. He's a warrior/ melee boss. He hits hard, but the real bitch is the Foefire he summons. This is an AOE holy fire that will kill you almost immediatly. Once you realize you can't spend a second in it, then it becomes top priority to avoid. After that, my second priority was blinds and disables on the boss to lower his damage output. My combo fields, scepter, and iDuelist applied stacks of confusion to the boss to do condition damage. The offhand pistol also gave me another interrupt to lower damage output on the Duke. We beat him, and I felt he was far easier than the Two Lovers bosses. You just had to stay out of Foefire, and kite/play defensively if he came after you. Help your teammates with combo fields, rezzes and disables on the boss. By this point, that process was a part of every encounter for me.
4. Loot: I got half my wardrobe replaced on this dungeon run. I got loot off of bosses and loot from treasure chests that drop after beating a boss. I got a new scepter, greatsword, pistol and torch. I also got a new head, shoulders and chest. The last boss doesn't drop a treasure chest in Story mode, but completing it the first time gives you a rare helm. This was my first rare item, so I was pretty happy. Defeating the dungeon in the variatiants in Explorable mode will get you the other rares that are part of the dungeon set.
Unfortunately, they removed the dungeon set look from Story/Explorable mode. Those unique looks are now moved to the higher level versions which require rerunning the dungeon in explorable mode. At least, thats what I think they involve. I'm not sure how they dole out the tokens.
Overall, we died a lot and I learned a lot. Their dungeon design is different than WoW or Rift, but it has to be because the trinity is gone. I think they expect you to go into downed state, and expect teams to help each other out of downed state.
Afterwards, I cleared out some inventory, put some stuff up for sale on the Trading Post and then grouped up with FatalT to run around in Queensdale for some fun.
Dungeon pics and dungeon armor pic: