Guild Wars 2

It always amazes me how they can turn anything positive Anet tries to give us into an elitist requirement to join the instance in a group. First was the unreasonable “Eternal” title achievement over which you have almost no control and requires personal skill only on your behalf, it is a gamble if any of the other 9 will stay alive or die. As someone who played WoW for a few months and saw how peoploe wanted you to link the achievement that you beat the final boss of the raid i guess it makes a bit more sense. But having to rely on 9 people not dying is stupid. Now the new trend is LI (Legndary Insight). Poor Anet made this currency for the creation of the legendary armor yet people amazingly managed to abuse it once more and turn it as proof you have killed bosses several time. It really makes me cringe how raiding made people so bitter. Same thing was going on with dungeons in the earlier days and the 5k+ achievement point requirement.

Yup – have experienced this elitism too – quite sad. The overhaul of the LFG system is great though!

Everyone wants convenience. The players setting PuG requirements are trying to select teammates using available criteria because they want the convenience of a smooth, successful run. The OP wants the convenience of getting into any group on the LFG.

Sometimes, I think the so-called elitists are being more rational. They’re resorting to LI’s because they think it’s the best available indication that someone has at least killed some bosses. Not to say that LI’s are a great indicator, but the game does not offer a lot of other options to use as filters. The people who want in on any group are expecting other people to want exactly what they want. Expecting acceptance from PuG’s is not all that rational.

While I agree that convenience is important, it’s also true that there are times when you have to eschew convenience to get what you want. Form your own PuG. Form a guild. Join an existing guild. Someone took the initiative to set up that PUG and (presumably) “lead” the raid. Why can’t you take the initiative? Why is your convenience more important than theirs?

I sympathize with your desire to raid. I understand the catch-22 implicit in requirements set by some groups. I also wonder, if you really dislike their approach, why do you want to play with them?

I have already done some bosses im not saying i dont get in at all but asking eternal title and 40+ LI is kinda stupid.

From day 1 of raids most of the groups I was in were just elitist and very rude and terrible.
I get wanting experienced people, and advertising looking for people you aren’t going to have to teach the raid to if you don’t want to do that. That’s fine.

But the raids brought out a lot of terrible people in the community and remind me of the hate filled gross encounters I had with people trying to raid in other games like WoW.

I really want to do the raids some day but not with people who are going to scream at me that I suck and I should kill myself just because I make a tiny mistake.

It’s why I stopped raiding in MMO’s. Requirements for items and gear found in raids used to gate people from raids is circular logic from a community.

The thing is, this is why raids always get neglected as content long term. The more people get shut out, the more it looks like people aren’t doing raids and the less updates raids get. Happens in many MMO’s. TSW even went as far as saying if people didn’t actively participate in the raids (ie stop blocking others from joining), then there was little chance of any raids being added again.

All this is doing is long term damage to the future of the very content these players seem to think they are protecting.

The elitist requirements actually works as a reverse filter for me because I don’t really care to group with judgemental players who like the smell of their own farts.

I would rather finish a zone with lesser skilled players who find a way to work together rather than the elitists who spoil the fun by taking everything too seriously and always accusing someone else for causing the fails.

I’ve completed the first raid wing several times and the second once (Pugged it into a GASM / NA group who walked me through it). And have yet to find a good group that contained elitists. Most runs I have done are half guild / half pug and have all went smoothly. Some full pug, some full guild.

Only one ever required a gear check and also a Legendary Insight check because it was Experienced Only.

I still join PuG groups to help out too.

At that, you see ‘elitism’ because we’ve all experienced the one liar who joins and completely screws up everything because he/she refuses to admit they don’t know what they’re doing or, worse, have completely wrong gear (Sorry, you’re not going to be DPSing anything if you’re in PVT armor and you’re also pulling aggro from the tank). People want experienced individuals and post for them because of this. People running raids are generally there to get it done fast-ish without frustration.

There are plenty of guild with capable people who are willing to teach as long as you’re willing to listen. I joined one, since left it, but they walked me through everything and taught me what’s expected of the classes I can provide. Since then I’ve been invited to different groups. Plenty of groups do training runs and you can find them somewhat easily. Such as over in /r/guildwarsrecruitment on Reddit. I also see quite a few training runs going on every now and then in LFG.

Muusic.2967:

The elitist requirements actually works as a reverse filter for me because I don’t really care to group with judgemental players who like the smell of their own farts.

I would rather finish a zone with lesser skilled players who find a way to work together rather than the elitists who spoil the fun by taking everything too seriously and always accusing someone else for causing the fails.

Holy generalizations batman

Syktek.7912:

I’ve completed the first raid wing several times and the second once (Pugged it into a GASM / NA group who walked me through it). And have yet to find a good group that contained elitists. Most runs I have done are half guild / half pug and have all went smoothly. Some full pug, some full guild.

This. In general (dungeons and raids) I’ve barely ever seen the elitists that people always complain about; maybe 2-3 in my ~2k hours in GW2. If you show up and contribute like you’re supposed to you’re not going to have issues

You can see a lot of elitism during fractals (at least before the patch) for easy path like swamps.

These guys can kick a friend if he doesn’t have the “required foods” where it’s not even necessary.
These guys can have a really bad behavior. IF someone fail for some reason they just mock at him, but during this time they doing nothing and wait at the entrance for others people to do all the work.

I don’t bother with the requirement it’s their choice and they are free to do this. But when the bahavior is bad and rude I don’t want to deal with these people. They just say hello to my blacklist after a nice private message saying how these people are really nice to others.

Requirements is fine but being rude is not. Even if sometimes I found some requirements totally pointless but well, just my opinion.

I don’t know if you know this but hopefully it will help.

If you hit “y” ingame it will bring up the group finding menu. From there you can go down to the raiding tab and on the right hand side it will display groups currently looking for members. HOWEVER, at the very bottom you will see a button called “advertise group”.

You can click this button and it will allow you to form your own search, where you can set any requirements you want. It sounds like you want a more casual experience, so I would suggest something like: “looking for casual raiders” or “looking for more for raids, all welcome”. This way you will attract players that are looking for a similar experience as yourself.

Thankfully you are under no obligation to join groups that are advertising an experience you do not prefer. Just ignore these groups and follow the above steps and this will allow yo to obtain the experience you are looking for.

Here is how it is.

The future of raids will be in the hands of the players who do them, not the players that don’t.

If the raid community doesn’t pull in the numbers to make raids look popular, then like many other things, their production will be halted, and their rewards negated.

Exactly in the same way, that is not the people who complain about a build that get it nerfed, it’s the legions of players that jump on the current meta and saturate the game with it, that get it nerfed.

There is absolutely nothing in a raid you need to have in order to complete anything in this game. It all leads to cosmetic and vanity items to show off to people.

As others have suggested:
Try to go with a group of guild members and/or friends.
Advertise your own party in LFG to get your own group going. Make sure the message says you’ll take anybody.

I’ve never set foot in a raid or ever tried to join a group for one. Though, on occasion someone in my guild offers to take any members. It’s just not something I’m interested in at this time.

I don’t know about all this “elitism” stuff people claim is going on. It’s possible some players are running into it while others never see it.

I did a bunch of scale 1-20 fractals yesterday with pug groups from the LFG tool and never had a problem. Never had a problem in the past pugging fractals. Even when I mess up and get myself killed nobody complains. They pick me and we go on our way to the next area.

Keep in mind that raids are something players have asked for for a long time. They got what they wanted. There are going to be some players who have strict requirements and some players who take anybody. You can find people to go with if you try hard enough. Complaining on the forums isn’t going to get any results, and IMO, makes you look kinda entitled because things aren’t going the way you want them to.

This thread shows perfectly why most people hate raiding with a passion, the communities it draws are some of the worst online games can generate..

Best honestly just to ignore raiding completely, in every game not just here.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I don’t know if you know this but hopefully it will help.

If you hit “y” ingame it will bring up the group finding menu. From there you can go down to the raiding tab and on the right hand side it will display groups currently looking for members. HOWEVER, at the very bottom you will see a button called “advertise group”.

You can click this button and it will allow you to form your own search, where you can set any requirements you want. It sounds like you want a more casual experience, so I would suggest something like: “looking for casual raiders” or “looking for more for raids, all welcome”. This way you will attract players that are looking for a similar experience as yourself.

Thankfully you are under no obligation to join groups that are advertising an experience you do not prefer. Just ignore these groups and follow the above steps and this will allow yo to obtain the experience you are looking for.

This deserves to be a sticky.

It was the same thing in GW1 and GW2 is no different and it is precisely why I don’t bother with raids. Zudet is right though, LFG is about the only way to get around it.

I find requirements to be such a good filter though! 40 “LI” is a great way to tell exactly which squad I will enjoy the least.

Also if anyone tells you to die in real life report them immediately, and block them even if they are in a raid you still want to try with. You don’t deserve to hear any toxicity they feel like bringing to a video game, and trolls can’t do anything without an audience.

If you want priority access to raids, pugs aren’t for you. Find a raiding guild and impress them and you’ll be getting a bunch of LIs every week.

Um, you can’t kick people at the end of raids to sell them, they don’t work like that…
“Before you even try to enjoy raids, the old system in GW1 must be brought back. Party members must work with their team for better or for worse.”
That’s actually kind of how it works in raids…
Please stop commenting about things which you don’t know anything about.

I lot of the bad impressions people get from raiding is from pug attempts. Yeah us raiders know that pugs are annoying and awful too, the real raiding community is within guilds.

This reminds me of the good old times on the sports ground when we were playing soccer and all the worse players wanted to play with us and we denied it. Holy sh_it, it was always fun if one of them got angry and started to shout insults at us. There has always been one of us who could run faster than those individuals.

The complaints are a joke, sry to say but it’s true. You got enough hints to avoid the requirements from players in this thread/forum. It is like dungeon running was at it’s peak: Build your own frickin group! You have the technology. I bet most of the ranting players are the ones that need to be carried like I can see it every day in dungeons now after this patch and in fractals. The bearbows & greatsword mesmers are still alive going for higher fractals today and they all think they are performing well.
I’ve seen enough players calling for raids and inside they couldn’t even manage to do one important thing like moving their char onto the right places, take over a green circle spot or just avoid being hit at melee range to downstate on vale guard when there was a tank having the aggro.
Just a side note: I helped a friend levelling 12 fractals these days and everytime we finished one he was talking about how well the group has played and that there were some awesome group synergies. The whole run he was quite underperforming (don’t have to mention but: greatsword mesmer) but he didn’t know it due to obvious reasons because if you are bad, you won’t recognize it often. Well you actually can’t because you don’t know how it feels to be good.

Appearance and reality – appearance and reality, that’s all need to be said in the end!

Every player I met that wanted to get in touch with serious raiding has made it. It reminds me of my loved german fellows instead of taking action and work for the success we go deep down into the basement and rant around.

randomguy.1283:

Um, you can’t kick people at the end of raids to sell them, they don’t work like that…
“Before you even try to enjoy raids, the old system in GW1 must be brought back. Party members must work with their team for better or for worse.”
That’s actually kind of how it works in raids…
Please stop commenting about things which you don’t know anything about.

Fair. Then I’m going to say my post proves OP’s point that raids are inaccessible. I’ve never made it past the checkpoints to know.

Over the next two or three weeks I’m going to create a few groups titled casual no eternal’s permitted. This will be a test(very small sample size) to see if the advice given in this thread to form own groups holds any water. Full disclosure, I have hundreds of dungeons under my belt so I’m not completely new to group play.

I’ll report back for better or worse on how this panned out.

Just a comment to that:
Don’t expect these groups to clear the first wing or even defeat VG at all. But if that is your goal you have to work very hard in the first place although you and your group members have a decent amount of skill.
And don’t compare dungeons or fractals to raids. The difference is huge. With HoT and the elite specs even pugs shred their way through dungeons like never before, same thing for about the first 50 levels of fracs.

Rivindor.7258:

Over the next two or three weeks I’m going to create a few groups titled casual no eternal’s permitted. This will be a test(very small sample size) to see if the advice given in this thread to form own groups holds any water. Full disclosure, I have hundreds of dungeons under my belt so I’m not completely new to group play.

I’ll report back for better or worse on how this panned out.

I make a raid of pugs every Monday, minus the weeks where I’m not online, I’ve cleared it each week. With the release of SP I just take whichever members from the SV squad want to stay and continue through.

I find LI a really bad indicator..
gear check is a start.. particularly the runes/sigils equipped.
Trait check is actually much more informative of a players level of class competency.
Mechanics quizzing tends to be the most reliable.
But is often tedious and time consuming to check things. LI ping is fast and easy for both sides.

However checking traits and gear, also allows us to offer advice on how they can improve (often times people just plain don’t know, and are willing to change things up. Provided you can provide a decent reason why x works better than y).

Being able to ping full build&gear templates would be amazing for this.

Rivindor.7258:

randomguy.1283:

Um, you can’t kick people at the end of raids to sell them, they don’t work like that…
“Before you even try to enjoy raids, the old system in GW1 must be brought back. Party members must work with their team for better or for worse.”
That’s actually kind of how it works in raids…
Please stop commenting about things which you don’t know anything about.

Fair. Then I’m going to say my post proves OP’s point that raids are inaccessible. I’ve never made it past the checkpoints to know.

Over the next two or three weeks I’m going to create a few groups titled casual no eternal’s permitted. This will be a test(very small sample size) to see if the advice given in this thread to form own groups holds any water. Full disclosure, I have hundreds of dungeons under my belt so I’m not completely new to group play.

I’ll report back for better or worse on how this panned out.

If you make hostile lfg posts, expect to get hostile members in your group. I would advise again “no eternal allowed”, as that makes you guilty of the exact elitism that you exclaim to hate.

I would instead encourage you to use something like the following:

- Spirit Vale raid, all welcome
- Spirit Vale raid, learning run
- Spirit Vale raid, casual run

Additionally make sure you go in with the correct expectations. Raids are this game’s form of challenging group content. Dungeons are extreme casual content. You will not clear the first boss on the first attempt like you can in dungeons. You should expect 3-10 hours of learning the mechanics before downing each boss depending on the groups skill level. That is 3-10 hours for each individual person. If you lose a member and pick up a brand new person with 0 experience then your group is unlikely to succeed until that new person has 3 hours of experience.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Additionally make sure you go in with the correct expectations. Raids are this game’s form of challenging group content. Dungeons are extreme casual content. You will not clear the first boss on the first attempt like you can in dungeons. You should expect 3-10 hours of learning the mechanics before downing each boss depending on the groups skill level. That is 3-10 hours for each individual person. If you lose a member and pick up a brand new person with 0 experience then your group is unlikely to succeed until that new person has 3 hours of experience.

Yes this is important. I had almost the same group of 10 people and it took us about 10 hours before our first VG kill. It take a lot of practice for some people. Now he’s is so easy, but take a lot of practice at first.

Is pinging your LI or having eternal title a really bad system for telling if someone is good? Yes.

Is there a better system? No, not really.

If this reality bothers you, I suggest we go back to the system we used to find good pugs in the dungeon days: a simple order of operations math problem. 2+3*2 = X solve for x. If the pug can quickly solve that they are probably capable of playing GW2 at an acceptable level.

X=8.0000000000000000000001

Edit:
In all seriousness, the best check is a quick quiz of the main mechanics. I have had people leave because of this quiz, and I have had people extremely thankful that I quizzed them instead of requiring insights, etc. However, when you are recruiting 2+ players for a raid, you do not have the time to personally quiz every applicant.

Raids require a high level of personal responsibility, and unlike dungeons, you can not trust one or two players to carry your PUG party through the raid. If a clueless puggie joins a group, and wipes them a few times that will cause more rage than if the clueless puggie was screened out in advance. When it takes 2+ hours for an average group to clear the raids at the moment, groups do not want have to add extra time to organize and teach new players. There has to be some requirement that groups can use to quickly determine if an unknown players is good or not. Legendary Insights fills that void at the moment as it is the only method to filter experienced players from inexperienced.

However, the bigger problem is that there needs to be some encouragement for Experienced Players to help new players learn the raids. With the weekly lockout and extremely low shard cap, most players who have already cleared the raid are losing 1+g an hour due to food for every hour spent raiding on repeat runs. This is a big problem in my guild as there are 5ish players who can consistently clear the run early on in the week, but another 10ish players trying to learn the raid. The 5 players who have completed the raid then spent long hours and much food on wipes with the newer guild players and random pugs who join are later week raids. Each time losing gold through food and opportunity gold cost with dungeons and fractals being so much more profitable. There has to be some mechanic to reward players helping new players learn the raid. I wish I new what that was.

Trick question! X is a letter :<

Maybe I look at things differently, but I find requirements to be a time management issue. If you have a group that just wants to beat the boss for their weekly kill then I can understand wanting players who can show they have experience.

There are raids that are training and causal. Joining those are a great idea. Usually they are run by someone who is learning or how wants to teach.

I dedicated a lot of hours to VG, Gors, and Sab and when I raid today I expect to kill VG in one pull, Gors in 3-4 and Sab 3-8 pulls. I want players who can do that. That isn’t elitism that is people wanting to be able to make it through content they have mastered.

If my dungeon experience has no value in this content then this makes this even better. If I can complete this in pugs, anyone can. If anyone is interested in these runs they may add me.

@Zudet, the lfg was primarily psychology. Everyone knows they can join a casual group and just not display their title. Those that showcase it and would be apt to beat it over our heads how exp they are would instead be turned away. But, I may take your advice anyway.

Those who don’t like the requirements that some raid groups impose, have you tried creating your own group that will allow anyone?

Rivindor.7258:

If my dungeon experience has no value in this content then this makes this even better. If I can complete this in pugs, anyone can. If anyone is interested in these runs they may add me.

You’re a little bit wrong here. Dungeons are doable in pugs, raid also but on a completely higher level. Dungeons are kinda faceroll for everyone that can handle their char.
It’s very questionable that everyone could even beat the first raid boss. I’ve been in there with my fun guild, where most of the people are playing open world and some of them will never have the chance to beat the Vale Guardian – never ever. But in dungeons it is no problem for them to run through with some other players.

I might have worded my post confusingly. I meant to say that since most are saying dungeons do not have any crossover and that raids are an entirely different beast, that my success(or failure) will be more representative of the experience others attempting raids for the first time will experience.

Again, I know nothing of raids, and so my first post disclosed my dungeon experience in case it mattered, because it has been something I’ve ran almost since release as primarily a PS warrior.

I think most lfg requirements take it a bit far…still i don’t find them irrational or elitist. Random people dont trust other random people to know their stuff so LI’s are the only way to measure someone’s experience.
Is it 100% accurate? No
More like 70% accurate.
For people struggling to get into raids, i see so so many training groups on lfg every single day.
Rather than whining on the forum go join and get experience until u can slowly rack some LI and be on your way.

Little tip: try going with the more difficult roles in raids, it will make u more desired even if u dont have LI n stuff. For example trying VG as a tank, healer, condi will get u a lot more invites than playing a standard power dps (lfg is overflowing with PS wars)

Same logic on Gorseval: Every Gors run has at least 2-3 tempest, why not gear one so u make your chances better. It’s not rocket science.
As for the topic:
People who can go in raids. pull their weight and kill bosses fast and smooth are probably in the “elite” of the playerbase. Asking for people with similar experience is not “elitism”, it’s rather logical unless its a training run. And that’s coming from a newbie to raids.

Dante.1508:

This thread shows perfectly why most people hate raiding with a passion, the communities it draws are some of the worst online games can generate..

Best honestly just to ignore raiding completely, in every game not just here.

QFT

This kinda works both ways. If people wouldn’t jump into raid and lie saying they have a ton of experience when they don’t then people would be as interested in proof that they had the experience

First day in pugs. I provided food for the group and we get through the three avatars no problem with whatever builds people came along with. However, many people were not accustomed to adversity and so the moment we began dying at the actual boss, people began to flee the group.

It became a constant cycle of the team practicing, and getting the mechanics down, but then leaving, in which I’d have to explain the game plan over again to the newcomers. Eventually the raid turned into a roleplay toward the end… and, needless to say it wasn’t a productive day. I can say that me personally, I learned a fair bit about the first encounters, but the problem is convincing the other nine people that this is accomplishable.

I did encounter one noob who took it really serious, but when a large portion of the group began to express defeatist attitudes he left rather quickly. I was more patient, but when the roleplaying began I too had to depart.

Key takeaways though:
- No such thing as carrying, you yourself account for very little of the groups success
- GW2 people are impatient(was having vietnam flashbacks of my first Arah clears)
- Raiders are very toxic

And I don’t mean the group. Nobody in the pug was toxic, but we did get a raider join up, ask if this was a teaching run, and when we said we’re learning by doing he called us trolls and immediately left.

I did get a lot of positive feedback from the actual newbies for creating the group. People actually seemed relieved and said this was a great idea. But, very few actually did what it took to put in the work to capitalize on the opportunity.

I probably went through 3-4 sets of groups(only 2-3 remained from the core group) and, same result of people learning mechanics but then having to go. I’m not keen on trying this again for this reason.

I’ll stick to my dungeons as the only way I can see myself getting into raids is masquerading as a girl gamer to trick raid elitists into teaching me the runs and putting up with my mistakes…and I’d rather keep my dignity. Best of luck to anyone else who tries raids, but my advice… look elsewhere.

So, if I get this right, this thread is about pugs blaming the raiding community after having bad pugs experience.

The community you guys are talking about is not the raiding community, it’s solo players with little patient trying to get into raids hoping it’ll be a cake walk.

Meantime, the raiding community is posting video guide, detailed build with in depth explanation, run countless of test to find a balance between optimal and safe comp. They even hold teaching runs. Of course not all of them, but as a whole, the community is very helpful if you search farther than the LFG raider wanabe.

This is why it’s upsetting when people bash the raiding community, because they are bashing the wrong person.

Rivindor.7258:

First day in pugs. I provided food for the group and we get through the three avatars no problem with whatever builds people came along with. However, many people were not accustomed to adversity and so the moment we began dying at the actual boss, people began to flee the group.

It became a constant cycle of the team practicing, and getting the mechanics down, but then leaving, in which I’d have to explain the game plan over again to the newcomers. Eventually the raid turned into a roleplay toward the end… and, needless to say it wasn’t a productive day. I can say that me personally, I learned a fair bit about the first encounters, but the problem is convincing the other nine people that this is accomplishable.

I did encounter one noob who took it really serious, but when a large portion of the group began to express defeatist attitudes he left rather quickly. I was more patient, but when the roleplaying began I too had to depart.

Key takeaways though:
- No such thing as carrying, you yourself account for very little of the groups success
- GW2 people are impatient(was having vietnam flashbacks of my first Arah clears)
- Raiders are very toxic

And I don’t mean the group. Nobody in the pug was toxic, but we did get a raider join up, ask if this was a teaching run, and when we said we’re learning by doing he called us trolls and immediately left.

I did get a lot of positive feedback from the actual newbies for creating the group. People actually seemed relieved and said this was a great idea. But, very few actually did what it took to put in the work to capitalize on the opportunity.

I probably went through 3-4 sets of groups(only 2-3 remained from the core group) and, same result of people learning mechanics but then having to go. I’m not keen on trying this again for this reason.

I’ll stick to my dungeons as the only way I can see myself getting into raids is masquerading as a girl gamer to trick raid elitists into teaching me the runs and putting up with my mistakes…and I’d rather keep my dignity. Best of luck to anyone else who tries raids, but my advice… look elsewhere.

Or join a guild willing to learn it to you…patient and competent players raid within a guild, you know.
For my expérience, dungeon community is much more toxic toward pug than raid btw.

Vinceman.4572:

This reminds me of the good old times on the sports ground when we were playing soccer and all the worse players wanted to play with us and we denied it. Holy sh_it, it was always fun if one of them got angry and started to shout insults at us. There has always been one of us who could run faster than those individuals.

The complaints are a joke, sry to say but it’s true. You got enough hints to avoid the requirements from players in this thread/forum. It is like dungeon running was at it’s peak: Build your own frickin group! You have the technology. I bet most of the ranting players are the ones that need to be carried like I can see it every day in dungeons now after this patch and in fractals. The bearbows & greatsword mesmers are still alive going for higher fractals today and they all think they are performing well.
I’ve seen enough players calling for raids and inside they couldn’t even manage to do one important thing like moving their char onto the right places, take over a green circle spot or just avoid being hit at melee range to downstate on vale guard when there was a tank having the aggro.
Just a side note: I helped a friend levelling 12 fractals these days and everytime we finished one he was talking about how well the group has played and that there were some awesome group synergies. The whole run he was quite underperforming (don’t have to mention but: greatsword mesmer) but he didn’t know it due to obvious reasons because if you are bad, you won’t recognize it often. Well you actually can’t because you don’t know how it feels to be good.

Appearance and reality – appearance and reality, that’s all need to be said in the end!

Every player I met that wanted to get in touch with serious raiding has made it. It reminds me of my loved german fellows instead of taking action and work for the success we go deep down into the basement and rant around.

Care to share the rest of your story with us too?
You know, where you were finally forced to take one of the worse players in then and when because one of your buddies had to run of to shame a violin or an instrument like that by trying to play it and he made you or one of your buddies look bad or was at least much better than you had expected.
Assuming that you are old enough to have played on your own instead of in a Kindergarten or Hort(children from 6 to around 10) like the large majority of children today, you at least had the excuse of nobody caring about social skills.^^

I can asure you that this happens every day between children playing soccer. The kids that can play always kitten and moan when we urge them to take one of the not so good players in their team, but most are pleasantly surprised how that supposed loser fared and how at least one of therir frriends can barely keep pace with the other guy.

Where I fully agree with you is this:
“Appearance and reality – appearance and reality, that’s all need to be said in the end!”

Make your own group if you do not like the requirements of other people.

Btw the eternal title is stupidly easy. It should have been doing the whole raid wing without dieing from start to finish instead of this.

People want smooth runs, so they want to create “requirements” that ensure that only people who can give smooth runs can join. This will happen in any community and has nothing to do with “raids” or “dungeons” or whatever. The idea is that the content is hard enough such that random players cannot succeed, so people want to hedge against that difficulty with skill and try their best to find likeminded people.

It’s really okay. If you don’t like those requirements, make your own groups! That’s the beauty of the LFG. If you avoid PvE content just because stuff like this exists at all, then that’s a whole section of the game you’re choosing to ignore and there’s nothing Anet can or should do to address that.

How small is the “raiding community”?

I have seen way more “raiding” guild that cannot kill any boss than raiding guild that breeze through every boss.

Gudradain.3892:

I have seen way more “raiding” guild that cannot kill any boss than raiding guild that breeze through every boss.

It’s way more fun if you name names.

Rivindor.7258:

First day in pugs. I provided food for the group and we get through the three avatars no problem with whatever builds people came along with. However, many people were not accustomed to adversity and so the moment we began dying at the actual boss, people began to flee the group.

It became a constant cycle of the team practicing, and getting the mechanics down, but then leaving, in which I’d have to explain the game plan over again to the newcomers. Eventually the raid turned into a roleplay toward the end… and, needless to say it wasn’t a productive day. I can say that me personally, I learned a fair bit about the first encounters, but the problem is convincing the other nine people that this is accomplishable.

I did encounter one noob who took it really serious, but when a large portion of the group began to express defeatist attitudes he left rather quickly. I was more patient, but when the roleplaying began I too had to depart.

Key takeaways though:
- No such thing as carrying, you yourself account for very little of the groups success
- GW2 people are impatient(was having vietnam flashbacks of my first Arah clears)
- Raiders are very toxic

And I don’t mean the group. Nobody in the pug was toxic, but we did get a raider join up, ask if this was a teaching run, and when we said we’re learning by doing he called us trolls and immediately left.

I did get a lot of positive feedback from the actual newbies for creating the group. People actually seemed relieved and said this was a great idea. But, very few actually did what it took to put in the work to capitalize on the opportunity.

I probably went through 3-4 sets of groups(only 2-3 remained from the core group) and, same result of people learning mechanics but then having to go. I’m not keen on trying this again for this reason.

I’ll stick to my dungeons as the only way I can see myself getting into raids is masquerading as a girl gamer to trick raid elitists into teaching me the runs and putting up with my mistakes…and I’d rather keep my dignity. Best of luck to anyone else who tries raids, but my advice… look elsewhere.

I think your experience is typical (how did raiders learn the fight?), but I’m not sure I agree with your takeaways.

Your post exemplifies exactly why (pug) raiders have high requirements. No one wants to waste their time when they already know the fight. You had to “start over” every time a couple of new people joined the group. Why would a veteran want to go through this over and over?

I’ll also note that most raiders went through similar trials when they were new, assuming they didn’t have a guild. I know I did. Again, I have no desire to waste my time learning something I already know.

I’m also not sure how the one raider you met was toxic. Rude (for calling you trolls), but he left immediately. No harm done to the group. I would not describe the entire raiding community as toxic based on one experience and on behavior that really didn’t hurt the group.

Joining requirements are fine by me so long as they’re reasonable.

What makes me laugh is the kind of people who ask for full berserker ascended and a specific class comp for ASCALONIAN CATACOMBS.

Requirements to ensure success are fine, but what’s pathetic is people who want to brute force success by making requirements far above what’s necessary to complete the content.

It reminds me of WoW’s mythic dungeons, which are tuned to ilv685 gear yet people are demanding ilv720+ for some runs. To give you an idea, ilv720 is the ilv of Archimonde’s loot on heroic mode, the end boss of the relevant raid. Mythic dungeons drop ilv685 gear on average with a very rare chance for 700-725 gear.

So, in essence, avoid people who place unreasonable requirements. It is virtually red flags screaming at you that the people that compose that raid are not very confident in their capacity to do the raid so they rely on getting carried.

Rivindor.7258:

First day in pugs. I provided food for the group and we get through the three avatars no problem with whatever builds people came along with. However, many people were not accustomed to adversity and so the moment we began dying at the actual boss, people began to flee the group.

It became a constant cycle of the team practicing, and getting the mechanics down, but then leaving, in which I’d have to explain the game plan over again to the newcomers. Eventually the raid turned into a roleplay toward the end… and, needless to say it wasn’t a productive day. I can say that me personally, I learned a fair bit about the first encounters, but the problem is convincing the other nine people that this is accomplishable.

I did encounter one noob who took it really serious, but when a large portion of the group began to express defeatist attitudes he left rather quickly. I was more patient, but when the roleplaying began I too had to depart.

Key takeaways though:
- No such thing as carrying, you yourself account for very little of the groups success
- GW2 people are impatient(was having vietnam flashbacks of my first Arah clears)
- Raiders are very toxic

And I don’t mean the group. Nobody in the pug was toxic, but we did get a raider join up, ask if this was a teaching run, and when we said we’re learning by doing he called us trolls and immediately left.

I did get a lot of positive feedback from the actual newbies for creating the group. People actually seemed relieved and said this was a great idea. But, very few actually did what it took to put in the work to capitalize on the opportunity.

I probably went through 3-4 sets of groups(only 2-3 remained from the core group) and, same result of people learning mechanics but then having to go. I’m not keen on trying this again for this reason.

I’ll stick to my dungeons as the only way I can see myself getting into raids is masquerading as a girl gamer to trick raid elitists into teaching me the runs and putting up with my mistakes…and I’d rather keep my dignity. Best of luck to anyone else who tries raids, but my advice… look elsewhere.

Now you may understand why people ask for requirements. Having a few people who don’t know the fight means 2-3 hours of teaching them. Many of them give up before 3 hours, resetting the learning curve. If you have 8 people who know what they are doing and have 3 hours to finish the raid before they need to log off, why would they want to waste that time by continually teaching people who aren’t willing to learn?

They so called “elitists” have already spent the time to learn the runs, and are now just trying to get their weekly loot and have fun killing the bosses. You’ve spent 3-5 hours on the first boss, and now know the mechanics. Will you continue to teach pugs that leave after 1-2 hours and never kill the boss, or will you maybe join a group of people who have spent 3-5 hours on the boss and have a decent chance of killing it? If you chose option 2 you are a filthy raid elitist.

This is what every raiding guild already went through, and many of the elitist pugs. They started with a group of people who never saw the boss, and never killed it, and they worked together, taught each other and eventually mastered it. The only difference between them and your pug is that they didn’t leave after a few deaths, they stuck it out.

If you are actually interested in learning and completing raids, I would look into joining a raiding guild. Many guilds have raid groups, my guild [TNO] has 3 raid groups and is looking for leaders to lead a 4th and 5th group since we have enough interested people. Feel free to google us and fill out an application.

Zenith.7301:

Joining requirements are fine by me so long as they’re reasonable.

What makes me laugh is the kind of people who ask for full berserker ascended and a specific class comp for ASCALONIAN CATACOMBS.

Requirements to ensure success are fine, but what’s pathetic is people who want to brute force success by making requirements far above what’s necessary to complete the content.

It reminds me of WoW’s mythic dungeons, which are tuned to ilv685 gear yet people are demanding ilv720+ for some runs. To give you an idea, ilv720 is the ilv of Archimonde’s loot on heroic mode, the end boss of the relevant raid. Mythic dungeons drop ilv685 gear on average with a very rare chance for 700-725 gear.

So, in essence, avoid people who place unreasonable requirements. It is virtually red flags screaming at you that the people that compose that raid are not very confident in their capacity to do the raid so they rely on getting carried.

While your observation is, I’m sure, accurate, your conclusion only encompasses one possible reason for the behavior. Another is that expressed by Absurdo, above. PuG’s list requirements because they don’t want a “learning” raid/dungeon. Instead, they want a smooth, efficient run. This is a frequent rationale in hard, instanced content. It’s an artifact of people disliking failure. It’s also an artifact of people repeating content past the point where the newness has run out. The desire at that point is to get it done. Another rationale I’ve seen, and agree with, is that the requirements serve to identify (to some degree) those who think and play like the one who sets the requirement.

As to the idea of avoiding groups with requirements if you disagree with those requirements, I think that’s a great idea. If people who don’t meet the requirements avoided the groups that set them, both “sides” would be better off.