Guild Wars 2

way too early to be making loong winded posts on raid content because well its a new thing and chances are it will change over time.Like everything else though i agree but patience.

Two things in particular irk me about this post.

MadRabbit.3179:

I like being able to log on at any point and immediately join and begin participating in content without any kind of barrier.

Raids could have followed this same philosophy, but they didn’t. There is only one difficulty level, a cap on the number of people who can participate and the sheer difficulty of it marks the first time ascended gear is almost required to experience the content itself.

You’re mistaking “begin participating” with “winning”. Raids are very challenging and it’s very important to provide that tone to the game. To say that it’s unfair to put exclusive rewards behind difficult content is absurd on its face.

MadRabbit.3179:

The introduction of exclusive content is what, I feel, breeds a degree of toxicity that can be found rampant in other MMOs like WoW. This toxicity comes in the form of a degree of elitism, feelings of exclusion due to the limit of players, exclusion of certain classes due to imbalance issues, abuse of new or casual players who want to participate but are still learning the content and barrier to entry in the form of ascended gear which has historically been optional in all content.

This is completely incongruous with what you’re saying. WoW has four difficulty levels for every current dungeon and four difficulty levels for every raid. Surely, it should therefore be far, far less toxic than GW2, but that’s nowhere near the case. Some of the people I’ve met in LFR and LFD systems are vile people who I’d never play with.

Secondly, GW2 is one of the friendliest games on the points that you suggest. Yes, there is a raid limit, but this is industry standard. There are very gentle limits on what class you can choose to play; leveling is quick and easy. Once you have ascended armor, moving it from character to character is based almost entirely on the speed of your hard drive. Teaching players new mechanics is as easy as it’s ever been.

Difficult content and exclusive content does not breed toxicity. Inconsequentiality of social interactions are what breed toxicity.

MadRabbit.3179:

Just curious to see what other people thought.

I think you should go play WoW and see what you’re missing.

Goldrock.9076:

way too early to be making loong winded posts on raid content because well its a new thing and chances are it will change over time.Like everything else though i agree but patience.

Um, no. It is never to soon to make a comment on how something is done. Complacency just leads to more problems. If you see an issue, there’s no proof that there’s a solution in the mix or that things won’t get worse, so speak up and say stuff immediately.

I see two issues here. First is the challenge. I like that we have challenging content. However I think this raid is challenging enough without putting a time limit on things. My guild has been working at this raid for a while now, and we have several dozen very skilled players. We can beat this if it wasn’t for that real short timer. And this isn’t for lack of DPS either.

Now for the other issue. You DO NOT have to have ascended everything gear to be successful at this raid. You do however need everything exotic. So this isn’t for the very casual player who doesn’t even bother to gear with something other than random junk that they picked up in loot. Right now my guild has gotten the boss down to 40% health and we only have ascended weapons and about half with ascended trinkets. That extra 1-2% in stats isn’t going to cover for anything here.

With that said this raid all boils down to skill and not wearing the worst stuff you can wear for gear but also not having to have the best stuff either. But here’s the real kicker, once people are successful more than once or twice at it, they will be successful all the time like it is a piece of cake. And by then hopefully a new challenge awaits. I suppose they could have had more increments up to the boss piling more and more of the mechanics together that you face in the last boss. But then there reaches a point where you just annoy people who have already mastered the minor fights but haven’t the major fight; and have to call it quits until another day and have to go through all that again.

The raid is going to be there forever so why not just wait and let everyone else figure out the fights and then jump into a group where the other 9 members have mastered it. Then it won’t be so hard for you individually. Personally I like the challenge of being one of those trying to master it for the rest.

Jia Shen.4217:

Now for the other issue. You DO NOT have to have ascended everything gear to be successful at this raid. You do however need everything exotic. So this isn’t for the very casual player who doesn’t even bother to gear with something other than random junk that they picked up in loot. Right now my guild has gotten the boss down to 40% health and we only have ascended weapons and about half with ascended trinkets. That extra 1-2% in stats isn’t going to cover for anything here.

See. that’s where you’re wrong. having full ascended weapons and trinkets means you’re doing 10% more damage than exotics. That’s equivalent to 43 additional seconds on the clock. That’s a pretty big chunk right there from gear tiers alone.
Ascended armor itself isn’t necessary, but the trinkets and weapons are.

The type of gear you wear is a big factor, too. The difference between damage of something like Knight and Berserker is around 50%, which is 146 seconds on the clock. Add that on to the previous, and being inefficiently geared at the exotic level would be equivalent to doing the fight efficiently geared, but with a 4.8 minute enrage timer. Don’t forget, this is also with specific builds and classes.

What you’re doing here doesn’t make sense. You’re saying that you don’t need to be optimally built to succeed at raids, but the only thing you’ve brought is evidence against your very own claim. “You don’t need to be optimally built! I mean, we don’t do it, and we can barely get the first boss past half HP…”. You can’t wait to do it either, because in months when everyone else has it down pat nobody will put up with newbs anymore.

I think in a month or two many groups wouldn’t mind taking someone new to raids, if that person says they’re new and researched the fight in advance. It’s not that hard to beat the bosses with 1 person performing at say 50% efficiency. As long as they’re not on green circles duty or similar. I guess with Sabetha there might be a problem.

once again we have someone complaining that the rest of the playerbase won’t adapt to them, rather than the other way around. Raids DONT exclude anyone, but people may do so in favour of someone more skilled or with slightly better gear. With an org group vg is likely to go down with 1.5 min left, and thus you can come to the conclusion that at least one player can be swapped for less optimal build/class/gear.

NOTHING prevents you and others that feel this way to start your own groups with your own preferences.

Forlio.6043:

sephiroth.4217:

Completely agree…

It’s horrible to pay $50 for content that you end up being excluded from because you’re too casual to start a crafting profession, and make a full ascended set.

What happened to exotics being highest entry level? what happened to grindless game catered for casuals, THE WHOLE REASON I BOUGHT THIS INSTEAD OF WoW.

As someone else pointed out: 3 Years of a fun game with a casual playerbase, can the elite playerbase keep the game going another 3 years?

Oh the expansion only covered the raids? All this time I could have been playing the new content.

Thanks for the info!

I said content, which is apart of the expansion. Overall the expansion is great.

Malchior.5732:

A lot of “elites” have been here since the very beginning, myself included, although I don’t like being called an “elite”.

That being said, I don’t appreciate me paying $50 for content I can beat in mere moments. I like the challenge and I want more of it. I’m content with having a lot of game being casual-friendly, but isn’t it fair for more “hardcore” players to have something for them too?

A shame that his guild and others are having troubles, but just because you can’t do a VERY small portion of the game with your casual PvE guild doesn’t mean there’s a big issue here. Those people just need to find a separate group to raid with; that’s why you can be in several guilds at once. I have my guild that I play with in general PvE, I’m in a pvp guild, and I have a guild filled solely with raid buddies.

You guys have always had your “Elite” modes though and we had our “casual” modes, like fractal leveling system, we were able to see the story and what’s inside and experience the content at least once before we had a choice on whether we made it more difficult or not… Everyone who bought the expansion should have equal access too ALL of its content too. To me a simple fix would be to implement a fractal system to it or have it work the same as Diablo, easy the first time, harder every time after that.

Atleast then everyone could experience the expansion and elite/hardcore players could continue to enjoy hardcore mode.

Chris McSwag.4683:

once again we have someone complaining that the rest of the playerbase won’t adapt to them, rather than the other way around. Raids DONT exclude anyone, but people may do so in favour of someone more skilled or with slightly better gear. With an org group vg is likely to go down with 1.5 min left, and thus you can come to the conclusion that at least one player can be swapped for less optimal build/class/gear.

NOTHING prevents you and others that feel this way to start your own groups with your own preferences.

On the contrary, raids themselves create these limitations. Already you’re seeing groups ask for very specific classes/roles with specific gear. It’s not because they’re necessarily trying to be difficult, but because the Raids have such a small margin of error (thanks to time limitations) that optimal party compositions are practically forced. You’re talking about one player being able to be swapped out as if it’s a good thing, when all it is, is an indication of how poor the situation is.

Even if you can form your own party with your own preferences, that doesn’t mean you’ll have any hope of completing the raid unless you conform to those optimal party compositions. Oh sure, one person in your group gets to play how they want (assuming the rest of the group is optimal), but too bad for the rest who might be playing builds they don’t necessarily like purely for the sake of success.

But who cares as long as a minority get to have fun, right? O_o

@OP

I agree with what you’re saying 100%. I’ve made a similar thread on this situation but I think the way you’ve set out your thoughts is nice and clear and not too emotionally charged.

Then l2p, simple as that.

My example is a demonstration than an entire player can be carried, which means that an entire group of less than optimal players CAN get through. at least 90% is Play-what-you-want friendly and yet ppl complain cause they can’t have it all without any time investment?

A minority has completed the raid as of now(big surprise, not), but I’m confident that a majority can and will complete it with time.

Chris McSwag.4683:

Then l2p, simple as that.

My example is a demonstration than an entire player can be carried, which means that an entire group of less than optimal players CAN get through. at least 90% is Play-what-you-want friendly and yet ppl complain cause they can’t have it all without any time investment?

A minority has completed the raid as of now(big surprise, not), but I’m confident that a majority can and will complete it with time.

How do you propose people learn to play when Raid groups are stringent with who they accept? There’s no difficulty curve, very specific class/role requirements and a high entry point. A lack of accessibility will make it hard for people to learn raid encounters because few will be given the opportunity to do so. Players who are already experienced will be less inclined to allow less experienced players to enter their group.

Asking for more accessibility is logical and will give players an entry point from which they can progress and improve. No-one’s saying there can’t be difficult content, but there is a reasonable expectation for a properly implemented difficulty curve. Creating difficult content purely for the sake of it is never good and often results in imbalance. Difficulty is something that should be implemented correctly, and with a great deal of thought, balance and an emphasis on natural or organic progress.

Keep in mind that I can be a godly player and it won’t matter if my group is less than optimal. My personal skill becomes meaningless in those situations. By implementing a proper difficulty curve, you allow more players to access content and learn it and become more skilled, which improves the pool of players doing higher level content which makes it easier for you or I to find a good group to play with. It benefits high level players as much as lower level players.

Alright, going to throw my 2 cents here. At the present time, I do not raid for a very simple reason.

It isn’t just because of punishing difficulty. Punishing difficulty can be fine, but ideally the game would have had some degree of middle ground between Easy and Crazy.

It isn’t just because they forced the holy trinity back in. I’m alright with the idea for heal and tank roles added in, and forcing a mix of condi and physical damage. This is okay by me. However I don’t exactly like the whole sitting around for an inordinate amount of time LFHealer to go.

At the end of the day its because a boss gauntlet just is not interesting to me. You could have the most ridiculous loot drops and I still wouldn’t care because it just isn’t fun to do. This was GW2 first attempt at Raids. There’s more raid content to come, sure. Maybe its more refined, maybe its better designed, who knows. But sometimes what you see is what you get. In this case, what I see is not interesting.

I played classic GW for 7 years. Give me content like Underworld, or Fissure of Woe and I would be in there every day.

(Regarding some recurring misconception)

Today is the 7th of december, people still think Ascended armor is a requierement for raids.
May I remind you the first wing is cleared within 1-2 hours and each boss can be defeated with 1-3 minutes left on the timer?

When I don’t have experience for something, I just make a group that says, “Learning group this raid”… You’d be surprised how many people want/need to learn.

Don’t need to come on forum asking for devs to lower challenging content because of “exclusivity”.

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

How do you propose people learn to play when Raid groups are stringent with who they accept? .

Here are three ways:

1. Organise learning run in LFG
2. Organise learning run with current guild(s) you’re in.
3. Join a guild that does raids(some require experience of your class, some open for all)

I personally did 2 and 3 as well as practiced my skills by joining lfg groups.

Miku Lawrence.6329:

May I remind you the first wing is cleared within 1-2 hours and each boss can be defeated with 1-3 minutes left on the timer?

Sure if you use some lame gear like viper or bersekker.

Anyone can participate in raids, idk what some people are talking about here.
Get your guild, go in there for a hour a day and practice and at some point you’ll have it cleared. Will it take time? Yes. Are you excluded from the content by default? No, so stop saying you are, it’s not true.
Same with “raids are only for the rich” and other things mentioned, stop spouting so much bullkitten, really. lol

I cannot immediately log in and play in the ESL PvP Pro League. Therefore, I will not be participating in PvP until this flaw is resolved.

So, I have not read the entire thread, but let me compare the situation OP has posed to my experience with the original Guild Wars game:

Back in GW1, by the time I joined in, it was already a “mature” game (EoTN had just launched). At this time, there were a myriad of elite areas to choose from (Underworld, Fissure of Woe, Domain of Anguish, not to mention the hard mode content widely available after completing the main story).

There was nothing casual about these elite areas. If you went to the Domain of Anguish outpost, and used the equivalent lfg tool available at the time, all you would see is “lfg r10+ SS/Rt/Tank/WoH monk only NO NOOBS”, referencing VERY tight requirements: we are talking about a game that had literally thousands of different skill combinations, and players eventually converged to using a single one in order to rush the content. When I first completed the “main game” and looked at these elite areas, it was very frustrating, to say the least, having to limit myself so much.

Eventually though, I joined a guild and met a couple of buddies whom I played most of the “hard” content with. Thing is, neither of us tried to replicate the run of the mill builds around, we simply fleshed out something at the spot and went on to experiment. Obviously we couldn’t run at the same speed others did; the previous elite area I used as an example took about 2 hours with a good team and the recommended build, for us it was a day’s work unless we completed one sub-area by one across days. The point is, we could actually do it, as long as we were sensible enough to build something which worked, but there was more than one thing that worked. We got to a point where our own custom build with NPC party members was actually doing fairly well and we could run every single elite area in manageable time, as long as we wouldn’t become greedy with luring too many mobs, etc.

I see no way of anything even close to this happening with the new raid content. The reason is very simple: the elite areas in GW1 were elite in the sense that, if you did not learn the game mechanic (which at the time was choosing a set of 8 skills out of hundreds, for eight party members), you would fail at all cases. But if you did learn, you would succeed at varying degrees of success (taking 4 hours to run the elite content is much worse than taking 2 hours, but you still won and deserve the rewards/to experience the lore).

The GW2 elite content so far, which I will only include raids (the high level fractals are perfectly doable with any setup as long as you have AR), is elite in another sense: you either maximize DPS, or you will likely fail at all cases. There is no “learning the game mechanic” as people try to claim (learning to dodge red circles and to save a single utility slot for boon removal? I learned that in Wayfarer Foothills, no one should feel special about this), and the DPS race requirement can only be fulfilled by a single set of classes/builds.

This is alienating not only to players who are too casual to attempt doing the hard content (which I think is no argument too, I played with my dad back in the day and we managed the hard content eventually so he could experience the lore by himself, with him playing for 1, 2 hours a day at most), but also alienates players who can go down the “hardcore” road but can’t be bothered to do it by looking at some metabuild wiki. Anet has done this right before, so I have no idea how did they manage to insert a DPS race into the game and call it elite content (Mallyx and Dhuum are ashamed of you). Yes I can play the raids, yes I can spit the thousands of damage you want me to, yes I can git gud, but I’m not having fun with it and will complain until you give me the juicy challenging stuff you used to give before.

NikeEU.7690:

I cannot immediately log in and play in the ESL PvP Pro League. Therefore, I will not be participating in PvP until this flaw is resolved.

ESL pro league and some raids that below average players can complete are almost same thing.

What I would like to see is better use of the raid timers.

So, everyone fights the same vale guardian, say, but the rewards are based on how long it takes you to complete the encounter. This means that the content scales to all levels of skill and those who do the encounter particularly well are suitably rewarded.

Junkpile.7439:

NikeEU.7690:

I cannot immediately log in and play in the ESL PvP Pro League. Therefore, I will not be participating in PvP until this flaw is resolved.

ESL pro league and some raids that below average players can complete are almost same thing.

So he has even less to complain about then, doesn’t he?

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

How do you propose people learn to play when Raid groups are stringent with who they accept?

What is your profession, build, gear? Maybe we can give you advice to where to go at low cost. Maybe you are not that far off of what is consider good. If you just never tried raid yet, you can probably find a pug group to learn it. You won’t be able to kill him anyway the first time you go in. Unless you are super lucky. Most group had to practice it for 2 to 12 hours before the first kill.

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

very specific class/role requirements and a high entry point.

Not really no. So far I saw or killed the first boss with tank that were Necro, Mesmer, Guardian, Engineer and Warrior. So far only once did we killed the Vale Guardian with a specific tank build for him. All of the other time we killed him with a guardian using part of his WvW gear with a build created at the last minute. Yes there is specific build needed like condition build and buffing build like Warrior and Herald. But once you got 2 herald, 1 PS warrior, 1 tank, 2-3 condi and 1 healer, then it’s pretty much free for all. Any profession can fill the 2-3 last spots.

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

A lack of accessibility will make it hard for people to learn raid encounters because few will be given the opportunity to do so. Players who are already experienced will be less inclined to allow less experienced players to enter their group.

Asking for more accessibility is logical and will give players an entry point from which they can progress and improve.

Totally right. LFG section for raid, making LFG and Squad work together, raid lobby. That would help forming pug. After that you have the ’’easy’’ mode. It’s debatable. Personnally, I think it can be a good thing. They can nerf the reward in that mode and remove the timer for exemple.

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

Keep in mind that I can be a godly player and it won’t matter if my group is less than optimal. My personal skill becomes meaningless in those situations. By implementing a proper difficulty curve, you allow more players to access content and learn it and become more skilled, which improves the pool of players doing higher level content which makes it easier for you or I to find a good group to play with. It benefits high level players as much as lower level players.

Now you just talking though your hat with no experience in the content you are talking about. You personnal skill is meaningless when the party is less than optimal? AHAHAHAH good joke dude. We killed the first boss with 2 condi, 1 tank in WvW gear and 2 thiefs. Do you think it’s optimal?? In an optimal group, you will him with 2-3min left on the timer.

It’s the little mistake there and there that make the difference. Someone without a good position is too far from the circle, someone don’t dodge the blue teleport attack, the tank don’t move the guardian at the right moment, etc. That’s what will make you fail. Unless of course you don’t have full buff. If you don’t have 25 might and perma fury, then there is nothing you can do. You won’t have the dps needed. Well for most people.

You bring valid points OP but I would like to remind us all, who have been here for over three years, that we’ve also been worried about difficulty in the past which now arnt talked about anymore. Because in time people learn and adapt, the first raid wing has only been out for like a month, its meant to be a longterm goal for casual guildies.

I remember when we had dungeons at the start, many complained that they were simply too hard, that AC couldnt be done as a pug. A year later it all was a breeze to complete, dungeon mechanics became common knowledge. And there isnt difficulty scaling in dungeons.

We should reserve judgement till all raid wings are out, heck even give it a year and see for ourselves.

maxwelgm.4315:

The GW2 elite content so far, which I will only include raids (the high level fractals are perfectly doable with any setup as long as you have AR), is elite in another sense: you either maximize DPS, or you will likely fail at all cases. There is no “learning the game mechanic” as people try to claim (learning to dodge red circles and to save a single utility slot for boon removal? I learned that in Wayfarer Foothills, no one should feel special about this), and the DPS race requirement can only be fulfilled by a single set of classes/builds.

1. If you maximize DPS you will kill the bosses with 2-3 minutes left. So there is certainly some leniency but you can’t bring tanky gear.
2. The mechanics are pretty good in my opinion. Given that the vast majority of wipes are not because the boss enraged but because of failed mechanics, I certainly think they’re fine. Even if you think VG and Gorseval have somewhat boring mechanics, which I disagree with, you have to admit that Sabetha has geat mechanics.
3. “DPS race can only be fulfilled by a single set of classes/builds” – Completely false. Unless I misunderstand what you mean. But probably still false. Group compositions have a good amount of variety in my opinion.

I think the most important thing when it comes to Raids is to do it with friends. PUGing it will likely not be a fun experience. My current raid group consistes of some guildies, some friends, and some people we met from LFG (who are now friends.) Playing with friends eliminates any serious gear checks or assumptions there is only one kind of team comp.

I also don’t understand something: if people (not saying OP) want easier difficulties for the raids, then how does that make it Challenging content?

Personally I think the first wing is well done; it’s the right amount of damage, skill, and mechanics. It’s nice to see the progression your squad makes from the first try to the later tries. Especially Sabetha is basically a big trust exercise for the squad.

MadRabbit.3179:

grinding to get full exotic

Not to discredit your stance on this matter, I respect your opinion, but if you consider gearing up a character in full exotics grinding, you might not be part of the audience raids are targeted at.

First off, my opinion of the introduction of the raids.

I love it. The difficulty is right where I want it to be as in the content was not impossible, but even myself and the more seasoned/experienced players in the guild I’m in were not able to complete the bosses for a few days. VG is a cake walk now, but it wasn’t at first.

The way we did it in my guild was we had a core group up players to sign up as the “A-team” that would be primarily responsible for grinding out the strats and ultimately figuring out what works. From there we would communicate our results to the rest of the guild and hold “Open Raid” days where anyone could join so long as they met reasonable requirements (knowledge of their class, correct gear, good build, etc).

Now, my opinion as to how the Raid content fits with the rest of the game:

I don’t like it very much. First off, our in-game LFG tool was not built with this content in mind. Most importantly, though, the game has for the past 3 years been catering to the casual player, and I think that should continue. The game is supposed to be something where a person can pick up the game in their spare time, and still reap decent rewards. With Raids, that’s not necessarily the case.

What I would like to see is something like a tier system where easier tiers could be completed by the more casual players, but they wouldn’t necessarily get the same rewards and/or receive rewards at a dramatically reduced rate. That was casual players still feel like they can complete the content, but there’s an incentive to improve their gameplay.

The frustrating part (and the part that most contributes to the “toxicity”) is when the more casual players are playing copypasta when it comes to builds and team composition and refuse to adapt otherwise. Now, I realize that’s nothing new to this game, but I would say we’re getting better about being less picky when it comes to other aspects/content of the game (especially in Fractals).

I fully agree though, that Raids have introduced a sort of divide in the player base more so than there already was.

Edit: My definition of a casual player being both someone who doesn’t care to better his skill and a casual player also being someone who simply does not have time (due to IRL conflicts) to invest as much time to practice.

Not sure what the issue is here. It’s difficult content with nice rewards for the people that wanted that sort of thing. On NA server, and I can always easily throw up a commander tag, squad invite all the people on lfg wanting to raid, and pug the raid. We all hop on teamspeak and even if we fail we have a great time. If this content is too hard for you to do even that, then you shouldn’t be doing it. Not ALL content in the game should be catered to ALL levels of players. You don’t NEED legendary armor or any other raid rewards. If it is something you WANT, then you’re just going to have to learn and get better.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I’m not planning to participate in any raids anytime soon. For a multitude of reasons, which I will now list in no specific order:

#1: I am the most uncoordinated individual I have ever met. It takes me hours to do jumping puzzles, let alone when I have 9 angry players waiting for me to get it right. Most of my play in this game consists of pre-planning and theorycrafting, and very little consists of clutch plays and precise movements. My aptitude for anything “skill” related is incredibly low, so much so that my actual skill caps out a week within playing the game. I can’t “get gud” basically.

#2: I don’t have anyone to do it with. Nobody in my area plays GW2, and I’m a lone wolf by trade. Any PUG groups I manage to get in on will be filled full of antisocial neckbeards desperate to prove something who will rage when yet another thing in their life doesn’t go exactly right. Without a group that will understand that I’ll ruin half the attempts because my fingers up and decided to not respond to my brain, running a raid is just going to be a frustrating experience that benefits nobody.

#3: I don’t have time to do it. I keep odd hours IRL, and now that I’m going to college a surprisingly large amount of time is dedicated to that fact. The first week of raids was an exam week, so now that everybody wants “experienced”, I’ll never get in to a group.

#4:It goes against what I’ve been striving for in this game, which is gear equality and class equality. The whole point of making the game harder in specific ways was to make it so more gearsets other than full glass cannon were desirable. But, by putting an enrage timer into mix, the only gearsets that get encouraged are berserker, berserker with a piece or two of knight gear to draw aggro , and a healing set. Whereas Anet originally saw the superiority of GC gear as a problem, now they see it as a good thing. And as with classes, instead of making content that encourages a diverse set of play, we have content that is optimized around having particular groups to maximize buffs and performance, leaving classes who don’t fit that mold (I.E. thief) to be left in the dust.

#5: The ascended requirements. Back when Anet said Ascended wouldn’t be required for anything, I took their word for it, and then continued to not make ascended gear, instead spending my cash on other things like alternate armor sets and outfits. Now suddenly I’m supposed to have full ascended gear, and to get the weapons alone for my characters it is going to cost several thousand gold, let alone how long it’ll take to get the laurels for the ascended trinkets, rings, and amulets. I am simply not rich enough to take my characters into the raids.

So in short, I can never have the “skill”, I don’t have the time, the people, or the money, and I have ethical problems with how raids are made. To be frank, if the raiding community is anything like the dungeon community of old, then they’re an insufferable bunch who will make the whole thing unwelcoming to everybody but themselves; exactly how they like it.

Just one thing to note. You don’t need full ascended. There groups that have done the bosses with +3 minutes left on the timer. As for weapons costing alone thousands of gold, you don’t need all 9 classes having ascended weapons. Just pick a class or two and get ascended weapons for them. And with them being account bound, if you really need you can just swap them to another character.

Shaogin.2679:

Not sure what the issue is here. It’s difficult content with nice rewards for the people that wanted that sort of thing. On NA server, and I can always easily throw up a commander tag, squad invite all the people on lfg wanting to raid, and pug the raid. We all hop on teamspeak and even if we fail we have a great time. If this content is too hard for you to do even that, then you shouldn’t be doing it. Not ALL content in the game should be catered to ALL levels of players. You don’t NEED legendary armor or any other raid rewards. If it is something you WANT, then you’re just going to have to learn and get better.

But but but, then I can’t get my legendary armor!! I NEED it, and I can’t be bothered to get better, so plz nerf it NOW. Legendary armor is a new tier anet went back on there word this is a casual MMO that means there can’t EVER be anything even remotely difficult!! I’m just sick and tired of Anet spending all there resources on raids now that’s all they ever update. I mean just look at what happened to wildstar. Just another WoW clone : (

/s

I’m not doing raids either, I don’t have much free time and when I do I don’t want to take 2 hours looking for a group that will ultimately fail at the first boss anyway.

Let’s face it, HoT has no endgame content and is unfinished. It’s just 3 boss fight with a huge grind/difficulty wall hiding the little there is.

I´d have no problem with raids if it wasn´t for the massive ascended gear grind that new players are facing and having to play a specific class/build.

Ascended gear is by far the worst thing to ever happen to GW2.

ChrizZcE.5981:

I´d have no problem with raids if it wasn´t for the massive ascended gear grind that new players are facing and having to play a specific class/build.

Ascended gear is by far the worst thing to ever happen to GW2.

Why keeping on saying this when plenty of people have posted vids where they actually beat the first raid in full exo or the ones in ascended finish it with 2 min left on timer (2 min out of 8 left = 25% of “over-dps” and asc is less than 25 % dps increase !)?
The thing is you beat the first boss and get a chance at finding ascended stuff… so the more you beat the raid the more ascended stuff you have.

Ranael.6423:

ChrizZcE.5981:

I´d have no problem with raids if it wasn´t for the massive ascended gear grind that new players are facing and having to play a specific class/build.

Ascended gear is by far the worst thing to ever happen to GW2.

Why keeping on saying this when plenty of people have posted vids where they actually beat the first raid in full exo or the ones in ascended finish it with 2 min left on timer (2 min out of 8 left = 25% of “over-dps” and asc is less than 25 % dps increase !)?
The thing is you beat the first boss and get a chance at finding ascended stuff… so the more you beat the raid the more ascended stuff you have.

That´s nice, but what I´m saying is even if you are the most skilled GW2 player in the world you won´t even be able to access the raid if you don´t have ascended gear and play the right class/build.

I dare you to find skilled PUG raid group that accepts a thief with no ascended gear. First thing people ask you when you join is to ping your gear. If you don´t have ascended gear you get kicked.

ChrizZcE.5981:

Ranael.6423:

ChrizZcE.5981:

I´d have no problem with raids if it wasn´t for the massive ascended gear grind that new players are facing and having to play a specific class/build.

Ascended gear is by far the worst thing to ever happen to GW2.

Why keeping on saying this when plenty of people have posted vids where they actually beat the first raid in full exo or the ones in ascended finish it with 2 min left on timer (2 min out of 8 left = 25% of “over-dps” and asc is less than 25 % dps increase !)?
The thing is you beat the first boss and get a chance at finding ascended stuff… so the more you beat the raid the more ascended stuff you have.

That´s nice, but what I´m saying is even if you are the most skilled GW2 player in the world you won´t even be able to access the raid if you don´t have ascended gear and play the right class/build.

I dare you to find skilled PUG raid group that accepts a thief with no ascended gear. First thing people ask you when you join is to ping your gear. If you don´t have ascended gear you get kicked.

^ Unfortunately this.

The first boss isn’t too bad a DPS check as it’s more of having to learn new team concepts that’s the biggest shock. In other words, you have to do more than just just stand an Auto-attack.

Ultimately, if you crunch the numbers you’re looking at most at about a 12.5% DPS gain on a Power build wearing full decked out ascended set vs full exotic (spreadsheet with the exact number distribution). Realistically, players are getting just over 10% damage increase with full ascended if infusions are ignored.

Again, for the first boss full exotics is more than enough as the DPS check isn’t too hard. On the following fights though the DPS is much tighter so for those wearing better gear they have a slight advantage. Those wearing lesser grade armor have to practice more to squeeze out that extra DPS they’re lacking from not having the gear.

However, PUG’s will be PUG’s regardless what the math looks like. The sad truth is that groups look at the gear much quicker than they look at the player. I’m not saying that the correct thing to do, but it’s what we have going on right now.

For a lot of us we have currency (laurels, commendation, materials, etc) on hand to adapt fairly painlessly. But for those who don’t have the luxury of time due to IRL conflicts they’re already a disadvantage since they don’t have that backstock and may not have the time to research how to most efficiently come up with that stock to ascend to the next level. This is a game advertised as casual so I don’t have the expectation that player spend as much time doing research as other games that demand more time dedication.

As Xillllix.3485 put it, why invest 2 hours on something that is likely to fail? I would decide the same if I only had limited windows of play time.

I agree. I’m a min-maxer type of player myself so the difficulty or gear requirement etc isn’t a horrible problem for me personally. Even if you like raids being somewhat exclusive; it doesn’t change the fact that they have taken this game in a different direction now. You should be able to make a top notch group and get great rewards, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be accessible for a larger audience in my opinion.

Instead of having the discussion “it’s too hard” vs “it’s great that it is hard” I think we should all agree that these things shouldn’t be mutually exclusive. It’s almost 2016, we have people making jet packs and robot pets, there is no reason why it shouldn’t be possible to make it enjoyable, and possible to participate in, no matter what class or spec you want to spend your time on – and whether you like hard content or just a good challenge with friends.

I like hard content where i need to block, reflect, use blind, use finishers, use steath, kite, remove conditions and so on. Raids i use dodge, auto attack and staff 5.

ChrizZcE.5981:

That´s nice, but what I´m saying is even if you are the most skilled GW2 player in the world you won´t even be able to access the raid if you don´t have ascended gear and play the right class/build.

I dare you to find skilled PUG raid group that accepts a thief with no ascended gear. First thing people ask you when you join is to ping your gear. If you don´t have ascended gear you get kicked.

Look at the numbers of people in all those thread who are saying the same as you. Talk to them and form a raid squad. Of course if I have ascended armor, I’m gonna ask for people with ascended gear because why not?

Now you don,t have ascended, go find people in the same situation. You keep telling us that raid are for only 5-10% of people. Then with 90-95% of the community on your side you should have a much more easier time to find a group and us no?

Ascended was released almost at the same time gw2 was launched so technically you had almost 3 years to get it, trinkets barely cost a gold and only requires commendations or relics, or fotm dailies. Weapons cost abit but in 3 years you should probably be able to save The gold for 1 weapon at least. Armor tbh is not even needed since it’s like 2.5% difference. Anet did stick to their words of no grinding needed to enjoy content, ascended has always been available it is just that YOU have nvr found any reason to get it till now that’s why your last minute effort to get it is so hard. Anet did not release a new BIS tier, they just released content which made a 3 year old BIS tier recommended. If after all this you still don’t want to get it just do it in exotics.

And like the post above me said, since so many people agreed with you in this thread you guys should form a raid squad lol, it’s definitely possible to do it in exotics since people have cleared it with a ton of extra time. If you guys are as good as you claim to be and that gear is the only thing stopping you from enjoying raids than why not stop complaining and get together, beat raids and come brag on the forums, pug group beat raid in full exotics. But that will nvr happen, because people who complain will just always find something else to blame their inability on instead of actually doing something so very possible right in front of them.

Zach.2618:

Ascended was released almost at the same time gw2 was launched so technically you had almost 3 years to get it, trinkets barely cost a gold and only requires commendations or relics, or fotm dailies. Weapons cost abit but in 3 years you should probably be able to save The gold for 1 weapon at least. Armor tbh is not even needed since it’s like 2.5% difference. Anet did stick to their words of no grinding needed to enjoy content, ascended has always been available it is just that YOU have nvr found any reason to get it till now that’s why your last minute effort to get it is so hard. Anet did not release a new BIS tier, they just released content which made a 3 year old BIS tier recommended. If after all this you still don’t want to get it just do it in exotics.

not everyone bought the game at launch.

ChrizZcE.5981:

Zach.2618:

Ascended was released almost at the same time gw2 was launched so technically you had almost 3 years to get it, trinkets barely cost a gold and only requires commendations or relics, or fotm dailies. Weapons cost abit but in 3 years you should probably be able to save The gold for 1 weapon at least. Armor tbh is not even needed since it’s like 2.5% difference. Anet did stick to their words of no grinding needed to enjoy content, ascended has always been available it is just that YOU have nvr found any reason to get it till now that’s why your last minute effort to get it is so hard. Anet did not release a new BIS tier, they just released content which made a 3 year old BIS tier recommended. If after all this you still don’t want to get it just do it in exotics.

not everyone bought the game at launch.

Well than when did they buy it? A year ago? A month ago? A week ago? Is it that much harder to get ascended now? Trinkets can still be bought for commendations, rings can still be gotten from fractals, amulets can be bought with laurels. If you’ve gotten the game a least a month ago you should be able to get ascended trinkets by now and maybe close to an ascended weapon if you have been saving up your gold. I played a staff ele in raids using exotic zerkers armor, ascended trinkets and 1 ascended staff.

You will always be able to do raids, it’s just your willingness to find the right party and willingness to commit to it.

Also regarding your previous post about not being able to find a party without the right class/build, yes that’s true, that’s life. If you don’t have a medical degree to be a doctor you can’t be one, if you don’t hold a gun you can win a gun fight. It’s pretty ridiculous to want to be able to play any class/build in every situation don’t you think? Than there would nvr be any strategy in gw2 anymore, gw2 will become like a mindless hack and slash mmo where you just do whatever you want and just kill stuff sorts like dynasty warriors if you’ve ever played it.

After pugging raids a couple of times I can tell you not many people even asks for gear checks, you enter the raid and just do what you are supposed to do, if you are good at it no one will question what gear you are using, if you are in exotics and doing perfect Dos rotations you are definitely going to output more dps than someone in full ascended doing subpar rotations. Just play well have a good attitude and no one will question you. Ofc if you only decide to look at all the pug groups that demand full ascended and complain than I’ve nothing more to say to you.

well we have to wait and see in 2016 whether this idea was good or not because it will be in ncsoft financial report if ncsoft did not removed anet due to anet taking over the publishing itself.

First of all, my group has downed the first two bosses with people in full exotics (with ascended trinks). Admittedly, we generally play with some subset of the same 13-14 people, depending on who’s online, but every so often we do pick-up a pug. Never once have we asked someone to ping gear. Never once have we kicked someone for messing up, or doing sub-par dps (we can generally tell when this is our pug, because we have a pretty good feel for how much dps our group is doing).

What we do: “Hey, do you have ts?” If yes: “Do you have ascended trinks?” 99% of the time, yes: “Do you have ascended weapons?” If yes: awesome! Welcome! If no: Alright, no problem. I just helps us to know.

Then we do a raid toughness check (we ask everyone to post their toughness in chat) for three reasons: 1. To make sure our dedicated tank actually has the most toughness. 2. To let her switch down to the lowest toughness possible while still being the highest. 3. To sniff out any super non-optimal builds our group may be running. (We’re not kicking anyone over 1.2k toughness or whatever.)

In the few cases where we have had people running non-optimal builds, we ask if they’re able to switch out some pieces, or re-do some traits (for example, we had our druid switch to all zerker trinkets when he first joined the group, and now he runs with us consistently). Everything is friendly, everything is just us trying to do our best and help other people be successful, and some of those pugs are now part of the core team.

I’m not saying that I don’t think the “ascended or kick” attitude doesn’t exist, but I don’t think it’s nearly as prevalent as people are making it out to be. Be honest with groups and they’ll either ask you to leave (in which case, I doubt the raid environment would be a fun one anyway), or they’ll make a mental note and let you into the group. If you really want to get into raids, and feel like there’s a barrier because you don’t have ascended gear, I promise you, there isn’t. (Literally if you took all the people saying this on the forums, you could form several raid groups who clearly are fine with raiding without ascended gear!) Just go for it! Be honest and nice, and be willing to work hard. My group values players who are willing to put the time in way more than players who have a full ascended set. Good luck and have fun!

Im not really sure what the problem is. People clear these raids on a daily basis, pug groups turn into new raiding guilds. Players adapt, get better, kick their game up to the next level.

But people on these forums want to whine and moan because they can’t do it. As far as i’m concerned that’s just too kitten bad. Man up if you want something easy go farm Jormag or actually I take that back, the ENTIRETY of vanilla Guild Wars 2.

Raids are a minor part of the new content, and yes you need to clear them before you can get legendary armor.

OH NO. You mean I have to actually be a decent player to get legendary armor? Heaven forbid! You mean I can’t just AFK auto attack a dragon and get the best end game armor available? Wow. I cant believe this.

Sorry you cant go into a raid with a full nomad thief and be successful. Heaven forbid you might actually have to…adapt…OH NO. There’s that word again!

Get real. If you can’t raid, don’t. Plenty of raiding guilds out there who can teach you the ropes and show you the way. You whining because you’re a sub par player who wants things just handed to you on a nice AFK Auto attack dragon golden platter is your problem; Not everyone elses.

a full none damage tank has been seen in successful raid kills, your nomad thief comment is sheer asinine and misses the point almost completely. You literally have to be off your rock to think that’s a valid statement.

These bosses have been downed with groups that have no idea what a meta build is
These bosses have been downed with people with disabilities ALOT of disabilities
These bosses have been downed with people who have trouble seeing let alone staying ALIVE due to health problems

If you have a computer that can handle the game and if you have a pulse, you can raid. You literally either need to be in a coma or not have sufficient computer specs to not have the ability to raid

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

See. that’s where you’re wrong. having full ascended weapons and trinkets means you’re doing 10% more damage than exotics. That’s equivalent to 43 additional seconds on the clock. That’s a pretty big chunk right there from gear tiers alone.
Ascended armor itself isn’t necessary, but the trinkets and weapons are.

I appear to have neglected to write one of my thoughts in my post. To me “FULL” ascended means armor, weapons, and trinkets. To which my reply was meant to address that you don’t need ascended armor because it only gives a 1-2% increase to the stats.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The type of gear you wear is a big factor, too. The difference between damage of something like Knight and Berserker is around 50%, which is 146 seconds on the clock. Add that on to the previous, and being inefficiently geared at the exotic level would be equivalent to doing the fight efficiently geared, but with a 4.8 minute enrage timer. Don’t forget, this is also with specific builds and classes.

This I neglected to address. Yes stat sets do matter, for example, if you are all wearing stats that don’t fit your build. With raiding you step out of the traditional game mechanics of GW2 of anyone does anything that the group needs at the moment in progress; to players filling more specific roles from the start. Our guild groups so far haven’t been as optimally built as we could in gear and stats; ascended weapons and about 60% total possible trinkets across the group. Yet we have been progressing rather well in our attempts. Each time we manage without improving our gear to get closer and closer to defeating the boss within the timer. Our best attempt is now down to about 30% with 2 minutes left on the timer. That seems to me to be inline with defeating the boss by the end of the timer. We just have to do better at not making mistakes and wiping. To me this is pretty good evidence that you don’t need to be fully ascended with perfectly chosen stats.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

You can’t wait to do it either, because in months when everyone else has it down pat nobody will put up with newbs anymore.

Here is the problem. It is my understanding that raiding is not a PUG activity, it is a guild activity. Thus why in every game I ever heard of that have raids; players who want to raid seek a guild that raids if the one they are in does not. So if your guild is not tolerant of new to the raid players that want to do the raid then there is something wrong there. We have been taking everyone in our guild who wants to raid and taking them on the raid. When the raid is old hat and we get new members who want to raid we aren’t going to moan that we have to teach that person how the raid works etc.

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

How do you propose people learn to play when Raid groups are stringent with who they accept? There’s no difficulty curve, very specific class/role requirements and a high entry point. A lack of accessibility will make it hard for people to learn raid encounters because few will be given the opportunity to do so. Players who are already experienced will be less inclined to allow less experienced players to enter their group.

Same thing as my above reply, that is what guilds that raid are for. Raiding is not content designed with PUG in mind. Remember the days of GW1 where you would be sitting in town with LFG healer. You could find all sorts of people who wanted to go but you needed a healer. Well here we are content added that is designed to have each specific player fulfill each specific role instead of the al la cart and go and spank the content and move on. Frustrations steming from PUGs constantly failing since you are going in with different people all the time are going to lead people who insist on PUGing the raid to be “stringent”; because that is the only way they can see to improve the odds of success.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The whole point of making the game harder in specific ways was to make it so more gearsets other than full glass cannon were desirable. But, by putting an enrage timer into mix, the only gearsets that get encouraged are berserker, berserker with a piece or two of knight gear to draw aggro , and a healing set. Whereas Anet originally saw the superiority of GC gear as a problem, now they see it as a good thing.

I take issue here. ANet never stated that they had an issue with glass gear. If anything, they stated that they had a problem with a meta that valued all glass gear, to the exclusion of the other major options for roles, healing, toughness and Condi. raids address all of these issue, with the possible exception of the HP stat. Nothing they said contradicts the results, which is that there is now room in harder content for a healer and a tanking role.

While I’m sure they would like for the community to abandon exclusion, I don’t think they realistically expected raids — whose primary goal was to challenge players whose main comment about the game was, “Too easy.” — to remove it.

Raids are “adventures” on steroids. Same gimmicky mini games with added bullet hell for extra twitch gameplay. They are the result of the no gear progression philosophy. If you dont like arcade games i suggest you to forget that raids exist in GW2.

Firstly, if you don’t address the impression raids have formed in the minds of most people right now looking at Heart of Thorns (that Guild Wars 2 is now just another WoW clone) you can say good-bye to this game.

Why?
Because there’s absolutely nothing else to do if you’ve already reached End-Game. I mean end-game. If you already have more legendaries than you can use. If you’re just going to snap out a set or two legendary armor no matter how things turn out. If you were basically ready for this expansion…

If that’s you, and by reading this, I’m kind of thinking most of us are… then ya… Heart of Thorns has been a pretty disastrous situation. We’re sitting at basically the position of having universal hall pass. We could kitten away the rest of this year twirling our thumbs and still get through with little more than the usual frustration of any other MMO.

But to say that and feel no trepidation is a monumental failure to understand what Guild Wars 2 wasn’t.

I played a Priest for years in WoW, a Bard and Healer in DAoC, and a Cleric in EQ. These are classes basically guaranteed that, if you could play them well, the guild would ensure you came out on top. Why? You were needed.
Druid’s are in that position right now. Am I concerned for myself? Not in the least. I have everything in the bank to flip over to an Ascended or Legendary Druid if need be. But from a player climbing up the ladder, or any number of people loyal to the idea Guild Wars 2 wasn’t going to be about kittening your life away for a video to have you chasing carrots on a stick… Anet is well deserving of some strong and fundamental changes of heart by its consumer base. Personally I’m of the stance right now companies that do this deserve to fail. They’re just in it for themselves and anyone that can’t grasp that is just a cow getting milked. What follows is the butchers yard. Everyone that didn’t already have Ascended armor got butchered.