Guild Wars 2

First, to start off, full disclaimer – I did not raid much in GW 2. I have yet to successfully kill any of raid bosses and currently I am in a process of gearing up a couple more characters to have more versatile options for raids (I main necro, but it is power build and it would take me a while to gear her up as condi, as don’t want to just change my armor and weapon stats at this time). As such, take this as opinion piece and speculation from person who does not have much raiding experience, but would love to beat that content.

My raiding attempts were done together with my small guild. We all had played GW 2 for quite a while and feel decently good with our chosen professions. We tried out first wing of raid for a few weeks (a run once a week, during weekend) but soon we got discouraged from raiding for a couple reasons. One – not being able to get full group of decently skilled players. We always lacked a couple people and those who did come not always had meta builds and as such we obviously had to look for people to fill in gaps in LFG and we didn’t had much success on the first boss – Vale Guardian. The other reason that we got discouraged from raiding was increasing tension between ourselves and demands for each other to go for meta builds, change stats, and overall conform to play styles we did not enjoy that much. After our guild leader almost shouted at one of our guildies for not following meta, he quickly decided that raids are not worth this tension. We all felt bad and as such decided that until something changes with raids or we have enough people in guild to fill all necessary roles for raid we are not going to try again.

After this, I started to think about what would need to change with raids to give raiding newbies like us (and a lot of other people) a better chance to beat raid. What could be easily changed without actually making encounters different that would lower the (quite high) requirements of dps and current difficulty scale enough, but not too much, to make people who feel discouraged and uninterested a way to experience the content.

The answer I came up with seems simple – removing enrage timers.

Now, here in this topic I would like all of you to think about what would happen if that would actually happen and give your own pros and cons in this matter.

To me, removal of enrage timers for bosses would mean that for some bosses raid group would be able to turtle up and slowly kill the boss. What builds you have would not matter as much and you could take half an hour (or even longer) to, for example, slowly wither down Vale Guardian. For other bosses, like those who have other failure states (like Sabatha) removing enrage timer would not make it terribly easier and still make encounter a challenge.

Without enrage timers, the dps requirements for a lot of raid bosses would be much lower. Is that a good thing? That is debatable. In my opinion everything that allows players to get away from current Berserker meta which is common in most builds is a good thing. Being able to not just go full dps and have some survivability (as not all players are good at dodging and have good enough reflexes to survive as glass cannons) would seem like a welcomed break. Requirements for pug groups would also probably be bit lower, though I am sure the best of raiders out there would still go for runs that take less than 10 mins instead of hour-long fights of slowly wilting down easiest of bosses.

The biggest question, I guess, would be – would removing enrage timers make raids too easy? Personally, I don’t know. To me it seems that the biggest reason for wipes during raid are not enrage timers themselves, but failure in knowing encounter mechanics (something a few people I asked about raiding told me). But even if it makes raids easier – experienced raiders would still go for a way to beat the encounter in fastest way possible. Only for new raiders would enrage timer removal truly help to experience the content. Those same players are also likely to not raid as much and might not even return to raiding after beating all wings once. The fact that you also get rewards only once a week would also mean that even if enrage timers are removed – it would not make raids ‘farmable’. It would only open raiding to much bigger amount of people.

What could also be done is making the ‘enrage timer’ time an achievement that you could accomplish in raid. Quite like timers in some of fractals for Legendary Backpack collection, those achievements could give people who are good enough to beat them some exclusive rewards. Like unique skins (like one you get for beating T4 Chaos fractal) or something that players would want. It could make those people who are raiding and beating timers happy as they can show off their accomplishment. As for those who are new to raids – it could be something to strive for, to get good for.

This would be all for my post. Sorry for a big wall of text and I hope to hear everyone’s opinions about this topic. Please, share your thoughts and discuss pros and cons of removing enrage timers for raids. Should it be done, should it not? Why? I am interested in all opinions. Keep it as detailed (or not) as you want and let’s all have a civilized, good discussion.

Have a good day and I hope to meet you all in game.

I’d highly suggest giving the first encounter of wing 3 a try, unlike VG there’s no enrage timer there so your squad can take all the time you need to clear it. It serves as a much better intoduction to raiding than VG, who’s actually one of the hardest encounters!

Regarding your topic though, I feel enrage timers are there to discourage simply tanking through mechanics and thus are a very important aspect of maintaining difficulty; particularly for fights that don’t have a “soft enrage” mechanic. Nearly all of the enrage timers are set extremely generously so even defence oriented groups should not struggle to meet those checks. Most groups that struggle are failing on a mechanical level (i.e being teleported away by blues) and should focus on how to better deal with the mechanics such that too much time isn’t being wasted.

In summary, removing the enrage timer at an encounter like VG allows groups to ignore their mechanical failures. Vastly reducing the difficulty of the encounter. Furthermore it sets groups up for disappointment when they reach bosses with soft-enrage mechanics such as Gorseval, Sabetha or KC.

I can count the number of times I’ve failed a raid due to enrage timers on the fingers of one hand. Hitting enrage timers due to low dps is almost never the reason raids fail. What actually causes groups to fail is dying to various mechanics, spending too much time ressing people, not being confident enough with the fight to actually dps the boss, that sort of thing. You only end up hitting enrage timers if half your members are dead and you’re trying to squeak out a kill with the remaining people.

It’s not like you even have to play meta builds to finish these fights either. Plenty of groups finish with varying levels of non-meta-ness. VG was even finished with just 4 people. That shows you just how far you can go off of the meta 10 man group and still finish fights. People that require strict adherence to the meta are usually the same people that don’t have a good understanding of the fights or mechanics.

Ultimately, people complaining about enrage timers are always people that don’t actually have any experience in raids. They pick that ticking clock in the corner as an easy target to complain about, not realizing that they’re complaining about the least impactful mechanic in any currently existing raid. If you want easier raids, you should be asking for anet to make versions that have less punishing mechanics, not removing the enrage timer.

I’ve said this same thing many times.

The counterargument that most give is that they timers are there to discourage “cheesing” the fight in all Nomads gear or something.

My response is, so what if people want to do it in all Nomads or something else non-meta that allows them to do the fight slower than the current groups? I say let them.

Just add in gold/silver/bronze reward tracks based on how fast the boss is killed. That way, you still reward the work the current groups are putting in – while opening the fights to a wider array of play styles.

This would allow players and communities to control their own kind of “easy mode.” Guilds looking for a more casual experience could take groups in designed around experiencing the fights rather than killing fast.

To me, this would be a win-win. Rewards would still be based on skill, but the experience would be open to a wider range of playstyles.

Blaeys.3102:

I’ve said this same thing many times.

The counterargument that most give is that they timers are there to discourage “cheesing” the fight in all Nomads gear or something.

My response is, so what if people want to do it in all Nomads or something else non-meta that allows them to do the fight slower than the current groups? I say let them.

Just add in gold/silver/bronze reward tracks based on how fast the boss is killed. That way, you still reward the work the current groups are putting in – while opening the fights to a wider array of play styles.

This would allow players and communities to control their own kind of “easy mode.” Guilds looking for a more casual experience could take groups in designed around experiencing the fights rather than killing fast.

To me, this would be a win-win. Rewards would still be based on skill, but the experience would be open to a wider range of playstyles.

Adding rewards based on how much time left on the clock would be a huge problem.
You just creat a system where you wont have anyother dps besides Tempest ( or the class that become the best dps after a balance change patch ), because now for example “Hammer DH bring good dps and protection” it doesnt matter because now you only want the best DPS to hit gold reward. So reward tired to timer is the most toxic ideia you can put in a group content. Because now you get happy when you down a boss even if only two people stands. With the timer reward, people would call names if someone go down at end of the fight and because of it you get silver instead of gold.
So its easy to see how this reward system would be the worst ideia ever.

Blaeys.3102:

I’ve said this same thing many times.

The counterargument that most give is that they timers are there to discourage “cheesing” the fight in all Nomads gear or something.

My response is, so what if people want to do it in all Nomads or something else non-meta that allows them to do the fight slower than the current groups? I say let them.

Just add in gold/silver/bronze reward tracks based on how fast the boss is killed. That way, you still reward the work the current groups are putting in – while opening the fights to a wider array of play styles.

This would allow players and communities to control their own kind of “easy mode.” Guilds looking for a more casual experience could take groups in designed around experiencing the fights rather than killing fast.

To me, this would be a win-win. Rewards would still be based on skill, but the experience would be open to a wider range of playstyles.

No thank you. You are not responding to the most common counter arguments, including the post above yours.

1. Most of the time, groups fail because of mechanics, not from timers.

2. A timer based reward scheme only tightens acceptable class compositions, which anti-raiders complain about.

3. You can trade-off dps for healing/tanking at the risk of going into enrage. This is an acceptable trade-off, because you shift difficulty from the middle of the fight to the end of the fight.

4. Enrage will not instantly wipe the group

5. You can beat some bosses in full nomad teams, which is actually more difficult

OnizukaBR.8537:

Blaeys.3102:

I’ve said this same thing many times.

The counterargument that most give is that they timers are there to discourage “cheesing” the fight in all Nomads gear or something.

My response is, so what if people want to do it in all Nomads or something else non-meta that allows them to do the fight slower than the current groups? I say let them.

Just add in gold/silver/bronze reward tracks based on how fast the boss is killed. That way, you still reward the work the current groups are putting in – while opening the fights to a wider array of play styles.

This would allow players and communities to control their own kind of “easy mode.” Guilds looking for a more casual experience could take groups in designed around experiencing the fights rather than killing fast.

To me, this would be a win-win. Rewards would still be based on skill, but the experience would be open to a wider range of playstyles.

Adding rewards based on how much time left on the clock would be a huge problem.
You just creat a system where you wont have anyother dps besides Tempest ( or the class that become the best dps after a balance change patch ), because now for example “Hammer DH bring good dps and protection” it doesnt matter because now you only want the best DPS to hit gold reward. So reward tired to timer is the most toxic ideia you can put in a group content. Because now you get happy when you down a boss even if only two people stands. With the timer reward, people would call names if someone go down at end of the fight and because of it you get silver instead of gold.
So its easy to see how this reward system would be the worst ideia ever.

Agreed 100% — I have no idea why anti-raiders want a timer based reward system.

At least arguing for no timer is consistent with them wanting to nerf raids. (But they fail to understand that mechanics, not timers, wipe most groups).

Don’t follow blindly meta/ metabattle build. For example metabattle told you that condi/zerk druid are meta while healer magi druid isn’t. That’s downright stupid. A bunch of newbies group won’t kill VG with zerk/condi druid as a MAIN healer.

Enrage times is never a problem since you pretty much can clear every encouter in raids with 2 FULL TIME healer. Try bringing 2 healers next time for VG( 1 to heal green circle and the other 1 to heal the melee team) and make sure all of your dps doing their job properly . I assure you, you can clear it with 2mins++ left and realize that the enrage time is already generous enough.

Also, as other people said, W3 fist encounter is pretty easy and doesn’t have an enrage timer. You could try that as well.

Enrage timers are developers simple solution to make encounters hard instead of actually developing smart AI in which boss’s tactics are based upon the party or raid composition. That being said they should not be in the game. Instead developers should deploy a tiered-loot system that bases reward upon performance and numbers participating.

Solo a dungeon a person gets 5x the loot that each in a full party would get.
Do a raid boss fast get better loot. Do the same boss in longer time get less loot.

Presently, the enrage timers once breached the bosses become essentially rote and people get bored with them. Developers need to deploy better AI (which is not actually that hard) and QA them with test suites via monte-carlo methods. But maybe I’m asking too much from the gaming community.

I don’t like a time based reward system because if you group struggles just a little bit and you want to reach gold tier you always have to /gg although nothing rly stupid happened. With the actual system it’s possible to rez downed players and continue or continue with 9 because it could work which you never know but with the time based thingy you have to suicide over and over and sometimes you rly don’t know if you can make it or not so you better give up to not get silver tier accidentally.

curtegg.5216:

Enrage timers are developers simple solution to make encounters hard instead of actually developing smart AI in which boss’s tactics are based upon the party or raid composition. That being said they should not be in the game. Instead developers should deploy a tiered-loot system that bases reward upon performance and numbers participating.

Solo a dungeon a person gets 5x the loot that each in a full party would get.
Do a raid boss fast get better loot. Do the same boss in longer time get less loot.

Presently, the enrage timers once breached the bosses become essentially rote and people get bored with them. Developers need to deploy better AI (which is not actually that hard) and QA them with test suites via monte-carlo methods. But maybe I’m asking too much from the gaming community.

This kind of comment really get on my nerves. If you are not a game developer or never published something , don’t say its easy. Only people that know jack about it would assume its an easy task to develop game A.I.

OnizukaBR.8537:

curtegg.5216:

Enrage timers are developers simple solution to make encounters hard instead of actually developing smart AI in which boss’s tactics are based upon the party or raid composition. That being said they should not be in the game. Instead developers should deploy a tiered-loot system that bases reward upon performance and numbers participating.

Solo a dungeon a person gets 5x the loot that each in a full party would get.
Do a raid boss fast get better loot. Do the same boss in longer time get less loot.

Presently, the enrage timers once breached the bosses become essentially rote and people get bored with them. Developers need to deploy better AI (which is not actually that hard) and QA them with test suites via monte-carlo methods. But maybe I’m asking too much from the gaming community.

This kind of comment really get on my nerves. If you are not a game developer or never published something , don’t say its easy. Only people that know jack about it would assume its an easy task to develop game A.I.

Lol just copy-paste the ‘improved ai for all purposes’ script from stackoverload, that’ll do it!

The thing about enrage timers is that they are already survivable if you can handle the mechanics. On VG, you should be avoiding ports, seakers, and making it to the green circles anyway. You should be breaking the breakbar in a second or two. What the enrage timers do is ensure that you know the mechanics and are playing into them instead of facetanking/ignoring them. I think this is healthy for the gametype.

There are a few videos around of hour-long boss kills where people bring lots of tanky gear. If you want to do that, it’s an option, but you still have to understand the mechanics because of the enrage timer.

Some bosses enrage isn’t too bad. My first Matthias kill was about two minutes into enrage.

I quite like the opening post here, seems like a reasonable fellow =D
Anyway, let me ramble a bit.

Initially, I, like many others, thought the enrage timer was there to make sure player cannot cheese the boss fight with full tanking gear or something. But nope, recently I realized that enrage timer was there to encourage players to do as few mistakes as possible.

You see, recently I tried high tier Swampland fractal with pugs. Well, it didn’t go well. 3 party members died right away, so then I tried to fought by myself (condi necro here), expecting to die soon-ish. Fortunately, while I was soloing the boss, the 1 living party member left took the initiative to ress all the dead players. Now all members have been ressed, we continued the fight, though 1 player seems to unable to dodge the boss’ charge attack and keep dying (and getting ressed).

In the end we killed the boss, but I don’t feel like we won anything. The whole fight was a slugfest with people busy ressing and getting killed. I mean, yeah sure, we get the reward and stuff, but it doesn’t feel like we’re good at the game or anything, we just won through sheer stubborn-ness because the fractal doesn’t really punish players for making small mistakes.

And that’s why enrage timer is needed. It’s to prevent player to win through mass ressurection. It’s to encourage players to actually outsmart and outplay the encounter. I’m sure a lot of raiders have experienced a “messy kill”. While you got the reward, I don’t think it feels good as beating the boss super quick in 1 shot with no one getting downed, right?

People saying removing enrage timer would solve all issues seem to forget all the nerf T4 Swamp threads, no enrage timer yet so much slat and the mechanics are a lot easier than any of the raid wings/ fights yet so many people want it nerfed. Removing enrage timers is not the solution.

The enrage timer is responsible for almost no wipes compared to the actual raid mechanics. Removing it only would really affect the vg and matthias fights, and even then you are still much more likely to die to bad movement on VG or poison+tornado or something on matthias. Since facing mechanics like these less is a huge defensive plus, max DPS builds will still be the meta and the scenario OP talks about where people get yelled at for running off-meta defensive builds wouldn’t even go away.

And look at it this way – if you’re getting angry at your squad for making a simgle mistake that ruins a ~5 minute pull, imagine how frustrated everyone is going to be when each pull takes 20 minutes. Imagine how much more often this would happen since many of the mechanics ignore defensive stats and you now have to face them 4x as much to get a kill. Imagine how bored you will be when you die 3 minutes in because you’re team can’t CC on matthias, then you have to wait another 15 minutes while they run around in their super defensive gear with people getting picked off one by one. Sure removing the enrage timer might increase your chance of a kill for each individual pull, but if you’re actually taking advantage of that by running defensive gear then your pulls will take potentially a much longer time on average.

So yeah maybe there is some small set of players for which removing the enrage timers would help but really allowing players to be successful with defensive stat sets just makes the fights less enjoyable for groups that were already having trouble.

I do want to express my appreciation to the OP for having a well thought out and respectful suggestion. Although I disagree with it, it is very nice to have some well-mannered discussion.

I think that part of the issue is that the community is very split. There is the section of the community that find enjoyment from just playing different parts of the game and have a much more relaxed playstyle. Then there are the people who find enjoyment out of really challenging content and min-maxing.

Pre-HoT the ‘hardcore’ community was really desperate for some challenging content. At the start of the game they had dungeons, which were very challenging at the time. Then they had fractals. But by the time HoT came around those gametypes had become very easy for various reasons.

What it comes down to is speedrunning and lowmanning easier content just isn’t as satisfying as having legitimately challenging encounters. If the game didn’t have raids as is, the hardcore community would be the ones on the forums asking for things to be different.

Without enrage timers, you’re right, people would be able to turtle up and beat the encounters. But then people who can kill the bosses quickly would not be satisfied with the content. It is satisfying to kill quickly because we have to kill quickly.

Raids were not designed to be completed by everybody, nor should they be. There will always be some people who optimize their builds, leading to creating the meta. This will always be a fairly large portion of the community, and they need content to play. If you are not one of these people, but want to become one, then there is a lot of support for learning. If you want to keep your playstyle and don’t like to optimize, then raids are content that was not designed for you and that’s ok. There is still a whole world out there for you to enjoy.

GLHF

Quite a few interesting posts with some points I haven’t considered while writing this post and as such I would like to address some of them.

AnariiUK.7409:

I’d highly suggest giving the first encounter of wing 3 a try, unlike VG there’s no enrage timer there so your squad can take all the time you need to clear it. It serves as a much better intoduction to raiding than VG, who’s actually one of the hardest encounters!

Yes, we actually tried that after our last fail at Vale Guardian. While I’m thankful for advice the problem is that that particular encounter requires at least someone in the group to have raid mastery to get through the tunnel to tower. As far as I am aware (and I checked a couple videos and wiki) there is no way to survive through that tunnel without mastery and no workaround that would enable the raid group where none of the members have that mastery to beat that initial step. I do plan to try and get mastery by trying to get into pug raid this weekend and then use my mesmer to maybe get my guildies successfully through encounter but that will defend if I am able to find a pug that will accept a necro that doesn’t follow current meta (aka power reaper). Thank you anyways.

Fay.2357:

I can count the number of times I’ve failed a raid due to enrage timers on the fingers of one hand. Hitting enrage timers due to low dps is almost never the reason raids fail. What actually causes groups to fail is dying to various mechanics, spending too much time ressing people, not being confident enough with the fight to actually dps the boss, that sort of thing. You only end up hitting enrage timers if half your members are dead and you’re trying to squeak out a kill with the remaining people.

It’s not like you even have to play meta builds to finish these fights either. Plenty of groups finish with varying levels of non-meta-ness. VG was even finished with just 4 people. That shows you just how far you can go off of the meta 10 man group and still finish fights. People that require strict adherence to the meta are usually the same people that don’t have a good understanding of the fights or mechanics.

Ultimately, people complaining about enrage timers are always people that don’t actually have any experience in raids. They pick that ticking clock in the corner as an easy target to complain about, not realizing that they’re complaining about the least impactful mechanic in any currently existing raid. If you want easier raids, you should be asking for anet to make versions that have less punishing mechanics, not removing the enrage timer.

You are probably right. Maybe the biggest issue is that we just haven’t tried enough. But it is really easy to blame enrage timer, exactly because last few times I and my guildies tried Vale Guardian we died to that. Ultimately – the enrage timer gives you quite a psychological pressure. I will tell you honestly – when I see that time in corner ticking down (and it is very hard to resist not looking at it) I do panic. It is like a clock ticking down to your ultimate death. I would guess, and it probably would be correct guess, that a few deaths where we did get through second split resulted precisely because of those numbers ticking down. Hell, you know what would make me kinda happy? Removing enrage indicator. Leave the timer in effect but don’t show it to players. That would help slightly. Guess I could just try to cover that part of screen too. Might try that next time I raid.

LegACy.1296:

And that’s why enrage timer is needed. It’s to prevent player to win through mass ressurection. It’s to encourage players to actually outsmart and outplay the encounter. I’m sure a lot of raiders have experienced a “messy kill”. While you got the reward, I don’t think it feels good as beating the boss super quick in 1 shot with no one getting downed, right?

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that you cannot resurrect dead people during raid. You can resurrect only players that are in downed state. As such your argument doesn’t really apply to raiding, but still thank you for taking time to read my wall of text and reply. I also wish you luck with fractals. ^^

Dinosaurs.8674:

And look at it this way – if you’re getting angry at your squad for making a simgle mistake that ruins a ~5 minute pull, imagine how frustrated everyone is going to be when each pull takes 20 minutes. Imagine how much more often this would happen since many of the mechanics ignore defensive stats and you now have to face them 4x as much to get a kill. Imagine how bored you will be when you die 3 minutes in because you’re team can’t CC on matthias, then you have to wait another 15 minutes while they run around in their super defensive gear with people getting picked off one by one. Sure removing the enrage timer might increase your chance of a kill for each individual pull, but if you’re actually taking advantage of that by running defensive gear then your pulls will take potentially a much longer time on average.

So yeah maybe there is some small set of players for which removing the enrage timers would help but really allowing players to be successful with defensive stat sets just makes the fights less enjoyable for groups that were already having trouble.

This is something I haven’t thought about while writing my first post and after reading through this and thinking about it for a bit – I agree. You are right – extended fights would actually also leave more time to make mistakes that would ultimately lead to wipe. When I wrote this post I fixated on enrage timers as easy solution because it is – having even a couple more minutes in Vale Guardian fight would have resulted in me and my guildies successfully killing Vale Guardian. Like I mentioned in reply a bit above – it is easy to blame and fixate on them and it is quite easy mechanic to dismiss and flame on. But yes, you are right, fighting Vale Guardian for an hour and then wiping because we somehow missed a green circle spawning in corner would not be fun.

Fluffy.1932:

I do want to express my appreciation to the OP for having a well thought out and respectful suggestion. Although I disagree with it, it is very nice to have some well-mannered discussion.

I think that part of the issue is that the community is very split. There is the section of the community that find enjoyment from just playing different parts of the game and have a much more relaxed playstyle. Then there are the people who find enjoyment out of really challenging content and min-maxing.

Pre-HoT the ‘hardcore’ community was really desperate for some challenging content. At the start of the game they had dungeons, which were very challenging at the time. Then they had fractals. But by the time HoT came around those gametypes had become very easy for various reasons.

What it comes down to is speedrunning and lowmanning easier content just isn’t as satisfying as having legitimately challenging encounters. If the game didn’t have raids as is, the hardcore community would be the ones on the forums asking for things to be different.

Without enrage timers, you’re right, people would be able to turtle up and beat the encounters. But then people who can kill the bosses quickly would not be satisfied with the content. It is satisfying to kill quickly because we have to kill quickly.

Raids were not designed to be completed by everybody, nor should they be. There will always be some people who optimize their builds, leading to creating the meta. This will always be a fairly large portion of the community, and they need content to play. If you are not one of these people, but want to become one, then there is a lot of support for learning. If you want to keep your playstyle and don’t like to optimize, then raids are content that was not designed for you and that’s ok. There is still a whole world out there for you to enjoy.

GLHF

Thank you for nice words, even if you do not agree with suggestion itself. Also thank you for taking your time to write your own walls of text for me to read through. Anyways, on to your post. Yes, community is split. Yes, prior to raids we did not have much of a challenge (even current T4 fractals are not actually that hard. That might change as they keep updating old ones, though). Yes, going through easy content and just getting rewards is not going to be satisfying. What bothers me the most, though, is the fact that yes, you are right – raids are not designed to be completed by everybody.

And that fact, if nothing else, is what makes me actually sad. As a person who loves unique stories and challenging, big bosses raids are a concept that I always looked for as an ultimate pve experience. It makes me quite… disappointed that a lot of people who can’t for various reasons get into raiding will never experience story, maps, and unique encounters present exactly in raiding. It is good that they are challenging, it is good that there is content that can’t be easily get through. But what is bad seems to me that the entry level to start and get through raid seems to be just too high.

I will agree to the posts here. Entirely getting rid of all enrage timers might be too much. But I feel that all people, regardless of class and skill level should have at least a bit of easier time at very first raid boss in GW 2. Because let’s face it – while I don’t know numbers and not sure if there is place to find them – not a lot of people are actually heavily into raiding. And it is not exactly easy to get into raiding after all this time. I would imagine that the quite a lot of people got discouraged and simply have wrong impression about raiding because they don’t know better. I, for example, was completely under impression that without fully following meta and perfect party composition you actually have no chance of beating any of the bosses. That is the kind of vibe I get from videos I watched on some encounters and my personal experience in failing to kill the very first boss in first wing seemed to only confirm this.

As this is the case and a lot of people are under opinion that raids are just not designed for everyone and those who do not optimize should just not attempt them, let me ask you this – is that a good thing? To me, it looks that at least slightly lowering down the difficulty bar in some way would attract more people to raiding. Is that good or bad is a whole different question, but more people trying out raids and successfully beating them maybe would melt the frosty opinion quite a few people have on raids currently. And then another expansion comes and we get new raid instead of multiple cries of ‘Oh no! Another ten people group content I will never manage to see. Guess I will pass this expansion.’ we would get ‘Yes! More epic bosses and interesting story! Pre-order now!!’ (exaggerated, but you get my point).

Let’s take some example of a progression from easy entry level to hard difficulty from fractals. One thing fractals kinda seem like they do right is increasing difficulty as you go through tiers, introducing instabilities and different mechanics. What if you applied similar concept to raiding? For example, start off bit easy – remove enrage mechanic from Vale Guardian, or extend it slightly so that even most new groups could kill it after a few tries and would get mastery. Then increase difficulty. Next boss has both soft and hard enrage mechanics. Yet another adds additional layer of complexity. That way new raid groups could get chance to unlock mastery, get 1 kill and attempt to get further and further against increasingly harder challenges. It would be just like climbing on large hill – feels easy at first, but at the top you encounter such a monster of epic proportions that you feel like typing /surrender by just looking at it.

What do you people think? As a compromise – would changing the very first boss of first wing to make it an easier ‘entry level’ fight would satisfy those who are currently hating on raids while leaving all of other bosses as a large challenge for those awesome skilled players who can beat them? Would allowing people who are just getting into raiding to have such easier ‘freebie’ be okay? I would like to hear what you all think about that. (And yes – I am aware that wing 3 escort is basically that. But it needs mastery. If it didn’t it would be nice, but can’t always have nice things.)

As I see it – all content need a carrot and a stick. Raids are not exception. And while the current raid has quite alluring little carrot (promise of legendary armor, ascended items and more), instead of letting you take a small bite and luring you deeper into rabbit hole, the rabbit holding the stick with carrot keeps beating you with stick until you either give up or take that stick and beat him with it (poor metaphor, but as I write this it is nearing 1am – sorry).

As such, once more to repeat myself, as I’m rambling – do you people think that lowering difficulty for just Vale Guardian and letting players have this lower level difficulty initial encounter and introduction to raiding would hook them enough to get them into raiding, changing their opinion and making them honestly want to get better and join raiding community? Would just giving this easier entry level be okay, or should raids just be kept as they are? Personally, I’m under opinion that something needs to change, but I can’t just yet figure out what. I want more people do raids. I want more friendly groups in LFG. I want to everyone have fun playing this great game. So please, discuss, offer suggestions and do your best so we could make raiding (and all other aspects of GW 2) as enjoyable as possible to as many people as we can.

Have fun and see you in game.

Elena.3642:

Quite a few interesting posts with some points I haven’t considered while writing this post and as such I would like to address some of them.

AnariiUK.7409:

I’d highly suggest giving the first encounter of wing 3 a try, unlike VG there’s no enrage timer there so your squad can take all the time you need to clear it. It serves as a much better intoduction to raiding than VG, who’s actually one of the hardest encounters!

Yes, we actually tried that after our last fail at Vale Guardian. While I’m thankful for advice the problem is that that particular encounter requires at least someone in the group to have raid mastery to get through the tunnel to tower. As far as I am aware (and I checked a couple videos and wiki) there is no way to survive through that tunnel without mastery and no workaround that would enable the raid group where none of the members have that mastery to beat that initial step. I do plan to try and get mastery by trying to get into pug raid this weekend and then use my mesmer to maybe get my guildies successfully through encounter but that will defend if I am able to find a pug that will accept a necro that doesn’t follow current meta (aka power reaper). Thank you anyways.

Fay.2357:

I can count the number of times I’ve failed a raid due to enrage timers on the fingers of one hand. Hitting enrage timers due to low dps is almost never the reason raids fail. What actually causes groups to fail is dying to various mechanics, spending too much time ressing people, not being confident enough with the fight to actually dps the boss, that sort of thing. You only end up hitting enrage timers if half your members are dead and you’re trying to squeak out a kill with the remaining people.

It’s not like you even have to play meta builds to finish these fights either. Plenty of groups finish with varying levels of non-meta-ness. VG was even finished with just 4 people. That shows you just how far you can go off of the meta 10 man group and still finish fights. People that require strict adherence to the meta are usually the same people that don’t have a good understanding of the fights or mechanics.

Ultimately, people complaining about enrage timers are always people that don’t actually have any experience in raids. They pick that ticking clock in the corner as an easy target to complain about, not realizing that they’re complaining about the least impactful mechanic in any currently existing raid. If you want easier raids, you should be asking for anet to make versions that have less punishing mechanics, not removing the enrage timer.

You are probably right. Maybe the biggest issue is that we just haven’t tried enough. But it is really easy to blame enrage timer, exactly because last few times I and my guildies tried Vale Guardian we died to that. Ultimately – the enrage timer gives you quite a psychological pressure. I will tell you honestly – when I see that time in corner ticking down (and it is very hard to resist not looking at it) I do panic. It is like a clock ticking down to your ultimate death. I would guess, and it probably would be correct guess, that a few deaths where we did get through second split resulted precisely because of those numbers ticking down. Hell, you know what would make me kinda happy? Removing enrage indicator. Leave the timer in effect but don’t show it to players. That would help slightly. Guess I could just try to cover that part of screen too. Might try that next time I raid.

LegACy.1296:

And that’s why enrage timer is needed. It’s to prevent player to win through mass ressurection. It’s to encourage players to actually outsmart and outplay the encounter. I’m sure a lot of raiders have experienced a “messy kill”. While you got the reward, I don’t think it feels good as beating the boss super quick in 1 shot with no one getting downed, right?

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that you cannot resurrect dead people during raid. You can resurrect only players that are in downed state. As such your argument doesn’t really apply to raiding, but still thank you for taking time to read my wall of text and reply. I also wish you luck with fractals. ^^

Dinosaurs.8674:

And look at it this way – if you’re getting angry at your squad for making a simgle mistake that ruins a ~5 minute pull, imagine how frustrated everyone is going to be when each pull takes 20 minutes. Imagine how much more often this would happen since many of the mechanics ignore defensive stats and you now have to face them 4x as much to get a kill. Imagine how bored you will be when you die 3 minutes in because you’re team can’t CC on matthias, then you have to wait another 15 minutes while they run around in their super defensive gear with people getting picked off one by one. Sure removing the enrage timer might increase your chance of a kill for each individual pull, but if you’re actually taking advantage of that by running defensive gear then your pulls will take potentially a much longer time on average.

So yeah maybe there is some small set of players for which removing the enrage timers would help but really allowing players to be successful with defensive stat sets just makes the fights less enjoyable for groups that were already having trouble.

This is something I haven’t thought about while writing my first post and after reading through this and thinking about it for a bit – I agree. You are right – extended fights would actually also leave more time to make mistakes that would ultimately lead to wipe. When I wrote this post I fixated on enrage timers as easy solution because it is – having even a couple more minutes in Vale Guardian fight would have resulted in me and my guildies successfully killing Vale Guardian. Like I mentioned in reply a bit above – it is easy to blame and fixate on them and it is quite easy mechanic to dismiss and flame on. But yes, you are right, fighting Vale Guardian for an hour and then wiping because we somehow missed a green circle spawning in corner would not be fun.

Fluffy.1932:

I do want to express my appreciation to the OP for having a well thought out and respectful suggestion. Although I disagree with it, it is very nice to have some well-mannered discussion.

I think that part of the issue is that the community is very split. There is the section of the community that find enjoyment from just playing different parts of the game and have a much more relaxed playstyle. Then there are the people who find enjoyment out of really challenging content and min-maxing.

Pre-HoT the ‘hardcore’ community was really desperate for some challenging content. At the start of the game they had dungeons, which were very challenging at the time. Then they had fractals. But by the time HoT came around those gametypes had become very easy for various reasons.

What it comes down to is speedrunning and lowmanning easier content just isn’t as satisfying as having legitimately challenging encounters. If the game didn’t have raids as is, the hardcore community would be the ones on the forums asking for things to be different.

Without enrage timers, you’re right, people would be able to turtle up and beat the encounters. But then people who can kill the bosses quickly would not be satisfied with the content. It is satisfying to kill quickly because we have to kill quickly.

Raids were not designed to be completed by everybody, nor should they be. There will always be some people who optimize their builds, leading to creating the meta. This will always be a fairly large portion of the community, and they need content to play. If you are not one of these people, but want to become one, then there is a lot of support for learning. If you want to keep your playstyle and don’t like to optimize, then raids are content that was not designed for you and that’s ok. There is still a whole world out there for you to enjoy.

GLHF

Thank you for nice words, even if you do not agree with suggestion itself. Also thank you for taking your time to write your own walls of text for me to read through. Anyways, on to your post. Yes, community is split. Yes, prior to raids we did not have much of a challenge (even current T4 fractals are not actually that hard. That might change as they keep updating old ones, though). Yes, going through easy content and just getting rewards is not going to be satisfying. What bothers me the most, though, is the fact that yes, you are right – raids are not designed to be completed by everybody.

And that fact, if nothing else, is what makes me actually sad. As a person who loves unique stories and challenging, big bosses raids are a concept that I always looked for as an ultimate pve experience. It makes me quite… disappointed that a lot of people who can’t for various reasons get into raiding will never experience story, maps, and unique encounters present exactly in raiding. It is good that they are challenging, it is good that there is content that can’t be easily get through. But what is bad seems to me that the entry level to start and get through raid seems to be just too high.

I will agree to the posts here. Entirely getting rid of all enrage timers might be too much. But I feel that all people, regardless of class and skill level should have at least a bit of easier time at very first raid boss in GW 2. Because let’s face it – while I don’t know numbers and not sure if there is place to find them – not a lot of people are actually heavily into raiding. And it is not exactly easy to get into raiding after all this time. I would imagine that the quite a lot of people got discouraged and simply have wrong impression about raiding because they don’t know better. I, for example, was completely under impression that without fully following meta and perfect party composition you actually have no chance of beating any of the bosses. That is the kind of vibe I get from videos I watched on some encounters and my personal experience in failing to kill the very first boss in first wing seemed to only confirm this.

As this is the case and a lot of people are under opinion that raids are just not designed for everyone and those who do not optimize should just not attempt them, let me ask you this – is that a good thing? To me, it looks that at least slightly lowering down the difficulty bar in some way would attract more people to raiding. Is that good or bad is a whole different question, but more people trying out raids and successfully beating them maybe would melt the frosty opinion quite a few people have on raids currently. And then another expansion comes and we get new raid instead of multiple cries of ‘Oh no! Another ten people group content I will never manage to see. Guess I will pass this expansion.’ we would get ‘Yes! More epic bosses and interesting story! Pre-order now!!’ (exaggerated, but you get my point).

Let’s take some example of a progression from easy entry level to hard difficulty from fractals. One thing fractals kinda seem like they do right is increasing difficulty as you go through tiers, introducing instabilities and different mechanics. What if you applied similar concept to raiding? For example, start off bit easy – remove enrage mechanic from Vale Guardian, or extend it slightly so that even most new groups could kill it after a few tries and would get mastery. Then increase difficulty. Next boss has both soft and hard enrage mechanics. Yet another adds additional layer of complexity. That way new raid groups could get chance to unlock mastery, get 1 kill and attempt to get further and further against increasingly harder challenges. It would be just like climbing on large hill – feels easy at first, but at the top you encounter such a monster of epic proportions that you feel like typing /surrender by just looking at it.

What do you people think? As a compromise – would changing the very first boss of first wing to make it an easier ‘entry level’ fight would satisfy those who are currently hating on raids while leaving all of other bosses as a large challenge for those awesome skilled players who can beat them? Would allowing people who are just getting into raiding to have such easier ‘freebie’ be okay? I would like to hear what you all think about that. (And yes – I am aware that wing 3 escort is basically that. But it needs mastery. If it didn’t it would be nice, but can’t always have nice things.)

As I see it – all content need a carrot and a stick. Raids are not exception. And while the current raid has quite alluring little carrot (promise of legendary armor, ascended items and more), instead of letting you take a small bite and luring you deeper into rabbit hole, the rabbit holding the stick with carrot keeps beating you with stick until you either give up or take that stick and beat him with it (poor metaphor, but as I write this it is nearing 1am – sorry).

As such, once more to repeat myself, as I’m rambling – do you people think that lowering difficulty for just Vale Guardian and letting players have this lower level difficulty initial encounter and introduction to raiding would hook them enough to get them into raiding, changing their opinion and making them honestly want to get better and join raiding community? Would just giving this easier entry level be okay, or should raids just be kept as they are? Personally, I’m under opinion that something needs to change, but I can’t just yet figure out what. I want more people do raids. I want more friendly groups in LFG. I want to everyone have fun playing this great game. So please, discuss, offer suggestions and do your best so we could make raiding (and all other aspects of GW 2) as enjoyable as possible to as many people as we can.

Have fun and see you in game.

VG is already easy enough, if they nerfed it would just cause more frustration because if you cant beat VG in its current form you have 0 chance at Gors, so you would beat VG just to get really frustrated at Gors because there the enrage matters.

But you sound like someone that really want to raid, but dont have the exp to see how easy most of the encounters are. So I would gladly help you and your fellows guild members at VG or at Scort ( i can play my mesmer and portal everyone up). Feel free to add me in game if you want my help.

I will second alot of things in the thread,

Thank you Elena for having a well thought out post and the discussion hase been extremely civil and entertaining!

As Onizuka offered, I will also add myself to that list of people you can contact. I am the eternal PuG. I would be MORE than happy to run with your group as a mesmer for the Escort event to help get you all a kill and get the mastery opened at least.

I am a chef by trade so my play time is extremely odd. But please if you see me and I can give you a hand on the run by all means hit me up.

(( random side Edit, As ihave had some people poking me for runs. I am NA servers, Just so you all know. Good luck all!! ))

Elena.3642:

Yes, we actually tried that after our last fail at Vale Guardian. While I’m thankful for advice the problem is that that particular encounter requires at least someone in the group to have raid mastery to get through the tunnel to tower. As far as I am aware (and I checked a couple videos and wiki) there is no way to survive through that tunnel without mastery and no workaround that would enable the raid group where none of the members have that mastery to beat that initial step. I do plan to try and get mastery by trying to get into pug raid this weekend and then use my mesmer to maybe get my guildies successfully through encounter but that will defend if I am able to find a pug that will accept a necro that doesn’t follow current meta (aka power reaper). Thank you anyways.

Ah that’s indeed something I failed to consider. There is a small jump you can do that allows a chrono to skip the tunnel. It’s difficult to describe but you can leap (Using lightning hammer skill #2) from a small ledge close to the cliff (Just after the first little castle). This gets you up to where the bouncing mushroom is and you can portal others up to help with the turret. You could also in theory run all of the way around, blinking past the turret fire and climb up to the turrets from the ramps at the back of the keep.

As an alternative I’d be happy to help you guys out if you need someone to run through the cave for you (I am on EU). Also if you’re interested in getting your raid masteries unlocked you’d be more than welcome to join one of my runs for a quick VG kill.

Blaeys.3102:

I’ve said this same thing many times.

The counterargument that most give is that they timers are there to discourage “cheesing” the fight in all Nomads gear or something.

My response is, so what if people want to do it in all Nomads or something else non-meta that allows them to do the fight slower than the current groups? I say let them.

Just add in gold/silver/bronze reward tracks based on how fast the boss is killed. That way, you still reward the work the current groups are putting in – while opening the fights to a wider array of play styles.

This would allow players and communities to control their own kind of “easy mode.” Guilds looking for a more casual experience could take groups in designed around experiencing the fights rather than killing fast.

To me, this would be a win-win. Rewards would still be based on skill, but the experience would be open to a wider range of playstyles.

I like this idea.

Just two new videos to show 2 things again: You really dont need meta to finish a raid, and enrange timer doesnt matter.

curtegg.5216:

Enrage timers are developers simple solution to make encounters hard instead of actually developing smart AI in which boss’s tactics are based upon the party or raid composition. That being said they should not be in the game. Instead developers should deploy a tiered-loot system that bases reward upon performance and numbers participating.

Solo a dungeon a person gets 5x the loot that each in a full party would get.
Do a raid boss fast get better loot. Do the same boss in longer time get less loot.

Presently, the enrage timers once breached the bosses become essentially rote and people get bored with them. Developers need to deploy better AI (which is not actually that hard) and QA them with test suites via monte-carlo methods. But maybe I’m asking too much from the gaming community.

Have you raided? How many times and which bosses?

Of all the times that you failed a raid, was it because of the enrage timer or the mechanics? Which bosses were the fails at?

The enrage timers are a joke. The timers are very generous and barely do anything noticeable. Anet should make enrages instant kill everyone.
If the current enrage timers make you fail a raid boss kill you probably do not deserve the kill.

I think removing the enrage timer would be a good idea as an optional thing for people to learn the mechanics of the fight. However this mode can not give out any rewards as doing the real thing should be rewarded properly.

NotOverlyCheesy.9427:

I think removing the enrage timer would be a good idea as an optional thing for people to learn the mechanics of the fight. However this mode can not give out any rewards as doing the real thing should be rewarded properly.

The thing is just doing the fight does the same thing, you don’t need to remove the timers to learn the fights.

After few hours of waiting in LFG yesterday with no real luck (apart from couple people telling me that I should play condi reaper or try rising other class if I want to play power and an offer to join raiding community in Discord) I finally managed to get into raid for Vale Guardian thanks to awesome AnariiUK, who offered a spot so I could unlock raid mastery.

And I got both amazed and speechless as I saw boss melt with like roughly three minutes to spare in enrage timer.

After seeing that – well, I can’t really say that you guys are wrong anymore, can I? You are right, after witnessing a perfect execution of Vale Guardian, I now can agree that yes – enrage timer seems to be fairly set with plenty of time with a good group that know mechanics and can carry even newbie like me (I still managed to get teleported maybe… twice by blue attack? Sorry Anarii!).

So now that I know what a huge waste of time it was to start this discussion and how wrong I actually am I wonder – what could be done to give newbies like me easier time to get into this content?

I’m not sure if anything can be done from developer side of things. Nerfing anything would only really annoy those raiders who love the current challenge (even though after seeing pros in action I now wonder if they are getting any challenge at all from those encounters anymore), so what could be done to allow players to get easier time?

Well, one idea pops up to see if someone could maybe write a guide with tricks and tips that make boss fights bit easier. I’m not sure if there is one anywhere in these forums or somewhere else, I obviously will need to look harder. I did notice one trick during Vale Guardian fight that I personally didn’t know about – Anarii and his group seem to not send anyone to green guardian during split, just focusing on mowing down blue and letting green come to them (or that is what it looked to me, was too busy gaping to really play close attention). Are there any more tricks like that which would make encounters easier? Do any of you guys know where I could find them if there are? And what advice you could offer for groups that are getting into raiding? These are the current questions I have and I will gladly accept any and all advice you can offer.

Thank you all for offers of help, keeping this discussion civil and overall being amazing and nice people. See you all in game.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

NotOverlyCheesy.9427:

I think removing the enrage timer would be a good idea as an optional thing for people to learn the mechanics of the fight. However this mode can not give out any rewards as doing the real thing should be rewarded properly.

The thing is just doing the fight does the same thing, you don’t need to remove the timers to learn the fights.

I don’t mind the enrage personally since I can get my kills each week but maybe there’s something to it since these threads seem to pop up all the time. On the other hand you are right that people could just go in there to learn the fights and not seek the kill but people are scared of failure and don’t really want to do it. Finding a middle ground here to get people motivated to start seems to be quite hard with all of these different opinions going around. The way I’ve been handling the issue is to have just fun runs sometimes and grabbing a totally newbie friend with my regular raid team and getting them like a VG kill to show the content.

http://dulfy.net/category/gw2/raid-guides/

Guide for every boss with a lot of helpful tips. Then there’s also dozens of youtube channels out there showing various tactics and professions points of view.

And, as the last two posts hit on, the issues of ‘accessibility’ are mainly created by the players themselves. Whether they’re unwilling to adapt their setup to fit their role, or just unwilling to accept that you might spend 2 hours and not get a kill. These things should and are the norm for any challenging content. If you can’t accept them then raids (in any game) just probably aren’t for you, and that’s not a problem. Open world PVE and PVP just aren’t for me, but I don’t see them as a problem (though masteries did annoy the hell out of me).

Jerus.4350:

http://dulfy.net/category/gw2/raid-guides/

Guide for every boss with a lot of helpful tips. Then there’s also dozens of youtube channels out there showing various tactics and professions points of view.

The dulfy guides tend not to be up to date with the latest strategies. They are excellent at explaining mechanics but since they come out close after the wing is released, they can’t include latest strats. I’ve found that most of the knowledge of strategies and cool tricks that exploit those mechanics are passed on through word of mouth. Watching videos is a good way to learn them as well.

Fluffy.1932:

Jerus.4350:

http://dulfy.net/category/gw2/raid-guides/

Guide for every boss with a lot of helpful tips. Then there’s also dozens of youtube channels out there showing various tactics and professions points of view.

The dulfy guides tend not to be up to date with the latest strategies. They are excellent at explaining mechanics but I’ve found that most of the knowledge of strategies and cool tricks that exploit those mechanics are passed on through word of mouth. Watching videos is a good way to learn them as well.

Yeah lots of little things I didn’t get from those but did from experience and people teaching me. But, it’s still something I’d suggest reading for anyone interested in raids, nice to have some details about the mechanics as most videos make things look easier than they are.

AnariiUK.7409:

In summary, removing the enrage timer at an encounter like VG allows groups to ignore their mechanical failures. Vastly reducing the difficulty of the encounter. Furthermore it sets groups up for disappointment when they reach bosses with soft-enrage mechanics such as Gorseval, Sabetha or KC.

I think this is a good thing.

This way new people/PuGs can actually learn to raid.

runeblade.7514:

AnariiUK.7409:

In summary, removing the enrage timer at an encounter like VG allows groups to ignore their mechanical failures. Vastly reducing the difficulty of the encounter. Furthermore it sets groups up for disappointment when they reach bosses with soft-enrage mechanics such as Gorseval, Sabetha or KC.

I think this is a good thing.

This way new people/PuGs can actually learn to raid.

Yes obvious people will learn to raid by ignoring what they are failing. Next time i want to learn something i will do it by ignoring it /s

runeblade.7514:

AnariiUK.7409:

In summary, removing the enrage timer at an encounter like VG allows groups to ignore their mechanical failures. Vastly reducing the difficulty of the encounter. Furthermore it sets groups up for disappointment when they reach bosses with soft-enrage mechanics such as Gorseval, Sabetha or KC.

I think this is a good thing.

This way new people/PuGs can actually learn to raid.

If you went into VG with half the DPS of a normal group you’d still get at least well into the second phase before enrage. This means you’ll have seen every mechanic that happens during VG, the second panel being lit in the third phase doesn’t play much different than the second phase, just less room for error. So I’m failing to see how this is an issue for learning?

OnizukaBR.8537:

runeblade.7514:

AnariiUK.7409:

In summary, removing the enrage timer at an encounter like VG allows groups to ignore their mechanical failures. Vastly reducing the difficulty of the encounter. Furthermore it sets groups up for disappointment when they reach bosses with soft-enrage mechanics such as Gorseval, Sabetha or KC.

I think this is a good thing.

This way new people/PuGs can actually learn to raid.

Yes obvious people will learn to raid by ignoring what they are failing. Next time i want to learn something i will do it by ignoring it /s

It is more like, People can’t just learn Calculus at first.

They need to learn how to do addition, subtraction, algebra, geometry, and Precalc.

They can learn when the mechanics pops up, how they can see it coming, and what to do when it comes, then when they are going up against the 10 minute enraged timer boss version, they’ll have better experience than just wiping and wiping and no one has fun like that.

runeblade.7514:

OnizukaBR.8537:

runeblade.7514:

AnariiUK.7409:

In summary, removing the enrage timer at an encounter like VG allows groups to ignore their mechanical failures. Vastly reducing the difficulty of the encounter. Furthermore it sets groups up for disappointment when they reach bosses with soft-enrage mechanics such as Gorseval, Sabetha or KC.

I think this is a good thing.

This way new people/PuGs can actually learn to raid.

Yes obvious people will learn to raid by ignoring what they are failing. Next time i want to learn something i will do it by ignoring it /s

It is more like, People can’t just learn Calculus at first.

They need to learn how to do addition, subtraction, algebra, geometry, and Precalc.

They can learn when the mechanics pops up, how they can see it coming, and what to do when it comes, then when they are going up against the 10 minute enraged timer boss version, they’ll have better experience than just wiping and wiping and no one has fun like that.

They can see now the mechanics, if they ignore it, then when they go to the real deal, they will die again because they were ignoring it and didnt even know how much damage the mechanic does. So they learn nothing from ignoring it. Ignoring mechanics doesnt make you learn a fight, actually ignoring mechanics make you a worst player, because you will create bad habits.

OnizukaBR.8537:

runeblade.7514:

OnizukaBR.8537:

runeblade.7514:

AnariiUK.7409:

In summary, removing the enrage timer at an encounter like VG allows groups to ignore their mechanical failures. Vastly reducing the difficulty of the encounter. Furthermore it sets groups up for disappointment when they reach bosses with soft-enrage mechanics such as Gorseval, Sabetha or KC.

I think this is a good thing.

This way new people/PuGs can actually learn to raid.

Yes obvious people will learn to raid by ignoring what they are failing. Next time i want to learn something i will do it by ignoring it /s

It is more like, People can’t just learn Calculus at first.

They need to learn how to do addition, subtraction, algebra, geometry, and Precalc.

They can learn when the mechanics pops up, how they can see it coming, and what to do when it comes, then when they are going up against the 10 minute enraged timer boss version, they’ll have better experience than just wiping and wiping and no one has fun like that.

They can see now the mechanics, if they ignore it, then when they go to the real deal, they will die again because they were ignoring it and didnt even know how much damage the mechanic does. So they learn nothing from ignoring it. Ignoring mechanics doesnt make you learn a fight, actually ignoring mechanics make you a worst player, because you will create bad habits.

And then they know how much damage the mechanic does now. Then they go back to the non-10 minute enrage timer raid again, learn to dodge that mechanic. Then they go back to the 10 minute enrage timer raid again and dodge that mechanic.

Done.

runeblade.7514:

OnizukaBR.8537:

runeblade.7514:

AnariiUK.7409:

In summary, removing the enrage timer at an encounter like VG allows groups to ignore their mechanical failures. Vastly reducing the difficulty of the encounter. Furthermore it sets groups up for disappointment when they reach bosses with soft-enrage mechanics such as Gorseval, Sabetha or KC.

I think this is a good thing.

This way new people/PuGs can actually learn to raid.

Yes obvious people will learn to raid by ignoring what they are failing. Next time i want to learn something i will do it by ignoring it /s

It is more like, People can’t just learn Calculus at first.

They need to learn how to do addition, subtraction, algebra, geometry, and Precalc.

They can learn when the mechanics pops up, how they can see it coming, and what to do when it comes, then when they are going up against the 10 minute enraged timer boss version, they’ll have better experience than just wiping and wiping and no one has fun like that.

There are actually a lot of high level mathmaticians that have been pushing for calculus to be taught much earlier. The difficulty of most calculus classes is not the calculus concepts but their application with complex algebra and trig. Just thought I’d toss that out because it was funny to me.

runeblade.7514:

OnizukaBR.8537:

runeblade.7514:

OnizukaBR.8537:

runeblade.7514:

AnariiUK.7409:

In summary, removing the enrage timer at an encounter like VG allows groups to ignore their mechanical failures. Vastly reducing the difficulty of the encounter. Furthermore it sets groups up for disappointment when they reach bosses with soft-enrage mechanics such as Gorseval, Sabetha or KC.

I think this is a good thing.

This way new people/PuGs can actually learn to raid.

Yes obvious people will learn to raid by ignoring what they are failing. Next time i want to learn something i will do it by ignoring it /s

It is more like, People can’t just learn Calculus at first.

They need to learn how to do addition, subtraction, algebra, geometry, and Precalc.

They can learn when the mechanics pops up, how they can see it coming, and what to do when it comes, then when they are going up against the 10 minute enraged timer boss version, they’ll have better experience than just wiping and wiping and no one has fun like that.

They can see now the mechanics, if they ignore it, then when they go to the real deal, they will die again because they were ignoring it and didnt even know how much damage the mechanic does. So they learn nothing from ignoring it. Ignoring mechanics doesnt make you learn a fight, actually ignoring mechanics make you a worst player, because you will create bad habits.

And then they know how much damage the mechanic does now. Then they go back to the non-10 minute enrage timer raid again, learn to dodge that mechanic. Then they go back to the 10 minute enrage timer raid again and dodge that mechanic.

Done.

Because they can’t dodge the mechanic now the same way they would with no enrage timer? (maybe the clock hold your foot ? ) If you really cant see how silly it it is i have nothing more to say.

OnizukaBR.8537:

runeblade.7514:

OnizukaBR.8537:

runeblade.7514:

AnariiUK.7409:

In summary, removing the enrage timer at an encounter like VG allows groups to ignore their mechanical failures. Vastly reducing the difficulty of the encounter. Furthermore it sets groups up for disappointment when they reach bosses with soft-enrage mechanics such as Gorseval, Sabetha or KC.

I think this is a good thing.

This way new people/PuGs can actually learn to raid.

Yes obvious people will learn to raid by ignoring what they are failing. Next time i want to learn something i will do it by ignoring it /s

It is more like, People can’t just learn Calculus at first.

They need to learn how to do addition, subtraction, algebra, geometry, and Precalc.

They can learn when the mechanics pops up, how they can see it coming, and what to do when it comes, then when they are going up against the 10 minute enraged timer boss version, they’ll have better experience than just wiping and wiping and no one has fun like that.

They can see now the mechanics, if they ignore it, then when they go to the real deal, they will die again because they were ignoring it and didnt even know how much damage the mechanic does. So they learn nothing from ignoring it. Ignoring mechanics doesnt make you learn a fight, actually ignoring mechanics make you a worst player, because you will create bad habits.

Obviously, you’re the type that skips learning Algebra, Geometry, and Pre-calc and go straight to Calculus or it would make sense to you.

runeblade.7514:

OnizukaBR.8537:

runeblade.7514:

OnizukaBR.8537:

runeblade.7514:

AnariiUK.7409:

In summary, removing the enrage timer at an encounter like VG allows groups to ignore their mechanical failures. Vastly reducing the difficulty of the encounter. Furthermore it sets groups up for disappointment when they reach bosses with soft-enrage mechanics such as Gorseval, Sabetha or KC.

I think this is a good thing.

This way new people/PuGs can actually learn to raid.

Yes obvious people will learn to raid by ignoring what they are failing. Next time i want to learn something i will do it by ignoring it /s

It is more like, People can’t just learn Calculus at first.

They need to learn how to do addition, subtraction, algebra, geometry, and Precalc.

They can learn when the mechanics pops up, how they can see it coming, and what to do when it comes, then when they are going up against the 10 minute enraged timer boss version, they’ll have better experience than just wiping and wiping and no one has fun like that.

They can see now the mechanics, if they ignore it, then when they go to the real deal, they will die again because they were ignoring it and didnt even know how much damage the mechanic does. So they learn nothing from ignoring it. Ignoring mechanics doesnt make you learn a fight, actually ignoring mechanics make you a worst player, because you will create bad habits.

Obviously, you’re the type that skips learning Algebra, Geometry, and Pre-calc and go straight to Calculus or it would make sense to you.

Or he’s the one that realizes that if you promise a student unlimited pencils to do a calculus test, it won’t change the result in any possible way.

If you couldn’t finish that test with just 1 pencil, having a box of them isn’t going to make things go better for you. The same is true of the enrage timer. If you couldn’t finish it within the normal timer, you’ve got bigger problems to worry about than the enrage timer.

Elena.3642:

Without enrage timers, the dps requirements for a lot of raid bosses would be much lower. Is that a good thing? That is debatable. In my opinion everything that allows players to get away from current Berserker meta which is common in most builds is a good thing. Being able to not just go full dps and have some survivability (as not all players are good at dodging and have good enough reflexes to survive as glass cannons) would seem like a welcomed break. Requirements for pug groups would also probably be bit lower, though I am sure the best of raiders out there would still go for runs that take less than 10 mins instead of hour-long fights of slowly wilting down easiest of bosses.

Are you being serious? Do you really think that “players who are not good at dodging” even deserve to beat a raid boss? Raids were announced as an elite group content, there is nothing elite about it if someone who can’t even frikkin press a key at a proper time can beat it.
Where’s this entitlement coming from? Just because GW2 is a stupidly easy game, doesn’t mean that everyone must have access to everything. If you can’t even meet the super low bar GW2 set with its encounters (raids included), then you don’t get the rewards. There’s plenty of other content in the game.

People have managed to beat most bosses with half the amount of people. If you can’t deal enough damage within the time, it means you’re doing something wrong. Either you have a bad build, or you’re playing poorly. Those special snowflakes like Nemesis always used to claim their builds are just as good (or even better) than meta builds, well guess what…. now they’ve been proven wrong. Yes, you can deviate from the meta slightly if it fits your style, but you can go only so far before you stop being able to play the game efficiently. Your PTV flamethrower engi or signet of the hunt longbow ranger who pewpews from 1200 away simply won’t be able to coplete the raid, and it’s good it’s that way.
If you personally are good, but your guildmates are dragging the team down, simply cut off the dead weight. You might actually have a shot at beating raids, but not with them. They have useless builds, they know it full well (since it’s obvious those builds perform poorly in raids, and for that matter – everywhere else in the game as well) and yet they refuse to change them up.

Edit: Thanks Vinceman for pointing that out, but not even with the amount of time I’m spending around these forums I can imagine myself reading through this whole thread. I’m glad to hear that OP has come to his senses, others will hopefully follow. May this thread be an example that most complaints about raids are being made by uninformed people and that the difficulty tuning is perfect just the way it is.

Tarasicodissa, sometimes it helps to read the whole thread.
The OP has recant his first post in his latest.

Blaeys.3102:

I’ve said this same thing many times.

The counterargument that most give is that they timers are there to discourage “cheesing” the fight in all Nomads gear or something.

My response is, so what if people want to do it in all Nomads or something else non-meta that allows them to do the fight slower than the current groups? I say let them.

Just add in gold/silver/bronze reward tracks based on how fast the boss is killed. That way, you still reward the work the current groups are putting in – while opening the fights to a wider array of play styles.

This would allow players and communities to control their own kind of “easy mode.” Guilds looking for a more casual experience could take groups in designed around experiencing the fights rather than killing fast.

To me, this would be a win-win. Rewards would still be based on skill, but the experience would be open to a wider range of playstyles.

Yes – let’s have people safely clear the boss in 1 hour in their full nomad gear while they’re watching netflix. I’m pretty sure that would become the case.

This again? Really?

An enrage timer that results in the boss doing more damage is a raid mechanic. In GW2, it’s not as if the timer procs an insta-wipe. All it means is that there might be a bit more skill required if the timer is reached than if the boss dies before the timer is reached.

In case anyone forgot, explorable dungeons were supposed to be for “coordinated groups of skilled players.” Raids are a stand-in for that content. Whatever mechanics exist should stand.

I kind of want all those against enrage timers to prove that they consistently reach the enrage timer. You know, to actually show that the enrage timer is an issue instead of a lack of knowledge about the mechanics.

Elena.3642:

After few hours of waiting in LFG yesterday with no real luck (apart from couple people telling me that I should play condi reaper or try rising other class if I want to play power and an offer to join raiding community in Discord) I finally managed to get into raid for Vale Guardian thanks to awesome AnariiUK, who offered a spot so I could unlock raid mastery.

And I got both amazed and speechless as I saw boss melt with like roughly three minutes to spare in enrage timer.

After seeing that – well, I can’t really say that you guys are wrong anymore, can I? You are right, after witnessing a perfect execution of Vale Guardian, I now can agree that yes – enrage timer seems to be fairly set with plenty of time with a good group that know mechanics and can carry even newbie like me (I still managed to get teleported maybe… twice by blue attack? Sorry Anarii!).

So now that I know what a huge waste of time it was to start this discussion and how wrong I actually am I wonder – what could be done to give newbies like me easier time to get into this content?

I’m not sure if anything can be done from developer side of things. Nerfing anything would only really annoy those raiders who love the current challenge (even though after seeing pros in action I now wonder if they are getting any challenge at all from those encounters anymore), so what could be done to allow players to get easier time?

Well, one idea pops up to see if someone could maybe write a guide with tricks and tips that make boss fights bit easier. I’m not sure if there is one anywhere in these forums or somewhere else, I obviously will need to look harder. I did notice one trick during Vale Guardian fight that I personally didn’t know about – Anarii and his group seem to not send anyone to green guardian during split, just focusing on mowing down blue and letting green come to them (or that is what it looked to me, was too busy gaping to really play close attention). Are there any more tricks like that which would make encounters easier? Do any of you guys know where I could find them if there are? And what advice you could offer for groups that are getting into raiding? These are the current questions I have and I will gladly accept any and all advice you can offer.

Thank you all for offers of help, keeping this discussion civil and overall being amazing and nice people. See you all in game.

Without sounding rude, I want to thank you Elena. This is precisely the response many of us in this forum wanted to hear with concern to one of the many topics about the state of raiding. It’s terribly difficult and very brave to admit something like this, and beyond anything else I am very glad that you too were open to the ideas being thrown around.

I believe that you touched on the very crux of where both sides more or less divide on, what constructive suggestions or prospects would make Raiding easier for someone not accustomed to it, without diminishing the raid itself.

I am personally against diminishing the difficulty, nor would I believe an ‘easy-mode’ solution would resolve things given the several points made about what ‘easy-mode’ raiding would take, the costs, longevity, rewards, etc.

So, right now we have to work from the current status quo. Which means from our Raider’s perspective, some very fundamental tips would be:

- Be mentally prepared to Wipe, and improve upon failure.

This is the foremost important aspect, these encounters are supposed to be fairly severe in difficulty compared to the rest of the game. Coordination, Rotations, Positioning, all of these are major aspects that each player needs to get down. Mechanics for each boss have varying levels that challenge all these aspects, and some are more relaxed than others which allow for, as you might have seen, being ‘carried’ a bit on certain phases.

The problem I see most of all is that GW2 has not had anything remotely close to the level of dedication for going in again and again, improving on wiping. Nothing comes close to spending hours on a boss with a completely new group of raiders, and because it is such a massive difference many would feel put off by it. If dungeons somehow kept that same level of difficulty from the start of launch until now I believe we wouldn’t have so many of these threads about raiding.

That being said, if you can overcome this mental hurdle and dedicate time to killing a boss, expecting at least a few hours that night to attempting it, regardless of success or failure you will improve drastically for future attempts. Oh and thankfully Arenanet put in consolation shards for good attempts, which is a very valuable currency to earn regardless of win or loss.

- Do your research, practice on the standing golem, consider your abilities for each encounter

Build + rotation versus what does the boss do. Pro-tip, Slothasor’s fear after he wakes from sleep is a quick double tick of 5s fear within a second. Blocks can actually stop this fear, so Rev Staff 3 (since you are in staff from the CC), Warrior Shield 5, etc are important enough to make sure you yourself don’t get feared.

This kind of thing isn’t something I should be telling new raiders, they could derive this themselves if they consider all the capabilities of what a boss does. Albeit, when a new Raid wing releases this kind of information is actually uncertain but that’s an entirely different set of circumstances outside the nature of this thread.

Point being, you can never be too prepared for a boss, get invested, and that gets you interested.

I believe those two points are some of the big ones.

It seems to me like part of the issue with your guild is that it sounds a bit like a ragtag band of people trying to conquer content that is designed to cater for a more coordinated and efficient team. Like you brought a power reaper to VG and other members of your guild raid team are running suboptimal gears/builds etc.

While I agree that min-maxing can create an environment that is hostile to casual players and can seem like it sucks the fun out of everything, bringing the right gear and skills will make it a smoother experience especially if your team is not all that experienced with raids.

I get that people are comfortable playing with certain weapons and have always used these utilities/traits that worked very well for them in other content, but you do have to know your class well and be flexible in that regard, and you do have to know the boss mechanics to get through. It’s not really a matter of ’I’ll play how I want’ or ‘raiders are elitist’ or ‘DPS check or get kicked’ anything like that, but it’s like trying to hammer a square peg into a round hole or trying to drill kitten with a screwdriver. It is just that much less agonising if you bring the right tools for the right job.

I’m currently raiding with a static group that is struggling at Gorseval because we’re hitting the enrage timer (once you hit the timer you can’t break the wall and everyone dies), but we’re getting better with each session. We recognise that the problem is not the timer – we’re hitting the enrage timer because too often people are getting knocked down, trapped in eggs, hit by orbs, ccs are too slow, etc. and we lose too much DPS especially if everyone has to stop and rez. Sometimes it is easy to blame something that is ticking in the corner of the screen but the problem is often something you won’t notice as you’re mashing buttons frantically crapping out on your rotations while trying to cope with 3 or 4 boss mechanics red circles green circles black circles flame walls poison etc. simultaneously going on.