Guild Wars 2

Killthehealersffs.8940:

‘’Enrage Timer’’ ?
What kind of casual things are you spouting ?
So Bersker gear should be a ‘’MUST HAVE 100%’’ to beat the encounter ?
Dont you have a more vivid immagination ?

im spouting casual things because i spend most of my playtime in lions arch to set up my new costumes.

just for your info johnny, the enrage timer was used as an example (you will even find the sentence “let me give you an example” in my other post) to explain to people that we dont have a trinity, how our combat system works and that you pick gear according to your skill level in PvE. but from your post it seems you are not very experienced when it comes to raiding content so thats totally ok and i will not take your post serious.

i would personally like to see enrage timers because it will actually force people to become better at the game. but on the other hand i know that there are people who simply want to use defensive gear for the sake of using defensive gear. so i am completely fine if we dont get to see any enrage timers and people can play how they want (if they are successful is a different question).

Killthehealersffs.8940:

b) you simply take 6-8 Elementalist+Hunters and make a rotation with the water fields , and trivialize the encounter
+ 3-4 Guardians that will spamm the Protection with the Elementalist ….

if you simply take ele and hunter and make rotation with the water fields so you can trivialize the encounter, let me ask you one question:
why are people still using defensive gear then?

ele hunter = make rotation
defensive gear = afk (i exaggerate here, but it simply allows you to ignore a lot of stuff that is going on around you)

a simple example is the lupicus poison bubble in phase 3. when i started to play gw2 i played an AH knights guardian. i was running around like a clown, lupicus spammed bubbles and my reaction was: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX7wtNOkuHo
he couldnt really hurt me.
in berserker gear, you need perfect positioning to avoid the bubbles ( they are based on the distance between you and him ). when you target him, there is a red circle under him. stay close to the red circle, but dont walk inside it (this will push him) and he will never do a single bubble. would i have found this out if i kept playing knights guardian? no. whats more challenging? “haha” or perfect positioning?

so how is “make rotation” trivializing an encounter and how does “haha” make the encounter more challenging?

to make it clear, using defensive gear to facetank stuff and using waterfields and other defensive buffs while maintaining a close to perfect rotation and dodging attacks at the same time that will kill you because you are squishy, is worlds apart from each other and option 2 is much more challenging and requires the player to be on top of his game 100% of the time.

Killthehealersffs.8940:

and not only a guy that 5 months now , wants every encounter to be balanced around Bersker and tries to shut down other ppl ideas about increasing other specs iin every single thread ….

i am not trying to “shut down other ppl ideas”. you got that wrong.
i am just trying to explain why the combat system is great and why tanks and healers are not a good idea in gw2 PvE. i am trying to explain why encounters can be much more fun, challenging and complex without dedicated healers and tanks.

i dont rush into discussion and the first thing i say is “lol just dps dps dps, nothing else, delete berserker gear please, force people to use play how you want builds”. no. i am just trying to explain.

on the other hand, its the anti berserker crowd that tries to shut down above average players in this game and is starting unnecessary discussions about gear in every thread.

edit: this is the prime example:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Defensive-Skills-to-scale-with-Toughness

“i have a strange…….. idea but i dont want anyone to comment on it” = shut down players.

NoTrigger.8396:

Killthehealersffs.8940:

b) you simply take 6-8 Elementalist+Hunters and make a rotation with the water fields , and trivialize the encounter
+ 3-4 Guardians that will spamm the Protection with the Elementalist ….

if you simply take ele and hunter and make rotation with the water fields so you can trivialize the encounter, let me ask you one question:
why are people still using defensive gear then?

What the heck is a hunter and where do I get one?

NoTrigger.8396:

Naetell.3815:

Again, there’s no inherent risk attached to DPS gear. If there is, I’d like you to show that.

if you do a mistake you are dead. thats the high risk of dps gear. you have to play well, you have to know the encounter, and you have to use the right skills at the right time. in tanky gear i can ignore all of that.

I have no problems until that last bit. See, in tanky gear, however that is set up, you shouldn’t be able to “ignore all of it” – you should be able to shrug it off but it should still damage and force you to be inconvenienced.

Not OHKO level, but you should still have to pay attention and not just “tanky gear, hit auto attack and make a sammich”.

merforga.4731:

So by that notion, dungeon and fractal skins should be attainable through every single activity in the GW2 universe? It’s the same concept as a raid unique skin. Why should this logic apply to raid items but not other exclusive items?

Well, they certainly should be available through more than one activity. Notice, btw, that dungeon skins are no longer exclusive due to sPvP tracks. I’m seriously expecting Fractal reward track to appear some day as well (and i still think fractal skins should be tradable).

Killthehealersffs.8940:

The boss must constantly do some aoes atacks that punish ppl with Berseker gear if we go with the ‘’normal raid bosses mechanics’’ …
He must be balanced around ppl with Balanced-Defensive gear …..
Otherwise :
a) he will be have a Trillion HP , if they balanced it around Berseker and he will be spong-boss like the istances (that you hate)
b) you simply take 6-8 Elementalist+Hunters and make a rotation with the water fields , and trivialize the encounter
+ 3-4 Guardians that will spamm the Protection with the Elementalist ….
c) if it balanced around Balanced-Defensive gear , then your marvelous raid with Bersekers willl kill the boss in half the time (2-3 min)
….. and every1 with Berseker-Defensive-Balanced gear will be happy ….
and not only a guy that 5 months now , wants every encounter to be balanced around Bersker and tries to shut down other ppl ideas about increasing other specs iin every single thread ….

‘’Enrage Timer’’ ?
What kind of casual things are you spouting ?
So Bersker gear should be a ‘’MUST HAVE 100%’’ to beat the encounter ?
Dont you have a more vivid immagination ?

While it certainly could have been presented better, there are some important points here.

Around which stat should the raid content (any content) be balanced around? If the baseline will be PVT, then (unless some additional mechanics are introduced) the zerkers will blow through the content with no problem at all. If you balance around the Berserker stat however, then it will become required, because anyone else will need to deal with massively inflated hp pools that would extend fights for hours.

The differences in DPS output of different stat sets are just too huge – while the advantages conferred by non-dps focused stat sets too low in comparison.
There’s just no point in upping your survival-per-time-played rate by 25%, if to do that you sacrifice the opportunity to do 2-3x more damage (and i am being conservative here). If the battles introduce any kinds of oneshots, that disproportion of stat set usefulness only gets more severe.

This is a weakness of the current combat design that can be overlooked for casual content, but will need to be addressed if you plan on creating truly challenging PvE game modes.

Astralporing.1957:

Around which stat should the raid content (any content) be balanced around? If the baseline will be PVT, then (unless some additional mechanics are introduced) the zerkers will blow through the content with no problem at all. If you balance around the Berserker stat however, then it will become required, because anyone else will need to deal with massively inflated hp pools that would extend fights for hours.

The differences in DPS output of different stat sets are just too huge – while the advantages conferred by non-dps focused stat sets too low in comparison.
There’s just no point in upping your survival-per-time-played rate by 25%, if to do that you sacrifice the opportunity to do 2-3x more damage (and i am being conservative here). If the battles introduce any kinds of oneshots, that disproportion of stat set usefulness only gets more severe.

This is a weakness of the current combat design that can be overlooked for casual content, but will need to be addressed if you plan on creating truly challenging PvE game modes.

if bosses dont have enrage timer, berserker players will kill stuff faster, but berserker wont be a requirement.
players who use other gear will need longer to kill stuff, but will have an easier time to survive. so isnt that a good trade off?

NoTrigger.8396:

if bosses dont have enrage timer, berserker players will kill stuff faster, but berserker wont be a requirement.
players who use other gear will need longer to kill stuff, but will have an easier time to survive. so isnt that a good trade off?

As i said, if you have your survival-per-second rating better by even 50%, but the encounter takes 3-4x longer, then your survival chances actually go down. And, as i’ve also said, this is conservative estimate, it’s actually much worse.

As the game is now, you sacrifice dps, but in exchange you don’t really get “better chances to survive”. All you get is more chances to make a mistake. I wouldn’t call it a good trade off.

merforga.4731:

Scryeless.1924:

Ohoni.6057:

I understand that sentiment exactly. Raiding is a part of PvE though, and we should be trying to make it more so instead of make it more of a fringe thing like you have in other games where there’s ‘the entire game, and raiding’ almost diametrically opposed to one another.

A million times “no.” Raiding is a PvE activity, but it is a very specific flavor of PvE, and not for everyone’s tastes. Those who like raiding can have raiding, and it should be fun for them, but those that do not enjoy raiding, do not enjoy raiding, just accept that, move on, and leave them in peace.

Exactly this. It is a specific flavor of PvE. It is like farming World Bosses, or farming Cursed Shore events, or farming anything else for that matter. Even with what challenge that is introduced by the raid encounter it’ll still amount to farming if drops/rewards are exclusive to it unless all necessary exclusive items are given the first time through making it so that you never have to go back. Even then people shouldn’t be forced or feel forced to do something that isn’t fun for them.

So by that notion, dungeon and fractal skins should be attainable through every single activity in the GW2 universe? It’s the same concept as a raid unique skin. Why should this logic apply to raid items but not other exclusive items?

I do, personally. I think Fractal skins and any other skin should definitely be achievable in any other part of the game. There is no real reason why they only have to be found in one spot. Having a skin or item as a reward exclusive to a certain area doesn’t mean anything other than you were in that area at some point. A Fractal reward track in PvP and WvW or any reward track, rather, is great way of making progress towards something without having to feel stuck in one tiny part of a vast world or in a game mode that isn’t to your liking.

Some of the earlier posts in this thread proposed reward tracks be implemented in modes outside of PvP and I completely support this. Playing through the Raid to completion once could unlock the reward track theme for that raid in PvE, PvP, and WvW. I think this is an excellent way to help out all game modes all at once.

Astralporing.1957:

NoTrigger.8396:

if bosses dont have enrage timer, berserker players will kill stuff faster, but berserker wont be a requirement.
players who use other gear will need longer to kill stuff, but will have an easier time to survive. so isnt that a good trade off?

As i said, if you have your survival-per-second rating better by even 50%, but the encounter takes 3-4x longer, then your survival chances actually go down. And, as i’ve also said, this is conservative estimate, it’s actually much worse.

As the game is now, you sacrifice dps, but in exchange you don’t really get “better chances to survive”. All you get is more chances to make a mistake. I wouldn’t call it a good trade off.

what you are saying is kind of true, but not exactly.
The major difference is, if you team up with the right players you will be totally unkillable in tank gear. In berserk gear this isnt really the case. You dont often see it, because thats not the meta, but a couple people have done videos of face tanking the hardest bosses in the game with some team support.

I am not really advocating for either style. But i think the fundamental disconect is having stats primarily be about only those two forces. In gw1, increasing stats was more about increasing the viability of a playstyle.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Naetell.3815:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Naetell.3815:

phys.7689:

Naetell.3815:

NoTrigger.8396:

Naetell.3815:

Again, there’s no inherent risk attached to DPS gear. If there is, I’d like you to show that.

if you do a mistake you are dead. thats the high risk of dps gear. you have to play well, you have to know the encounter, and you have to use the right skills at the right time. in tanky gear i can ignore all of that.

I’ve played in tanky gear too, and it’s not exactly what you’d call fun. It takes everything out of the game, and if you combine it with dodging you might as well be invulnerable the entire time. With the added problem it takes you hours to do anything and you don’t get rewards as easily in the open world because it’s all calculated on DPS done.

On none of my full glass characters have I ever had that feeling of imminent danger in this game.
And there’s no raiding mechanic that can change that.

So, I really do wonder where this notion comes from, that there’s an actual split between skilled and not-skilled players based on the gear the wear.

its not that because you wear berserk, you are automatically a better player. Its that the better you are, the less need you have for the defense.

You say with your tank gear, the encounter is too easy, and you cannot die. What is the advantage of tank gear?
Tank gear in this game exists primarily to set your handicap in battle. the more tank gear you have the more mistakes you can make. I am not saying every player in tank gear does, but thats the main advantage of it.

I’d argue against that on the premise of creating a fake difficulty.
The game is plenty forgiving even in full glass. The prevalence of tank gear in the game (and this is simplifying and generalising it by a lot) gives players the idea that it is not only okay, but expected to wear some amount of it. There is no reason to have more than 100% survivability.
Better yet, if the game is built on the premise that all damage can be avoided, then this tanky gear is hampering people’s learning process by reducing the need to learn how to dodge.
From that point of view, it is hard to defend tanky gear at all.

But as a PVT War my goal is to ensure the rest of the group doesn’t get downed so we can win as my DPS is poor. I love this role and even when I dodge effectively there are still plenty of attacks that catch me off guard. So therefore I see my armor and traits as a way to better support my group.

It doesn’t matter if i can stay alive ad infinitum (which I can’t). What matters is that I can help my group to help us all win.

Chris

The percieved problem here is not that the PVT warrior (heal shouts) is an ineffective build. (It’s not, it’s one of the most powerful support builds in the game, I’d argue)
The point is that the sacrificed DPS do not mathematically align with the support gained. You could use the same build in PPF or VTP gear with the same level of support given.
Theoretically, the dodge alone + the self-healing ability you have are enough to make it through an encounter as encounter time drops the more DPS you deal. The longer any encounter takes, the greater the theoretical chance becomes of anyone making a mistake, and the added survivability mattering.
Tequatl as an encounter tries to balance the equation by taking Precision and Ferocity out of the equation, and that works to some degree, but this does tend to annoy DPS players.

Now the real questions and issues begin when looking at stats that actually do matter for support. Healing and Boon Duration exist, they are on gear. (Not many in the case of BD, admittedly) However, these stats do not affect support in the matter DPS is affected by gear. Instead, sufficient support is added without these stats according to many experienced dungeon players.

But maybe this is just me thinking too much like a theorycrafter than as an actual player.

I think your comments are well made. And therefore what I would say is that the notion of support, co-operation and a role is very much dependent on the kind of encounter that is built then with a delta of skill and armor and traits that is not as important as knowledge and co-operation in said raid encounter but important none the less.

I suppose that this is the core of the approach I would like us to discuss.

knowledge>skill>character setup>group number

And the reason group number is last is because I think that by following the paradigm we discussed and in the confines of this proposal that player’s could complete a raid with less than the recommended amount by increasing their acumen in Knowledge>skill and character setup.

Chris

what do you mean by charachter setup?

Chris,

I want to ask you something.Will Defiance be redesigned?Is there any plan for it at all?Because right now it is removing the need of any CC in the fights.If raids come will interrupts,stuns,fear become an actual mechanic?Will they be more useful from now?

phys.7689:

what do you mean by charachter setup?

He means Traits selection, 6-0 Skills selection, Weapon selection, Gear Stat Combo selection, Rune Set and Sigil selection, Food and Utility buff selection.

So by that notion, dungeon and fractal skins should be attainable through every single activity in the GW2 universe?

Ideally, yes. I know that it isn’t that way currently, but it really should be. Not that every activity should directly reward every type of thing, because that would be chaos, but there should always be alternate means of earning the stuff you want if you don’t like a specific activity. Laurels or Mystic Coins could be a good alternate currency, something like how Mystic Stones can be used as a universal substitution in several types of recipes. Or maybe crafting recipes that use alternate currencies, like if you don’t want to run Arah to get Arah armor, you could collect stacks of Putrid Essence and Ancient Bone or something and use them in a forge recipe with exotic armor.

But yeah, having more options is always a good idea.

Defiant is kind of a topic of it’s own though, and there’s plenty of ideas about it floating around, so perhaps I shouldn’t be bringing this up here.

Yeah, Defiant could certainly use its own thread, but I think there’s a reasonably simple solution, make all Defiant bosses permanently immune to hard CCs. No, wait, hear me out. Make them permanently immune to CCs, but then make them vulnerable to ALL CCs during phases in which this is appropriate, when they’re meant to be CCed. And make it so that instead of being hit with the actual CC that lands first, they just have an :allergic reaction" to _any" hard CC that is as strong as could be hoped for. By that I mean, whether they get hit with an untraited 1s daze or kitten heavily traited stun, it would be treated as a really strong CC that would have the effect the devs intend you to be allowed to have. This way, the players can’t screw it up except by not trying. Moa already works kind of like this, except that she bugs sometimes making her immune to CC even during her “CC me” phase, which would be terrible in a raid fight.

Now if they wanted to ramp up the need for CCers beyond just one, then they can combine the effect with the current Defiant, so that what would happen is, the boss is immune to all CC 90% of the time, but during specific phases he loses that protection, and instead has X stacks of Defiance. Then the players have to spam their CCs, drain off that Defiance, and as soon as they hit 0 he gets hard stunned, regardless of what the actual last effect was.

I like the idea of Defiance stacks being lowered in the same manor as they do now but instead of only allowing one CC skill to take affect it should render the boss stunned in a double damage window of opportunity.

Defiance could function as a stagger counter. It could be something that parties have to really fight for. Maybe instead of just counting in a repetitive up and down cycle the stacks could build up by one for each player hit by an attack. Bosses could gain two or three stacks for each player put in down state and four or five stacks per player rendered double down.

I also think that Bosses and trash mobs, alike, should act more like players. Suppose a player doesn’t execute a dodge in time and loses 60% of his health to an attack, the NPC should then focus that player and try to hammer that player until double down is achieved.

lets say a boss has 5 defiance stacks you need 6 interrupts to stun the boss. but what if the boss regains defiance stacks the longer you wait to take them down. like 2 players use CC and remove 2 defiance stacks. if the other players dont use 4 CC skills within 5 seconds the boss will have 6 defiance stacks again.

NoTrigger.8396:

Killthehealersffs.8940:

‘’Enrage Timer’’ ?
What kind of casual things are you spouting ?
So Bersker gear should be a ‘’MUST HAVE 100%’’ to beat the encounter ?
Dont you have a more vivid immagination ?

just for your info johnny, the enrage timer was used as an example (you will even find the sentence “let me give you an example” in my other post) to explain to people that we dont have a trinity, how our combat system works and that you pick gear according to your skill level in PvE. but from your post it seems you are not very experienced when it comes to raiding content so thats totally ok and i will not take your post serious.

i would personally like to see enrage timers because it will actually force people to become better at the game. but on the other hand i know that there are people who simply want to use defensive gear for the sake of using defensive gear. so i am completely fine if we dont get to see any enrage timers and people can play how they want (if they are successful is a different question).

So an enrage timer will make ppl more skilled ?
This is beyong me …. i dont really have words to describe it ….
Or will it make the encounter a DPS RACE like other games ?
Have you played seriously raid in other games ?

5 months now , you always try to shut down ppl opionion that:
‘’istances is not about DPS’’
‘’you are not forced to run only Berseker gear’’
‘’istances are not competive encounters’’

And you are here now …. saying we must implant a a DPS RACE in the game and we should make exactly the same ecnounters like the dungeons that you hate (huge HP + slow telegraphs?) ?

If the game ‘’ johnny’’ will be balanced around pppl will defensiuve gear , the boss will have LESS HP and LESS ENRAGE TIMER to be beat by any1 .
So your super guild and the rest of the planet , wont have to fight a gazilion HP bosses ……
, but instead your Bersker guild will melt down the boss faster than anything …..

Did you understand it ‘’ johnny’’ ?
Or should i make more ‘’ johnnish’’ ?

NoTrigger.8396:

lets say a boss has 5 defiance stacks you need 6 interrupts to stun the boss. but what if the boss regains defiance stacks the longer you wait to take them down. like 2 players use CC and remove 2 defiance stacks. if the other players dont use 4 CC skills within 5 seconds the boss will have 6 defiance stacks again.

I think the problem with it being time based is that the CC in this game is endless and for some professions/builds it is almost if not completely spammable. So a phase would have to generated during each boss encounter in which the boss reacts to its own Defiance stack count to try to prevent players from succeeding in reducing it to zero. Not sure how that would feel to play out in a fight but it sounds interesting.

Killthehealersffs.8940:

NoTrigger.8396:

Killthehealersffs.8940:

‘’Enrage Timer’’ ?
What kind of casual things are you spouting ?
So Bersker gear should be a ‘’MUST HAVE 100%’’ to beat the encounter ?
Dont you have a more vivid immagination ?

just for your info johnny, the enrage timer was used as an example (you will even find the sentence “let me give you an example” in my other post) to explain to people that we dont have a trinity, how our combat system works and that you pick gear according to your skill level in PvE. but from your post it seems you are not very experienced when it comes to raiding content so thats totally ok and i will not take your post serious.

i would personally like to see enrage timers because it will actually force people to become better at the game. but on the other hand i know that there are people who simply want to use defensive gear for the sake of using defensive gear. so i am completely fine if we dont get to see any enrage timers and people can play how they want (if they are successful is a different question).

So an enrage timer will make ppl more skilled ?
This is beyong me …. i dont really have words to describe it ….
Or will it make the encounter a DPS RACE like other games ?
Have you played seriously raid in other games ?

5 months now , you always try to shut down ppl opionion that:
‘’istances is not about DPS’’
‘’you are not forced to run only Berseker gear’’
‘’istances are not competive encounters’’

And you are here now …. saying we must implant a a DPS RACE in the game and we should make exactly the same ecnounters like the dungeons that you hate (huge HP + slow telegraphs?) ?

If the game ‘’ johnny’’ will be balanced around pppl will defensiuve gear , the boss will have LESS HP and LESS ENRAGE TIMER to be beat by any1 .
So your super guild and the rest of the planet , wont have to fight a gazilion HP bosses ……
, but instead your Bersker guild will melt down the boss faster than anything …..

Did you understand it ‘’ johnny’’ ?
Or should i make more ‘’ johnnish’’ ?

If you have a time constraint you are forced to work harder. You are encouraged to maximise your groups efficiency. This means taking as much damage as you can while also maintaining your ability to survive etc. Without a time constraint you can simply use fully defensive gear and take it as slow and easy as you like. This dimishes the challenge. And thats the reason that enrage timers exist in raids. They encourage the group to try as hard as they can. The enrage timer can be balanced around moderate dps groups and then it shouldnt be a problem for groups with a mix of gear types. Or the enrage can be prevented by some special condition. Enrage mechanics dont always have to be tied to timers. The clockheart has a simple decent idea for alternative enrage.

NoTrigger.8396:

lets say a boss has 5 defiance stacks you need 6 interrupts to stun the boss. but what if the boss regains defiance stacks the longer you wait to take them down. like 2 players use CC and remove 2 defiance stacks. if the other players dont use 4 CC skills within 5 seconds the boss will have 6 defiance stacks again.

I like the idea about increasing stacks overtime so lets add a few tweeks on top of that to make it harder.

First thing first remove the possibility bosses to be stun locked to death.
The Second most important thing is how and what defiance does.Make a Special attack that can’t be dodged/blocked/parried/reflected or using a spell that will save you from the hit.The only possible way to stop it is by having a player who will interrupt it(Only silance/interrupt willl work on it nothing else).The special attack has to be well telegraphed and visible.

When the special hit occurs the rest of the group has to removl the defiance stacks really fast or they won’t be able to avoid the dmg that they will suffer from Special attack.The dmg has to be unavoidable only interruptable(It will hit heavily for tons of dmg,like a truck).

At this moment almost 90% of the bosses don’t need to be CCed at all,because you can avoid every their spell with active mitigation.That way bosses’s attacks are negated easily and people focus only on DPS and dodge.

Killthehealersffs.8940:

NoTrigger.8396:

Killthehealersffs.8940:

‘’Enrage Timer’’ ?
What kind of casual things are you spouting ?
So Bersker gear should be a ‘’MUST HAVE 100%’’ to beat the encounter ?
Dont you have a more vivid immagination ?

just for your info johnny, the enrage timer was used as an example (you will even find the sentence “let me give you an example” in my other post) to explain to people that we dont have a trinity, how our combat system works and that you pick gear according to your skill level in PvE. but from your post it seems you are not very experienced when it comes to raiding content so thats totally ok and i will not take your post serious.

i would personally like to see enrage timers because it will actually force people to become better at the game. but on the other hand i know that there are people who simply want to use defensive gear for the sake of using defensive gear. so i am completely fine if we dont get to see any enrage timers and people can play how they want (if they are successful is a different question).

So an enrage timer will make ppl more skilled ?
This is beyong me …. i dont really have words to describe it ….
Or will it make the encounter a DPS RACE like other games ?
Have you played seriously raid in other games ?

5 months now , you always try to shut down ppl opionion that:
‘’istances is not about DPS’’
‘’you are not forced to run only Berseker gear’’
‘’istances are not competive encounters’’

And you are here now …. saying we must implant a a DPS RACE in the game and we should make exactly the same ecnounters like the dungeons that you hate (huge HP + slow telegraphs?) ?

If the game ‘’ johnny’’ will be balanced around pppl will defensiuve gear , the boss will have LESS HP and LESS ENRAGE TIMER to be beat by any1 .
So your super guild and the rest of the planet , wont have to fight a gazilion HP bosses ……
, but instead your Bersker guild will melt down the boss faster than anything …..

Did you understand it ‘’ johnny’’ ?
Or should i make more ‘’ johnnish’’ ?

Back in the day when people raided, they figured out that they could kite bosses infinitely staying just out of reach or trading off tanks or whatever just long enough for cool downs to come back up. This trivialized the encounters and made them super easy, provided people had the time to play this out. Enrage timers weren’t originally implemented on a wide scale to make everything dps races but to balance out the content so that unskilled/under-geared people couldn’t just ignore mechanics and win.

It doesn’t have to be an enrage timer. This issue could just as easily be handled with increased health regeneration rate. Maybe some other ideas could be put forth so that enrage timers don’t have to be the anti-trivialization method of choice.

spoj.9672:

Killthehealersffs.8940:

NoTrigger.8396:

Killthehealersffs.8940:

‘’Enrage Timer’’ ?
What kind of casual things are you spouting ?
So Bersker gear should be a ‘’MUST HAVE 100%’’ to beat the encounter ?
Dont you have a more vivid immagination ?

just for your info johnny, the enrage timer was used as an example (you will even find the sentence “let me give you an example” in my other post) to explain to people that we dont have a trinity, how our combat system works and that you pick gear according to your skill level in PvE. but from your post it seems you are not very experienced when it comes to raiding content so thats totally ok and i will not take your post serious.

i would personally like to see enrage timers because it will actually force people to become better at the game. but on the other hand i know that there are people who simply want to use defensive gear for the sake of using defensive gear. so i am completely fine if we dont get to see any enrage timers and people can play how they want (if they are successful is a different question).

So an enrage timer will make ppl more skilled ?
This is beyong me …. i dont really have words to describe it ….
Or will it make the encounter a DPS RACE like other games ?
Have you played seriously raid in other games ?

5 months now , you always try to shut down ppl opionion that:
‘’istances is not about DPS’’
‘’you are not forced to run only Berseker gear’’
‘’istances are not competive encounters’’

And you are here now …. saying we must implant a a DPS RACE in the game and we should make exactly the same ecnounters like the dungeons that you hate (huge HP + slow telegraphs?) ?

If the game ‘’ johnny’’ will be balanced around pppl will defensiuve gear , the boss will have LESS HP and LESS ENRAGE TIMER to be beat by any1 .
So your super guild and the rest of the planet , wont have to fight a gazilion HP bosses ……
, but instead your Bersker guild will melt down the boss faster than anything …..

Did you understand it ‘’ johnny’’ ?
Or should i make more ‘’ johnnish’’ ?

If you have a time constraint you are forced to work harder. You are encouraged to maximise your groups efficiency. This means taking as much damage as you can while also maintaining your ability to survive etc. Without a time constraint you can simply use fully defensive gear and take it as slow and easy as you like. This dimishes the challenge. And thats the reason that enrage timers exist in raids. They encourage the group to try as hard as they can. The enrage timer can be balanced around moderate dps groups and then it shouldnt be a problem for groups with a mix of gear types. Or the enrage can be prevented by some special condition. Enrage mechanics dont always have to be tied to timers. The clockheart has a simple decent idea for alternative enrage.

I agree with you.Enrage timers creat healthier raid comunity.With them in place people will come prepared.

Killthehealersffs.8940:

NoTrigger.8396:

Killthehealersffs.8940:

‘’Enrage Timer’’ ?
What kind of casual things are you spouting ?
So Bersker gear should be a ‘’MUST HAVE 100%’’ to beat the encounter ?
Dont you have a more vivid immagination ?

just for your info johnny, the enrage timer was used as an example (you will even find the sentence “let me give you an example” in my other post) to explain to people that we dont have a trinity, how our combat system works and that you pick gear according to your skill level in PvE. but from your post it seems you are not very experienced when it comes to raiding content so thats totally ok and i will not take your post serious.

i would personally like to see enrage timers because it will actually force people to become better at the game. but on the other hand i know that there are people who simply want to use defensive gear for the sake of using defensive gear. so i am completely fine if we dont get to see any enrage timers and people can play how they want (if they are successful is a different question).

So an enrage timer will make ppl more skilled ?
This is beyong me …. i dont really have words to describe it ….
Or will it make the encounter a DPS RACE like other games ?
Have you played seriously raid in other games ?

5 months now , you always try to shut down ppl opionion that:
‘’istances is not about DPS’’
‘’you are not forced to run only Berseker gear’’
‘’istances are not competive encounters’’

And you are here now …. saying we must implant a a DPS RACE in the game and we should make exactly the same ecnounters like the dungeons that you hate (huge HP + slow telegraphs?) ?

If the game ‘’ johnny’’ will be balanced around pppl will defensiuve gear , the boss will have LESS HP and LESS ENRAGE TIMER to be beat by any1 .
So your super guild and the rest of the planet , wont have to fight a gazilion HP bosses ……
, but instead your Bersker guild will melt down the boss faster than anything …..

Did you understand it ‘’ johnny’’ ?
Or should i make more ‘’ johnnish’’ ?

XD your post makes me smile.

ok so
1. read spojs post. he explains why enrage timer exist.
2. yes i have played “serious” raid in other games. and especially “serious” raid that wasnt about gear or spreadsheets but therefore about knowledge, teamwork and player skill.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HisRpzL24B8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEmE8i0Lsn8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvA9r9NBdlY
i only recorded these 3 videos but i can record more if you would like to see “serious” raid that actually forces players to be good and overstep their own bounds/limits to beat encounters. in the 3. video you can actually see how enrage timers look like at the end of the video. we just killed the boss right before he would have rekt us.

3. i never tried to “shut down” anyones opinion. i tried to explain facts and basics to the people who dont seem to understand it.

4. you should read carefully.
if you would read carefully, you would have realized that i never said ONCE in this thread “we need enrage timer or dps race”. the enrage timer in my example was just a tool to prove a point.

5. i dont hate huge hp and slow telegraphs. but i would like to see even more “telegraphs” and more action so i have to react and avoid even more -> become better, play better, have more fun. i would like to learn. learning is fun (except in school). as long as you can learn you will have a goal and something to strive for.
and no matter how much kitten you will throw at me, i will always find ways to use the most offensive stuff and become good enough to deal with it without going full tank.
its actually good game design and challenging, when a boss throws alot of kitten at you but you are able to survive because of player skill and not because of gear.

“If the game ‘’ johnny’’ will be balanced around pppl will defensiuve gear , the boss will have LESS HP and LESS ENRAGE TIMER to be beat by any1 .
So your super guild and the rest of the planet , wont have to fight a gazilion HP bosses ……
, but instead your Bersker guild will melt down the boss faster than anything …..”

6. when there are real mechanics involed in the boss fight it doesnt matter how much hp a boss has. and less enrage timer means less challenge, because you can “chill more, drink a beer, make a pizza” and you dont have to be on top of your game.

i am all for options and mechanics so the “play how you want crowd” can do and play whatever they want in the raid.
but there needs to be a clear line between giving players freedom and making content too easy.

spoj.9672:

If you have a time constraint you are forced to work harder. You are encouraged to maximise your groups efficiency. This means taking as much damage as you can while also maintaining your ability to survive etc. Without a time constraint you can simply use fully defensive gear and take it as slow and easy as you like. This dimishes the challenge. And thats the reason that enrage timers exist in raids. They encourage the group to try as hard as they can. The enrage timer can be balanced around moderate dps groups and then it shouldnt be a problem for groups with a mix of gear types. Or the enrage can be prevented by some special condition. Enrage mechanics dont always have to be tied to timers.

“Enrage on timer” also encourages groups to only take along those who are “good enough”, which leads to gear checks and other assorted nonsense. I’m all for difficult fights, but a timer on the fight seems like one of those steps towards bad things happening socially.

I found it more interesting when it was “enrage on X% HP”, honestly. You knew it was coming by how you were doing, if you could see health bars . . . and in cases where you couldn’t, it became a good barometer of how well you were doing.

Though that brings the question of: “What exactly is the enraged effect?” Do they hit harder, swing faster, get different attacks? Do the behaviors change completely, and it becomes invulnerable to certain types of conditions/attacks or becomes vulnerable to ones it was invulnerable to before? (See: Monster Hunter: Nargacuga)

Deconstruct what these things are rather than assume them as given from other games.

Scryeless.1924:

Back in the day when people raided, they figured out that they could kite bosses infinitely staying just out of reach or trading off tanks or whatever just long enough for cool downs to come back up. This trivialized the encounters and made them super easy, provided people had the time to play this out. Enrage timers weren’t originally implemented on a wide scale to make everything dps races but to balance out the content so that unskilled/under-geared people couldn’t just ignore mechanics and win.

It doesn’t have to be an enrage timer. This issue could just as easily be handled with increased health regeneration rate. Maybe some other ideas could be put forth so that enrage timers don’t have to be the anti-trivialization method of choice.

Back in the day, they solved kiting with player summons. (“You cannot evade me, Tobias!”) It was meant to stop kiting but became also a fine warning you were DPSing too hard and the tank was losing their spot in the hate list.

Back in the day, enraged happened when the boss fell below a certain % HP, and from what I recall and can look up? That meant “I’ll block everything you throw which doesn’t strikethrough and riposte with a melee attack”.

Then there was “rampage”, which was . . . a headache if it happened to be area rampage. Picture, if you will, everyone on a second hate list (which doesn’t get cleared easily) in melee range eating hits.

Alas, I didn’t get too much into the crunchy bits of how this worked back in the day. I did healer and burn group (as in, it’s under 9% health, start burn now). My brother was the one who tanked, mostly. His explanation to me when I asked about these things was “you should never see them and if you do, back off or wait for a res”.

Indeed. Enrage timer will naturally force people to go towards a direction which I believe, the deve wanted to avoid. High level skill is great but it naturally accompanied with gears and traits to meet that demand. I am being practical here, not idealistic. Let say you enter a raid, what are your raid leader going to do? He gonna check gears and roles, if raid size is limited, then the weaker players will be not allowed to participate.

Unless the raids are designed to be progressive, it gets more difficult as you go. Then, maybe the players skill can slowly progress with that as well. The raid can double up as a form of training to improve one’s skill.

PS: i didn’t read the entire thread, if someone already suggested the raids to be progressive, then, please ignore this post.

kitten .9460:

Aggro is impossible to control but this was manageable in GW1 by body blocking, something that doesn’t work in GW2.

Does it have to be? With all this discussion about skill based playing and impossibility of tanking, I got to thinking, could “tanking” be skill based playing equal to DPS in fragile gear setup?

Allow me to present you…
Aggro Management

Now, to start off, make no mistake, I’m not suggesting adding taunt skills or aggro-affecting effects to specific skills – we already have built-in aggro mechanics that could be improved to provide the means of aggro management gameplay.

Because everyone loves lists, that’s how I’ll present the proposed changes.

1. Taking damage increases aggro. You may think this encourages facetanking and passive play – you would be wrong. Facetanking isn’t possible, it gets you killed. So what would this change do? Introduce a tactical choice where taking hits allows you to keep an enemy on you, so if your job is to handle aggro, you’ll have to balance avoiding and taking hits to both keep the aggro on you, and to stay alive.
2. On the other side, make successful dodges and blocks reduce aggro. Not only does it make sense (most people would rather strike targets that are easy to hit first), it would support the first change.
3. Make aggro decay faster – this would both encourage active aggro management, and bring value to burst gameplay in PvE.
4. Make conditions such as blinds, cripple and chilled, weakness and immobilize, and hard CC cause a lot of aggro. You mitigate the damage the enemy deals, but the enemy won’t ignore you for it.

To compliment these, I’d point to my earlier post in this thread, where I discussed mob AI changes.

Without a time constraint you can simply use fully defensive gear and take it as slow and easy as you like. This dimishes the challenge. And thats the reason that enrage timers exist in raids.

So what? If you complete it faster then you complete it faster, and can move on to other things. If you prefer to play it safe then you play it safe, and you take longer to complete it but with more of a safety net. Let players choose for themselves which group composition they prefer.

Hey, I’m just going to throw this out there, but since condition damage is often largely irrelevant in megaboss fights, due to stacking issues, why not remove the impact of ALL stats entirely in raid boss fights. Make it so that the bosses’ damage dealing and receiving capabilities are entirely irrespective of your stats. Make it so that every attack that hits him hits for a fixed portion of his HP (adjusted so that rapid attacks deal lower damage than slower attacks, but otherwise a maxed out Zerker would hit no harder than a green-geared CVT), and likewise the damage he deals to you is a flat percentage of your HP at all times. This would level out the stat concerns and make it a pure skill contest, without being one of those “dodge everything or you get one-shotted” messes. Of course your stats would still come into play when fighting the lesser mobs in the raid, but this could take some of the “dps check” pressure off the big battles.

NoTrigger.8396:

XD your post makes me smile.

ok so
1. read spojs post. he explains why enrage timer exist.
2. yes i have played “serious” raid in other games. and especially “serious” raid that wasnt about gear or spreadsheets but therefore about knowledge, teamwork and player skill.

3. i never tried to “shut down” anyones opinion. i tried to explain facts and basics to the people who dont seem to understand it.

You make even more to smile :P

1) You should read yourself …
‘’Enrage mechanics dont always have to be tied to timers’’ ….
while you insist that that they must be on Timer , so if you dont have enought DPS you simply wipe after 15 min .

And huch DPS will be need to kill the boss ?
You must have atleast 13 Berskers to kill the boss , before the 15 min enrage shows up ?
You dont want to create a boss with various-unforgitable mechanics , but a boss that MUST be killed in 15 min

3) So every time , when some1 says that : ‘’
we must increase the importance of various other specs in the dungeons’’ ,
you magiacly show up , and say :
a) Berseker gear is the optimal ,
b) they need huge skill floor to kill the boss with that gear
c) Makes the encounter more fun and skillfull when he melts in less time

AND NOW , i am here , giving you the option to melt down the boss at EVEN MORE LESS TIMES , with your skilled raid group , so you can shows us what is your SKILL FLOOR .

You always shutted down ppl opinion …. we might have missed a marvelous idea for an encounter ……

A true Raid-er means to use every gear (they balanced the encounters around exotic) , and change your build to Beat the boss ………. not make it a DPS race and ultimated copy-pasting a gazilion HP boss , while defending the ‘’Berskers gear’’ (like most silly ppl protect their classes from being nerfed)

Ohoni.6057:

So what? If you complete it faster then you complete it faster, and can move on to other things. If you prefer to play it safe then you play it safe, and you take longer to complete it but with more of a safety net.

the problem is instead of playing good to beat a boss people can just use 15 players geared in full nomads.

Ohoni.6057:

Hey, I’m just going to throw this out there, but since condition damage is often largely irrelevant in megaboss fights, due to stacking issues, why not remove the impact of ALL stats entirely in raid boss fights. Make it so that the bosses’ damage dealing and receiving capabilities are entirely irrespective of your stats. Make it so that every attack that hits him hits for a fixed portion of his HP (adjusted so that rapid attacks deal lower damage than slower attacks, but otherwise a maxed out Zerker would hit no harder than a green-geared CVT), and likewise the damage he deals to you is a flat percentage of your HP at all times. This would level out the stat concerns and make it a pure skill contest, without being one of those “dodge everything or you get one-shotted” messes. Of course your stats would still come into play when fighting the lesser mobs in the raid, but this could take some of the “dps check” pressure off the big battles.

im pretty sure people who have grinded their ascended gear will ragequit the game if you introduce a change like that.

Killthehealersffs.8940:

1) You should read yourself …
‘’Enrage mechanics dont always have to be tied to timers’’ ….
while you insist that that they must be on Timer , so if you dont have enought DPS you simply wipe after 15 min .

And huch DPS will be need to kill the boss ?
You must have atleast 13 Berskers to kill the boss , before the 15 min enrage shows up ?
You dont want to create a boss with various-unforgitable mechanics , but a boss that MUST be killed in 15 min

my brain is melting……

alright since you are obviously not able to read simple sentences i will quote the most important stuff. maybe you will see the light

NoTrigger.8396:

now let me give you one example.

do you understand what example means? i used an example as a tool to prove a point about the gw2 combat system.
example is the key word here.
i used a boss encounter with an enrage timer as an example to talk about the gw2 combat system, and not about enrage timers.

Killthehealersffs.8940:

You always shutted down ppl opinion …. we might have missed a marvelous idea for an encounter ……

actually we might have missed a good idea for an encounter because i am trying to defend myself against you because you are reading my posts completely out of context.
and because you dont understand what example to prove a point means.

if you need further help/assistance to understand what example means you can contact customer support https://help.guildwars2.com/anonymous_requests/new
or send me a PM.

the problem is instead of playing good to beat a boss people can just use 15 players geared in full nomads.

So what? If they do that, then the raid would likely take two or three times what it would take to do with a Zerker team. Yes, they would complete it, but they would waste a lot of time. And then maybe that group clears it a few times and gets better at what they do, and some of them feel up to switching to more damage-heavy builds, because the faster they can get through, the better. What does it hurt you if some other players are able to complete the content?

im pretty sure people who have grinded their ascended gear will ragequit the game if you introduce a change like that.

Why? They’ll still have their ascended gear for other content (and for fighting the smaller enemies in the raid). But ok, let’s say it’s important to keep that in play, so why not make it so that the damage dealt/received is moderated by the quality of armor you have, just not type, so for example if you are in full Exotic, then you will take 100% and deal 100% of the intended damage. If you are in full Ascended, then you would take 95% and deal 105% of the intended damage (which I believe is the current bonus Ascended offers?). If you are in full Master armor, then you would take 125% or more of the base damage, and only deal 75%. So yes, you would want to have high quality gear, but it would still be irrelevant whether you had on Nomads or Zerkers, it would still deal and receive the same damage from the boss.

[edit: corrected typo to read “full Ascended” in the example above.]

From now on … if other ppl give ’’EXAMPLES’’ to increase the importance of support-cc specs in the PvE , then the ‘’EXAMPLE GUY’’ should not hard-counter them …. but try to find a mid ground ….

Ohoni.6057:

So by that notion, dungeon and fractal skins should be attainable through every single activity in the GW2 universe?

Ideally, yes. I know that it isn’t that way currently, but it really should be. Not that every activity should directly reward every type of thing, because that would be chaos, but there should always be alternate means of earning the stuff you want if you don’t like a specific activity. Laurels or Mystic Coins could be a good alternate currency, something like how Mystic Stones can be used as a universal substitution in several types of recipes. Or maybe crafting recipes that use alternate currencies, like if you don’t want to run Arah to get Arah armor, you could collect stacks of Putrid Essence and Ancient Bone or something and use them in a forge recipe with exotic armor.

But yeah, having more options is always a good idea.

I’m going to keep this polite as Chris requested,
I’m having trouble articulating my points exactly but:
Frankly that is not a game I’d want to play, it sounds like a single player game. In single player you’re always going to succeed so the rewards are always yours, in an MMO that doesn’t hold true if you’re not as skilled at the game it doesn’t hand hold and you’ll quickly realize not all the rewards are yours.

A game where the skilled all round content player is no matter what they do going to be at the same end point visually as a less skilled player that only sits in the open world? genuinely does not seem fair to me.

I also don’t agree with giving all the rewards from any content,
If you’ve spent 1000 hours farming the frostgorge train congrats you’ve done nothing of note and haven’t earned a unique reward. (Remember skins are rewards, rewards are given for actually doing something, generally something impressive or that others couldn’t.) But you will have tons of buyable skins.

If you’ve spent 1000 hours in PvP playing well and effectively, well done you’ll have some unique rewards for your efforts, but you should not have the rewards for the other areas of the game because you haven’t done the content they are linked too, you specifically chose to ignore the other content, your choice. But you’re not playing a large part of the game.

If you’ve spent 1000 hours and have Fractal 50, PvP 80 , Dungeoneer, All story completions, All metas, 15k Ap, The WvW Torny metas. Congrats you should have plenty of unique rewards you’ve done well in all areas of the game, still shouldn’t have all the rewards though. In an MMO some rewards should always be out of your reach, it creates differences/ aspirations and helps keep every high end player from looking the same.

I also treat skins differently from you, objectively I like flame legion armor, I’d never wear an untransmuted set of it though because it screams 80’s first armor and is over used so I’d see other people walking around in it.

What I choose to wear is based off 4 things,
1. Does it look good together (contrary to popular believe we don’t just stick on the rarest weapons and armor we have.)
2. What does this skin say about me.
3. How rare is this skin.
4. How likely am I to see someone else wearing this? (looking at you legendaries)

On my ranger a Dwayna backpack would look good and is relatively rare but fails 2,4 because it’s just a gold sink and is worn by a ton of people.

So I went with the shattered holographic dragon wings instead: still looks good, skin says I played and successfully completed dragon bash back then, Is relatively rare to see and in a few years will be objectively rare
(Got a bit long winded here)

So Tl/Dr rare items/skin / items/skins obtained from doing specific things / limited skins/ items are a massive part of why I play. Removing that would completely destroy the game for me and is why I’m so hostile towards your view.

Ohoni.6057:

the problem is instead of playing good to beat a boss people can just use 15 players geared in full nomads.

So what? If they do that, then the raid would likely take two or three times what it would take to do with a Zerker team. Yes, they would complete it, but they would waste a lot of time. And then maybe that group clears it a few times and gets better at what they do, and some of them feel up to switching to more damage-heavy builds, because the faster they can get through, the better. What does it hurt you if some other players are able to complete the content?

Its a problem because it diminishes the challenge. Raids are supposed to be challenge. Yes you can make it easier by playing safer. But there needs to a line. A point where you are going a bit too far. Without a method to encourage improvement or set a minimum standard of completion you reduce the contents ability to provide challenge and encourage coordination at the same time.

It doesnt have to be timers. If an enrage mechanic is stopped by some highly coordinated serious of objectives every time the boss reaches a certain health threshold. That also serves a similar purpose. But in an example like that i think it should be more difficult to prevent the enrage if you took considerably longer to get to the enrage phase. Its all about incentivising players to improve. Which is important in challenging content. You should have to improve to be able to complete consistantly.

Simple request for everyone – once you finish writing your posts, go back and read it as if it were being written to you. If it includes snarky comments, any kind of name calling at all, condescending statements or anything else hateful, cut those lines out before you hit post.

They get in the way of the actual conversation and they’re going to end up getting the thread closed and leaving a bad impression of a potential raiding community with the developers. Neither is something anyone should desire.

Please excuse me to say this but I think the whole “what stats should be used on stuff” discussion boring and pretty useless for two reasons:
1/ The better players are at beating an encounter, the lesser damage they will take, the more they will be able to equip damage oriented equipment to deal with the encounter faster. That issue is in now way new and specific to GW2 and the dynamic combat system. While I was raiding in WoW, one of the points of our strategies and individual skill requirements was always to reduce incoming damage as much as possible and, as a matter of fact, my raids typically ran with one less healer than most others. In WoW this more or less equaled to all running in zerker gear in GW2.
Therefore, encounters should be designed (number wise) with that fact in mind and players will naturally shift from more defensive buids at start to more offensive ones

2/ I think that encounter design should mainly decide on this point, and the design can make requirements vary from one encounter to another. Let’s take two examples:
- just as NoTriggers insists on, some encounters can have an enrage timer with high HP ennemies, thus setting high dps targets for the raid. Such encounters will naturally favour zerker builds
- contratry to what NoTriggers says, it is perfectly possible to design on the other hand encounters where waterfields, dodging and a choice of base group healings will not be enough. To do this, you just need to calculate how much a perfectly optimized and played pure zerker raid can heal per second/minute/whatever, and set the encounter up so as to have it inflict more damages than this maximum to the players.
Such encounters will force a stronger focus on support skills and support oriented stats.

In my opinion, what will make raids enjoyable on the long run will be encounter diversity (along with well designed raid mechanics of course, but this one is obvious). I therefore expect to meet fights that will require me to squeeze every last bit of dps of my character and of my raid, as well as encounters that will require me to think differently.

And I expect as well that equipement and builds will always shift toward a more damage oriented mindset as players get used to encounters. And that is where the encounter design comes into play: deciding where the breakpoints will be to push players toward an offensive or defensive gameplay during the encounter and preventing them to switch too early to the full damage mode in the later case. A good raid design should promote all sort of gameplays over various encounters/within a same encounter

On another point:
Proposal overview
To put all classes on equal footing concerning specific encounter mechanics

Goal of the proposal
On very challenging content, class discrimination has always been an issue when some classes are better than others at dealing with a specific “limiting step” mechanic. GW2 raids could improve much on this point, although some players above have come to great length to show that many classes share each specific gameplay mechanic.
This would also ease on the raid class composition issue.

Proposal functionality
When an encounter requires the use of specific skills to be successfully challenged (e.g. reflects, knockback …), there should always be some bundles (either lying around or gotten through killing X mob/doing X action) that allow players without such skills to nevertheless perform the required action.

Possible issue
Some raiders actually enjoy class limitations and the need to design specific raid compositions optimized for each encounter.

On the topic of enrage timers -

Chris has multiple times mentioned the importance of “knowledge>skill>numbers” in raid design. Enrage mechanics and hard timers run counter to that mantra, imo. If they make the mechanics challenging enough, they don’t need artificial timers to gauge skill or bring the fight to a close.

More importantly, since scaling will probably not be considered for these raids, hard enrage timers would diminish the ability to bring smaller sized groups to encounter, something they have indicated is important (and that is important to me if there is only one raid group size).

That said, I think there is a compromise. Simply add in achievements for defeating an encounter in X minutes. That way, skilled heavy dps groups are rewarded for their efforts in a small way.

I think a better mechanical discussion to have is what constitutes a good “failure mechanic.” We already have several in the game that would translate well into raids, including:

• Keep the NPC alive . I really like this one because it adds a hard element/goal outside of simply killing the boss . There is something very gratifying about using my healing mantras and chaos fields to keep the miners alive in the cave in Dry Top on my mesmer.

• Raid Wipe . The simplest – doesnt really require explanation.

• Lose Real Estate . The blue/red capture circles. If you lose it, the encounter fails. Another one I like as it adds control to where the fight takes place a little.

• Dont Let the Boss get to the objective The chase fight. While this has an element of an enrage timer, the time you have to defeat the boss can be significantly extended through the use of strategic crowd control skills.

These are just a couple of examples. Im sure the community in this thread could come up with a bunch – all of which would prioritize skill in ways that enrage timers dont, imo.

More importantly, they avoid the artificial difficulty constraints that a hard timer creates. Knowledge and skill would win the day, no matter how many people were in the encounter.

And again, the reward for fast kills can be an achievement. In fact, I see the achievement system being extremely important for those groups looking for added challenges in raids.

Gilgalas.7860:

2/ I think that encounter design should mainly decide on this point, and the design can make requirements vary from one encounter to another. Let’s take two examples:
- just as NoTriggers insists on, some encounters can have an enrage timer with high HP ennemies, thus setting high dps targets for the raid. Such encounters will naturally favour zerker builds
- contratry to what NoTriggers says, it is perfectly possible to design on the other hand encounters where waterfields, dodging and a choice of base group healings will not be enough. To do this, you just need to calculate how much a perfectly optimized and played pure zerker raid can heal per second/minute/whatever, and set the encounter up so as to have it inflict more damages than this maximum to the players.
Such encounters will force a stronger focus on support skills and support oriented stats.

i dont insist on enrage timers, i would like to see some enrage timers, but i am completely fine without them (i said that in one of my posts). and i agree its perfectly possible to design encounters where you are forced to wear more defensive gear (i never said its not).
but this raises one question (and thats basically what im talking about all the time but people get it wrong):

what is the advantage of an encounter that is intentionally forcing players to use passive damage mitigation instead of designing the encounter in such a way that mainly player skill and knowledge makes the difference?

NoTrigger.8396:

Gilgalas.7860:

2/ I think that encounter design should mainly decide on this point, and the design can make requirements vary from one encounter to another. Let’s take two examples:
- just as NoTriggers insists on, some encounters can have an enrage timer with high HP ennemies, thus setting high dps targets for the raid. Such encounters will naturally favour zerker builds
- contratry to what NoTriggers says, it is perfectly possible to design on the other hand encounters where waterfields, dodging and a choice of base group healings will not be enough. To do this, you just need to calculate how much a perfectly optimized and played pure zerker raid can heal per second/minute/whatever, and set the encounter up so as to have it inflict more damages than this maximum to the players.
Such encounters will force a stronger focus on support skills and support oriented stats.

i dont insist on enrage timers, i would like to see some enrage timers, but i am completely fine without them (i said that in one of my posts). and i agree its perfectly possible to design encounters where you are forced to wear more defensive gear (i never said its not).
but this raises one question (and thats basically what im talking about all the time but people get it wrong):

what is the advantage of an encounter that is intentionally forcing players to use passive damage mitigation instead of designing the encounter in such a way that mainly player skill and knowledge makes the difference?

I would like to point out, with improved aggro management with some small changes to the aggro mechanics, “tanking” can be a role that’s not passive, and would be supported by defensive stats in the same manner as DPS is supported by offensive stats. Defensive stats would provide passive damage mitigation to some level, for sure, but to hold the aggro would be the part requiring player skill.

I think an enrage timer may have some place in Raids; as Chris said knowledge>skill>numbers. I see it applying strongly in the knowledge section and somewhat in the skill section.

First I’m not talking about super strict DPS timers like Teq has I mean a “You are doing something wrong” style one.

[Spoiler free mention of yesterdays content]
As an example the end boss for yesterdays living story episode, if you understand the mechanics the fight should not take any player more than 5-10 minutes, so if I was to set an enrage for this it would be at 15 minutes. This is to prevent someone from doing the fight without knowing what they were meant to do (remember you can still do 1% damage to the boss and eventually kill it.). It can lead to some longer but far easier fights. One of the stages involves the boss being stationary which could allow someone to easily auto-attack it to death.

Conski Deshan.2057:

Ohoni.6057:

So by that notion, dungeon and fractal skins should be attainable through every single activity in the GW2 universe?

Ideally, yes. I know that it isn’t that way currently, but it really should be. Not that every activity should directly reward every type of thing, because that would be chaos, but there should always be alternate means of earning the stuff you want if you don’t like a specific activity. Laurels or Mystic Coins could be a good alternate currency, something like how Mystic Stones can be used as a universal substitution in several types of recipes. Or maybe crafting recipes that use alternate currencies, like if you don’t want to run Arah to get Arah armor, you could collect stacks of Putrid Essence and Ancient Bone or something and use them in a forge recipe with exotic armor.

But yeah, having more options is always a good idea.

I’m going to keep this polite as Chris requested,
I’m having trouble articulating my points exactly but:
Frankly that is not a game I’d want to play, it sounds like a single player game. In single player you’re always going to succeed so the rewards are always yours, in an MMO that doesn’t hold true if you’re not as skilled at the game it doesn’t hand hold and you’ll quickly realize not all the rewards are yours.

I think you may be missing an important aspect of PvE whether it be small party dungeons, world bosses, or even raids. If a dev designs a fight, its designed for the player to win. The raid boss you fight in a raid is designed to lose and it is designed to lose 100% of the time. That is its sole purpose. It will be designed with specific criteria in mind for accomplishing this but in the end there isn’t anything that will change that fact.

Tuomir.1830:

I would like to point out, with improved aggro management with some small changes to the aggro mechanics, “tanking” can be a role that’s not passive, and would be supported by defensive stats in the same manner as DPS is supported by offensive stats. Defensive stats would provide passive damage mitigation to some level, for sure, but to hold the aggro would be the part requiring player skill.

Tanking works fine, just not as dumb as in others game with artificial threat mechanics.
Archy and Mossman are great examples how can you make an advantage of the situation when the boss sticks to you. Thats why guardians often use Knights gear there so while they grab the agro and rotating blocks or simply backpedaling while the boss is slowed down, the rest of the party can damage the boss at free will. Of course when the kitten hits the fan and the boss suddenly turns around to rip off that poor ele’s face than you should react and hope the guard dude get the agro back soon.

It just requires more situational awareness. Watch the game, not the UI.

Scryeless.1924:

Conski Deshan.2057:

Ohoni.6057:

So by that notion, dungeon and fractal skins should be attainable through every single activity in the GW2 universe?

Ideally, yes. I know that it isn’t that way currently, but it really should be. Not that every activity should directly reward every type of thing, because that would be chaos, but there should always be alternate means of earning the stuff you want if you don’t like a specific activity. Laurels or Mystic Coins could be a good alternate currency, something like how Mystic Stones can be used as a universal substitution in several types of recipes. Or maybe crafting recipes that use alternate currencies, like if you don’t want to run Arah to get Arah armor, you could collect stacks of Putrid Essence and Ancient Bone or something and use them in a forge recipe with exotic armor.

But yeah, having more options is always a good idea.

I’m going to keep this polite as Chris requested,
I’m having trouble articulating my points exactly but:
Frankly that is not a game I’d want to play, it sounds like a single player game. In single player you’re always going to succeed so the rewards are always yours, in an MMO that doesn’t hold true if you’re not as skilled at the game it doesn’t hand hold and you’ll quickly realize not all the rewards are yours.

I think you may be missing an important aspect of PvE whether it be small party dungeons, world bosses, or even raids. If a dev designs a fight, its designed for the player to win. The raid boss you fight in a raid is designed to lose and it is designed to lose 100% of the time. That is its sole purpose. It will be designed with specific criteria in mind for accomplishing this but in the end there isn’t anything that will change that fact.

Thats not really true. Its not designed to lose 100% of the time. Challenging encounters are designed to cause the players potential difficulty and the possibility of losing. Truly challenging encounters will give players the potential to lose even if they have the required knowledge. In those cases its skill and avoiding mistakes which determines the outcome. If a boss was designed to lose 100% of the time then it would involve no danger and no challenge.

Scryeless.1924:

Conski Deshan.2057:

Ohoni.6057:

So by that notion, dungeon and fractal skins should be attainable through every single activity in the GW2 universe?

Ideally, yes. I know that it isn’t that way currently, but it really should be. Not that every activity should directly reward every type of thing, because that would be chaos, but there should always be alternate means of earning the stuff you want if you don’t like a specific activity. Laurels or Mystic Coins could be a good alternate currency, something like how Mystic Stones can be used as a universal substitution in several types of recipes. Or maybe crafting recipes that use alternate currencies, like if you don’t want to run Arah to get Arah armor, you could collect stacks of Putrid Essence and Ancient Bone or something and use them in a forge recipe with exotic armor.

But yeah, having more options is always a good idea.

I’m going to keep this polite as Chris requested,
I’m having trouble articulating my points exactly but:
Frankly that is not a game I’d want to play, it sounds like a single player game. In single player you’re always going to succeed so the rewards are always yours, in an MMO that doesn’t hold true if you’re not as skilled at the game it doesn’t hand hold and you’ll quickly realize not all the rewards are yours.

I think you may be missing an important aspect of PvE whether it be small party dungeons, world bosses, or even raids. If a dev designs a fight, its designed for the player to win. The raid boss you fight in a raid is designed to lose and it is designed to lose 100% of the time. That is its sole purpose. It will be designed with specific criteria in mind for accomplishing this but in the end there isn’t anything that will change that fact.

I’d like to think a raid is designed where everything is trying to kill you and you are trying to kill it with no guarantees as to who will win.
It is entirely possible to lose and the boss to win, even with Teq, if you can’t kill him in 15 minutes you lose and he wins. Sure you can try again later but it is not designed that you win 100% of the time, or have a guarantee of winning at all.

I’ve played a few MMO’s where there are bosses who have never been beaten, I’ve also played some where in events it is possible for the boss to win permanently and the players to lose out on something due to this.

Proposal Overview
Guild overflows and zones like Silverwastes

After playing in The Silverwastes for a few hours it struck me just how raid-like the content was. It required large groups of players to coordinate and to work towards the shared goal of defeating a common enemy to acquire specific rewards. My suggestion, is to allow a guild the option of “owning” an overflow. A high ranking guild member decides to open the server and a pop-up is sent to all online guild members not currently in an instance (dungeon or story instance) asking if they would like to go to the server. If they guild can meet a specific percentage of the player cap for that map then they are given their own overflow and all members are taken to the map. If they don’t, then they are denied their own server and the pop-up disappears. If the map is created successfully, players can also invite party members to join.

Goal of Proposal
To introduce new maps in the style of the Silverwastes and give guilds an option of turning the map into their own raid.

Proposal Functionality
This would be similar to Guild Wars 1’s server system, but on a larger scale and only with select maps. The amount of required players prevents unnecessary overflows, and the option to include party members allows guilds to open the instanced map to other players looking for a coordinated raid.

Associated Risks
The risks include guilds opening instances and then not using them, wasting server resources. The other risks include the depopulization of regular zones leaving some players in empty zones.

As Chris has indicated, active defense and active support are the core tenents of gw2 pve game play. this is why dodging is better than soaking damage. This is why blasting water fields are better than passive regeneration buffs.

I reference this quote a lot, but its always true: any content so challenging that the elite players in the game are forced to wear tanky gear to survive it will be so challenging that less skilled players will have no way to complete it. I would be incredibly careful what you wish for in regards to defensive gear checks.

Im still at a loss why GW2 needs raids. As Colin J. once put it: Gw2 is about completing events in open world with large amounts of people. Why are we going to suddenly segregate some playerbase by creating instanced content for 10-20 people, that will require voice comms(i.e. 9/10 times it will be a guild and not a pug). Seems that the very essence of raids, whatever the combat style and mechanics are, go against what GW2 was meant to be.

Are raids definitely coming?

edit: I understand we have instanced content with fractals and dungeons. I dont think theres an MMO out there currently that doesn’t have traditional 5-man dungeons, or something of the sort. But not every game has endgame max-level raid content. I thought GW2 fell into this category.

Concept:
Use Gear/Survivability disparities to allow natural raid scaling (without actually scaling)

Details:
I think there may be a good compromise we can reach by taking a macro view of the gear, difficulty, numbers and fight design issues.

On the one hand, you have people asking for an immensely challenging experiences that, hopefully emphasize skill and coordination more than numbers and gear.

At the same time, you have people (like me) advocating for some flexibility in how raids are sized and still others looking for a place for non zerker/assassin’s gear in the design.

There is some logical synergy here.

How it would work (theoretically)

If they design a fight to be ultra challenging for a group of 15 full zerker players but stay away from hard timer mechanics (including enrage timers), then the current game system may very well provide us with a natural scaling mechanic that makes everyone happy (without having to resort to actual scaling or multiple raid tiers).

Basically, the challenge of doing the fight with fewer people shifts from how fast you can burn down the fight to how well you can stay alive. The assumption can be that groups lower than 15 may include some people wearing more support-focused gear.

The fights in those situations will last longer, but there will be a place for groups lower than 15, putting my concerns about leaving people behind on guild raid nights to rest.

Potential Risks

The risk/compromise is that a full group of 15 players with more people wearing survival gear will find the fight less stressful (albeit longer) and a little less challenge (with the trade off being the fight takes longer)

That is fine. As NoTrigger likes to point out, that is part of the current game design anyway. Why not embrace it – opening raiding to larger portions of the population without denying groups their challenging content.

To the point of not trivializing content, that is, imo, a non issue. Speed run groups will continue to challenge themselves to beat it faster and faster – and guilds with a more social agenda (like mine) will still have a place in the raid model dynamic.

The second compromise would be NO ENRAGE TIMERS. That single mechanic is the only real barrier to making this happen. Likewise, they would need to stay away from any mechanic that required the entire party to focus burn (just using DPS) any element of the encounter. This isnt an issue if they get creative – by requiring interrupts, cleanses, specific ccs, etc to act as the catalyst in those situations rather than just damage output.

Like I said in an earlier post, there are better ways to challenge players than an artificial timer wall.

Win-Win.

The importance of Achievements

To keep a sense of accomplishment for those groups who fully embrace the rigid number cap and put hours into their builds and stat choices (mostly builds), there should be baseline achievements (with multiple tiers) in every raid, including the following:

• Multiple achievements for the speed of the kill. Additionally, after a certain number of groups achieve the fastest speed achievement, Anet should add new faster kill achievements in (slight rewards/aknowledgement for speed runners).

• Survival achievements – personal achievements for not dying and for not getting downed throughout the raid. Group achievements for the same thing at a group level (not letting anyone die or get downed).

• Optional Boss Victories – Most raids should include one OPTIONAL ultra hard core boss for those groups looking for the extra challenge. Maybe do something like the bonus phase of Aetherpath, where, once the final raid boss is complete, the group is assaulted for 10 minutes by progressively harder versions of a legendary beast with complex mechanics (with achievements for how many waves/versions you kill).

The point is, use the disparities in gear and the fact that some gear does make encounters a little easier to enable smaller raid parties to experience the content from day one. As I’ve already said -

Win-Win.

Dalanor.5387:

Tuomir.1830:

I would like to point out, with improved aggro management with some small changes to the aggro mechanics, “tanking” can be a role that’s not passive, and would be supported by defensive stats in the same manner as DPS is supported by offensive stats. Defensive stats would provide passive damage mitigation to some level, for sure, but to hold the aggro would be the part requiring player skill.

Tanking works fine, just not as dumb as in others game with artificial threat mechanics.
Archy and Mossman are great examples how can you make an advantage of the situation when the boss sticks to you. Thats why guardians often use Knights gear there so while they grab the agro and rotating blocks or simply backpedaling while the boss is slowed down, the rest of the party can damage the boss at free will. Of course when the kitten hits the fan and the boss suddenly turns around to rip off that poor ele’s face than you should react and hope the guard dude get the agro back soon.

It just requires more situational awareness. Watch the game, not the UI.

I think you missed my proposed aggro changes from earlier the same page. Situational awareness is exactly what I am driving. With enhanced aggro mechanics, raid encounters can be designed with aggro management role in mind.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

And I absolutely agree.

There are plenty of ways with our core mechanics that we can make player’s have roles. There are many ways we can make player’s provide a true support role. And there are many ways that we can create new types of raid encounter experiences based on our core mechanics.

And therefore to be more precise the specific point i am making is that I don’t get downed (PVT Shout Heal War) (often) (In Teq) and certainly no more or less than I did when the encounter first came out. This is because my build is the way it is. However I soon realized that this was of no use to me without supporting the rest of the forward raid group and that was awesome! Because raiding should be all about co-operative challenging content, and that when you finally complete it the whole group is screaming with joy because it was a culmination of everyone’s knowledge and skill.

Chris

You really only define roles currently with alternative mechanics (turrets, reflect orbs, environmental weapons, etc.). Having a support role in most cases, doesn’t win the day, almost every encounter in the game you can easily avoid support roles (with maybe the exception of reflects in a few encounters, which doesn’t require traiting into at all). Core combat mechanics, no matter how you look at it, revolve around dropping things quicker than they can drop you. There are also core mechanics, like control and conditions that need to be worked into better utility than they are currently. The only superior mechanic in Teqs front line is fast res banner warriors when it comes to core utility. The rest is dependent on burn down DPS, stacking and turret cleanses.

Certain core mechanics are actually rather well hidden (like blast finishers), other direct damage skills (like conditions) are typically mediocre at best. With challenging content, you have to look to alternatives to core combat mechanics given the current core mechanics really focus the player on dropping a target faster. Water fields and finishers tend to overwrite each other too, which certainly makes them far less useful.

While you can certainly design content around these limitations, you seem to do this mostly with alternatives to basic combat. Some see that as a flaw. I just have to call you on speccing outside of DPS, it isn’t all it’s cracked up to be and certainly doesn’t win encounters more efficiently than fast res and DPS.

Overall, i think the combat system is better focused on small man PvP fights and much less useful for larger forces in a PvE environment. Sadly, you’ll need to address that first or continue to design challenging encounters around alternatives to the core combat mechanics.

Tuomir.1830:

Dalanor.5387:

Tuomir.1830:

I would like to point out, with improved aggro management with some small changes to the aggro mechanics, “tanking” can be a role that’s not passive, and would be supported by defensive stats in the same manner as DPS is supported by offensive stats. Defensive stats would provide passive damage mitigation to some level, for sure, but to hold the aggro would be the part requiring player skill.

Tanking works fine, just not as dumb as in others game with artificial threat mechanics.
Archy and Mossman are great examples how can you make an advantage of the situation when the boss sticks to you. Thats why guardians often use Knights gear there so while they grab the agro and rotating blocks or simply backpedaling while the boss is slowed down, the rest of the party can damage the boss at free will. Of course when the kitten hits the fan and the boss suddenly turns around to rip off that poor ele’s face than you should react and hope the guard dude get the agro back soon.

It just requires more situational awareness. Watch the game, not the UI.

I think you missed my proposed aggro changes from earlier the same page. Situational awareness is exactly what I am driving. With enhanced aggro mechanics, raid encounters can be designed with aggro management role in mind.

I read that. The problem with the idea (more or less with the current one as well) that often the one would get agro who is the least threat for the enemy.
“Hey that dude poke me with 500 damage per hit but let the ele melt my left arm with a gazillion of damage.” You get it.

I wouldn’t be surprised if we would have more area and / or room wide effects to force everyone in the raid to defend itself somehow instad of getting hit one by one. And if you think about it why would it good if 1 player gets the boss attention while 9, 14, 24 or whatever number of other players just slice it into little pieces?

tl;dr: Agro management is currently acceptable in 5 man dungeon content while in raid environment it’s an encounter design issue.