Ascalonian Catacombs - First Experiences!

Today I decided to venture into Guild Wars 2's first dungeon Ascalonian Catacombs. This dungeon requires you to be at least level 30 and if you are above level 30 it will de-level you to meet the dungeons requirement. I entered this dungeon with a group of guildies that I was in Team Speak with, all of which are veterans to this genre and know what they are doing.

When entering the dungeons story mode for the first time you are greeted with a prologue cinematic that will give you background to the Catacombs. Once past the intro, you will then talk with the NPC at the start to begin the dungeon. After initiated, the doors open and you begin your journey through Ascalonian Catacombs where you will be met with a ton of crypts to sort through till the first boss appears. This whole sequence was fun, enjoyable, and a challenge, but after the first boss, the challenge turns into the broken mess that is Ascalonian Catacombs.

After the first boss I was quite pleased with the dungeon, however, after that the dungeon implodes into a huge overpowered mess that you almost have to be lucky to make it through. The trash mobs in this dungeon, when grouped up, could almost pass as a raid boss in any MMO I have ever played because they are THAT strong. Not only that, but they are so strong that I found my self as a Thief getting one shot even with good gear and even at RANGE. A few more bosses, wipes and hours later, we ended up getting to the Two Lovers boss sequence where you have to separate the two lovers in order to not get annihilated. You can do this by using the boulders on the ground, or kiting one away from the other. Once separated, you then begin dpsing one of them down, then the other after that. Very simple mechanic, however, because of the overpowered mobs that this dungeon has, it wasn't so easy.

After wiping about 25+ times, my guildies grew frustrated and decided to call it quits till this dungeon gets fixed, some of which said that this dungeon is WAY harder than any other dungeon in the game. I found this sad because I have never once made it through this dungeon, no matter what group comp I have, the dungeon fares to powerful for an average to good group to get through. I also found that the rewards were bad as well. I wouldn't have minded the challenge if the rewards weren't blues or stuff crappier than what I have. I was all for the difficulty of Vanilla WoW because at the end of boss fights you got amazing gear and rewards. This dungeon lacks that in my opinion because for the time spent doing this dungeon, you could have gotten the same rewards if not more just questing.

In the end I cant do a "proper" review of this dungeon because the fact I have not 100% completed it, but what I can tell you is it is harder than any dungeon I have ever experienced and also lacks a decent experience gain to make it worthy of your time. Also, for a dungeon to be in "Story" mode and be more challenging than then Vanilla WoW raids that were notorious for their challenge, this dungeon is a broken over powered mess that Arena Net needs to fix so people can actually experience what looks to be a fun and interesting dungeon. Till then, I recommend you don't try this dungeon out, because all you will gain is more deaths on your /deaths count.

***Keep in mind this was only really my first time through considering the first time I did Catacombs my party left after the first boss, so who knows, could be doing something wrong, but I still stand by my opinion that the dungeon at this point is to hard for the first dungeon in the game.***

Question Of The Article: Did you guys experience Ascalonian Catacombs yet? And if you did, what was your experience like? Do you feel this dungeon needs to be nerfed? Why or why not?