New to dungeons. Where to begin?

Hi everyone!

I've never done any dungeon but I'm really curious and I'd like to learn as much as possible about it. I wanna be good at dungeons so I can join a group one day and feel confident that I won't let them down.

I've been trying to understand how dungeons work, but I still have some (newbie) questions, like what kind of armor, weapons, accessories etc should I use? And what else do I need to get started? Right now I have a level 80 Elementalist.

Thanks for your help!

Dungeons sadly have fallen way out of favour to the point where I’d consider them “abandonware” of sorts.

Players don’t really do them because the rewards suck and Anet refuses to rework them to make them more attractive.

I’d highly suggest looking into Fractals instead as they are very similar content and have sort of taken over the role Dungeons used to play.

What @Oglaf.1074 said.

However if you still intend to run dungeons, you should know this.Dungeons have 1 story path and a multitude of exploration paths. The story path is really only done to gain access to the exploration paths and ceases playing any role after that.Most people who run dungeons have done so 1000 times over. Having a new player in the group is uncommon. My advice is to tell your group when you're running a dungeon path for the first time or else everyone will just expect you to know everything.Tactics in dungeons usually revolve around standing in corners so line of sight forces all mobs in a room into melee range where they can be cleared quickly. In some situations the standard tactic is to skip the mobs entirely. When you start fighting and your group just skips the mobs there's a good chance you'll end up alone. Bosses can be bursted down quickly to prevent them from using any big mechanics. The go-to builds for this are purely dps based (either berserker or viper).There are dungeon paths that are run more often and there are paths that are shunned for not being woth it.

Terminology:Path (P) = Shortly after entering exploration mode of a dungeon you'll have to choose one of multiple paths from a multiple choice dialogue box. This usually means helping a different NPC, getting different bosses and facing different obstacles. P1 refers to the first choice from this dialogue box, P3 to the third choice.AC = Ascalonian CatacombsCM = Caudecus's ManorTA = Twilight ArborSE = Sorrow's EmbraceCoF = Citadel of FlameHotW = Honor of the Waves (Sometimes just called Honor or HW)CoE = Crucible of EternityArah = The Ruined City of Arahexp = Experienced players only. This group has no intention of teaching new players.5000 ap = This group only accepts players with at least 5000 account points. I don't know if this is still a thing, but for completionist's sake I'll include it here.all welcome = This group is ready and willing to teach new players and doesn't care about your dps. Don't expect a swift clear.

I really wish Anet would change their stance on the dungeons. I’ve got such nostalgic memories from them, and the story paths offer such unique opportunities to “hang out” with some of the major characters in the overall story of the game.

As ststed above, dungeons are abandoned content and are rarely ran, though some still are, most noticably ac for the monk runes, and the occadlsional ta for nightmare runes. If you want to know how to run them, try watching sone youtube vids on them, doesn't matter if it's an old vid, nothing about dungeons have changed since that vid was posted. As for gear, there really is only 1 role in dungeons: dps. Zerk armor is bis for power dps builds.

@"Oglaf.1074" said:I really wish Anet would change their stance on the dungeons.

Please no, imagine they add instabilities or some other "cool" stuff into dungeons... at least now they are still playable.

@krzysiekb.8769 said:

@"Oglaf.1074" said:I really wish Anet would change their stance on the dungeons.

Don’t just assume like that. I’m not talking about reworking the dungeons themselves. They’re fine. What they need to fix the rewards. I’ve often suggested they add a tier of Ascended dungeon armour and arms.

Voilá - people would want to run dungeons again.

It’d be like when everyone ran the Charr dungeons for Exotic Berserker gear all those years before the introduction of Ascended stuff. Ah.. good times.

I run them more or less regularly with some friends online. We do deal so much damage that it doesn't matter if there is one noob in the group. Had one doing next to 0 damage and still we ran through. Most bosses go down in a couple of seconds.

The rewards aren't bad. You get almost 1g for one path and you also get tokens which you can exchange for exotic gear. These days this gear isn't used (at least for me, since I always run full ascended/legendary) so I just throw them in the mystic forge.

Take in mind that some dungeons are harder than others. Any story path is relatively easy considering you know game mechanics (expect to be hard if you're doing AC at lv 40.... I remember my first time, it was hell and got literally carried).

About explorable mode IMO HotW is the easiest one even with the underwater combat, you just Cleave everywhere. The hard one would be CM because 1.- mechanics 2.- mobs hit like a truck. Of course I'm not counting Arah because that another whole story, It's Long, Hard as heck, and frustrating to PUG with unexperienced people, and I just only did the shorter path.

Well, you have to consider that at one point of the game’s lifespan, Arah exploration was considered PvE endgame - as weird as that seems nowadays.