Your first dungeon experience

[Ora]

I have done 4 dungeons now, 3 on my engineer, 1 on my guardian.

What needs to be fixed instantly:

1) camera. Try CM on a melee class and you know what I mean. Not recommended w/o prior popping of a seasickness pill.
2) gfx effects. Other MMO's have, what GW2 desperately needs. an option to switch off unneeded gfx fireworks eg, the effects of your team mates. That would actually make it possible to know when to dodge and to see, where to move to safely.

what needs to be fixed asap:

1) Aggro. Wether the removal of the holy trinity is good or bad is debatable. Whats not debatable is that the way it was implemented has 2 huge drawbacks:

a) removal of most of the teamplay. Everyone just tanks, spanks and runs for himself. Most teamplay required is 1 guy throwing boulders or standing on a plate.
b) removal of most of the group tactics due to lack of aggro management. Ie: chaos instead of teamwork and group effort.
I doubt we get the trinity back, but anet urgenntly needs to think about fixing teamplay and aggro management.

what needs to be fixed in further addons:

As of now dungeons are no brainers. All they require is grit your teeth and spam your skillbar 100x against dumb but high hp mobs. Basically the same for trashmobs, boss ads and bosses. This also explains why dungeons in GW2 are called to easy and to hard by the same player: Their difficulty is achieved in a not challenging, cheap and no fun way.

I remember an MMO where it took the best players 5 weeks to get to the endboss of a newly released dungeon. The forums were bustling with progress reports and discussions about different tactics. Yours truly and his than top 3 guild even needed 2 months. And we went day after day, since it was fun, good loot on the way and we found a slightly faster and better way every time.

That MMO has an overall rating of just 70% on metacritic, compared to GW2's 92%. But when it comes to the dungeons it's the other way round: 60% for GW2, 92 for other MMo's.
In GW2, dungeons were done the day 5 players had the apropriate level. And a week later players grind them. Nobody ever bragged on chat about doing a dungeon in GW2 or claimed a wirldfirst in any forum...

In every other MMO dungeons are the highlight. The place were the designers put most effort and which are used to advertise and showcase.
In GW2 town design and jumping puzzles got more attentiton than the dungeons. It looks like the dungeons were added last minute before the game was released.

This and also the constant messages of exploit fixes are a clear indication, that both dungeon design and their playtesting need a lot of improvement in GW2.

[Wethospu]

You have tried dungeons 4 times. It is quite understandable that it feels chaotic.
There are all kinds of conditions, control and boons to protect teammates. Obviously just spamming your skills on recharge won't get wanted results.
In my opinion the issue is that they are trying to cater everyone. Enemies need to have lots of health so that you can't just faceroll them (pretty much all non-veteran enemies are like this). In the otherhand they need to deal poor damage so that everyone stands a chance.
I think they should just create hard-mode. Casuals/beginners get the content and better learning curve and better players get their challenge (forced to have proper positioning, proper skill-usage and proper coordination).

[Ora]

You have tried dungeons 4 times. It is quite understandable that it feels chaotic. .

Not really. It didn't feel chaotic to do missions and later dungeons in GW1 after just 4 times. It also didn't feel chaotic in the other MMO's I played.
I am experienced enough after 30 years of playing games on a PC to know a good dungeon from a bad one
I am still not to old to adjust though (at least I hope )
I did adjust to WvWvW in GW2 eg.
I asked people here what I did wrong, went back to WvWvW and tried again. WvWvW needs improvements as well, and I am posting suggestions about it, too.

However. Dungeons are way more in need of improvement than WvWvW.
WvWvW could be fixed with more tp's, a fair matchup and an acess mode for PvE players to map it/tame pets/do puzzles w/o getting ganked.
Dungeons need a lot more than that.

[sorudo]

after i did the explorable ones i found it to be way to hardmode oriented, regardless of how much you try to work as a team the enemies ether wipe the players or kill the objective way faster then anyone can do anything about it.
it's a mess, for now i avoid it until they get a lid on it and make it do-able, i want the armor but if i have to be lvl 80 to do a lvl 35 dungeon then something is really wrong here.

[Wethospu]

I agree those level requirements feel weird. It really can't work for both level 35 and level 80 (with gear-difference and player skill-difference). All exp should be level 80 and have side-kicking system (if you want to carry someone).

Not really. It didn't feel chaotic to do missions and later dungeons in GW1 after just 4 times. It also didn't feel chaotic in the other MMO's I played.
I am experienced enough after 30 years of playing games on a PC to know a good dungeon from a bad one
I am still not to old to adjust though (at least I hope )
I did adjust to WvWvW in GW2 eg.
I asked people here what I did wrong, went back to WvWvW and tried again. WvWvW needs improvements as well, and I am posting suggestions about it, too.

However. Dungeons are way more in need of improvement than WvWvW.
WvWvW could be fixed with more tp's, a fair matchup and an acess mode for PvE players to map it/tame pets/do puzzles w/o getting ganked.
Dungeons need a lot more than that.

It feels chaotic because of steep learning curve. The difference between normal PvE and dungeons is very big. If you want to enjoy dungeons you need to overcome that difference, and that requires some tries.
When I did my first dungeon I didn't understand much, everything seemed chaotic and we just didn't stand a chance. First explorable ended in failure and felt impossible. Now most of them feel very easy.

[Ora]

If you want to enjoy dungeons you need to overcome that difference, and that requires some tries.
.

Thats really not the point. read my post above, my guild and me needed 2 months to get to the endboss in a dungeon in another MMO...

I would however not invest that time into something as poorly designed as the dungeons in GW2. If they were actually challenging and fun, rest assured, I would camp the entrances.

I will check, if the items needed for a legendary weapon can be traded. If not, than i won't get one.
And if arenanet doesn't come up with better dungeons or with some endgame for PvE, i won't play this game after I get bored with rising twinks in WvWvW...

The arenanet guy talking about dungeons in GW2 had one point right: He compared them to the crappiest part of GW1: DoA. I completed that exactly 1x for the title and than never went back.