Guild Wars 2

So here is my question for the players and devs:
Is a timer the only way to make challenging PvE content?

So in general, the raid content has been well received in terms of providing challenging content. But how big of the percentage of the difficulty can be attributed to a timer and large health pool?

Let’s say, we also put a 22m health and a 7-8 minute timer on old bosses like Lupi, Mai trin or shaman(also some nerf to reflection damage). Will they just be equally challenging as the current raid bosses?

The bottom line is that despite of some interesting mechanics, the biggest challenge of those raid encounters is still all about dishing out max damage per second. This is pretty much the same thing ppl did in all the old content. It is still fun, but definitely not very innovative.

When I first read the raid introduction blog, they were advertising like ‘ppl run for their lives’. It gave me an impression that the raid content will provide such a hostile environment so that you need to constantly worry about staying alive. However, the reality is very different that I am not under that much pressure to stay alive. I am only under the pressure to dish out more dps. The gameplay is still pretty much just maintaining a max dps rotation.

So enforcing a timer looks like a cheap way to make content challenging. But with current PvE encounter design sole focusing on dps, it is also probably the only way to make sure content is challenging.

TLDR; New raid content is fundamentally no different from old ones. The only way to ensure being challenging is a timer.

Once you complete the first encounter you’ll notice that each successive one has mechanics that make you fail it and those mechanics are not hard timers (chasing ghosts, limited updrafts, platform health pool).

Timers are there to limit your ability to recover, put more pressure on a team and disallow stacking defence.

Besides, once timer runs out, it’s not a wipe.

In a way, yes. It’s the only way they can balance it around so many gearsets. I mean, they could add DPS checks in other ways but… isn’t that just the same thing rly?

No but timer is the easiest way.

More than 95% of my boss attempts fail because of something other than the enrage timer.

17% of failures are “cat walking across keyboard”

Exciton.8942:

Let’s say, we also put a 22m health and a 7-8 minute timer on old bosses like Lupi, Mai trin or shaman(also some nerf to reflection damage). Will they just be equally challenging as the current raid bosses?
.

Wouldn’t Work. You know why? Because these boses were never designed as Raid Bosses. Mai Trinn and Shaman with 22 Million Health? 3 Phases who are the exact Same, very few Mechanics. You need to redesign the Encounters to make them working with so much Health.
And even Lupi wouldn’t work. Why? Because for most of the Time he is a mess. First Phase is a Boring Mess. The Adds he spawns are Cleaved down pretty Quick and even the Grubs can be cleaved ( if dodge fails ). Second Phase is…. broken. An Autoattack that can be mixed with other Attacks like his Charge or the Necrid Bolt AOE Attack. And speaking of the AOE. These Things can hit everywhere, not just on the Places where the AOE Indicator shows it, sometimes also not in the Indicator. Phase 3 is fine. But to make him work as a Raid Boss Anet would need to rework Phase one and Two and add one or two Mechanics on the last Phase.

The Timers on the Raid Bosses and the HP are not a Problem, the Main Difficulty is to play with the Mechanics and not with the Timer ( Even with Gorseval, who is the closest Example of a DPS Check in the Raid, you have to watch for his Mechanics ). Sabetha, from what I’ve seen, has many Mechanics that need to be Executed well otherwise you wipe, and this Fight can get really scary.
Also the Vale Guardian. Take my Raid Group for an Example. We raid two days a Weeks and 2 Hours a Day right now because we don’t have so much time. And while we didn’t kill VG, the Damage was never the Problem. At 2 Min Rest Time we normally have the Boos down to 10%. What kills us are the Mechanics at Phase 3 which we don’t Execute that well at the Moment. ( Like Lighting Group that gets Teleported away ).

So the Timer isn’t a Problem, its there to put out some extra Pressure and make sure that everyone in the Group learns how to use their Class and also to make sure that you can’t Cheese Fights like the VG with 10 Nomads.

Without DPS timers you could just stack tank gear and beat any raid boss simply through attrition.

Yeah, everybody go SOLDIER stats and in about half an hour the boss would be down eventually.
I would like to see challenging stuff in Raids more like WoW did. Seriously. Most people say WoW raids are easy, which is probably true, however easy doesn’t mean BORING. And challenging doesn’t mean FUN either.
WoW’s raids were fun to me at least, not because difficulty but mechanics were fun to do, timers were also there but it was nothing about a DPS check only, but it was about a group being coordinated enough to fulfill roles in the right time while keeping DPS and even defending themselves in certain moments.
Its like some fractals. I like fractals because they add a different experience than normal dungeons. people actually need to be sync to do some stuff and act at the right time or esle the group is punished. Well vale Guardian has the green circle and the breakbar, but thats not the same thing as fractals since the group’s challenge is DPS instead of dealing with mistock instabilities or something else.

I love how the Gorseval fight works. Theres actually many things going on but they are in a script rather than a chaotic RNG like the fight with VG.
But seriously, whoever put those updrafts in that platform must be trolling everybody and must be laughing loudly.

Timers are in place to require you to run a somewhat glassy setup and engage with the boss mechanics in a noticeable way.

Cletus Van Damme.2795:

17% of failures are “cat walking across keyboard”

…this made me laugh because it’s actually the case in our raid squad.

Anet challenging content mean that you need to craft some lame gear that is useless in real fights and you need to bind dodge. You don’t even need to use any class mechanics because dodge is always enough.

prouble not relevative but.. if u put a timer on things ur saying this content is not hard but u got to kill it fast… if u want to see hard content look at wildstar dungeon at least raid where hard to but they where easer to recover even though it took weeks to kill the first boss. and yes there was a timer on dungeons but that was there to attunement for raids and it was already hard to finish lol

Exciton.8942:

TLDR; New raid content is fundamentally no different from old ones. The only way to ensure being challenging is a timer.

Isnt the main problem here with the huge huge difference between a bunch of 10 glass cannons and a bunch of 10 super tanky builds (and not only gear stats)?

Edit: This!

Timers are in place to require you to run a somewhat glassy setup and engage with the boss mechanics in a noticeable way.

Harny.6012:

Exciton.8942:

TLDR; New raid content is fundamentally no different from old ones. The only way to ensure being challenging is a timer.

Isnt the main problem here with the huge huge difference between a bunch of 10 glass cannons and a bunch of 10 super tanky builds (and not only gear stats)?

Edit: This!

Timers are in place to require you to run a somewhat glassy setup and engage with the boss mechanics in a noticeable way.

I can also interpret it as the encounter mechanics are not difficult enough for players to go a bit tankier either through traits or gear.

Exciton.8942:

I can also interpret it as the encounter mechanics are not difficult enough for players to go a bit tankier either through traits or gear.

if you can go a bit “tankier” it will be easier.

NoTrigger.8396:

Exciton.8942:

I can also interpret it as the encounter mechanics are not difficult enough for players to go a bit tankier either through traits or gear.

if you can go a bit “tankier” it will be easier.

Actually killing boss fast is easy mode. For good players challenge start after enrage.

this is probably a new one if you arent trolling. havent heard of it before.

NoTrigger.8396:

Exciton.8942:

I can also interpret it as the encounter mechanics are not difficult enough for players to go a bit tankier either through traits or gear.

if you can go a bit “tankier” it will be easier.

That’s simply not true. On my engi with zero vitality/toughness(and everyone else), surviving is so easy with VG or gor with just one healer in the group.

If you compare horizontally with PvP and WvW, surviving with full offensive gear and traits is unthinkable!. I would say the environmental pressure is so much lower in raid compared those other game modes.

You just admitted its easy to survive. Surely its even easier when you are tanky.

Comparing PvE and PvP is never possible directly. You cannot design AI that is as good as a human player. Period.

So to make up for this fact you create challenging encounters in PvE through other methods, by making the smart humans jump through execution challenges as a group. Think of PvE like a dance, everyone needs to know their steps and execute those steps correctly and in sync or you all fail.

I don’t think many folks are calling for getting rid of the timers completely. There needs to be some middle ground between Ehmegherd all dps/condi glass (with one running a bit of toughness to “tank”) and everyone full bunker hitting with wet noodles.

Right now there’s very little (if any) wiggle room for build diversity. Most groups won’t even take one fully bunkered up tank or a fully geared healer.

I personally want to beat/do the raid and I do run mostly zerk characters, but sometimes I’d like to have a tad more vitality or toughness so that I can flub a little and not insta-die while I work on getting the mechanics down. And if nothing changes then I will wait til it’s on farm and try to get into a guild group later down the road. I didn’t do dungeons for the first year of the game either because there was other stuff I could do and I could come back and get the dungeon things done later once more folks knew how they worked better.

khani.4786:

Right now there’s very little (if any) wiggle room for build diversity. Most groups won’t even take one fully bunkered up tank or a fully geared healer.

VG has around 3 minutes of wiggle room.

Putting marauder armour/weps on an ele is something like 7% dps loss for a lot of hp gain, there is a lot of wiggle room there, you just can’t sacrifice stat loss, bad rotations and lack of group support. And you can add on latency and encounter knowledge + group synergy as important things you need to address when failing.