Guild Wars 2

Enrage timers in their current state are nothing but a DPS test. Players can have the mechanics down, but if their damage isn’t high enough, the timer kicks in and wipes them all.

I’m not sure if this is the best way to approach difficulty in raids. It forces a DPS meta onto everyone, where they must meet strict damage requirements within a timeframe and doesn’t allow much flexibility in builds or playstyles. But at the same time, enrage is needed. Without it players could run extremely defensive builds without any downside but slower kill speeds.

What I believe we need is a less strict enrage system, one which causes the fight to become more difficult as time goes on, not as a defeat timer like in the current implementation. Enrage could have multiple phases, and when each one is reached either the mechanics could become more strict or certain effects, which could be similar to fractal instabilities, could occur.

For instance, against the Vale Guardian:
• Enrage tier 1: Lightning AoE activates faster, forcing players to gather in the circle quicker.
• Enrage tier 2: Teleports activate faster. When a player is teleported they suffer from torment.
• Enrage timer 3: The red orbs cause an effect similar to agony, dramatically decreasing healing effectiveness and pulsing slight damage over a few seconds.

With effects like these enrage would become a more interesting and skill based mechanic. It would require players to change the way they play and give less room for error when dealing with the mechanics, which is much better than a hard timer that increases damage to absurd levels, guaranteeing defeat soon after its activation.

This, 100% this.

This, 100000000000000000% this.
If any Anet Dev actually reads this please do it.

this will also result in what you guys call “dps race”. because people will try to make the fight and each phase as short as possible so they dont have to deal with more difficult versions of the phases.
im not saying this is a bad idea, but it wont change much.

what would be cool however is your idea in combination with the enrage timer.

in the end, people will always blame it on “this fight promotes zerker builds and is a dps test and i cant beat it with my build” because they were spoiled for 3 years.

Bri.8354:

Enrage timers in their current state are nothing but a DPS test. Players can have the mechanics down, but if their damage isn’t high enough, the timer kicks in and wipes them all.

This argument is just not true. If you’re getting downed constantly, get constantly teleported away from the Unstable Energy Spikes, or send more people than is necessary to soak the Distributed Magic, all of these are poor play and bad strategy which the enrage will punish you for.

This might come as a surprise to everybody, but damage matters. Damage is actually one of the three pillars of the soft Trinity: damage, support, control. For some reason people think damage does not matter. It does.

Agree with idea, but i think that enrage should be a bit harder. Something like this:
Lightning AoE becomes unblockable and wipes entire party if activated.
Teleports places 30s slow, cripple and chill.
50% all damage increased.

Nokaru.7831:

Bri.8354:

Enrage timers in their current state are nothing but a DPS test. Players can have the mechanics down, but if their damage isn’t high enough, the timer kicks in and wipes them all.

This argument is just not true. If you’re getting downed constantly, get constantly teleported away from the Unstable Energy Spikes, or send more people than is necessary to soak the Distributed Magic, all of these are poor play and bad strategy which the enrage will punish you for.

This might come as a surprise to everybody, but damage matters. Damage is actually one of the three pillars of the soft Trinity: damage, support, control. For some reason people think damage does not matter. It does.

If the group is having that much trouble already they won’t stand a chance once enrage starts building up.

My problem is with skilled groups who are surviving well and managing the mechanics, but lack the highly optimized team required to meet the DPS requirement. If they play well enough to survive the ramped up mechanics, they should be able to continue fighting, letting their skill make up for their lack of optimization.

I feel the end result is the same, which is once you reach X time, you will lose. What I don’t like about this system is basically each tier of enrage timers can be ignored by the better players which effectively means the better your group is, the longer the “game over” enrage timer starts. In terms of balancing, this is horrible. It is a feedback loop where it punishes the lesser skilled players because their “game over” enrage timer starts earlier and for the more experienced players, their “game over” enrage timer starts way too late.

All this does is allow for less optimised groups to complete the content with the flexibility of using faceroll defensive builds. The enrage timer is just in a different form but less strict. A less strict timer in any form means the content becomes much much easier. You need to create strict timers to force players to sacrifice defence for offence so they are at actual risk of dieing. So i do not support this.

However i would not be against these sort of ideas as progressive mechanics on top of a regular timer.

Pretty sure progressive mechanics are already in the first boss. phase3, soft enrage, 2/3 lighted floors.

Bri.8354:

Nokaru.7831:

Bri.8354:

Enrage timers in their current state are nothing but a DPS test. Players can have the mechanics down, but if their damage isn’t high enough, the timer kicks in and wipes them all.

This argument is just not true. If you’re getting downed constantly, get constantly teleported away from the Unstable Energy Spikes, or send more people than is necessary to soak the Distributed Magic, all of these are poor play and bad strategy which the enrage will punish you for.

This might come as a surprise to everybody, but damage matters. Damage is actually one of the three pillars of the soft Trinity: damage, support, control. For some reason people think damage does not matter. It does.

If the group is having that much trouble already they won’t stand a chance once enrage starts building up.

My problem is with skilled groups who are surviving well and managing the mechanics, but lack the highly optimized team required to meet the DPS requirement. If they play well enough to survive the ramped up mechanics, they should be able to continue fighting, letting their skill make up for their lack of optimization.

If they are truly skilled then they should have no problem sacrificing some of their defence for more damage to actually beat the timer. That is the entire point of it. Without it its not actually difficult. Because surviving on its own is easy. And dps on its own is also easy. Difficulty comes from trying to do good damage under constant pressure. The timer forces players to require that damage. Without it there is no true difficulty.

spoj.9672:

Bri.8354:

Nokaru.7831:

Bri.8354:

Enrage timers in their current state are nothing but a DPS test. Players can have the mechanics down, but if their damage isn’t high enough, the timer kicks in and wipes them all.

This argument is just not true. If you’re getting downed constantly, get constantly teleported away from the Unstable Energy Spikes, or send more people than is necessary to soak the Distributed Magic, all of these are poor play and bad strategy which the enrage will punish you for.

This might come as a surprise to everybody, but damage matters. Damage is actually one of the three pillars of the soft Trinity: damage, support, control. For some reason people think damage does not matter. It does.

If the group is having that much trouble already they won’t stand a chance once enrage starts building up.

My problem is with skilled groups who are surviving well and managing the mechanics, but lack the highly optimized team required to meet the DPS requirement. If they play well enough to survive the ramped up mechanics, they should be able to continue fighting, letting their skill make up for their lack of optimization.

If they are truly skilled then they should have no problem sacrificing some of their defence for more damage to actually beat the timer. That is the entire point of it. Without it its not actually difficult. Because surviving on its own is easy. And dps on its own is also easy. Difficulty comes from trying to do good damage under constant pressure. The timer forces players to require that damage. Without it there is no true difficulty.

i completely agree with spoj here.

spoj.9672:

Bri.8354:

Nokaru.7831:

Bri.8354:

Enrage timers in their current state are nothing but a DPS test. Players can have the mechanics down, but if their damage isn’t high enough, the timer kicks in and wipes them all.

This argument is just not true. If you’re getting downed constantly, get constantly teleported away from the Unstable Energy Spikes, or send more people than is necessary to soak the Distributed Magic, all of these are poor play and bad strategy which the enrage will punish you for.

This might come as a surprise to everybody, but damage matters. Damage is actually one of the three pillars of the soft Trinity: damage, support, control. For some reason people think damage does not matter. It does.

If the group is having that much trouble already they won’t stand a chance once enrage starts building up.

My problem is with skilled groups who are surviving well and managing the mechanics, but lack the highly optimized team required to meet the DPS requirement. If they play well enough to survive the ramped up mechanics, they should be able to continue fighting, letting their skill make up for their lack of optimization.

If they are truly skilled then they should have no problem sacrificing some of their defence for more damage to actually beat the timer. That is the entire point of it. Without it its not actually difficult. Because surviving on its own is easy. And dps on its own is also easy. Difficulty comes from trying to do good damage under constant pressure. The timer forces players to require that damage. Without it there is no true difficulty.

A large part of optimizing isn’t just balancing your roles; what classes and builds you choose to fulfill those roles is just as important. A single healer and 9 DPS (with some dedicated to conditions), and maybe a “tank” to manage boss aggro, works just fine from what I could tell, but are you lacking a class to provide something like banners? Took a class that doesn’t offer as much DPS another? Chose a healer that’s not as effective as the druid? Is someone using a trait line, weapon, utility, or pet that’s not as efficient? Each of these cut into your ability to defeat the content, no matter how skillfully you play.

To give you a realistic example, my raid group during the beta was unable to complete the fight simply because too many people ran inefficient builds. We had good roles set up, learned and got pretty good at the mechanics, but the fight was impossible for us because we didn’t have enough people running efficient enough builds.

And what do you do in a situation like this? Keep trying and get better at the fight and its mechanics? No, instead you kick that third necromancer, shout at the other 2 to get good, kick the other 2 guys you don’t need, then spend 20 minutes looking for the appropriate builds to replace all the people you just got rid of. Is this really the best way to approach difficulty in raids?

In my opinion, what enrage should do is allow these less efficient teams to continue the fight, but push them further than a group that can kill the boss before enrage activates. And even if the team has poor role optimization by bringing too many healers, the buffed up mechanics will offset it and they’ll still have a harder time then a team with better optimized roles.

Give these less optimized groups a chance to prove themselves by mastering the mechanics. It’s not going to be easier for them to kill the boss than a fully optimized team, but they will have a chance, unlike right now.

If you accommodate for those compositions you will run into serious lack of difficulty problems. Thats a problem caused by poor class balance more than anything. And so it should be addressed with class balance.

spoj.9672:

If you accommodate for those compositions you will run into serious lack of difficulty problems. Thats a problem caused by poor class balance more than anything. And so it should be addressed with class balance.

That’s the most difficult approach you could take to this. To reach an acceptable balance you’d have to evaluate roles, how the professions and aspects of those professions function in relation to the content and competition, split PvP from PvE, then rework whatever is problematic.

Its why they’ve been unable to address the huge gap in efficiency between traits, utilities, weapons, and classes in PvE. They designed and balanced them around multiple game modes at once when they need to be designed and balanced separately in context of the content they will be used in.

At best what they could do, and is what they’ve been attempting, is to give each profession a few competitive builds, but this doesn’t stop the problem of huge gaps in efficiency between builds that serve largely the same purpose.

Bri.8354:

To give you a realistic example, my raid group during the beta was unable to complete the fight simply because too many people ran inefficient builds. We had good roles set up, learned and got pretty good at the mechanics, but the fight was impossible for us because we didn’t have enough people running efficient enough builds.

That’s sort of the whole idea, though. They said several times during the hypefest that they wanted us to have to think about our builds, change them, and tune them to succeed. This is working as intended.

And what do you do in a situation like this? Keep trying and get better at the fight and its mechanics?

Yes, that’s what my guild will do.

No, instead you kick that third necromancer, shout at the other 2 to get good, kick the other 2 guys you don’t need, then spend 20 minutes looking for the appropriate builds to replace all the people you just got rid of.

Erm…you don’t have to…

If a group wants to only have members that are willing to change classes/builds to succeed, then players who don’t want to do that shouldn’t join that group. Stick with people who have similar playstyles, and all will be well. We saw during the beta that there is a large window of error. I wouldn’t assume the enrage timer was too short just because you couldn’t beat it during a beta weekend that was mostly downtime.

Also, this content isn’t meant to be pugged. You shouldn’t be “kicking and waiting 20 minutes” like is currently common in dungeons when you’re playing with a static guild group. And if you do, it’s your choice to be in such a serious group.

Give these less optimized groups a chance to prove themselves by mastering the mechanics.

Remember, working as intended. They want you to change up your build to get through. That’s the whole point.

Personally, spoj summed up my thoughts on the topic quite well:

spoj.9672:

However i would not be against these sort of ideas as progressive mechanics on top of a regular timer.

I’d be down if this started at say 6:30, at 7:30 swapped to the next, 8:30 the next, and 9:30 was your hard timer. That could be interesting. But, I think a hard timer of sorts needs to be present eventually. Or, more so one that pushes you beyond what is expected to be possible.

I’m down with a softer timer, but eventually you need a harder timer otherwise you can just whittle all day.

And for the record, I’m not opposed to seeing a boss with these sorts of enrage mechanics instead of a timer. I’d like to see a variety of mechanics in the bosses — some with a hard timer, some with soft, slowly ramping enrages over the duration of the fight, and others with mechanic-based enrages such as those suggested here.

I have a feeling that is what we’re going to get. After all, there are many ways to build pressure as a fight progresses.

I just don’t want to see a gut reaction that “hard timers are bad always” just because this is the first time we’ve had any serious pressure in an encounter that’s forced us to actually think about what we’re running.

I suppose I just disagree with their method of creating difficulty (at least through the timer).

Mechanics like the boss’s attacks and phases are how the difficulty should be approached in my opinion. Conditions, heals, crowd control, movement, boon removal, and many other aspects of the combat all play an important part because of these mechanics. Players even have to bring different team compositions compared to the rest of PvE because of this, and if they wanted to get players to optimize their group to a “meta” level in order to complete the content, it should have also been done through these mechanics.

But a death timer? The need for one, such as counteracting a team too focused on defense and punishing a team that is being downed too much, could be achieved in a much more interesting way by a system like I suggested. Damage is already prioritized since the main goal is to kill the boss through it. So past all this, its just a way to force players to optimize their group even further for damage, which is largely done by excluding less efficient classes and builds.

I just can’t agree with this way of creating difficulty that strikes me as uninspired, lazy, and artificial.

Bri.8354:

Enrage timers in their current state are nothing but a DPS test. Players can have the mechanics down, but if their damage isn’t high enough, the timer kicks in and wipes them all.

I’m not sure if this is the best way to approach difficulty in raids. It forces a DPS meta onto everyone, where they must meet strict damage requirements within a timeframe and doesn’t allow much flexibility in builds or playstyles. But at the same time, enrage is needed. Without it players could run extremely defensive builds without any downside but slower kill speeds.

What I believe we need is a less strict enrage system, one which causes the fight to become more difficult as time goes on, not as a defeat timer like in the current implementation. Enrage could have multiple phases, and when each one is reached either the mechanics could become more strict or certain effects, which could be similar to fractal instabilities, could occur.

For instance, against the Vale Guardian:
• Enrage tier 1: Lightning AoE activates faster, forcing players to gather in the circle quicker.
• Enrage tier 2: Teleports activate faster. When a player is teleported they suffer from torment.
• Enrage timer 3: The red orbs cause an effect similar to agony, dramatically decreasing healing effectiveness and pulsing slight damage over a few seconds.

With effects like these enrage would become a more interesting and skill based mechanic. It would require players to change the way they play and give less room for error when dealing with the mechanics, which is much better than a hard timer that increases damage to absurd levels, guaranteeing defeat soon after its activation.

It does sound interesting, but flaw is good dps is also about skill full play. Just dealing with the dAmage is only half the difficulty.
Maintaining stacks of might, keeping pressure on the boss, taking advantage of breaks and vulnerability.

This is part of the skill full play involved.
Basically beating a well designed enrage timer increases the skill required.

However i wouldnt totally hate your idea if well implemented

I would support the idea of incremental enrage timers, but I would take a slightly different, more simplistic approach that could be applied universally – At enrage 1, I would make it impossible to rez anyone fully dead, after enrage 2, anyone downed would immediately die (and be unrezzable) and at enrage 3, one random team member would die every 30 seconds.

As I’ve said before – enrage timers are necessary, but should – in most cases – not be so strict as to make them the defining difficulty in the fight. That would be lazy design and would only perpetuate the zerker meta. That said, I think there is a place for a Patchwerk-style dps check fight every now and then, as long it doesn’t become the norm.

Reading through my comments, I think I responded too strongly. Now that I’ve had something to eat, let me try to approach this calmer and clearer.

The point I suppose I was trying to get across, is just that I don’t like how players can preform perfectly within the mechanics of the fight, but lose because they hit the enrage timer. To me it feels unnatural to hit that type of barrier and how you deal with it isn’t great either, being encouraged to kick players because another profession can preform their role more efficiently.

I actually like the idea of a timer to encourage steady damage and add tension to a fight, just not the automatic defeat it causes. I’d much rather have it ramp of the difficulty of the mechanics, where they have to keep up in order to keep going. This way players will be encouraged to defeat it before the timer, but still feel like there is a chance if they go over it.

Granted, it would make the fight somewhat less strict to complete because players would have more time, but the combat itself wouldn’t change. Players might even enjoy the new enrage system as a challenge as well, only fighting it after enrage has been reached as a form of hard mode.

I hope you can see my points, and I understand if you disagree with them. I will enjoy raids even if the enrage mechanic is unchanged, I just wanted to give my viewpoint on the system and suggest potential improvements.

Blaeys.3102:

I would support the idea of incremental enrage timers, but I would take a slightly different, more simplistic approach that could be applied universally – At enrage 1, I would make it impossible to rez anyone fully dead, after enrage 2, anyone downed would immediately die (and be unrezzable) and at enrage 3, one random team member would die every 30 seconds.

As I’ve said before – enrage timers are necessary, but should – in most cases – not be so strict as to make them the defining difficulty in the fight. That would be lazy design and would only perpetuate the zerker meta. That said, I think there is a place for a Patchwerk-style dps check fight every now and then, as long as doesn’t become the norm.

Something like that would be a good compromise which I could get behind.

Bri.8354:

The point I suppose I was trying to get across, is just that I don’t like how players can preform perfectly within the mechanics of the fight, but lose because they hit the enrage timer. To me it feels unnatural to hit that type of barrier and how you deal with it isn’t great either, being encouraged to kick players because another profession can preform their role more efficiently.

if players perfom perfectly, then why wouldnt they run at least halfway decent builds?
also if you have to kick players because another profession deals more dps then i can assure you players in your group do not perfom perfectly.
the problem you are trying to talk about here does not even exist tbh.

and anet will nerf the +500% dmg enrage, so even if you hit the 8 min mark, you will still have a chance.

also if the enrage timer is not “strict” people will be able to run more tanky builds and have a much easier time.
the enrage isnt just a dps check, it checks everything, execution, dps, teamwork, coordination, buffs etc

i have one question for you tho, if the timer is as strict as you say, how do you explain it that people with suboptimal group comps, suboptimal gear and suboptimal rotations beat the boss with like a min left on the timer?

I think a gradual enrage system is nice because it will give you a fighting chance, and make tanky gear bit more useful.

But I don’t think they should spend much time on it. The effort spent on the enrage mechanics could also be spent on the actual fight mechanics.

NoTrigger.8396:

and anet will nerf the +500% dmg enrage, so even if you hit the 8 min mark, you will still have a chance.

It was nerfed to 500%, supposedly it was higher and was reduced for the beta.

Wethospu.6437:

But I don’t think they should spend much time on it. The effort spent on the enrage mechanics could also be spent on the actual fight mechanics.

There’s no reason why fight mechanics can’t also be enrage mechanics. I’d also generally like to see more involved dps checks than just a timer. Something like a case where 1 player has to soak something that’ll one shot them and you have to burst down adds for a rally before they stomp the downed player, for example.

If the mechanics already exist on the fight then they aren’t enrage mechanics.

NoTrigger.8396:

if players perfom perfectly, then why wouldnt they run at least halfway decent builds?
also if you have to kick players because another profession deals more dps then i can assure you players in your group do not perfom perfectly.
the problem you are trying to talk about here does not even exist tbh

Players can perform well within the mechanics of the encounter, keeping the orbs away from the boss and players, dodging the teleport, stopping the AoE in time, assigning correct roles to the split phase, and so on, but still fail due to the timer. In raids its not only how you play that defines success, but what you play as.

NoTrigger.8396:

i have one question for you tho, if the timer is as strict as you say, how do you explain it that people with suboptimal group comps, suboptimal gear and suboptimal rotations beat the boss with like a min left on the timer?

From what I could tell, the groups that beat it were fairly optimal. You don’t need a perfect team to beat it, but you do need a fairly optimized one.

The scale of efficient builds is pretty large, with each step outside of the meta causing a reasonable cut in efficiency. For instance, exotic instead of ascended berserker is a personal loss of ~12% DPS IIRC, not taking frost spirit is a ~35% loss, using the wrong sigil is a ~5-10% loss, and these keep stacking up. Between having a non-optimal profession composition and players not using all the best options, a group can lose a lot of effectiveness.

So if you could imagine, the guild who got the first kill of Vale Guardian with 1:20 remaining, which is pretty high on that scale, was just 17% less efficient, they wouldn’t have made it.

Also keep in mind this is only the first boss, which they call easy compared to the next 3. If the next ones are designed similarly, expect even more reliance on efficient group compositions.

Wethospu.6437:

But I don’t think they should spend much time on it. The effort spent on the enrage mechanics could also be spent on the actual fight mechanics.

Enrage would just be adding additional effects to the current mechanics. It shouldn’t be hard to program in things like faster activation times and additional effects on hit.

Wethospu.6437:

If the mechanics already exist on the fight then they aren’t enrage mechanics.

In Devil Survivor the bonus boss has an attack that hits everyone on the field and increases in damage every time it’s used. He uses it every turn so it’s definitely a normal fight mechanic, but the damage quickly becomes difficult to manage and eventually becomes powerful enough to instantly wipe you no matter what.

This attack is a normal fight mechanic, a soft enrage and a hard enrage all in one.

Bri.8354:

In raids its not only how you play that defines success, but what you play as.

people have beaten the boss with a necro in the party.

Bri.8354:

From what I could tell, the groups that beat it were fairly optimal. You don’t need a perfect team to beat it, but you do need a fairly optimized one to.

exactly. now what i dont understand is, why would people who WANT the challenging content and who WANT the difficulty not run what is effective or fairly optimal in terms of builds? that is something i will never understand, because each player who wants to beat content like that is also striving to become as good as possible at the game, which is simply not possible when you are a special snowflake or run builds that are clearly inferior compared to others just so you can say “hey im different than all of you :P”.

i mean in wow people wouldnt raid with 20 tanks or 20 healers if they take it at least a little bit serious and wanna make some progress.

optimizing your group comp, builds, dps rotation, theory crafting and all of that stuff has been and will always be part of raids and it is a requirement if you want to succeed.
if you want to beat the bosses and if you want the shiny legendary armor, then you do what it takes.
now i dont see where the problem is.

Bri.8354:

So if you could imagine, the guild who got the first kill of Vale Guardian with 1:20 remaining, which is pretty high on that scale, was just 17% less efficient, they wouldn’t have made it.

yep, but they could have been 17% more efficient than they were, easily.

for example the fastest phase 1 we had ended between 6:50 and 6:45 left on the timer.
assuming the boss has 22 million hp and phase 1 ends at 66% hp (people with dps meters said so) that means we dealt 96800 raid dps. that is less than 10k dps per player. and 10k dps is not much. and our execution, team comp and rotations were far from perfect.

this is also why i said the enrage timer should be 7 min or 6:30. but it is the first boss in the first gw2 raid after all.

Bri.8354:

NoTrigger.8396:

if players perfom perfectly, then why wouldnt they run at least halfway decent builds?
also if you have to kick players because another profession deals more dps then i can assure you players in your group do not perfom perfectly.
the problem you are trying to talk about here does not even exist tbh

Players can perform well within the mechanics of the encounter, keeping the orbs away from the boss and players, dodging the teleport, stopping the AoE in time, assigning correct roles to the split phase, and so on, but still fail due to the timer. In raids its not only how you play that defines success, but what you play as.

NoTrigger.8396:

i have one question for you tho, if the timer is as strict as you say, how do you explain it that people with suboptimal group comps, suboptimal gear and suboptimal rotations beat the boss with like a min left on the timer?

From what I could tell, the groups that beat it were fairly optimal. You don’t need a perfect team to beat it, but you do need a fairly optimized one.

The scale of efficient builds is pretty large, with each step outside of the meta causing a reasonable cut in efficiency. For instance, exotic instead of ascended berserker is a personal loss of ~12% DPS IIRC, not taking frost spirit is a ~35% loss, using the wrong sigil is a ~5-10% loss, and these keep stacking up. Between having a non-optimal profession composition and players not using all the best options, a group can lose a lot of effectiveness.

So if you could imagine, the guild who got the first kill of Vale Guardian with 1:20 remaining, which is pretty high on that scale, was just 17% less efficient, they wouldn’t have made it.

Also keep in mind this is only the first boss, which they call easy compared to the next 3. If the next ones are designed similarly, expect even more reliance on efficient group compositions.

Afaik Frost Spirit is 70% chance to deal 10% more dmg so 7% dps increace
and the raid is a daytime instance, so there is no proper 10% sigil there.
Oh and please don’t start the Exotic debate again, it is balanced around asc gear and thats fine. Don’t have it and still want to raid? Then get it, its not like something prevents you from gearing out your chars.

Bri.8354:

Wethospu.6437:

But I don’t think they should spend much time on it. The effort spent on the enrage mechanics could also be spent on the actual fight mechanics.

Enrage would just be adding additional effects to the current mechanics. It shouldn’t be hard to program in things like faster activation times and additional effects on hit.

It still takes development time. They have to create new skills (copypaste), manage when they are active and test that everything works properly. For example boss shouldn’t use enrage skills too early and should revert back to original skills when he resets. Also then they have to balance those new skills so that they aren’t too powerful but also not negligible.

All in all, it adds up (ever wonder why dungeons don’t get updated?). In my opinion it’s waste of development time because they don’t really add anything to the encounter.

Coldtart.4785:

Wethospu.6437:

If the mechanics already exist on the fight then they aren’t enrage mechanics.

In Devil Survivor the bonus boss has an attack that hits everyone on the field and increases in damage every time it’s used. He uses it every turn so it’s definitely a normal fight mechanic, but the damage quickly becomes difficult to manage and eventually becomes powerful enough to instantly wipe you no matter what.

This attack is a normal fight mechanic, a soft enrage and a hard enrage all in one.

No, it’s just a normal fight mechanic.

DPS is part of the game, just accept it. It’s the same in ANY MMO : max DPS with what will allow you to survive. If you can’t beat the boss fast enough and the enrage timer kills you because you are using defensive gear and don’t deal enough damage, then switch to more offensive gear. Clearly better players are able to survive without the defensive gear and raids are supposed to be challenging… not everyone will succeed, especially if they want their hand held. Using offensive gear (berserker, sinister), ADDS to the challenge. Contrary to what a lot of people imply, using berserker gear doesn’t mean you aren’t making use of your class mechanics and it also doesn’t mean you aren’t using support skills and traits.

One of the main complaints people used to make about berserker gear was that it allowed players to destroy bosses before their mechanics even kicked in. Well, clearly that isn’t the case here. Instead, it allows you to complete the boss. As an added bonus, you’re a glass cannon so everything is more tense and difficult. It’s an added challenge in this context instead of removing all challenge through sheer power.

The irrational hatred of everything DPS so many people have in this community is really annoying.

The enrage timer is NOT just a dps check. You cannot and will not succeed the fight if you just DPS a boss and don’t do anything else. You need to survive and make use of the fight mechanics.

You want to see what a pointless DPS check is? The old Simin (Dwayna in Arah p4) was a pointless DPS check. The boss couldn’t kill you, but if you didn’t do enough DPS you were screwed, even if you understood the mechanic. It wasn’t challenging, you could stand there for hours fighting her and eventually get lucky.

Trust me, I know. I made the thread that got Simin hit with the nerf bat back when I was a mediocre player and couldn’t beat her after multiple PUG attempts (didn’t have a guild back then) even in full zerker gear. I’m still happy about it though because it was a POINTLESS dps check in a game mode (dungeons) that offered no other similar DPS checks. It was completely out of place for the game at the time and was NOT fun in any way, shape or form. So ArenaNET made it pretty simple and once you understood the mechanic you were now able to beat her relatively easily.

Raids are a different beast though. You aren’t expected to be on the same level to complete a raid vs a dungeon.

An enrage timer is the game telling you : hey, if you want to beat this boss, not only do you need to understand the mechanics, you need to be skillful enough to do it quickly or we will wipe your party.

Part of that is the added challenge of being a glass cannon and doing enough damage. An enrage form like you propose would be incredibly boring : have 10 people in clerics/sentinel gear and just take 2 hours to kill everything, but be essentially invulnerable even when boss reaches “max enrage”.

It is entirely expected of this game mode that you need to beat an enrage timer. It’s an endgame challenge where you are expected to be a good player, geared properly, patient, have good teamwork, etc. Every boss in raids will probably have an enrage timer, it’s part of the challenge of raids.

Like others have pointed out, the timer is somewhat lenient and groups beat the encounter without perfectly optimized strategies. This is good as it means the raid is somewhat accessible. You’ll still need to be a decent player to beat it very likely, but it won’t be just SC caliber players beating it is what I mean.

Wethospu.6437:

No, it’s just a normal fight mechanic.

You automatically lose after a set amount of time. There is no functional difference between the mechanic I listed and a hard enrage timer.

Im a perfect world where they have all the development time in the world, can balance perfectly, and have all the money they need, then this system would be great. The opportunity cost is way too high and is better spent else where.

SlyDevil.3952:

NoTrigger.8396:

and anet will nerf the +500% dmg enrage, so even if you hit the 8 min mark, you will still have a chance.

It was nerfed to 500%, supposedly it was higher and was reduced for the beta.

I hadn’t heard about them nerfing the enrage for the beta, but Crystal did say after the beta that they would be reducing it further:

Crystal Reid.2481:

Jerus.4350:

I’ll say I’ve always liked soft timers best. 500% is probably a bit much to call it a soft timer, but hey at least it’s not one of the “and you’re dead” type enrages.

I actually just reduced this to give you a little wiggle room to (as my raid says) kittenroach the boss down if he’s low enough.

So the enrage will be a little softer in the final product. Which honestly, sounds fine for the first raid boss.

Coldtart.4785:

Wethospu.6437:

No, it’s just a normal fight mechanic.

You automatically lose after a set amount of time. There is no functional difference between the mechanic I listed and a hard enrage timer.

There is no functional difference between parents and enrage timers.

NoTrigger.8396:

exactly. now what i dont understand is, why would people who WANT the challenging content and who WANT the difficulty not run what is effective or fairly optimal in terms of builds?

Because people want to run challenging content with our friends – and we want them to be able to play the professions and roles they enjoy playing. That isnt to say that every single build and stat choice should be supported. It’s just that the wider they can throw that net, while still maintaining actual difficulty through actual mechanics, the more diversity and interesting mechanics they can include in future raids.

Super tight enrage mechanics force people down set traitline paths, armor setups and playstyles – discouraging diversity and any semblance of real strategy. They limit fight design possibilities. If “kill super fast” is always the most important part of raiding, then the same builds, setups and strategies will be the most optimal on every single fight – which will get boring really fast.

Ive raided with (and led many) high end progression level groups for almost a decade now. In my opinion, enrage timers, while necessary to avoid cheese-able fights, should not, in most cases, be the element that defines fight difficulty. They loosely set the parameters – the mechanics of the fight set the difficulty.

I think a system that might work – and reward skill in most every group – would be to include prestigious achievements for things like faster kills, groups where no players are down, perfect execution of difficult mechanics, etc. They could even provide titles and one time gear rewards for these achievements. So – a speed kill group could get a reward/achievement, but a more survival-focused or tactically-focused group could as well.

Blaeys.3102:

Super tight enrage mechanics force people down set traitline paths, armor setups and playstyles – discouraging diversity and any semblance of real strategy. They limit fight design possibilities. If “kill super fast” is always the most important part of raiding, then the same builds, setups and strategies will be the most optimal on every single fight – which will get boring really fast.

First of all, the enrage that we experienced was not supertight.

Second, any complaints you have about suboptimal weapons or traits is not a raids complaint. That a skilled and balance issue. Thank god we’re getting raids before they decide to balance the game though because that’s literally never going to happen.

Blaeys.3102:

NoTrigger.8396:

exactly. now what i dont understand is, why would people who WANT the challenging content and who WANT the difficulty not run what is effective or fairly optimal in terms of builds?

Because people want to run challenging content with our friends – and we want them to be able to play the professions and roles they enjoy playing.

Fair enough, but it might be a good idea to spend a week or two trying to progress with casual builds and see how it goes before asking for nerfs. This boss already doesn’t have a tight enrage timer that forces DPS. From what we saw last weekend, there’s plenty of wiggle room for less-than-optimal groups. And as I’ve mentioned, thinking about your build and being willing to change it up is an intended component of this raid content. If player refuse to at least retrait, take different weapons, and use unfamiliar utilities, this content is not for them, unless they find a team willing to carry them. They should stick with dungeons.

And to be honest, IMO your earlier suggestion of adding an enrage mechanic that would instantly and randomly put players in defeated state every 30 seconds sounds far more frustrating than a 500% damage buff. There’s no possibility of skillful counterplay. At least with the damage buff you could play defensively and whittle off the last couple HP after time’s up if you got close.

Nokaru.7831:

First of all, the enrage that we experienced was not supertight.

Second, any complaints you have about suboptimal weapons or traits is not a raids complaint. That a skilled and balance issue. Thank god we’re getting raids before they decide to balance the game though because that’s literally never going to happen.

dlonie.6547:

Fair enough, but it might be a good idea to spend a week or two trying to progress with casual builds and see how it goes before asking for nerfs. This boss already doesn’t have a tight enrage timer that forces DPS. From what we saw last weekend, there’s plenty of wiggle room for less-than-optimal groups. And as I’ve mentioned, thinking about your build and being willing to change it up is an intended component of this raid content. If player refuse to at least retrait, take different weapons, and use unfamiliar utilities, this content is not for them, unless they find a team willing to carry them. They should stick with dungeons.

And to be honest, IMO your earlier suggestion of adding an enrage mechanic that would instantly and randomly put players in defeated state every 30 seconds sounds far more frustrating than a 500% damage buff. There’s no possibility of skillful counterplay. At least with the damage buff you could play defensively and whittle off the last couple HP after time’s up if you got close.

To both of you – I fully agree.

I had the chance to see the new raid boss during the beta and absolutely LOVED it. While the pug I was in didnt beat it, I did not think the enrage timer looked out of reach.

My comments in this thread are about the topic of enrage timers as a whole and the concept of multi-tiered skill based enrages – they are not about the Vale Guardian fight at all (again, I loved that fight and cant wait to get my guild in there).

Regarding my earlier proposal about the enrage timers, you are right dlonie, it probably isnt the best idea. I do like the concept of multi-tiered enrages though.

The thing I want to get across is that good design will allow for greater diversity, not less. And greater diversity means that the fights should be doable with more than just builds/gear/etc designed around “kill super fast.” They should provide strategic challenges that make players come up with creative solutions based around the professions/roles they enjoy playing.

It’s so strange to see civil discussion in the forum, lol. I guess all we needed was something new worth discussing in PvE ;-D

Absolutely, though, I hope we see a variety of enrage mechanics over the next few raid releases. The good news is that the devs seem to have a passion for what they’re doing and are having fun with it. That’s awesome; it means they’re more likely to be creative and clever in their designs and we’re more likely to see fresh, interesting encounters. Color me hopeful.

Wethospu.6437:

There is no functional difference between parents and enrage timers.

This made me lol so hard. 10/10.

The thing is; we’ve only seen simply what 1 single enrage timer does. A lot of enrage timers act differently across MMO’s and per boss/instance. Some 1-shot the raid, some increase defense, some 1-shot 1 target at a time, etc - the point is; yea this ’dps race mechanic’ might not be the most enjoyable if it were to be the only mechanic, but I think a lot of people are forgetting that this is completely customizable as well and many raid designers do adjust this mechanic from fight to fight.

Exactly, we’re talking about the first raid boss GW2 has seen, looks pretty solid, of course I hope they gets more intense and more intricate and more fun but looks pretty fun for now.