Guild Wars 2

Dahkeus.8243:

Satenia.9025:

3. Builds/skills being mandatory: I’m thinking of boon-stripping here for the blue guardian or again the condi-damage for the red guardian. I have no doubts that other raid encounters will feature similar or even extended variants for this. This will make some classes preferable over others, maybe even the elite spec of some. Meaning that a player will likely want to have several classes available for raids, depending on what is being asked for. These characters may require anything from enough % of world completion (elite spec?) to multiple sets of ascended equipment (see point 1).

I don’t think this is really something to worry about at this point. The blue boss only has a single boon that doesn’t reapply very often. It’s not going to be hard for a group of 10 people to have at least 1 necro, thief, engineer, or mesmer. Last night I got in and was just messing around against the bosses with a friend and I was able to keep the boon stripped by myself as an engi just by using throw mine.

I expect there will be some complaining about groups that require X profession, but more than likely those groups don’t really need that one exact profession and are just asking for it because they don’t know the other ways to deal with a certain mechanic.

Well, as I initially stated, such matters may not seem like much when you look at them individually. However, I ask to consider the overall picture:

First of all, there is going to be a meta for this. This means that for each raid there will be a selection of classes, builds and stats that are being considered optimal. Since there is no official lfg-system support for raids, rest assured that any random team attempting to do this will absolutely want to ensure that the meta-requirements are met. What you currently see in dungeons pales in comparison to this (… and consider how many tears are cried over it already).

Secondly, if you are playing with regulars (guildies, friends), you have a far smaller pool of potential players available. Suddenly, having to come up with a combination of X classes fully decked in (multiple) ascended gear might become an issue. This puts you precisely into the position where you will want to have 2-3 characters available to pick from each. That is quite an investment…

I honestly had a lot of fun with the 6 hours I got to raid over the last 2 days and while the first 3 I think may need to be a little harder (both groups I was with had no problems with them once we got the mechanics down) Its the boss that was weird for me when we fought it.

Reasons being is that anet claimed they were going to stop the zerk meta in raids saying we would need more which in this case it is kind of true but while we do not Need healers (they are nice) we defiantly Need Zerkers and Condi builds.

Honestly the way I think about it is the damage of the 4th boss is fine but if you want to make the zerk meta go away and make it so multiple builds can play so everyone on any class can play (the play style that anet has been promoting and attempting to do for raids) then the bosses hp needs to be lowered as well as the rage timer increased so that it balances out so that you break the zerker meta and make it so any class can play.

Yea I like the idea of someone tanking (don’t need them to be a guardian either I was face tanking the boss on a reaper with soldier’s /valk’s set for 6 minutes straight) but the fact that we Need zerkers to beat the boss is counter intuitive to what anet has been promoting sense raids were announced.

Just my 2 cents I had a lot of fun trying it and I went in the first time with no info on the boss and mobs and still managed to get to the boss thinking it was going to be a fight about like the wyvern fight but with more mechanics.

P.S. I am not saying make the boss easy if people decide to go full zerks but I am saying that going full zerks should be discouraged (actually think about your states not just your damage people) but at the same time making it possible for people who don’t want to go full glass cannon to deal damage lol.

I haven’t gotten to try the raids, So my only feedback is that me (and many others in my squad) got Disconnected as soon as we agree’d to enter the raid (via the popup)
And afterwards were unable to re-enter. (in my case I got to try again, I DC’d and then I came back and the squad UI was missing and what not. (but I was still in the squad)
I couldn’t re-enter and so I left to try and rejoin (using the friends list, some of my friends were in the raid in the squad I was in.) but the option wouldn’t appear to join squad.

So it might be kinda like the issue with fractals when they first came out, where you couldn’t rejoin if you lost connection. (and someone almost always lost connection.)

I will say though, I’m having trouble just playing any of the new map. (Silverwastes and Dry Top are the same) as my laptop can’t handle it well. (I have an average of 4 FPS in those areas) I’m not sure if that is connected what so ever.

So I think the squads might need a bit more work to be able to rejoin after you’ve disconnected.

kill timers reinforce zerk meta hardcore, they should be straight out dumped

The absolute only way to ever “break” the idea of berserker is to eliminate the stat combo. Otherwise, no matter how questionable it is, people will still pick it simply because it’s the most damage. If the game had launched without the stat combo we wouldn’t likely care too much but taking it away now is just going to cause an uproar.

Keep in mind, the thought isn’t to abolish berserker players but rather to break up this so-called berserker meta. Which, btw, doesn’t actually exist. There’s a small handful of players that live and die by it but the vast majority of players play whatever they want. Sometimes it can feel like the majority because we all post here on the forums but in reality we are a very small section of the GW2 community.

A few quick observations about the final boss:

The mechanics seem like they’re in a fairly decent place, and damage dealt to the party seems pretty acceptable. The major criticism I have is with the health pool. It drains almost obnoxiously slowly relative to the repetitious nature of the his mechanics. Paired with the enrage timer, this is still pretty heavily favoring berserker tactics.

I think a trade off of ~25-33% health reduction, with the addition of more environmentally aware attacks (seeker orbs) would suffice to make this a more appropriately challenging encounter.

Honestly, IMO the zerker meta has never really been the problem, but the encounters that Anet has made in the past. Easily LoS, stackable bosses with an auto attack every 10s that is easily dodged.

These raids are a step in the right direction. Having zerker be optimal is not the end of the world it’s fine. I do not know why people find the stat combo so toxic. What was most exciting to me was that even though the Vale Guardian was decently easy after we got used to the mechanics, (we still couldn’t get it below 85%…puggable in the future) people were still making valuable choices with the skills they slotted and traits they took. We needed a condi team, a boon team, and everyone had to have decent dps thrown in with a druid for a little safety net. We needed skills for the break bar and the boss has to be kited in a specific way.

Those are the things that matter, a mechanically interesting boss. Just because someone ran zerker because it was OPTIMAL as a build doesn’t mean that raids are doomed.

As for feedback.

Earlier bosses are there to teach mechanics but they are terribly boring and easy to kill. The blue boss is alright but red and green are just too mechanically uninteresting. The way you have them set up in the encounter might have left little creative wiggle room for giving them more skills as you wont see them in the Vale Guardian so I don’t have much feedback on how to improve those fights.

The Vale guardian is in a good spot. Just hard enough where it punishes people for not positioning right and just easy enough for a FIRST RAID BOSS. I would hope the encounters after this are harder because the fight is very easy so as long as you stand in the lightning and keep track of your own health, druids aren’t necessary for this boss.

And for all those people who are protesting to get rid of the enrage timer…That mechanic is there for a reason. That reason being anyone in full nomads could beat the raid and all it would take is time. Leaving raids bland and uninteresting. There has already been a beta first on downing the raid boss. All it takes is coordination.

From what I’ve seen in Card’s and his Buddies Guardian Vale fight the whole thing looks like an amazingly fun and already well balanced encounter.

They seem to have run lots of heavy damage oriented choices so it wasn’t super close on the timer in the end. And they all definitely know well how to keep all the group’s damage enhancing effects up.
So I think the timer will be pretty close for many other groups.

In general I am no fan at all of enrage timers.

They don’t add any fun and take away the choice for less proficient or learning groups to trade off between quicker but more risky fight and a much prolonged but less risky fight by gearing lots more defensively.

I think enabling super defensive strategies would not take away from the difficulty.

Groups running those would have to fulfill all the boss mechanics over a much longer period of time and for many more times in a row than a more offensively set up group.

So that would still be fair but enable reasonable access to such fun mechanic heavy encounters for players that may be less proficient in offensive group stats application.

Give Leaderboards and bonus reward for pro min/max players

The pros on super speed kill time records can have Leaderboards instead for going super quick offensive strategy route.
Adventures will have them, so just extend them to Raid encounters as well, that would be super cool for the high end players.
If that was already announced as a feature and I missed it then well ignore this paragraph.

My suggested alternative to enrage timers is this:

Make the boss progress towards an enrage state by counting amounts of successful and unsuccessful player interaction with the encounter mechanic.

Whenver the group does not successfully meet encouter mechanic interactions (like blocking orbs, not standing in fire, not boon stripping, etc…) over a check time intervall, or the ratio of fails to successful interaction is bad, make the boss progress a bit towards enrage state.

That way the encounter will still have a hard enrage end, if the group ignores or just fails at the encounter’s mechanic, yet doesn’t put them on the dreadful damage race timer.

You can still do partial damage checks like burst/focus fire or sustained damage upkeep checks as part of a mechanic though. I just don’t see much fun in the overal you die then timer concept as it does not check for ppl actually playing the encounter but how well they again min/max DPS within in it.

Let’s just leave that min/max DPS game to the pro’s running for raid leaderboards.
Many other players will also have fun without it playing these cool mechanic oriented encounters, so just let them.

tldr

Please consider using enrage trigger by mechanic fail instead of enrage timers in the raid future.

Quells.2498:

Keep in mind, the thought isn’t to abolish berserker players but rather to break up this so-called berserker meta.

Which won’t ever happen if the things like enrage timers get introduced. Especially if those are so tuned, that they actually enforce zerker even more.

Frankly, i do not see the point of enrage timers at all. If a group wants to go full bunker, and slowly kill the mob over a 3 hour slog, let them. In that time they are far more likely to get tired, start making mistakes and wipe anyway. The only thing this mechanic does is making certain stat sets (and tiers – see the “ascended are required/recommended” threads) necessary. And too much insistence on gear over skill is a bad thing.

There is very little about the boss mechanically that I dislike. All the mechanics are very sound and work great together.

My only problem is the enrage timer and the tuning of the numbers. I’ve seen one group of players clear the boss with 4 condi zerker equivalents and 6 full zerkers; they were using very defensive skill sets and possibly defensive traits, so it’s a step in the right direction; but I feel like a full zerker team shouldn’t be able to clear the boss.

My group had 2-3 zerkers and a few tanky direct damagers, a few condition builds built to a vary degree of survivability, and a couple of support players. We got the boss to 50% before we had to stop because of people needing to sleep. Our damage wasn’t nearly high enough to beat the time, and I question if it’s even possibly with a more defensive group.

I think the numbers need to be tweaked in the direction of people built half defensive/ half offensive; that would mean increasing the enrage timer (or reducing the HP of the boss) and increasing the raid’s damage pressure to incentivise more defensive stats or more support roles in the raid. There is a very specific balance to strike here in between people dying to unavoidable damage (causing less DPS) and people staying alive but not doing enough damage.

Right now; full zerks can clear it, but a full group of zerk/tank hybrids most likely will have a lot of difficulty, and too many defensive stats make the fight impossible. That’s not a good thing if you’re trying to kill the zerk meta. But I think the timer needs to be there because it makes the raid balance damage and defensiveness; but right now you still have no need to balance defense and you get punished for doing so.

Dare I say; that the stat combo of power/precision/ferocity is too good? I refrained from mentioning it because it seems like an extreme solution to the problem; but perhaps a nerf to this stat combo would be a suitable solution to the problem. Mind you, not so that they’re garbage, but in line with other stat choices. The benefit you get from trading ferocity for a defensive stat isn’t worth it for example.

Two examples of a possible change: Maybe making ferocity the high stat on zerkers; or maybe turning the ferocity into vitality, making it into a stat set we don’t have already. I don’t think it’s much of a bad idea to make it so that if you wanted precision and ferocity with power you have to combine certain sets together… this has become a bit of a tangent; but this could be part of the perceived problem in addition to the numbers of the raid itself.

Astralporing.1957:

Quells.2498:

Keep in mind, the thought isn’t to abolish berserker players but rather to break up this so-called berserker meta.

Which won’t ever happen if the things like enrage timers get introduced. Especially if those are so tuned, that they actually enforce zerker even more.

Frankly, i do not see the point of enrage timers at all. If a group wants to go full bunker, and slowly kill the mob over a 3 hour slog, let them. In that time they are far more likely to get tired, start making mistakes and wipe anyway. The only thing this mechanic does is making certain stat sets (and tiers – see the “ascended are required/recommended” threads) necessary. And too much insistence on gear over skill is a bad thing.

I’ve always been a fan of “soft” enrages, ones that when the enrage timer is hit, will instantly kill a glass cannon group, but only injure a bunker group. (as in, if a DPS focused group is failing an enrage, they should be punished, a defensive group makes it a fight of attrition)

in FFXIV, the second raid boss (Allagan Defense System) had two ways of going about its fight: either you played Hot Potato with a debuff and avoided its other mechanics, OR, you let it enrage and killed it whilst healing through its AoEs (in an amusing inversion to the GW2 community, the FFXIV playerbase greatly opted for the far slower option (as in,it took 2 mins to kill the boss normally, but 12 to do the enrage method), because MY GOD WAS ALLAGAN ROT A PAIN)

the devs said they were actually impressed with the playerbase’s ingenuity and left it in as a valid tactic

I’ve noticed that consumables such as Fire Elemental Powder can be used inside Spirit Vale. Is this intended? I was expecting these sort of small advantages would be disabled.

While the mechanics of the encounters allowed for a variety of builds to be implemented, I still felt that they bosses themselves were not very epic.
In fact, the whole area seemed more like a pvp tutorial(raid tutorial?) than a raid itself.
The encounter was fun but I was hoping for something a bit more “cool” than some glowing multicoloured guys

Malthurius.6870:

Right now; full zerks can clear it, but a full group of zerk/tank hybrids most likely will have a lot of difficulty, and too many defensive stats make the fight impossible.

No group has killed it with full berserker gear.

My team was able to beat the “final” boss, required multiple wipes about 2.5 hours of attempts.

Everyone understand that this is the first raid wing boss encounter, I don’t believe they would put their most difficult encounter first.

The mechanics are relatively fun and difficult to a degree. This was the only PvE content where I had to pay attention to my screen for the entire duration of a fight. This is a huge improvement from current content.

Couples things:
The guardians colors seem to be place-holder skins (could be wrong)
The leashing on the guardians in “Pillar Phases” act kind of odd, they just run off with no reason.
You can get locked out of the arena as the fight starts even after you have gotten the main boss in combat. For the first 5-10 seconds of a fight and if you’re caught outside the ring you get insta-killed (this is kinda annoying).
I think speeding up the portal timers (AoE proc time) would make the raid way more difficult and reactive.
Sometimes seeing the AoE ring for the portals is kinda hard with 10 people using heavy particle effect skills. Is there a way to make them more prominent in comparison to your ally AoE’s.
The “mini bosses/trash mobs/training mobs” are really awesome, allows you to have an idea of what to expect and practice with your groups.
The break bars are relatively easy to handle and doesn’t really put much pressure on us, during the break bar phases maybe implement a a higher dps or even another mechanic to make these parts a little more difficult.

I don’t think this first raid wing should be that difficult because this should be the introduction to the challenging content.
Hopefully, the level of coordination and difficulty continues to increase and that this is just a precursor for what is to come with the rest of the raids/wings.

Nokaru.7831:

Malthurius.6870:

Right now; full zerks can clear it, but a full group of zerk/tank hybrids most likely will have a lot of difficulty, and too many defensive stats make the fight impossible.

No group has killed it with full berserker gear.

There are 2 threads on the forums right now that report their group being dominately zerker.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/WORLD-FIRST-VALE-GUARDIAN-KILL/first#post5573316
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/LOD-Vale-Guardian-Down/first#post5573244

They each have 1 slightly tankier character and 1 celestial respectively. That’s not good enough to say that full zerker can’t clear it.

Malthurius.6870:

Right now; full zerks can clear it, but a full group of zerk/tank hybrids most likely will have a lot of difficulty, and too many defensive stats make the fight impossible.

Malthurius.6870:

There are 2 threads on the forums right now that report their group being dominately zerker.

I’m glad you finally corrected yourself. We agree then, that nobody’s killed this in full berserker.

Nokaru.7831:

Malthurius.6870:

Right now; full zerks can clear it, but a full group of zerk/tank hybrids most likely will have a lot of difficulty, and too many defensive stats make the fight impossible.

Malthurius.6870:

There are 2 threads on the forums right now that report their group being dominately zerker.

I’m glad you finally corrected yourself. We agree then, that nobody’s killed this in full berserker.

I said ‘can’ before, never claimed one had. So I haven’t changed my stance.

Inverse.2967:

My suggested alternative to enrage timers is this:

Make the boss progress towards an enrage state by counting amounts of successful and unsuccessful player interaction with the encounter mechanic.

Whenver the group does not successfully meet encouter mechanic interactions (like blocking orbs, not standing in fire, not boon stripping, etc…) over a check time intervall, or the ratio of fails to successful interaction is bad, make the boss progress a bit towards enrage state.

That way the encounter will still have a hard enrage end, if the group ignores or just fails at the encounter’s mechanic, yet doesn’t put them on the dreadful damage race timer.

You can still do partial damage checks like burst/focus fire or sustained damage upkeep checks as part of a mechanic though. I just don’t see much fun in the overal you die then timer concept as it does not check for ppl actually playing the encounter but how well they again min/max DPS within in it.

Let’s just leave that min/max DPS game to the pro’s running for raid leaderboards.
Many other players will also have fun without it playing these cool mechanic oriented encounters, so just let them.

tldr

Please consider using enrage trigger by mechanic fail instead of enrage timers in the raid future.

This I quite like as it’s no longer a DPS race to drop the boss’s health but a marathon involving the encounters mechanics. Make to many mistakes & your still going to wipe but allows for a larger variant of group playstyles.

Calcifire.1864:

I’ve always been a fan of “soft” enrages, ones that when the enrage timer is hit, will instantly kill a glass cannon group, but only injure a bunker group. (as in, if a DPS focused group is failing an enrage, they should be punished, a defensive group makes it a fight of attrition)

in FFXIV, the second raid boss (Allagan Defense System) had two ways of going about its fight: either you played Hot Potato with a debuff and avoided its other mechanics, OR, you let it enrage and killed it whilst healing through its AoEs (in an amusing inversion to the GW2 community, the FFXIV playerbase greatly opted for the far slower option (as in,it took 2 mins to kill the boss normally, but 12 to do the enrage method), because MY GOD WAS ALLAGAN ROT A PAIN)

the devs said they were actually impressed with the playerbase’s ingenuity and left it in as a valid tactic

That’s quite cool. So its basically two fights in one providing two levels of playstyle completions. Squads can test their skills against a DPS race or ability to survive through an enraged battle. Two differing achievements with players able to brag about complete mastery if they can complete the battle both ways.

This would be nice to see going forward with all GW2 raids. Both battles, DPS race & Enraged mode would require just as much skill for completion & should be equally rewarded & possible. Some truly amazing cosmetics could locked behind & require both modes of completion.

Of note with the enraged mode you still need to survive through the DPS race part of the fight & them smoothly swap into a different paced battle that has a high level of sustained damage overall & maybe some new mechanics to boot.

A crazy idea is taking this slightly further allowing for 2+ differing secondary modes that depend on what was achieved in the first stage. Provide multiply successful completions playstyle options that each regard a high level of skill.

This would also add a little more re-playability allowing players to choice how they what to complete said raid contact this week not always doing it the same way.

Allow for both a DPS Race completion & a Enrage Battle completion of raid bosses.

Btw, here is one little thing that does not yet seem to be working as intended:

Possible issue with the boss in the vale. The teleporter aoes are sometimes spawned entirely within the circle that everyone has to stack in. Occasionally this made it impossible for us to stop the aoe from wiping the raid. This seems like a mechanical oversight that is a bit over the top. If we have to stand on point A, and point A is covered in a mechanic that will remove you from point A, thus killing you… perhaps the positioning of said mechanic should be rethought.

Just my opinion. Otherwise, looks like a promising start. head and shoulders above dungeons so far. Keep going from here.

Raid Races
A cool function would be the ability to challenge guilds (other teams) to a Raid Race. The way I see this working is a simple UI that places a small raid race track somewhere in your UI. This has important encounters marked along the race track which track when each team successfully completes them.

As this is only a completion encounter tracker this would allow for these teams to play at anytime throughout the lockout period. This means each team does not need to be playing at the same time & that the race doesn’t need to be completed in one sitting providing flexibility to work it in to players weekly schedules & available playtimes.

A the time of lockout reset or once both teams have completed the raid a winner is announced.

There could be many option & race requirements;

• DPS race bosses kills ONLY
• Enraged bosses kills ONLY
• Limited encounters race.
• Full trash mobs + bosses clears.
• Profession lockouts or required.

You could have differing leader-boards for differing race categories truly turning this into a PvE competitive scene.

Finally got a good go of the raids today, Real enjoy the concept they have done to them, lots of mechanics to keep everyone on their toes, the implication of put ppl into specific roles and specs is rly nice (i.e. control, healing, direct and condi damage). Only thing i found was the timer was to short to get the job done and only if every has full zerk gear and meta builds might the boss be downed. If this is the case then we wont be getting away from the full zerker meta. But im sure they will be looked as it is only beta. Otherwise rly enjoyed the raid i got a chance to play.

Inverse.2967:

In general I am no fan at all of enrage timers.

They don’t add any fun and take away the choice for less proficient or learning groups to trade off between quicker but more risky fight and a much prolonged but less risky fight by gearing lots more defensively.

I think enabling super defensive strategies would not take away from the difficulty.

Groups running those would have to fulfill all the boss mechanics over a much longer period of time and for many more times in a row than a more offensively set up group.

So that would still be fair but enable reasonable access to such fun mechanic heavy encounters for players that may be less proficient in offensive group stats application.

…

My suggested alternative to enrage timers is this:

Make the boss progress towards an enrage state by counting amounts of successful and unsuccessful player interaction with the encounter mechanic.

Whenver the group does not successfully meet encouter mechanic interactions (like blocking orbs, not standing in fire, not boon stripping, etc…) over a check time intervall, or the ratio of fails to successful interaction is bad, make the boss progress a bit towards enrage state.

That way the encounter will still have a hard enrage end, if the group ignores or just fails at the encounter’s mechanic, yet doesn’t put them on the dreadful damage race timer.

You can still do partial damage checks like burst/focus fire or sustained damage upkeep checks as part of a mechanic though. I just don’t see much fun in the overal you die then timer concept as it does not check for ppl actually playing the encounter but how well they again min/max DPS within in it.

Let’s just leave that min/max DPS game to the pro’s running for raid leaderboards.
Many other players will also have fun without it playing these cool mechanic oriented encounters, so just let them.

tldr

Please consider using enrage trigger by mechanic fail instead of enrage timers in the raid future.

Fully support this. Making instanced content into a DPS race is not the way to go. Have a boss enrage based on messing up the mechanics of the fight, not by some timer running out. Players are always less salty if they fail a fight due to messing up a mechanic as opposed to a timer saying, “lol, lern 2 zerk noob”.

I agree with you guys. The timer is there to make the fight challenging. What that also means is that the fight isn’t challenging at all without the timer.

The raid bosses should have mechanics so brutal that would kill you. That should be the difficulty, to survive, not to make it in X time. In my opinion the Guardian Vale boss lacks of mechanics strong enough to push players to the limits where they will die. Once everyone understands the fight, this boss will be just a DPS race and bye bye to the challenge. With true challenging mechanics, this would never happen because the sense of danger would be always there.

Elrey.5472:

I agree with you guys. The timer is there to make the fight challenging. What that also means is that the fight isn’t challenging at all without the timer.

The raid bosses should have mechanics so brutal that would kill you. That should be the difficulty, to survive, not to make it in X time. In my opinion the Guardian Vale boss lacks of mechanics strong enough to push players to the limits where they will die. Once everyone understands the fight, this boss will be just a DPS race and bye bye to the challenge. With true challenging mechanics, this would never happen because the sense of danger would be always there.

There are mechanics that kill in the fight (failing to stack in the lightning, and failing to kite the boss out of the AE post split phase); failing in the execution will cause problems.

I think the main problem with the timer is that it forces defense stats out of the game. I have my doubts that the fight is doable with a group that’s even half tanky. That’s not acceptable; and it’s that way because of the harsh time limit.

I think the damage numbers should be tweaked up, and the timer either increased or the health of the boss reduced.

This is just an example of how they can design a raid, it does not mean all the encounters will have the same check. If you want to promote diversity in fights, you don’t design all of them the same way. In other game it is no surprise that the first boss is a DPS check (reading a gear check) just to be sure you can pull enough damage to go further.
The other bosses will probably have something else.
On the other hand, but I haven’t played it so I may be wrong, is the fact that there is just a timer and no “lorish” explanation like “the platform will explode kill him fast” or “if you don’t do it in that time will have to use or mega laser and you’ll be wiped”.
It doesn’t bring anything to the encounter but I would find it more immersive

Enrage timers are important to prevent people from playing too cautiously such that everyone is super bunker and it takes thirty plus minutes to complete. They’re important to force people into a certain measure of glassiness and they also are good for the developers to balance around. Enrage timers absolutely and without question should stay. It’d be cool if the enrage timer had a lore reason for existing, though, no argument there.

Other than that I quite like the encounter. I have collected a lot of the repeating feedback from this thread and will send it along to the ANet team later today as part of my report. I expect to finish getting my report out by COB on the west coast, Crystal, so you guys will likely see it tomorrow morning.

@Ranael, I agree with you. They’re going easy on design, and this boss pretty much looks like an introduction to anti-zerker meta, so it still allows zerker meta to a degree, but as far as what they’ve publicly announced new encounters will completely require more than a full offensive stat gear.

Berserker gear isn’t bad and will never go away in any of the raid wings. The only reason anyone has ever brought tanky stuff or healers to a raid ever in the history of MMOs is to provide minimal necessary support so that the DPS characters can perform their max DPS rotations unimpeded.

The very fact that people winning have one person in clerics and some people using toughness at all is indicative that gear diversity is being achieved. You don’t have to get rid of sinister or berserker gear to somehow create better encounters or better class diversity.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Berserker gear isn’t bad and will never go away in any of the raid wings. The only reason anyone has ever brought tanky stuff or healers to a raid ever in the history of MMOs is to provide minimal necessary support so that the DPS characters can perform their max DPS rotations unimpeded.

The very fact that people winning have one person in clerics and some people using toughness at all is indicative that gear diversity is being achieved. You don’t have to get rid of sinister or berserker gear to somehow create better encounters or better class diversity.

If 10 players can clear a raid in full DPS gear then the raids are poorly designed. I’m not saying that’s the case with GW2 raids I haven’t been able to get in yet (logging in now) but they are meant to be challenging and if you can face roll them, they aren’t.

I’m on the fence for the current state of enrage timers.

Yes they are a necessary evil, but they could be done better.

I.E a positive reinforcement tool, If you do the mechanics proper the boss loses a stack of rage. If you miss a mechanic it gains multiple stacks at x stacks it enrages for X duration or until its stacks are set back to null.

This still promotes people not being too tanky as you can have DPS being factored in the background as a means for gaining stacks of rage. But ultimately will open up more diversity than 1 tank, rest DPS.

Just 2 cents on how to make enrage less, timer focused and more meaningful mechanically.

Rising Dusk.2408:

The only reason anyone has ever brought tanky stuff or healers to a raid ever in the history of MMOs is to provide minimal necessary support so that the DPS characters can perform their max DPS rotations unimpeded.

Exactly right; which is why I think the minimum survivability for the raid as a whole should be higher. I’m not foolish enough to completely scorn dps stats; I was actually relieved that full dps builds were more than usable still. I don’t want any stats off the table, so it seems counter productive to me to push out defensive stats with a timer that requires a predominately DPS group. I think the balance of support/survivability to damage dealers is skewed too far towards damage dealers.

My greatest fear is that a group with 9 damage builds is the minimum requirement to clear the boss. I feel like the balance should be closer to 6-7 damage builds and 3-4 defensive/support/hybrid builds. I agree, at least 1 non-dps build in the raid is a step in the right direction; but I think they should keep stepping.

Aidenwolf.5964:

If 10 players can clear a raid in full DPS gear then the raids are poorly designed. I’m not saying that’s the case with GW2 raids I haven’t been able to get in yet (logging in now) but they are meant to be challenging and if you can face roll them, they aren’t.

If ANY 10 players would do this (almost the situation of dungeons right now) I’d agree. But one can always think about the possibility that the 2 or 3 wipes that have been advertised were achieved by really good players

Aidenwolf.5964:

If 10 players can clear a raid in full DPS gear then the raids are poorly designed. I’m not saying that’s the case with GW2 raids I haven’t been able to get in yet (logging in now) but they are meant to be challenging and if you can face roll them, they aren’t.

You’re making the false assumption that if 10 players in DPS gear can beat a raid that means they ‘facerolled’ it. Au contraire, that means that they’re exceptional players far above the average gamer and compensated for the gear difference by playing perfectly.

Remember that GW2 has active defenses, and a berserker that runs active defense utilities instead of pure DPS utilities may actually do less damage than a guy in knight’s who can now run full DPS utilities. Every dodge is a DPS loss for most builds. There are so many factors, and what gear you wear really is based on your team compositions and build plans and is just one facet of the whole. Suffice it to say that just because it can be beaten (and we don’t even know if this is true yet) by 10 people in DPS gear doesn’t say anything about the actual difficulty of the encounter itself.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Aidenwolf.5964:

If 10 players can clear a raid in full DPS gear then the raids are poorly designed. I’m not saying that’s the case with GW2 raids I haven’t been able to get in yet (logging in now) but they are meant to be challenging and if you can face roll them, they aren’t.

You’re making the false assumption that if 10 players in DPS gear can beat a raid that means they ‘facerolled’ it. Au contraire, that means that they’re exceptional players far above the average gamer and compensated for the gear difference by playing perfectly.

Remember that GW2 has active defenses, and a berserker that runs active defense utilities instead of pure DPS utilities may actually do less damage than a guy in knight’s who can now run full DPS utilities. Every dodge is a DPS loss for most builds. There are so many factors, and what gear you wear really is based on your team compositions and build plans and is just one facet of the whole. Suffice it to say that just because it can be beaten (and we don’t even know if this is true yet) by 10 people in DPS gear doesn’t say anything about the actual difficulty of the encounter itself.

It means the “raid” design didn’t compensate for the mitigation mechanics of GW2’s classes and yes, that is poor design.

Meta Zerk (the most correct name should be DPS META, since zerk is not the only meta gear dps on game) is dead, at least i don’t saw no one doing the raid with the DPS Meta. But they did with 6 zerk and 3 sinister… bla bla bla. In the actual meta the objective of the party is achieve the max dps possible, no one takes defensive traits or utilities, unless that defensive utilites allows you to do massive damage to boss or negate massive damage and increase your dps uptime, this utilities are reflects and blocks. What i saw is people using zerk gear with defensive traits/utilities, and they were not doing the proper damage rotation, they were trying hard to survive. For you guys that don’t understand much about the game, let me tell you that there is a massive difference between have a zerk gear with ofensive traits/utiities (glass canon build), and have a zerk gear with defensive traits/utilities (hybrid build). The difference in dps can be alot more than 50%, especially when you are trying to survive and are not doing the proper damage rotation.

Enrage time is needed, if is not there raids will be a joke like you can just put defensive gear and trivialize most of gw2 content, another fact is that a Revenant solo the first 3 learning mini-boss and the only reason that was impossible to him to solo the last boss it was the enrage time. You need enrage time or everyone just go on defensive gear and can do alot more mistakes, they just need some hours to do the content. Also, just think about the tt wurm you remove the timer and every one does the event without much trouble, the only thing they need is alot of time. I don’t played the raid yet, but for what i saw and heard from other people, i give my congratulations to the raid team, they did an awesome job.

Aidenwolf.5964:

It means the “raid” design didn’t compensate for the mitigation mechanics of GW2’s classes and yes, that is poor design.

I vehemently disagree, so I’m genuinely curious here; what do you actually want to see? Dedicated healers/tanks running Nomad’s gear? Every DPS class running Knight’s gear? What justification could you have for any of that?

Only had the chance to pug, so didnt actually beat the boss, but I have to say, this boss feels really well designed – and I do see the viability of multiple play styles and even armor sets in the encounter. Ive never been a fan of super tight enrage timers – they add artificial difficulty to a fight that isnt really skill based. The Vale Guardian enrage timer feels like it is close to where it should be (given that this was the first time many saw it).

I fully expect to see this encounter beaten by groups that deviate from the zerker/sinister meta, which means they did a good job on design.

I would like to see some encounters that have less emphasis on huge damage in the future (not all, but a few), but this is definitely a great first step forward. Great job Anet.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Aidenwolf.5964:

It means the “raid” design didn’t compensate for the mitigation mechanics of GW2’s classes and yes, that is poor design.

I vehemently disagree, so I’m genuinely curious here; what do you actually want to see? Dedicated healers/tanks running Nomad’s gear? Every DPS class running Knight’s gear? What justification could you have for any of that?

Why would I want DPS in PTV? I’ll assume you’re calling me a madman because I disagree.

DPS
Dedicated healer(s) (which are necessary for every raid in every game)
And yes, at least 1 tank

That leaves 60-80% of the raid in DPS gear.

Since my words don’t make sense to you I’d ask what games you’ve raided in.

Calcifire.1864:

all in all, it was fun, mechanics were somewhat obscure, but once they were figured out the mobs melted (except the red one, because we didn’t figure it out :/)

Satenia.9025:

1. Explain the mechanics: In my opinion, the challenge should be in executing a counter to a certain mechanic, not having to figure it out through try-and-error. In case of the three guardians, how to combat them wasn’t intuitive in my opinion. Giving or leaving hints through NPC’s or something like that would speed up the learning-process.

With all due respect (and I mean it, no disrespect to you), I believe you are not so used to raiding in other games. Part of the fun is actually discovering what to do. GW2 is kind enough not to charge for repairs (anymore), think of other games with raids that didn’t explain the mechanics and you still had to pay for repairs. WoW (just to give a popular example, not to compare) lived with no boss explanation for a very long time. It just worked. There were videos on the internet, different strategies. I fear that if ANet gives away too much of the mechanics, everybody would simply execute the bosses the same way, no creativity. Tequatl has no in-game explanation and people figured it out. The Marionette was temporary with no in-game explanation and people figured it out. The final boss at Silverwastes has no in-game explanation and people figured it out.

So to be quite honest, I don’t think ANet is wrong or faulty here. Besides maybe explaining things like: this boss has these boons and throws these conditions, but not telling how it uses them.

Rash.6514:

Calcifire.1864:

all in all, it was fun, mechanics were somewhat obscure, but once they were figured out the mobs melted (except the red one, because we didn’t figure it out :/)

Satenia.9025:

1. Explain the mechanics: In my opinion, the challenge should be in executing a counter to a certain mechanic, not having to figure it out through try-and-error. In case of the three guardians, how to combat them wasn’t intuitive in my opinion. Giving or leaving hints through NPC’s or something like that would speed up the learning-process.

With all due respect (and I mean it, no disrespect to you), I believe you are not so used to raiding in other games. Part of the fun is actually discovering what to do. GW2 is kind enough not to charge for repairs (anymore), think of other games with raids that didn’t explain the mechanics and you still had to pay for repairs. WoW (just to give a popular example, not to compare) lived with no boss explanation for a very long time. It just worked. There were videos on the internet, different strategies. I fear that if ANet gives away too much of the mechanics, everybody would simply execute the bosses the same way, no creativity. Tequatl has no in-game explanation and people figured it out. The Marionette was temporary with no in-game explanation and people figured it out. The final boss at Silverwastes has no in-game explanation and people figured it out.

So to be quite honest, I don’t think ANet is wrong or faulty here. Besides maybe explaining things like: this boss has these boons and throws these conditions, but not telling how it uses them.

Agreed with you, I was about to post my own response to this in particular.

This is not an issue. The 3 “mini bosses” at first are there explicitly to teach the mechanics of the final boss (ofc the final boss is more complicated than just that).
Figuring out the strategy from what you understand of the mechanics is what’s fun for most people that are into raiding – I understand it might not be the case with some but it is why I feel the need to criticize this feedback since I wouldn’t want it to be changed in the future.

Also the mechanics really weren’t complicated enough to warrant that opinion (in my opinion :P). My group figured it out in less than a hour how to do most things right and got the boss to 50% HP (we’re actually WvW/sPvP players) which I found to be quite quick for relatively slightly above average experienced players (of PvE content, we can trio fractal 50 per example but we’re not your optimal comp speedrunners etc) in comparison to other games but as the content it not fully released yet I can’t solidify my opinion on this.

Aidenwolf.5964:

DPS
Dedicated healer(s) (which are necessary for every raid in every game)
And yes, at least 1 tank

That leaves 60-80% of the raid in DPS gear.

This sounds exactly in line with what the winning groups ran then, except that the “dedicated healer” also does some DPS because “GW2 combat” and the tank just ran extra toughness but had an otherwise DPS build. That sounds perfectly fine to me and in no way conflicts with anything I’ve previously said.

PLEASE DISABLE THE USE OF BOOSTERS IN RAID ENVIRONMENTS LIKE YOU DO FOR PVP. Other than that, the raid seems fun! I think the floating blue orbs that can hit you for damage need some extra kind of explosion effect if they touch your character as it’s kinda hard to tell what happened. Their hit boxes are a little off as well. Also, please increase the periodical damage from the bosses that effects the entire raid. Otherwise, we’ll never see the need for more than one healer in the raid.

Those things aside, the mechanics are really fun. Really looking forward to the raids to come!

Rising Dusk.2408:

Aidenwolf.5964:

DPS
Dedicated healer(s) (which are necessary for every raid in every game)
And yes, at least 1 tank

That leaves 60-80% of the raid in DPS gear.

This sounds exactly in line with what the winning groups ran then, except that the “dedicated healer” also does some DPS because “GW2 combat” and the tank just ran extra toughness but had an otherwise DPS build. That sounds perfectly fine to me and in no way conflicts with anything I’ve previously said.

Cool. And I like the design of the raids sans timer but it was likely necessary

Crystal Reid.2481:

Ingros.7801:

3. During phase 2 when the guardian splits sometimes the color guardians decide to take long walks for no reason and causes quite a bit of annoyance. The only reason we noticed this as a possible problem is because the aggro system for the Vale Guardian is solid and works very well. (Good Job on that, really. It makes controlling the boss smooth.)

Something I noticed while watching streams last night. I will be looking into that this week.

Just a note on this, when doing the boss last night, we noticed that it happens if one of the people on the split boss is teleported, or the bosses target stealths. For instance I was on green (split p2), when I used Cloak and Dagger, the boss instead of going to the next highest on aggro list that was actively attacking it, he aggrod on a teammate fighting another part. So the aggro tables need to be adjusted for the mini boss phase only.

P3 just seems a little clustery when you have orbs and the other boss mechanics. They just seem thrown in, because this is the first boss, i’d rather do away with those blue orbs, they clutter up the screen space.

Melee dps seems to be diminished because of some mechanics that actively promote moving away from the boss/minis. If you are on blue p2, stacking on circle means no damage, during boss phase the rocks (or portals if you will) sometimes force you to stop dps. This makes it seem (no hard data yet) that melee might actually do less damage than a ranged dps will, because even with circle stacking, you still can do damage on the move. Maybe provide a boost to melee for more incentive to use it/bring it.

All in all, for the first raid boss of GW2 I give it an A-.
Keep it up.

I was only able to try this with a PuG, but I also spent a fair amount of time looking at multiple videos of the encounter. I definitely think that this is a very well done 1st boss. There is nothing too complex, but if people don’t do their jobs (boonstrip)/aren’t built correctly (condi/toughness) then they won’t win. Since GW2 is a game without a gear treadmill the difficulty has to come from mechanics and understanding how best to approach them. Half of the reason why raids in other games tend to be harder is not because of mechanics, but because the player’s gear makes it hard to beat at first, but easy afterwards. With that in mind I think that this is a very well designed boss.

The main complaint I have is that due to the extravagant particle effects it becomes very difficult to see the bosses melee attack as well as the teleportation rocks (the rocks are easy to see when there is no AoE from players…but when there is…). I would suggest adding the easy to see red tell to the rocks. The problem with this suggestion is that it would be harder differentiate the bosses lightning strike (though it can be identified by the beam/delay visual) and that if the rocks are placed in the lightning strike it becomes very difficult to see (though this problem is already present). In addition an identifiable sound (like how the lightning strike has one) for the rocks would make it much easier to react to when there are lots of particles.

Amiron.1067:

PLEASE DISABLE THE USE OF BOOSTERS IN RAID ENVIRONMENTS LIKE YOU DO FOR PVP.

Just wanted to signal boost this. Very good point.

Dahkeus.8243:

Amiron.1067:

PLEASE DISABLE THE USE OF BOOSTERS IN RAID ENVIRONMENTS LIKE YOU DO FOR PVP.

Just wanted to signal boost this. Very good point.

Completely agree.

Insert facetious P2W joke here.

I ran the raid only with pugs and a friend on TS: we had a tank revenant, 3 condi dealers ( i was there as a necromancer ) and the rest full dps, or so i tought.

We did not manage to put down the boss: our first phase was good but not very optimized with melees running at the circles losing a lot of dps, the second phase was very good i think with the 6 damage dealers bursting green, we 3 condi dealers dealing with red and the tank soaking blue by itself. The third phase was more messy, but i noticed the biggest problem was the timer: while the boss was at 50% we had only 1 min remaining best case.

Honestly, i am fine with this: i expected it to be hardly puggable and i am fine with this result, even tought i found the timer too much short still – not because it made the encounter impossible, but because gave me the idea of promoting too much optimized builds and strats while i think berserker timers should be there mostly to avoid stalling.

The thing that pleased me the most about the raid is how much it was not gear-checky: many times in other games you have the impression of failing an encounter just because of your gear quality, but looking back at the tries i did i could see improvement rooms that were mostly skill- based and i really really liked that. Also a better raid composition could have been necessary, and i am totally fine with that.

I liked how the boss interacted with the party members – with scenarios where not full offensive gear was not necessary but very useful to help downtimes in dps. Toughness now is mostly relegated to the main tank and i like that, because it gives a clear purpose to the stat as well as healing power does for the healer, leaving vitality for those that might need more resistance ( before this i ran valkyrie reaper ) and i think that the devs can play around that.

I experienced the whole encounter as a dps-race: the thunders of the 1st and 3rd phase require coordination between players, else it can happen that too many people go there, or a melee finds itself forced to lose dps, or somebody tries to reach the thunder but is not fast enough: the result can or cannot be a wipe, but it can slow too much the party and make the timer run off, which i found really intresting.

I found that the fight required a moderate awarness of the sorrounding, either for the hazards like bubbles, thunders and floor or for the party members getting downed, prompting a decision between letting somebody else pick it up or keep dealing dps.

The least tense part for me was the second: once it is set you have nothing to worry about if not damage dealing. Probably is too much light and some additional distruption hazard might be in order, but is somewhat short after all and it can be a good thing to have a less tense moment in the raid to cool off the head a bit before the hardest phase.

I think that this particular boss encounter has a damage output that can be healed up more efficently by the classic healer specialization of the game rather the druid, that has a lot of burst heal but not too much sustained and pays it with a lot of lack of damage while guardians, elementalists and engineers might constrast better the costant damage stream of the boss; the efficency of the healer is still unclear however, and i don’ t like the idea of the healer as a not mandatory figure because a player can patch itself up with its own heal without healing stats.

However i was really satisfied witht he encounter and i really hope the next bosses will keep this pleasure, or better!