Hey folks, I’m Robert Hrouda, a content designer on Guild Wars 2. In the coming months, we’ll make some changes to dungeon mechanics to make them a more fun and challenging experience. I wanted to give you a heads-up on our plans for phase 1 of our dungeons evolution—specifically, the removal of “res-rushing”—as well as a brief overview of our plans for phase 2.

“Res-rushing” is when a player uses a waypoint to resurrect immediately after being defeated in a dungeon and then runs back to the fight, instead of waiting for their party members to resurrect them.

Dungeons were designed to be highly focused on teamwork. The current res-rushing mechanic discourages the type of behavior we intended when a fellow player goes down. We hope that by eliminating res-rushing, we’ll bring dungeons more in-line with our original design goals, which are based around team play and strategy.

With this upcoming change, defeated players will be unable to use waypoints while their party is in combat. Players will only be able to use waypoints if the party wipes or withdraws from combat.

When we were making this change, we looked at the events and encounters where our data showed players being encouraged to res-rush and re-balanced them to allow for the safe removal of res-rushing. There are a few standout examples of this, and our patch notes will include a full list of changes we are making to existing dungeon content.

What’s Happening in Phase 2?

Phase 2 of our dungeons evolution will see a lot of changes to bosses and enemies. We plan on taking a good, hard look at the health values and mechanics of our elites and bosses, and in turn how we reward players for their time investment and risk. This will include looking into every boss in our dungeons and seeing what we can do to enhance the gameplay experience in order to make more memorable and strategic encounters.

Do you have any thoughts or feedback on these upcoming changes you want to share with us? Head over to the dungeon forum and join the conversation: https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/dungeons. We value player input during this process and look forward to hearing from you!