- All of the second bosses (or first real bosses, if you prefer) in the 3 dungeon are gear/dps check. You're probably not "doing it wrong", but perhaps you should check your ability to down them quickly before they kill you .

- Most of the trash mobs require the use of heavy cc and aoe, don't be afraid about using your ultimate on them, as they are available fairly often.

- I think Spindleclutch is perhaps the "easiest" starter vet dungeon at the moment, both bosses and trashs.

I have also been wondering about this.

But it seems Zenimax made the veteran rank dungeons start at VR4/5. Im not really happy with this considering how long even one veteran level takes. I really need a break from questing sometimes, and dungoneering is great fun.

My group of VR1s managed to finish veteran Banished cells. All bosses were VR5 and all were only ever dropping VR5 loot.

Tried Fungal grotto, its the same story, managed to kill the first boss but couldnt kill the second.

It feels almost like 4 manning a 20 man raid, the boss fights can last for 20 minutes, and at least doing it at VR1 there is NO margin for even the slightest error.

Why werent at least some of the many dungeons scaled to VR1 and VR2?

On a side note how the heck are healers other than Templar managing to sucsessfully heal these? I can just see a lot of "unusual" builds realising they need to reroll when they start veteran content, and that makes me a little sad.

Supersomething wrote: »

Out of the three dungeons in the first VR Tier Fungal Grotto is by far the hardest one there is. Banished Cells are the easiest to complete. Spindleclutch is doable as you can skip the first boss if you're unable to kill him and you can still manage to clear the rest of the dungeon.

Sure we can complete it, but it is obviously not what Zenimax intended, since all loot is for VR5...

You might say Banished cells is the easiest, but it is still very hardcore at least at VR1. The dungeon difficulty went suddenly off the scale, and i struggle to see how "casual" players and "unusual" builds can manage here. That is a shame because everything worked fine until VR1.

I play a Templar healer and up until this point have used a few resto staff skills alongside my templar heal skills. I have now had to take most of them off my bar, i have only 1 resto staff skill left and really only use it for the magicka regen and passives. The bosses hit like trucks, even for a "proper" tank with all the right stats overcharged and playing with skill. How then is a small damage shield and HoTs ever going to cut it? Avoidable damage? sure that was the case for normal but not the same in VR...

Basically at the end of the day, trying these dungeons at VR1/2 is the same as trying the lvl 30 dungeons at level 10 I am told to expect to be VR5 at the end of the entire Ebonheart pact...

Hearts wrote: »

The second boss of each dungeon has a hard boss.
Spindleclutch got a pure DPS boss, you shouldnt have to do anything other than dpsing all the time (and block if he targets you after aoe).
Banished Cell has a DPS race as well, have the tank pull the boss around the room, move backwards in a circle so that the fire spreads from the outside to the inside. Everyone else should just go DPS on him.
Fungul Grotto is the hard one, no DPS race here, its just pure skill, he will spawn 4 mobs and chain one person down, the other 3 should nuke one of the 4 mobs that are spawned, if you fail to kill one of them before the sword goes down, the player dies.
He also casts a blue beam and links two people, these two people got to get far away from each other in a few seconds or they die from the damage.
If you dont get past these then you wont be able to beat the rest of the dungeon as these are regarded as the hardest bosses of the dungeons. (and also you cant progress without beating them :P).

Personally i thought the second boss in BC was one of the easiest. The guy with the adds and "Blue ball" spam was really difficult without cheating.

This is sort of derailing the thread.

The answer OP is that theres arent really any dungeons for VR1/2

On the subject of unusual builds and healers other than Templars, I can confirm being able to heal BC and Spindle with no problem as a VR2 NB healer in full VR1 greens (Seducer set and Magnus set) with blue staves and rings. I did run the dungeon with Guild mates, and the tank and DPS were VR5. I really had no problem healing these two dungeons with this setup(ran them each 3 times with 0 wipes). I also have Purge from the support line in Alliance War, and that helps for the 2nd and final bosses in BC. Actually, our speed run attempt failed because we had a D/C at the last boss.....at 17 mins. We may not have beat the 20 minutes anyway.....but it was damn close.

The tank I ran with said that the dungeons really have more to do with using the proper abilities and tactics than anything else (and of course some encounters are a DPS race). AoE and CC is huge for trash pulls especially. The tank would regularly change skills on his bars for even trash pulls.

One highly useful skill for DPS is Volcanic Rune from the Mage Guild tree. That really helps to control the trash pulls and reduce the damage. Some of the trash pulls can kill the tank faster than you can blink if they aren't properly CC'd.

My observation is that good DPS can make or break these runs. EVERYONE has to know how to block, dodge, and break CC. People have to be in the right place at the right time and there is very little room for error. Try to learn the encounters. Watch videos and talk to people that have done it and know the strategies. I don't think they are tuned for VR1-2 groups. Even at VR3-5, it's still not going to be welfare epics. These dungeons are a challenge. I'm lucky that my first runs were with guild mates and with people that knew the fights.

I can say that after that first successful run, it gets easier. Once you know what to do and what's coming next, it begins to get easier each time. These things always get easier with time as the population becomes more experienced and educated about the encounters. I've seen it in plenty of MMOs. Today's "hard" content will be next months trivial content.